The Gold of Thrace

by Aileen G. Baron

  The door opened on the fifth floor. A man in a security uniform met him and said, “This way, sir. Follow me.”

  The guard led him to a glass booth one meter square at the end of the corridor, said, “We have retinal identification, sir,” and put his hand on his side-arm.

  “Instructions are in three languages, sir. Step one: enter your personal identification number. Step two: place your eye against the scanner when you hear the beep. Step three: after scanning, when you hear the beep, proceed through the door to your left.”

  For a moment he wondered what would happen if something went wrong. The glass door would lock; he knew that. The guard would shoot him; he knew that. But would the glass go flying? Would poison gas fill the booth? He wasn’t going to find out.

  He went through the procedure as instructed. The door to the secure area opened. He deposited the “prox” card in the lock box next to the door, continued into a windowless corridor, and entered the office at the end of the hall.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Basel, Switzerland, August 16, 1990

  By morning, the storm had calmed to a steady drizzle. Tamar stood at the window, watching a few pedestrians hurry through the rain, then rang for coffee and a roll. She scanned the Paris Tribune that was outside her door while she ate, wondering if there was more news on Chatham’s murder, and found nothing. She dressed for the rain in jeans and a tee shirt, put on a yellow slicker and tucked her hair into a rain hat and headed for the taxi stand outside the hotel. She gave the driver the address of the shop that Herr Keller had told her about in Klein Basel, leaned back in the seat, and relaxed.

  They drove past the red sandstone Gothic towers of the Münster that stood watch over medieval Basel, and across the Rhine on the Wettstein Bridge.

  In a small cobbled square in Klein Basel, red geraniums danced in the window boxes of fourteenth-century half-timbered houses. A trace of sun, just beginning to appear, glinted on the cobbles still shining with rain and dappled the quiet water in the basin of a public fountain fed by a stream of water spouting from the mouth of a stylized griffin. The house on the corner carried a small sign, Konditurei Basler.

  The shop had three or four tight, low-ceilinged rooms with small fireplaces. Jars of preserves and pastries sat neatly arranged on tables and glass cases.

  For a moment, Tamar imagined the house as it had once been, a house where ancestors of the Holbein Baslers once lived in cozy rooms, undersized to protect against the cold, with rag rugs on the floor as a form of insulation and furnished with practical, hand-hewn furniture. How different from nineteenth-century patrician houses like Gilberto’s that flaunted the owner’s healthy pride in his wealth with central heating and spacious, high-ceilinged rooms and walls covered with watered silk.

  Tamar bought two quarter-kilo boxes of Basler Ballen, and three jars of preserves: strawberry, raspberry, and apricot. She paid, said, “Merci, viel mals” to the woman behind the register, looped the handle of the plastic bag around her wrist, and left the shop.

  Outside, the rain had stopped; the little square was bright and clear under a blue sky with occasional gossamer clouds. The cobbles of the street were shining, and leaves on trees were greener from the rainfall. On a day like this, with the world newly washed and under a clean sun, it would be wrong to be indoors. She decided to walk back to the hotel.

  She meandered toward the river, humming, swinging the bag of chocolates and preserves from her wrist, passing a red sandstone Gothic church, passing the grounds of the old Carthusian monastery. She strolled down a tree-lined promenade along the bank of the Rhine toward the old bridge, the Mittlere Brücke, and began crossing the river on the pedestrian walkway, letting others pass her, cars and buses moving in her peripheral vision, their exhaust dimming the perfection of the day.

  She paused in the middle of the bridge and leaned over the concrete railing to look down at the river. Some swimmers cavorted in the Rhine, some pattering a few feet doing a breaststroke, some diving like porpoises. Beneath her feet, she could feel the walkway shudder from the rhythm of the traffic that belched fumes as it hummed across the bridge.

  She let go of the railing and saw a dark blue Mercedes turn onto the bridge.

  The car moved toward her, slowly at first, picking up speed as it came nearer. The license plate had Cyrillic writing and she could just make out Demitrius Konstantinopoulis at the wheel.

  Down in the river, a man was laughing, pitching a bright yellow ball toward a knot of swimmers. A bus moved past her in the center of the bridge, belching diesel fumes, shaking the bridge as it rolled by.

  The Mercedes came faster, its wheels slightly canted toward the pedestrian walk. She could see Demitrius’ face now, expressionless, determined.

  He revved the motor. The Mercedes was aimed at her like a bullet.

  People walked past. Cars moved along the bridge. Only the Mercedes stood out, bearing down on her, ready to jump the curb, coming at her faster, faster.

  Heart pounding, she moved back against the balustrade. She tried to raise her arm to deflect the blow.

  She knew it was coming.

  No time to get out of the way.

  Her hand caught on the railing. She felt the weight of the package on her wrist. She pulled at it, grabbed for it with her hand.

  No time, just seconds to go.

  She swung the bag above her head, hurled it at the Mercedes, watched the bag arc toward the windshield of the car.

  She saw Demitrius flinch and duck his head, saw him wrench the wheel, saw the car jerk forward, saw the red jam spill across the windshield, saw it shatter into a web of a thousand shards.

