by Cari Z
Jackass.
He wasn’t wrong in this instance, though. The door opened with a gentle groan, and he ushered me inside the gallery. I looked around for my actual employer, liking this situation less and less by the minute. The space was dark, the glass covering the books and some of the artifacts against the walls reflective. It gave me a greater range of vision, but it would do the same for anyone else lurking in the room already.
“You’re here!”
Never mind, he wasn’t lurking at all. A dark-haired, round-faced gentleman sporting a black Van Dyke and a set of more traditional evening-wear stood in front of a tall white vase, his hands clasped together. “At last,” he said, striding toward us. He moved fast for such a small guy. “I was worried we’d somehow passed each other by, or that some part of the plan had thrown a cog. We should go and look for the curator now, shouldn’t we? I’d hate to miss him, and it’s going to take both of you for this to work.”
I glanced between the two men and held up a hand. “Whoa, slow down. First off, I haven’t agreed to anything yet, so if you actually want to hire me for a job, you need to tell me what’s going on. Secondly, nothing in any contract my boss would have considered would include collaboration with someone not employed by KIS. We keep our work in-house only.”
The small man held his hands out placatingly. “Indeed, indeed, I understand your concerns and wish to address them, but we are on a very tight schedule right now, and it will be easier if I can speak to both of you, explain to both of you, at the same time. I received assurances from your employer that working with another person would be no problem.”
“Did you now?” If that was true, I was going to have words with Robert.
“Dante, if I may?” the plummy gentleman interceded. His friend nodded, and the man turned back to me. “Mr. Tucker, the situation here is unique and can only be handled by someone with two very disparate sets of skills. Either we try to locate a historian and curator who is qualified to authenticate a priceless piece of history and also knows how to shoot with both hands and assemble a bomb out of common household chemicals, or we use two people. You are, from all accounts, highly qualified at the second skill set and not at all at the first.
“It’s not a jibe,” he added. “It’s the simple truth. No one we’ve been able to locate would be able to handle both sides of this task, because Indiana Jones simply doesn’t exist. Your role in Dante—Mr. Ashad’s—job is to provide protection for the man who is qualified at the first skill set but wouldn’t know how to track down what we’re looking for, much less retrieve it from the people who stole it.”
I looked at Mr. Ashad. “You just want a bodyguard?” The guy could have gotten one here in London for a lot less than he was going to be paying me.
“Not just a bodyguard,” he said, worry lines clear on his face. “A person with the capacity to handle a wide range of… potential difficulties. And someone who has traveled before where the thieves might be taking the artifact.”
“Which is?”
“All in good time, Mr. Tucker, all in good time. Trust me when I tell you that the work in front of you is quite possibly one of the most noble tasks you could ever undertake in your life. Will you not stay and hear me out, at least?” He wrung his hands and looked at me beseechingly. “Please.”
Goddammit. I was such a fucking sucker. “Fine.”
“Excellent, excellent.” He exchanged glances with the other man. “Gerard, shouldn’t we—”
“We should,” the man—Gerard—agreed. “If I know Malcolm at all, and I do know him better than most, then it won’t be long before he’s ensconced in the Reading Room, trying to avoid the rest of the party. If he’s not there when we arrive, I’ll go and hunt him down.”
“But how do you know he will show? He left in disgrace, did he not?”
“He did, but….” Gerard glanced at me. “Every man has his price, and Malcolm’s has always been knowledge. He worked here for many years and loved this place as few have. He won’t be able to resist showing up tonight.”
Gerard might not be my type, but it was hard to deny that there was something captivating about him. His expression seemed to challenge me, even when it seemed nothing but banal. What’s your price, Mr. Tucker?
We were about to find out if he and Dante Ashad could meet it.
Chapter Four
“WHAT THE hell is going on here?”
I felt like I was entitled to a bit of pique, after being confronted in the middle of a dark gallery by a gun-toting American, a rather petite fellow with unfortunate facial hair I’d never seen before, and my ex-lover. Possibly I was working off a bit of nerves as well, but again—I deserved to do so, given the shock.
