The Looters

by Harold Robbins

  I replayed what had happened after I’d been taken out of the taxi. I was hustled into the back of a building and into the bathroom. No one spoke to me. Comments between the men who forced me into the building were in a foreign language. I assumed the language was Arabic and the men were Iraqi.

  My initial guess was that I was in the back of a Middle Eastern restaurant or grocery store, since my nostrils got a whiff of aromatic and pungent scents when we entered the building. I picked out the smells of garlic, mint, cinnamon, and maybe saffron.

  The more I thought about it as I sat on the toilet, the more I concluded that it wasn’t a restaurant. No smell of cooked lamb and chicken. More likely this was one of those mama-papa stores that specialized in ethnic foods and spices.

  Why they put me here was easy enough to figure out. It made a nice jail cell. Hardly big enough for someone to stand in—I could sit on the toilet and wash my hands in the sink if I wanted to—the cubbyhole had no window and a single door. That meant I couldn’t escape and my screams wouldn’t be heard. They could chop me up in little pieces and flush me down the toilet.

  I really didn’t think my predicament was funny. On the contrary, I was terrified but just too tired to show it. Nothing short of the door opening and a mangled, bleeding, homicidal Stocker grinning crookedly at me would get a rise from my weary bones.

  Why I had been kidnapped was a mystery. The possibilities were endless and all had unhappy endings for me. My abductors were Iraqis, for sure, and they hadn’t kidnapped me to thank me for recovering national treasures. The time-honored universal motives for crime were profit and revenge. Neither objective fared well for me. Did they think I had more of the museum pieces and could be persuaded to turn them over?

  Were they friends of Abdullah out to avenge his death? Certainly the folkways of Middle Easterners were more in tune with avenging murder with biblical solutions than my own Middle America mores, which were limited to calling the cops and/or a lawyer.

  It occurred to me that they might be Iraqi intelligence agents who believed I was involved in the museum looting and would torture me to find out where some of the other fourteen thousand or so missing pieces were. That unpleasant thought sounded plausible because the FBI could have advised them that they were pursuing a suspect in the case.

  “No, not Iraqi cops,” I told the closed door.

  More likely they were thieves who wanted to get their hands on the pieces for profit. Unfortunately, I didn’t know the whereabouts of any other missing antiquities. How long would they torture me before they realized I knew absolutely nothing?

  I needed to tell them something so they wouldn’t harm me. I could say there were pieces at my penthouse. They would need me, of course, to get them past the doorman. Then I’d start screaming and running the first chance I got.

  Speaking of running, I hadn’t even tried the door handle to see if it was locked. The door opened outward and had a slip bolt on the inside. It probably wasn’t locked. Who would lock a bathroom door from the outside? But either they had it blocked from opening or, worse, one of the thugs was waiting for me to make a run for it.

  I was too scared and weary to try to shoulder it open if it was blocked. So far they hadn’t hurt me, just tight grips on my arms as two men led me into the building. I didn’t want to push my luck.

  Once they had shut the bathroom door, I heard muffled voices, but I hadn’t heard anything for the past hour.

  My only option was to sit on the toilet until someone decided to tell me why I had been kidnapped. Or someone had an urgent need to use the toilet.

  My recent fall from grace with the world made me wonder if I was being punished for doing something bad in a past life. Something very bad. The sort of thing for which you get reborn as a worm in a cesspool in hell.

  I finally heard voices and footsteps approaching. A spike of fear-generated adrenaline gave me enough energy to sit up straight as the footsteps approached my door.

  The door opened and Coby stared at me. He didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked dangerously pissed.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Gotta go?” I don’t know why I made that cute remark. Not the right time, considering his mood.

  He sucked air. Staring down at me, his face grew a deep red. Violent red. As if he had been storing up anger and seeing me had turned it loose.

  “I should break your fuckin’ neck.”

  I pushed a strand of hair off my forehead. “I did it for you,” I said in a calm voice. I was hoping to diffuse his angry mood.

  His face just got redder. He wasn’t in any mood for jokes. I decided it was time to talk my way out of being murdered.

  “I needed to get the stolen pieces back to the Iraqis, and Stocker in jail, so I could go on with my life. I didn’t think Neal told you the truth about where the pieces were stored. I went to the warehouse to see if the stuff was really there. And to see if we would be walking into a trap. All that talk about Stocker booby-trapping the place, it sounded like a war was going to erupt, and that the antiquities would also end up being casualties.”

  He noisily sucked in a deep breath. Breathing was good. He was ready to kill me. Taking those deep breaths told me he was trying to keep the temptation under control.

  “You’re lying. You called the feds to meet you there.”

  I held up my hand. “Stop. You’re completely wrong.”

  He leaned down closer, still beet red. “Tell me it’s just a fuckin’ coincidence that the FBI agent on the case was on his way to the warehouse when you were leaving it.”

  I stood up, showing real indignation. If there was anything I loved doing, it was telling the truth. Especially a version that could be sold.

