by Paul Preuss
Rudi let the suggestion dangle until Wingate impatiently broke the silence. “That was years ago. Recreational drugs according to this, not antiquities. Anyway, apparently they haven’t seen each other since they were children.”
“But in Appendix IX, telephone logs…” Rudi found the page he wanted and slid the report back in front of Wingate, holding his muscular index finger against the long list of phone numbers. “Alain Brand’s bookshop in Geneva…”
Wingate peered at the log. “Eleven minutes, sixteen minutes, twenty-three minutes, almost half an hour…four times in the last two weeks. What have they found to talk about after all these years?”
Rudi shrugged. “Without a phone tap…illegal, of course…”
“I can’t imagine we’ll learn anything useful.” Wingate leaned away and steepled his fingers under his chin. “All right, see what you can find. But only at this end. You’d better go to Geneva and handle it yourself.”
2
A brass bell jingled discreetly as Anne-Marie pushed open the door of the bookstore. When she stepped across the threshold, her pulse accelerated; bookshops were among her favorite haunts, but she’d long avoided this one.
Not that it was a scary place. The light through its many-paned windows was diffuse and warm, reflected from the high brown-stone walls across the Grand Rue; it had a nice scent of wood polish and old paper; its mahogany shelves were filled with high-priced editions covered in gold-embossed leather—Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Rousseau in English translation—the sort of souvenirs of Geneva that investment bankers from Illinois or South Africa or Australia would take home to display in their libraries along with other handsome books that they never read.
The clerk, a young woman with black hair pulled back in a knot, looked up and assessed Anne-Marie as a casual tourist who might spend a few Swiss francs on a paperback classic or a leather bookmark but was not here to do any serious buying. She hunched down on her stool behind the rostrum and went back to perusing the commodities columns in the Tribune de Genève.
Anne-Marie moved slowly among the shelves, letting her eye range along the titles, noting the occasional fine old volume among the reproductions. Here was a Descartes in a locked glass case, there a Voltaire. A sixteenth-century English translation of Caesar’s Commentaries was displayed on a reading stand in the corner. She knew the content of these works intimately, most as ragged paperbacks from her school days at the Sorbonne, but a few from their earliest appearances in print, even in manuscript, from her researches in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris.
A door opened quietly in the back of the shop. Edgy despite her best attempts to stay cool, Anne-Marie swung in its direction. The handsome young man who faced her widened his eyes and pursed his lips in a tight O, mocking her expression. “Excuse me, dear, but I’m the one who should be surprised. You’re twenty minutes early.”
Alain was older than she was by two years, and his lank hair was the same glossy chestnut as hers, their mother’s legacy, but his eyes were green, not blue, after their father’s. He walked quickly to her side and, before she could lean away, wetly kissed the air beside her cheeks, one side then the other.
His lips stretched into a smile. “Were you ever early in your whole life?”
“I can’t wait to hear why you asked me here, Alain,” she said softly, willing herself to be friendly.
“I am warned, then. But we cannot talk in my shop.” He batted his eyes at the clerk at the rostrum. “My sister and I are going to lunch, Edith. We’ll be back in an hour.”
“All right, sir.”
“I’ll tell you what,” he said with saccharine cheer, bearing down on her, “if a customer should happen to stumble in, try something new, why don’t you? Just for me.”
“Yes sir? What would that be?” The woman’s red lips barely moved when she spoke.
“Pull your nose out of the newspaper. Offer to help. Maybe we’ll sell something.”
“My apologies, sir,” she murmured, shoving the paper farther under the rostrum.
Under the clerk’s spiteful gaze, Anne-Marie allowed her brother to pull her out onto the street. They walked in hurried silence along narrow cobbled streets, Alain humming tunelessly to make it clear he did not wish to speak. She followed him with difficulty; her skirt tugged at her knees and her low heels found every crack in the paving, while he moved like a male model on a runway, his gleaming alligator slippers neatly skipping past dirt and puddles, his tan summer-weight suit and silk tie flowing insouciantly around him.
