Sixtine- The Complete Trilogy Box Set

by Caroline Vermalle

  An hour earlier, the Cairo police had revealed to the press the presence of two victims, one dead and one in a critical condition, in a coma. They had also confirmed what Florence had suspected herself: the ‘treasure’ found with the bodies in the pyramid was merely a copy of the famous mask of Tutankhamen. The original was safe and sound within its glass fortress at the Egyptian Museum. Al-Shamy himself had issued a statement saying as much.

  Then there was the message in her personal mailbox from an American living in Cairo.

  Franklin G. Hunter.

  At first, she had wondered how he had gotten hold of her address – very few people knew it – but that soon became irrelevant when she found out he had some very specific knowledge of the case to share with her.

  Was he an Egyptologist? He had not offered, but Florence's journalistic instinct had prompted her to suggest that they meet as soon as possible. The same day. Hopefully, it was not already too late.

  The taxi came to a violent halt against the curb, and the driver signaled that they had arrived, pointing to the entrance of a dark alley on the other side of the sidewalk. Soon the honking horns of the impatient drivers held up behind them covered the din of the street, and the men lounging in front of the cafe nearest to them paused their games to look, and then to stare.

  Moments later, Max and Florence were inside another café; its walls were cluttered with crookedly hung picture frames covered in oily dust. A feeble breeze pushed down by lazy ceiling fans rattling overhead hardly disturbed Florence’s pink hair. She scanned the customers around her; they were engrossed in a football match on television or quietly smoking their shisha, the water within their glass hookah pipes bubbling away. While the older men wore traditional djellabas, most were dressed in western garb.

  But none of them bore any resemblance to Florence's idea of a man called Franklin G. Hunter.

  She had just settled down at a free table with Max, when a deep voice made them both jump and turn.

  “I did not expect a correspondent of the British Broadcasting Corporation to have pink hair.” He had materialized out of nowhere like a specter and Florence, like Max, was caught off guard by the tall, older black man in a worn black suit. With a gold earring. “Franklin Hunter, how do you do?”

  Florence firmly shook the hand he had offered in greeting. “I could return the compliment and say that you also don’t look the type, if only I knew what type that was.”

  Florence introduced Max briefly and, after an appraising look at the pair of them, Franklin signaled to the waiter to come and take their order.

  “Have you ever tasted iced karkade? It’s a tea made from hibiscus, very refreshing.”

  “Not for me,” interrupted Max, and ordered his drink in fluent Arabic.

  Franklin Hunter glanced quickly at him, then turned to Florence and said:

  “I'm a private investigator.”

  “The victims of the pyramid?” Florence began.

  “Nope, not interested. I specialize in art and antiques. And those who traffic it. My clients are museums, galleries, private collectors.”

  “Oh yeah,” Florence said mischievously, “like Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair.”

  Franklin snorted. “Hollywood clichés. Believe me, we are very far from a world of playboys or gentleman-burglars. The illegal market in antiquities is not glamorous at all: the economy it represents and its style of operation, put it in the same league as the trafficking of arms, drugs or humans. The stakes are formidable – from influencing international geopolitics to funding terrorism.”

  Franklin shifted his gaze from Florence to Max, measuring the effect of his words. Seeing them sufficiently intrigued, he continued. “During the war in Iraq, the American army seized convoy after convoy of weapons. Each time, between the missiles, under the grenades or cases of ammunition, they found ancient tablets or statues. We also know that the current conflict in Syria is fueled, at least in part, by the demand for antiquities. The rebels have created a coalition of looters who barter what they find for weapons; the other side sells them to hire mercenaries. Collectors in Europe and the United States follow the conflict with interest. They choose the items they want and place their orders. We have seen bulldozers on archaeological sites, expensive and advanced technology that nobody would use unless they already had a buyer. War is good for business.” He paused and sighed. “But the sale of antiquities prolongs the conflict, and at the same time, the destruction of the sites and the looting of the museums deprives the countries of future revenues from tourism, impoverishing it even further and destroying one of the primary routes to recovery after the war is over. A vicious downward spiral.”

