by Nick Thacker
My Pesach, he reminded himself. My job to do.
The cart was heavy, but it was mostly empty. A single jar full of a whitish powder sat beneath a sheet on the top of the cart, but the rest of the weight came from the cart itself and its industrial-strength casters. They rolled smoothly, but he still had the friction gravity provided to contend with.
The path he had chosen was clear: a left turn out of the access hallway into the main museum’s atrium, then a right turn into a smaller, central atrium that housed his final destination: The Antiquities of Thera exhibit, a brand-new spectacle that Athens and its museum was quite proud of. He’d seen the advertisements for the grand opening: hundreds of artifacts, thought to be from the islands near the coast of Greece, all from thousands of years ago.
Tonight was not the grand opening, but a sort of ‘soft opening,’ a celebration of the museum’s newest attraction, and a way to generate — hopefully — more offerings from the museum’s most distinguished donors. The gala was a closed-door affair, an invitation-only event that began as soon as the building closed to the public.
As such, Stephan was in a bit of a hurry. He wouldn’t turn any of the guests’ heads as long as the museum was open during normal business hours, but once the gala began, security would tighten a bit.
These people were, after all, some of Athens’ finest, and that meant they were worth more to the museum than the standard day visitor. These donors and VIPs would begin arriving at any moment, so his window of opportunity would be closing soon.
few minutes between the shift changes when it was safest to move about, without fear that he’d be seen by a regular employee who might not recognize him and grow suspicious.
Relax, he told himself. Follow the plan. The plan is good, the plan is sound.
My Pesach.
1
Jennifer
IN ADDITION TO THE BRAND-NEW Antiquities of Thera exhibit, the National Museum had a world-class collection of antiques and sculptures in its numerous divisions, including the well-known Antikythera Mechanism and a massive Epigraphical wing. Built originally in 1829, the museum had moved locations and acquired new curators, exhibits, and names during its nearly 200-year existence.
Now located on a beautiful and grandiose green space in the heart of downtown Athens, the National Museum of Archeology was a glorious throwback of a sight in the midst of a bustling and modern cityscape. Pillared Ionic columns that hearkened back in an upgraded homage to the Parthenon’s own Doric architectural design.
As the entrance wound into the first of the grand lobbies where the herd of guests had congealed, Jenny Polanski tugged gently on her husband’s arm. Let’s go, she thought. We’re going to be late.
She didn’t dare say anything.
Her husband, the salt-and-peppered man standing next to her and a full head taller than her, was deep in conversation with another couple in front of them. Both couples were wearing their most elegant outfits — tuxedos for the men and formal dresses for the women. Jenny’s own dress was snug, tightly shaped to her lithe, athletic body. Red sequins sparkled out from strategic spots on the dress, calling attention to areas on the outfit she knew would earn admiring looks from the male attendees and a few uneasy glances from their female counterparts.
She hadn’t picked out the dress — that had been her husband’s work, as he liked everything to be ‘perfect,’ as long as ‘perfect’ was defined by him. Jonathan Polanski was a rising star in the political arena in Massachusetts, and his work as a lawyer during the bankruptcy of Greece had earned him a spot among the Athens elite. They were here tonight to rub elbows with the other VIPs in attendance, including leading economic advisors, political players, and the upper echelon of high-class Grecian celebrities.
She sighed, almost inaudibly, but loud enough that Jonathan would hear. He was a phenom when it came to working a room, and she knew he would have been able to detect her social cues from across the expansive lobby. The fact that he was ignoring her while she was hanging on his arm — again, by his design — meant that he was sending her a nonverbal cue as well.
You’re not as important as these two, he was saying.
She made a face, but pointed it toward the marble floor.
The couple her husband was conversing with was one of the high-flying Athens elite — a movie star and his wife, a stunning blonde with a dress that barely covered her thighs and only stretched up far enough to show off an impressive upper body. The dress seemed as though it had been fashioned out of a single, skimpy piece of fabric.
Sheik, nearly see-through fabric.
She knew her husband well enough to know that he was hardly interested in what the other Greek movie star — a man who offered Jonathan Polanski no political value — had to say.
She shook her head.
“We should probably get going,” the blond suddenly said, interjecting.
“Right, of course,” Jonathan replied. He made a show of looking at his fabulously expensive watch, a gift from President Pavlopoulos of Greece. He looked down at Jenny. “Ready, honey?”
She smiled, but she knew he was reading the fury in her eyes. Sure, darling, she thought. I’m ready.
He nodded, taking the lead as he dragged Jenny out of the lobby of the museum and down a corridor leading to their destination: the brand-new Antiquities of Thera exhibit. The opening was set for a week from tonight, but the museum staff had been working overtime to get this ‘soft opening’ gala set up for the VIP attendees tonight. It would be another event like all the others, according to Jenny. Plenty of elaborate displays of hors d’oeuvres, shrimp cocktails on massive ice sculptures, bright green inedible flora and fauna that provided a colorful backdrop to the real food, and, of course, live music.
