The Gold of Thrace

by Aileen G. Baron

  Madame Aristides adjusted herself in her chair, and folded her hands.

  Mustafa went on talking, telling Tamar that in Egypt, the serpent made the sap run and guarded the entrance to the underworld.

  “The world of eternal life,” he said, and talked of ancient Mesopotamia where a serpent guarded the tree of life, of the Garden of the Hesperides where it protected golden fruit. “Olympias,” he told Tamar, “the mother of Alexander, was a snake handler, and Zeus came to her in the guise of a snake to father Alexander.”

  Tamar stirred uncomfortably in her chair and wondered if Mustafa was mad. He was still talking. “In Mesopotamia, Gilgamesh dove to the bottom of the waters to retrieve the plant of life.”

  The great pearl on Madame Aristides hand winked as she gestured for him to stop, but Mustafa went on talking. He told Tamar that a serpent came and ate the plant while Gilgamesh rested, and thus the serpent became immortal.

  “So the serpent sheds its skin and each time comes forth glistening, fresh and renewed, always young.”

  Madame Aristide was visibly upset. Was he revealing some esoteric mystery that accounted for her implacable beauty? And what of the pearl, the huge pearl, that Madame Aristides had told Tamar that God created from his soul? The pearl looked like an enormous pustule to Tamar, and she involuntarily tightened her hold on the arms of her chair and tilted away from Madame Aristides.

  “She’s not interested in talk of the divine,” Madame Aristides said to Mustafa.

  “Divinity is like fire,” Mustafa went on, “and like fire it has two faces.”

  Madame Aristides looked down and fingered the pearl.

  “With one it gives light,” Mustafa said, “with the other it harms and burns.”

  Tamar tried to turn the talk away from this and back to the mosaic. “Did you find out anything about the mosaic in Berlin?” she asked Mustafa.

  “No sign there,” he said. “Orman was supposed to be in Berlin. I left messages for him, but we couldn’t connect. He never called me back.”

  “He was killed,” Tamar told him.

  Mustafa turned pale and threw up his hands in shock. “When? How?” He seemed like an actor straining for effect. “In Berlin?” His eyes remained intense, guarded.

  “In The Hague.”

  “What was he doing there?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s strange. First Binali, then Chatham, then Orman.”

  “What about Chatham?”

  “You don’t know? He was murdered in Bulgaria.”

  “What do you mean murdered? In Bulgaria? Why Bulgaria? He was going to visit his mother in Prague.”

  “You don’t know about the Thracian gold? He was bringing it to the British Museum.” Mustafa and Chatham were friends, for God’s sake. They worked together at the British Museum. “It was in the news.”

  “I was traveling, didn’t get to a newspaper.”

  “According to the papers, Chatham stopped in Sofia to examine a collection of Thracian gold that he heard about. He talked the collector into lending it to the British Museum.”

  “He was killed for the gold?”

  “I thought so at first. Now with Orman killed too, I’m not so sure.” She looked from Mustafa to Aristides. “You think their murders may be linked to the missing mosaic?” she asked them.

  “No, no, not at all,” Aristides said. “You are safe here in Basel. He thought for a moment and asked, “You know that Gilberto has a mosaic floor? Acquired recently.”

  “He told me it’s from Italy.” Tamar shrugged. “Not from Hazarfen.”

  “Did you see the mosaic?” Mustafa asked.

  “It’s in the warehouse, still being restored.”

  “Don’t trust Gilberto,” Mustafa said. “He’s not what he seems.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “He’s treacherous, more dangerous than you think.”

  Gilberto dangerous? Charming maybe, Tamar thought, devious, but treacherous? She was about to ask if he was as treacherous as a snake, then thought better of it.

  Madame Aristides had been glancing at her watch while they were speaking, and now she looked at it again.

  “You have to excuse us,” she said to Tamar. “We have appointments at twelve o’clock. We must prepare. You will have to leave.”

  How rude. How abrupt.

  Aristides responded to his wife’s strange interruption by looking at his watch, as if she had given a signal. “Is it that late?” He stood up and turned to Tamar. “Sorry we couldn’t help you.”

