Tuscan Hoax: An Archaeological Thriller (A Darwin Lacroix Adventure Book 4), page 15
Minutes later, he knocked on the head of security’s door. “Bonjorno, Max.”
“Bonjorno Darwin. Come in. How are you?”
They caught up with each other. Max recounted a busy weekend attending his children’s football matches, and then they shifted to the investigation of the missing oinochoe jug.
“Nothing’s happened since it arrived at the Basel freeport. We’re trying to get access, but the Swiss courts are an impenetrable maze,” said Max.
“Any other ideas?”
“None. But I’m sure we’ll hear once they discover the jug’s fake. I like your optimism that it will draw them out into the open.”
“Hopefully. We’ll see,” said Darwin. He paused and then added, “Can I ask a favor?”
Max’s eyebrows shot upward.
“No. No. Nothing like that.” Darwin waved a hand, dismissing any thought of transferring another priceless object. “Can you run a background check on someone?”
“Thank goodness,” Max said behind a nervous smile. “Give me the name and basic data. I’ll ask one of my guys to do it.”
“I’d like you to do it. I’m hoping this person isn’t connected to the forgeries, but if she is, we can’t risk alerting anyone.”
“Sure. Sure. I understand.”
Darwin wrote down Jasmin’s name and the little he knew about her, including what he had learned of her failed Ph.D. pursuit in Lebanon. Max read the paper and asked a few questions, such as nationality and significant dates. Then he said, “Okay. We’ve worked with less. Come back tomorrow.”
Darwin returned to the library offices, and, during a ninety-minute staff meeting, his thoughts kept drifting back to Max’s comment about the thieves discovering the fake. Why haven’t we heard from them? They must have studied it.
He recalled photos of the freeport’s rectangular warehouse complex, enveloped by high fences and twenty-four-seven security. Last week, Max had arranged a conversation with an Italian art dealer whose company had a space in the freeport. When Darwin asked the man about looted works, the dealer’s face darkened.
“We would never do such a thing,” he said. Then he added, “But I have heard of dealers who traded in pieces with vague origins.” When Darwin pressed him for examples of any such dealers, he had become evasive and declined to share details about the inner workings of the freeport.
As today’s meeting droned on, Darwin contemplated the underworld of antiquities and art dealing. It carried the rancid odor of drug cartels: wealth and pricey lawyers at the top sanitizing the lawlessness. Those at the pinnacle deluded themselves into thinking they were a business supplying a market demand, that the problem lay with the consumer, the addict, who abused the product. Darwin saw the millionaires behind the tomb raiding and forgery as junkies whose zeal to possess justified any means of acquisition. The more he studied the subject, the more his bile rose.
Pinching his eyes closed and shaking his head, he pictured a document he had read last night. Gavin had emailed him a warrant from the Los Angeles district attorney’s office that read like a whodunnit. A brazen theft of rare cuneiform tablets during the US conflict in Iraq had a list of suspects that included a corrupt museum official, the London branch of the auction house he had visited in Beverly Hills, and a husband-and-wife antiquities trading company based in Hawaii. Together with a litany of shipping companies and sketchy waybills, they had obfuscated the tablets’ provenance as “Ex-Canadian private collection, obtained in the 1990s, said to be from Mesopotamia.”
Obtained, my ass. Try stolen. He drank from a water bottle to wash down the sour taste in his mouth. “The bastards are destroying our past,” he muttered under his breath.
“Darwin?” said his assistant.
“Huh? Sorry. I was working out a problem.”
“We’re wrapping up. We need a decision on the budget.”
“Right.” Darwin scanned the document that had been laid before him earlier. Then he looked up at the team. All eyes were on him. The tone during their debate had sounded reasoned, so he cut to the chase. “Any objections to what’s been proposed?”
Heads shook. One woman said, “No.”
“Okay, then. Approved.” He signed it and asked his assistant to submit it to the head librarian.
45
Eyrún stared absently at the bust on her desk after again scrolling through the photos of the vase on the megayacht. She messaged Darwin:
Can you talk?
