“Why?” Thompson asked.
“Chad added what we found out about Charles Sims, that he owned the reliquary in 1986.” The phone in her pocket chirped and she said, “Agent Denton, be prepared for an army of people coming to Charleston. The Vatican has sent an envoy. They want to share the missing reliquary’s history in person, and of course take possession of it when we find it, assuming it isn’t contaminated with anthrax.
“Chad is the one member on my team that is smiling, and that is only when he thinks I’m not looking. He’s been on the phone for hours with Homeland explaining the FIG program to their computer scientists.”
She walked with Thompson out the front door. “Be back at 5:00 p.m., please. An entire contingent of FBI agents from Washington arrives around then. One more thing: The Vatican wants the word ‘reliquary’ removed from all of our conversations and our written notes. They do not want
the Catholic religion to be associated with a government investigation.”
“That’s nuts. If some crazy group is stealing the Vatican’s reliquaries because they believe there is some ancient bug contained in one, then the Vatican ought to want to find them.” He looked at Brook. Fluorescent light wasn’t flattering to anyone, and she looked exhausted. “Am I free to leave? I have reports to write.”
“Of course. Let’s take the stairs. I need the exercise.” She led him to a door in the hall, opened it with her key card and guided him down the five flights to a private exit. He pushed the door open to leave.
“Wait, Agent Denton.” Thompson turned, halfway out into the parking lot. He could hear people laughing from the street. “Do you believe this? That we may have some sort of ancient anthrax hiding in that missing reliquary?”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. If a terrorist group believes it, we’re in trouble either way. If they don’t find a bug in a reliquary, these people will move to something else. There’s a long list of stuff that can kill thousands.”
“You’re very knowledgeable of weapons for someone with a PhD in art history.” Agent Reynolds attempted to smile.
Thompson‘s face was flat. “Since we picked up the first rock, humans have slaughtered each other and celebrated their victories. The winners memorialize themselves in fantastic architecture, sculptures, and paintings. War is second only to religion in its ability to stimulate creativity.” Thompson looked at her. “To understand art, you must understand war.”
Chapter 32
The slight priest in dark robes left the plane at the Charleston airport, carrying nothing but a small overnight bag and a locked aluminum briefcase. He had thought that a dark-skinned priest in a city like Charleston would be a somewhat unusual sight, and he prepared to receive sidelong looks, but his fellow travelers had done nothing but smile or nod at him.
The year before, he had followed the story of the murders of nine parishioners at Mother Emmanuel AME Church with a feeling of sick anticipation, waiting for protesters to fill the streets in a lava flow of rage. It didn’t happen. Several days later, when the families of the victims offered forgiveness to the perpetrator, a pale young man with a bowl haircut, he had gone to the Sistine Chapel and given thanks that the city of his birth had not devolved into violence.
Monsignor Giuseppe Ogier was an anomaly at the Vatican—an American with an Italian first name, French last name, and dark skin. After almost forty years in Rome, he was no longer the only African-American wandering the grounds of Vatican City, but since he was from the southern part of the United States, he was frequently consulted on the latest ethnic crisis in the world, his peers believing his upbringing gave him secret knowledge of racism. He had learned there was no secret knowledge relating to racism. Some born to this world were just evil, and he had long given up attempting to find any logical reason for their existence.
The secret knowledge he did have was about reliquaries, and he was elated at the thought of putting his hands on the one missing from the Convent of Corbie since 1685.
Chapter 33
“Thompson, are you coming over here this morning? Amarintha and I missed you yesterday afternoon.” Richard sounded querulous on the phone, quite different from his normal voice. Thompson had almost not answered the call. He was standing in front of an FBI conference room, preparing to go in and explain, again, to the FBI how Bunin’s auction scheme worked. He had no energy to deal with Richard. Kate Strong, Bunin, anthrax in Charleston in 1986, and an FBI computer program predicting Armageddon
were all fighting for his mental attention, attention he did not have.
“I had planned to, but something else has come up. Is something wrong at the site or with Amarintha?”
The night—and early morning—had been exhausting. After the meeting with Jack Strong, he had left the FBI building, gone home and changed clothes, and then returned. By that time, around 6:00 p.m., there had been several new faces, presumably FBI agents, ensconced in the previously empty cubicles. The night was a blur of meetings and updates with these new agents, repeating what he knew about Kate Strong, Anton Bunin and the world of antiquities smuggling. The fact that Thompson was, through his cover as a designer, involved with the husband of the kidnapped Kate Strong, as well as working for the daughter of the man who had owned the
missing reliquary, seemed to be of utmost interest to the new agents.
Monsignor Ogier, the Vatican’s emissary, had arrived from the airport in the early evening. Sally brought him to a conference room where Frank and Thompson had been working. The monsignor, a slight coffee-skinned man in his sixties, smoothed his robes and put his hands on the table, a model of composure and dignity. “I appreciate you allowing me to come. I sincerely hope I can help you find the missing reliquary, and more importantly, when we do find it, I pray it is not contaminated.”
“How are your priests?” Thompson asked.
Monsignor Ogier looked at him a long while before he spoke, his fingertips together on the table. “They are recovering, but slowly. Many are praying for them.”