  “I understand,” Tamar said, but she didn’t. She got to her feet and Mustafa rose with her.

  Aristides reached for Mustafa’s arm. “You will stay, of course,” he said to Mustafa, then extended his hand to Tamar for a farewell handshake. “My wife will see you to the door,” he told her, and Madame Aristides led the way down the long hall, through the room with the peacock fountain, through the anteroom and to the elevator.

  At the elevator, she hesitated. “You will excuse Mustafa. His parents were killed in a horrible manner when he was a boy. Today he was remembering.”

  “There’s nothing to excuse.” Tamar wondered at Madame Aristides’ apology and her agitation at his long discussion of snakes. Was she also upset about what he said about Gilberto?

  “Their bodies were mutilated in life and in death,” Madame Aristides said. “People from the village could hear their cries all night. It was Mustafa who found them when dawn came.”

  She thought of the day when she heard of her parents’ accident. “I understand,” she said. The shock, the sadness, the loneliness that swept over Tamar that morning at her grandmother’s house would always be with her. “I understand,” she said again.

  “No, you don’t,” Madame Aristides said and clicked the peacock door shut behind her.

  Tamar watched her shadow fade behind the etched glass door and stared again at the handle like a serpent, and remembered Mustafa at Tepe Hazarfen, offended when she killed a snake.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Basel, Switzerland, August 18, 1990

  They were just finishing lunch—the three of them, Gilberto, Enzio, and Tamar—seated around the glass table on the sun porch that overlooked the garden in the back of the house. In one corner of the room was the marble statue of a spear bearer—Greek or Roman, larger than life; against the wall, a false door plundered from an Egyptian tomb. They could hear Fabiana speaking in the kitchen. Her voice seemed low and musical, almost flirtatious.

  They had been talking about the statue of the spear bearer, but all Tamar could think of was the fountain with the golden peacock and black snakes on the door handle at Aristides’, painted on the walls, shimmering on Mustafa’s lapel. What was it Orman said to Mustafa after she had killed the snake at Hazarfen? Devil worshipper, he had called him.

  “It’s probably a second-century copy of the Doryphoros,” Gilberto was saying, gazing at the spear bearer, “the Canon, after Polycleitos.”

  “You know anything about Yedizi?” Tamar asked.

  Gilberto looked startled, and a little annoyed at being interrupted. “A children’s game? Why do you ask?”

  “It has something to do with snakes.”

  “Yezidi?” Enzio said.

  “That’s it.”

  “It’s a religious sect,” Enzio said. “The Black Snake, left over from Mithraism, represents good men. Their chief deity is Malak Ta’us, the Peacock God, a fallen angel.”

  Tamar wondered whether to take a sip of wine. She put down the glass.

  “What does Yezidi mean?”

  Wine made her sleepy. Her head still hurt, just a little, dull, minor ache, and she had trouble keeping her eyes open.

  “I’m not sure,” Enzio said. “They claim the word Yezidi comes from Sumerian. Supposedly their religion is older than Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It has elements of all four, even Mithraism.”

  He
spread his hands and shrugged. “It’s a true syncretism—a mixture of Gnostic cosmology, ancient Pagan polytheism, Mithraism, with a little Islam and Christianity thrown in.”

  Gilberto poured another glass of wine and looked again toward the statue in the corner. “It was Polycleitos who set the standard for artistic beauty, established the canon for the symmetry and ideal proportions for the human body.”

  “Who and where was Yezidi founded?” Tamar asked. “Do they have a prophet?

  Gilberto stood, refilled everyone’s glass, and lifted his own. “To Polycleitos,” he said.

  Tamar looked at Enzio. “Do they?” she repeated.

  “Some say that the founder is Yezid, the Umayyad Caliph. Some link it to Mithraism, some to Zoroastrianism, some even to the ancient Buzzard cult of Iraq and western Turkey.”

  “Like the buzzards drawn on the walls at Çatal Hüyük?” Tamar played with the stem of her wine glass. “Do they have anything on the Yezidi in the library at the university? Maybe some literature, sacred texts?”