  “I did not tell the FBI about the warehouse. Nunes tracked me there because of my cell phone. They didn’t even know about the warehouse. The phone was in the car parked around the corner in front of a self-storage facility. They thought I was in the storage facility, that the stolen antiquities were stored there. They were driving by my car when I came around the corner in the truck and hit them head-on.”

  That gave him pause. “What did you tell them about us?”

  “Enough of the truth to satisfy Nunes that I wasn’t holding out on him. But I never mentioned your name or the names of the others. I said the man I dealt with was Viktor Milan.” I tapped him on the chest with my finger. “That is absolutely the truth. Viktor Milan was the only name I gave.”

  “What about Neal?”

  “Jesus, get real. You don’t think I’d tell the police I was in the house when Neal got—”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  I held up my hand in an imitation of the way he gave pledges. “Scout’s honor.”

  He bit his lower lip and stared at me. “You planned all along to give the pieces back to the Iraqis.”

  That amounted to an accusation that I had betrayed them. Of course, there was a problem with putting the blame on me for the feds getting the stolen antiquities: We had both agreed to give the pieces back. I was just the one who actually intended going through with it.

  In my current circumstance, it didn’t seem advisable to remind him that he was going to welsh on the agreement and keep the antiquities. But no one had ever accused me of keeping my mouth shut.

  “We agreed the pieces were going back to the Iraqis. Coby, I want us to be free, you, me, your friends. Free of crimes, free of guilt, free of the police and that murdering bastard Stocker. The only way to do it was to see that the stolen pieces went home.”

  From the sour expression on his face I could see that truth, honor, justice, and the American Way weren’t going to fly with him.

  “We went into Baghdad with a war going on and risked our lives to steal antiquities worth tens of millions of dollars—”

  “Preserve,” I reminded him. “You were preserving them for humanity.”

  “I oughta kick your ass for what you did.”

  He didn’t want to walk away empty-h
anded. So I threw him a bone. A big juicy one.

  “There’s just one more piece that has to be liberated.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The biggest one of all. A small golden mask worth fifty-five million dollars. It’s worth more than everything in that warehouse put together. And we can get it.”

  His breathing became more even. “How? The Piedmont has it.”

  “I know more about the museum than anyone. Hiram Piedmont is a pussycat compared to your pal Stocker. Getting the Semiramis from the museum will be child’s play for the SEALs.” I kissed him sweetly on the lips. “I also know the security system at the museum. I designed it.”

  He was starting to relax now.

  “Naturally,” I said, “our objective would be to, uh, recover the Semiramis in the name of the people of Iraq and return it to them.”

  His lips slowly spread into a smile. “Naturally.”

  Of course I didn’t believe him. But that didn’t matter, not at the moment, though it was inevitable the SEALs and I would lock horns over the Semiramis when I insisted it go back to Baghdad. By now I was more thoroughly convinced that the mask actually carried the curse it was reputed to have. The real question was whether that evil whore of Babylon would cut me off at the knees before I was able to return her.

  Considering the history of that region for the past five or six thousand years, I had to wonder whether they even wanted the mask back.

  Chapter 60

  I had guessed right that the bathroom was in a store that specialized in Middle Eastern foods. The owner, who turned out to be the man who had pulled me out of the taxi, had also been involved in the Iraqi museum heist with the SEALs.

  “He’d prefer not to have an introduction,” Coby told me as he led me out of the bathroom and back outside to a taxi.

  The taxi driver, the same man who had helped kidnap me earlier, simply raised his eyebrows and gave a “I was just following orders” shrug when I got inside the cab. He showed zero remorse for aiding and abetting my kidnapping.

  “No tip for you,” I said.

  He gave me a smug, cocky, I-put-one-over-on-you-bitch grin in the rearview mirror. If he had kept his glee to himself I wouldn’t have opened my mouth, but I couldn’t help myself. I had to get even with him.

  As he pulled out onto the main street, I leaned forward and spoke in a confidential stage whisper. “Drive carefully. I’m being followed by FBI agents.”

  He slammed on his brakes. Brakes and tires screeched behind us.

  Coby and I braced ourselves for the impact behind us.

  It never came.

  We both got our breathing back with a gasp.

  “That was pretty stupid,” Coby said, not amused at my little stunt.

  Stupid or not, the smug taxi driver was no longer grinning.

  ***

  Only Gwyn seemed totally forgiving when Coby brought me to their new hideout: the home of Gwyn’s parents on Staten Island.

  The unsuspecting parents of the Navy officer turned tomb raider were off sunning in Florida, unaware that their daughter was using their house to plan a museum heist.

  The house had some unusual furnishings.

  “My parents are retired schoolteachers,” she told me. “They both have a long love of magic. In fact, they met at a show at the Magic Castle in Hollywood. When they retired from teaching, they launched a second career doing magic at birthday parties for people with too much money.”

  Their interest in magic was obvious: The house was loaded with stage props, including a black coffin used as a coffee table.

  Gwyn patted the coffin. “An old friend. I got cut in half in it when I was nine. At eleven they buried me alive.”

  The scary part is that I believed her.

  Maybe it was better that her parents weren’t home.

