Among the Ruins

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  He checked again to be sure, then he proffered his admission ticket to a smartly dressed guard who scrutinized him with an air of indifference and waved him through. He had chosen to arrive in the middle of a pack of tourists, a diminutive group of Malaysians, whose cameras and gentle smiles were at the ready. He swept along in their train, through a gallery crowned by arches, where a canopy of chandeliers framed a line of splendid columns. Their candle cups were white, the spindles peacock blue. Portraits lined the gallery but Khattak’s attention was soon claimed by the treasures on display.

  Khattak had purchased a catalog of the exhibits with his ticket. He proceeded down the central aisle where the imperial crowns were arranged in a row: the Pahlavi Crown beating like a ruby heart, the Crown of the Empress Farah, and the Kiani Crown, star of the private exhibit.

  Khattak studied the crowns with a quiet sense of enthrallment. The beauty of each piece was linked to a vivid history. He pictured emperors in Delhi, the heirs of Safavid shahs, raiders from Afghanistan, each adding to the royal treasury to the best of their wits and ability.

  Hemmed in by the Malaysians, Esa found himself between the Imperial Globe and the Naderi Throne, two dazzling artifacts in a hall of splendors. He paused before the Naderi Throne, used at the 1968 coronation of the Shah as an emblem of empire, excess, and sovereign preeminence. He imagined the throne as a prop for the film version of the story of the Taj Mahal, so apropos to a Mughal setting. The dynastic shahs had had an open hand with their treasury: the Naderi Throne defied description.

  He moved next to a scattering of sun-gold stones on a tray: these were the Iranian Yellows. They were grouped in clusters on the floor of the diamond cabinet. So exquisite was their faceting, he couldn’t imagine a substitution—they had to be the originals. The rumor had been only a rumor, and it was unlikely to have been started by Mossadegh.

  Khattak looked around. The Malaysians had squeezed past him to a pair of cabinets that displayed the royal tiaras, the Nur-el Ain among these. Obligingly, he took a photograph of two women posing so the tiaras appeared to rest on their heads. Smiling, he handed their camera back, taking a closer look at the Nur-el Ain himself.

  The pink diamond at its heart blazed at him, a superlative stone that had no equals. He knew he was looking at Tavernier’s stone, so brilliant was its allure.

  He moved in a systematic fashion down a third aisle to a small case lit from the inside, where a single ornament reposed on a soft white bed.

  Here, at last, was the Darya-e Nur, the greater half of the Diamanta Grande Table. Though it was the largest known pink diamond in the world, the stone could have fit in the palm of his hand. His fingers curled with the desire to touch it.

  Was he imagining that it shone less brilliantly than the Nur-el Ain? Was it an effect of the lighting, or did he discern a dullness to the pink stone? When viewed from a different angle, the stone wasn’t quite flat—the diamond seemed to bubble, perhaps the result of irregular step facets. A dozen or so small diamonds surmounted the tablet and held it in their grip. Removing the Darya-e Nur from their grasp would cause irreversible damage.

  Khattak pretended to a preoccupation with his catalog. The Malaysians bumped around him, full of smiling apologies. He used their presence as a cover for tying his shoe and examining the stone from below. Though he tried, he couldn’t spot the Persian inscription that marked the original. It was either hidden by the bed, or the ornament he was viewing was an imitation.

  He circled the case several times, but there was no means by which he could be certain. The catalog failed to clear up the matter, it mentioned the inscription without specifying its location. Khattak was at a loss.

  One of the Malaysians posed near the Darya-e Nur. The flash of his wife’s camera left a dazzle on the diamond. It lit up like a windowpane after a strike of lightning.

  And Khattak had seen something.

  The woman took another picture of her husband, and the flash lit up the Darya-e Nur for a second time.

  Khattak saw it again.

  He remembered the camera on his phone. He photographed the ornament repeatedly with the flash on. Finally, a guard came to tell him to step away.

  Esa complied, squatting before the Darya-e Nur to study it with his naked eye.

