Clan Novel Setite: Book 4 of The Clan Novel Saga

by Kathleen Ryan

  Thirty minutes later she poked her head back out of the bathroom—cautiously. It had occurred to her that she didn’t remember the end of the evening. The apartment felt empty, sounded empty…she crept to the edge of the curtains, and looked out. No sign of Hesha, she saw with relief. She shrugged into an old, comfortable T-shirt and sweats, and reached for a hair band from a pile on the dresser. The note lay next to them.

  Dear Elizabeth—

  Good morning—I hope you slept well. The wine was apparently a stronger vintage than expected. I brought you in here—I hope you don’t mind—you looked rather crumpled in the living room. I’m afraid you’ll feel rather crumpled in the morning, too. My father’s secret hangover cure is waiting in the fridge for you. Whatever you do, don’t sip it. It tastes worse than it smells.

  Thank you for the ‘consultation’ on the statue. You get the ‘A’ and I owe you steak dinner and cocktails, if you like. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be in town, but 202-555-7831 will catch up with me eventually, no matter where I go.

  Hope to see you again soon.

  —Hesha

  Elizabeth stuck the note by magnet to the freezer door. She stacked a hangover-friendly breakfast on a tray, added the blue juice glass, and balanced the lot across the room. Sleipnir’s broad back took breakfast from her.

  She nibbled absent-mindedly at a muffin and started drawing the long curtains up to the ceiling. Her reflection stared back at her, paler and more fey than in her mirror. She cranked open the windows, and the images slanted away, disapproving crookedly of her slothfulness. Elizabeth turned on the fans, plopped down on a stool in the workshop, and turned to her assignment for the day, an American Colonial painting that had been, unfortunately, varnished for its own protection several times.

  Most of the afternoon later, picking out another solvent took her past the bench where the putty casts lay, and on the way back she took them with her. She stared at the little eyes, and tried to remember where she had seen their like before. She abandoned the easel to search her office desk. It was a journal article, she was sure now—something the statue had reminded her of—but she couldn’t put her finger on the issue or even the year in which she’d read it. She thought of a place in the bedroom shelves that held a bundle of old xeroxed references. She flew to them, and spent half an hour eliminating the possibilities of the shelves, the magazine rack, the bedside table.

  “Damn.”

  Then she saw it—just a corner sticking out of a pile of magazines—the cadet-blue paper cover of The Southern California Archaeological Digest. Elizabeth leaped for the couch, sent the stack sprawling, and seized the journal.

  The article, entitled “Further notes on the Sur-Amech burial site,” was ‘further’ notes because the digs had been disrupted by border wars and travel sanctions to the nation that laid claim to the patch of desert the old necropolis occupied, and because the grave under study was set apart from the main cemetery. Elizabeth looked at the atlas and the dates given for the research—the author had to have returned to his excavations under threat of fire, if he’d worked when and where he claimed to.

  There were photographs of the grave, and diagrams in three angles of the location of each artifact uncovered. Two pieces merited their own diagrams: a beautiful, unbroken example of the pottery native to the time and region, and a carnelian bead the corpse had worn on a thong around her neck.

  Elizabeth pored over the writer’s description of the little jewel, and walked over to the workbench. She measured the putty casts with calipers, string, and a ruler. The left eye was a perfect match. She grinned, propped her elbow on the bench, and bit her thumb in satisfaction.

  Flipping the blue-gray journal over to its cover and contents page, she found the author’s name: Dr. Jordan Kettridge, Professor of Archaeology, University of California, Berkeley.

  Of course. Kettridge was the kind of man who would rather dig during war than peace; she’d heard of his exploits in Iraq. She’d heard complaints, too, from her own professors and the staff at the museum. Kettridge wouldn’t specialize properly. Kettridge wouldn’t stay with an expedition, not the way real archaeologists worked the field. Kettridge would waltz in after someone else had been carefully running test trenches and stratification holes for ten years to establish culture and diet and timeline and everything that was important, get permission to do a foundation study on some farmer’s outhouse, and immediately stumble across the high priests’ personal quarters. Some said it was luck, some said it was instinct, but everyone agreed it was goddamn annoying.