  The Mercedes leapt onto the walkway and kept going, ramming the yellow posts that flew from its path, smashing through the balustrade.

  The balustrade crumbled. The car crashed past it and plunged, nose down, into the Rhine.

  Chapter Twenty

  The Hague, Netherlands, August 15, 1990

  He had just come from the crowded, wind-swept beach at Scheveningen. The place was full of screaming children, running and kicking up sand while their mothers, covered with oil, slept under bright beach umbrellas.

  He still had an hour to kill before he met the principals here in The Hague to get paid for the deal. In front of the Ridderzaal, they told him, inside the Binnenhof, right in the middle of the government offices.

  Weren’t they smart?

  He strolled idly down Oude Molenstraat, glancing in shop windows, and wondered if he was being followed.

  He looked back to check and noticed a man who had stopped about fifteen meters down the street in front of a store window. He looked like a casual shopper. He carried a shopping bag and wore a dark blue windbreaker, one of those American baseball caps in dark blue and a pair of showy American running shoes, white with blue and black decoration.

  He had seen the man before. The man had been following him since Berlin. Did they think he wouldn’t notice? Did they think he was stupid?

  The man looked too familiar. He had seen the man somewhere else. It had been nagging at him since the first time he spotted the man. Then he remembered. The pictures of the three from Hazarfen, that was where he saw him: Chatham, the girl, and this man.

  Orman Çelibi, that was his name. Orman.

  He walked about ten meters further and stopped again in front of a cutlery shop with knives and scissors in the window. His reflection in the store window was distorted. It made the scar less noticeable.

  Behind him, Orman had stopped, too. I’ll have to lose him, Firenzano thought.

  An enormous Swiss knife a meter and a half high mounted on a mountain of knives turned round and round, round and round in the middle of the window. Blades and scissors and nail files and key rings and screwdrivers splayed in all directions, as if the knife had tentacles.

  He felt for the switchblade in his pocket. He preferred it to a Swiss knife. It was lighter, it was quicker, it was more pra
ctical.

  If all goes well, he decided, from now on I will call the shots instead of being ordered about.

  If all goes well.

  He paused and crossed himself with a wish. Right there in the middle of the street, right there with Orman watching.

  That was stupid.

  He looked around, a little shamefaced, to see if Orman saw him. Orman wasn’t there. Relieved, he kept on walking.

  Someone on the other side of the street wearing running shoes—white, gray and blue—caught his peripheral vision. He halted a moment and recognized Orman, this time with a white polo shirt; Orman still wore the blue pants. He must have taken off the jacket and cap and put them in the shopping bag.

  He knew then that he was being followed by at least two of them, maybe three, someone tracking him on this side of the street, maybe one in front, one behind. The three of them would change places and spell each other like relay runners. Did they think he was stupid?

  He looked back again to see if he could spot anyone, then stopped at another shop and looked in the window. Antique furniture.

  No one stopped behind him. A man walked past him, brushed against him, and kept going. There must be three of them. Someone was in front, waiting for him to pass.

  He crossed the street, his eye on Orman, and stayed behind him. Orman walked faster. He kept pace.

  At the corner of Papestraat, he bumped into a man with his head thrown back, dangling a herring over his mouth like a sword swallower about to perform.

  What is it with these crazy Dutchmen? They cackle and hauwck when they speak and eat raw herring from a kiosk in the middle of the street.

  Next time, he would arrange the meeting himself. Italy, maybe the south of France, somewhere where the food was good.

  He turned the corner and saw Orman duck into a doorway. He followed.

  After no more than a minute, he came out of the doorway alone and started back toward Molenstraat. He wore the baseball cap and the dark blue windbreaker zipped up to the neck.

  He still wore his own shoes. The running shoes didn’t fit.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Basel, Switzerland, August 16, 1990

  As spectators gathered around the gaping parapet and looked down into the Rhine, Tamar backed away. At the edge of the crowd, she shed the rain slicker and hat, turned, and crossed the bridge onto Rheinsprung in Gross Basel.

  She walked a few blocks to Markplatz, hailed a taxi, and rode back to the Euler. Her hand trembled as she tried to pay the driver. What did he say? Twenty francs, thirty francs?

  She gave him three ten-franc notes and ran into the hotel.

  In her room she sat at the desk and gazed into space, still shaking.

  She stayed in the chair, not moving for the better part of an hour, then cradled her head in her arms on the desk and closed her eyes. And still, Demitrius’ shocked face behind the broken windshield, the sight of the car plunging off the bridge, haunted her. She pictured him, trapped in the car—water swirling around him, gasping for breath—and shuddered.

  She turned on the television and watched a man and woman speak to each other in some incomprehensible language, watched shapes move around on the television screen until the room was lit only by the blue light reflected from the screen.

  After a while, she realized that she was hungry and went downstairs into the bar. She ordered a filtered coffee, a bottle of water, and the kind of grilled cheese sandwich they made at the bar that they called toast. She sat back and closed her eyes, waiting for the waiter to bring her order.

  She opened her eyes when she heard the waiter approach with the sandwich and coffee, and saw Enzio come into the bar, carrying a small package and smiling.