  None of the camera flashes had revealed a trace of Persian script, even on the south-facing facets. But he’d discovered an anomaly in the symbols of the Safavid dynasty, a pair of rampant lions that mounted the tablet on either side of the crown.

  The setting was said to include hundreds of diamonds and four perfectly matched rubies, each pair of rubies forming the eyes of a lion. Two rubies glowed up at Khattak from the lion on his right. But on the left side, the lion’s eyes were mismatched. One was a winking ruby, the other a plain crystal.

  The legendary stone was a fake.

  49

  Charlotte Rafferty refused to grant Rachel a second meeting, claiming the pressure of work. Undaunted, Rachel waited outside the staff entrance until the ROM closed for the day, hoping Charlotte wasn’t the type of employee to work at her desk after hours. When Charlotte finally joined the crowds heading to Union Station, Rachel fell into step behind her.

  She took stock of Charlotte’s expensive Ferragamo handbag, her red-soled, spike-heeled boots, and the stylish new haircut Rachel bet had set Charlotte back four or five hundred dollars. Charlotte Rafferty wasn’t taking the subway. She strode to the curb to hail a taxi.

  The hot dog and falafel carts that clogged the streets during lunch hour had packed up for the day, giving Rachel a clear view of her quarry dashing past other pedestrians. A man with a terrier on a red leash gave Charlotte a nasty glare as her boots trampled the dog’s lead. She dodged him with a muttered apology. Just as a taxi slowed down along the busy street, Rachel gripped Charlotte’s arm from behind.

  Recognizing a lost fare, the cab sped away through the lights. With a visible flash of rage, Charlotte Rafferty turned back. When she recognized Rachel, her mouth tightened, but she didn’t look afraid. Rachel put that down to the ice-cold blood running through Charlotte’s veins.

  “A moment of your time,” Rachel said. Her grip remained implacable.

  Charlotte gave an ostentatious sigh. Rachel’s hand slipped from the cloth of her coat. She guided Charlotte over a mound of snow, directing her back to the doors of the atrium. She wasn’t expecting to be let in, she wanted privacy for her questions.

  “I have a dinner, and now I’m going to be late for it.”

  “Not with Winfield Park, by any chance?”

  The harried energy of the other woman went quiet. Two patches of heat flared in her cheeks. She pulled her handbag around to her chest like a shield.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “No? I’ve already spoken with him, Ms. Rafferty. He’s told us about the Darya-e Nur, which I’m guessing is the reason you didn’t tell me about Zahra Sobhani.”

  As quickly as an actor entering a new scene, Charlotte adopted an attitude of gritty sophistication, slitting her eyes, tilting her head so her hair fell around her face. Rachel wondered if she planned to extract a lorgnette from her bag. Maybe she should call the other woman “Madam.”

  A fine rain began to mist the streets, adding droplets to Charlotte’s hair and spangling her mulberry coat. Her shoulders twitched, she dropped the pose.

  “What do you want?” she demanded.

  “Answers to my questions. Who bought the replica of the Darya-e Nur from Winfield Park? He told me you brokered the sale.”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  “I can very easily make it my business to get Revenue Canada to take a look at your finances, Ms. Rafferty.” Rachel had every intention of doing so anyway. “I can also make it my business to report you to the board of the ROM for what is clearly a conflict of interest—brokering deals between patrons of the museum and third parties.”

  Charlotte grimaced. A trace of scarlet lip gloss caug
ht on a strand of hair, leaving a thin line of color along one cheek. She didn’t notice.

  “It wasn’t a conflict. The buyer isn’t a patron of the ROM, not exactly.”

  “Who?” Rachel insisted. “Who are we talking about?”

  “Mehran Najafi. I honestly didn’t think twice about it. He asked for a list of respectable gemologists—gem cutters, in particular.”

  “Recently?”

  “No, sometime last year. He’s a well-known collector, I introduced him to a number of gem cutters, he focused on Winfield Park.”

  “Was that the extent of your participation?”

  Charlotte hesitated. She was wondering how much Rachel knew. Rachel set her straight.

