The Christos Mosaic

by Vincent Czyz

  “More than four thousand years old.” Serafis smiled; his cross glimmered.

  Francesca nodded gravely.

  Drew had never seen cuneiform that wasn’t behind the glass case of a museum. “What … what’s written on them?”

  Francesca shrugged. “I can’t read cuneiform, but I would say these tablets most likely contain verses from a Babylonian epic. The Enuma Elish.”

  It was a few seconds before Drew could speak. “You … you don’t even know what you’re selling?”

  Serafis lowered his eyebrows and pulled his head back as if he were a turtle and had a shell into which he could withdraw. His gesture— Don’t be ridiculous—fattened his already round face. “My boy, what’s the difference? They’re already sold. The buyer was sent photographs, and perhaps before he agreed to a price, he found someone who could translate them.” Serafis shrugged. “Tomorrow they will be gone.”

  And what was the buyer going to do with clay fragments from a Babylonian epic, Drew wondered. Use them for paperweights?

  Serafis seemed to have his diverging eyes on Drew. “I took one look at you, my boy, and I saw that you don’t care about money. From the same look I can tell you something else: you don’t have any. No great riddle. But I also know that you are rather proud of your poverty.”

  Drew smirked with appreciation.

  “Well, I do care about money. What I don’t care about is what these things mean—history, archaeology, scholarly theories.” He scrunched his chubby face and waved a hand as if dispelling noxious vapors. “God save us from any more theories.” He put both hands out as if he were pushing away an overfriendly dog. “Most of my merchandise is pottery—baked clay for which fools pay hundreds of thousands of dollars. I don’t want dirty pots—I want dollars. Freshly printed euros.

  “Nothing bores me more than reading. Why do you think I’ve hired Francesca? I don’t mind looking at pictures or paintings. Vases are fine for decoration. I like to drink. I like food. I love my wife. I like to laugh. If some old clay pots buy me these things and the time to enjoy them, why should I care?”

  “What about the rest of us?” Drew was aware he sounded hopelessly naïve, but he couldn’t help it. “You don’t feel any sense of responsibility?”

  “Responsibility?” Serafis seemed to dislike the word even more than theory. “My responsibility is to me. Let me tell you something: God made me the way I am. If He doesn’t like it, he has no one to blame but Himself! Why fight against my own nature?” He spread his arms wide. “Does it look like God is punishing me?”

  “You could sell frostbite to a polar expedition.”

  Serafis chuckled and glanced at Kadir. “Your friend here, he is like I am. He’s not interested in crumbling parchment, old pots, long-winded poems. He cares about the one gift God has given us all: life. And about making his life—the only one he or any of us is going to get—worthwhile.

  “Money is freedom my young friend—freedom not to spend your life in a tiny shop hammering at the bottoms of shoes. Freedom to travel where your heart leads you. Freedom to love whomever you choose. You and he, you’re nothing alike. And this one …” He looked at Zafer and laughed. “A mercenary! With good business sense.” He wagged a finger collared by a thick ring at Zafer. “I hope you don’t have a conscience. A mercenary with a conscience sooner or later winds up dead.”

  “Sooner or later,” Zafer said, “we all wind up dead.”

  “Hah! True enough, true enough. Sooner is what I meant.” He turned his spreading eyes back to Drew. “And everyone else with a conscience winds up poor.”

  Drew imagined borrowing Zafer’s pistol and emptying the clip into Serafis. Ventilating him as they would have said in the old gangster movies. The way they’d done to Stephen. Stephen, with his singularly wonderful mind, was dead, but here was this ignorant homunculus selling off the world’s heritage, interested in nothing more exalted than financing a villa here, a mistress there, maybe a wine cellar to compete with Louis XIV. This gnome, with his house and its palatial pretensions, trafficked in fossils of the human psyche—these clay tablets and the painted ceramics filling Serafis’s glass-sheathed shelves.

  Guessing what Drew was thinking, the dealer said. “Do you think Greece’s glorious past ever propped up the drachma?” He shook his head. “That’s why after 1300 years, we Greeks gave it up without a groan. Now it’s euros, not drachmas.”

