“Peacocks?” Carter said to Beth as they drove, slowly, onto the grounds.
And sure enough, there they were—a flock of them, their tail feathers fanned out in a beautiful display of blue and gold, strutting around the lip of a splashing fountain.
“An awfully good replica of the Trevi,” Carter said of the ornately sculpted fountain.
“What makes you think it’s a copy?” Beth said, and Carter laughed.
“You could be right,” he said. “What’s next? The Eiffel Tower?”
At the top of the winding drive, in front of a massive stone and timber manor house, a valet in a red jacket stepped into the drive and gestured for them to stop. Another valet materialized out of the dark and swiftly opened Beth’s door. Carter could see a dozen other cars lined up neatly in front of a garage wing. All the cars were Bentleys or Jaguars or BMWs, with the lone exception of a dusty green Mustang off at the far end. They were ushered up the front steps and into a spacious, marble-floored foyer, with a wide, winding staircase on both sides; ahead of them they could hear music, and a maid in a white skirt and cap escorted them out to the back garden, where a string quartet in formal attire was playing Brahms under the boughs of a jacaranda tree.
Al-Kalli, spotting them, stepped away from a small group of people and came forward with his hand extended. “I was beginning to fear that you wouldn’t make it,” he said, and Carter apologized for the delay.
A waiter with a silver tray of filled champagne flutes appeared and al-Kalli handed a glass to each of them. His ruby cuff links glittered in the pale glow of the standing lights that had been positioned here and there in the garden.
“Your house is beautiful,” Beth said, and al-Kalli looked up at its mullioned windows and gray stone walls as if taking it in for the first time. “It’s a pity you couldn’t see our palace in Iraq.”
Carter wondered to himself if it was still standing.
“But come and meet the other guests,” al-Kalli said, “we’ll be going in to dinner soon.”
Beth had already noticed several familiar faces, including the wealthy museum patrons the Critchleys and her own boss, Berenice Cabot. The others, an interesting-looking mix of all races and ethnicities, had what appeared to be but one thing in common—money. They all exuded sophistication and style in everything from the cut of their clothes to the way they held themselves. Even as she approached them, she could hear a smattering of accents, a few words in Italian, a mention of the Venice Biennale. Beth and Carter were introduced to everyone as if they, too, were visiting royalty, and as Beth fell into the general conversation—she recognized one of the guests as a board member of the Courtauld Institute, where she had studied in London—she noticed that Carter was drawn off by al-Kalli to meet the one man who seemed not to fit in somehow. He was wearing an ill-fitting suit, and there seemed to be something wrong with his left leg. But then Mrs. Critchley launched into a story about a Mantegna, just on the market, that she thought “someone in Los Angeles really must buy,” and Beth had to shift her attention back to the conversation at hand.
“This is Captain Greer,” al-Kalli was saying to Carter as he drew the two men aside. “Formerly a member of the United States armed forces in Iraq, he is now in my employ, in charge of security.”
Carter started to introduce himself, but the soldier stopped him short. “I know you. You’re the paleontologist.”
Even al-Kalli looked surprised. Impressed a bit, too.
“I saw you on TV,” Greer explained. “You were arguing about Indian artifacts, with some guy named Running Horse.”
“I was hoping nobody’d seen that show.”
“Sorry—too late. But I can’t say I remember your name.”
“Carter Cox.”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
Al-Kalli smiled. “Well, now that that’s all cleared up, I will leave you two alone for a few minutes. Excuse me.”
Why, Carter wondered, was he leaving them alone? Beth was off in the thick of things, and he was now marooned with this ex-army guy. Just looking at him, Carter could tell this guy was in a bad way. His skin had an unhealthy pallor and there was a dull gleam in his eye that Carter had seen before—usually in friends of his who’d burned out in grad school and gotten hooked on one drug or another.
When Captain Greer turned to a passing waiter to put his empty glass on the tray and take a fresh one, Carter noted that when he pivoted, his left leg moved oddly. Carter assumed it was a war injury, and if that was the case, if this was indeed a war vet and al-Kalli had hired him, then that was a point in al-Kalli’s favor. Much as Carter had opposed the war, he didn’t oppose the vets—that was just one of the myriad cheap and cynical sleights-of-hand the administration had pulled, conflating criticism of the war with criticism of the men and women forced to conduct it. Carter had nothing but respect, and sympathy, for the ones who had had to appear on the front lines.
