* * *
KARINA CAME OUT of the mall and walked along a busy street before turning onto a side street. She kept walking, leaving the busy area for one with construction sites and few people on the streets.
As she passed by an alley used for deliveries, two men grabbed her and pushed her into the rear seat compartment of a sport utility vehicle waiting at the curb.
One of the men got into the front passenger seat of the SUV and the other remained with Karina in the back.
The man next to Karina brought a knife to her face. “Scream and I’ll slice pieces off of you and feed them to a dog.”
“You can’t get away with this.”
“We already have.”
The dusty sign on the SUV’s door identified it as belonging to a Pakistani contractor. The driver was, in fact, a foreman for the contractor. There were a million foreign laborers in the tiny country, with many of them provided by contractors from the Indian subcontinent. In a bizarre twist of demographics, about 90 percent of the nearly two million people in the city were foreigners, mostly laborers imported to perform the manual work that the citizens of the rich little metropolis preferred not to do.
The laborers lived in barracks outside the city and were bused to their workplaces each day.
As the vehicle moved into traffic, Karina made a grab for the door handle. The man watching her jerked her back and put the blade of his knife against her throat.
“Russian slut! I’ll cut your throat and drain your blood like a slaughtered pig if you resist.”
“Let me go! My father—”
“Your father has the balls of a she-goat. And he won’t even have those once we get through with him.”
“You filthy pig.”
The man leaned close to her, staring intently into her eyes. “I know what you want.” He put his hand on her robe and squeezed her breast. “Everyone knows that your father passes you around to Kremlin bosses to get him favors. And you enjoy it.”
He jerked her around so she faced the seat and pulled up her black robe. She was naked underneath.
He glided his hand over her bare bottom, caressing its softness, and then forced his hand in between her warm thighs, clutching at the hot, wet opening between her legs.
“Let me go!”
“You’ve had limp Russian cock; now I’ll show you what a real cock is like.”
He unzipped himself and released his male member. He took her hand and placed it around his erect member.
“Guide it in or I’ll cut your throat.”
He penetrated her doggy-style as the SUV moved through traffic. The rape went unseen because of the tinted windows of the vehicle.
* * *
THE SUV LEFT the glittering city and proceeded to a “bunkhouse” where foreign workers lived.
Karina was pulled out of the SUV and taken into the workers’ building. The building was empty because workers had been bused that morning to jobs in the city and would not return that evening. It would not have mattered if anyone had been around—it was a “safe house” for members of the organization who had brought Karina there.
Taken down a hall by the man with the knife, she was pushed into a dark room. When the door was slammed behind them, he pulled off her robe, tied her hands, and hung her up to a meat hook extended from the ceiling.
With her dangling from the ceiling, he ran his hands up and down her naked body, slowly and deliberately.
“Slut … when I’m finished, I’ll have all the workers come in and have their way with you.”
As he crouched between her legs to give her oral sex, she lifted her legs to rest them on his shoulders.
“You wouldn’t dare,” she whispered, “you know I’d enjoy it too much.”
8
“You liked it, didn’t you? Fearplay is what the Euro and American trash call it.”
Karina and her Chechen lover, Ramzan, lay naked on a cot in the room. After making love they shared a hookah. The old-fashioned water pipe was loaded with herbal tobacco and opium.
Her father had forbidden her from smoking cigarettes despite the fact he was a chain-smoker. The hypocrisy made the narcotic-spiced tobacco even more appealing to her.
“I liked it because it was you and I knew it was a game,” she said. “But I don’t think rape is something to make fun of. I have girlfriends who were gang-raped by Russian soldiers. It’ll be more fun if you think of a game where we kill Russians with sex. Maybe cut off their balls.”
Ramzan laughed. Thirty-five years old, he was tall and slender, with dark brown hair, a fair complexion, and brown eyes. He was comfortably solid in his muscle tone, not hard-bodied, but with fast hands and feet when he needed to defend himself.
“I leave in a couple hours to complete the task in New York,” he said. “Will you miss me?”
“Only the part below your belt,” she said.
“Are you sure Shamil will obey his orders?”
“He’s frightened. He suspects we have found out that he slipped up. He wants to redeem himself.”
“He may go to the authorities instead.”
“In America? Not likely. Besides, he doesn’t know for sure that we know. Don’t worry, he will do his part.”
“What about your father and that old art thief? Why didn’t you stay around and find out what they talked about?” he asked.
“I know what they talked about. The woman in New York. And the patriarch won’t know any more after the conversation than he does already, so it wouldn’t have done any good to hang around and listen at keyholes.”
“The Britisher still won’t tell your father his plans? I’m surprised your father would stand for that. He has a compulsion to control everything. Including you.”
“The patriarch has the mentality of a thug. I’m sure those rumors about him being a KGB informant when he was a young priest are true. For whatever reasons, he is less paranoid about dealing with a thief like Lipton than he is with an honest person. He seems to feel that thieves are predictable and can be trusted to do exactly what he asks them to do.”
