by Gordon Ryan
“No, it shouldn’t,” Tess said. “It’s criminal.”
“So, I need to raise the money myself.”
“Wait a minute, you want us to fund you, is that it?” Dmitri asked.
“Sorry,” Tess said. “My friend here isn’t rich. And I’m just a college professor on sabbatical. I don’t have—” She paused, frowned. “Oh, I see. You’re not talking about my money, you’re talking about my boyfriend’s money.”
“Wait, before you say anything, let me explain. I don’t need it all, I’ve already got a half million. And then, I know a restorationist who can repair most of the damage, after which I think I can sell the manuscript to a museum or university for at least nine hundred thousand. That means it will only cost you a hundred thousand, plus a loan of the rest for a couple of years.”
“Lars,” she interrupted. “This is great what you’re doing, I really mean it. The thing is—”
He cut in before she could say no. “I’ve heard Peter Gagné is interested in history—he gave us all that money for the festival—and he’s so rich that he won’t even notice. I saw you and thought he might be here, but since he’s not, maybe you could call him and—”
“Listen to me for a second,” Tess said. “I’d help you, but I can’t get the money. Peter and I broke up.”
He stopped, stared blankly. “You did?”
“Well, I think so. He moved out one day without saying anything. That’s what it means to be an eccentric billionaire, you do what you want and other people be damned.” She shook her head. “And I wasn’t dipping into his bank account while we were going out, so all you’re looking at is a college professor and part-time writer. I don’t have that kind of cash any more than you do.”
“Was it a bad break-up? Sorry, I mean, are you still friends?”
“How would I know?” Her voice sounded more brittle than she’d intended. “I haven’t seen him for four months.”
Or his son, for that matter, which is what really burned her. You push two people together like Peter had with Tess and Nick and you’ve created an independent relationship, that you no longer control. Or that’s how she meant to explain it, when she caught up with Peter.
“But if you’re not here to buy antiquities, then what are you doing?” Lars asked.
She turned to Dmitri. “Do we tell him?”
“Well, he’s trying to save this bible from a hack-job, and I can respect that. Sure, maybe he’s seen something.”
“This is Dmitri Federov,” Tess said. “He works in the antiquities department of the Hermitage, in St. Petersburg. We’re part of a team trying to recover artifacts looted from the Baghdad Museum.” She pulled a small photo from her purse and handed it over. “We’re looking for this.”
Lars looked over the picture of the bronze mask with the stubbled beard. “The Akkadian King, yes, I’ve heard of it.” He studied the picture before handing it back. “In fact, I’ve got something that might help you. When I was trying to track down who was outbidding me on the Damascene I heard there was a guy buying up Roman and Mesopotamian antiquities who didn’t care much if they were legal or not. Turned out not to be my guy, of course.”
“Any idea who he is?” Tess asked.
“No, just that he was Russian.” He looked at Dmitri. “But there are a lot of Russian collectors these days.”
“That’s true, but it still might help,” Dmitri said.
“Of course if it’s the guy we’re already following,” Tess said, meaning Alexander Borisenko, “and his agent is here, so that’s a good guess—he could serve our livers as paté, so that doesn’t exactly help us.”
“Except that he’s in the Mediterranean himself somewhere, from what I heard,” Lars said. “Meaning he probably hasn’t moved any of it yet, because he’s still buying. He’ll still have to get it back to Russia or wherever, and that gives you a chance to have the police watch him.”
“We work with Interpol when we can, but they’re more worried about terrorists and drug smugglers,” she said. “And they move very, very cautiously when someone important is involved.” She made a quick decision and hoped Dmitri would go along with it. “What if I helped you get your bible, would you help us figure out who this Russian guy is and where to find him?”
“Thought you said you didn’t have any money.”
“We don’t. But here’s the thing. I have no idea where Peter is. He went back to France, I think, but I’m not sure. I haven’t made a big deal over our break-up, so I can use his old social circle to search for this museum stuff. Point is, most of his friends don’t know, and I still have contacts. One of them might help move the manuscript.”
