Tuscan Hoax: An Archaeological Thriller (A Darwin Lacroix Adventure Book 4), page 12
35
A week later, back at his desk in Vatican City, Darwin surfed around a map of the Mediterranean, daydreaming about the trip with Eyrún. She had suggested they take an even longer journey once they got past their legal entanglement and completed the ACA construction. He was swiping to Malta and then over to Crete when his watch vibrated.
Finally! His heart thrummed as he nearly jumped out of his chair. The restoration approval had been signed a day after he had returned from holiday, and the briber had sent instructions for a warehouse drop-off in Rome.
Fortunately, the process of pulling the object off exhibit and shipping it out moved swifter than the signatories for its release. As the museum closed, he met Max and followed two curators to the top floor of the Etruscan gallery, where they opened the glass and, using protective gloves, lifted the jug onto a cart. Darwin noticed a small slip of paper fall off the base, and he picked it up and read it. Merde.
After looking about to see if anyone had noticed, he slipped it in his pocket as the curators wheeled the cart to the lift. He fingered the note in his pocket, itching to read it again as they walked to the lab. To occupy himself while the curators crated the vase, he scrolled through posts by archaeologists he followed. Then, when the four of them had returned to the ground floor and the curators had left for home, Max and Darwin lingered until a security specialist met them.
Back in the basement, the specialist opened one side of the crate and, using magnifying spectacles, inserted the tracking device. Once she had verified the signal and closed the crate, they returned to the ground floor, where Darwin waited until the specialist had left. Then he turned to Max. “I think you should read this,” he said, handing him the paper.
The next day, at ten a.m., a courier van arrived to transport the crate. Instructions had been clear: if the van was followed, the deal would be terminated. Darwin watched the dot move on Max’s monitor. Two vehicles with Swiss Guards moved parallel to the van in case intervention became necessary.
Thirty-five minutes later, the van stopped on a street with older commercial warehouses. Max alerted the team to the location and instructed them to wait on streets a few blocks on either side.
“What do we do now?” asked Darwin.
“It depends on how long it stays there,” replied Max. “Espresso?”
“Sí, but we can’t leave.”
Max got their coffees while Darwin kept vigil in front of the monitor. Not two minutes after the security chief walked out, the dot moved again. Darwin swore, ran to the office door, and yelled, “It’s moving again.”
As the dot tracked through Rome, Max conversed with his men by radio. One said, “The Italian police stopped the van—routine investigation, as you requested. The driver’s a kid, about nineteen. Said he picked up a crate at the Vatican and was instructed to drop it at a warehouse. Put it on the floor and left. That’s it. Saw no one.”
“Understood. Do not enter the warehouse. Acknowledge,” said Max.
“Acknowledged.”
“Good. Continue tracking with Nico. Stay well back. The GPS is working.”
“Understood.”
The van’s dot now moved onto the main highway, traveling north out of metropolitan Rome. They watched it for a quarter of an hour before Max went back to the kitchen to brew new espressos.
Over the next hour, the dot traveled north along the Via Flaminia Nuova, beside the River Tiber’s serpentine course. Then it turned clockwise onto the A90, which rings the capital city, and a kilometer later, it made a sharp left onto E35 and up the Italian peninsula. When it passed Orvieto, Darwin asked, “Where do you suppose they’re going?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Max.
They took turns watching into the late afternoon. At one point, while Max got lunch, Darwin went on alert when the dot stopped, but it moved again in less than five minutes. A radio chat with the pursuit cars determined it had been a petrol stop. One of them rolled past the station and snapped photos of the vehicles at the fuel stop: two sedans and one compact SUV. One sedan contained a group of three. The other sedan and SUV each had a single driver.
A half-hour later, when one of the Swiss Guards’ cars needed a petrol stop. Max suggested they run ahead at high speed and determine if the sedan and SUV were still ahead. “I only passed the SUV,” said the driver when he pulled off the highway. Fifteen minutes later, the other guard made a similar pass and only saw the SUV before his petrol stop.
