The Artifact

by Quinn, Jack

  “I have told you all that I can,” Mitchell said. “The sacrament of Reconciliation is inviolate.”

  She cast a look of exasperation at Sammy, who took a different tack. “Surely you can tell us what happened after you..., Mitchell ran ahead of the Hummer to the soldier with the mine detector.”

  Mitchell shook his head in silence.

  “When they discovered the ancient treasure, did you intercede in the firefight with the Arab Nomads, or oppose smuggling it back to the States?”

  “I oppose all mortal sin.”

  “Did General, Colonel Callaghan and Captain Geoff commit you to these hospitals?”

  “‘I am the resurrection and the life,’ sayeth the Lord.”

  Andrea retrieved a digital camera from her carry bag and snapped a flash photo of Mitchell, who frowned, then calmly returned to sit on his cot.

  Yank had taken a motel room on the Days Inn on Connecticut Ave. in Wakefield, a few miles north-west of Georgetown. Prior to his arrival, the young African-American had transformed his appearance from his usual Manhattan persona of suave male model and bit-part actor affecting cashmere blazers, open-necked hand-made shirts and Gucci kiltie loafers, to low key businessman attired in an off-the-rack suit, muted tie, brown wingtips and Samsonite briefcase. After two days of calling on retail stores, companies, homeowners and tenants selling KTP security systems, his purposeful stride through the Georgetown neighborhood and environs was unremarkable, blending in to the largely black population of shoppers and residents.

  He passed Andreas’ condominium building each of the first three days on surveillance, occasionally pausing for coffee at a donut shop or lunch at a deli on the opposite side and a half block up and down the street from her address, taking note of her comings and goings with her husky, ever-present male companion. He had learned from the doorman that no security system had been installed in the building, nor was one needed, due to the 24/7 presence of himself or one of his coworkers, plus a 9 to 5 weekday building supervisor and janitor. Iron bars secured individual street-level condo units and those with metal fire escapes. Yank offered the building superintendent a free security inspection, including a report that would grade the safety of the entire structure on illegal penetration that could support any burglary claims or loss to their insurance company. When they came to the double-wide delivery and personnel doors at the rear of the building that opened onto the back alley, Yank complemented the Super on their foresight at mounting two-by-four crossbars to secure them, avoiding the mistake of installing locks, all of which were vulnerable to professional thieves.

  On his fourth day observing Andrea’s building, Yank was relieved to see her and her body-

  builder friend get into a taxi with luggage, evidently off on an overnight trip. That evening he

  donned a black ski hat, badly worn trousers, coat and shoes he had purchased at a secondhand clothing shop. He appropriated a grocery carriage from a supermarket replete with black trash bag stuffed with old newspapers, rags and several tools. His image of a benign homeless person scrounging dumpsters and garbage cans was unmistakable, not a threatening individual by any means.

  Yank entered the alley and pulled a small step ladder and cordless drill from his shopping cart. He wrapped a towel around the drill do deaden the noise, and in the narrow beam of its penlight, used a holesaw to bore an irregular rectangular slot at the top of the personnel door and upper jamb. There were other means of illegal entry, of course: bluffing his way passed the evening doorman as an emergency tradesman or fire inspector, cutting through the bars on a side basement unit, rappelling down from the roof, convincing some elderly occupant to allow him to visit their condo—but all of these would entail either elaborate preparation or unacceptable risk.

  He dropped a grappling hook tied to a rope through the rectangular slot, tugged it against the

  crossbar and lifted it out of its brackets, inserting a crowbar against the rope to swing the beam

  away from the door, and lowered it gently to the floor; then used the crowbar to pry the door open. Once inside, he replaced the crossbeam in its brackets and hid the hook and rope in a corner. When he left the condominium, he would reverse this access procedure, lowering the thick wooden beam back in its brackets from the outside and be back in his room at Days Inn before midnight. Satisfied that he had left no evidence of his entry and was set for a quick retreat, Yank jogged silently on ragged running shoes up the service stairs to Andrea’s floor and was inside her unit seven minutes from the time he propped the ladder against the rear door of the building.

