“Mike…” I groaned.
“This is a complex and challenging world,” Mike said, looking skyward. “Who are we to judge how our brothers and sisters stay alive? Especially when we are searching for what has been lost ourselves.”
He put some stress on part of that—we are searching for what has been lost—and I finally caught up.
Textbooks and museums only hold part of the story. It’s sad, but human civilization gets turned upside-down on a regular basis. Lots of stuff has gone missing, or gotten stolen, or wasn’t considered important enough to preserve. Archimedes and the Antikythera Mechanism both have large followings within the academic community, and most of what is known about them has been uploaded and dissected and debated and funneled into online journals.
Maybe there was information that existed…somewhere else.
Which made sense, if you thought about it. After all, we were here in Greece because of a piece of the Mechanism that had slipped through the cracks. There could be more of them on the black market, or already in the hands of private collectors. And somebody who was active in those circles might have a better idea of where we should start hunting for Archimedes.
“We’re already working with a…an archaeologist,” I said.
“Who works directly with museums. I think we need someone off the books.”
Dang. “You could have told me,” I muttered.
“No,” he said. “Not if you need to testify under oath that you had no idea what the real purpose of this store was when we first arrived, and that you left after you learned the truth.”
“Um…”
“After being somewhat relative,” he admitted. And, before I could ask, he added, “I already paid for our gear. You’re clean.”
That tweaked a nerve. The Puukko knife had been expensive. I’d make it up to him.
During our brief ethical interlude, Speedy and the shopkeeper had been engaged in a battle royale over…something. When Mike and I stopped chatting, the shopkeeper threw up his hands in frustration. He locked the front door, and then waved us toward the back of the store.
“What’s up with him?” I whispered to Speedy.
The koala let his forepaws come free of the ceiling beam and he dangled in midair, held up by nothing but those wicked tree-gouging claws on his back legs. “He thinks he’s dealing with two stupid Americans who want a piece of the Antikythera Mechanism.”
“Well, yeah.”
Speedy rolled his eyes as he stretched himself towards me. I held out my hands, and he oozed off of the ceiling in a snakelike coil, crawling down my arms to settle in his customary place on my shoulders.
“He’s a middleman.” His fur buzzed against my ears as he whispered. “He’s gonna try to pass off cheap dross as treasures. Don’t buy anything—don’t even look interested. Just hold out until he puts you in touch with people higher up in the food chain.”
“Sparky’s gonna shit kittens over this,” I muttered.
“No, he won’t,” he said. “The person he sends to you will have been employed by private auction houses and museums. You can play dumb—the best dealers in the illegal art trade have legitimate connections.”
Isn’t that depressing?
We followed the shopkeeper into the room behind the store, and I stood with my arms crossed as he showed us a veritable buffet of trinkets from lost civilizations. I kept shaking my head as he showed us each item—nope, nope, nope, not looking for old pots, nope—until he gave up.
He and Speedy had another argument. I tried to ignore the koala shouting across my left ear as best I could—a real trick, I assure you. I caught the name of our hotel, and nothing else.
Then, Speedy popped me on the side of my head. I took this as a sign to shoot the storekeeper one last stern Look, and then the three of us left.
“Nicely done,” Speedy said to me. “He’ll send his contact over to our hotel tomorrow. And he thinks you’re a complete bitch!”
Well. High praise from Asshole Caesar.
CHAPTER TEN
Apparently, I’d be dining in a fairy kingdom. The restaurant had rooftop seating which overlooked the city. A marble fountain large enough to bathe in was the major source of light: it was surrounded by lanterns, and a soft warm glow swam up from spotlights set below the waterline. Trees grew from huge planters between the tables, carving out niches of space and privacy.
I was accidentally-on-purpose fifteen minutes early, and was wearing something tiny, expensive, and red. Blood red, really, that one dark shade you get when the injury is on the bad side of serious. The sound of my heels smacked down the rest of the ambient noise as the maître d' showed me to my table, and I smiled and waved when people called my name.
If I had to meet a stranger a couple thousand miles outside of my home territory, I was damned sure I’d make myself some witnesses.
I took a few selfies with the waitstaff, and chatted up a very nice American couple on their honeymoon. Then, halfway through the new bride’s story about a dress fitting gone awry, her mouth dropped open and the rest of her face fell slack.
I turned to look at what had caused her mental hard drive to crash. She was staring at the man who had just walked into the restaurant and…
Wow.
Let me remind you that I’m usually surrounded by good-looking men. My husband is finger-licking delicious, and most of the guys in OACET are at least on par with him. There may be one—*cough*Josh Glassman*cough*—who is sex appeal incarnate.
What I’m saying is, I’ve had to build up an immunity to Grade-A prime beefcake just to get through the day.
But this guy?
Wow.
He had thick, dark hair and smoky Mediterranean skin, and was in a suit that was barely a button away from being a full tuxedo. He wore the jacket open, and it spilled in clean lines over a broad chest and a pristine white shirt.
A small boutonniere on his lapel held a rose that matched my blood-red dress.
“Ah,” I heard myself say. “This must be my dinner date.”