“Okay, let’s assume the tracker’s in the SUV, but stay sharp. It could be the sedan.”
Darwin grabbed a quick lunch at the employees’ cafe, inhaling a plate of pasta with wild boar ragu, and returned in time to watch the dot loop around Florence and veer northwest toward Bologna. The combined boredom and post-lunch drowsiness pulled on him, and, when Max left to take a scheduled meeting, he struggled to stay alert. When his head bounced off his chest, whiplashing his neck, he got up and stretched while glancing back at the dot.
Finally, close to five o’clock, the dot merged onto the A50 around the western edge of Milan and then onto a westbound highway. It exited in less than a kilometer, and Max zoomed in as it stopped at a roadside motel. He alerted the team to exit in the same location. “Park discreetly. Let’s see what he does.”
When no movement had occurred by ten p.m., they determined the driver had checked into the hotel. Max and Darwin prepared for an all-nighter by having a cot set up in a nearby office. Dinner had been delivered earlier, but they skipped the wine.
“You get some rest. I’m a night owl and never sleep before two,” said Max.
The Swiss Guards in Milan similarly organized themselves for an all-night watch, carefully parking out of view from the hotel’s windows. Darwin lay down on the cot shortly before eleven, but he tossed and turned. Sleeping in public places like ferries and planes made him uncomfortable; the myriad noises and lights kept him from settling into a deep sleep. He thought of Eyrún, but he had messaged her “goodnight” earlier, and they had agreed to restrict communication to their normal chatter. They could not be a hundred percent sure no one had access to their conversations.
His next memory was a hand rocking his shoulder. “Darwin. Darwin. Time to get up.”
It took him several seconds to realize his location. “Right. Okay,” he said, pushing himself to a sitting position. “Anything happen?”
“Quiet as the dead,” said Max, who went back to the monitor while Darwin used the toilet and brewed coffee.
In less than five minutes, Darwin was sitting in the dim office, watching the red dot next to a building labeled “Motel 2000.”
“Wake me if anything happens,” said Max. “Alain’s on watch. Nico’s on sleep break. Don’t worry about dozing. I’ve set an alarm if the GPS moves.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Darwin finished the coffee and got a second cup at 3:13. While not feeling refreshed, he was reasonably alert and used the time to read a backlog of papers. He had to abandon reading a data-intensive paper by a forensic archaeologist and clicked to another, but soon he was struggling with that one, too. His tired eyes forced him to repeat reading most paragraphs. The monitor beeped, and he jumped as the dot moved north on A50.
“Max!” Darwin shouted and tapped the radios to alert the drivers.
“Where’s it going?” asked Max, stepping into his shoes.
“A50.” Darwin pointed as the radio crackled.
“The SUV’s still here,” said Nico.
“Get on the road behind that signal,” said Max.
“Already on the A50, matching its speed,” Alain said in the second car.
“Must be a vehicle switch,” said Darwin.
“How come we didn’t see it?” Max pounded the desk.
Darwin listened to the team’s fast chatter, and then all went silent while Nico investigated the SUV. The dot now moved east onto the E64, crossing the northern edge of Milan. Max ran down the hall for a quick bio break and was hurrying back in just as Nico reported, “The SUV’s empty.”
36
An hour later, both cars trailed the dot. Earlier, Nico reported opening the unlocked SUV, finding the keys in the driver’s side cup holder, and, determining it was abandoned, racing to catch up with Alain. Now Max considered their next moves. “How’s your fuel?” he asked.
“Three hundred kilometers range,” said Nico. Alain reported similarly.
The morning sun in the security office angled through a high window, which, combined with noises from the incoming staff, helped Darwin shake off lost sleep. A junior officer brought them breakfast while they debated the vehicle’s destination. While Darwin ate, he retraced the route from yesterday.