“Things that an honest man would question.”
“Exactly. The patriarch also lets Lipton play his hand out in secret because he’s desperate to get the icon. When he gets what he wants…” She shrugged. “You know what a bastard he can be. In the meantime, we have to try and find out what we can about Lipton’s movements.”
He nodded. “Which makes the woman a problem because it gives Lipton someone to hide behind.”
She laid her head on Ramzan’s shoulder. “I’m going to miss you. Come back as fast as you can. I can’t stand being around the patriarch if I don’t know that I can get away and be with you.”
9
New York
I woke up at four o’clock in the morning, tossed and turned for a while, and then hit my TV remote to see if the world was still there. The TV came alive with a man asking, “Are you unable to sleep at night? Are you worried—”
I clicked it off and did my best to put myself back to sleep. Nothing worked until I made a decision on Lipton’s offer.
“I’ll go,” I said to myself.
Keeping the money hadn’t been the issue that kept me awake. Wrestling with the thought of keeping the money and not going to Dubai, period, was the thought that tormented me. It was the least I should do to a man who engineered the biggest single looting of antiquities in modern history—with my career getting trashed as collateral damage. But it sounded like I’d put a lot more bad karma on my plate if I did something like that.
Besides, even though he owed me big-time, it wasn’t Lipton’s money. It would have been paid by his collector. That meant that the only way I could honorably keep the fee was if I did the work. And I had to keep the money. The money “up-front” part of Lipton’s manipulations had been his best ploy. He knew that once I had the money in my hand, I wouldn’t be able to give it up.
I was up and out by nine and settled into a corner table at a coffee place, a
long with a hot onion bagel with light cream cheese, a cup of coffee, and my cell phone. Before I left my apartment building I dropped in on the elderly man upstairs who said he would take care of Morty to make sure the offer was still open.
I called Elena Rodriquez, an old friend from the days when I worked at the Met. Having no illusions that I could trust Lipton, I wanted to get some idea of what he might be after. And try to educate myself about religious artifacts.
Elena’s expertise focused on the artifacts of first-century Palestine. I was sure she would know more about Petra’s archeological wonders and the Dead Sea Scrolls than Christian religious objects because I suspected most of the latter were in cathedrals in Europe and the Middle East, but at least she would know the time period. Besides, not only was she the only one I knew who might know something about the area, she would also be nice enough to talk to me without too much inquiry about either the job I was taking on or how I was managing with a shattered career.
For sure, I couldn’t tell her that I had been contacted by Lipton. If I did, she’d put me on hold and call the FBI or whoever chases errant British art dealers. The consequences of Lipton’s sale of looted antiquities to museums were still reverberating in major museums around the world.
Nor could I tell her exactly what Lipton had said to me, even without mentioning Lipton as the source. If there was a prize piece out there, and it had suddenly come onto the market, she would go after it for the museum. It was the nature of the business—so few rare artifacts, so much demand, meant no honor among friends or thieves.
I simply told her that I had a collector interested in getting into the area of Christian artifacts.
“The hottest items are the Orthodox icons,” she said. “You know what they look like. Usually painted on wood, heavy in mood, suffering, soulful eyes. But you have to have an ironclad provenance because it’s an area where there’s been a lot of theft. Organized crime in Russia has gotten so blatant about stealing them, thugs storm into churches in rural areas and load up their SUVs with religious treasures.”
“Really.”
“A sign of the times. Icons can go for hundreds of thousands of dollars. The police have advised priests to arm themselves, but that seems a bit contradictory, considering their beliefs.”
She told me that Italian churches and Greek monasteries have also suffered major thefts.
“It doesn’t sound like something my client would be interested in,” I said. “How about something belonging to Jesus? Any artifacts around connected to him?”
She laughed. “Sure. The Holy Grail is out there somewhere.”
“Remind me what the Holy Grail is.”
“The cup or goblet Jesus drank out of or that his blood was collected in when he was crucified. It has magical powers … they made a movie about it, remember?”
“Yeah, now I remember, the Indiana Jones movie with Harrison Ford and Sean Connery. I think drinking from it makes you younger.”
“Good Lord! Are two university-educated curators really discussing movie artifacts?”
We both howled.
“But think about it,” I said, after I got my breath back. “What the cup used at the Last Supper would fetch at auction is unimaginable.”
“A toothpick used at the Last Supper would be priceless, Maddy. But I can’t imagine how anyone would trace its ownership history for the provenance.”
“Anything else you can think of?”
“Well, there’s always theories about Jesus not dying on the cross, or having children, or being an entirely different person. Any of those events, if true, would spawn artifacts.”
“Thanks, Elena. If you think—”
“Wait! How about something from Jesus’ family tomb?”
“Come again?”
“A tomb uncovered in Israel that housed the remains of a family whose members had names like Jesus, Joseph, Mary, that sort of thing. Naturally, it’s embroiled in the usual controversy that follows anything religious. I really don’t know much about it—just an article I read—but I think one of the boxes of bones was missing.”
