The Gold of Thrace

by Aileen G. Baron

  “That’s Kybele?” Tamar asked.

  Dela Barcolo laughed. “You were expecting the terrible Anatolian Kybele, of the castrated priests?” He moved to the desk, placed the figurine carefully on top and stood back. “This is the Roman version of the Mother Goddess, the Magna Mater, the Great Mother of the Gods. Like a good Italian mother, she is a nurturer. She probably cooks for her children.”

  He laughed again. “Originally, the Roman Kybele was a meteor that had fallen from the sky somewhere in Asia Minor, near Pergamum. They anointed it with oil and draped it with garlands and wreaths to consecrate the rock.”

  He stroked the figurine gently. “Beautiful, isn’t she? When the Romans were fighting Hannibal, the Sybil told them they could only conquer Carthage if the Kybele were brought to Rome from Pergamum. The goddess was formally welcomed in Rome and placed in the pantheon to become, eventually, the principal goddess, known to Romans as the Great Mother of the Gods. During her festival, her worshippers anointed and dressed her and paraded her through the streets in a chariot drawn by two lions. In time, her cult was rivaled only by the cults of Isis and Mithras.”

  He reached into the top drawer of the desk, pulled out a yellowed envelope and extracted a letter, worn thin at the folds. “The piece has impeccable provenance.” He pointed to the crest on the letterhead. “It was part of the collection of the Marquis de Cuvier.”

  Everything from Dela Barcolo has provenance, if not, he’ll get one for you, Enzio had told her.

  “Very nice,” Tamar said.

  “Some people see a relationship between Kybele and the Black Stone of the Kaaba in Mecca. The Black Stone, too, is a meteorite.” He shrugged. “Scientists tell us that life may have been carried to Earth on the crust of a meteor. Who knows? Perhaps a meteorite is the mother of us all.”

  She waited a moment and then said, “I would be interested in something a little more…”

  “Sensational,” he said.

  He refolded the letter from the Marquis de Cuvier and put it away in the desk, carried the Kybele with both hands back to its shelf and started back down the stairs.

  He led her to two glass cases attached to the wall in the vestibule and filled with a range of eclectic artifacts: Roman glass vials, Mesopotamian clay statuettes of bearded worshippers with clasped hands and sheepskin skirts, Astarte figures with coffee bean eyes and elaborate headdresses, bronze figurines from Sardinia that looked like little robots.

  He reached into one case and took out a larger clay statuette of a clean-shaven man in a robe, wearing what looked like a cap with a wide headband.

  “Gudea, the ancient king of Lagash in Sumeria,” he said, running his finger along the folds of the robe. “Is it not beautiful?”

  “I was thinking of something larger, more impressive for the public.”

  “You’re buying for a museum?”

  She nodded. “A university museum.” How could she put it, so that he wouldn’t suspect that she was seeking a stolen mosaic? “Something Roman perhaps, something grand that we could put at the entrance to catch the eye of visitors.”

  “Which university?”

  “California State.”

  “Ah, the University of California. I know the institution.”

  She began to say no, they are not the same, and then thought better of it. Too complicated to explain. Besides, she wasn’t going to buy anything anyway. “Yes,” she said and followed him into a sitting room.

  Tamar navigated around a coffee table and between two settees toward a stele fragment set on an easel next to the fireplace.

  “From the palace at Nineveh,” Dela Barcolo said. “It belongs in a museum. You see here?” His finger traced a multitude of mounds incised on the stele. “The mountains. And here,” indicating a cluster of wavy lines, “a river. You see the soldiers, who came down from the mountains and crossed the river?” He pointed to a line of armored men wearing pointed helmets and carrying spears.

  The stone was dark and cracked. “It looks burnt,” Tamar said.

  “Of course, of course, the palace was destroyed by the invading Medes…”

  The sharp jangle of the doorbell interrupted him. Dela Barcolo looked toward the back of the house, waited a moment until the bell rang again.

  He sighed. “The housekeeper is still out. Please to excuse me.”