She could hear the strains of one of Haydn’s quartets reaching her ears even before they stepped into the lavishly appointed hall. A black-tie staff member greeted them, handing her a program — her VIP husband wasn’t deemed lowly enough to carry a piece of paper apparently — and ushered them to their table.
“Will you be dining with Mr. and Mrs. Ellison?” the staffer asked. He motioned to the couple behind them.
The movie star and his trophy wife beamed. “That would be exceptional, if you do not mind,” the movie star said.
Jonathan clenched his jaw once, a tick that Jenny had long ago interpreted as annoyance, and nodded. “Sure,” he said. “That’s fine.”
2
Jennifer
Always the politician, she thought. Her husband had likely run through the scenarios in his mind in that split-second and decided that it wasn’t worth the possible political ramifications of denying the movie star a bit of one-on-one conversation. She knew he had been hoping to get across the table from one of the power players in the room, perhaps a Ralph Friedman, Europe’s modern-day John D. Rockefeller, who was bringing solar power to the masses in Western Europe, or Prince Alwalam bin Alam, an oil tycoon and philanthropist who had made his riches the best way possible: by being born into them.
The tables were all-four tops, and the waiter brought them to one near the far corner of the room. It was another slap in the face to her husband, who was now going to be sitting so far out of the limelight he would be lucky to even be noticed by the occupants of the tables right next to them.
I’m sure I’ll pay for this later, she mused. He would be craving attention by the end of the night, and if he didn’t throw himself on top of her during the limousine ride back to their hotel, it would surely happen as soon as they got into the suite’s bedroom.
If Jenny was lucky, her husband might even try to pry the actress-supermodel wife of the movie star off her man’s arm and set up a late night ‘work meeting’ somewhere downtown with her, leaving Jennifer alone to curl up with the latest David Berens novel.
They sat, the waiter pulling Jenny’s chair out for her. She placed her clutch on the table beside her and eased down into the seat. The man moved across and performed the same motion
for the actor’s wife, then stood at the edge of the table and took their drink orders.
Jenny mindlessly ordered ‘something with vodka in it, and don't be stingy,’ while she watched another black-suited museum staff member hustling through the half-empty room, wheeling a cart in front of him. He seemed nervous, but he kept his gaze straight toward the center of the room.
The waiter left, spinning quickly and heading toward the table nearest theirs. Jenny watched the area just past him, in the center of the large hall, where a beautiful antique bell-shaped object sat, lights from the LED fixtures far above her head shining down on it. It appeared to be some sort of metal — bronze or silver — but it was matte in some places, its sheen worn off from centuries of weather. She took in the scene for a moment, appreciating for the first time since they’d entered the marvelous design of the museum’s interior.
The staffer pushing the cart headed straight toward the center of the room. There were two tables flanking the central bell exhibit, one closer to Jenny and one on the opposite side, closer to the man and his cart. Both tables had collections of smaller artifacts on them, each with a tent card in front of it with writing on it. She assumed each one depicted the item in question and where it had been found. The whole display was grand, but it was nothing compared to the stage and food tables set up in the wide nook at one edge of the long hall which could just now noticed behind the central exhibit display. She had been right about most of it — the ice sculpture, the greenery, the hors d’oeuvres — but one thing was off.
There was no ice sculpture. Or rather, there was no single ice sculpture. Arranged around the food, using strategically placed leaves of parsley and other garnishes as tiny pops of color on the otherwise monochromatic sculpture, was a pair of two massive humans, both carved out of ice.
The ice men were embroiled in an intense hand-to-hand duel, their swords still hanging by their sides, both shirtless, wearing a leather cloth around their waist and sandals on their feet.
She caught her breath. It was strikingly beautiful, and the sheen of the slowly melting ice added to the effect, giving her the impression that the two sculptures were actually sweating as they fought one another. The sculptor had somehow even given one of them a ponytail of hair on the back of his head, floating magically in space as the frozen warriors whipped out at one another.
“Impressive, no?”
She turned her head and remembered that there were three other people at the table. “Sorry,” she replied, “I just now noticed it. It’s — phenomenal.”
“It is,” the man said. “Henrique Waltham Joaquin,” he said, over-enunciating each syllable as if he was simultaneously sucking on a marble. “A French-born sculptor who has made his home in Greece these last few decades. He is sitting right over there, directly next to the piece.”
He pointed across the room and Jenny saw the man. Joaquin was hunched over a glass of champagne, both elbows on the table. His hair looked dirty and disheveled, but he wore an impeccable tuxedo, complete with tails. “Interesting,” she said.
“Quite interesting,” the actor continued. “To gather such a fine assortment of men and women, well — it’s really quite remarkable.”
Jenny didn’t necessarily feel the same way. With enough money on the table, anyone can get some famous people together for a night.
The man pushing the wheeled cart stopped in front of the giant bell, looking straight at it. He wore a permanent frown, his eyebrows crusty and thick, dark and brooding.
“It’s just a fundraiser,” she said.