The courier picked up the crate from the museum loading dock. Took it to the warehouse. Then another vehicle took the crate from the warehouse to Milan. Spent the night at the hotel and moved the crate to a new vehicle. It’s now heading east. To where?
He grabbed his iPad from Max’s desk and zoomed in on a map of Italy. Unless they turned north into the Alps, the vehicle would reach Venice in less than two hours and enter Slovenia in another. Albania! They’re heading towards the Albanian Master.
He zoomed out and immediately knew that made no sense. It was over a sixteen-hour drive south through the countries opposite Italy. No, for Albania, they would have driven south from Rome and taken the ferry across the Adriatic. His eyes roamed the map, trying to divine the dot’s destination. Then an idea surfaced. What if they’re trying to throw us off?
As Max and his men chattered in the background, Darwin grabbed his iPad and compared the warehouse address given by the ransomer to the address on the spreadsheet. It’s different. He went to the restorer’s website and clicked a link for company history. Merde!
He called the number. “Bonjourno, DaVinci Restorations,” said a young female voice.
Darwin asked her about the warehouse and was transferred to the owner. He repeated the question and learned the warehouse was their original headquarters but they had moved to their current headquarters half a century ago. “That old building’s been in our family since the seventeen hundreds. It’s disused now. Why?”
Darwin made up a story to explain his query and thanked the owner before disconnecting. He returned his attention to Max, who had just finished talking with the drivers about the destination. “What was that about?” asked Max.
“What if the thieves found the tracking device? Maybe…planted it on another car,” said Darwin, and he filled Max in on his theory.
“It’s plausible,” said Max. “Nico’s making a fast pass of the vehicle now. Should be—”
Nico’s voice burst over the radio: “It’s a family sedan.”
“What?” asked Max. “Confirm.” A moment later, his mobile beeped with a photo of a small blue sedan with four passengers, two of them children. As he and Darwin studied the photo, Nico said, “There’s no way the crate would fit in that car with four people. Even the boot’s too small.”
“Dammit!” Max roared, jumping to his feet. “Nico, get back to Milan. Alain, follow the sedan. Talk to the driver when it stops.” He sat down, elbows on the desk, and massaged his temples.
37
Darwin waited with Max and Richard at the papal office. Word had spread around the museum that a priceless vase had been stolen with his help, so he had avoided the office until today’s late meeting.
Yesterday morning, Alain had followed the family car until it stopped, and he had found the GPS device stuck under its bumper. He then returned to the abandoned SUV in the Milan hotel parking lot, and he and Nico reviewed the hotel’s security cameras. In the middle of the night, an unmarked cargo van had parked next to the SUV, and two people shifted the crate into the van. Minutes later, one emerged, bent down behind the family’s blue sedan, and affixed the GPS. The entire process had taken five minutes, and Nico had admitted to not watching a hundred percent of the night.
Now, sitting in the waiting area, Darwin tugged at his jacket’s sleeve a fifth time, adjusting the length of exposed shirt cuff. One of his feet was swept backward toward the door, his ankle wiggling. Stop it. He brought his feet together in front of the chair.
I gambled and lost. It happens. He reviewed his internal pep talk. Work the plan. In two hours, he would meet the owner of DaVinci Restorations at the warehouse, and he hoped a backtrack to the original transfer point would elicit some clue. He sat straight and calmed himself. We didn’t lose the original. At least Max had already devised a story of how they would produce the object safely stored in the basement.
“His Holiness will see you now,” said the pope’s assistant. Darwin’s stomach hardened as he realized his fretting was not over the loss of the object but the pope’s trust.
Just before entering the inner office, a security officer rushed in and whispered something to Max.
Inside, the pope said, “I only have a few minutes. Let’s get to it, shall we?” Once everyone was seated, the pontiff turned to Darwin. “The press is having a field day at my expense, Darwin. Tell me how you allowed a priceless Vatican treasure to be stolen."
“We didn’t, Your Holiness,” said Darwin. “It was a forgery.”
