Book of Stolen Tales

by D J Mcintosh

  Noctes atque dies patet atri ianua ditis.

  “The doors of hell are open, night and day,” Alessio translated. “Attributed to the Sybil by our great poet, Virgil. Apollo granted her one thousand years of life in exchange for her virginity. The god fulfilled his part of the bargain but the Sybil denied him her body. He got his revenge by granting her a thousand years of life without preventing her from withering with age. Eventually she shriveled up to nothing more than a voice within the jar.”

  It was his own fascination with the underworld and necromancy, I thought, that must have attracted Mancini to the Sybil.

  Alessio, moving at a snail’s pace, stopped in front of the fresco. “It is suitable we meet again in the Sibyl’s domain. Like her, I have lived far too long and wish only to die. My association with this house has been a source of deep regret.”

  “How so?”

  “Because I brought the demon upon them. Quite unwittingly, it is true. I bear the responsibility nevertheless.”

  We ventured into a rotunda. Alessio surveyed it with his hooded eyes. “Nothing here has been touched,” he said.

  Cobwebs festooned a row of baroque ceramic chandeliers like dusty fishnets. The webs held a macabre catch, hundreds of desiccated insect bodies. Nests of cobwebs draped elaborate cornices and ran in fine strings from the ceiling to the lamps, as if purposely strung to anchor the lights. More statuary, strange ethereal figures, representations of legendary beings, stood on marble plinths in rows on either side of the hall—Pan with his pipes and goat legs, a young girl riding a unicorn, a minotaur, and others I couldn’t name. Dust in such heaps it had turned to soil gathered in the corners. I stood in amazement taking it all in. Who wouldn’t try to imagine the strange circumstances that befell this place?

  Marcantonio Raimondi’s Il Morbetto

  Alessio gave the entrance hall one last look before heaving a sigh. “Come this way,” he said. Off the rotunda we emerged into a large salon. Portraits hung along its back wall. They’d once been splendidly painted and framed but mildew had crept upon them. All the walls were blackened with damp and mold. In many places the plaster had completely disintegrated and fallen onto the floor tiles. The brilliant scarlets and cobalts of the Turkish carpets underfoot had long since faded. This room must have served as both a place of entertainment and a library, I mused, because the cabinets contained dozens of books. Some of the shelves had broken, spilling ruined books onto the floor. Moths had made a feast of them as well as the wall tapestries and brocaded upholstery on the chairs and settees of the room.

  Despite the revulsion and fascination I felt with the fallen grandeur of the house I couldn’t afford to waste more time. “Take me to Dina now,” I said. I might have added if she’s really here.

  Alessio leaned against a settee and with the tip of his cane pointed toward a door. I rushed over and pushed at the creaking timbers until they gave way beneath my weight. I gazed in fear at what the open door revealed.

  Bodies lay where they’d dropped, clustered in a foul final embrace on rotted straw. I’d seen the mummies of Capuchin friars in the Palermo catacombs, still dressed in their robes, dried out with ceramic pipes and cleaned with vinegar. Those dead monks didn’t compare to the horrors I saw here.

  Nobles still in their finery lay curled up like babies on soiled covers. The once rich silk-cut velvets, yellowed lace, and bejeweled satins of their garments had slowly rotted away.

  Something—plague?—had left their bodies dry and desiccated. And yet their glassy eyes were still gruesomely intact and their reddish, rubbery skin had shrunk on their bones. Some had abnormally enlarged ribs and twisted spines.

  One died much more recently than the rest. He was dressed in modern street clothes. Blood pooled beneath a gouge in his neck. The guard Mancini sent to watch over Dina.

  Dina lay on a couch near the guard’s body. I dashed over to her. Her mouth was slack and her breath came in slow, shallow waves. I put my arm under her and raised her to see if that would help her breathing. I tried to use my phone to call an ambulance without getting a signal.