“How long have you worked for Mr. al-Kalli?” Carter asked.
Greer glanced at his watch. “About twenty-eight hours, give or take.”
Carter had to laugh. “Oh, so you don’t know a whole lot more about this spread than I do.” Carter looked around in all directions, at the back of the huge house, the rows of blossoming trees, the black-bottomed swimming pool, the gazebo—and said, “Just how big is this place?”
Greer shrugged. “I’ve had the tour, and yeah, there’s a lot more to it than you can see from here.” He gulped down the champagne the way you would normally drink a Coke. “A lot more.” Then, appraising Cox, he said, “What are you doing here? You know al-Kalli?”
“My wife does. She’s working on something for him.”
“What?”
Carter wasn’t used to the bluntness, and he wasn’t sure how much to say in reply. “Oh, just a scholarly project.”
Greer looked unsatisfied, and Carter thought maybe he was taking his new job as head of security a little too broadly. He also thought he was slugging down the drinks too fast.
A butler in a black tailcoat—Carter had never seen anything like that outside of the movies—moved across the flagstoned courtyard to al-Kalli’s side, and then started circulating among the guests. “Dinner is served,” he said to Carter and Greer in a low voice, as if it were a state secret, and with one hand gestured toward a pair of French doors that were now opened. Inside, Carter could see a long rectangular table, glittering with silver and china, lighted by flickering candelabra.
“Excuse me,” Carter said, “while I go and retrieve my wife,” but even as he turned he saw that Beth was being escorted into the dining room on the arm of al-Kalli himself. She cast Carter a confidential glance as she passed—a glance that said, I’m as much at sea as you are, but I guess we should just go with the flow—and Greer was the one who laughed now.
“That your wife?”
“Yes.”
“Not bad,” he said, “and I guess al-Kalli thinks so, too. He gets what he wants.”
Carter knew what he was implying, but it didn’t bother him. What he was wondering now was how he was going to get through a whole dinner with this guy, who was probably going to get increasingly stoned. Going into the dining room, he was immediately relieved to see that there were neatly written ivory place cards at every chair. He was looking for his own card, when he saw Beth being seated next to al-Kalli at the head of the table. He started to head in that direction, too, when the butler touched his sleeve and said, “The other side, I believe, sir.”
For a second, Carter didn’t understand, then the butler led him around the table so that he was seated on al-Kalli’s right side, directly across from Beth, who was seated at his left. Carter sat down; the butler flipped his napkin open and draped it across his lap. These were sort of the seats of honor, and Carter was, frankly, a little surprised to be sitting in one of them. He and Beth had discussed the dinner invitation—especially its late delivery—and decided that al-Kalli must have invited them as an afterthought, after some prominent gue
sts had dropped out at the last minute. Beth had said al-Kalli was probably going to use the occasion to pump her for information about how fast the translation and restoration work was going, “and maybe even try to instill a little guilt.” Carter had figured he’d made the list strictly by virtue of being Beth’s husband.
But now it almost looked as if the dinner had been pulled together, indeed on very short notice, as a means of becoming more intimate with the two of them. Al-Kalli was already leaning forward to tell Carter he had only that afternoon read a monograph he had written on the hunting habits of the Tyrannosaurus rex.
“Even for a layman,” he said, in that upper-crust English accent, “it was a very thought-provoking piece.”
“Glad you enjoyed it,” Carter said, though he couldn’t imagine why al-Kalli would have been reading it. It certainly hadn’t been written for the layman; it had been published years before in an obscure scientific journal. “But I didn’t know that you were interested in dinosaurs.”
“I am,” al-Kalli replied. “In fact, I’m interested in many questions of natural history—particularly those involving strange and extinct life forms.” With that, he turned his attention to Beth. “Such as those depicted in a certain antique book.”
A servant in a white jacket poured some white wine into one of several glasses and goblets at Carter’s place.
“How is that coming along?” he asked Beth, and Carter dropped his eyes, lest it be too obvious what he was thinking.
“Very well,” she said. “The graphemical database is almost complete.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning we can soon run the entire text against all the characters deployed in the manuscript and get the most accurate and expedited transcript.” She did not mention that the process had been somewhat slowed of late by the discovery of a secret epistle, hidden under the front cover of the book, that she had been giving priority to.
“How soon?” he asked, and even though his tone was neutral, Carter could see the urgency in his expression.