  Elizabeth found UC-Berkeley on the net, ran through the faculty e-mail to Kettridge, and shot off a query.

  Dear Professor Kettridge,

  I recently had occasion to review your article on Sur-Amech in the Fall 96 SCAD. I was particularly interested in the pattern of striations found on the carnelian bead from grave d-24. Do they, as they seem to in the diagram on page 138, spiral counterclockwise in relation to the flatter side of the bead?

  If so, I believe I have a client interested in purchasing this artifact. The piece is not described as a part of Berkeley’s museum collection in the article; I assume that, being a minor item compared to the pottery found during the expedition, it has passed into a private collection. Could you inform me of the final disposition of the bead? Thank you for your time.

  Sincerely,

  Elizabeth A. Dimitros

  Associate, Rutherford House Antiques

  That done, she took to the kitchen phone, and punched Hesha’s number in from the note he’d left.

  “Hello?” It was a machine; eventually it beeped. “Hesha, this is Elizabeth. It’s Saturday evening. Thanks for, um, carting me to bed. Anyway. I found something in one of my journals about your statue, I think. Give me a call when you can. Take care. Bye.”

  She set down the phone, and began scavenging her cupboards for dinner, clearing the remains of breakfast away as she went.

  The forgotten contents of the little juice glass went swirling down the sink.

  Saturday, 26 June 1999, 9:14 PM

  Laurel Ridge Farm

  Near Columbia, Maryland

  Hesha woke to darkness and the silence of the tomb. Lethargy lifted from him, and he felt the last light of day leave the earth. He wondered if the face of the sun had changed in the centuries since the curse had been laid on him. He wondered if Set fled Ra’s glory as he traveled the underworld, or whether the dead god were forced by the curse to attack his grandfather’s barge every night, or if Set slept, as Hesha himself did, and fought the curse in the land of the living.

  Hesha, childe in the seventh degree from Set, the son of Geb, the son of Ra, stirred in his chamber, and lights hidden in the ceiling glowed dimly at his first movement. They threw the carved walls into deep shadow; shallow relief stood forth like sculpture in the round. Farmers, fishers, hunters, artisans, scribes, priests, nobles, and royalty performed their daily tasks in the friezes. Beneath the arched body of the sky, they marked the hours with ritual, work, prayer, and pleasure. They were copies of the most beautiful art of Egypt, blended into a single masterpiece by modern hands. Hesha ran his night-black fingers over the smooth stone, and traced the outline of the cartouche in the wall to his right: a rope, bound into a loop by thinner cords, filled with the signs of Set’s name and the simple title, “Lord of the Northern Skies.”

  Set’s descendant rose and paced the walls, admiring the work. He touched his own cartouche above the lintel of a door, and walked on. In a crooked corner of the irregular cave, he came to the only unfinished section of the work. Chisel, hammer, brush, and charcoal lay neatly in a box at the base of the stone. He picked up the stick of charcoal and drew a last cartouche on the gray rock. Within the oval, he scribed a horned viper, an open tent, a vulture, a man, and an ankh—VGH—Vegel, the artist. His work was over. Hesha chiseled the rock away from the sign and laid the tools down again. The unfinished panel would remain that way forever.

  “Thompson,
” Hesha said into the dimness.

  A small speaker among the lights clicked on. “You called, sir?”

  “Conference. Half an hour. You and the Asp in person. Have Janet and the doctor call in on secure lines.” Hesha pushed lightly on a papyrus plant carved into the rock, and a door opened to more mundane apartments. He returned clean and clad in a simple robe, the gallahbeyah of his native North Africa. The amulets that had been hidden by western garb swung freely from cords at his neck and waist.

  Thompson was waiting for him. A door to the upper areas of the house swung open as he entered, and the Asp made his way into the room. Hesha sat at the foot of the stone bench on which he had spent the day.

  “Janet? Doctor? Are you with us?” Hesha asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I’m here, Hesha.”

  “Let’s begin, then. Reports. Thompson?”