  Placing the tablets in front of Francesca, who began re-wrapping them in newspaper, he rubbed his hands together briskly as if to remove dirt from a grave. “Now that philosophy is out of the way, are we ready to do business?”

  “We are ready.” Kadir pointed at the tablets Francesca was putting back into their shoebox. “These are very much older than our scroll, yes, but our scroll is worth very much more. So the shame is put on them.”

  “Hah! You’re a shrewd man, Kadir.” Serafis toggled his finger rapidly. “I saw that right away. Let us not make any foolishness about our deal. Please, would you show the photographs to Francesca?”

  Zafer lifted the flap of the leather satchel still slung over a shoulder, took out a manila envelope, and put it on the table in front of her. She pulled out the stack and examined them. Drew guessed, however, that she was once again out of her element. Someone who dealt primarily in classical antiquities would not be able to read Aramaic. Nonetheless, her nod seemed to be the confirmation for which Serafis had been looking.

  “Well the scroll certainly appears to be authentic, and although I know of course where it came from, there’s no need to speak of that.” He lowered his head and focused intently on Kadir. “What do you say to two million dollars IF …” He sliced the air with an index finger. “If my experts can authenticate it. If it is indeed one of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Two million dollars in cash.”

  Kadir shook his head. “Nabil even offered more than this.”

  “Nabil? He…?” For the first time, Serafis seemed to lose some of his carefully composed façade. The episode with Nabil was a blank in his data banks.

  “Then I will make the unprecedented offer of three million dollars!” He held up three fingers for emphasis. “One million for each of you!”

  Drew prayed that Kadir wouldn’t crack. Please, Kadir, please.

  Kadir was as impassive as the kouros sunk in evening shadow. He shook his head.

  “My friend, what is it you think you have there, the Rosetta Stone? A gospel signed by Jesus himself? Perhaps some undiscovered verses of the Holy Qur’an? Do you want a roll of old parchment or three point six million dollars—yes, one point two million for each of you?”

  Drew couldn’t believe Kadir’s reserve. The sum Nabil had mentioned was as imaginary as a unicorn; here was a man who could actually produce $3.6 million. Cash.

  Kadir shrugged. “I am thinking maybe I will not sell.”

  “Not sell?” Serafis’s voice betrayed his agitation. “Look my friend, we are here to do business, yes? I am offering you a fortune—an absolute fortune for a long sheet of ragged paper. You must realize you cannot sell the scroll on the open market because it is stolen property—twice stolen in fact. It has no provenance, no history of legal ownership. Universities won’t touch it. The Israeli government will give you a tenth of my offer if they don’t throw you in jail first. Without me, this scroll is worthless.”

  Kadir shrugged again. “Maybe the only one offering millions of dollars is not you.”

  Even Drew wasn’t sure whether or not Kadir was bluffing.

  “Is this your last price?” Kadir looked like he was about got get up.

  “Dort buchuk! Son fiyat!” He shouted in Turkish. Four and a half! Last price!

  Although Kadir looked slightly more interested, he slid out of his chair. “We will call you tomorrow morning and say you yes or no.”

  Drew was relieved—and astonished.

  Zafer collected the photographs and put them back in his satchel.

  “Think well my friend, think well.” Serafis j
umped out of his chair as if to drag Kadir back to the glass table. “One and a half million dollars for each of you. Think of what that kind of money can buy. No scroll has ever brought such a price!” He opened the glass door covered with iron leaves and vines.

  As they descended the stairs, as they crossed the salon with its huge mosaic of Apollo in pursuit of Daphne, and even as they walked the tiled courtyard toward the green Audi, Serafis kept talking, insisting that no one could make good on an offer of more than $4.5 million. “I alone, Iorgos Serafis, can put this sum of cash in front of you the moment we are sure the merchandise is authentic!”

  Driving them through the iron gates, which opened automatically, Zafer said. “They’re here.”

  “Who?” Instinctively, Drew looked over his shoulder.

  “The Sicarii.”

  “They followed us?”

  Zafer smirked. “They’ve been in Antakya since we left Egypt.”