They came to a cramped hilltop square, from which rose the abrupt and inelegant towers of the Cathedral of Saint Pierre. To the right of its portico, modern steps went down under the pavement.
“Do you know of the excavations beneath Saint Pierre? One of our more famous attractions?”
“Certainly I know them.”
“Well, pretend it’s your first time.” His bright grin was dangerous, a little mad.
“I thought we were going to lunch,” she murmured, shrinking from him.
“And I thought you wanted to talk about private matters.” His grip on her elbow was as tight as his grimace. “Not in a crowded café, thank you.”
He pulled her down the steps to the subterranean gate. Upon reaching the ticket seller, a diffident old gentleman in a tweed suit, Alain hesitated and patted his pockets. He turned to her, all innocence. “I seem to have come out without any cash.”
At that she laughed. Alain, true to form: had he ever paid for anything he could get someone else to pay for? She opened her purse and paid the ten francs for the tickets. They went through the turnstile into the cool darkness.
They walked along steel catwalks suspended over an eerie tangle of ruins beneath the floor of the cathedral, moving through shadows into pools of light thrown from hidden fixtures. In this place Julius Caesar had established an outpost of Rome; four centuries later Rome still ruled the West, and a Christian bishop had built his palace here. From the compost of ancient walls and paving stones and trash heaps and bone pits rose the massive piers which supported the medieval structure over their heads.
Alain stopped under an eroded gargoyle and turned to face her. “How are you and Peter getting along? Still newlyweds? Still the lovebirds, are we?”
“Do you feel safer in the dark?” she asked. “Do you think I won’t dare start screaming in a museum?”
“I suppose that would be foolishly optimistic.”
“Peter and I have a very good relationship.”
“Why do I imagine that you sound like you are giving a deposition? But perhaps that’s the point. A respectable marriage, a respectable husband—next time maybe you can use them to sway the court in your favor.”
“Why are you being such a shit? What have I done to you, except to ask for your help?”
His smirk was gone. “I won’t waste your time. I fervently wish you’d go away, but after months of your letters and phone calls I get the idea that you’re not inclined to do that.”
“I told you I’m prepared to pay you, Alain. All your expenses and more.”
“How can you possibly compensate me? This is a conservative town, the soul of Protestantism, in which I scrape out a living selling expensive curios to the greedy and self-satisfied.”
“You deal in more than curios.”
“Precisely my point. And while the rare-book business is understood to be full of scoundrels, one cannot prosper in the business if one is known to be a scoundrel. Especially if one identifies one’s self as a scoundrel.” His voice had dropped to a creaking whisper.
To Anne-Marie it sounded like a stifled shout. “I’m not asking you to do me a favor. Charlie has my son because he has money. Now I have money too.”
Alain sighed expressively. “I did a bit of research on your new husband”—he raised an open hand—“nothing sinister, just a routine credit check. Peter Slater may be better off than most, but he’s not wealthy.”
“He has enough. And he’s w
orth more than money, Alain.”
“Well, he’s never going to make any money studying quarks, or superstrings, or whatever they’re studying these days. If you had to marry a scientist, you really should have married someone with an interest in computers. DNA. Pharmaceuticals. Something like that.”
With effort, she quelled her rising anger. “How much are you asking me to compensate you?”
“We’ll get to that.” He spoke plainly, his false cheer forgotten. “I’ve told you, I’m ashamed of what happened…”
“It didn’t just happen, Alain.”
He recoiled from her fury. “What I did, then. I can’t undo it. And really, I’m not the only one who…I mean, your boy is all right, after all.”
The blood rose in her cheeks, darkening her face in the dim light. “Charlie is doing this to punish me,” she said. “Not because he loves Carlos. Carlos is alone. He spends his days with hired nannies.”
Alain looked distressed, but not on her account. “Oh dear, we’re about to repeat ourselves.”
“All I want from you is a drop of blood, Alain. A strand of your DNA.”
