by Gordon Ryan
“Now you’re toying with me.”
“Let’s just say it wasn’t Borisenko, but a weird, overly aggressive fan. Who has the resources to track me here?”
“They called your publisher,” Lars said. “Or Cornell.”
“The people who know wouldn’t give out my address, they’d say I was on sabbatical in Europe, but that’s it.”
The carrot soup arrived and Lars started eating at once, but kept eyeing the dagger case. “Say he’s someone trying to get your interest. Remember all those letters you got from the German guy? Someone heard about your next book and wants to talk.”
“I thought about that, but the German was a fellow academic. Besides, there are probably ten people in the world who know the subject of my next book.”
“Word gets out,” Lars said. “You said he was American. Some guy at Harvard or whatever who wants to help with the book Maybe he’s even got original research. He gave you a little gift to pique your interest.”
“Check out the so-called little gift, Lars.” She took her hand off the case.
He took the case and opened it. A low whistle as he picked it up and then he turned it over in his hands, got a serious look on his face and returned it hastily to the case. He met her questioning look and blinked twice, then looked back at the dagger with a frown.
She studied his expression. “You know the man who made this, don’t you?” Of course he would. True craftsmen were vanishingly rare. Didn’t matter if you were talking construction of a trebuchet or metallurgy, the knowledge base was kept alive by a handful of people.
“That would be impossible, Tess.” He closed the case and pushed it away. “The man who made this dagger died four thousand years ago.”
Chapter Four:
“Gimme that,” Tess said. She snatched back the dagger case and flipped it open. “It’s a replica, right? I mean, a good one.” Her fingers closed around the curved hilt.
“For God’s sake, don’t pick it up,” Lars said.
She pulled back as if she’d burned her fingers. She studied his flushed expression. “You can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I’m serious. It’s either real or such a good fake that you’d need a lab to prove it. Tess, this is a gold ceremonial dagger from a royal tomb in Ur. It was looted from the Baghdad Museum.”
Tess shut the case and looked around the restaurant, studied the other patrons. Most were locals and everyone was engrossed in their own conversations, some loud.
She lowered her voice as she turned back to Lars. “Doesn’t make sense. The guy handled it like it was nothing. He told me not to throw it out, but still. If it’s real it’s worth what? Hundreds of thousands of dollars?”
“You can’t put a price on it,” Lars said with a note of protest.
“People do all the time. That’s what we’re doing here, remember?”
“But I have no idea how much it’s worth. Look at the condition, it was in a dry tomb for thousands of years and the blade is gold. There’s nothing like it in the world.” He shook his head. “There’s no question Borisenko is onto us. This must be a warning.”
“And he warned us with a priceless artifact?” she asked. “Why not just take care of us? We’re nobodies. I mean, people would notice, but then the police would find out we were involved in this smuggling stuff and they wouldn’t get any farther. Dmitri might be safe, he has important friends, but we wouldn’t.”
“Dmitri’s not safe, his friends are Russian, too,” Lars said. “Borisenko has more than friends, he has money and he has the government.” He eyed the dagger case. “Can you hide that? It’s making me nervous.”
“Calm down. It looks like a tourist knick-knack.”
“Tess.”
“Okay, whatever.” She stuck it under the book.
Lars relaxed visibly. “Okay, so what about that book?”
“He said there were notes. I haven’t looked, I was distracted by the dagger.”
Tess examined the book. It was a broken-spined and dog-eared copy. She flipped through the pages. Someone had scrawled notes next to a diagram of a siege where the attackers had mined under a vulnerable corner of a castle, filled the hole with wood and brush and lit it on fire in an attempt to collapse the outer curtain. Someone had scrawled in red pen: “Vulnerable???” A second hand, more controlled, answered in blue: “Ground too rocky. Mines impossible.”
Lars leaned across the table as she continued to thumb through the book. Midway through, she came to another dog-ear. Here was a picture of a trebuchet like the one on the hill, broken into labeled parts. The scrawling hand had written in the margin and then highlighted yellow: “Can Tess build this???” There was no answer.