“But I still need 1.4 million euros by tomorrow.”
“This asshole who wants to chop up an Eighth-Century bible, why should you give him money?” Dmitri asked. “What’s he going to do with the money anyway? He’ll probably buy more rare manuscripts to abuse.”
“Well? What can we do about that?”
“We can’t buy the bible, so why not steal it instead?” Tess asked.
“You’re kidding, you mean right here, just smash the glass and make a run for it?”
“Of course not. We’ll pretend we’re going to buy it and then—well, I don’t know, we need to figure that out.”
“I’m listening,” Lars said.
“How about this?” Dmitri cut in. “Tonight, during dinner—”
They stopped as three men approached, one with a cream suit, open at the collar, and two workers. The man in the cream suit unlocked the case with the bible from its stand and the two workers picked up the case and started toward the house. “Sorry,” the man in the suit said to Lars in an Arabic accent. “The Damascene has been sold.”
“You said I had until tomorrow,” Lars protested. “I’ve got the money, it’s going to be wired tomorrow morning. If you’ll just—”
“Very sorry, Mr. Nilsson, but the buyer offered a premium if I closed the deal this afternoon.” He nodded in the direction of a man who stood near the marble pillars, taking notes. It was the Russian with the huge diamond studs in his ears. He paid no attention to the men hauling off the bible, no doubt intent on other purchases for his master.
“Yep, that’s our guy,” Tess said after the man in the cream suit disappeared. She briefly entertained the fantasy of lowering her shoulder and knocking the guy with the diamond studs off the patio and over the edge of the cliff.
“Goddamn it,” Dmitri said.
Suddenly, Tess had a better idea than pushing Borisenko’s agent over the edge. All she had to do was whisper a few words in his ear about stolen artifacts. Word would get back to Borisenko and he’d get greedy. She looked down at her drink, still untouched, and took a large swallow.
“No, this is good,” Tess said with more confidence than she felt. “So he’s probably got the Akkadian King, too. We can nab the bible and the statue at the same time.”
“Who is he?” Lars asked. “The Russian you were talking about?”
“That’s not our man, but it’s his agent. Our man is Alexander Borisenko, the Russian Oil Minister. Billionaire playboy, ruthless businessman, all that fun stuff.” Tess gave Lars a smile. “Call it a hunch, but I doubt Borisenko likes to be ripped off.”
“God, no. The Russian Oil Minister? Guys like that don’t mess around. We did that, and we’re back to serving up our livers as pâté.”
“Take a look around, Lars. You think this place is safe? But the Damascene was important enough that you came. Are you giving up that easily?”
She knew she wasn’t. Tess thought about the first time she’d met with the committee, armed with a briefcase of dossiers about the looted artifacts. Most of them, she was told, were gone forever. Looters had smashed some of the artifacts against the stone floors or thrown others in the trash. The valuable stuff they smuggled from the country to sell on the black market. It was terrible, disgusting.
“I don’t know, it’s dangerous,” Lars said. “I’m j
ust not that kind of person.”
“Well we are, and we’re going to help you.”
“Tess is, at least,” Dmitri said. “She’s the fearless one. I’m going along for the ride, and if we happen to screw these bastards at the same time, so much the better.”
“Point is,” Tess said, “All you have to do is let me take the lead and when we’re done, you’ve got the Damascene and we’ve got the Akkadian King.”
A gleam flickered in Lars’s eyes and she knew she had him. “Okay, Tess, I’m listening. Tell me how you’d rip off a Russian billionaire.”
“Tell me,” Tess said, “do you guys really think I could pass for Tunisian?”
Chapter Two:
Tess Burgess could almost feel the bronze mask of the Akkadian King, run her fingers over its over its curly beard. No doubt Lars was thinking the same thing about his Syriac bible.
Alexander Borisenko’s yacht stretched white and gleaming in the harbor. It loomed over the fishing boats in the Tunisian village of El Attaia, on the island of Kerkennah, but attracted surprisingly little attention from the men who tended octopus pots or repaired nets from the shade of tents or on the decks of their boats.