“Just a fundraiser — ha!” The movie star was apparently a jovial man, and he let out a few more chuckles before explaining himself. “This event is certainly a fundraiser, my dear,” he said. “But it’s a fundraiser for more than just a sense of pride.”
“Oh?” Jenny looked over at her husband. He had his trademark grin plastered on his face, the one that said to the world I have no idea what’s happening but you’ll never be able to tell. He shrugged.
He’d told her earlier that evening that the fundraiser was simply a way of keeping the museum in the black for the next fiscal year. The country had been thrust into a bit of a depression following the economic collapse that occurred a couple of years ago, so many of the nonprofit institutions like this one had worked toward increasing their donation support.
“Yes, of course,” the man said, now addressing Jonathan as well. “The museum will benefit from the support of the fine people here, but it is not intended to be an altruistic effort. There is something quite valuable on the line for the auction.”
“The auction?” Jenny looked at the tower of antiquities on the table in the center of the room.
“Not for those piddly objects,” he said. “They will live here, like all the other pots and pans from centuries ago. No, some of the museum’s silent partners have the distinct privilege of owning some offshore interests it is hoping to sell tonight.”
Jonathan was now intrigued, Jenny noticed. He sat up straighter in his chair, leaning slightly inward toward the actor sitting across the table from him.
“For the past five years or so, they have owned a moderately sized parcel of land on the island of Santorini.”
Jenny knew of Santorini. Jonathan had been there twice on ‘business’ while working with the Greek government the past two years, though she suspected that what he meant by ‘business’ had an entirely different meaning to him than it did to the rest of world.
“They excavated some of these items from that land, but the pressures of the government as well as a waning interest in the Aegean region for geological history has led them to believe that it is time for a new chapter in their own history. They hope the new owner will take care of the land, even possibly open it to the public as a park or wildlife sanctuary, though they have been quite vague in their descriptions.”
It sounded familiar now. She thought she had read something about that in one of the local papers their doorman brought up to the hotel that morning. Something about a museum hoping to cash in a nice piece of land for short-term profit. The paper had taken an anti-capitalism slant, but had ultimately ended with the optimistic statement that Greece would rise again through a focus on the historic past it had come from, not from importing the histories of other nations.
Jenny looked up again at the bell in the center of the room. The staff member who had been pushing the cart toward the bell had stopped directly in front of it, and was now pouring some sort of liquid into a cavity at the bottom of the antique object. He was focusing intently, unaware of the two other museum security guards approaching him from behind.
She frowned. Odd, she thought. The guards were in a hurry, one of them taking into a radio while the other had a hand on his side.
Gripping a gun.
3
Jennifer
She squeezed the edge of the table. The movie star was still yammering on, apparently bored of the philanthropic talk and now onto the subject he was really interested in: himself. Her husband was still wearing the goofy smile, using what little self-control she knew he had to focus on the actor and his story.
The guard with the huge eyebrows finished pouring the vase of liquid into the crevice and tipped the jar back onto his cart. He reached down into the front pocket of his shirt as he knelt down, pushing aside a sheet that had been concealing the lower section of the cart.
Jenny watched closely, but couldn’t see what it was the man was fiddling with beneath the sheet. He took a tiny device out of the shirt pocket and set it down next to something larger, but his body was obscuring the view.
The two guards were nearly on him now, approaching silently. Apparently the security lead had ordered them to keep their appraisal of the situation quiet, so as not to disturb the growing number of VIP guests in the room. Jenny imagined their supervisor watching on from a closed-circuit television system in a back room somewhere, communicating with the man holding the walkie-talkie.
She loo
ked at the actor’s wife — she was listening intently to her husband’s retelling of how they’d met — either doing a great job of pretending as though it were the first time she’d heard the story or it was, in fact, the first time she’d heard it. She looked at the actor himself, suddenly having the strange urge to tell him to shut up, to interrupt him and ask the table to watch what was happening in the center of the room.
She didn’t need to look at Jonathan — he hadn’t moved since the story had begun, holding his frozen look of interest since they’d sat down. So she glanced around the room to see if anyone else was aware that there was something strange taking place.
The only person she saw watching the scene unfold with her was the artist, Henrique Waltham Joaquin, who was sitting cross-legged across the room from her, his head cocked sideways a bit as the man with the eyebrows knelt in front of his cart.
The first guard was on him at that moment. He grabbed the man’s shoulder, urging him upward, and the man obliged. He stood, just as the second guard reached him.
She could them exchanging words, though she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of Mozart and pre-dinner chatter that reached her ears. The thick-browed man shrugged a bit and she could imagine him saying, I don’t know what the problem is. I just came in to check the bell-thingy.
She looked at the object that had been the subject of the man’s focus since entering the room with his cart. It was worn, and shaped like a ceramic cap that had once been covering a tinged metallic bell. It was about six feet tall, four feet in diameter. There were no markings large enough to be visible from where she sat, but the metal structure seemed to have small scratches on it, like writing, around the exterior.
One of the guards inspected the bell while the other continued to question the staffer who had been working on it. She couldn’t read lips, but she could tell they weren’t speaking English.