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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Part One: Death by Orgasm
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part Three: Istanbul
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Books by Harold Robbins
Praise for Harold Robbins
Copyright
For
Hildegard Krische
Acknowledgments
Many hands and minds assisted in bringing this book to print. I especially want to thank editors Ashley Cardiff, Eric Raab, and Robert Gleason, along with copyeditor Sabrina Roberts, who had to go above and beyond the call of duty to correct the manuscript.
I also want to thank Jann Robbins for being the trooper she has always been. She has kept the flame alive out of love and admiration for Harold.
Harold Robbins
left behind a rich heritage of novel ideas and works in progress when he passed away in 1997. Harold Robbins’ estate and his editor worked with a carefully selected writer to organize and complete Harold Robbins’ ideas to create this novel, inspired by his storytelling brilliance, in a manner faithful to the Robbins style.
Prologue
Venice, Italy
See Venice and die.
The old expression about another city swirled in my head as I hurried down a deserted cobblestoned passageway that ran beside a canal. Night and fog had settled into the narrow passage, firing my paranoia as shadows behind me took shape—like eerie Rorschach inkblots that take different forms as you stare at them, what horrors my eyes didn’t see, my mind imagined.
For sure, someone had been following me earlier. Someone who wanted me dead. Stone-cold dead.
Looking behind me as I hurried forward, I stumbled on the uneven stones and bumped against the iron railing along the canal. Getting back my footing, I kept going, careful to avoid a dip in the cold, dark canal. I didn’t know the chemical makeup of Venetian canals, but from the smell I was reasonably certain the water would burn the hide off of an alligator.
On my left a row of weathered old brick buildings were dark and silent. Probably dwellings, their occupants would be at the carnival celebration at Piazza San Marco. During daylight, I’d find these buildings and the canal charming. Tonight their silence added to my feeling of being cold at the bone. I wished I were at a warm, noisy café with good wine, good food, and good company.
The only light along the passage came from old-fashioned glass bulbs that cast hazy, wet penumbras, their glow barely taking the dark edge off the gloomy night.
The sounds of the night were the rub of small boats moored along the canal wall and the aching stretch of dock lines.
In the distance I heard the foghorn of a vaporetto, a water bus out on the Grand Canal. Just my luck to be on foot in a city where only boats and ducks can use the roadways.
I was scared—frightened not just of things I couldn’t see, but ones that I knew about. That someone wanted me dead was a given. The trouble started in Manhattan and followed me through cities steeped in ancient history and The Arabian Nights, all the way to this waterlogged, medieval relic on the Adriatic Sea.
As I hurried along, it occurred to me that if someone put a gun to my head and forced me to choose a place to die, Venice would be my first choice. An insane thought from a mind deranged by fear, but not unexpected considering my background: My passion was old things, the relics and artifacts and objets d’art of the ancient world and medieval times. If I was murdered in Venice, I could hope that my restless soul would wander the quaint streets and charming canals in search of my killer—
Oh, God, get a grip. I started to laugh and it caught in my throat and I choked out a little gasp at the incredibly stupid thought. I wasn’t ready to give up the ghost, in Venice or anywhere else.
This wasn’t the first time I’d gotten myself in a bad situation. Or gotten in so deep that I couldn’t turn to anyone for help, not even the police.
Finding myself in harm’s way went back to my love affair with antiquities—like a parent protecting a child, I too often put aside my good sense and stuck my neck out to protect an object that had survived a thousand years of war and storm and the abuses of mankind.
After my fall from grace as a museum curator—actually, it was more of a suicidal plunge caused by sticking my neck out way too far for a three-thousand-year-old antiquity—I started advertising my services for what I called “Art Inquiries” on my business cards.
That vague phrase in my case meant that because I was behind in my rent, I was forced to take on assignments ranging from the mundane to some that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
My instincts had warned me back in New York not to get involved in the mystery of a two-thousand-year-old artifact that nations had fought wars to possess, but my empty stomach had led me into the fray and to a dark passageway in Venice.
What was that expression? Fools rush in where angels fear to tread? Well, I wasn’t an angel …
I came out of the passageway and out to the edge of the Grand Canal. The glow of Piazza San Marco, the main square of Venice, lit up the night across the water, burning a hole in the fog. It looked like heaven right now.
I gave another furtive glance behind me, but nothing came out of the gloom to grab me.
A water taxi came by and I jumped up and down and shouted like a banshee until it veered and came alongside to pick me up.