“Calm down, Malcolm.” Gerard stepped forward, his face fixed in the same affable-yet-concerned expression he adopted for every mildly uncomfortable encounter, from a broken toilet in the loo to letting me know that, heavens, it just wasn’t possible for us to remain together after a scandal like this, was it? He had his position to think of, after all.
Keep condescending to me and your next position will be flat on your arse, bodyguard or not.
Or perhaps I wouldn’t, because goodness… that man carried himself very competently. I’d only glanced away for a moment—where had his bloody gun gone? I refocused my ire where it belonged—on Gerard.
“Telling me to calm down, oh, absolutely, that’s sure to get us off on the right foot.”
Gerard chuckled. “I’m not that naïve, Mal. I know there’s no chance of a ‘right foot’ between us, but I’m asking you to hear Mr. Ashad out.” He gestured to the admirer of the Banquet sculpture, who was staring at me with bright, hopeful eyes.
I gestured to the other man. “What about him? Why is he here, and why the hell is he armed?” I narrowed my eyes. “Oh my God, is this about drugs? Is it smuggling? Goddamn you, Gerard—”
“Nothing illegal!” Mr. Ashad intervened, his hands flapping like the wings of a butterfly caught in a net—weak and trembling. He clearly wasn’t accustomed to much interpersonal conflict. “There is nothing illegal about any of this. Mr. Tucker is here for the same reason you are, Dr. Armstrong—to consider working for me. And he knows no more than you do at the moment, so if you will please allow me to explain?”
I glanced at the man with the hidden gun again. Surprisingly, he met my eyes and shrugged. That simple, casual gesture did more to calm me down than another thousand of Gerard’s sweet and poisoned words could have. It carried a feeling of camaraderie with it, and I felt like I desperately needed a comrade right now. I looked back to Mr. Ashad.
“Fine. Explain.”
“It is my pleasure to do so.” He gestured toward the glass case beside me, the one holding the scepters. “I noticed you admiring them. What do you think of the display?”
“I find it incomplete,” I bit out. “Is that your doing?”
“After a fashion, but not for the reason you think. I am no thief.” He looked at the case, gaze trained on the barren quarter of the display. “I am, in fact, the one who has been stolen from. That spot was meant to be filled by an artifact that my family has owned for three generations.”
I was a bit… intrigued, despite myself. I wanted to hold on to my anger—it was a comfortingly familiar feeling when I was surrounded by emotional upheaval—but my damnable sense of curiosity was getting the better of me. “What sort of artifact?”
Mr. Ashad smiled. “I’m sure you can guess.” He gestured to the case. “A scepter. A symbol of rule, one that belonged to the wealthiest king in the world.”
The wealthiest king in the…. My mind first went to Croesus, the semimythical king of Lydia who’d invented minting coins, but no. There was someone else, someone whose wealth had been so great it literally couldn’t be measured. “Are you talking about Mansa Musa?” I ventured.
“Got it in one,” Gerard said proudly, and slapped Mr. Ashad on the back. “Didn’t I tell you he was clever?”
I cl
enched my hands into fists and desperately held on to the idea that hitting Gerard would only get me into more trouble than I could afford. “Actually, I know very little about him,” I managed once I’d relaxed my jaw. “He was a great ruler of the Malian Empire in the early fourteenth century, and he was a devout Muslim who made a legendary pilgrimage to Mecca. He took his scepter on the journey, and people remarked on its exceptional beauty.”
Mr. Ashad shrugged. “That’s more than most Westerners know. The Malian Empire’s greatest assets were its salt mines and its gold mines. Mansa Musa made expert use of both of them to increase his power. His memory was greatly revered, but in the centuries after the fall of that empire, his personal treasures were lost.”
“Were looted,” I corrected.
