by Gregg Loomis
The room also smelled of wet socks since there were probably seventy to a hundred pair dripping on the marble floor. Was it his imagination or could Lang actually hear his own socks sloshing inside his shoes with each step?
Lang had become inured to the looks, glances, and stares Gurt received in any gathering. Even in a modestly cut dress and medium heels, her near six foot, statuesque figure, blond hair, and sculpted face could have come right off a Saint Pauli Girl bottle, absent the overflowing beer steins. If she was aware she drew the attention of nearly every man and the envy of almost all the women, she did not acknowledge it.
The reason for the crowd here in the lobby became instantly apparent: Tuxedoed waiters circulating with trays of Champagne flutes. Lang’s mood improved marginally as he took two and handed one to Gurt.
He sipped tentatively. Lang was far from a connoisseur of bubbly. Twenty dollar a bottle California Mumm Brut or $1,900 Dom Perignon from Reims, France, it all tasted like a very light beer to his uneducated palate. Well, uneducated as to Champagne. A vertical tasting of post-World War II vintage Ports was as simple as differentiating between chocolate and vanilla. Likewise, the flavor, aroma, and finish of a Campbelton single malt were equally distinguishable from those of, say, an Islay.
As the saying goes, pick your poison.
The crowd was gradually filtering toward a pair of elevators that ascended to the top floor. As each person exited, he (or she) joined one of a half dozen lines in front of a long table to register and be assigned a cardboard paddle with a number printed on it. Instead of oral bidding, flashing these devices served. Unsubstantiated legend had it these paddles had originally been wood, a custom discontinued after a series of disputes between bidders became bloody when paddles became weapons.
Behind the tables was a room where perhaps a hundred or so folding chairs faced a stage upon which was a single rostrum as might be found in any college lecture hall. To the stage’s right, a staff of ten manned both telephones and laptops. Although Christie’s had accepted bids by wire for nearly a century, cyber bidding was a relative novelty.
Lang and Gurt took seats on one of two aisles.
Moments later, a cherubic little man, gavel in hand, entered stage left to light applause. Adjusting the microphone on the top of the rostrum, he began.
“Welcome to Christie’s, Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a plummy accent that surely had its origins in Oxford or Cambridge. “As you know, tonight’s auction includes a number of fabulous items from the Elizabethan era. Among those is an addition to the catalogue, lots 226 through 230, a number of what appear to be scientific instruments that may well have belonged to Elizabethan scholar, navigator, cartographer, magician, and astronomer, John Dee. They were recently unearthed on what is believed to have been the site of his home in Mortlake.
“Since it will be some time before Christie’s has another auction of items from this era, we decided to include these tonight. Those of you who wish may inspect them during the intermission.”
“Adding items not in the catalogue?” an elderly gentleman behind Gurt and Lang grumbled. “Highly irregular!”
And it was. Lang knew the list of items to be auctioned was made public via publishing the catalogue three to four months in advance of the auction, allowing potential patrons to make such travel and financial plans as might be necessary.
The issue was forgotten as the auction began. The first few lots consisted of coarse sandy ware, brown or green with plain lead glaze. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, fine china didn’t exist in England. That changed when the Portuguese established a trading base on the island of Macao. By the time of the queen’s death, finely decorated “China goods” were arriving. The name was reduced to simply “china,” a designation still in use today.
Surprisingly, the fragile china had survived better than the stocky oak, function-over-form furniture of the era. It would be more than a century before the more workable if less-durable maple and walnut plus the exotica of imported woods allowed the simple beauty of Sheraton, the strong, curving lines of Queen Anne and the whimsy of Chippendale. Only two hunt tables and a decidedly uncomfortable looking chair were knocked down before the linenfold paneled coffer was wheeled out.