Fine beads of perspiration decorated his nose. “You want rather more than that. You want a confession.”
“A simple statement of the facts. No one will ever see it except you and me and Charlie.” She felt calmer now. As despicable as he was, at least he was honest with himself. She leaned toward him, so close a casual observer might have thought they were lovers. “Tell me what you want. Just tell me.”
“Let’s walk a little,” he said. “Pretend I’m showing you the sights.”
They moved along the catwalks, through the thick walls of the cathedral’s foundations and, still below ground, outside the massive building and under the street. Here the tunnels were more constricted and the roof was lower, made of reinforced concrete.
Alain stopped beside a Roman mosaic floor. All the stone and glass chips that made up its quiltlike pattern had been cleaned by the excavators and left almost as bright as new, but the floor lay buckled like a sheet of wet cardboard. “Your husband’s in Mykonos now, isn’t he? Attending a conference?”
“Yes he is. I’m supposed to be there with him.” For the first time in their conversation, her brother had surprised her. What did he care about a physics conference?
“There’s another man there, I’m told, also a theoretical physicist. His name is Minakis.”
“Greek?”
“Evidently, although he spent most of his life in England and Switzerland. He’s over seventy by now. He made good choices when he was still active”—unlike her new husband, Alain meant, as if scientific choices were obvious, or even wholly voluntary—“took out patents in superconductors, started a company you may have heard of, Andwin-Zurich. Today, even I would call Minakis wealthy.”
“Is that the reason you’re interested in him?”
“He’s an amateur archaeologist. Amateur, but not really—now and then he writes for professional journals. The point is, within the past few months photographs of certain artifacts have been circulating. Unpublished stuff said to be in private collections. Reliable people tell me the collection is Minakis’s.”
“What kind of artifacts?”
Alain reached into the pocket of his double-breasted jacket and brought out a sheaf of Polaroid prints. “Three Middle Minoan painted cups”—he spread the prints like a hand of cards—“an alabaster vase carved with a harvest scene”—holding them up to the light—“a Late Minoan votive in the form of a gold labrys, a double ax.”
She lifted her gaze from the spectacular ax. “I thought you were a book dealer.”
“My interests are eclectic.”
Again she waited; it got easier with practice. He had never discussed his business with her, but she knew that like herself he was unacquainted with hard work of the conventional sort. Who were these “people” of his who were so interested in Minakis? He must have sponsors, backers—buyers, perhaps.
“Minoan artifacts are extremely rare outside Crete, even in museums,” he continued. “Sir Arthur Evans had a deal with the local authorities to take some of what he found at Knossos back to England—it’s at Oxford now—but that was before Crete was part of Greece. These days the Cretans won’t even let the National Museum in Athens borrow pieces, never mind letting them out of the country. I’m told that the last time the government tried, half the population of Iraklion surrounded the museum in town and the other half went out to the airport and stood on the runway to keep the riot police from landing.”
“Yes, I heard about that.” He wasn’t exaggerating by much.
“The ancient Minoans did get around. There have been finds on the mainland, some Aegean islands, Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt—but nothing much compared to even a minor site on Crete. The people I’ve talked to are very anxious to have a look at what Minakis has found.”
“The Greek government must be anxious too”—she smiled thinly—“since it’s illegal to conceal archaeological finds.”
Alain shrugged irritably. “What I’m saying is, good-quality Minoan artifacts are among the rarest and most valuable objects one can hope to come across.”
“And you think you’ve come across a trove of them.”
“I haven’t, but maybe you will.” Alain went on, oblivious of Anne-Marie’s shocked expression. “This Minakis is an awful man, they tell me, who’d rather insult a person than say hello. But you have an excellent reason to visit Mykonos, an excellent reason to introduce yourself; you’ve spent time on Crete, you speak Greek, he’s a colleague of your husband’s. And you certainly know how to handle a bad temper—I’ve seen you charm favors from a—”
She cut him off. “I’ll be your spy, why not?” If it had been any less important to her, she would have made Alain persuade her, made him work for it, but that would be a waste of time. “And meanwhile you’ll take a blood test and sign an affidavit.”