  “I brought you something from Lyon,” he said and sat next to her.

  He put the package in front of her on the table. “For you.”

  “Can I open it?”

  He laughed and nodded.

  She removed the wrapper. “Chocolates?”

  “What did you think I would bring?”

  She knew she should thank him, but all she could think of was the package of Basler Ballen and the shattered windshield after she had hurled it.

  She took a sip of coffee. It burned her mouth. Her hand began to shake, and she gripped the handle of the cup so hard that it snapped. She dropped the cup and watched the coffee spread across the top of the table and cascade to the floor.

  Enzio reached for her arm and moved her to the next table. He set the box of chocolates down and signaled the waiter, ordered another sandwich and a sherry.

  She watched the waiter sop up the spilled coffee and Enzio asked her what was wrong.

  “It’s nothing,” she said.

  She dabbed at the spots on her blouse with a napkin and tried to smile, to think of something amusing to say.

  “Bringing chocolates to Switzerland?” she finally said. “Like coals to Newcastle?”

  “Like fleas to Mesopotamia.”

  She succeeded in smiling at that. She wadded up the napkin and finished unwrapping the box.

  She thanked him and offered him one.

  “They’re for you,” he told her. “Chocolate is good for you. Gets your endorphins going, makes you happy.”

  She couldn’t answer. Tears stung her eyes and she felt foolish.

  “You missed me that much?” He offered the open box again. “An endorphin or two?”

  The waiter brought the sandwich and the glass of sherry and set them down in front of Tamar.

  “Drink your sherry and eat your chocolates,” Enzio told her. “You need to think of something good.” He took a chocolate from the box and handed it to her. “If you could think of something good, you can do anything, you can take flight and soar.”

  “Soaring is not what it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “I heard a story once about a little yellow bird who lived in a cage by a window.” She lifted the chocolate and inspected it. “One day a skylark came by and saw the little yellow bird cooped up in the cage and felt sorry for her. ‘Come with me, little bird,’ he said, ‘and we will soar above the clouds and into the great blue sky.’ ‘And in the great blue sky,’ the yellow bird asked, ‘is there a perch?’”

  She popped the chocolate into her mouth. Enzio closed the box. He reached into his pocket for a packet wrapped in tissue and tied with a string.

  “Another gift?” she asked.

  “Not really.” He unwrapped the tissue and put the spiral gold bracelet on the table between them.

  She picked it up, examined the horse’s head at one end and the coiled tail at the other. “The bracelet Gilberto gave me.” She looked around for Herr Keller, not sure of what to do. “You stole it from my room. I called the police, you know.”

  “I got this from the police. It was in Demitrius’ hotel room.”

  “Demitrius?”

  Demitrius behind the splintered windshield. Demitrius trapped in a flooded car.

  She tried a bite of sandwich. It was dry and tasteless, and stuck between her teeth.

  “About Demitrius…” she began, then paused.

  “They arrested him this afternoon,” Enzio said.

  He’s alive.

  “Demitrius stole the bracelet?” she asked. Somehow he got out of the car. “What made the police suspect him?”

  “They were waiting for him on another matter.”

  “The accident?”

  “Accident?”

  “He skidded off the Mittlere Bridge into the Rhine,” she said. Enzio raised his eyebrows and gave her a puzzled look.

  “I’m not sure what happened,” she said. “I only heard about it. Did he get out of the car before it sank?”

  “Some swimmers pulled him out. The car is a total loss. When he got back to the Drei Konig, the police were waiting.”

  “They arrested him for skidding off the bridge?”

  Enzio shook his head. “He’s an accomplished
forger and con artist. His real name is Dimitar Konstantinov.”

  “He’s Bulgarian, not Greek?”

  Enzio nodded. “He forges antiquities, whole collections.” He pointed to the bracelet. “Like this bracelet from Chatham’s collection of Thracian gold.”

  “And sells them for the real thing?”

  “It’s more complicated than that. What he would do was manufacture a whole collection, like the Bactrian hoard you saw at Gilberto’s, using real gold. He and Irena would arrange for the collection to be exhibited, insured by a museum. They would steal it, collect the insurance, melt it down, and start all over with a new collection.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We’ve been after him for some time.”

  “You and your mother?”

  He smiled at that.

  “Why did it take so long to arrest him?” she asked.

  “We didn’t have proof until now.”

  “The coin you stole?”

  “Now we know the coin is modern. The bracelet may be too.”

  “How do you know?”

  “We tested the coin.”

  “Your mother and you?”

  He smiled at that again.

  “Your mother lives in Lyon? What’s her name?”

  She waited for his answer. “Your mother gathers evidence to arrest people and she lives in Lyon where she has a lab. I think I know her name. She just moved to Lyon from Paris?”

  “Yes,” Enzio said.

  “Because the food is better in Lyon?”

  She took a bite of sandwich, then picked up the bracelet and examined it. “How can you tell if it’s modern?” She looked closely at the finely chased finish. “It’s made by the lost wax method, the same technique they used for ancient gold.”

  “We use a new test for authenticating archaeological gold, state of the art.”

  She turned the bracelet over in her hand. “What kind of test?”