Darwin: in a long meeting. an hour?
Eyrún: Look at these. Jasmin knows more than she’s saying.
She included photos and a link to the publication. A minute later, her mobile chimed.
Darwin: !!!!!!!
Eyrún: I know. Maybe Vatican security can do a background check.
Darwin: thought the same thing earlier and asked Max to run one.
Eyrún: when will you know?
Darwin: tomorrow
Eyrún: ok, I’ll ask her about it in the meantime.
She cleared her email inbox before Hervé introduced an interview candidate, and then she attended a series of meetings before lunch. In a break before an afternoon interview, she went to see Jasmin, who was peering into a microscope.
Eyrún tapped on the doorframe, and, as Jasmin turned, she said, “Sorry to bother you again, but I stumbled upon something with Lupita.”
“No bother. I’m always happy to help,” Jasmin said, scooting her chair backward.
Eyrún moved to the lab bench and leaned on it, facing Jasmin. Then she asked if Jasmin was familiar with Lupita’s project.
“She described it in our last staff meeting, but I’m not technical and tuned most of it out. Why?”
“We found these.” Eyrún took three photos from her jeans back pocket and handed them to Jasmin, who flipped through them. When Jasmin did not respond, Eyrún pressed, though she kept her tone light. “Why would the Fountain of Salmacis be on your yacht?”
Jasmin looked up at Eyrún. “I’ve no idea.”
“You didn’t recognize it in the lab before they seized it?”
“It was the first time I’d seen it.” Jasmin shuffled through the photos again. “Where did you get these?”
“Lupita’s algorithm found them in an issue of Vanity Fair from 2007.”
“That story’s over a decade old, just before my ex bought the yacht from a client in financial trouble. I was so angry when I learned what he spent, but he always did that with our money.”
She’s got a smooth answer for everything. Eyrún pondered this latest reply before asking, “So, you never saw it?”
“No. There was no art aboard when I first saw the yacht, and we sent it for a makeover right after the purchase.” After a pause, Jasmin added, “He let me decorate it as consolation. It’s how he placated me.”
Eyrún shifted her inquiry. “Could your ex have a role in what’s going on with us?”
Jasmin snorted. “I don’t know how.”
“It’s okay. Let’s leave it to the lawyers. Sorry for the questions. This whole thing is wearing me out, too.”
“Believe me, I understand.”
Eyrún thanked Jasmin and headed back to the main offices, having learned little. But a twisting in her belly left her unconvinced, and she replayed all her interactions with Jasmin as she walked. There’re too many coincidences. I can’t wait to see the background check.
46
The next afternoon, Darwin canceled a meeting and cut a swift path to the security office after Max called to say he had received the report on Jasmin.
“Bonjourno,” said Darwin, taking the chair opposite Max.
“Bonjourno.”
“What did you find? I talked with my wife last night. She’s convinced there’s more going on than Jasmin’s telling us.”
“She’s got good intuition, and there’s a lot to unravel here,” said Max. He began reading from a summary page. “Jasmin had a rough start—born 1980 in Beirut. Her mom died in 1986, a casualty of the civil war. Luckily, a French family adopted her when she was six, and she grew up in Paris."
“Looks like a normal childhood after her tumultuous early years. She attended good schools and earned a baccalauréat in 1997. Her family must have had money because, despite being a middling performer, she went to the University of Paris."
“Anything about grad school or her Ph.D. attempt in Beirut?” asked Darwin.
Max picked up the full report and flipped the pages to confirm. “There’s nothing on post-graduate work.”
Darwin’s eyes darted back and forth as he considered the alternate picture of Jasmin developing before him. “What about her business? The antiquities galleries?”
“It’s legitimate. Jasmin and Thierry Panchon—"
“Panchon? She said her name is Kahn.”
“That’s her original family name. She and Thierry own two galleries in Paris that, according to tax records we could get, gross over seventy-nine million euros annually.”
“Anything else stand out?”