  Alessio’s coat swished as he came up behind me, his cane ponging on the tiles. He reached my side and lowered himself to the floor when I swept Dina up in my arms. “I have destroyed the books and the stone weight for fear they still held the contagion. Before you leave me, you must take back your coins. I am sorry to have caused you so much suffering.” He reached deep into his pocket, held out the six remaining coins for me, and sank into a heap on the floor, his coat fanning out around him like a black pool.

  Alessio panted again with the effort to pull oxygen into his lungs. “The man you see before you now bears no resemblance to the person I once was. I loved the fullness of life whether the wind blew fair or foul. This shadow life holds no pleasure for me. I will not last the night.”

  I saw a glimmer of a smile in his expression and sensed a gentleness I’d never noticed before. “I welcome the end,” he said, “and ask only one thing of you.”

  “Of course. What can I do?”

  “Keep my stories alive, but let me die here in peace.”

  “If that’s what you want, you have my promise.” I took one last look at the wizened wreck of a man before me and around at the ruin of the once elegant home before turning my back on him with Dina in my arms.

  Although she was slight I struggled to carry her as I made my way through the warehouse and outside onto the street. Her eyelids fluttered when I reached the intersection but she didn’t respond when I called her name. A middle-aged woman walking alone with her dog saw me carrying Dina’s limp body; the look on my face was enough. She pulled out her cellphone and dialed emergency.

  An ambulance soon arrived with a blare of its siren. In my broken Italian I told the attendants I was a tourist who’d just landed in the city and had found the young woman lying in the gutter as I passed by. Dina started to come to then and spoke a few words in Italian. The fact that I was American and spoke only primitive Italian seemed to convince them. The attendants wrapped her warmly, put her on a stretcher in the ambulance, and left.

  A few streets away I found a church and went inside. The sight of that gruesome place and Alessio’s terrible suffering were hard to shake. So were his incoherent ramblings about demons and plagues. And now Alessio had taken the secret of the book to the grave. While I’d traced three volumes to Renard, Katharina, and Naso, none of them had witnessed my photocopies and those alone weren’t enough to convince the authorities of my innocence. I was still on the hook for the entire book and perhaps even a suspect in Katharina Hatzfeld’s death.

  Worse, Mancini could return to Naples at any time and check the hospitals. Dina was unsafe. I could think of only one person who might help. When I called, it was a great relief to hear his voice come on the line.

  “I’m on my way to Baghdad,” Shaheen said. “I want you to meet me in Kuwait.”

  “Whoa, hold up a bit. Why Kuwait?”

  “The last volume of Basile’s book is in Iraq.”

  “Are you sure? How do you know?”

  “I’m certain. It was one of the first volumes purchased—last February. An Assyrian scholar apparently donated it to something called the House of Wisdom—know where that is?”

  I’d grown up with an expert in Assyriology but had never heard of the place. “No,” I said.

  “Finding it’s our first task. As to the rest, I’ll fill you in when I see you.”

  “What do you mean ‘our’? You’re saying we’re working together now?”

  “You’re the one with the knowledge about the book and the history of how Renwick got tangled up with it. And we may need your expertise in archaeology too.”

  The prospect of returning to Iraq had about as much appeal as dropping into a snake pit. The thought of it turned my stomach. Added to that I felt like I’d been hit by a train. I was exhausted and feverish. No surprise really, given I nearly froze on the way to Renard’s. Probably just a case of the flu
. But the red marks on my neck had worsened overnight and I couldn’t rid my mind of the image of Alessio dying in that foul place.

  On the other hand, Shaheen’s proposition gave me bargaining power and a way out for Dina. I had to decide. “I’ll consider it on two conditions. Dina’s in the hospital. Guarantee she’s protected and once she’s recovered, find her a safe place out of Mancini’s reach.”

  “Done. What’s the second thing?”

  “Explain why Special Forces are involved in this. I was never told.”

  “That’s classified. Like I said before.”

  “Then I’m not coming.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Email me when your plane is due to arrive. When you get there, if you agree to sign your life away, I’ll fill you in. I’m not saying anything over the phone.”