Tess and Lars walked among stacks of pots toward the yacht. One of the fishermen rose from under a tent as they approached, pulled back a hat to reveal non-Arabic features. “Quick, come in, we need to talk,” the man said in English.
Tess and Lars ducked into the fisherman’s tent. The supposed fisherman was Dmitri, who’d been watching Borisenko’s yacht all morning.
“Hurry,” Tess said, “we don’t have much time.”
“I was wrong on the phone,” Dmitri said. “The boat isn’t empty. Guy came on deck just after Borisenko left.”
“Guard, cook, what?”
“Big, mean looking guy. Russian, I’m pretty sure.”
“Great,” Lars said.
“Must be a bodyguard,” Tess said. “Dammit. And it looked like Borisenko’s helicopter was flying over the island, instead of toward the mainland.”
“That’s what it looked like to me, too,” Dmitri said. “So we’d better decide, quick. He could come back soon.”
“We could wait,” Lars said. “Maybe Borisenko will go into town tonight for dinner. You heard what he said, he loves the octopus.”
Tess and Lars had eaten on Borisenko’s yacht last night and discussed how she would deliver the Roman mosaics that she’d allegedly stolen from the Bardo Museum in Tunis.
“Even if he does, what if he leaves another guard on the boat?” she asked. “And we told the fisherman he could set his traps tonight, so Dmitri will lose his cover.”
They’d found the fisherman with the best vantage spot and paid him two hundred dinar to loan them his boat and another hundred to leave the docks for the afternoon and let them use the tent. He’d seemed pleased enough to get the money. Might not be so happy when he had to retrieve his boat from the mainland, but that was their getaway plan.
“I say we go now,” Tess continued. “Three of us, one of him.”
“He’s got a gun,” Dmitri said, “and we’re unarmed.”
“Then let me make the first move. He won’t expect that, they never do. Dmitri, follow about twenty feet back, like you’re going about your business, then shout something in Russian as soon as we get to the deck, to distract him, then come running. I’ll go for his gun.”
She turned to Lars. He was at least as big as the Russian guard, and looked like a bearded Viking except that she didn’t know him well enough to know how he’d behave in a pinch. She guessed he was more timid than he looked. “You, get his arms. Remember, there are three of us,” she repeated, “and one of him.”
Tess left the tent first, followed by Lars. Dmitri trailed with an octopus pot in each hand. They picked their way along the quay toward the docks. The yacht sat perfectly still except for a stream of water from the bilge pumps. The water beyond the harbor was equally calm. A fishing boat powered along a marked channel. In the shallow, weed-filled waters that lined the channel grew a weird assortment of stick and mesh runs to herd fish into nets. Sun glimmered off the water.
Four days since she’d flown from France. Tunis was Mediterranean, a bit like Beirut or somewhere on the Costa del Sol, but she felt something else in Kerkennah. The sandy, palm-covered island pulled at her in unexpected ways. She imagined walking with Peter and his son along the sandy beaches. Nick would explore the wreckage of a overturned boat, chase lizards, while she and Peter would walk hand in hand at the edge of the surf. It was a stupid fantasy, but she couldn’t dismiss it.
The guard appeared on the deck as Tess stepped onto the gangplank with Lars at her back. He frowned and held up his hand. Below the plank, Dmitri paused, bent as if to fiddle with his sandal.
“Good morning,” she said in English with an affected Arabic accent. “Is Mr. Borisenko here?”
The guard wore sunglasses but she could feel him look her up and down with barely a glance at Lars. Either sizing her up or checking her out; she was used to both kinds of looks. He flicked his cigarette into the water. “No, he’s in town.”
She frowned and continued up to the boat until she stepped onto the deck. “He was supposed to meet us at ten. I don’t know what—”
Dmitri shouted in Russian and the guard jerked his head, looked startled, at the man with the octopus pots and dressed like a fisherman. Tess lowered her shoulder and slammed into the guard. He staggered, but he was too big and didn’t fall. She hooked her leg around his and grabbed his hand, which reached toward his jacket.
