The Gold of Thrace

by Aileen G. Baron

  “Not to worry. The gold is insured,” Dimitar told her. He turned to Chatham. “It is, yes?”

  “As of twenty minutes ago,” Chatham said without a blink. “By Lloyd’s, the best.”

  Irena nodded. “Lloyd’s. I’ve heard of them.” She kissed his cheek and reached for the telephone. “You must go now. The sooner you go, the sooner you come back. The plane leaves soon. I’ll call for a cab.” She dialed a number and said something in Bulgarian. She seemed angered with whatever she heard, then gave a disgusted shrug and slammed down the receiver. “The phone doesn’t work.” She held her finger against her lips a moment, as if she were thinking.

  “There’s always a line of taxis near the Cathedral of Alexander Nevsky,” Dimitar said. “The rain has stopped now. You could cut through the park to the Cathedral.”

  He missed the look passed between Irena and Dimitar. “Why is he Saint Alexander Nevsky?” he asked.

  Dimitar shrugged. “He was a great hero. He defeated the Swedes and the Germans and saved the Slavs from the west.”

  “I always thought that saints were either anorexic women or schizophrenics who thought they talked to God,” Chatham said.

  “Oh, Andrew, you are incorrigible,” Irena said. Then she laughed and kissed Chatham on the other cheek and he felt strong and invulnerable.

  “You will be safe going through the park?”

  “I can handle it,” he said.

  “Dimitar can go with you,” she said.

  “I have to wait here for a call from a client,” Dimitar said. “Then we can go.”

  “He’ll miss the plane,” Irena said.

  “I’ll miss the plane,” Chatham said

  Irena straightened his tie and smoothed his lapel. “I will miss you,” she said, and moved him toward the door. “Go quickly. The sooner you go, the sooner you come back.”

  He picked up the suitcase and felt the heft of it tug at his arm. He moved toward Irena and bent to kiss her goodbye, but she had already turned away. His cheek brushed the back of her shoulder and he kissed the empty air.

  “You must hurry,” she said from the door of the kitchen. “The plane leaves in less than two hours.”

  Chatham hastened along the path through the park, the weight of the suitcase dragging at his shoulder. He still felt the warmth of Irena’s earlier kiss on his cheek.

  Wet leaves and buds lay on the damp earth. The park seemed to come alive, basking in the cool sparkle after a rain. Pigeons pecked at the ground at the edge of puddles left by the rain; twigs snapped in the bushes along the path where dogs prowled and foraged for food.

  In front of Chatham, a bulky man, muscles bulging in his tight T-shirt, strolled aimlessly in the dappled light toward the cathedral.

  A bortsi, Chatham thought, and slowed his pace.

  His shoulder began to ache from the weight of the suitcase.

  As Chatham slowed, the man in front of him seemed to hesitate.

  Footsteps sounded from behind. Chatham turned to see another bortsi bearing down on him. Chatham hurried along the path. The suitcase banged against his leg and the sounds all around him seemed to be magnified—footsteps behind him quickening, moving in on him, bushes beside the path crackling with snarling dogs fighting for scraps.

  The bortsi behind him seemed to speed up. I must be imagining it, Chatham thought. Irena wouldn’t do that.

  The man in front stopped, hands on hips, arms bent at the elbow, and blocked the path. He turned to face Chatham, powerful legs spread, smiling, arms open as if in welcome, while from behind the footsteps accelerated, closer, closer.

  Dimitar, that’s who it must be, Dimitar did this.

  Just for a moment, heart thumping, Chatham hesitated, then took his chances with the feral dogs. He ducked into the bushes, swinging the suitcase in a wild arc at the man blocking the path as he went. The man went down with a soft whimper of surprise.

  The dogs bayed at Chatham. One gripped his ankle. He felt a sharp pain and tried kicking at the dog. He swung the suitcase again, this time at the dog. It fell back with a yelp. Chatham careened out of the bushes, his heel landing on the bortsi in front of him, still splayed on the path. Chatham kicked him, heard the man groan. He swung the suitcase again, this time behind him. He felt the impact, heard a contact thump, then a grunt and a moan.