She turned the book so Lars could see. He studied the picture and the words and then shook his head. “I don’t get it.”
“Me, either.” The waitress came with the food and Tess shut the book, set it on top of the dagger case.
The waitress put the two plates of herbed lamb in front of them and then told Tess, “The men at the window table were asking about you. Friends of yours?”
Tess and Lars looked up, but the two men were on their way out the door, their backs turned, menus abandoned on the table. As the door shut and they turned down hill, she got a glimpse of the second man. The tilt of the head was familiar, the sandy-blonde hair.
Lars pushed away from the table and ran out the door after the men. He came back a few minutes later, panting. He sat back at the table, shook his head. “Gone.”
“The blonde one, that was him,” she told Lars, suddenly certain. “The one who gave me the book.”
Chapter Five:
Dmitri sliced downward, from belly to head. Intestines, kidneys, bladder, heart, and lungs bulged from the body cavity. He reached a hand into the fish and pulled out the lumpy, sloppy mess, then threw the guts to the dock.
Seagulls fought over the prize. The air was alive with their screams. The smell of fish and blood was so strong it made Dmitri’s head swim.
Two hours ago these fish were swimming in the sea, he thought. Bright, alive, aware. Every day, millions of them dragged to gasp, suffocate, stiffen in death. Vast fleets of fishing boats combed the Mediterranean and turned it into a desert patrolled by these white, screaming vultures.
Dmitri had been in Cassis since returning from Tunisia with Tess and Lars. It was a picturesque fishing village a few kilometers from Marseille, mobbed by tourists during the high season, people said, come to find an authentic corner of Provence. Quiet enough in the off season. He hadn’t shaved in days and he dressed in worn clothing and work boots. He hung around the docks as a Polish day laborer.
Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the man who was his target. Two days, the man had watched him—a Belgian named Henri, he’d learned. He’d spotted the man in the fisherman’s bar Le Poisson Décomposé and buying a paper at the bureau de tabac in the mornings.
Dmitri decided to take a chance. He set down the filleting knife and his fish and held up a sticky, smelly hand to stop Henri as he walked past on the docks.
“Bonjour,” Dmitri said in heavily accented French. “Are you looking for workers?”
Henri recoiled from the bloody hand. “What makes you think that?”
Dmitri lowered his hand and shrugged. “I saw you watching. Never mind, if I was wrong.”
The man stepped back and leaned against a post as Dmitri returned to gutting the fish. Dmitri finished, tossed it in the second ice bin, then grabbed another fish by the tail. Henri lit a cigarette and watched in silence.
At last, Henri said, “You Russian?”
“No, I’m Polish.”
“Polish, eh?”
It didn’t matter if the man knew Dmitri was lying or not. Poles could work legally in France, but not Russians. Henri would understand that kind of lie coming from a day laborer.
“I do have some work,” Henri said. “Just one night, very late. Unexpected, which is why I’m short and looking for a couple of men
, and willing to pay well. Five hundred euros.”
Dmitri put down the knife and rinsed his hands in a bucket of water. As soon as he turned his back, gulls landed on the edges of the ice bins and tried to peck at the fish. He waved his arms and the filthy things flew off with frustrated cries.
“Rats and seagulls,” Dmitri said.
“Excuse me?”
“That’s the future of the planet. Everything wiped out but the weed species. Rats, seagulls, cockroaches, humans.” He dried his hands on his pants. “Five hundred is a lot of money for one night of work.”
“It’s tricky work. Sensitive, if you know what I mean.”
“All business is sensitive,” Dmitri said. “And you’ll never catch me talking about any of it, or bragging.”
Dmitri had a contact in Sicily where Borisenko stopped to refuel his yacht, then spoken with a man who owned a fishing boat called the Chardonneret, based here in Cassis.
So far as Dmitri understood it, the Chardonneret would leave one morning and return with the goods from Borisenko’s yacht. They’d unload their cargo to some middleman here in France, who would later give it to Borisenko himself to fly to Moscow. Dmitri’s job was to learn the identity of the middleman. Was Henri Borisenko’s man?