  He disappeared into the vestibule. Tamar examined the stele again. The same style as the ones at the British Museum depicting Sennacherib’s conquest of Lachish, except that those at the British Museum don’t have as much evidence of burning. This may be part of the same series, she thought, and wondered how Dela Barcolo got it, whom he had bribed, how many crimes had been committed on the way to acquiring it.

  She shrugged. One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian, she thought, and moved to the window to look out. Enzio stood at the entrance. Behind him, a taxi pulled up. A woman with bleached and pampered hair and shoe-button eyes emerged, carrying packages with both arms, and darted up the walk past Enzio. Tamar heard a tumble of rapid Italian coming from the foyer hall and saw the woman storm toward the back of the house, shaking her head.

  Enzio stood in the doorway of the living room, leaning against the jamb, smiling at her, almost laughing.

  “I took your advice,” he said to Tamar. “I didn’t wait.”

  “You know each other?” Dela Barcolo asked, looking from one to the other.

  “We met at the hotel,” Tamar said.

  Dela Barcolo moved closer to Tamar and blocked her view of Enzio. “You are stopping at the Euler?”

  She nodded.

  “You will stay for lunch?”

  “Of course she will,” Enzio said. “Your lunches are famous.”

  “And you,” he said to Enzio. “You’ll stay for lunch.”

  “Not today.” Enzio looked at his watch. “I can only stay a few minutes. I have an appointment with Aristides at one.”

  Dela Barcolo bristled. “You brought something to sell? You offer it to Aristides before you show it to me?”

  “I’m not showing it to Aristides. I’ll bring it here tomorrow.”

  “Then stay for lunch.”

  “I can’t.”

  Dela Barcolo shrugged and threw up his hands. “Fabiana!” he called, and made his way to the back of the house.

  Enzio stood in front of the stele from Nineveh, and examined it while Tamar wandered the room. She stopped before one of two small curio tables with glass tops and velvet lined trays that held golden earrings shaped like ram’s heads, intaglios set into rings, brooches with the dull yellow luster of ancient gold.

  Enzio continued to peer at the stele, running his fingers along the surface. “I wonder where he got this.”

  “I’ve been wondering too,” Tamar said.

  “He just acquired it. It’s been around for a while. The site was dug in the thirties.”

  “You know a lot about archaeology, don’t you?” Tamar said.

  “Of course he does,” Dela Barcolo said in his smooth voice as he burst into the room.

  “My housekeeper,” he said. “She was at the police, giving a deposition. Two weeks ago, we were robbed. We had a flood in the basement when the washing machine overflowed. Fabiana left a window open to dry it out and the thief crawled in through the basement window. Somehow, he got into the safe and stole a collection of rare ancient coins. The police recovered the coins and are holding him.” He gave Tamar a slight bow. “You will excuse me while I call to ask about the trial date.”

  He went into a small alcove off the living room, opened a polished mahogany box on the table, took out a telephone and punched numbers into the keypad inside the box. He spoke into the telephone, listened for a moment, then slammed down the receiver.

  “They released him!”

  “After Fabiana’s deposition?” Enzio said.

  Dela Barcolo held out his hands in a gesture of frustration. “They say they refuse to get
involved in my sordid household intrigues.”

  “The thief is a friend of Fabiana’s?” Enzio asked.

  “She knows him. Mario started as one of my runners. He became a minor dealer, tries to sell me small Etruscan vases, Bucchero ware sometimes. Nothing important.” He smiled and shook his head and threw up his hands in a dramatic gesture. “And now, he’s a special friend of Fabiana’s.”

  “He stole only the coins?”

  “Thanks to God, he didn’t take more.”

  Enzio raised his eyebrows and gave Dela Barcolo a knowing nod. “And he knew when the window to the basement was open, and somehow found the hiding place of the safe and figured out the combination.”

  “What are you saying, Enzio? All this can be explained.”

  “By Fabiana? It’s up to you, Gilberto. It’s your house she lives in.”

  Fabiana came into the room, set a tray of drinks down on the table in front of the fireplace, and flounced out.