The pope sat back, his mouth slack.
Darwin continued. “When we moved the piece two days ago, a note that fell from its base alerted us to a duplicate in the basement storage. After the curators left, Max and I found the forged duplicate and swapped it with the original.”
“Why was I not told?”
Max answered this time. “My apologies. It was my doing. We wanted the situation to appear authentic, as we don’t know who’s involved.” He explained the jug had been duplicated when it went out for restoration in 1963. Its owner had since died, and his estate had left it to the Vatican, where the curators had placed it in storage.
Richard asked, “Why leave a note under the original?”
“Who knows?” said Max. “And it doesn’t matter, since it worked to our advantage.”
The pope accepted this logic. Then he asked, “But we still lost the forged piece. We’re no closer to the thieves. What now?”
“My office just reported the van went to the Basel freeport, where it’s still parked.”
“Freeport?” asked Richard.
“A customs warehouse with a duty-free designation for goods in transit,” said Darwin.
“So…” Richard prodded.
“A lot of art and antiquities are warehoused to avoid taxes and police. This freeport’s a known legal hiding place for illegal goods.”
Max’s mobile chimed. He looked at it and read the message aloud. “The crate went to a warehouse used by Alexandria Antiquities.”
“Nahla,” Darwin muttered under his breath.
38
Darwin arrived at the DaVinci Restorations warehouse the morning after the papal meeting, and he greeted the owner. They shook hands before the bulky man worked through a series of keys to unlock a small side door. “I’ve not been here in three decades,” he said. “We have no use for it, but the family trust forbids selling it.”
Their footfalls echoed on the concrete flooring. The space was dimly lit, as the only light came from top windows. Darwin sneezed from the kicked-up dust and pinched his nose to stop a second. He paused to assess the empty warehouse, running a light over the dusty floor and shining it back toward the door they had entered through. Crouching, he could better see the dust layer covering the floor, which had been disturbed near the large freight doors facing the street. There were tire tracks from at least two vehicles, but his and the owner’s footprints were the only ones that led deep into the warehouse.
He stood and, running the light along the walls, found only two places of interest: an office in the left-rear corner and a workbench with a handful of broken wooden crates beside it. As he moved toward the workbench, he could see packing material, ranging from straw to more modern bubble wrap, strewn about the crates. He clicked a task light on the bench. Nothing.
“Electricity’s been off for years. I checked,” said the owner.
“Any idea who could have used this space?” asked Darwin.
“None. Like I said. I was last here when I was eleven. My grandfather brought me for some reason. I don’t remember, but it was empty then.”
“Well, we’re the first people back here in a long while,” Darwin said while examining the crates.
“I’m going to look in the office,” said the owner, and he walked over to a small house-like building inside the larger structure.
Darwin examined the workbenches. He recognized brushes and other tools as those used in conservation, arranged in an orderly fashion. He scanned the dust-covered wooden surface and found two spots where tools had been moved. He swiped a fingertip about a thumb’s length and then moved twenty steps opposite the crates and used a different finger to swipe the floor. When he compared them, the floor fingertip was completely black, while the bench finger was just a dirty gray.
Someone’s been here within the last year or two. He wiped his fingers on his jeans. They would need a more precise survey to narrow down the time, but his gut told him this place saw sporadic use.
He moved to the crates and found one containing a carved bust. He snapped its photo in situ before moving it onto the work surface. It was classical Roman: a man, hair carved in ringlets and topped with an olive-branch crown. But the artist had carved it from basalt. Odd. Heads like this had always been done in more durable materials, like marble or bronze. He leaned closer. The gray rock had been finished smooth like any other sculpture, but its color struck him as strange. He had never seen such a thing.
He searched the crate but found no markings on its exterior. Then he rummaged through the packing material and found a crumpled paper. Smoothing it, he struggled to interpret its Arabic script, but he guessed it was a torn waybill, only a third remaining. He set the note next to the bust and, putting his hands on hips, surveyed the area.