  The man in front struggled to rise. Holding the suitcase out at arm’s length, Chatham flayed in wide arcs, banged against the temple of the man in front, swung at the bortsi behind. Without looking to see what happened, Chatham sprinted out of the park, gripping the suitcase to his chest, his breath coming in agonized puffs, listening for the sound of pursuit.

  He reached the bank of taxis and started toward the first in the rank. No, Dimitar may have set that one up in case he got away from the bortsi in the park. Not the second one, too obvious.

  The driver of the third taxi in the rank opened the door and Chatham jumped in and fell onto the back seat.

  “Lock the doors,” he ordered.

  The driver reached for the button on the panel next to him and all four doors locked with a satisfying snap. Outside, the drivers of the first two taxis shouted and shook their fists at Chatham.

  “The airport. Hurry,” Chatham said.

  The driver turned to look over his shoulder as he backed up and Chatham recognized his steely eyes and his scar.

  “I know you,” Chatham said. “You’re the driver who brought me to Ulitza Rakovsky.”

  The driver maneuvered the taxi out of the parking space and started away from the square. Chatham contemplated the back of the driver’s head.

  “You owe me ten leva,” the driver said.

  Black and gray hairs stood out on rolls and folds of fat below the cap on the back of the driver’s head.

  “I’ll pay you. Just get me to the airport on time.”

  The taxi snaked in and out of traffic, along broad boulevards lined with square apartment blocks.

  Chatham’s leg began to throb. He looked down and noticed that his cuff was torn and his ankle was bleeding.

  “You cheated me,” the driver said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll pay you,” Chatham told him.

  The traffic was lighter now, and the taxi accelerated. The blocks of apartments were thinning out.

  “This isn’t the way to the airport,” Chatham said.

  His ankle was getting more painful.

  “Take me to the airport.” He took ten leva from his pocket and tossed it on the seat in front of him. “Here’s your ten leva.”

  The cab speeded up.

  Chatham reached into his pocket again and threw ten more leva on the seat. “Here’s twenty.”

  They passed villas with broken balconies and sagging roofs, speeding faster and faster as they went.

  “Stop the car,” Chatham yelled at the back of the driver’s implacable head.

  He tried to open the door and remembered that the panel next to the driver controlled the locks. Damn Dimitar.

  “I’ll pay you double to get me to the airport.”

  In his peripheral vision, he saw scattered villas fly by the window and realized they were nearing the outskirts of town.

  “You’re going the wrong way.”

  Soon they would approach open country.

  “This isn’t the way to the airport,” he shouted to the back of the driver and the car continued to race relentlessly in the wrong direction.

  Chapter Twelve

  Basel, Switzerland, August 12, 1990

  Tamar opened her eyes, stretched luxuriously in the featherbed, put on the terry robe that the hotel provided, and rang for the floor concierge to bring breakfast—filtered coffee, butter, a basket of croissants, and small pots of jam. She opened the door a crack and retrieved the shoes she had left out the night before. They always reappeared in the morning, shining and tidy, lined up next to the door. She looked for the newspaper and then remembered it was S
unday. She felt slightly annoyed at the inconvenience, then laughed at her reaction.

  I’m an archaeologist, she thought, why am I complaining? I dig in the dirt with a cramp in my knee and dust in my hair. I couldn’t live without it, the adventure of it, the thrill of handling the artistry of long dead hands, the chance to whisper to the past.

  When she first came to dig at Tepe Hazarfen, the dig house in Kilis was so bad that when she told the driver, “The mansion of Neshet Effendi,” he stopped at the police station to pick up a gendarme, sure that the address was a mistake. When they found it, the house had broken windows, peeling paint, and Orman’s head popping over the cracked garden wall like a jack-in-the-box on a spring.

  He called out, “Tamar, is that you?” as the car drove up.