Frank shifted in his seat, rubbed his eyes and said, “Can you tell us a bit more about both reliquaries? How old they are, how one could have been stolen, anything that might help us locate the other one?”
“I have reviewed all known accounts and references to both reliquaries,” said Monsignor Ogier, “and I am certain that the missing one was stolen from the convent in 1685, by a Huguenot woman who later came to Charleston. If you are interested, I have a report that details the complete story.”
Later, Thompson wondered why it had taken over three hundred years for the Vatican to report the stolen item to Interpol’s Art team; at the time, he had been too dumbfounded to ask.
“The missing item isn’t one of our most notable reliquaries, and it took me some time to track down the proper records. Both reliquaries date from the 1200s, and were given to the convent by King Louis IX after he purchased ten artifacts from the Byzantines. We cannot know when the altar was contaminated with anthrax, but I’m assuming your health authorities are operating under the assumption the missing item is also contaminated. Here is a dossier you may find interesting.”
Monsignor Ogier had handed them all a spiral-bound document that Thompson had not had a chance to read, then left for his hotel.
He realized Richard was saying his name again.
“Thompson, Thompson, can you hear me?”
“Yes, sorry, what is it that you need?” Thompson was barely listening to Richard.
“Those two guys digging the foundation piers yesterday found a trunk buried on Amarintha’s lot. We opened it and it had a little box in it.
“Amarintha wants you to look at it. It could be valuable, unless the top is completely costume jewelry stuff, which I guess it could be, but I looked at it with my magnifying glass and the stone on the lid sure looks like a ruby or a big diamond. We figured you might know something about this type of decoration, si
nce you know art. I can keep it here until you show up tomorrow. Amarintha’s not here anyway.”
Thompson’s comprehension was about two seconds behind Richard’s words. He stopped walking. “Wait, you found what?”
“A small decorated box. It’s quite unusual, with a figure on the top. It was in a leather bag—”
“Richard, do you know how to take a picture with your phone and text it to someone?”
“I do.”
“Richard, please listen very carefully to me. In my job, I sometimes see notifications of stolen art. What you have sounds familiar. Can you text me a picture right now?”
“Well, sure, Amarintha put it all back together, but we took pictures first. You want me to open it again?”
“No! No, just text me a picture. We’ll have to hang up for you to do that.”
“I’m on my land line, so I’ll get my cell phone and send it to you.”
He heard rustling, banging, a chair scraping, silence, and then a click.
“You got it?” Thompson asked.
“Sending it to you now.”
Thompson pulled the phone away from his ear, shaded the screen away from the sunlight, and waited. He heard the single note of his text notification, and a picture appeared.
“Oh my God,” whispered Thompson. It was Charles Sims’ reliquary. Taking a deep breath, Thompson said more calmly, “Richard, what you have there may be dangerous. Has anyone touched it?”
“What do you mean dangerous?”
“Has anyone touched it?”
“Amarintha touched what was inside the box. You want me to take a picture of what’s inside?”
Thompson was already walking to the room where the FBI agents were waiting for him. He covered the phone, and whispered, “Get Agent Reynolds. Now.” One agent nodded and hurried away.
“No, Richard. You need to leave it alone. I know this is confusing, but there is a risk that what you have is contaminated with—” Thompson thought quickly, “—contaminated with mercury used to glue the gems on the top.”
Richard was silent. Brook Reynolds came rushing down the hall. Looking carefully at his face, she led him to an empty
room.
“Hold on, Richard,” he said. Thompson put the phone on speaker, muted it and wrote on the whiteboard.
The artifact is at Amarintha Sims’s home site on Church Street. Her next-door neighbor has it.
Brook rushed out of the room, and Thompson leaned against the wall. Amarintha’s father must have buried the reliquary. Why? The only connection was what happened at the Base in 1986.
Thompson could see others in the hallway outside talking to Brook. She came back in and sat down.
“I think we need to tell Amarintha. It’s her property,” said Richard, his voice surprisingly loud given the small speaker of the cellphone.
“I’ll call her, Richard. In the meantime, some people are going to come to your house and pick up what you found. They will take the item with them.” Thompson looked over at Brook, his eyes raised. She nodded.
Richard gave a snort. “You know, I worked for the FBI for a long time. I wasn’t a field agent, but I know spin when I hear it. What’s really going on?”
Brook Reynolds was typing furiously on a terminal in the conference room. She turned the screen around and showed Thompson a screen with a picture of Richard Anderson with the status of ‘retired.’ She mouthed, “I know him.” Thompson pushed his phone over to her.
“Mr. Anderson, this is Brook Reynolds. You and I met right before you retired.”
“I remember. You’re the SAC now. Special Agent Reynolds, perhaps you can tell me what is going on.”
“The small box you are holding is a reliquary, a box that holds relics. A man named Charles Sims, who worked on the North Charleston Naval Base owned it, and is likely the person who put it into the ground. We’re not sure why. I will be sending people from the FBI to secure the item. If you can agree to a voluntary quarantine, you can stay at your house until we determine whether the reliquary is dangerous.”