A week later, back at his desk in Vatican City, Darwin surfed around a map of the Mediterranean, daydreaming about the trip with Eyrún. She had suggested they take an even longer journey once they got past their legal entanglement and completed the ACA construction. He was swiping to Malta and then over to Crete when his watch vibrated.
Finally! His heart thrummed as he nearly jumped out of his chair. The restoration approval had been signed a day after he had returned from holiday, and the briber had sent instructions for a warehouse drop-off in Rome.
Fortunately, the process of pulling the object off exhibit and shipping it out moved swifter than the signatories for its release. As the museum closed, he met Max and followed two curators to the top floor of the Etruscan gallery, where they opened the glass and, using protective gloves, lifted the jug onto a cart. Darwin noticed a small slip of paper fall off the base, and he picked it up and read it. Merde.
After looking about to see if anyone had noticed, he slipped it in his pocket as the curators wheeled the cart to the lift. He fingered the note in his pocket, itching to read it again as they walked to the lab. To occupy himself while the curators crated the vase, he scrolled through posts by archaeologists he followed. Then, when the four of them had returned to the ground floor and the curators had left for home, Max and Darwin lingered until a security specialist met them.
Back in the basement, the specialist opened one side of the crate and, using magnifying spectacles, inserted the tracking device. Once she had verified the signal and closed the crate, they returned to the ground floor, where Darwin waited until the specialist had left. Then he turned to Max. “I think you should read this,” he said, handing him the paper.
The next day, at ten a.m., a courier van arrived to transport the crate. Instructions had been clear: if the van was followed, the deal would be terminated. Darwin watched the dot move on Max’s monitor. Two vehicles with Swiss Guards moved parallel to the van in case intervention became necessary.
Thirty-five minutes later, the van stopped on a street with older commercial warehouses. Max alerted the team to the location and instructed them to wait on streets a few blocks on either side.
“What do we do now?” asked Darwin.
“It depends on how long it stays there,” replied Max. “Espresso?”
“Sí, but we can’t leave.”
Max got their coffees while Darwin kept vigil in front of the monitor. Not two minutes after the security chief walked out, the dot moved again. Darwin swore, ran to the office door, and yelled, “It’s moving again.”
As the dot tracked through Rome, Max conversed with his men by radio. One said, “The Italian police stopped the van—routine investigation, as you requested. The driver’s a kid, about nineteen. Said he picked up a crate at the Vatican and was instructed to drop it at a warehouse. Put it on the floor and left. That’s it. Saw no one.”
“Understood. Do not enter the warehouse. Acknowledge,” said Max.
“Acknowledged.”
“Good. Continue tracking with Nico. Stay well back. The GPS is working.”
“Understood.”
The van’s dot now moved onto the main highway, traveling north out of metropolitan Rome. They watched it for a quarter of an hour before Max went back to the kitchen to brew new espressos.
Over the next hour, the dot traveled north along the Via Flaminia Nuova, beside the River Tiber’s serpentine course. Then it turned clockwise onto the A90, which rings the capital city, and a kilometer later, it made a sharp left onto E35 and up the Italian peninsula. When it passed Orvieto, Darwin asked, “Where do you suppose they’re going?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” said Max.
They took turns watching into the late afternoon. At one point, while Max got lunch, Darwin went on alert when the dot stopped, but it moved again in less than five minutes. A radio chat with the pursuit cars determined it had been a petrol stop. One of them rolled past the station and snapped photos of the vehicles at the fuel stop: two sedans and one compact SUV. One sedan contained a group of three. The other sedan and SUV each had a single driver.
A half-hour later, when one of the Swiss Guards’ cars needed a petrol stop. Max suggested they run ahead at high speed and determine if the sedan and SUV were still ahead. “I only passed the SUV,” said the driver when he pulled off the highway. Fifteen minutes later, the other guard made a similar pass and only saw the SUV before his petrol stop.