  “They have the Jelwa, or book of revelation. The Black Book, the Mishaf Resh, is an oral tradition. The story is that the original Mishaf Resh was stolen and is hidden somewhere in the basement of the British Museum.”

  “So someone might get a job in the British Museum to look for it.”

  “You’re thinking of Chatham?”

  She shook her head. “I’m thinking of Mustafa Yeğin. He’s a friend of Chatham’s.”

  Gilberto perked up. “Mustafa?” he asked. “You know Mustafa?”

  “I met him in Turkey,” Tamar said. “He’s here in Basel now. I just saw him at Aristides’.”

  “Did you ask about my fresco?” Gilberto said.

  “What fresco?”

  “The one from the villa near Pompeii. I told you about it, showed you the photo.” He moved uneasily in his chair. “It’s over a year now.” He rested his arms on the table. “He told me the fresco already left Italy by ship.” He leaned forward, frowning. “According to Mustafa, the captain of the U.N. ship that patrols the Mediterranean took it aboard and brought it to Marseilles.” He took a breath and a sip of wine. “Under the clandestine auspices of the U.N.,” he said with a chuckle.

  “A complicated route for a fresco,” Enzio said. “Especially since there’s no U.N. ship patrolling the Mediterranean.”

  “There must be. I paid Mustafa three hundred thousand dollars. Some of the money went to the U.N. captain.”

  “You’re sure it was Mustafa Yeğin?” Tamar asked. “Mustafa is a common name.”

  “How is it supposed to get from Marseilles to here?” Enzio asked.

  “That’s easy.” Gilberto spread his hands. “From there Mustafa picked it up by truck, smeared the license plate with mud to avoid detection, met another truck off the road to transfer the fresco, and crossed the border.” He swiped his hands with a gesture of finality. “It should be here any day, may be here already.”

  Enzio reached for his glass, raised it to his lips, then changed his mind. “You paid Mustafa three hundred thousand dollars for a fresco that you have never seen and was never delivered?”

  “You know nothing about business, Enzio.” Gilberto shook his head. “My business is built on trust. If I can’t take his word for it, I may as well quit.” He took a sip of wine, banged the glass on the table and sloshed a little on the placemat.

  Tamar watched Gilberto rub at the wine spill with his napkin. It couldn’t be Mustafa, she thought, not Mustafa Yeğin, not Mustafa with the glimmering snake writhing on his lapel. The snake on the door handle, the fountain with the glittering peacock—the fallen angel—still stuck in her mind.

  From the kitchen, a man’s voice mingled with Fabiana’s.

  “Mustafa is here,” Gilberto said, “with my fresco.” He got up from the table and gulped down the rest of the wine in his glass. “Come,” he said and headed for the kitchen.

  Mustafa stood near the door, with Fabiana’s head leaning against his chest as he clutched Fabiana’s rump.

  “She has something in her eye,” Mustafa said.

  Gilberto gave a humph and a smile. “I can see that.” He turned to Tamar and Enzio. “You will excuse us?”

  Tamar and Enzio waited in the salon. They sat in front of the Nineveh stele.

  Tamar tapped her foot restlessly, troubled by what she had seen, troubled by Mustafa’s duplicity. Enzio sat back and waited for her to speak.

  “I don’t understand,” she said. “Gilberto really was talking about Mustafa. Gilberto said he bought a fresco from him.”

  “Does that surprise you?”

  “He works for the Department of Antiquities in Turkey, and at the British Museum.”

  “And he shouldn’t be doing this.”

  “And the thing with Fabiana and Mustafa. Does this happen often?”

  “All too often. Fabiana is susceptible to….” Enzio smiled and waved his hands around while he searched for a word. “Sweet talk,” he said. “Everyone knows it, and uses it to manipulate her.”

  “Why does Gilberto put up with it?”

  “He feels he doesn’t have much choice.” He smiled again, and said with a conspiratorial whisper, “Fabiana was his first wife.”

  “He was married to Fabiana? For five years, I assume.”

  “Less than that. She was pregnant. She went away with her sister, gave birth to a nephew, and talked Gilberto into marrying her.”

  “He has a child?”

  “It turned out the child wasn’t his. Gilberto paid for his education anyway.”