  7: 5

  IN THE BAG

  ZAFER DROVE AS FAST as the serpentine backroads—half of them unpaved—would allow. “The games are over now,” Zafer said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the Sicarii could predict our moves up until now. They knew we’d have to go see Tariq’s wife. They knew we’d come here to see Serafis—or Serafis would come to Istanbul to see us. But once we finish our business with him …” Zafer shook his head. “If this guy Duvall is any good, we can’t hide for long.”

  “Even at the safe house?”

  “If they pick us up in Istanbul, and they put enough people on us, they’ll find us there, too.”

  When they pulled onto the two-lane highway connecting Antakya and Harbiye, Drew glanced in the side-view mirror, but he didn’t see anyone behind them.

  With good pavement under the wheels, Zafer kept the needle at around 135—about eighty miles per hour. He passed illegally at will and constantly checked his rearview mirror for another vehicle doing the same.

  A hairpin turn made the tires squeal as Zafer took them down a side street. Hitting the brakes, he cut the wheel so hard the car fishtailed. By accelerating at the right second, he got the car to do a complete 180. Pulling to the side of the road, he brought the Audi to a rough stop that snapped Drew’s head forward. Zafer kept the motor running, turned off the lights, and looked at Drew. “If I get out of the car, slide over and take the wheel. And I mean fast.” He twisted his head around to talk to Kadir. “I’d tell you to keep your head down,” he said in Turkish, “but no one can see it anyway.”

  “Defol git.” Piss off.

  Zafer scrutinized every car that turned down their street. He’d wait until the car was about fifty feet away and then turn on his high-beams. All they saw were a surprised family, an old man who looked like he was about to collapse behind the wheel, and a woman in a headscarf.

  “She’d be great for surveillance work,” Zafer said as the covered woman passed. “Not very likely though. The car she’s driving is older than I am and has local plates.”

  When a fourth car turned down their road, Drew knew right away something about it was wrong. It was going too slowly, as though the driver wasn’t familiar with the roads. The car glided under a streetlamp, a black BMW.

  Zafer flicked on his lights.

  The man squinting in the beams didn’t look Turkish. He had dark hair, pale skin, and looked English if anything. It was the American that Nathan had given them a photo of: Francis Collins.

  Collins had the sense to turn on his own brights and speeded up as he passed.

  “Get ready, Drew.”

  The car’s back bumper had hardly cleared the driver’s door when Zafer leapt out, pulled out his Glock and squeezed off six or seven shots inside of a couple seconds.

  Drew climbed over the stick shift, landed in the driver’s seat and released the parking brake.

  The BMW sped away with a peel of screeching rubber.

  Zafer sprinted to the other side of the car—

  Drew hit the accelerator before he’d even closed the door.

  “Make a right up here.” Zafer dropped the clip from the Glock, which Drew noticed wasn’t empty. “I don’t think Collins will follow us. I’m pretty sure I took out his rear tire.” Zafer slammed a fresh clip into place with the palm of his hand.

  Drew cut off a small truck to make his right turn, incurring angrily flicked headlights and a blaring horn, but he hit the accelerator and rapidly outdistanced the truck.

  “There’s a dolmush stop about two or three miles up. You’re going to make a left down the street right after it.”

  Drew took them back up the hill, passing the road where they’d met Francesca in the Mercedes.

  “There!” Zafer pointed. “Make a left.”

  Drew saw the line of dolumushes—white minivans here in Antakya— and zipped past an oncoming car to make the left.

  “Now … the next right, find a place to park.”

  Drew’s hands were practically numb, but they were surprisingly steady on the wheel. Was he getting used to this business? Pulling over, he stopped the car and yanked the emergency brake into place.

  “Pop the trunk.”

  As he got out of the car, Drew looked sympathetically at Kadir. This wasn’t going to be fun.

  Zafer took a huge canvas bag out of the trunk. Unzipping it, he looked at Kadir. “In you go.”

  Kadir muttered a curse in Turkish and climbed into the bag.

  “Now …” Zafer pulled a keffiyeh out of the trunk. “We cover that goddamn long hair of yours.”