“Okay, let’s assume the tracker’s in the SUV, but stay sharp. It could be the sedan.”
Darwin grabbed a quick lunch at the employees’ cafe, inhaling a plate of pasta with wild boar ragu, and returned in time to watch the dot loop around Florence and veer northwest toward Bologna. The combined boredom and post-lunch drowsiness pulled on him, and, when Max left to take a scheduled meeting, he struggled to stay alert. When his head bounced off his chest, whiplashing his neck, he got up and stretched while glancing back at the dot.
Finally, close to five o’clock, the dot merged onto the A50 around the western edge of Milan and then onto a westbound highway. It exited in less than a kilometer, and Max zoomed in as it stopped at a roadside motel. He alerted the team to exit in the same location. “Park discreetly. Let’s see what he does.”
When no movement had occurred by ten p.m., they determined the driver had checked into the hotel. Max and Darwin prepared for an all-nighter by having a cot set up in a nearby office. Dinner had been delivered earlier, but they skipped the wine.
“You get some rest. I’m a night owl and never sleep before two,” said Max.
The Swiss Guards in Milan similarly organized themselves for an all-night watch, carefully parking out of view from the hotel’s windows. Darwin lay down on the cot shortly before eleven, but he tossed and turned. Sleeping in public places like ferries and planes made him uncomfortable; the myriad noises and lights kept him from settling into a deep sleep. He thought of Eyrún, but he had messaged her “goodnight” earlier, and they had agreed to restrict communication to their normal chatter. They could not be a hundred percent sure no one had access to their conversations.
His next memory was a hand rocking his shoulder. “Darwin. Darwin. Time to get up.”
It took him several seconds to realize his location. “Right. Okay,” he said, pushing himself to a sitting position. “Anything happen?”
“Quiet as the dead,” said Max, who went back to the monitor while Darwin used the toilet and brewed coffee.
In less than five minutes, Darwin was sitting in the dim office, watching the red dot next to a building labeled “Motel 2000.”
“Wake me if anything happens,” said Max. “Alain’s on watch. Nico’s on sleep break. Don’t worry about dozing. I’ve set an alarm if the GPS moves.”
“Got it. Thanks.”
Darwin finished the coffee and got a second cup at 3:13. While not feeling refreshed, he was reasonably alert and used the time to read a backlog of papers. He had to abandon reading a data-intensive paper by a forensic archaeologist and clicked to another, but soon he was struggling with that one, too. His tired eyes forced him to repeat reading most paragraphs. The monitor beeped, and he jumped as the dot moved north on A50.
“Max!” Darwin shouted and tapped the radios to alert the drivers.
“Where’s it going?” asked Max, stepping into his shoes.
“A50.” Darwin pointed as the radio crackled.
“The SUV’s still here,” said Nico.
“Get on the road behind that signal,” said Max.
“Already on the A50, matching its speed,” Alain said in the second car.
“Must be a vehicle switch,” said Darwin.
“How come we didn’t see it?” Max pounded the desk.
Darwin listened to the team’s fast chatter, and then all went silent while Nico investigated the SUV. The dot now moved east onto the E64, crossing the northern edge of Milan. Max ran down the hall for a quick bio break and was hurrying back in just as Nico reported, “The SUV’s empty.”
36
An hour later, both cars trailed the dot. Earlier, Nico reported opening the unlocked SUV, finding the keys in the driver’s side cup holder, and, determining it was abandoned, racing to catch up with Alain. Now Max considered their next moves. “How’s your fuel?” he asked.
“Three hundred kilometers range,” said Nico. Alain reported similarly.
The morning sun in the security office angled through a high window, which, combined with noises from the incoming staff, helped Darwin shake off lost sleep. A junior officer brought them breakfast while they debated the vehicle’s destination. While Darwin ate, he retraced the route from yesterday.