  “All of it, or my next call is to Revenue Canada.”

  “I don’t know how to describe it. He was thrilled to discover Winfield specialized in replicas, but in a way that didn’t seem personal. He wanted me to persuade Winfield to sell him the entire set of Great Table Diamond replicas. He said Winfield could fashion more.”

  She expelled her breath in an angry huff.

  “People with money have very little understanding of how art is created. It’s a sensory process, but it’s also a skill.”

  Rachel was surprised to find she understood this. Zach had told her the same thing.

  “Winfield wasn’t willing to part with it—the Diamanta Grande Table is the largest pink diamond known to history. Fashioning the replica was a labor of love.”

  “Then why did he sell Najafi the Darya-e Nur?”

  Charlotte Rafferty’s gaze darted away.

  “Mehran had been generous in the past. He assured me if I could convince Winfield to sell him the Darya-e Nur, he’d bequeath his entire collection of nineteenth-century photographs to the ROM. He put some pressure on me,” she admitted. “He went over my head and told my boss the same thing.”

  Which explained why Charlotte didn’t consider her actions a conflict of interest. The bequest would have created a flurry of anticipation among Charlotte’s higher-ups.

  “What was Zahra’s interest in this?”

  Charlotte’s hands moved involuntarily. The Ferragamo bag slipped to her elbow.

  “I couldn’t quite figure it out. She knew Mehran had purchased the replica. She didn’t think he was the end buyer, she was trying to reach him in Iran. When she couldn’t, she came to me looking for the name of the man who had financed the buy.”

  “Who was it?”

  “I didn’t know.” And at Rachel’s obvious skepticism: “I’m telling you the truth. I thought Mehran was the buyer.”

  “Did you find out why he wanted the Darya-e Nur?”

  Charlotte gazed longingly over Rachel’s shoulder. A taxi was making its way down the street. She flagged it down with her free hand.

  “He said something about a sentimental fondness for an emblem of his country. And that’s really all I know about the entire matter.”

  She made for the stairs, Rachel let her go.

  “Ms. Rafferty,” she said. Charlotte pivoted on her heel. “What did you get out of the arrangement? I can see the benefit to the ROM, but what about you?”

  Charlotte’s smile was brittle. “Do you have any idea what my salary is at the ROM? Or the hours I’ve put into this place?” She dismissed its crystal façade with a grimace. She placed one elegantly booted leg inside the taxi. “He offered me a major commission on the deal.”

  The door closed on her razor-edged smile. “Believe me, I earned every penny.”

  50

  Zach walked in on Rachel in her bedroom, hastily throwing things into the beat-up black Samsonite she’d unearthed from their parents’ basement. She’d told him of her plans, and he was worried. But it wasn’t a decision she’d made lightly—a small part of her wondered if in the end it came down to weighing what Khattak meant to her against her brother’s need of her, or the place of each in her life.

  She brushed uselessly at her eyes. She would do anything for Zach. But how could she respect herself if each time she was presented with the consequences of doing her job, she backed away out of fear? She hadn’t done that at Algonquin, she wouldn’t do it now. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d made her choice.

  “Do you really have to do this, Ray?” Zach settled himself on a corner of her bed, stretching his long legs out. A childhood photograph of the two of them together occupied a corner of her night table. He picked it up with a grin.

  “Thank God you gave up that mullet, the ponytail suits you better.”

  Rachel smacked his leg with a sweater she had rolled into a bundle.

  “You have all my contact information.”

  She sat down on the bed beside Zach. The time had come to tell him, and she knew it was going to be tricky. She wished she had more time to talk to him about Lillian, but she had to prepare for all scenarios. Though she was confident she’d be home soon, she still had to account for plane crashes, road accidents, unexpected violence—the random phenomena of life.

  She opened her night table drawer and extracted an envelope, which she handed to Zach. He’d just come from a shower, and his hair was a rumpled mess. He hadn’t added his normal jewelry and eyeliner. He looked like a gangly teen, uncomfortable in the arrangement of his bones.

