The Babylonian Codex

by C. S. Graham

  She turned back to her crate and resumed wrapping the mummy mask. Only a careful observer would notice that her hands were shaking. “I don’t deal in stolen goods,” she said evenly. “We provide provenance on everything we sell. My customers have my complete assurances that I have performed due diligence on all of my merchandise. To the best of our knowledge none of the items in our gallery has been illegally obtained from any excavation, monument, or collection.”

  “To the best of your knowledge,” said Jax dryly. In the background, the sitar played on, joined by men’s voices ululating strange unknowable harmonies. He let his gaze travel over the tastefully displayed glass-fronted cases full of sandstone reliefs, of votive statues and fertility goddesses and bronze shields from millennia long past. “And those thirty Etruscan vases you were forced to buy back and return to the Italians a few years ago when a customer discovered the latest addition to his collection had been lifted from a Roman museum and in a rare fit of conscience informed the authorities?”

  Her jaw hardened in indignation. “We were misled by the seller.”

  Jax smiled. “Pesky things, those excavation numbers they write on artifacts.”

  He wandered the gallery, pausing to admire a particularly fine early Christian Coptic textile some eight inches square depicting the Sacred Horseman. Fifth century A.D., proclaimed the tag: $1,750. He said, “I’ve been thinking about the Iraqi National Museum theft; about how it could have been done. Oh, not the random looting of the second day, when the poor of the neighborhood decided to join in the free-for-all. I’m talking about the initial break-in. The careful removal of the museum’s finest, most coveted artifacts.

  “You see, I remember those days leading up to the war on Iraq. It was obvious to anyone who was paying attention that the invasion was coming. Now, if I were an unscrupulous dealer in antiquities with lots of wealthy customers I knew weren’t overly concerned about assurances of due diligence and the like, I might have seen that as a golden opportunity.”

  “This is ridiculous.” She gave up all pretext of packing. “How could anyone imagine pulling off a theft of that nature in the middle of a war?”

  “Ah, but you see, the invasion provided the perfect cover. Not only that, it also emptied the museum of its staff and guards, and got rid of all those nasty Iraqi soldiers and customs officials who normally guard the borders and tend to get irate when people try to steal their patrimony.” He bent to study a three-inch-high Egyptian Bronze Horus falcon, circa 680 B.C.: $3,800. “Now, if I were said unscrupulous dealer, my first move would be to approach one of the megacorporations that were poised to rake in billions by providing the kind of logistical support the Army used to do for itself. Outfits like Halliburton or Keefe Corporation that got those big, juicy no-bid contracts. Just think of all those trucks carrying supplies into Iraq and then deadheading back to Kuwait—you know, rolling into Baghdad loaded but coming out empty.”

  She stood very still, her arms crossed at her chest, her head thrown back. “You overestimate me if you think I’m capable of coordinating something of that magnitude.”

  “Oh, I don’t think you did. I think the mastermind behind the whole operation was Gabriel Sinclair, working in cahoots with someone like Adelaide Meyer, who was CEO of Keefe at the time. I hear Adelaide had a thing for ancient bas reliefs, so I suspect she and Gabriel had a longstanding . . . friendship. And her connections to the dirtier guys in our revered former president’s administration and the upper brass of the military were enviable.”

  Madeleine Livingston’s nostrils flared. But she said nothing.

  “I suspect it was the guys at Keefe Corporation who saw that the top brass ignored the pleas of the world’s scholars to send troops to guard the museum and library. It would be Keefe that arranged all that cumbersome but oh-so-necessary paperwork. And it was probably Keefe—working through a subsidiary called Global Tactical Solutions, which is basically a bunch of mercenaries and thugs for hire—that organized the commandos who went in, secured the perimeter while the battle for Baghdad was still raging, and then preceded to ‘liberate’ the priceless treasures of Iraq. Gabriel’s role would have been to guide them in what to take—and of course to arrange for the buyers to receive the loot after it was ferried out of Iraq in the back of those supposedly empty Keefe Corporation trucks.”