The man nodded. “Good. I need someone discreet, someone who knows how to get things done and isn’t squeamish.”
“I don’t deal with bodies,” Dmitri said. “That’s the only thing. You’ve killed someone, leave me out of it.”
“No bodies.”
“Then sure, I’ll take the job. Five hundred, you say?”
The man smiled and held out his hand. “I’m Henri.”
Dmitri took the man’s hand. “I’m Kowalski. Polish.”
“Polish, yes, you said that.”
“What’s the work?”
“Got some goods I need to move at night. It’s heavy and it’s got to go fast, and so I need a couple of guys with strong backs and closed mouths.”
Dmitri cloaked the rising sense of elation from his face. This was his man. He kept his tone bored, uncurious. “Tonight?”
Henri lit another cigarette. “Maybe. I’m not sure. Someone is going to tap me. Maybe tonight, maybe next week, and then I’ll tap you. Where will you be?”
“At the bar. You know the one?”
”Le Poisson Decomposé, yes.” Henri hesitated. “I’m not sure, but I think it will be tonight. The goods are like fish, you know. They’ll spoil if they sit too long, so be ready.”
“Okay.”
“You have a cell phone?”
“I do,” Dmitri said.
“Give me your number and I’ll call when I’m ready. With instructions.”
Dmitri nodded. He gave Henri the number of his prepaid phone. The man pinched his cigarette in his lips while he jotted the number in a notebook.
Dmitri used his other phone to call Tess as soon as Henri left. It rang through to voice mail. She was probably at the restaurant with Lars and had her phone turned off. Tess’s message came through in perfect French, with even a bit of a Provincial accent.
Lars would milk that meal as long as he could. Tess was either oblivious or too polite to notice, but the big Dane was clearly in love with her. His ancestor would have thrown Tess over his shoulder and galloped off at full speed to avoid her father’s wrath. Rough wooing.
Poor Lars. This was the 21st Century. Lars did not possess the tools necessary to approach someone like Tess.
Dmitri had been tempted to make a move himself. Tess was a beautiful woman with dark hair and hazel-green eyes. She could have passed for French, Italian, Greek, or Tunisian, yet somehow looked quintessentially American. Peter Gagné was a fool to let her go.
Dmitri left a message. “It’s me. The fish are in port. Going to help captain bring them to market.”
What he didn’t say was just as important. They needed to know when he got the goods, so they could set up Borisenko on the other end. They didn’t need to know the fate of the middleman.
The plan was simple. Dmitri waited in Marseille, Lars and Tess near Arles. Dmitri would watch for the middleman to take the goods, then follow him north until they discovered the rendezvous point. They would burst in with guns drawn, seize the smuggled goods and Borisenko’s cash, then flee. Dmitri would launder the stolen money to finance their next operation.
Except that Dmitri didn’t trust himself to follow the middleman. Dmitri was one guy; a cautious man could give him the slip. He had his own plan, and it didn’t involve Henri walking out alive. And there was this other thing, with Borisenko. Dmitri was an old enemy. If Tess and Lars had known his full history with the man, they’d have cut him out altogether.
He made another call. A voice answered in English, then switched languages after Dmitri relayed how Henri had approached him on the docks.
“Do your friends know yet?” the man on the other end asked.
“No, but I was going to tell them.”
“Don’t. It will be easier to explain when things go to hell if you keep this middleman mysterious.”
“Ah, yes.”
Dmitri thought about his message on Tess’s cell phone. “The fish are in port. Going to help captain bring them to market.” Tess would naturally think he had an in with the middleman. He’d explain that away as excitement over making a positive identification. Nothing more.
“With any luck,” the man on the other side continued, “your friends will keep from burning their fingers in the fire.”
“Yes, with luck.” They’d be in danger. But there was nothing he could do about that. He needed them to lead him to Borisenko.
The line went dead and Dmitri put the phone away, then returned to the fish. The guts spilled across the dock and dripped blood into the water to mingle with the rubbish swept in from the Mediterranean: floating plastic bags, broken planks, styrofoam cups, dead fish too rotten to entice fat, overfed gulls.