  If I wasn’t satisfied when I met up with him in Kuwait, I could always leave. It was worth a flight there and back to safeguard Dina. And it would be quite different from my experience last August. This time I’d be in Iraq under the protection of the American military.

  “We’re good then,” I said and clicked off.

  Forty

  December 2, 2003

  Kuwait

  Shaheen led me to a beat-up Jeep Cherokee in the Kuwait airport parking lot. He’d discarded his street wear and gold chains and cut his hair shorter. Now he was in combat uniform.

  “You’ve lost your street cred,” I joked.

  He grinned. “All the better to fit in. Wearing my off-duty gear I’d stand out here like a male stripper at a church supper. I see you’ve transformed too.”

  I rubbed my hand over the couple of days’ stubble on my jaw. “You all right?” Shaheen asked. “Looks like you’ve been on a bender.”

  “Jet lag’s catching up with me. I’ve caught a cold or something and the past few weeks haven’t exactly been a party.”

  “You need any pills or anything just say the word. I’m a walking pharmacy. And if they don’t work I can get whatever you want.”

  Before I left Italy I wanted to see with my own eyes that Shaheen had lived up to his word. At the hospital I was satisfied to find a security guard posted outside Dina’s door. That also gave me the opportunity to see a doctor. He told me I’d come down with a simple cold and dismissed my worries about the marks on my neck, declaring them to be a harmless allergic reaction. He gave me some salve to apply to my skin and a mild antibiotic for the cold.

  “I’ll keep that in mind.” When we reached the car, I asked, “Will it be just the two of us going in then?”

  “Yep. No worries, you’re in good hands.” Shaheen opened the trunk and stuffed my pack in; he grabbed a Kevlar vest and helmet and tossed them to me. He opened the flap on a bag inside and took out two metal boxes. Gun cases. Shaheen withdrew a pistol, shutting the trunk with a click. “Take the back seat, if you don’t mind.”

  “I prefer shotgun, Lieutenant.”

  Shaheen grinned again. “So when an IED blows your ass off because you blocked my view—then what?”

  I could see his point and got in the back. Shaheen jumped into the driver’s seat, jammed the key in the ignition, and peeled out of the parking lot.

  We found a McDonald’s a few miles down a dusty stretch of highway and ordered Big Macs and Cokes. Shaheen picked a table near the window. “This place goes back to 1994,” he said. “On opening day the lineup was seven miles long. Got my first taste of American food here.”

  He’d brought a briefcase with him. He reached into it and took out a form and a pen and plunked them down in front of me. “Sign on the dotted line,” he said.

  The form, entitled “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement,” had my name already printed in bold at the top. Below the type, my social security number appeared, along with spaces for me and a witness to sign. I was surprised to see it was only two pages long. I’d figured I’d have to wade through a small book. One sentence stood out: releasing information without authorization was a criminal offense. Translation? If I breached it, I’d be an old man before I ever made it back to New York. If I survived an Iraqi prison cell, that is. I signed and handed it back to him.

  “Okay, Shaheen. First, tell me how you tracked the last volume here. All my leads dried up—or died.”

  “Mancini told me,” Shaheen said. “He was still in Ghent after you left and I interviewed him. He does a lot of banking business in Iraq and can’t afford to get on the wrong side of the U.S. so he agreed to cooperate. Mancini’s source was Ewan Fraser. He revealed the name of the first buyer, a wealthy Assyrian named George Bakir from Baghdad. The volume was sold to Bakir last February.”

  I could hardly believe it. “Then you’ve got him for killing Fraser! He admitted it?”

  “No. He sidestepped it and I didn’t press him. That issue’s outside the purview of my job.”

  Not mine, I thought grimly. I couldn’t stand the prospect of him getting away with the murders and his treatment of Dina. If Mancini had discovered that the fifth volume was in Iraq, maybe Renwick had too—it made a rough kind of sense. Renwick must have learned the volume was here, hence his visit to Iraq last August. “Why would Bakir be interested in an old Italian book?”

  “For a very good reason. He’s a world authority on another set of tales, The Arabian Nights. Bakir was interested in tracing the tales and believed some of Basile’s stories came from The Nights and originated in Baghdad.”