  After wrapping Drew up like a Kurd, Zafer tied one around his own head. This was why Zafer insisted Drew dress in long pants despite the heat. Now he could pass for a local. Taking off his jacket and shoulder holster, Zafer put them in the bag with Kadir. His pistol went into the satchel. “Try not to move around in there, all right?”

  “Defol!”

  With the bag zipped, Drew and Zafer each took a handle strap. “Shit. He’s heavy for a little guy.”

  Pulled toward each other by the weight between them, Zafer and Drew lugged Kadir toward the dolmush stop, about 150 yards away.

  “One thing I can’t figure out … Collins couldn’t have followed us all the way from Serafis’s—there was no one behind us. How the hell did he find us?”

  “They already knew what kind of car we were driving—I’m sure they saw us leave—and they knew sooner or later we’d come out to the highway. Collins was just lucky enough to see the street we turned down.”

  “I don’t know if I’d call that lucky.”

  They heaved the bag with Kadir in it onto the first dolmush in line. The minivan was almost empty.

  Zafer paid for four places so that they could put Kadir next to them on the row of seats at the back. He sat down next to Drew. “So … how the hell are you going to talk him—” he tipped his head toward the luggage—“out of four and a half million dollars?”

  Hermes or some other god of thieves had inspired Drew as Serafis and his guests had been walking over the mosaic of Daphne and Apollo in the antiquities dealer’s palatial house. The answer was so obvious, he didn’t know why he hadn’t thought of it sooner. He leaned closer to the ex-commando. “I’m not. We should take Serafis’s offer.”

  7: 6

  ONE-ON-ONE

  WITH THE BAG HOLDING KADIR sagging between them, Zafer and Drew walked, a little stiffly, into a hotel a couple of miles from the one into which they had checked in earlier. Zafer, who had already booked reservations, handed in another passport and got their room key. He and Drew, still in their keffiyeh’s, carried Kadir onto the elevator.

  Zafer unzipped the bag. “Free ride’s over.”

  Kadir climbed out, pouring sweat. “Ya, it’s like a hamam in there.” He wiped his face with his hands.

  They got off on the third floor, the canvas bag now under Drew’s arm.

  Zafer unlocked the door to 324. “A new hotel, a new room. No bugs. No surveillance. Even if they happened to po
st someone here, they’ll be looking for him.” He jerked a thumb at Kadir. “Not a couple of Kurds.”

  Their luggage was already in the middle of the room, waiting for them. About half an hour before meeting Serafis, Zafer had telephoned the second hotel to arrange to have their bags picked up.

  “All right …” Zafer pulled off his keffiyeh and raked out his curly hair. “So why do you want to sell to Serafis all of a sudden?”

  “We set him up with the antiquities police.” He looked from Zafer to Kadir and back again. “We take Serafis’s money, he lands in jail, the scroll goes back to Israel, the Turkish government takes the credit, and we give the photos to the Ebionites. Everybody wins except that little bastard Serafis.”

  “You see the gaping hole in your plan, don’t you?”

  Drew shrugged. “It’s a first draft.”

  “Even if we don’t get arrested with him, how do we keep the money?” Kadir shook his head. “It doesn’t work.”

  “It might, it might.” Zafer rubbed his jaw with two fingers. “Let me think about for a while.”

  When he’d come up with the idea, it had seemed perfect, but if Zafer couldn’t find a way to set up Serafis without losing Serafis’s payment, the scroll was as good as gone. He needed to see Jesse tonight.

  “So, now that that’s settled, you mind if I show Jess the photos? She might be able to tell us something important.”

  Zafer shook his head. “I don’t like it, Drew. I got us locked up, safe and sound.”

  “Look, I’ll call a taxi. I’ll go straight to her hotel—as soon as I find out where she is. I’ll keep my keffiyeh on. I mean, what if Serafis tries to put something over on us at the last minute?”

  “The professor already looked the photos over.”

  “Barely. He didn’t have time to read more than a few lines. He was interested in the other scroll, remember?” Drew tried to keep his voice from sounding desperate. “Jesse can tell us exactly what we have and how much it’ll bring in.” It was only half a lie.