The piece was perhaps four feet in height, sitting on four short, block legs. Lang’s previous inspection days earlier had concluded one of them had been clumsily repaired in the late sixteenth century (with pegs, not the more-expensive nails). The panels were carved in folds like small waves or linen as it is folded in a drawer. Age had turned the wood as dark as mahogany.
“I thought you were not fond of carved furniture,” Gurt whispered.
Not the busy carvings of hunt scenes and dead game so popular on the panels of chests of her native Germany, but he said, “Not quite the same.”
Commencement of the bidding relieved him of further response.
The auctioneer described the coffer, opening bidding at 4,000 pounds. Paddles flashed in hundred=pound increments but largely disappeared as interest lagged past 6,000. At 6,500, the coffer was knocked down to Lang.
He and Gurt sat through the rest of the first half of the auction. As the crowd milled about during the intermission, he stood, stretched and edged into the adjacent aisle. Gurt also stood, collecting her rain coat.
“I’m going to the business office, make arrangements to have my coffer shipped. I’d like to stay to take a look at those scientific instruments that may have belonged to John Dee.”
There was a question on her face.
“John Dee was quite a character. I’ll tell you about him.”
“We have reservations at Club Gascon at 21:00.”
Lang checked his watch. “Plenty of time. Just now coming up on 20:00. We’ll take a cab instead of the tube. Besides, it isn’t that far to West Smithfield.”
She was digging in her purse as he walked away. “I’ll call and see if we can get a later reservation.”
Lang made arrangements for Christie’s to draft his Barclay’s account for the 6,500 pounds plus shipping.
“Where might I view the John Dee items?” he asked the rosy cheeked young lady behind the desk.
“Number three gallery, right along there.” She pointed. “Last door before you reach the auction hall. And remember, Christie’s does not guarantee they really did belong to Mr. Dee.”
The litigious society of America was spreading like the plague it was. Now even English clerks issued disclaimers.
Compared to the vast auction hall, number three gallery was small. Perhaps a dozen pictures hung on the walls. Lang guessed they were painted by Rossetti or some other Pre-Raphaelite, that mid Victorian brotherhood of painters, poets, and critics with a predilection for Arthurian and Greek legend who had resolved to reform art to its true form but had faded into oblivion, if indeed they had ever emerged from it.
The only other furnishings was a pair of jewelers’ showcases around which a dozen or so people clustered. Lang waited for an opening and edged his way next to the glass. He recognized two brass telescopes and a trio of hour glasses, progressing in size. He thought the large brass ring fitted with a sighting rule might be an astrolabe, used to measure the angle between the pole star and the horizon, something difficult on a pitching, rolling ship. It was the ancestor of the modern day sextant. A device that might have been an early spring-driven clock caught his attention before he noted what looked like a large, brass-case pocket watch, lot 228.
He motioned to one of the attendants stationed along the wall like sentries and pointed. “May I have a closer look?”
The man, a grizzled elder whose demeanor screamed ex-cop, detached himself from his post, reaching into his pocket. A key emerged on the end of a chain attached to his belt. He unlocked the glass top of the case and Lang lifted the object out.
There was a catch. When pressed, the top snapped open like a pocket watch. But it was definitely not a time piece, at least not like any Lang had seen. There was no winding
mechanism and its face had no hands, only a notch in the brass casing’s top where a watch’s stem might have been. Nor were there numbers, only groupings of one, two, or three barely distinguishable letters, forms and figures, either worn or rendered illegible by the clouded glass over the face. In the center was a small hole where Lang supposed something long lost had once been attached.
“Know what this is?” he asked the attendant.
The old man shook his head. “No idea, guv. I only get paid to make sure none o’ the lot gets nicked.” He smiled, displaying nicotine-stained teeth. “Not that any o’ this crowd of toffs would be knocking something off.”
As Lang handed the object back, he noted a man standing just inside the door. Lang wasn’t sure what had caught his attention. Perhaps the ill-fitting, cheap suit that contrasted with the largely bespoke attire of most of Christie’s male customers. Maybe the man’s scowl at the screen of an iPhone as he texted.