I’m not sure what happened to the honeymooners, since I spent the next thirty seconds watching an authentic Greek god walk towards me. He had that smooth, rolling stride of a man who enjoyed long jogs on the beach, and listening to live music at sunset. His turnoffs included—
Sorry. As I said, wow.
He was standing over the table for a good few heartbeats before I remembered I should, you know, talk or something.
I arched an eyebrow instead. It seemed safer.
“Atlas Petrakis,” he said with a grin. There was a little bit of devil in it.
“Of course you are,” I replied. “Please, sit down.”
He reached for my hand. Like a dummy, I thought he was going to shake it. Instead, he kissed it, a perfectly gentlemanly gesture with the bare minimum of lips and spit.
And it still sent a shivering tingle down to my southern inlet.
Some men know what they’re doing. Atlas Petrakis knew what he was doing.
He released my hand—again, not too fast, not too slow, but juuuust right—and I gestured towards the other chair. “Please,” I said. “Sit down.”
Atlas seated himself, carefully tucking his leather satchel between his feet. I noticed he looped the strap around his knee, and realized he had brought samples.
Oh boy.
See, I wasn’t quite sure whether I, a wealthy American tourist, could visit a foreign country and walk off with a part of its history. I definitely wasn’t sure if Atlas Petrakis was a legitimate archaeologist. What’s the etiquette when an edible hunk of a man offers you (possibly) stolen antiquities? Slap him and walk away? Wait for the third date to buy them? I had completely skipped over this chapter in The Ladies’ Guide to Felonies.
“So, Mr. Petrakis—”
“Atlas, please. Ms. Blackwell…”
He waited to see if I’d give him permission to use my first name, but he wasn’t about to get lucky tonight. “So, Atlas, what is it you d
o? Goodwin said you’re the best in your business, but he was vague about what that business actually is.”
“Easiest to think of me as a professional treasure hunter,” he said. “Would you object if I ordered us some wine?”
I would not object, and Atlas called the waiter over and asked for something in Greek. The waiter returned with a bottle of a local vintage, Xinomavro, which I thought was somewhat spicy.
It sure went down easy, though.
“What does a professional treasure hunter do?” I asked, swirling the wine to make its long legs crawl down the side of the glass. The torchlight sparkled within the wine’s deep reds. “Tomb raiding, dodging giant boulders, and such?”
Atlas chuckled. “I’ve played those games. No, I have never raided a tomb. Collectors hire me when they want an item, and I locate it for them. I’m an art broker for antiquities.”
There we go. Art broker sounded much less sexy than professional treasure hunter, but I could wrap my mind around it. When Ben and I first started making money in the stock market, I had gone through a brief period where I acquired paintings as quickly as I could. I sold most of them the following year when I finally accepted that Abstract Expressionism was lost on me. My rapid churn rate on Rothkos and Kandinskys had been a fast introduction to how the art world catered to the wealthy: if you hired the right broker, you could point and shoot him at what you wanted, and he’d spring out to grab the item like a meaty grappling hook.
“Do you have a client list?” I asked, and he flipped open his satchel to retrieve it.
“Some clients request their privacy be protected,” he said, handing me the list. “They have asked to be kept anonymous.”
Yup. On of a list of a hundred names, the first twenty were Anon, followed by a description of the item that Atlas had acquired for them. All of the items sounded exotic. Like, birds with crazy claw-hands in their wings exotic.
“What’s a nábrók?” I asked.
Atlas feigned a shudder. “You’re better off not knowing.”
“Hah,” I said, and poured myself a little more wine. “Now I have to know.”
He told me. I regretted asking. [7]
“Where did you find one of those?” I asked, and then amended the question to include the rest of the list. “Where did you find all of these?”
He smiled. “I am quite skilled,” he said, and I swear his eyes twinkled at me.
“Pretend this is a job interview,” I said.
It came out a little harsh, and he sat up and smoothed himself down. “Ah…yes. Many private collectors are willing to part with some items in exchange for others. I facilitate the trade between interested parties.”
“Where do the items come from?” I asked. “You know…originally.”
“You’re concerned about what is legal and what is not?”
I nodded. “Very concerned.”
“Collecting relics of lost civilizations is not a new phenomenon,” Atlas said, as he ran a finger over his blood-red rose. “Much of what I find has been bought and sold many times, long before cultural property was formally recognized. Such items have been in private possession for many years, and are often treated as exempt from current standards. If these items go to a museum, they are removed from private circulation.
“Except…” Atlas gestured over his shoulder, calling my attention to the city spread out beneath our rooftop patio. “Greece? It has many museums. Not all of them will survive our depression. It is sad, but the smaller museums, they are selling off parts of their collections to survive. Many of them have approached me and have asked me to find them buyers for items that will not be missed.”
It was sad, the idea that museums needed to trade their treasures to keep their doors open. I followed his gaze towards the city, where the outlines of the acropolis were soft against the twilight sky.
I felt his hand on mine. It was warm—like, a sitting-by-the-heat-vent-on-a-January-morning warm. “We are an old people,” he said. “This is not our first challenge. It shall not be our last.”
And he gave me that twinkling smile again.
I decided to fire another warning shot.