  Franklin’s voice trailed off. The waiter brought the blood-red karkadés and a lemon cordial for Max. The detective took a sip of his hibiscus-flavored concoction, closing his eyes as he savored the drink.

  “So what’s the connection with the pyramid story?” Max asked.

  “We always say that an artifact in a museum is 'priceless',” Franklin answered, “but in reality, the treasures all have price tags, even if they are not visible. I'm not talking about their black market value, but about their official value. Insurance companies don’t do 'priceless'. They demand a fixed value for every item they insure and set their premiums accordingly. Do you know, for example, the price tag on Tutankhamen's funerary mask?”

  Florence and Max shook their heads.

  “Over nine hundred million dollars,” Franklin answered himself.

  Max could not help choking on his lemon cordial. He apologized while wiping his chin and whispered, shaking his head: “When you think that half of Egypt survives on less than two dollars a day.”

  “But the calculation is absurd,” Florence retorted, “Tutankhamen is unsellable. And I’m still not seeing the connection with the pyramid.”

  “You told me that you had seen what was inside Room X,” Franklin said, his eyes narrowing.

  “Sure, a copy of Tutankhamen's funeral mask.”

  Franklin held her gaze. “Who told you that it was a copy?”

  Max laughed. “You mean apart from the fact that the original is in the Egyptian Museum?”

  “And if it was stolen,” Florence added, “the museum would have declared the theft and pocketed almost a billion, thank you very much. And yet they haven’t, or am I wrong?”

  “No, they have not,” Franklin said, smiling. “And, by the looks of things, I would have to agree that the mask found yesterday is indeed a fake.”

  Franklin retrieved a folded sheet of paper from his pocket and unfolded it slowly. It was a contact sheet showing pictures of the mask from different angles with a scale ruler next to each one. Even without the ‘Made in China’ stamp on the base, anyone could have recognized that it was a cheap reproduction that would not have deceived even the most naive of tourists. But what intrigued Florence was something else.

  “Where did you get this contact sheet?” she asked.

  “I have my sources, just like you do. But all you need to know is that this was not taken in the museum in Cairo, but somewhere else, very recently. And I would bet this is the exact same mask that was found in Room X yesterday.”

  Florence scanned the snapshots again. “Okay. Masks like these, they are a dime a dozen in the bazaar. Why is this one interesting?”

  Franklin smiled broadly. “I think this is a very special kind of fake. A fake that is not trying to pretend to be real. On the contrary. A fake that is doing its best to convince you that this is a fake.”

  Florence stared at him.

  “Wait,” Max interjected, turning his gaze back to Franklin. “Are you suggesting that this ‘Made in China’ thing, is actually...”

  “The real Tutankhamen, yes,” Franklin smiled smugly.

  “And the one in the museum, that’s the fake?”

  “Two out of two.”

  “And of course, you can prove this?”

  “I have enough pieces of the puzzle to be persona
lly convinced.”

  “This is nuts,” Florence said, her cheeks flushed.

  “Who’s your client? The Egyptian Museum? Did they ask you to find the truth?” Max pressed.

  “No. Not the museum.”

  “So who, then?”

  “Let's just say that it is a man who has quite a lot of skin in that game.”

  Shouts suddenly broke out in the café, Max and Florence jumped, while Franklin stayed perfectly still. A goal had been scored, all eyes were on the television set. While the noise rose inside the café, around their table, all was quiet.

  Florence was trying to think. Everything was racing forward but with no time to untangle the true from the false and the probable from the improbable, she felt overwhelmed. And yet there were opportunities in this mess, she was sure of it. If only they could be pinned down.

  “Why did you contact me?” she asked Franklin simply.

  “For my client, the outcome is not financial. He just wants the world to know the truth. A documentary by the unimpeachable BBC would seem a good place to start.”