Only one passenger was on board, a man wearing the carnival costume of a swordsman. It was a relief to see someone totally frivolous. He reminded me of the mysterious, romantic swordsman Scaramouche, of whom Sabatini wrote, “He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.”
“Buona sera,” I said.
The
swordsman smiled.
Nice lips.
He wore a mask that left his blue eyes, slender sensuous lips, and strong chin exposed. It was a popular type of carnival mask because it left the wearer free to eat, drink—and kiss.
If I weren’t on the run from killers, I would have loved to get to know him better. I was alone, scared, and in need of some TLC.
As the boat taxied across the canal, a cold breeze gave me the shivers. I mentally scolded myself for leaving my coat back in a café before I’d fled down the passageway.
My mystery companion gestured that he’d remove his cape and give it to me, but I smiled and shook my head. Sure I wanted the cape—not to mention to be held in his arms—but it wasn’t the time or place.
He was obviously the strong, silent type. He hadn’t spoken to me, but from my accent when I said good evening and my appearance, he probably had picked up on the fact that I was an American.
We docked at the piazzetta next to Piazza San Marco and the masked swordsman gave me a hand up. I thanked him, got a sensuous smile and a small bow in return, and I regretfully moved on alone. I wanted to quickly melt into the enormous crowd in the square.
I passed between the tall columns holding the Lion of Saint Mark and the statue of Saint Teodoro of Amasea standing on a sacred Egyptian crocodile and merged into the crowd. That old expression about being packed in like sardines nicely described my situation. It was one of the grand nights of the two-week-long carnival, and thousands had gathered in the square to watch men dressed as Venetian sailors of old carry across the piazza gorgeously dressed festival princesses sitting on planks.
About a third of the people crowded into the square were in costumes, making me wish I was hiding under a mask, too.
I loved the Venetian Carnival. Not tastelessly vulgar like the New Orleans Mardi Gras, nor wildly pulsating with music and street dancing like the Rio celebration, the Venice Carnival was more like a grand costume ball at a duke’s palace than a street parade, extravagantly risqué and slightly profane, but with elegance and class.
The celebration mimicked the underlying culture of the country: Italy has some of the most conservative religious people on the planet—and some of the most daringly provocative and licentious.
The Venetian celebration was all that and more. It had an atmosphere of elegant decadence, remnants of late Renaissance and Baroque ambiance, just as Venice itself did.
I had read that the Catholic Church used to approve of the carnival because in the old days the masked celebration gave priests the opportunity to hide behind costumes and do a few things that were otherwise forbidden …
A kaleidoscope of costumed characters—elegant, comical, some even sinister-looking—weaved through the crowd, some posing for tourists taking pictures.
The medieval sailors were a reminder that this small, slowly sinking city perched on small islands in a marshy lagoon, was the greatest sea power in the world during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
With my passion for antiquities, I loved Venice—it was literally a floating museum, filled with the relics of a magnificent history.
Unfortunately, at the moment I wasn’t in a mood to be appreciative of either the city’s glorious past or its splendid presence because I had no sooner melted into the crowd than I realized I was more exposed now to danger than I had been in the deserted alley. At least in the alley I could see someone approaching.
My theory is that the safest places in any big city are where you see lots of people on the streets. But as I was shoved and elbowed by people pressed into the large square to enjoy the spectacle, it occurred to me how easily someone could slip a knife into my back.
Pushing back at the crowd to keep my balance felt like trying to hold back big waves. Besides the fear of a knife being slipped through my ribs, I was getting claustrophobic and worried that I would go down and be trampled flatter than egg noodles.
I stumbled back against someone who immediately held me upright. I turned my head and looked into the blue eyes of my water taxi companion.
“Grazie,” I said.
He smiled with those sensuous lips.
Was this man ever going to say something?
The cold and my nerves had gotten to me and I shivered. This time he slipped off his cape and pulled it around in front of me as best he could with people pressing us. With the cape covering my front, he gently pulled my exposed back close to him. I felt instant relief from the cold.
I was pushed back harder against him as the crowd got thicker.
That was when I felt something against my tush, hard and firm. I stiffened, but instantly realized it wasn’t his fault. He was a man and his body was simply doing what came naturally when a woman pressed her body against his.
And what came naturally felt really good at the moment—I was cold, lonely, frightened, and emotionally battered. I felt safe for the first time in days.