  He swept one hand in a wide arc, taking in shelves of ancient marble and glass, wood and stone, pottery and metal. “This is just the low end of the market. The really valuable stuff never appears on gallery floors or websites; it’s sold privately, to carefully selected buyers.”

  She was silent for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was low and steady. “What do you want from me?”

  “A name. One of the items stolen from Baghdad was a very early text of the Apocalypse of John called the Babylonian Codex. I don’t know if it came from the museum or the library. But I do know it wasn’t taken by chance or on spec. Some collector put in a very specific order for it. I want to know who that collector is.”

  “I don’t know. I know what my own particular clients received, but that’s all. I told you, I didn’t coordinate this.”

  “No. Gabriel coordinated everything. And now Gabriel is dead.”

  Her face had gone slack, so that she suddenly looked much older than she had before. “He’s not the only one,” she said softly. “I heard this morning that a dealer in Seattle was found strangled in his bed.”

  He walked up to her. “Tell me. Who ordered the Babylonian Codex?”

  She shook her head, her eyes wide with fear. “I told you, I don’t know. I really don’t.”

  “Okay. I can accept that.” Jax reached inside his coat and unfolded Elaine Cox’s list of twelve of the most precious of Iraq’s tens of thousands of missing artifacts. “But you know the antiquities market. You regularly attend every major auction from New York to London to Basel; you know whose representatives bid on what. You have an international clientele and advise customers on enhancing their collections. So you can look at this list and tell me who ordered—or is likely to have ordered—the various items on it. Just the Americans,” he added. “I don’t think the individual I’m looking for is from overseas.”

  “I can’t give you that! The names of clients are held in the strictest confidence. If it were to become known that I—”

  “It won’t become known.”

  She gave him a twisted smile. “And of course I believe you.”

  “Look, I know better than to appeal to your sense of patriotism—”

  Her eyes flashed anger. It was amazing the things that did—and did not—raise her ire. “I’ll have you know I have been an American citizen for twenty-five years.”

  “—so I’ll appeal to your sense of self-preservation instead. The guy I’m looking for thinks he’s on a mission from God. As far as he’s concerned, he’s one of the new Chosen Ones, which means he thinks he has a license to lie and steal and cheat and kill and do whatever he wants, as long as he can convince himself it’s in the service of the Lord. Ever read the Old Testament?”

  “I’m Jewish.”

  “Good. Then you know all about King David and King Solomon and their proclivity for breaking every commandment ever carved in stone. But they went down in history as the good guys anyway, because as far as the scribes writing their history were concerned, they were the Chosen Ones. They had a covenant with God, which was like a ‘Get Out of Hell Free’ card. Well, the guy I’m after thinks the Jews broke that covenant when they crucified Jesus—”

  “Actually, it was the Romans who—”

  “Technicality. Doesn’t matter to these guys. They’ll tell you that when the Jews turned away from the Messiah, they lost their spot. There’s a new covenant now, and these guys think it’s with them. And before they’re done, they’re going to make David and Solomon look like a couple of choirboys.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me.”

  “Really? I’d have said the death of Gabriel an
d your friend in Seattle already did that.”

  Her chin lifted a notch. She was one tough cookie. “These deals all went through years ago. Why would I be in danger now?”

  “Because we’re suddenly getting close to them.”

  “Them?”

  “Them. Which means they’re getting rid of anyone who might give them away. If you’re smart—and I know you are—you’ll tell me what I need to nail these guys. I’m not talking about you having to appear in court someday. All I need is a little information and then you can go away and hide until this is all over.”

  She set her jaw, hard, and reached for the list. “Give me that.”

  She studied it for a moment, frowning. Jax handed her a pen.

  She drew a line through the first item on the list, a massive, four-and-a-half-thousand-year-old carving of a bull that had once adorned a temple built by the King of Ur. “This I know went to a collector in Hong Kong.” She circled the next piece, an eighth-century-B.C. ivory plaque inlaid with lapis and carnelian and gold. “There are two possible American buyers for this one: a Texas oilman named Buddy Gibson and a Silicon Valley IT billionaire named Carson Henderson.”