  “The bodies of Vegel’s team are all accounted for, sir. Transportation arrangements are under way; and we’ve made funeral provisions for their families. I’d like tomorrow and Monday afternoon free to attend services.” Hesha nodded approval. “There wasn’t much left of the car, but Atlanta police identified it yesterday as a wreck left in Cabbagetown early Tuesday morning. In their opinion, it was stolen for a joyride and then deliberately crashed.

  Probably true,” said Hesha, “as far as it goes. Asp?

  Six of the Family have come to the townhouse looking for shelter—one from D.C., two each from Charleston, Richmond, and Atlanta, all separately, all in a hell of a hurry. I found them crash space here and there, and put them on field rations, per your orders. I gave them your number here; calls have been piling up, but so far they’ve lain low like good boys and girls.

  “That won’t last much longer.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right, Hesha,” said Doctor Oxenti from her office. “D.C. hospitals and the Red Cross were on our backs for rare types before the riots, and now we’re low on everything. Plasma’s cleaned out completely; whole blood is in short supply.”

  “I see.” Hesha placed his hands flat on the stone beneath him. “It’s going to get worse,” he began. “By now you all will have gathered that these riots are Family business. My own branch is neutral, but that won’t make a difference to either faction. We support both sides against the middle, and they will take any opportunity they can to use us, to trap us into allegiances we can’t afford, or to rend us in the general slaughter.

  “Washington, D.C. is now under attack.” He drove on, ignoring the expressions on the faces before him, and the gasp—Janet’s—that whistled through the speakers. “Assume, based on the war’s progress so far, that Baltimore is not only a target, but the next target in a line north up the East Coast.

  “Our open business and the townhouse are almost certain to be ransacked or firebombed. Begin removing the most valuable and portable pieces, slowly. Fake buys, arrange shoplifting, send things out for recycling, and make small shipments, but don’t let it be too obvious that we’re withdrawing. Warehouse the goods in the deep country—the Appalachians would be best, I think.

  “I want the staff out of the buildings well before sundown every day until further notice. If we don’t have more information by autumn, we’ll keep later morning hours as the day gets shorter.

  “Janet, you’re coming out of the city center. Choose whatever files and equipment you want to bring with you, but hurry. You move to new quarters at dawn tomorrow. Asp, you’re moving her yourself. We’ll pick a safe zone after this meeting, and the location doesn’t go beyond the three of us.”

  “Doctor?”

  “Still here, sir.”

  “Can you leave your research at this time?”

  “No.” Hesha heard the tapping of Yasmine Oxenti’s long, manicured nails on the phone receiver, and then, “A week. I need a week, at least.”

  “We’ll try to give you the week. After that, I want you to take a holiday. Janet, book passage for the doctor to Alaska, one week from tomorrow.”

  “Alaska?!”

  “The sun isn’t setting there. I’d send you all if I could afford to do without your aid, but blood banks are particular targets, and you are particularly resistant to efforts by Thompson’s people to protect you.”

  “But—”

  “In the meantime, order the usual shipments for the next month. Have your second-in-command coordinate emergency blood drives with the Red Cross. Start at our own open offices, in fact. And put your staff on daylight hours, same as the other businesses.”

  “How in hell am I going to rationalize that?”

  “Convincingly,” Hesha frowned, “if you want to save their lives. Should the enemy take the clinic while the staff are still there, our people will be massacred. Understood?”

  There was a pause. “Yes, sir.”

  “And all of you: Cut communications between branches of the organization to a minimum. Close what channels you can. I want our holdings concealed from onlookers as much as possible. I want the four of you speaking to each other as little as possible. Thompson has briefed you all on the emergency procedures; start using them.

  “Any questions?” Silence fell. “Further business?

  “Yes, sir.” Thompson darted up the stairs and back again, holding several plastic-wrapped bundles on a tray. He wore gloves to handle them. “Family letters for you, and a few others that Mrs. Lindbergh had a feeling about.”

  “There are messages waiting on your private line, as well,” said Janet. “And I show a call from Miss Dimitros’s number.”

  The Asp snickered.

  Monday, 28 June 1999, 9:15 AM

  Rutherford House, Upper East Side, Manhattan

  New York City, New York

  Elizabeth let herself in by the alley entrance, and found Amy Rutherford waiting for her on the stairs. She held two cups of coffee and very little patience.