  “You think she heard you?” Gilberto asked.

  “No,” Fabiana called from the dining room. “I was in the chicken.”

  “Kitchen,” Enzio said.

  Gilberto picked up one of the glasses. “Leave her alone. Have a Bloody Mary. Good for your soul.”

  He strolled over to one of the small glass-topped curio tables on the other side of the room.

  “You like jewelry?” he asked Tamar. “Something for yourself, for you to wear, perhaps? Something precious to grace your beauty, something worn long ago by another beautiful woman.”

  Tamar bent over the table. “Nothing for me, thank you. Just for the museum. But if I did…” She pointed, not to the jewelry, but to one of two small, carved stone figures shaped like a violin, an abstract representation of a woman common in Neolithic sites in the eastern Mediterranean.

  “Of course,” Dela Barcolo said. “A goddess. How fitting for you to choose her. You are a goddess yourself.”

  Tamar took a step away from the table.

  “Friends call me Gilberto. And your friends call you?”

  “Tamar.”

  “Tamar it is, then. May I call you Tamar?”

  Enzio beamed at them and said, “I have to go now and leave you two to your own devices,” as Fabiana called from the dining room that lunch was ready. “I can find my way out.”

  The large table was set for two with lace placemats, polished silver, Baccarat glasses, and a small pink rose next to each plate. Cecile Brunner, Tamar thought, remembering the tumble of climbing roses in her grandmother’s garden, where each rosebush had a name and a lineage.

  The lunch began with ox-tail soup, spiced with a little Scotch, then came Coquille St. Jacques.

  At the head of the table, Gilberto Dela Barcolo presided like a king dispensing favors. He exuded charm like syrup, from the tips of his graceful fingers, from his dark Italian eyes, from his charismatic smile.

  Between courses, she thought she detected a movement of his right leg searching for a floor-button. Each time he moved his leg, Fabiana would appear a few seconds later to clear the empty plates and bring on the next dish, just as Tamar’s grandmother summoned the maid from the kitchen with her little glass bell.

  For a moment, Tamar was a child again, caught in her grandmother’s stern admonitions. Keep your elbows off the table. Close your mouth when you chew. No singing at meals. Always a spectator, always kept at arm’s length, stinging with her grandmother’s resentment through the haunting loneliness, never to see her brothers again.

  She found solace only in the past, traveled the world in search of herself, of the memory of her lost brothers, of her lost mother and father. Always a wanderer, always a stranger. Until with Alex she was safe at last, asleep in the hollow of his arm, comfortable enclosed in his affection.

  “My family is from Venezia,” Gilberto was saying as Tamar looked down at the table.

  The plate was Wedgwood, the dish was veal piccata, and it tasted like ashes.

  He patted the bottle of wine and turned the label toward Tamar. “Our coat of arms.” He pointed to the small red shield near the bottom of the label depicting a diminutive sailboat floating on a lake with a castle in the background. “We have a small estate in the hills in the Piedmont where I spent the summers of my childhood.” He tapped the image of the boat on the label with his fork, his eyes dark and soulful, his smile slick and elegant. “Our name means ‘little boat’ in Italian. Viscount Dela Barcolo.” He shrugged. “Of course, we no longer use the title.”

  They had just finished dessert when Gilberto stretched his leg again. It seemed to be his left leg this time, searching for another button on the floor. Two wall panels facing Tamar opened. Tamar’s mouth dropped in astonishment as she watched the silent panels move as if by a magician’s wand. Behind them, on mirrored shelves lit from above and behind, was a marvel of artfully arranged Classical Greek pottery—Geometric, Corinthian, black on red, red on black—each resting on a Plexiglas display stand.

  “Lovely, isn’t it?” Gilberto said, gesturing toward the open cabinets.

  He rose from his chair and stood in front of one of the cupboards. “You will like this.” He waved her over. “Come. I’ll show you magnificent things.”

  He took a kylix, a graceful, shallow cup on a pedestal base with horizontal handles, from its stand and held it carefully in his hands. The cup was smooth black, with palmettes and draped red figures painted around the outside of the rim.