“We’ll talk about that later, depending on what you learn.”
“I’ll even steal his damned treasure for you, Alain. I want my son back.”
“There’s no need to steal anything.”
“Do we have a deal?”
He drew a silk handkerchief from his breast pocket and daintily patted his sweating face. His skin was as damp and pale as the underground. “All right. If you’ll do this for me, I’ll do what you want.”
She rummaged in her purse. “Put it in writing. Before I leave here.” She handed him her address book, opened it to a blank page, and gave him a felt-tipped pen.
Alain stuffed his handkerchief back in his pocket and took the book and pen. He scribbled hastily. “Don’t try to steal anything, Anne-Marie,” he said as he gave them back to her. “Just tell me where he keeps it.”
She read his scrawl, then slapped the booklet closed and turned away, no longer willing to share either anger or hope with the man who had dragged her into the pit. Impatiently she sought the stairway to the surface.
Eight hours later Anne-Marie was climbing again, pulling herself wearily up the last flight of apartment-building stairs. She’d been on trains all afternoon, Geneva to Paris on the TGV, transferring to the suburban for the trip to Saint-Germain-en-Laye. When she came out of the underground station in front of the château, it was already dark. She didn’t bother to look for a taxi, just slung her overnight bag over her shoulder and set off through the village streets, grateful for the opportunity to stretch her legs.
But her mother, who owned this prime piece of real estate and lived on the highest floor, could not keep its lift running because she would not let repairmen do their work for more than a few hours without accusing them of malingering or theft, whereupon they invariably cursed her and walked off the job. Which gives her a perfect excuse not to fix anything, Anne-Marie thought, as she paused to catch her breath on the dim fifth-stage landing, under a fifteen-watt bulb on a timer that would extinguish itself any second now.
Her mother had buzzed her in at str
eet level but hadn’t yet opened the apartment door. Anne-Marie was reaching for the doorbell when she heard a key in the lock and the slide of a bolt. Then another bolt. The door opened an inch.
“I didn’t think you could get up here so quickly,” her mother said, peering through the slit. At that moment the light loudly clicked off, plunging the hall into darkness.
“Let me in, Mama. No one’s holding a gun to my head.”
“No?” Her mother squinted cautiously, then loosed the chain and pulled the door open a little wider, still holding it in front of her like a shield. “Then why mention it?”
Anne-Marie pushed into the apartment. “How’s Jenny?”
“In her crib. You should not be surprised if she sleeps all night, after what she ate for lunch. Your child is voracious.”
“Is she eating you out of house and home, Mama?” Anne-Marie walked down the dingy hall to the spare room, where she slept on a fold-out couch when visiting. “After only one day?”
“My apologies. I should have said she has a very healthy appetite.” The older woman sniffed and fell silent.
Inside the spare room, Anne-Marie tossed her bag on the folding couch and turned to face her mother, a woman with eyes as fierce as her own, who had once been almost as tall and slim as she, now with wide hips and tired shoulders and a mass of dark hair dramatically streaked with gray. Anne-Marie drew a breath and tried to soften her hard words. “I’m sorry, I know you didn’t mean it. It’s been a long day.”
They were interrupted by the appearance of Jennifer, who grinned shyly from behind the doorframe, winsome in polka-dot pajamas that left her feet bare and her toes curling. Seeing that she was seen, the dark-haired little girl swiftly hid herself behind the wall.
Anne-Marie eyed her mother, holding a finger to her lips. After a second, Jennifer poked her head out again. “Peekaboo!” Anne-Marie cried, which made her mother wince and caused Jennifer to crow ecstatically. Anne-Marie swooped forward, picking up her clown-suited little girl and squeezing her close, whirling her around in the narrow hallway while Jennifer giggled and screamed with pleasure.