How many hundreds of millions of people lived around the Mediterranean Basin? They treated it like their sewer, dumping their filth into it and stealing or poisoning everything that lived in its waters. And yet if you took away the people, it would only take a few years before the sea erased all trace of so-called human civilization.
Wouldn’t that be something?
Chapter Six:
Someone followed Tess and Lars from La Baux the next morning.
“I don’t like it,” Lars said. He leaned over to look in the rearview mirror with a frown.
Tess followed his gaze. Traffic slowed as they passed through a village and the pickup truck was directly behind them. “We can’t abort,” Tess said. “We’ve got the time, we’ve got the place.”
“Then why isn’t Dmitri answering his phone?”
“He’s with someone. Come on Lars, you’ve got to trust him.”
“It’s not Dmitri I’m worried about.” He put his hand into his jacket pocket.
“You keep fiddling with that thing, you’re going to blow a hole in your leg.” She shifted to third. At any time, she could lose that truck. Her Peugeot 607 had a V6 engine and she knew these roads as well as any local.
“Not even loaded,” he said. “The ammo’s in the other pocket.”
“Well, you’re making me nervous. Forget the gun and stop worrying about the truck.”
“Tell me again how this doesn’t end in disaster.”
He’d almost convinced her to abort, but last night she got a message from Dmitri. Their man was on the inside. He left a second message sometime in the night to give the rendezvous point.
“I agree,” Tess said. “Someone is onto us, I’ll give you that. But what if it’s not Borisenko?”
“The man at La Baux gave you a gold dagger from the museum, and Borisenko is transporting the Akkadian King. How could that be coincidence?”
“Thing is, it’s too subtle. Everything I know about Borisenko is that he prefers a blunt instrument.”
He glanced again in the rear view mirror. “If not
Borisenko, then who?”
“Maybe it’s the police. They think we’re the smugglers or the buyers of the goods. They gave us a clever replica and—”
“Doesn’t fit, Tess.”
“Okay, I know that. I’m just brainstorming. How about this. Maybe it’s someone who wants to help, set us up with the next sting or something.”
“Right. Sure.”
She shrugged. “Maybe someone wants us to do something else.”
“Like build a trebuchet? I saw the notes in your book. Then why not just ask? Some museum sure as hell isn’t going to invite you by giving you a priceless relic stolen from the Baghdad Museum.”
Truth was, she was curious. It’s why she wanted to stick to the plan. If the man who’d given her the dagger was Borisenko’s man, why didn’t he come back in the middle of the night or blow up her car? And so she didn’t try to lose the truck; she wanted to see what would happen.
“Check it out,” Lars said as they approached Arles.
She glanced in the rear view mirror. The truck had pulled over to the side of the road and receded in the distance. “Feel better now?”
“Right. No need to follow us because we’ve just shown exactly where we’re going.” He pulled the gun from his pocket and snapped a clip into the magazine. “You’d better be right, Tess.”
“And if I’m not, that’s what the gun is for,” Tess said.
“Funny, you told me it was for show. Not gunplay with international smugglers and ruthless billionaire collectors.”
#
Dmitri helped Henri unload the fishing boat that night, then things took an unexpected turn. Henri had paid the three laborers five hundred euros cash. Not bad for half a night’s work. The other two men disappeared at once into the darkness, no doubt to look for a bar still open this time of the night to start drinking up their wages.
The water sloshed against the pier. A foghorn sounded in the distance, answered by a dog barking. The smell of brine and seaweed filled the air, together with the odor of dried fish guts.
Dmitri took his money last. He counted it, then nodded and turned to go. He planned to watch the panel truck until Henri drove off, then follow in his car. Somewhere between here and Arles, his friends—his other friends, that is, not Lars and Tess—would stop the truck. They’d knock the Belgian around until he gave the rendezvous point, then kill the man. The three would find Borisenko and finish him off. With any luck, Tess and Lars would know enough to keep from getting themselves killed when things got ugly.