“She was arrested in Lebanon twenty-three years ago for looting a tomb. No record of conviction. But there’s something odd. Best if you read it yourself.” Max handed the report to Darwin, who scanned the page.
“Merde,” he breathed out, sinking into the chair.
Darwin took the report back to his office and closed the door. He opened the folder and, skimming over the details Max had summarized, flipped to the section that caused his earlier reaction.
The document listed a lawsuit in France leveled by Nahla’s company, Alexandria Antiquities, Ltd., against Jasmin’s firm alleging the sale of state treasures stolen from the National Museum of Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. The suit settled out of court, but the report contained a translated section from a French newspaper:
Ms. Jasmin Panchon, Managing Director of Eshmun Holdings, SARL, said, “The court showed that our practices live up to the highest standards. We stand vindicated of wrongdoing and shall take action against anyone who seeks to malign our legitimate business.”
Managing director? She’s not as naive as she claims. I wonder what Nahla’s version of this is.
He scanned the report with his mobile, uploaded it to a secure server, and texted Eyrún the link.
She called within minutes. “I knew it. That sneaky bitch. She runs the company that owns the megayacht.”
“Yep. I noticed that. And, no surprise, there’s bad blood between her and Nahla.”
They debated how Jasmin might be waging a war against Nahla through the ACA, but they stumbled when they got to the Albanian Master. “She’s got some fixation on him. Her interest in our collection definitely picked up when she found the aleph,” said Eyrún.
“What do you think is Nahla’s view of this lawsuit?”
“Meaning her evidence on Jasmin’s company stealing from the National Museum of Beirut?”
“Exactly.” An idea began to coalesce, but Darwin could not get a bead on it.
“But wouldn’t the Lebanese museum sue Eshmun Holdings? They owned the stolen objects, not Nahla’s company.”
“Dunno,” he said. Then, deciding to go with his gut, he blurted out, “What if we ask Nahla?”
An hour later, after convincing Eyrún it was worth risking, Darwin got Nahla’s contact information from a dossier gathered when the pope had secured the Alexander scroll from Egypt. After typing and deleting several messages, he decided simple and vague would best:
This is Darwin Lacroix. I need some information and have something to trade.
She texted back minutes later, and they exchanged a series of texts, ending with Darwin agreeing to meet her in Alexandria. At first, he hesitated on the location, but he agreed after pondering her message:
I bear you no ill will Darwin. We are competitors. Sometimes I win. Sometimes you win. But Jasmin is not who she says she is.
47
Eyrún warmed her hands on a teacup as she looked far beyond the horizon, imagining Darwin’s flight nearing Alexandria. The hot liquid soothed the butterflies in her stomach.
Yesterday afternoon, her warning radar had gone up when Darwin proposed visiting Nahla. Initially she had argued against going, saying it bordered on dangerous, but her opinion shifted as they discussed it. The security report showed Jasmin Panchon, a savvy executive communicator, expert at selling antiquities to the super-wealthy, not the victimized Jasmin Kahn, who deflected blame onto her husband and manipulated their suspicions about Nahla.
As Eyrún had lain in bed last night, she had replayed her encounters with Jasmin. She knows so much of our history with Nahla… But we can’t trust Nahla, either… Thinking about Darwin made her heart race, but she willed herself to relax, knowing that Max had promised two security operatives to shadow him. She had finally fallen asleep after convincing herself he would be safe.
Now, in the bright light of a new day, the prior evening’s doubts returned. What if meeting Darwin is just a distraction and Nahla and Jasmin are in this together? She shuddered, spilling tea on one hand. The idea made sense on one level—how else could Jasmin know so much about them? But on the whole, something was missing.
She dried her wet hand on her jeans as she continued to ponder the questions that had kept her awake. Did Jasmin seduce Zac to get into our life? And what’s the Albanian Master connection?
On top of everything, she could not connect the ACA’s framing to the ransom request to send the Vatican oinochoe jug out for restoration. The more she thought about it, the more she convinced herself they had to pursue alternate strategies. Darwin’s keen intuition took them in seemingly illogical directions, like meeting Nahla, but Eyrún knew solutions came from assembling multiple options.