  “You want something like this, perhaps.” He turned it over. “You see here.” He pointed to the Greek lettering on the base. “It is signed. Epiktetus.” He turned it back to show her the inside of the kylix. “And here, in the tondo.” He pointed to the circle in the center. “A flute player and dancer.”

  “Beautiful,” she said.

  He looked at her and leaned closer. “Not half so beautiful as you.”

  “Is that how you always begin?”

  He shook his head and moved closer still. “You hold me with your eyes. Your eyes are magic.”

  She backed away. “I’ve heard many a line, but none this smooth.” He was so charming, so good looking that she almost forgave him. “You’re a great salesman.”

  “Indeed I am.” He bent over, his mouth close to her ear, and said in a throaty whisper, “And I’m going to sell you my soul.”

  I’d rather you offered me a mosaic, she thought, but later, in the cab on the way back to the Euler, all she thought about was what Gilberto said and the way he had said it, not wanting to feel the slight pleasure it gave her.

  ***

  That evening when Tamar stopped in the bar for a bottle of water before she went upstairs, she saw Enzio seated at a table in the far corner. He waved her over and she sat down.

  “What do you think of Gilberto?”

  “He has quite a line.”

  “Be careful,” Enzio told her. “You’ll get caught in it and he’ll reel you in.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Sofia, Bulgaria, August 11, 1990

  Chatham enclosed a note advising that there was more to follow with the packet of drawings that he mailed to the Illustrated London News.

  Irena had gone to the post office with him. “You will go to London now?” she asked.

  She stopped to buy a newspaper at the kiosk outside the post office as they made their way back to the small apartment on Ulitza Rakovsky. The street was misty, the sky overcast.

  “I have more drawings to do,” he told her.

  “You could take the gold with you.”

  “The gold isn’t what bothers me,” Chatham said.

  “What then?”

  “I want to spend more time on the drawings,” he said. And linger close to Irena with restless dreams of reaching for her in the night on the lumpy bed in Ulitza Rakovsky. “Would you miss me?”

  “Certainly.”

  He thought of the triumph of marching into the British Museum bearing his find of the Thrac
ian hoard.

  “I’ll come back.”

  “With the gold,” she said. “When the exhibition is finished.”

  Chatham felt a chill of apprehension. He didn’t know why. Maybe it was the way she said it, moving away from him as she spoke.

  “I’ll call for a plane reservation,” she said.

  “Today?”

  “When we get back to the apartment.”

  It began to rain and they hurried through the wet streets, past bortsi standing on street corners who followed them with their eyes. Chatham reached for Irena to put his arm protectively across her shoulder, but she was steps ahead of him, running through the rain with the newspaper over her head.

  ***

  “It will be safe?” Irena asked after Chatham made a plane reservation for five o’clock that afternoon.

  “Not to worry. We will insure the gold,” Dimitar said.

  “The museum will insure it,” Chatham told him.

  “They will? They will pay the insurance, the whole cost?”

  “Of course,” Chatham said.

  Dimitar nodded his head in satisfaction. “That is good.” He clapped Chatham on the shoulder with a smile. “Go now. We pack the gold while you make the arrangements.”

  Chatham walked back through the rain with a borrowed raincoat and umbrella to the travel agent across from the stationer’s, and passed more bortsi who skulked in doorways to keep out of the rain. He paid for the plane ticket with a credit card that Emma didn’t know about, and crossed the street to the stationers. He sent a Telex to the Keeper of Near East Antiquities at the British Museum, telling him that he was bringing a collection of Thracian gold on loan for a possible exhibit.

  He knew the museum couldn’t arrange for insurance until the collection was authenticated and evaluated. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t let go of it until he reached Heathrow, wouldn’t let it out of his sight until it was safely deposited in the museum. Now that he could take it with him, he would have time to do the research, have the pieces photographed and tested.

  He showed Irena the ticket when he returned. She held it in her hand for a moment, then gave it back.

  “You must hurry.” She flicked an imaginary piece of lint from his lapel. “You will be safe?”