That was interesting—the part about something missing. Right up Lipton’s alley. But he had said that he wanted me to find something. Why would he need me to find it, if he had already stolen it?
I thanked Elena again and hung up. I didn’t feel any more enlightened about what Lipton might want me to chase. The Holy Grail was my personal favorite. Especially if Harrison Ford or Sean Connery were part of the search.
* * *
SHAMIL SAT IN a rented car parked down the street from the apartment of Madison Dupre and watched the entrance to her building. He had been there off and on all day as she went in and out of the building. It was evening now and she was about to leave one more time.
He knew her movements because of an electronic tap of her cell phone put on by his Chechen organization. She didn’t have a landline that would have required an old-fashioned wiretap. The cell phone was much easier to monitor because it could be done electronically from a distance with wireless receiving equipment.
She had called in a takeout order of pad thai noodles to a café down the street and told them she’d pick it up rather than have it delivered because she also had to get some cat food.
His handler, Ramzan, had arrived earlier, still jet-lagged from a long flight, and gone over his assignment again. Shamil was curious what the American woman had to do with the Chechen movement for independence from Russia. He had asked the question of Ramzan and again got told bluntly he had no need for that information.
“Your mission is important. But if you are caught, it’s better that you don’t know everything.” Ramzan grinned at him. “But don’t worry if you’re caught. The Americans won’t torture you, and even if they did, their idea of pain would make the Russian police howl with laughter.”
Shamil knew he had to follow the orders without asking any questions. But he still had a bad feeling about the assignment. Ramzan had said nothing to indicate that he held Shamil in disfavor or was suspicious of his actions. But Shamil knew that of all the members of the movement, Ramzan was the most clever. It had been the neutral way that others had stared at him during the meeting with Ramzan that had made Shamil uneasy.
He had good cause for being uneasy. He had betrayed them once. But Shamil would make sure this time, with the woman, he did not fail.
10
I came back to my building lugging delicious noodles with spicy Thai peanut sauce and cat food for Morty for a week. The cat food was organic and made from free-range chicken. The cat ate better than me.
I also picked up a bottle of dark rum and a thank-you card—which I planned to stick a hundred-dollar bill in—to prime the pump for José, the Puerto Rican gentleman upstairs who agreed to babysit Morty.
I’d let him know that there was more money coming for babysitting … if Morty was safe and sound when I got back.
It wasn’t that I didn’t trust José—Morty could test the patience of a saint.
I’d taken a bottle of the finest premium light rum up to the counter and asked the man if it was good rum for a gift. After finding out that the rum was for José, who was a customer of the store, he had me put the light rum back and get the dark rum that José liked.
It was cold outside and I adjusted my scarf and pulled up the collar on my jacket as I left my last stop, the Thai café, and headed home.
I was still apprehensive about taking the flight in the morning to Dubai. I was waiting for the next shoe to drop. Pocketing twenty thousand dollars for flying to Dubai and back was too good to be true. I had already decided that would be my absolute limit of participation in whatever Lipton had going—fly over, say no, fly back. No matter what he offered.
It would be a piece of cake.
Juggling bags from the café, liquor store, and food store, I fumbled with the lock to my apartment. I didn’t swing the door open because sometimes Morty made a dash between my feet to explore the rest of the buildi
ng and it was hell getting him back.
I opened the door a crack. “Morty … I’m home.”
As I opened the door wider and entered, I heard his whining cry of annoyance coming from the closet.
How did he get in—
The half-open door was slammed shut by someone hiding behind it. My scream came out as a startled, agonized gasp as the person touched me with something that zapped and sent a shock through my system.
I felt as though I had been lifted off my feet and slammed down as my knees caved in and I crashed to the floor. I was conscious enough to realize that the person was a man, but the shock I received had turned my limbs to rubber.
I tried to push myself up as he hovered over me. Something went around my neck, some kind of cord, and started to get tighter, and I froze for an instant. Then I heard Morty’s cry again. Hearing that sound brought me back to reality. I jerked upward in sheer terror and panic, slamming the back of my head into the man’s nose.
His grip loosened for a second and I rolled over, screaming and kicking at him, but my screams came out in sputters and my legs still felt like rubber.
He lunged at me again, pushing me down, grabbing the cord that was still around my neck. I clawed at his eyes with my nails and he yelled and batted away my arm, but as his hand went to his wounded eye I twisted again and got away from him.
I rolled over and tried to get up on my hands and knees, but he was on top of me again, grabbing at the cord around my neck.
The cord was wrapped around the outside of my coat collar and scarf, but his powerful grip pulled them all together against my soft throat. I knew I was losing the fight, but I couldn’t get his heavy body off of me. I couldn’t breathe and my eyes felt like they were bulging from my head as darkness swept over me.
My attacker made an exclamation in a foreign language and the stranglehold on me was released. I realized someone else was in the room. I heard an electric buzz like the one that dropped me and then someone crashed to the floor.
The cord around my neck was loosened.
The Shroud Page 6