  The third item, again, was crossed out. “That would have gone to Hong Kong, too.” She circled the fourth, the golden dagger from Ur. “This is probably in the collection of Aaron Leibowitz, in New York.” She crossed out the fifth and sixth pieces, too. “Russia,” she said simply.

  An unpleasant smile transformed her face as she circled the next item, a gold bracelet studded with lapis lazuli, and wrote beside it. “Senator Talbot.”

  Senator Richard Talbot was Jax’s latest stepfather. “I didn’t think he had that kind of money,” said Jax.

  “You’d be surprised . . .” She paused a beat, then added, “Mr. Alexander.”

  He gave a startled laugh.

  She circled the next artifact. “The Inanna Vase would have gone to Leo Carlyle. He would never have allowed anyone else to get it.” She crossed out two more items. Beside the next, she wrote simply, “Randolph.”

  “As in, former president Randolph?”

  “Who do you think?” Circling the final item—an exquisitely preserved, life-sized marble statue of Athena from the second century before Christ, she wrote four names—an arms manufacturer, an investment banker, a hedge fund manager, and the owner of a chain of very successful drug stores. “This last one is difficult. I know the bidding was intense, but I never learned who won.”

  Jax took the annotated list and slipped it back into his pocket. “What about something like a rare, second-century copy of Revelation? Which of these men are likely to have put in an advance order for that?”

  She gave him a tight smile. “I could give you dozens of names—everything from private universities with fat endowments and an elastic moral code to corporate titans who act as if they have the connections to get into heaven no matter how many lives they destroy.”

  Jax shook his head. “I’m only interested in the men whose names you just gave me.”

  “Ah,” she said, her mouth turning downward in a thoughtful frown. “In that case, it would probably be—”

  The quiet snick of a pistol being racked jerked Jax’s attention to the curtained archway at the rear of the gallery.

  “I suppose I should thank you for opening that Medeco lock for us,” said the man who stood there.

  Chapter 37

  The man was dressed in black slacks with a black turtleneck and a black watch cap, and he held a Ruger Mark II suppressed .22 caliber pistol in an easy, professional grip.

  The MkII was an assassin’s gun, popular with the CIA and Special Forces types because the suppressor was built right into the thick barrel. The small caliber meant the guns were reliably effective only with a well-placed head shot at close range. But what one lost in firepower one gained in stealth, for only a suppressed .22 was truly silent. Yes, a 9mm or a .45 could be suppressed, but even with subsonic ammo they were still far from “silent”—unless you called the sound of a big, unabridged dictionary smashing to the floor quiet.

  One look at the Ruger told Jax all he needed to know.

  “Get down!” he shouted, lunging at Madeleine Livingston. He pushed her behind the big packing crate and dived behind the nearest display case just as the assassin in the archway squeezed off three rounds.

  The first two bullets thumped into the crate, the only sound the impact of lead against wood and the tinkle of the ejected shell casings hitting the floor. The third round was aimed at Jax. But the caliber was too light to do more than crack the laminated glass of the case in a spiderweblike pattern.

  Madeleine screamed, her hands coming up to bracket her head, her body jerking with each suppressed shot as if she’d been hit.

  Scrambling up into a crouch, Jax was reaching for his Beretta when a second guy appeared in the archway—a big redhead packing some serious heat: a .357 Magnum Colt Python.

  “Shit,” swore Jax, throwing himself flat.

  The big redhead squeezed off a round that punched straight through the display case, shattering both sides, and raining glass and pulverized stone on Jax’s head and shoulders.

  Her eyes wide with terror, Madeleine bolted for the front door.

  Jax yelled. “Stay down!” Still lying flat, he aimed his Beretta through the case and fired five rounds at the guy with the big Colt.

  Jax’s rounds hit home. The redhead staggered back, the Colt blazing wildly. One bullet ricocheted off a brick wall; another shattered a towering display case of Bronze Age shields and stone battle-axes and obsidian knives hafted to restored shafts.