I need to draw Jasmin out. Turn the table. Get her to react.
She recalled the idea Astrid had proposed two months ago when their legal battle had just started: conduct a public relations campaign showing the positive work the ACA was doing. At the time, she had disliked the idea, saying, “We’re not guilty,” but her pragmatic side had begun to consider it a decent strategy.
While Eyrún had done nothing other than talk with the marketing firm Astrid had recommended, seeing Jasmin in the kitchen across the open office prompted her to test the idea. She grabbed her mobile and tapped Darwin’s number, knowing it would go to voice mail. Upon reaching the kitchen, she stopped close enough to be overheard but just out of Jasmin’s sight.
“But it makes perfect sense, Darwin. The lawyer said antiquities theft is rampant and the OCBC has no solid evidence that we looted the vases. Besides, under French law, the transfer documents from the museum protect us."
Eyrún paused as if Darwin were replying. When the kitchen noises stopped, she continued. “I say we send the vases back to their countries of origin, make large donations to their museums, and begin a media campaign to apologize.”
She watched Jasmin’s reflection in an inner office window. When Jasmin moved closer, Eyrún cast the bait. “Forget about Nahla. The whole thing blows over, and, in a few years, it’s forgotten.”
Jasmin froze. Eyrún waited for a few more beats before ending her fake call. “Okay, I gotta run, too. I need another tea before my call with Astrid. See you tonight. Bisous.” She pocketed the mobile and then entered the kitchen. “Good morning, Jasmin. How are you today?”
“Lovely. You?”
Eyrún answered, and as she stepped toward the kettle, Jasmin asked, “When will Darwin be back? I need his help on the provenience of a cinerarium. They look so similar, and modern borders cut across the ancient kingdoms.”
“Later tonight,” said Eyrún, switching on the kettle. Then, thinking Jasmin might be probing based on what she overheard, she added, “He’s in Alexandria today.”
Jasmin’s eyes blinked rapidly. “Oh. It can wait till tomorrow.” She looked away.
Eyrún grinned and walked out.
48
Darwin exited customs and saw a sign for Mr. Lacroix. The slim, black-suited man holding it reminded him of the corrupt Egyptian antiquities officials who had seized his Alexander scroll. He flushed at the memory, grinding his teeth at the personal violation. For two years, the vision had plagued and humiliated him. Some nights, he had fallen asleep plotting how to destroy Nahla. And now I’m walking into her lair. Stop it, he chided himself. Focus on the meeting.
Darwin followed the man to a white Mercedes-Benz 600S sedan idling curbside at passenger arrivals. The driver palmed baksheesh to a policeman standing watch over the vehicle, got behind the wheel, and soon pulled into the hornet’s nest of Alexandrian traffic.
Darwin reclined the rear seat and sighed out the tension from the morning’s airport hurdles and constant barrage of noise. Sometime later, an abrupt stop jerked him from a lucid dream, and he saw they had reached the coastal road.
As the car rolled past the New Library of Alexandria, its silver dome glistening in the southern Mediterranean sun, he imagined the scrolls he and Eyrún had found. We should visit the library and go to Siwa again. They supported the schools in the oasis, and Eyrún had kept in touch with Illi, a local girl who had helped them, promising her an internship at the ACA.
They soon reached Nahla’s apartment building, less than two kilometers from the library, and the driver strode around to open the rear door. Darwin thanked him and informed the doorman he was a guest of Ms. Al Mahwi.
The lift’s mirrored inside doors reflected his tight expression; he was squinting so hard his green eyes were hardly visible. Relax. Let it go. He took a breath, swept back his hair, and unclenched his jaw. The doors opened into the penthouse foyer, where a young woman greeted him.
“Bonjour, Mr. Lacroix. I trust you had a pleasant journey?” she said in flawless English. She wore a smart royal-blue suit and white blouse and, in sandals, equaled Darwin’s height.