  She tapped her foot again. “Are they devil worshippers?” she asked.

  “Who?” Enzio asked.

  “Yezidi?”

  He shrugged. “Some say they are. For the Yezidi, the peacock is a beneficent deity, who was rehabilitated. But Moslems identify him with Lucifer, and they’re convinced the Yezidi worship the devil.”

  “Do they have a Black Sabbath?”

  “I doubt it. Very little is known of their rituals. No one has ever seen them worship. Lately though, they’ve begun to have more of a public presence. They have an autumn assembly when they sacrifice a bull, and a spring procession when they march with a bronze peacock—Malak Ta’us.”

  “The fallen angel?”

  “Their worship centers around seven angels. The principal one is Malak Ta’us, the Peacock Angel. They don’t worship evil. They’re not Satanists.”

  “The Yezidi are from Turkey?”

  “Turkey, mostly Iraq, Syria. Most of them are ethnic Kurds. There’s even a large contingent in Europe. Germany, England, some even here in Switzerland.”

  “Like Aristides?”

  “The peacocks and the snakes in his house? I suppose he might be, but he isn’t very strict about it. They have a number of taboos he doesn’t follow. His wife on the other hand—”

  They heard the kitchen door close and Gilberto’s footsteps coming toward them from the dining room, and they fell silent.

  “Mustafa had to leave,” Gilberto said.

  “The fresco,” Enzio asked. “Did he bring it?”

  Gilberto shot him an angry look. “Still in transit.”

  Enzio paused, then looked at his watch. “I have to go. Have an appointment.”

  “Are you sure you can trust Mustafa?” Tamar asked after Enzio left. “Are you sure he will deliver the fresco?”

  “Of course I’m sure. He’s one of my runners. I deal with him all the time. I bought your bracelet from him. The fresco comes from the same villa near Pompeii where I got the mosaic floor.”

  “You bought the mosaic floor from Mustafa?”

  Gilberto nodded.

  “I would like to see it,” Tamar said.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Basel, Switzerland, August 18, 1990

  Enzio was in a hurry. He slammed the gate to Gilberto’s house behind him, took the steps two at a time and rang the bell. Tha
t was when he saw Mustafa slip out the side entrance through the basement door while Enzio waited on the front steps for Fabiana to answer his ring. Mustafa scurried into the street without seeing him and snatched Enzio’s waiting taxi.

  When Fabiana finally opened the door, Enzio told her that he left his briefcase and rushed inside before she had time to tell him that she saw it on the table in the salon. She followed him inside.

  “Gilberto isn’t here?” he asked.

  “He took the American professor to the warehouse.”

  “What was Mustafa doing here just now?”

  “None of your business.”

  “Fabiana….”

  She waved her hand in a vague way. “He wanted to see Gilberto about something.”

  “You told him where Gilberto went?”

  “I said he was at the warehouse with the American professor. She wanted to see the mosaic.”

  “You told him that? That they went to the warehouse to see the mosaic?”

  He rushed out, leaving Fabiana standing open-mouthed.

  No taxi on Hohenstrasse. He dashed to the corner at Hardstrasse and started running toward the Rhine, looking for a taxi, afraid that he wouldn’t reach the warehouse in time.

  ***

  The warehouse was on the ground floor of an old building in Klein Basel. They stood in a large room, thirty by thirty feet across with doors that opened to smaller side rooms. A table in the center held bags of plaster, plastic containers streaked with dried plaster, brushes and pots of tempura paint in Pompeian red and gold. For the frescoes, Tamar thought.

  “Your skin is like alabaster,” Gilberto was saying, as he leaned toward Tamar.

  Slabs of frescoes, looking like giant jigsaw puzzles, with pieces of the original stuck into a plaster matrix, were stacked against the corner near one of the doors. A sink stood against the far wall, and next to it, under a damp tarp, lay a hidden mosaic. Only the corner showed, white with plaster.

  Gilberto leaned closer. “Has anyone ever told you—?”

  “Never,” Tamar said. “You’re the first one.”

  Tamar could just make out the pattern of the corner of the mosaic—the familiar twisted guilloche, the cluster of fruit at the edge.