  “Woah,” Florence stopped him immediately. “Before a camera even gets unpacked, you will have to show a few more cards than that. We get offered more than five hundred stories a year. At most, we make eighteen. We need something more compelling than a wild theory, no matter how alluring the packaging.”

  Franklin glanced down again into his crimson drink, waiting for the cries of the football fans to die down before replying, “A little more than a year ago, the Egyptian Museum was looted by twenty or so demonstrators who managed to break in. The army intervened with tanks, but it was too late, the damage had already been done. Dozens of antiques had been stolen, mummies decapitated, display cases ransacked. Apparently, the director, Al-Shamy, was found in tears in the middle of the mess. The museum remained closed for several weeks. No journalist was allowed in to photograph the disaster. The police retrieved some artifacts, but many are still out there. When the museum was reopened to the public, tourists were still able to admire the museum's number one attraction, Tutankhamen's funeral mask, thanks to the security systems that saved it. Except that at the very moment when the doors were opened, and visitors were once more admiring the mask in its home in Cairo, it was offered for sale to my client in a Miami restaurant.”

  “Seriously?”

  “He was shown only pictures, not the object itself. They looked to have been taken in someone’s kitchen. The smuggler told him that the mask was still in Cairo, but once the deposit was paid, he had a network that could get it to Miami safely.”

  “How much?” Florence and Max asked simultaneously.

  “The price over starters was sixty-five million dollars, but by dessert, it had been negotiated to twelve million, with a deposit of two million.”

  “Wait a minute,” Florence said, cutting him off. “What stops me from buying a cheap print of say, the Mona Lisa, from a souvenir shop on the Champs-Elysées, photographing it in my kitchen, then telling you that I have the real McCoy and that the Louvre are a bunch of saps, and sending you my bank details with a “pretty please” for two million bucks?”

  Franklin smiled, and shook his head wistfully. “When it comes to antiquities, separating truth from fantasy is a game of Russian roulette. No one wants to play, but they all have to join in. Even the curators of some of the greatest museums in the world have, at one time or another, been deceived by fakes. Modern scientific techniques are extremely effective, but technology hasn’t yet caught up with the imagination of the counterfeiters. Sometimes an expert’s intuition is the only defense against calamity, but even intuition can be deceived, especially when emotion is at stake. The people that have been in this game the longest, people like my client, will tell you that there is only one thing you can depend on.”

  “What?” Florence leaned over the table.

  Franklin’s voice softened to barely a whisper. “Rumor.”

  Florence slumped back against the worn fabric of the banquette, the disbelief plain on her face. Franklin smiled.

  “Because what we cannot say out loud, we whisper. There is no honor among thieves, so whispers tend to get louder and louder.”

  “And what is the rumor whispering?” Max asked, not attempting to conceal his incredulity.

  Franklin did not appear to take offense, and answered without any hint of defensiveness. “The rumor, from Cairo to New York via Paris and Miami, tells me that the mask of Tutankhamen was stolen during the looting of the museum and that it has been put up for sale out of desperation.”

  “And what’s the role of the Egyptian Museum, in all this? Do they know? Did they commission a fake to display instead of the real thing?” Florence’s questioning took on a firmer tone. She would need more than this to convince anyone back in London to spend time or money on this story, but there was a chance.

  “I don’t know,” Franklin replied, “but the question I am asking instead is: what if the looting was not, as we have been led so easily to believe, the collateral damage of a spontaneous riot, but was instead a crucial part of a carefully planned and executed burglary?”

  While Max seemed lost in thought, Florence was sizing up Franklin with dark suspicion. Could she trust him?

  The buzzing vibration of an incoming call on her phone pulled her away from the dilemma. “Florence Mornay,” she said, and paused for moment as she listened to the caller. “Okay. Yes. Got it.” She ended the call and lowered her phone. “They just announced the names of the victims. Seth and Jessica Pryce.”