  “What’s this?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen to me, but you never know when you travel.” She took a deep breath. “This is a copy of my will and my life insurance. If anything does go wrong, I don’t want you to worry about what will happen to you, you won’t end up on the streets.”

  She didn’t add the word again, but it hung in the air between them.

  “Everything I have, I’ve left to you. It’s enough to see you through a year in this place, or you could sell it and make your own plans.”

  Zach’s golden-brown eyes had gone wide. A strange expression crossed his face: a mixture of shame and disbelief.

  “Why are we talking about this?”

  Rachel gave his arm a squeeze of reassurance.

  “You’re not a kid anymore, you need to understand how things are done.” She nodded at the envelope. “There’s also information in there about my funeral arrangements.”

  “When did you do all this?”

  Zach’s face became sullen. She knew it was because he couldn’t, at this moment, face the reality she was describing.

  “Not long after I found you. I’m a police officer.” She spoke briskly, hurrying over the words. “In my line of work, it’s important to make these kind of plans.” She’d had no reason to make them before she’d found Zach. Finding him had changed everything. She stuffed the envelope back into the drawer. “My lawyer’s number is in there, too.”

  She still hadn’t told him about their mother. Her back to him, she heard her brother choke back the knot of emotion in his throat.

  “Don’t make any plans to do away with me.” She said it with a grin, trying to lighten the moment. Zach tugged on her ponytail from behind.

  “Ha!” he joked. “All your worldly goods are mine. Does that include the hockey memorabilia? I’ve always liked your poster of the Soviet series.”

  The photograph of Team Canada during the epic 1972 series hung over Rachel’s bed.

  She glared at him. “Touch it and die.”

  Grinning, he locked her suitcase and lifted it from the bed while Rachel collected her purse. She glanced at his open bedroom door. The tree-within-a-tree was coming to life beautifully, the leaves at the top of the branches worked in squares of gold. Brilliant shades of green outlined the lower branches.

  “Christ, that’s gorgeous. You should have done it on canvas, you could have sold it for a fortune.”

  Zach looked pleased. Though Rachel’s arts education was limited, she’d always supported her brother’s efforts, able to tell the real thing from when he was fooling around.

  “Think about greeting cards, maybe. Or a calendar. I bet they’d sell out.”

  Zach had no pretensions about his ar
t. He wanted it to be seen and experienced.

  “Maybe,” he agreed.

  Rachel still hadn’t reached for the door handle. She knew what she’d left undone, just as she knew she couldn’t leave it like this. Her nightmare scenario was returning from Iran to find her brother gone.

  She turned and faced him, tipping her head up to meet his eyes.

  “I’ve got something to tell you about Mum, and I think it will probably upset you.”

  The words had the effect she’d feared. Zach hunched his shoulders, his whole body tight.

  “We don’t need to make this anything big, I’m just afraid—” She waved one arm in a futile gesture. No one in the Getty family was a particularly skilled communicator. She wasn’t sure how to go on. She steeled herself for his reaction. “Mum came the other day while you were out. She asked me to send you back to her and Da. I wanted you to hear that from me.”

  Zach’s eyes rested on his sister’s face, a hollowness in them that made Rachel ache.

  This wasn’t the way.

  At last with a sigh, he asked, “Why does that make you afraid?”

  Rachel knew the answer. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to share it with Zach.

  “I’m afraid she’ll convince you, somehow. Or make it seem like I don’t want you here, and you’ll be doing me a favor by leaving. That’s not true.” She locked eyes with her brother. “I’ve wanted you here for so long.”

  Tears welled in her eyes. She blinked them back furiously, not wanting Zach to witness her weakness. Rachel Getty didn’t cry. She wouldn’t be much use to her brother if she did.

  She chose her next words with painful consideration.

  “I’m afraid she’ll do something to make you leave for good. It’s … been a lot, Zach. I can’t face that again.”

  She busied herself by checking for her passport in her purse, shocked when her brother grabbed her shoulders and kissed her on the top of her head.