  But even as he fired, Jax saw the assassin with the Ruger pivot and send a bullet high into Madeleine’s back. Gasping in shock and pain, she spun around, her blond pageboy flying out around her head, her mouth slack.

  Two more rounds punched through her forehead.

  Then, lithe and quick, the assassin dove through the curtained archway just as Jax landed two more rounds in the redhead’s chest.

  The redhead fell backward, his shirt shiny with dark red blood.

  Breathing heavily, Jax stayed where he was. He had no way of knowing if he’d killed the guy with the .357 Colt or not. He heard the alley door slam open, felt the cold bite of night air blowing in through the storeroom. The assassin obviously wanted Jax to think he’d fled.

  Jax wasn’t that trusting.

  He pushed to his feet, crossing cautiously to where the redhead lay sprawled in a spreading puddle of blood. Jax kicked the Colt away from the man’s hand, sending the revolver spinning across the floor.

  Then his gaze lifted to the green velvet curtain shifting heavily in the icy wind.

  Reaching into the shattered wall case beside him, Jax grabbed one of the Bronze Age shields. The shield had obviously been extensively restored, with the original bronze conical dome reinforced with a backing of heavy oak. Slipping his left hand into the inner grip, he thrust the shield through the curtain—

  And heard the ping-ping-ping of the .22’s suppressed rounds hitting the ancient metal.

  With a roar, Jax charged through the curtain, slamming the shield up into the assassin’s face. The two men went down hard, grappling together, rolling over and over. Their flailing bodies caught the green curtain and yanked it down in billowing, blinding folds.

  Battling free, Jax lost his grip on his Beretta and crashed back against the shattered display case. Staggering up, the assassin lunged at him. Jax closed his fist around the shaft of one of the ancient obsidian daggers and brought it up to plunge it deep into the assassin’s heart.

  For an unsettling moment, the guy’s startled, confused gray eyes met Jax’s. Then his eyes slid back in his head and he toppled over.

  Sitting up on his heels, Jax took a deep breath, the hand he brought up to wipe across his upper lip not quite steady. Then he pushed to his feet and went to see if Madeleine Livingston still lived.

  Chapter 38

  Coeur d’Alene Lake
, Idaho: Saturday 3 February 4:40 P.M. local time

  Leo Carlyle cradled the ancient alabaster vase in both hands, his fingertips skimming over the cool stone. Beneath his touch, the outlines of the carved procession of sheep and oxen, of worshippers bearing fruit and grains, still felt crisp despite the passing of the millennia.

  There’d been a time when he’d seen such pieces as mere commodities; blue-chip investments to be bought and sold for financial gain. But with knowledge had come passion, and with passion, joy. He’d read once that the psychological basis of all collecting was sensual pleasure, that Sigmund Freud himself had possessed more than two thousand artifacts from the days of Rome and Greece and the kingdoms of Egypt.

  Freud had been a Jew. Yet rather than collect the heritage of his own kind, he had found his delight in the works of the ancient pagans. So perhaps it was not so strange after all that Leo, who had taken Jesus Christ as his personal lord and savior, should find his greatest delight in the possession of the relics of the early enemies of Judea—the Babylonians and Egyptians, the Hittites and the Assyrians.

  Once, five thousand years ago, the vase in his hands had graced the palace of a mighty Mesopotamian king. Known as the Inanna Vase, its concentric bands of carving depicted the sacred marriage of the pagan goddess Inanna, known to later generations as Ishtar. Now, the Mesopotamian king who’d prized this vessel lay long dead, his civilization destroyed, his false gods and goddesses long forsaken.

  Smiling at the thought, Leo settled the vase in its specially designed case and closed the glass door. The case stood on a plinth, one of many scattered the length of what he jokingly called his Thieves Gallery, for although he had paid handsomely for its contents there was nothing here to which he held clear title. More glass cases lined the walls. In an adjoining room, its environment even more carefully controlled than this one, Leo kept his collection of manuscripts.