  “Seth Pryce, from Pryce Ore?” Franklin asked in disbelief.

  “Does that tell you anything?” Florence asked.

  “Only that the victim was a very wealthy man indeed.”

  Franklin was doing a good job with his ‘take-it-or-leave-it, I-don’t-care’ attitude. But something about the way his eyes flicked from his drink to Florence and back again told her that it was all an act. The man was desperate. He would not rest until he found someone in the mainstream media to believe him. And despite everything, Florence knew that if he were even just a little bit more right than he was wrong, it would be a massive story. But could she trust him?

  “One last thing,” Franklin added. “I hear you’re in town to shoot some stuff about Nefertiti.”

  “Yes, and?” Florence answered defiantly, hold her breath.

  The private investigator retrieved an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket and handed it to her. Inside was a photo taken with a long lens of a fine-featured, gray-haired man in his sixties who dressed like a dandy from another age. A local address and phone number had been scribbled on the back of the photo, but no name.

  “Who is it?” Max asked, taking the picture from Florence.

  “Yohannes DeBok,” Florence whispered, still gazing at the picture, “the antique dealer who identified Nefertiti in Berlin and now refuses to do any interviews.”

  “He’s also survived longer in the game of ‘antiquities Russian roulette’ than anyone else and is probably the best fake-buster of the century. But that talent requires a certain anonymity which is why he doesn’t do interviews, and you won’t exactly find him listed in the Yellow Pages.” Franklin paused to allow the significance to sink in. “This is his address in Cairo.”

  Florence had spent two fruitless months searching for a picture of DeBok and whilst she had discovered the addresses of his shops in New York, Paris, Mexico, and Hong Kong, she didn’t know he had one in Cairo.

  “Thanks,” she said. After a pause, she stared at Franklin, and declared: “All right. Your Tutankhamen story. I'm interested.”

  Franklin smiled as if he had never doubted the outcome.

  “We’ll need to draw up exclusivity and confidentiality agreements,” Florence said. “And a few other bits and pieces as well, but as long as I have your guarantee that you won’t talk to anyone else, I don’t see any of that being a problem. Do you?”

  Soon the deal was done. But as Max and Florence go
t up to leave, Franklin called out, “Mr. Hausmann, can I ask you a question?”

  Max nodded.

  “When experts talk to each other about the different rooms of Cheops, its corridors, its ducts, and so on, do they use numbers? Like for example, A-fifty-five?”

  “Not as far as I know,” Max shrugged. “They are always called by their names, even if they are misnomers. For example, there has never been a queen in the Queen's Chamber, and the 'air ducts' that get talked about have never ventilated anything. I have never seen the mention of numbers, even on architect's plans.”

  “Good to know,” Franklin said as he slipped behind the bar, and then, to their surprise, opened a door concealed in a wall of gold-framed pictures. Before closing the door behind him, he turned, his eyes suddenly eager and bright. “By the way, if you need me, I’ll be here. I live upstairs.”

  And with a wave, he shut the door and disappeared.

  In Franklin’s small apartment, the heat of the afternoon sun was held at bay by shutters covering the windows. As the detective flicked a switch, a fly whirled lazily from around the ceiling lamp, casting its light over a small table littered with the morning snapshots of Tutankhamen's mask. Franklin took the police contact sheet out of his pocket and grabbed the pictures on the table. He pinned them all to one of the walls, adding to the hundreds of others that covered the stained wallpaper behind. The pictures were all taken from the same angle and on each, a date stamp was visible in the lower right corner. There were also articles on the looting of the museum, a portrait of Al-Shamy and several employees, and hundreds of scattered notes.

  He sat down at the table and took out of his pocket the message found in Al-Shamy's pocket.

  BBC TV found 2 bodies in room A-55. Woman alive. Police requesting permission to drill. URGENT.

  A-55. What the young architect had said did not surprise him. He, too, had never heard of any numbering of parts of the pyramid. But one image kept coming back to Franklin's mind.