  The garden was filled with trash, old tires and broken bottles, the detritus of abandonment since the turn of the century when it was last occupied. Nights, Orman and Chatham crashed through the house with a broom chasing bats, turning lights on and off because Chatham had said bats go toward the light.

  “What do you mean, go toward the light?” Orman would say. “They’re bats, you damned fool, they’re blind. Blind as bats.”

  But here at the Euler, with her featherbed and her morning luxuries, she delighted in opulence. This is the life, she decided, this is how I will live from now on, surrounded by servants and comfort. She stretched again, amused at the prospect.

  She foraged in the small refrigerator in the corner of the room for the last peach she had bought at Marktplatz then opened the door at the knock of the floor concierge. He carried the tray to the small table near the windows and she gave him a five-franc note. He closed the door gently as he left.

  She yawned again luxuriously before she turned on the television and began surfing through the channels, looking for a program in English. She passed a station, mostly static and snow, with an image that wavered in and out, and thought she recognized a picture of Chatham.

  Why Chatham?

  She turned up the volume. Some incomprehensible words filtered through the interference in a Slavic language. Czech, maybe? Some Cyrillic letters appeared below the picture, and then it faded out. She shrugged, went on surfing hoping to find a broadcast from the BBC. She gave up, settled on a foggy French station with a wavering performance of Les Sylphides, and sat down to breakfast.

  She had almost finished when the door buzzer sounded. She looked through the peephole to see Gilberto’s head, nodding in rhythm to some inner music.

  Tamar opened the door and he sailed in, carrying three large shopping bags filled to the brim and bright with flowers cut off at the stem: asters the color of jewels, dainty rosebuds, yellow daisies, white daisies, zinnias, perfumed gardenias.

  He made straight for the bathroom. “The world of a beauty must be adorned with marvels to match her loveliness,” he said, and dumped the flowers into the tub.

  He came back to the bedroom and stood contemplating her.

  “You are so beautiful,” he said. “A profile like a cameo, eyes like a cat. You are as beautiful as a Botticelli.”

  He fell onto one knee and held up his arms as if in worship. “You are as beautiful as my mother, and she was very beautiful indeed.”

  Then he rose and turned to go. “You will, of course, come to lunch,” he said over his shoulder before he left. He closed the door behind him, leaving a trail of petals and bits of flowers behind on the carpet: a rosebud, two purple petunias, and Tamar, standing dumbfounded in the middle of the room.

  She gathered the scattered remnants of petals from the carpet, laid them on the table next to the breakfast tray and went into the bathroom. She took off the robe and wondered how to deal with the stemless flowers that smiled up at her and filled the bottom two inches of the tub. She turned on the water and stepped into the shower. The flowers crunched beneath her feet. She stood on the floral carpet beneath the stream from the showerhead, savoring the bite of hot water, steam and perfume from the flowers filling her nostrils. She thought about the mad, handsome Italian who had invaded the bathroom, then left, and she began to sing.

  It wasn’t until later, after she was fully dressed and had combed her hair, that she wondered about the ghostly image of Chatham on a television station that came from a place she didn’t know and told a story in a language she didn’t understand.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Sofia, Bulgaria, August 12, 1990

  Irena read about the body found in the outskirts of Sofia in the Vecherni Novini, the Evening News.

  The dead man had no identification, no packages, empty pockets, only a label in his suit from a tailor in Savile Row in London that raised the possibility that the corpse was British.

  She had to wait until the next day, Monday, before she could call the British Museum and ask for Chatham. She was told he hadn’t arrived yet. She asked when he was expected.

  “Last week,” the woman from the Department of Near Eastern Antiquities told her. “He seems to be delayed. We’ve had no word from him.”

  “It’s him,” she told Dimitar. “The corpse in the newspaper. I’m sure it’s Chatham. How can we claim the insurance without him?”

  It was bad enough that the locker at the airport was empty, with no sign of the suitcase or the gold, and now this.

  “We wait,” Dimitar said, and picked up the paper to read the article himself.

  Irena was fuming. They had worked so hard, and this time, nothing went right.