  “Good morning, Miss Golightly. Here’s your coffee.” Amy waited until the younger woman had had a good gulp of the hot, black brew, and then developed a cat-and-canary smile. “Tell Mama all about it.”

  “About what?” Elizabeth slipped past, hugging the well-wrapped package tightly under one arm. She waggled the package at her boss. “This?”

  Amy ran after her, and caught the door to the offices open with a deft foot. “You scamp. You know exactly what I’m talking about. About the date.”

  Liz sat down. “Thursday night didn’t go well at all. He had a business meeting beforehand, it dragged on, and he was three hours late.” She shrugged. “Dinner was good, though. He and his chauffeur drove me home, and he asked if I could meet him the next night. So he came over Friday after dinner, and we talked antiques and things.”

  Amy’s mouth fell open. “And?”

  “What do you mean, ‘And?’”

  “Good God, Liz. Do you realize you’ve made fire-irons sound more exciting than that? You sell a cheap Roman bracelet to one of the Miller sisters, and it’s all romance and the story of how the glass went from hand to hand along the silk road, and the wedding it was bought for, and the…well, you go on and on, you know you do, and it sells the thing. Here you have not one, but two nights with one of the most interesting men I’ve ever met, and all you have to say about it is, ‘He was late. Dinner was good. We drove home. He came over. We talked.’” She ran the sentences together in singsong mockery. “Do you know what I did Friday?”

  “You attended an estate sale in Massachusetts.” Elizabeth got up and started down the carpeted stairs to the display floor. “How did it go for us?”

  “I—well, it went fine. Four good pieces of Philadelphia cabinetry, a nearly complete set of Spode china, a—damn it, you changed the subject. I spent Friday wondering what happened to you Thursday night.”

  “That was sweet of you, but he was quite the gentleman. Brought me home safe, sound, and with my virtue unassailed.”

  “Liz—” Amy began seriously, and looked at her. An eight-day clock on the wall beside them chimed the half-
hour, galvanizing her into movement. “Oh, Lord. Do you realize we open in thirty minutes? Hurry. The Totiros took the floral, but they also cleaned out all the Nouveau we had in the showroom. We’ve got to reorganize before ten…. Call Antonio and the boys in to help us with the heavy things, would you, Liz?”

  In fifteen minutes, the front room was ready enough to start the day with. The two women tramped upstairs to brush dust from their dresses and jackets, comb Amy’s flyaway hair, and make themselves, as Miss Agnes would have put it, “decently presentable.” They stole a moment for more coffee and gossip, until the phone rang. Amy reached for it with one hand, but kept her eyes on Liz. “Hold that thought, dear.”

  “Rutherford House Antiques,” she answered, in excruciatingly well-bred tones. “How may I be of assistance to you today? Yes. Yes.” Her brows waggled at Elizabeth, and she mouthed ‘asking for you.’ “She is here with me now, as a matter of fact. Would you like to speak with her?” There was a pause. “In about five minutes. Our hours begin at ten, Mr… Yes, that is the street. Three blocks from…that is correct. Well, we will see you then, sir.”

  “Another gentleman caller for you, Lizzie.” Amy shrugged and waved away Liz’s questions. “Didn’t leave his name. Didn’t state his business.” She glanced at her wristwatch. “Time to unlock.”

  The elegant smoked-glass-and-chromed-steel doors opened for the first customer of the day. Amy Rutherford drifted unobtrusively forward, neither putting herself in the man’s way, nor giving the slightest appearance of neglect, should he be looking for assistance.

  His eyes flickered over her, but he said nothing. He started a circuit of the room, examining it silently. From time to time, he would look over at the two women, but his attention seemed absorbed by the antiquities. His hair was a graying ash-blond, his face dark in a way that suggested layers of honest sunburn, not trips to a tanning bed. He wore a wrinkled, khaki button-down shirt with too many pockets, and blue jeans that seemed to have come across the idea of “threadbare” in ages past and liked it. Neither woman judged him on the clothes; enough VIPs took pride in shabby casuals that he might have been anyone.