  At the house of magic, I showered and slept for ten hours. When I came into the kitchen where the group was gathered at the table, I got a cool greeting. Only Gwyn was pleasant. Coby had earlier vacillated between forgiveness and homicidal tendencies toward me. Mostly the latter.

  I was almost tempted to remind them that we had all agreed the Iraqi loot was to go back to the museum and I had accomplished the task without risking their lives… yet we all knew they never intended to go through with their promise. They were lying to me, and I was lying that I believed them. But I knew how to keep my mouth shut, at least most of the time. I was seriously pissed that they were the injured parties when I was the one who was nearly murdered, not to mention almost getting killed in a head-on collision, being arrested, and having my passport locked up in the federal jail.

  These were the bastards who started the whole mess by robbing a museum. I deserved a little sympathy from them. Not to mention an apology for completely screwing up my life.

  As I poured cream in my coffee, the more I thought about their attitude, the more aggravated I got. I said, “Isn’t it wonderful that the Iraqis will be getting back their priceless cultural treasures?”

  Bad move. I could see they had no sense of humor about the loss of priceless antiquities from the biggest museum heist since Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun or whoever sacked nations.

  “You did it behind our backs,” Rob said.

  You bet, you jerk. That was the only way I could do it and walk away with the pieces and my head intact.

  I kept those retorts silent and leaned against the wall as I sipped my coffee and smiled at them. I would’ve loved to turn the whole bunch of them in to the authorities. Except for Gwyn, who seemed to be nice to me, and Coby, whom I had mixed feelings about.

  I forced a smile at the bastards who had ruined my life. “Can’t trust anyone today, can you? No honor among thieves, eh?”

  My humor fell flat. Again.

  A dark look from Coby told me to put a lid on it. “Tell us about the security at the Piedmont,” he said.

  A laptop was up and running in front of him.

  “Security is state-of-the-art because the museum’s new. It’s also not very large, so security doesn’t have to be too complicated or heavily staffed. There’s only one guard on at night, but that’s all they need. All windows and doors are hardwired to the system. Motion detectors are in every hallway. The area that has the mask displayed is especially monitored. All significant pieces, like the mask, have RFID tags that trigger an alarm if they are moved outside a certain range, which is usually just a few feet. A hidden camera is directly above the mask, and its image is displayed on a separate monitor in the security room. Motion detectors crisscross each other all around the display.”

  Gwyn whistled. “Tight security.”

  I shook my head. “You don’t display a fifty-five-million-dollar item small enough to fit into a purse without security backup. The rest of the museum is pretty well covered, too. Surveillance cameras watch every square foot of the display areas. The cameras have high-quality night resolution even though the display areas are illuminated with low light during the night. Naturally there’s a backup battery system for everything and anti-tampering devices that go off if you mess with the alarm. You can’t cut security system wires or turn off power without setting off the alarm. Breathing too hard in the museum at night would probably set off the alarms.”

  “But there’s only one guard at night?” Coby asked.

  “Only one, but he has camera and sound monitoring for the entire museum. He can have a hundred cops there in minutes. He sits in a heavy-armored, impregnable room. He doesn’t have to keep an eye on every monitor because once the museum is shut down for the night a signal goes off in the security room if any change occurs in the image a camera is on.”

  I was proud of the museum’s sophisticated security. But right now I wished I had been a little more wishy-washy about protecting the collection.

  “What about the basement?”

  That one threw me. I raised my eyebrows. “It’s big. It covers the entire footprint of the museum, but there’s nothing down the
re except storage shelves and a workshop for cleaning and repairing museum pieces.”

  “Any security devices?”

  “No, it doesn’t need it. There’s no outside access to the basement. The only way you can get down there is from the stairway and elevator on the main floor.”

  “What’s the security for the elevator?” Gwyn asked.

  “There are two. The one that serves the public goes from the main floor to the second floor. It has a security camera and attic access only with a card key. The elevator shaft also has a security camera and a motion detector that’s turned on in the evening after the museum closes.”

  “The other elevator? Down to the basement?” Coby asked.

  “Only goes between the first floor and the basement. There’s no public access to it.”

  “And no security,” Gwyn said.

  “No. Like I said, there’s no outside basement access. And there’s nothing of value down there unless someone working on a piece has left it down there overnight. It’s the safest part of the museum.”

  “Not if you’re a mole,” Coby said.

  It took me a second to remember what a mole was: a little creature that burrowed in gardens. “I’m afraid your hairy little friends don’t have teeth or claws sharp enough to go through concrete walls that are a foot thick.”

  “I wasn’t talking about that kind of mole but the mechanical ones that dig tunnels.”

  I got his drift. “You’re thinking about coming in through the basement?”

  “The thought has occurred to us.”

  I shook my head in wonder. These people were amazing. And tech crazy. “I don’t know what good it would do. Or how you would manage it. But even if you did, the Semiramis is on the first floor.”

  Gwyn said, “The basement elevator shaft isn’t secured. That makes it a no-brainer to get to the first floor without detection. Then all we have to worry about is getting from the elevator to the Semiramis display.”