  Who expected that stupid Chatham to send two bortsi to the hospital? And that Italian, or Swiss, or whatever he was. The arrangement they made in Turkey was for him to rescue Chatham in the park after the robbery and pour him on the plane so he could contact Lloyd’s.

  Not this. You can’t trust anyone anymore.

  She rubbed her arm with irritation. “We should go to the police and identify him.”

  “We can’t do that. Our identity cards are suspect. God knows what they will think. That we are spies, maybe? We could get shot.”

  “I’ll go. I’ll smile and they won’t look too closely at my identity card.” She paused a moment to think. “Wait. I have an old British passport somewhere. I’ll go as a concerned friend.”

  “The passport’s too old. It’s expired.”

  “Fix it. I’ll go this afternoon.”

  After lunch, armed with a well-worn but current British passport, she went to the police and told them that she was concerned about her traveling companion, a man who had gone missing. She waited in the reception hall of the station for two hours seated on a hard wooden bench, and then they brought her to the morgue.

  “It’s not a pleasant sight,” the man said. “The wild dogs…”

  He brought her to a well-scrubbed room of tile and stainless steel that smelled of alcohol and rot. The man went through a door and reappeared behind a glass at the far end of the room and beckoned to her.

  The room beyond the glass had a steel gurney in the center holding a body covered with a sheet. The man pulled back the sheet.

  The face was recognizable but the dogs had done their work on his arms and upper body.

  “It’s Chatham,” she said, and fainted. When she came to, she asked the man if he found the suitcase that Chatham carried.

  “There was nothing found with him,” the policeman told her. “Not so much as a handkerchief.”

  “We have to give a report,” he said. He took the information from her passport and turned to her to ask a question.

  “I think I’m going to faint again,” she said, holding her head. “I must lie down.”

  “You had a great shock,” he said.

  “Can we finish the report tomorrow?”

  He offered to drive her to the British Embassy. She asked him to drive her to her hotel instead, repeated that she needed to lie down. She promised to return the next day so that he could complete the report.

  He said he understood and drove her to the
new hotel, the Sheraton at Sveta Nedelya Square where she told him she was staying. She thanked him at the curb and assured him she would be all right by the next day. She went through the lobby, took the elevator to the eighth floor, then the stairs back down to the lobby. She left the hotel by the Largo Street entrance and crossed the street to the Archaeological Museum. She stayed there for an hour, looking at the exhibits, and then took a taxi back to the apartment on Rakovsky.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Basel, Switzerland, August 12, 1990

  The table in the dining room was set for three, but only Tamar and Gilberto were there, waiting for lunch.

  When her taxi arrived at Gilberto’s that morning, she saw a heavy-set man who seemed to be sneering, hunched at the side entrance to the basement. When he saw Tamar, he ducked back inside. Probably just a friend of Fabiana’s, Gilberto said when she told him about it.

  “I can make you my agent in the United States, set you up in business,” Gilberto was saying. His voice was as seductive as cream. If she weren’t careful, she would slide into agreement with him.

  “I’m an archaeologist, not an antiquities dealer,” Tamar said.

  “You can’t make a decent living at it. Not enough to live well.” He leaned forward and touched her arm. “I can make you rich.”

  She clutched the edge of the table. “I couldn’t. It’s unethical.”

  “To be rich?”

  “To deal in antiquities.”

  “Once I thought the same, when I studied archaeology—in Florence, in Rome at the Pontifical Institute, at the Sorbonne.” He waved his glass with the Bloody Mary in her direction as if he were offering a toast and almost spilled some on the carpet. “Elegance, my dear, elegance is what you need, and enough money to live elegantly.”

  His hands moved eloquently, enticingly as he spoke. “If the Elgin Marbles were not in the British Museum, where would they be today? Blown up in a Turkish ammunition depot?” Even his hair was sensuous, black and lush, with the silver accent at the temples. “If Napoleon left the Rosetta stone in a little town in the Egyptian delta, what would we know of ancient Egypt?”