Something. . . .
A closer look revealed a Cyrillic key pad.
Interesting. An iPhone in Russia cost somewhere around a thousand dollars. For reasons Lang had never cared to understand, the Apple smart phone had either not caught on or the government/oligarchy had economic reasons to keep it out of the reach of ordinary citizens.
A lot of those oligarchs had homes here in London, men to whom a thousand dollars for a phone would be but a trifle. But they also dressed lavishly if not flamboyantly, not in poorly fitted, off-the-rack suits. It was like seeing a battered junker in the driveway of a multimillion dollar mansion.
7.
Christie’s Auction House
Moments Later
The ringing of a hand-held bell announced the second part of the auction was about to begin.
Gurt was studying the auction catalogue with undue intensity as Lang slid into the seat next to her. “See anything you can’t live without?”
“Abendessen,” she said in the German she used when annoyed with him. “Dinner. I have difficulty with missing dinner.”
Lang pretended interest in the catalogue she was holding. “I gather Club Gascon was unable to extend our reservations.”
Her answer was a glare. “The French are impossible both here and in France.”
The truth was, Gurt simply did not get along with the Gallic temperament if such a thing was definable. Whether this was personal or atavistic, Lang never knew. He did know, however, there was one characteristic of almost any high-end eatery, whether it be French, Japanese or whatever.
“Let me have your phone.”
She handed it over, perplexed
He pointed to the screen. The restaurant is the last number you called?”
She nodded, still puzzled.
Lang stepped outside of the room, returning just as the bidding on a painting “in the manner of Holbein” was knocked down for a price Lang didn’t catch.
“Well?” Gurt asked.
“Our reservations are an hour later.”
“And?”
“Ten pounds to the matre’d.”
They needed the time. It was nearly an hour before the Dee items came up. By then most of the auction’s customers had departed. The mystery item was the last.
“What is it?” Gurt asked in a whisper.
“I don’t know. That’s what fascinates me with it. Besides, it will make a nice birthday gift for Francis.”
“He won’t know what it is, either.”
Lang bobbed his head, agreeing. “But the fact it came from Elizabethan times will please him. He’s a bit of a history buff as you know.”
Francis, Father Francis Narumba, was a native of one of West Africa’s less desirable hell holes. Through what even Lang admitted resembled divine intervention, the young man had been selected from his fellows at a Catholic-operated school to attend seminary. Upon graduation, he had been sent to serve the growing number of African immigrants in Atlanta. For reasons Lang would never determine, Janet, Lang’s sister and only living blood relative, had joined Francis’s almost entirely black flock. When she and her adopted son died in a fiery blast in Paris, Francis had offered comfort and consolation. Though under the circumstances, Lang had a hard time accepting a loving, caring deity, he and Francis had become fast friends. During his college days, Lang’s bent toward liberal arts had induced him to take Latin, a language with which most Catholic seminary graduates are familiar if not fluent. It was, then, the language in which Lang and Francis exchanged jibes, aphorisms, and the occasional friendly disparagement of one’s religion or the other’s lack thereof.
“How will he be pleased if he doesn’t know what the thing is?” Gurt insisted.
Lang was relieved of an answer as the bidding began. It quickly became apparent that there were only three or four bidders before a five hundred pound bid was reached, a sum far below the average lot here at Christie’s. The auctioneer’s disappointment was obvious when there were only two remaining bidders: Lang and someone behind him.
Swiveling in his seat, Lang saw the man with the Cyrillic cell phone hoist his paddle.
“Just what would a Russian oligarch want with something belonging to John Dee?”
It wasn’t until Gurt responded that he realized he had asked the question out loud.
“The same as you: To give it away. Or maybe he knows what it is. And he isn’t missing dinner.”
Lang inhaled deeply. He stood and orally doubled his opponent’s bid.