The courier picked up the crate from the museum loading dock. Took it to the warehouse. Then another vehicle took the crate from the warehouse to Milan. Spent the night at the hotel and moved the crate to a new vehicle. It’s now heading east. To where?
He grabbed his iPad from Max’s desk and zoomed in on a map of Italy. Unless they turned north into the Alps, the vehicle would reach Venice in less than two hours and enter Slovenia in another. Albania! They’re heading towards the Albanian Master.
He zoomed out and immediately knew that made no sense. It was over a sixteen-hour drive south through the countries opposite Italy. No, for Albania, they would have driven south from Rome and taken the ferry across the Adriatic. His eyes roamed the map, trying to divine the dot’s destination. Then an idea surfaced. What if they’re trying to throw us off?
As Max and his men chattered in the background, Darwin grabbed his iPad and compared the warehouse address given by the ransomer to the address on the spreadsheet. It’s different. He went to the restorer’s website and clicked a link for company history. Merde!
He called the number. “Bonjourno, DaVinci Restorations,” said a young female voice.
Darwin asked her about the warehouse and was transferred to the owner. He repeated the question and learned the warehouse was their original headquarters but they had moved to their current headquarters half a century ago. “That old building’s been in our family since the seventeen hundreds. It’s disused now. Why?”
Darwin made up a story to explain his query and thanked the owner before disconnecting. He returned his attention to Max, who had just finished talking with the drivers about the destination. “What was that about?” asked Max.
“What if the thieves found the tracking device? Maybe…planted it on another car,” said Darwin, and he filled Max in on his theory.
“It’s plausible,” said Max. “Nico’s making a fast pass of the vehicle now. Should be—”
Nico’s voice burst over the radio: “It’s a family sedan.”
“What?” asked Max. “Confirm.” A moment later, his mobile beeped with a photo of a small blue sedan with four passengers, two of them children. As he and Darwin studied the photo, Nico said, “There’s no way the crate would fit in that car with four people. Even the boot’s too small.”
“Dammit!” Max roared, jumping to his feet. “Nico, get back to Milan. Alain, follow the sedan. Talk to the driver when it stops.” He sat down, elbows on the desk, and massaged his temples.
37
Darwin waited with Max and Richard at the papal office. Word had spread around the museum that a priceless vase had been stolen with his help, so he had avoided the office until today’s late meeting.
Yesterday morning, Alain had followed the family car until it stopped, and he had found the GPS device stuck under its bumper. He then returned to the abandoned SUV in the Milan hotel parking lot, and he and Nico reviewed the hotel’s security cameras. In the middle of the night, an unmarked cargo van had parked next to the SUV, and two people shifted the crate into the van. Minutes later, one emerged, bent down behind the family’s blue sedan, and affixed the GPS. The entire process had taken five minutes, and Nico had admitted to not watching a hundred percent of the night.
Now, sitting in the waiting area, Darwin tugged at his jacket’s sleeve a fifth time, adjusting the length of exposed shirt cuff. One of his feet was swept backward toward the door, his ankle wiggling. Stop it. He brought his feet together in front of the chair.
I gambled and lost. It happens. He reviewed his internal pep talk. Work the plan. In two hours, he would meet the owner of DaVinci Restorations at the warehouse, and he hoped a backtrack to the original transfer point would elicit some clue. He sat straight and calmed himself. We didn’t lose the original. At least Max had already devised a story of how they would produce the object safely stored in the basement.
“His Holiness will see you now,” said the pope’s assistant. Darwin’s stomach hardened as he realized his fretting was not over the loss of the object but the pope’s trust.
Just before entering the inner office, a security officer rushed in and whispered something to Max.
Inside, the pope said, “I only have a few minutes. Let’s get to it, shall we?” Once everyone was seated, the pontiff turned to Darwin. “The press is having a field day at my expense, Darwin. Tell me how you allowed a priceless Vatican treasure to be stolen."
“We didn’t, Your Holiness,” said Darwin. “It was a forgery.”
The pope sat back, his mouth slack.