A moment later Dmitri and Lars joined the battle and all four fell to the deck. Then Dmitri lifted one of the pots and smashed it across the guard’s forehead. The blow stunned the man long enough that they were able to get on top of him before he resumed his struggle.
Dmitri snarled something in Russian and the guard went limp. Dmitri had a knife in his hands. Tess hadn’t known he was armed.
She fumbled through the man’s pockets but only came up with a cell phone. “Where’s your gun?”
“In my cabin,” he said. “Down below, but it’s no good, they’ll be back any minute. They’ll kill you.”
“You’re lying,” she said. “We saw them fly off five minutes ago. Get up, take us inside. Try anything and my friend will shove a knife through your kidney.” She switched from English to French in hopes that Borisenko’s man wouldn’t understand. “Lars, go for the boat, we’ll get the first box.”
“I’m stronger, let me help with the boxes.”
She hesitated, then nodded and turned to Dmitri. “Give Lars the knife, go get the boat.”
After Dmitri disappeared, Lars and Tess led the guard into the upper cabin. There was a bar and a lounge with an enormous plasma television mounted on one wall, and a staircase that led below. “Take us to the goods. You know what I’m talking about.”
Lars waved the knife to emphasize the point.
“You’re idiots if you think you’re going to get away with this,” the man said, but he pointed to the stairs.
She went down first, followed by Borisenko’s man and then Lars. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, she stopped, drew short. There was a woman in the room.
She sat on a couch with her legs stretched out, speaking intensely in Russian into a cell phone. The woman looked up and met Tess’s eyes, then blinked with surprise. It was Yekatarina Borisenko.
The bodyguard turned suddenly on his heel and grabbed Lars’s wrist, then slammed his fist into the man’s stomach. Lars tumbled the last couple of stairs and sprawled on the carpet. Too late, Tess recovered from her surprise. The bodyguard had the knife.
”Nyet!” Yekatarina snapped, followed by a string of words in Russian. She stood up, flipped the phone closed. The bodyguard took a step back, asked his own question, before he nodded, then went upstairs with Lars’s knife. Lars climbed slowly to his feet, a grimace on his face and hand clenched at his gut.
“Tess Burgess?” Yek
atarina said. “What are you doing here? Wait, are you supposed to be this Tunisian woman, Sabine? The one with the Roman mosaics, it is you, isn’t it?” She laughed. “Too bad I was sick last night, all those damn octopus, I was going to join you for dinner. That would have been a fun surprise for the both of us.”
“Where is it?” Tess asked. “Where did he hide it?”
Yekatarina walked to the wall, where she stood by an intercom. “My man went for his gun, so don’t bother trying anything.” She shook her head. “I told Sasha someone knew he had the Mesopotamian artifacts. Never dreamed it was you.”
“They’re stolen, you know that.”
“Not by us, they weren’t. Besides, why do you care?”
“If you don’t understand already,” Tess said, “then there’s no way I can explain it to you.”
“Sasha will be disappointed that the mosaics weren’t real. He’s on a Roman kick at the moment.” A smile. “And by Peter’s girlfriend, too, that will shock the hell out him. Only I heard that you broke up with Peter, is that true?”
Yekatarina had her own history with Peter, some years back. They’d met on some oil project in the Gulf. The breakup, as much as Tess could piece together, was nasty. Yekatarina wasn’t all that beautiful, but she had no problems snaring powerful men, and she’d shortly connected with Peter’s slimy friend, Alexander Borisenko, the Russian Oil Minister.
“Yeah, we broke up.”
“Sorry to hear it,” she said, sounding not sorry at all. “Come upstairs, I’ll show you the goods. They’re not down here.”
Lars leaned forward, “Tess, let’s get out of here.”
“You can show us some other time,” she said to Yekatarina. “And can tell your husband that he’s a bastard.”
“You can tell him yourself. That sounds like his helicopter.”
Tess and Lars hurried upstairs and onto the deck to see a helicopter landing on the helipad. She thought about running, but the bodyguard stood next to the gangplank with his hand tucked into his jacket. He flashed an unpleasant smile.