  A thorough search of her entire condo and computer produced nothing related to the artifact

  mystery except a scribbled list names, and the address of a Veterans Administration Hospital in

  Arizona he found on a crumpled sheet of paper at the bottom of a wastebasket under her escritoire.

  Puzzled and uncertain of it’s value, Yank called Brit on his cell phone to report his findings. The Englishman was no more certain of the significance of the list than Yank, but instructed him to call back from his motel room that night with the information so all of their fellow conspirators could work at determining if any of the men on the list were patients at the VA hospital.

  Although Mohamed Massoub had ordered his two young henchmen to tail Andrea wherever she went, they had arrived at her condo too late on the morning that she and Sammy left in a taxi for the airport and their flight to New Mexico, so had no idea where she was. Furious with their incompetence and more as a punitive measure than lesson on surveillance, Massoub told them to observe her residence until she returned from wherever she had gone.

  On the night of Yank’s intrusion, Razzaq had walked to the alley behind Andrea’s condominium to relieve himself of the hot tea he and Samarri had been drinking all day. Just as he finished his business behind a large green dumpster, he noticed a shadowy figure on a stepladder at the rear of Andrea’s building, halfway down the alley. Razzaq rushed back to inform Samarri in their vehicle out front, who in turn notified Massoub at their motel in Alexandria. Alerted to the possibility of activity in Andrea’s condo, Massoub activated the wiretap secreted in her phone and listened to Yank’s call to Brit.

  “Take the intruder and get the list,” the al Qaeda leader told his minions in Farsi. “Do not bungle this assignment.”

  Samarri closed down his cellphone and started the car. “We will show Mohamed what we can do,” he said, pulling away from the curb and parking at the head of the alley with lights out, engine running. They had to wait less than fifteen minutes until Yank emerged from the building and stood on the stepladder to replace the crossbar. Samarri threw the car into drive and stepped on the accelerator, burning rubber, speeding the eighty feet down the narrow alley, straight toward Yank as he turned with an expression of wonder and fear toward his ultimate demise. The front bumper of the car smashed into the ladder, tossing him into the air, over the hood and roof of the car onto the pavement behind them. Samarri looked in the rearview mirror at Yank sprawled immobile amid pieces of scattered refuse, shifted into reverse, running over the inert body with rear and front tires.

  “Get the paper, Amar,” Samarri said with a satisfied grin.

  When Brit did not receive the expected call from Yank that evening or throughout the following day, he began calling the American’s cell phone at regular intervals. When a DC police detective finally did answer, he questioned Brit for several minutes, initially reluctant to offer any information regarding Yank’s whereabouts or why the police were in possession of his cellphone. When Brit told him he was Yank’s cousin calling from Australia, the policemen became more informative: Yank had been the victim of a hit and run accident after breaking and entering a high-rise condominium complex. He had no identification on him, there was no evidence pointing to which units he had entered and no loot or anything whatsoever on his body. Having gathered all the details he would probably ever get, Brit broke the connection, removed the sim ca
rd from the

  one-time use cellular phone and threw it into the trash.

  “Someone,” Brit told his coterie of art thieves during a subsequent conference call, “is watching the Madigan woman at home and away.”

  “Possibly more than one,” Boer said. “Poor bloke, probably never even saw it coming.”

  “Why kill him straight off?” Nero wondered. “No capture, interrogation?”

  “Maybe they did,” Shogun said, “and the alley accident was a setup.”

  “Or they knew he had the list on him,” Brit speculated.

  “How?” Nero asked. “It seems he came straight down fro her apartment after he called Brit.”

  “They must have her condo bugged,” Boer said.