His immediate answer was a shocked silence from the auctioneer who recovered nicely before inquiring if the “gentleman in the rear of the room” cared to respond.
He didn’t. In fact, he seemed to be having trouble with his Cyrillic iPhone. He rebooted twice before displaying an expression with which Lang was well familiar: a temptation to throw the treacherous device against the nearest wall. He pocketed it instead.
For the second time that evening, Lang was writing a check in the auction house’s office. He exchanged it for a small velvet bag containing his prize and a handshake from the auctioneer.
“Thank you so much, Mr. Reilly,” the man bubbled. “Hope you will attend out next affair, contemporary abstract paintings.”
The pressure of Gurt’s foot on his was responsible for his mumbled reply, which might, just possibly, be construed as affirmative. He regarded the dribbles and splatters that passed for abstract paintings as more chance than design, certainly not the product of artistic ability. It was an opinion he had learned to keep to himself.
Outside, the rain had stopped, its epitaph a series of puddles mirroring the street lights and rooster tails of spray as cars drove along the wet pavement.
The “TAXI” light on the first two of London’s approximately 21,000 black taxi’s was off, signaling they were occupied. Lang was so intent on spotting one that was not, he didn’t notice the man’s approach.
“Lang?” Gurt warned.
Lang thought he recognized the man with the Cyrillic phone, but it was difficult to be sure with the hat brim pulled down and the collar of his raincoat up despite the fact it was no longer raining.
“Mr. Reilly?”
Lang was instantly put on guard by strangers who knew his name. He said nothing.
“I saw your name on the check you left on the desk back there in the office,” the man said in heavily accented English.
Not likely. The check was on the Foundation’s Barclay’s account and the signature was less than legible.
Gurt had caught the lie also. She moved defensively so that the stranger was between her and Lang.
“Are you interested in selling that object you just bought? You will make a nice profit.”
Without thought, Lang’s hand went to his coat pocket. “Just what do you believe it is?”
The man shrugged unconvincingly. “I have no idea.”
“Then why are you interested in buying it?”
“I have a--what do you say? I am acting for someone else.”
“A principal?” Lang suggested.
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br /> “Yes, a principal who collects things owned by that man Dee. I could not get a proper phone connection to him during the auction and I went the limit of what, er. . . .”
“Authority?”
“Yes, authority. I could not exceed my authority. But now that I have spoken with my principal, I am prepared to offer twice what you paid for it.”
“Does your principal have any idea what the thing is?”
Again the shrug. “He didn’t tell me.”
Gurt was signaling another cab, this one with a light on. It pulled to the curb, and she opened the passenger door.
Long ago, Lang had learned that which is too good to be true usually is just that: Too good to be true. “I don’t think I want to sell, Mr. . .?”
The man produced a card, seemingly from nowhere. He proffered it just as Lang climbed into the cab. “Should you decide differently. . . .”
Lang turned to watch the stranger shrink, then disappear, as the cab turned a corner.
8.
Headquarters, Metropolitan Police Services
10 Broadway, London
Two Hours Earlier
Chand Patel was well satisfied. Among the first of Indian ancestry to be promoted to inspector by Scotland Yard, he was now one of many. And then this was his new office, formerly occupied by his immediate superior, Dylan Fitzwilliam. It had become his when the senior inspector had retired slightly less than a year ago.
Patel ran his palm across the desk’s surface. How many times had he stood on the other side? At least three or four when the subject of the American, Lang Reilly, had come up. Or, more accurately, when Reilly entered the United Kingdom. More often than not, his arrivals had been antecedent to slaughter. Had it been ten years since two hoodlums had been shot on the street right in front of Reilly’s pal, Annulewitz’s, South Bank flat? Never could prove Reilly’s involvement in that nor in several other homicides including a particularly grisly beheading and shooting at Cavanaugh Hall two years ago. The one killing definitely tied to Reilly was of a kidnapper at the British Museum, entirely justified.