Thompson and Brook looked at each other waiting for Richard’s reply.
Richard expelled his breath, a long, old man sound conveying agreement as well as resignation. “Did you say Charles Sims? That’s Amarintha’s father. He’s dead now. I knew him, and his wife Fannie.”
Brook said, “He also worked at DOD, and that box may have been contaminated at the base.”
Thompson gave her thumbs up. Brook had given Richard a much better reason to secure the box than his lame story concerning gem paste.
“I understand. Of course, I’ll cooperate, but I’m worried about Amarintha. She is the one who touched what’s in that box and then went to her mother’s house. Go find her, Thompson.”
Chapter 34
Amarintha woke up in her old bed at Fannie’s with that same feeling she had had every morning when she was a kid before her father died—that she could conquer the world. Charles Sims had been Amarintha’s hero. The two of them had tromped through the farm multiple times per week; always looking for evidence of life—scat from a deer, a raccoon skeleton, or perhaps a squirrel’s nest. After one of these walks, she had wanted to know how lizards could lose their tails and then grow them back. Her father told her to become a biologist and discover the answer for herself. Had Amarintha known how much education it would take just to begin to answer that question, she might have found an easier way to make a living.
At ten, he died in a car accident. Amarintha could not remember anything from that year except for the memorial service, when several people came up to Fannie, with Amarintha white-faced and mute at her mother’s side, and described how Charles Sims had changed their lives.
Rolex’s barking brought her back to the present, and she heard her daughter and mother laughing outside. Her mother had taught that fool dog not to bark at the birds in the back yard, but in the front yard, he still barked at and attacked the sprinklers. He would do it for hours if allowed. What danger a dog thought sprinklers presented no human would ever know.
The evening before, her illness had not been the primary topic of conversation. She had told her mother and daughter about the trunk the contractors found, and the little box inside it.
“Too bad we didn’t find something like that years ago. Your father and I could have built the house if the thing on top is really a ruby,” Fannie grumbled. “I would have pried that stone off and sold it in a second.”
“Mama, we can still do that, as long as it’s not stolen,” Amarintha laughed.
“Finders, keepers,” Ava had trilled.
Amarintha heard the two women and the dog tromp back into the house up the side porch that led to the kitchen. She pulled on a robe and walked down the stairs to the kitchen. Ava and Fannie were sitting at the table, all eyes on the paper, so she padded towards the coffee pot. The dog barked and Amarintha turned and said, “Good morning.”
The women looked up from their respective sections of the paper. Ava made a little screeching noise, and dropped her coffee cup, creating a waterfall of hot coffee that Rolex began to sniff.
“My goodness! You’re a fumble fingers this morning,” laughed Amarintha, as she knelt down and picked up the cup. She grabbed paper towels, competing with the dog to clean up the mess. Amarintha looked up from her kneeling position. Her mother and Ava were staring at her. “What are you two looking at?”
Amarintha stood. “I mean it. What is wrong?” Her mother and daughter rose simultaneously from their chairs and pulled Amarintha to the bathroom in the hall.
In the mirror were three faces: Ava, with her long bangs and those unmistakable eyes, just like her mothers, tear-streaked and smiling; Fannie, her lined face offset by the thick white braid; and, in the middle, Amarintha, with ever so faint eyelashes and eyebrows. She had been without both for so long that her eyes looked frame
d with a black marker. The face itself was no longer ghost pale but pink, and surrounded by a barely visible halo of hair, some of it back to its original, copper-penny color.
Amarintha stared into the mirror, running her hands over her face, pulling her eyelashes, touching her hair, turning, hugging her mother and her daughter, all of them beginning to speak at once.
“Oh my, oh my. I just can’t believe you look so much better than you did yesterday.” This was all Fannie could say. Amarintha rubbed the mirror as though her reflection was an illusion. It didn’t change. She looked at herself again and realized that Ava and Fannie were just as they had been yesterday, but she was undeniably not.
The three women hurried back to the kitchen and sat at the table.
“Ok, now guys, let’s not get too excited.” Amarintha tried to dampen the mood, attempting to put her scientific brain in control.
“Mom. You looked so awful yesterday. I’m sorry, but you did. You look so much better today. You have eyebrows and lashes coming back.”
“Hair grows back differently once you’ve had chemo. This could be nothing but a momentary glow, you know, from seeing you for the first time in a month.” Amarintha kissed her daughter.
“Don’t you think it might be a good idea to go to your doctor as soon as you can?” asked Fannie.
Could the terrible treatments actually have had an effect? “You’re right. After Dick sees me, we’ll go to the Angel Tree.”
The three of them quickly dressed, packed a lunch and piled into Amarintha’s car to make the trek to downtown Charleston.
The visit with her doctor was brief. He said he saw no difference in her appearance, but agreed to have her blood checked. When he left to get the phlebotomist, Amarintha gazed at herself in the mirror on the back of the examination door. She saw only a thin, haggard woman looking back at her, no different from the dozen cancer patients Dick had likely examined before her.
Amarintha shrugged when she saw her mother and daughter’s anxious faces in the waiting room. “He’ll have some results from my bloodwork in an hour or so. Let’s go.”
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