  “I do not like this,” Nero said. “Not a single adversary to the Madigan woman has made themselves known, but there are possibly several elements vying for the same prize.”

  “Not our bailiwick,” Shogun admitted.

  “Right-o,” Brit said decisively. “This is not about acquiring a precious treasure, it is first about beating out one or more competitors—obviously ruthless, resolved, with skills and resources we do not have.”

  Boer sounded disappointed. “So, give it up?”

  “Resort to the strategy we should have adopted in the bloody first place,” Brit told them. “Keep an eye and ear out for when the treasure surfaces, then work out a plan to take it wherever resides.”

  “I’d like to find those blokes that did Yank in,” Boer said.

  “So would we all.” Brit acknowledged. “But our payoff is the artifact, remember. Revenge is sweet, but should not ignore the reason Yank is no longer with us.”

  “I hated doing that.” Sammy said, as they pulled out of the Bancroft driveway faintly illuminated by their parking lights.

  Andrea repositioned her left leg with both hands in an attempt to get comfortable. “Trying to get information out of a regular hospital is bad enough, but these mental institutions act like they were secretly implanting new brains for old.”

  “I don’t think they know what they’re doing with mental illness,” Sammy replied. “Most people are reluctant to tell the world about any serious mental disease they have, especially something like depression, obsessive compulsion, schizophrenia.”

  “Or whatever I’ve got.”

  “At least it’s not your brain. Some benign nerve disorder, I’ll betcha.”

  They were silent for several moments until she noticed that Sammy was more preoccupied with the rearview mirrors than the road ahead.

  “Problem?”

  “Don’t look back, but we seem to have picked up a tail.”

  “That’s all we need.”

  “Iraqis, the competition, other thieves, take your pick.” Sammy took the next exit ramp off I-40 north, then made a ‘U’ turn under the highway, getting back on I-25 heading south. He glanced in his side mirror. “Right behind us.”

  “I’m not keen about getting pushed out in traffic again.”

  Sam had reported the attack on Andy to the police, who had determined that the two muggers had a rap sheet of several pages and were hirelings commissioned by a cutout they had yet to apprehend. Which did not lessen the possibility that the prime instigator behind the assault would not order another attack.

  “Either amateurs who don’t care if we spot them,” Sammy reasoned, “or want us to.”

  “We could find a cop,” she said, “and confront them.”

  “We’d be answering questions for hours and miss our flight.”

  “Then let’s try to shake them off.”

  “If we can’t, I’ll park the car at the curb outside the terminal and we’ll both go in.”

  Andrea nodded. “Shake ‘em off for a day, maybe more ‘til we figure our next move.”

  “If a cop’s around he should be sympathetic to your wheelchair.”

  “Gee, maybe I’ll keep that thing after I get better.”

  Sammy smiled at her. “That’s the stuff.”

  They had been watching the reporter’s condo in three eight-hour shifts from various nondescript cars since she and Sammy had gone and come on various errands and appointments with her doctor. When a taxi had double-parked in front of her building and Sammy emerged from the entrance with overnight luggage to speak to the driver, Eddie DiBiasio pressed a key on his cell phone.

  “It looks like they’re going out of town,” he said into the fold-up device, then listened for almost a minute before breaking the connection to address Johnny ‘The Shiv’ Capaldi behind the wheel.

  “We’re going to tail her, call the tech guys if it looks like they’ll be out for awhile.”

  “What about the Arabs?”

  “Let ‘em play out their hand. We’ll take ‘em all when they get the treasure.”

  Their quarry emerged from her building ten minutes later, Andrea visibly frustrated by her awkward attempts moving from her wheelchair into the back seat of the taxi, then Sammy and the driver struggled to collapse the device before fitting it into the trunk.

  The white Mercedes with the two Iraqis pulled out from the curb to follow the taxi, with a gray ’02 Pontiac a discreet distance behind it. Johnny started the engine of the black Chrysler sedan and merged into traffic. The technicians had found a parking place for their Verizon communications van a half block down from Andrea’s condo and had been waiting patiently when they received the call.