Darwin continued. “When we moved the piece two days ago, a note that fell from its base alerted us to a duplicate in the basement storage. After the curators left, Max and I found the forged duplicate and swapped it with the original.”
“Why was I not told?”
Max answered this time. “My apologies. It was my doing. We wanted the situation to appear authentic, as we don’t know who’s involved.” He explained the jug had been duplicated when it went out for restoration in 1963. Its owner had since died, and his estate had left it to the Vatican, where the curators had placed it in storage.
Richard asked, “Why leave a note under the original?”
“Who knows?” said Max. “And it doesn’t matter, since it worked to our advantage.”
The pope accepted this logic. Then he asked, “But we still lost the forged piece. We’re no closer to the thieves. What now?”
“My office just reported the van went to the Basel freeport, where it’s still parked.”
“Freeport?” asked Richard.
“A customs warehouse with a duty-free designation for goods in transit,” said Darwin.
“So…” Richard prodded.
“A lot of art and antiquities are warehoused to avoid taxes and police. This freeport’s a known legal hiding place for illegal goods.”
Max’s mobile chimed. He looked at it and read the message aloud. “The crate went to a warehouse used by Alexandria Antiquities.”
“Nahla,” Darwin muttered under his breath.
38
Darwin arrived at the DaVinci Restorations warehouse the morning after the papal meeting, and he greeted the owner. They shook hands before the bulky man worked through a series of keys to unlock a small side door. “I’ve not been here in three decades,” he said. “We have no use for it, but the family trust forbids selling it.”
Their footfalls echoed on the concrete flooring. The space was dimly lit, as the only light came from top windows. Darwin sneezed from the kicked-up dust and pinched his nose to stop a second. He paused to assess the empty warehouse, running a light over the dusty floor and shining it back toward the door they had entered through. Crouching, he could better see the dust layer covering the floor, which had been disturbed near the large freight doors facing the street. There were tire tracks from at least two vehicles, but his and the owner’s footprints were the only ones that led deep into the warehouse.
He stood and, running the light along the walls, found only two places of interest: an office in the left-rear corner and a workbench with a handful of broken wooden crates beside it. As he moved toward the workbench, he could see packing material, ranging from straw to more modern bubble wrap, strewn about the crates. He clicked a task light on the bench. Nothing.
“Electricity’s been off for years. I checked,” said the owner.
“Any idea who could have used this space?” asked Darwin.
“None. Like I said. I was last here when I was eleven. My grandfather brought me for some reason. I don’t remember, but it was empty then.”
“Well, we’re the first people back here in a long while,” Darwin said while examining the crates.
“I’m going to look in the office,” said the owner, and he walked over to a small house-like building inside the larger structure.
Darwin examined the workbenches. He recognized brushes and other tools as those used in conservation, arranged in an orderly fashion. He scanned the dust-covered wooden surface and found two spots where tools had been moved. He swiped a fingertip about a thumb’s length and then moved twenty steps opposite the crates and used a different finger to swipe the floor. When he compared them, the floor fingertip was completely black, while the bench finger was just a dirty gray.
Someone’s been here within the last year or two. He wiped his fingers on his jeans. They would need a more precise survey to narrow down the time, but his gut told him this place saw sporadic use.
He moved to the crates and found one containing a carved bust. He snapped its photo in situ before moving it onto the work surface. It was classical Roman: a man, hair carved in ringlets and topped with an olive-branch crown. But the artist had carved it from basalt. Odd. Heads like this had always been done in more durable materials, like marble or bronze. He leaned closer. The gray rock had been finished smooth like any other sculpture, but its color struck him as strange. He had never seen such a thing.
He searched the crate but found no markings on its exterior. Then he rummaged through the packing material and found a crumpled paper. Smoothing it, he struggled to interpret its Arabic script, but he guessed it was a torn waybill, only a third remaining. He set the note next to the bust and, putting his hands on hips, surveyed the area.