I didn’t pull away.
His arms came around me under the cape and explored my body. His hands were not intruders—he was careful to explore softly, slowly, to make sure that I was not offended by his touch.
I felt naughty, but euphoric, as I watched the princesses being carried across the large square and listened to the roar of the cheering crowd while he unzipped my pants and lowered them enough to slip his erect manhood between my naked thighs.
I let out a gasp when he entered me.
At moments like this in my life, I wondered why I did these things. Even though my parents were wonderful people, my excuse was that I must have been raised bad.
What other reason could there be?
PART ONE
Death by Orgasm
1
New York
It was one of those days I should have stayed in bed, hidden under the blankets; a day during which I discovered that not all secrets stay buried, nor do the dead always remain in their graves.
Having had only four hours of sleep, I could have slept for several more, but I had an appointment with an important client who lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and I had already pressed the snooze button twice on my alarm clock.
I finally dragged myself out of bed when the alarm went off a third time.
I wasn’t in a good mood.
Losing sleep because I had been up until the wee hours partying would have made the loss more bearable, but instead I had gone to bed feeling lonely, and woke up in the middle of the night with flashes of the wrong turns I’d made in life racing through my mind on fast-forward.
Meeting this client was especially important because she was the only customer of my art inquiries business at the moment.
Nearly a year had passed since bad decisions and worse karma had roared through my life like a tsunami and I was still trying to pick up the pieces and stay on my feet. Overnight I went from a high-paying job and the Good Life, Manhattan-style, to wearing down shoe leather and popping antacids as I tried to get an art consulting business going.
Madison Dupre, Art Inquiries, that’s me. I didn’t deal in paintings, which is what most people usually imagine when the word “art” is mentioned. My field is antiquities.
The traditional definition of an antiquity is an artifact dating back to ancient times, from around the fall of the Roman Empire fifteen hundred years ago and back thousands of years. That wouldn’t include medieval times, but I use the word “antiquities” to include pieces made before the late Renaissance, which means anything made later than about four or five hundred years ago.
The word “art” is also used broadly. The marble statue of the Venus de Milo was created by a Greek artist as a piece of art more than two thousand years ago; the plain clay cup that the artist drank wine from while sculpting the statue is also considered an objet d’art today, something that collectors might well pay a small fortune for.
If it’s ancient and rare, it’s worth a great deal of money. If it’s also something beautiful to behold … well, a price can’t be put on the Venus de Milo
, but I’ve seen porcelain vases go for thirty, forty million dollars and some art pieces fetch more than a hundred million.
As you might imagine, private art collecting on that level is a billionaire’s sport.
Buying, selling, collecting, appraising, and authenticating antiquities is an exciting business, one that I’ve had a love for since an early age. It’s not just exquisite workmanship that stirs my emotions, but also that every piece has a story because it came out of a page of history.
When I look at a shard from broken Egyptian earthenware, I don’t just see a chip from a clay jug; instead, knowing the history of Egypt, I imagine the splendor and pageantry of the pharaohs, the enigmatic Sphinx and Great Pyramids rising from the desert sands, and even the time I sailed on the Nile in a felucca when I was researching a—oh, God, those were the days.
These days the only sailing I did occurred when I occasionally got a cold wind behind me as I wore out shoe leather trudging down long New York blocks trying to drum up business.
I have a master’s in art history, a minor in archeology, and a decade of work as a successful museum curator. As Oscar Wilde probably once said about his own talent, that should have been enough. But a vengeful God, that dark lady called Luck, bad karma, or whatever, hadn’t finished punishing me for my transgressions.
Not that I felt that guilty—I had made a mistake, but when I found out that a three-thousand-year-old antiquity, which had survived the ravages of war, nature, greed, and ignorance, was in danger, I did what was necessary to save it. Unfortunately, instead of getting a medal, my career and reputation took a hit as if they had been embraced by a suicide bomber at the moment the button was pushed.
If I could do it all over again, I would do things a little differently, but my primary concern would still be to make sure the artifact was honored and protected.
The woman I had to see was one relic I wouldn’t have minded if someone had dropped and broken.
A genuine Bitch with a capital B—pushy and annoying—she had already changed her mind twice about buying a piece of art that I appraised and authenticated for her. I had a feeling she was about to change her mind again. The woman was wealthy but had the worst possible traits when it came to buying art—she had bad taste and haggled endlessly over prices.
The Shroud Page 1