  “They went to the airport,” Eddie told them, “the Arabs are parked. Take your time.

  Within the next ten minutes, the two techs had shouldered their bags, locked the van, and were standing in Andrea’s living room. They placed a bug in every room in her condo, avoiding the landline phones, the first place any searcher would look. They were about to leave the condo when the bearded man pointed to an apparently new motorized wheelchair still folded in its plastic cover leaning against the wall by the entrance. The second man fished around in his bag while the first tech unscrewed the left vinyl armrest of the chair. They inserted a miniature listening device and thumb-sized GPS tracker under a corner of the seat padding, secured it back in position and left the condo. The bearded man sat in the rear of the van checking the receptivity of their handiwork as the second man drove away, reporting the details of their successful mission to Eddie, still waiting in the short-term parking lot of National Airport. Eddie immediately relayed the news to the consigliore in Providence.

  It was mid-afternoon the following day when Sammy unlocked the door to Andrea’s condo and

  stepped into the foyer. Andy rolled into the room and turned on the lights on her way to the kitchen where she filled a glass with ice and vodka as Sammy brought her bags into her bedroom.

  “Can you use the head on your own?” he asked her.

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were trying get a close-up to see what it looks like.”

  “Maybe I am. I can still appreciate the female form as an objet d’art.”

  “Let me know when you take up sketching and I’ll consider it. Meantime, turn on the tube, will you?”.

  When she returned to the living room, Sam helped her out of the wheelchair and onto the sofa, then sat down beside her. The TV was on, but muted.

  “I called Timmy in Boston while you were in there—my museum friend that’s been keeping an eye out for any rumors about the artifact treasure.”

  Andy took a long swallow of vodka, her expression dejected, her mind still grappling with the horrific news of her mysterious illness, and the pathetic condition of George Mitchell stashed away in a government insane asylum by the military after sacrificing his mind for a country now using him as some kind of pawn in a high-stakes international game he certainly could not comprehend.

  “Timmy says there’s something weird going on in the rarefied echelons of ancient artifact authentication.”

  “Like what?”

  Some mid-range freelance antiquity experts, university professors of paleontology, archeolog
y, ancient history have been reluctant to take on new projects during the past year or so.”

  Andrea seemed more interested in her drink and the television video than Sammy’s information. “So?”

  “Scuttlebutt is that they’re busy validating items for a hush-hush assignment whose due date has been recently accelerated.

  Andrea finally perked up, turning toward Sam. “What items?”

  “Nobody knows. But they seem to be related, all part of the same project.”

  “The artifact treasure!” She slapped her thigh with the certainty of the revelation. “Well compensated, spread out among a bunch of experts so no one gets the whole picture.”

  “Possible,” Sam acknowledged. “Likely.”

  “Does your boy have any names to go with this rumor?”

  Sam bridled at the term, ‘boy,’ but let it go. “He gave me the contact info for a half-dozen untenured college profs in small colleges that might be willing to talk for a modest incentive.”

  “Make it damned modest, pal, I can’t compete with the rewards NNC and some of the other

  news orgs are touting.”

  “There’s a thought,” Sammy said. “Find a weak link, tell him we’ll get him the half million reward.”

  “They must have thought of that already.”

  “But for some reason are too timid to act on it.”

  “Threats of physical harm, damage to their professional integrity, warnings of legal action,

  collusion with thieves, stolen goods.”

  “Maybe they took the assignment before your broadcast and are now sorry they accepted the project, anxious to get out of it.”

  “Are you going to make those phone calls or keep jawing about hypothetical motives?”

  Sammy pulled out his cell phone, moved to her escritoire and smoothed Timmy’s list out on the shallow surface. “If your disposition gets any more caustic, I’m going to stuff a one of my week-old gym socks in your pretty mouth.”