“Actually, they were thought melted down into coin. All but the famous scepter, whose existence hasn’t been documented for several centuries.” Mr. Ashad smiled faintly at me. “I know what you’re thinking.”
“I sincerely doubt it.”
At that, Mr. Tucker, of all people, chuckled. Gerard and Mr. Ashad looked at him as though they’d forgotten he was there. “Is something about this amusing?” Gerard asked.
“Not really, no, just….” He shook his head. “I thought I was bad with people. You two are taking it to a whole other level.”
In that moment, I wanted to kiss him. I wouldn’t kiss him, of course, because he had at least one gun on his person and I didn’t possess a death wish, but it was rather nice to have someone else around who had been drawn into Gerard’s orbit and saw it for what it really was—a rather large load of fuckery.
“I’d say we’re doing rather well,” Gerard replied, riding the line between vaguely affronted and somewhat affable that let him slide through conflict like a greased pig. “We’ve got you both here, and you’re still listening.”
“Please, stay,” Mr. Ashad implored me. “It’s vitally important that you do. You see, while almost all the personal raiment of Mansa Musa is gone, the legend of the scepter is real. After the fall of the Malian Empire, it was hidden in a mosque in Timbuktu, which is where my grandfather learned about it. He was a merchant seaman captured and held in the city during the Second World War, after his ship was sunk off the coast of West Africa.
“He survived his imprisonment, survived the war, and returned to the city several years later. It was at this time that the Tuareg attacked Timbuktu in great numbers. Fearing the scepter would be lost as a result of the battle, he escaped with it and eventually brought it back to England.”
Aaand here was the song and dance I’d been expecting from the moment wealth was brought into the equation. “To keep it safe, I see. From raiders. How positively sordid.”
“Here is where whatever you are thinking is wrong,” Mr. Ashad said. His perfect composure slowed my rapid slide into lambasting him. “My grandfather did take the scepter; it’s true. But he never profited from it. He lived and died a fisherman. My father kept it as well, more for the sake of his father’s memory than out of any desire to do something with it. He was a longshoreman, and never aspired to be anything else.”
“And what did you aspire to be, Mr. Ashad?” I asked quietly.
His smile widened. “A tailor. And I have been a very good one for all my adult life. I have my own stores now, in London, Paris, Milan, and New York. I work with some of the greatest designers in the world. I am comfortably wealthy, and have no need for the scepter for the sake of its raw materials. I believed that it was time for it to be returned to a position of prominence in the eyes of the world. I sought Mr. Thorburn’s advice.”
“I told him about the upcoming exhibit and how it would be the perfect showcase for reintroducing the scepter to the global community,” Gerard said, picking up the conversation with ease. “Of course, for it to be accepted it would have to be authenticated. I reached out to an African art expert, who recommended a young woman with supposedly impeccable skills to do the initial authentication. She arrived at Dante’s home yesterday, and—”
“Why the hell didn’t you authenticate it here?”
I was a bit surprised that those words hadn’t come out of my mouth, but no, this was Mr. Tucker again.
“This is one of the most important, well-funded museums in the entire world. You can’t tell me you didn’t have experts on staff who could have handled it,” he continued. “Not to mention security to oversee the entire thing.”
“It’s a… delicate matter,” Gerard said, casting a sidelong glance at me. “The museum takes protecting its reputation very seriously, and after a few incidents in recent memory left it a bit… tarnished, I thought it best not to involve anyone here until we had an authentication report in hand.”
That little jab was enough to send my head reeling. It was no wonder I’d never won an argument with Gerard, never managed to talk him around to my way of thinking or gotten the upper hand with him. He was brutally efficient at finding my soft spots, and there was none softer than the memory of the event that had sent me off to catalog potsherds in the Cotswolds, reeling from professional disgrace.