  “And you know where we can find him? But if Mancini knew who it was, why not get the book back himself?”

  “He tried and failed,” Shaheen said. “Since the war started, Assyrians have come under attack. Bakir had to flee with his family and leave behind the collection he’d spent a lifetime assembling. He donated his collection to the national library of Iraq before he left.”

  My heart sank. I knew what happened to the library. The volume had probably been destroyed some time ago, if not looted and cast to the four winds. “Did Mancini think Bakir’s collection survived?”

  “That I don’t know. Apparently it had been assigned for safekeeping—to the place I told you about called the House of Wisdom.”

  “Okay, pal. I’ve been patient. Now tell me why the army’s involved.”

  Shaheen shifted closer in his seat and chugged down some Coke. “We sent two microbiologists named Loretti and Hill to Iraq to search for bioweapon sites. They turned up nothing. Back home they came down with plague-like symptoms. We know they picked up something in Iraq but not where or what caused it. Did they stumble upon a production site or was their illness just a fluke? All we’re certain of is they had a number of meetings with Charles Renwick in their off-hours and there are several coincidental links with Renwick’s theories about plague and folk tales. The job now is to figure out whether Renwick actually found the location he believed Basile hid in the book and if he told Loretti and Hill.”

  “Can’t the scientists tell you? Where are they now?”

  “Dead. And Loretti’s wife’s close to dying now too.”

  “It’s something you can catch then?”

  “Looks that way. You can see we’ve got to get on top of this.”

  My skin crawled and I touched my neck gingerly. I’d had direct contact with Alessio and with the book. “How long did it take for their symptoms to show up?”

  “That we don’t know for sure. Loretti and Hill arrived in Iraq last May, shortly after we took control of the country. If the contagion is just some kind of weird virus, they could have picked it up anytime after that. No symptoms showed until a couple of weeks after they’d gone back home.”

  I first met Alessio two weeks ago. I tried to reassure myself with the knowledge that the doctor at the Naples hospital gave me a thorough going-over, so surely he would have caught anything serious. “Why include me in all this? That’s something you could find out more easily yourself. I know next to nothing about locations in Baghdad, and if you need archaeological advice, any number of experts are better than me.”


  “You’re more familiar with Renwick’s line of thought and the particular role that book has played than anyone else at this point. If we need to fill any gaps in your knowledge, then, as you say, that’s easy enough to do. There must be a lot of unemployed museum staff in Baghdad these days.”

  I looked out the window at the golden arches with the MacDonald’s name in Arabic script underneath. You could travel thousands of miles from home and some things never changed. I decided to trust Shaheen and dropped a present in his lap. “I know what the round stone artifact is. The one stolen from Renwick’s shop.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s a spindle weight, believe it or not, called a whorl. It helps moderate the movement of a spindle as fibers are pulled and made into thread. Mesopotamians used them when they wove linen textiles made from flax.”

  “So how does this fit in, do you think?”

  “If the Babylonians wanted to preserve lethal grains of a virulent strain and keep them perfectly dry, a hollow spindle whorl sealed with pitch on its underside would have done the job nicely.”

  Most border crossings have an ugly air about them. Utilitarian buildings, glaring warnings, lines of idling vehicles, drivers cranky from long waits. The Kuwait–Iraq border was even less appealing than most. The buildings were dirty and makeshift and looked as if they’d been damaged in Desert Storm and never repaired. Large signs in Arabic clustered on both sides of the main highway. Other than the buildings, they were the highest objects in sight. Vast stretches of wasted brown soil extended flat out to the horizon. Gas fumes and exhaust from the ranks of trucks and U.S. army vehicles waiting to cross hung in the air. Many were fuel tankers. Ironic that in a country with one of the world’s largest supplies of petroleum, fuel had to be trucked in.

  The border crossing itself was a breeze thanks to Shaheen’s bona fides. We hooked onto the back end of a convoy headed to Baghdad. Much safer traveling in their company.