“Love your flower,” I said.
“Thank you,” Atlas replied. “I see we have similar tastes, yes? Your dress, you see? A complement?”
I didn’t reply.
“We Greeks believe in Fate,” he said. “Perhaps, Fate tells us we shall work well together.”
“Sure,” I said. “Or you arrived early and waited outside, saw me come in, and then ran down to the florist on the corner to find a boutonniere that matches my outfit. Great trick, by the way. Suggests there’s already a bond between us.”
He flashed his devil’s grin. “Caught,” he admitted. “Did you learn that from your friends, the spies?”
“No. It’s something con artists do.”
The grin disappeared.
“Ms. Blackwell, I didn’t mean to—”
“Of course not,” I said. “But don’t try to jerk me around. Now, do you want to start over?”
He busied himself with his napkin, unable to meet my eyes. “I would like that, yes.”
The waiter arrived and we went through the traditional Dance of the Breadsticks. They were delicious, warm and buttery, and I devoured my share.
By the time I had gotten a nice soggy layer of appetizers in my stomach, I felt secure enough to shift from small talk to the real stuff.
“You’ve heard about the discovery of the new piece of the Antikythera Mechanism?”
“Of course,” he said.
“Finding it has been good for OACET’s reputation,” I said. “If there were another lost fragment out there, OACET would like to be involved in its location and recovery. We would turn it over to a museum, of course. I’m here because they can’t leave the country, and they need someone they trust as their representative to put the feelers out.”
There. Nice and solid. Probably aligned neatly with what little information he had gotten from Ambassador Goodwin. Who says I can’t lie worth a damn?
Atlas Petrakis gave me a very cautious nod. Suspicion, so well hidden I almost hadn’t noticed it, left him. “Yes,” he said. “I see how that would bring you to me.
“But, Ms. Blackwell,” he said, as he reclined in his chair. His shirt shifted slightly, the space between the buttons stretching to show that smooth chest…oh wow. “Finding a single fragment of the Mechanism was a miracle. If there are more of them at large, they are most likely at the bottom of the sea.”
“Or in a private collection,” I pressed. “There might be something out there that’s been…lost.”
“Many things have been lost,” he agreed.
“As you’ve said, it’s your job to recover such items for interested parties.”
He nodded again. “But it’s never so simple. Understand, please, that this new discovery is likely to bring out the frauds. Every collector with an unidentified fragment in their possession will think they’ve had a piece of the Mechanism all along.”
I shrugged. “So what? I’m rich, and I bet you work on commission.”
Atlas blinked.
“I’m not very subtle,” I added helpfully.
“I have noticed,” he replied.
“If I decide to hire you, you’ll be paid for each possible lead, false or not. I want anything connected to the Mechanism, not just actual pieces of it. Documents, scraps of paper, family anecdotes… It’ll all be good for OACET’s reputation.
“For the record,” I added, “anything you obtain for me must be done legally. OACET is dissected in the media on a daily basis, so I’m going to personally check each lead.”
I paused. This was the tricky bit.
“If,” I continued, “you do find a solid lead, I’ll want to know the source. I’ll be checking how that source acquired the fragment. Especially where they found it. It doesn’t matter if it was discovered five or five hundred years ago—I’ll still want to check the data myself.”<
br />
“It’s my job to establish provenance—”
I cut him off. “And mine to make sure anything I bring back to my husband won’t bite him in the ass. With that said,” I continued, “you’ll still be paid for these solid leads, even if the provenance falls apart when I check it out. It’s not your fault if a seller lies to you.”
He shook his head, bemused. Apparently, this is not how such deals were usually done in the gray areas of the antiquities trade. I wondered how much he’d jack up his price for leads that he knew would dead-end on me.
I also wondered how long it would take him to realize that I was hoping he’d find these dead ends.
“It’s my spring break, so I’m here for one week,” I said. “Two, if your best leads can’t be resolved quickly. Again, you’ll get a bonus if they—”
“No.” Atlas cut in. “Ms. Blackwell, what you want, it cannot happen. The art world moves slowly. It takes time to find what you are looking for, more time to arrange meetings, and still more time to check provenance.”
“Then I hope you’re caught up on your sleep,” I said.
He stared at me for a very long moment. I thought he might walk out. I really wouldn’t have blamed him if he had. Instead, he nodded, as if agreeing to terms.
“Now,” I said, as I reached for the bottle to refill my wine. “Before I decide to put you on the payroll, show me what you’ve brought.”
Atlas reached for his satchel.
He was definitely a pro. He hailed the waiter and asked for a clean dishtowel, which he laid on the table; on top of that, he placed a piece of clean white linen which he removed from a large plastic Ziploc baggie. He tucked the plastic baggie between the dishtowel and the linen, making a sanitation sandwich to keep any grease from floating upwards through the layers of cloth.
Then, he started placing small boxes on the linen.
“If these aren’t enough to prove my skills,” he said, “I have more at my office. Larger pieces, very lovely. But more expensive, of course.”
Damn. I realized, almost too late, that he expected me to buy at least one of these samples as proof that I was committed to the hunt. I hoped he took personal checks.
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