A few years ago, when I had still worked here, I’d been part of curating an exhibit of ancient Chinese porcelain. While preparing the pieces for display, I’d noticed one in particular, a beautiful Song dynasty–era bowl that purported to be from the Longquan area, that stood out to me for some reason. It had taken a bit to put my finger on it—I was no expert in Chinese ceramics—before it hit me: the tint of the glaze was wrong for a Longquan kiln. It should have been a resplendent grayish-green, but instead it appeared to have a pronounced olive tint.
I’d demanded that the pottery’s provenance be checked immediately. It was a piece that had been with the museum for more than fifty years, and the mere insinuation that it might be a fake put me on the bad side of everyone from the other curators to the director himself. I’d insisted, threatening to go public with the news that they might knowingly mislead the public about the display.
It had taken weeks, but the tests had eventually been done, and the bowl… had proved to be genuine. I had never felt so betrayed by my own intellect in my whole life. Very shortly thereafter, I was let go by the British Museum. It took a lot of time and effort to find another job in my field, and I’d half thought that I never would. I didn’t even go back to look at the exhibit once it was up and running—I hadn’t had the heart for it.
Gerard, bosom buddy that he was with the director and most of the museum board, had dropped me like a bad habit after that. One day it was, “I believe in you, darling,” and the next it was, “I’ve had your things sent to your family’s flat. I’ll take that key back now.”
Two years should have been long enough to get over that pain. It wasn’t, not by a long shot, but I fancy I did a decent job keeping my countenance very British.
“I let the young woman into my home to handle the scepter,” Mr. Ashad continued, something like shame entering his voice. “I should perhaps have been more careful, but I have an excellent security system, and she was—well, she was very beautiful, quite graceful and slender. She had no weapon. I thought I had no reason to be afraid.”
I heard Tucker sigh. When I glanced at him, he looked a split-second away from throwing his hands up and walking out the door. “She stole the scepter?” he said. Mr. Ashad nodded. “How did she disable you?”
“She—actually, she choked me unconscious.”
Mr. Tucker’s eyes narrowed. “Show me your neck.”
Both Gerard and Mr. Ashad seemed taken aback. “I beg your pardon?” Mr. Ashad said.
“Show. Me. Your. Neck.”
“Uhm, ahh….” The short man glanced at Gerard, who simply raised an eyebrow. “Very well, then. If I must.” He carefully untied his bow tie, then undid the top three buttons of his shirt. “But I don’t know what you expect to see,” he continued. “It wasn’t a painful experience, just like… being forced to take a nap.”
Mr. Tucker stepped up to Mr. Ashad, pract
ically dwarfing him. He tilted the tailor’s head to each side, then up briefly. “Hmm.” He moved back after a few more seconds of quiet observation.
“And?” Gerard asked, a bit acidly. “May he go on now, if you’re quite done inspecting him?”
“Please do,” Mr. Tucker said.
Mr. Ashad glanced between the two of them nervously. “Well, once I woke up and she was gone, I immediately decided that I had to recover the scepter at all costs. I knew of Kensington International, after they very ably assisted a former client of mine several years ago. I figured if anyone could help me retrieve the artifact, it would be one of you.”
“Why not the police?” This time it was my turn to speak up. “Why on earth wouldn’t you contact them about this? They could set up blockades, monitor train stations and airports—”
“They’re already doing so,” Gerard interjected. “I filed a report with them as soon as Dante came to me, but the details were slightly… adjusted.”
“You have to understand, I have no papers legalizing my ownership of the scepter,” Mr. Ashad said pleadingly. “It would be her word against mine. In truth, I had grown tired of the secrecy of its ownership—I was looking forward to donating it to the museum permanently. Anonymously, of course.”
“And he still will, after you authenticate it, Mal,” Gerard added. “That’s why we need you in this—once you get your hands on it, you’ve got to determine whether or not it’s the real thing. Your history with spotting fakes might be a bit checkered, but you never tried to pass an imitation off as authentic. If you two managed to find it, verify it, and return with it, a lot of your past could be overlooked thanks to aiding in such a brilliant acquisition.”