“Within the next few days,” Beth replied, and Carter hoped, for her sake, that she meant it.
Al-Kalli remained focused on her for a telltale second or two, then raised his glass to his other guests—Carter guessed there were a couple of dozen, with that Captain Greer way down below the salt—and announced, “Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I’ve been remiss all season, and I didn’t want to go another night without seeing my dear friends and enjoying their company.”
Mrs. Cabot, Carter thought, was one of his dear friends? That dithery old couple, the Critchleys? To Carter, it looked like a somewhat strange assemblage, with old-moneyed Europeans and South Americans, a few Middle Eastern types (one in the traditional Arab headdress), that new security chief, and of course, himself. But, taking the charitable view, maybe it displayed an admirably democratic streak in his host.
Though he doubted it.
The meal itself consisted of more courses than Carter had ever been served at one time, many of them with a distinctively Middle Eastern flavor. Al-Kalli was often explaining the ingredients and preparation to them—“Have you ever tried fesenjan? It’s walnuts, sautéed in a pomegranate sauce” or “This is called karafs—seasoned with parsley, celery, mint, and other herbs—and my cook is the only one in America who knows how to make it properly.” Carter had to take his word for that, never having had it before, and never, to be honest, likely to have it again. The food, he could tell, was exquisitely prepared, and most of the other guests were clearly enjoying it immensely—the man in the Arab headdress kept beaming at al-Kalli, and once bowed his head deferentially, with his eyes closed in bliss—but to Carter, whose palate was more accustomed to fast food and backyard barbecues, it was all pretty much off the charts.
Beth, however, seemed to be liking it—when it came to cuisine, she’d always been more adventurous than her husband—and all the emphasis on vegetables and yogurt and exotic herbs would, he knew, be dear to her heart. She believed in eating healthfully, and she had always contended that there were ways to do that without sacrificing the enjoyment that Carter claimed he could only experience from an ice-cold beer and a red-hot slice of greasy, New York pizza.
Carter remained unpersuaded.
When Beth wasn’t talking to al-Kalli, she was talking to the man on her left, a distinguished, silver-haired gent who appeared to have some relation to the Courtauld Institute of Art. Perhaps that was why al-Kalli had seated him next to Beth. Which did not explain why Carter had, on his own right side, an heiress from Texas who strongly believed that “if everybody’s so positive about the theory of evolution”—with a drawn-out emphasis on the word “theory”—“then why are they so afraid to teach Intelligent Design?” Because she had learned Carter was a scientist, she waited for her challenge to be refuted. And for a second, he almost did rise to the bait. He almost launched into an explanation of the difference between science and faith, between evidence and supposition, between the empirical and the assumed, between Darwin and the Bible, before reminding himself that he was off duty now, and that, no matter what you said anyway, nobody’s mind was ever changed.
“Why not indeed?” he said, and eagerly turned, though he’d never imagined such a day would come, to al-Kalli for his conversation. However sinister the man might seem, he was at least well educated and urbane. And waiting. He seemed as eager to talk to Carter as Carter was to escape the idiocy of the Texas heiress. Was this all part of al-Kalli’s clever design, too—seating him next to a buffoon, so he wouldn’t have anywhere else to turn?
“In several of your papers,” al-Kalli said, “you outlined your beliefs in the common ancestry of dinosaurs and modern-day birds. I found your arguments interesting—and not always in agreement with others in your field.”
“No, I’m not always in agreement.”
“But then, why haven’t you drawn it all together into a book? You write compellingly, and you seem to have a rare knowledge of the animal kingdom, both past and present. Has it been for want of time?”
Carter had to mull that one over. He had written a number of published papers and monographs, and he had considered—virtually every day—undertaking a major synthesis of his views, but to some extent al-Kalli was right. Carter hadn’t found the time—or more specifically, the money that would support him and his budding family—for the many months (years?) that it would take to compose and publish such a book.
“Because if finding the freedom to work on what you want is a problem, perhaps we can discuss that later.”
Carter didn’t know what he was getting at.
“My family does run a foundation—we never advertise its existence—to help with certain projects we find provocative or intriguing.”
A servant refilled the last wineglass Carter had been drinking from. Carter took the interruption to think. “Thanks very much for your interest,” he said to al-Kalli. With the way things were going with Gunderson at the Page Museum, he might be taking him up on it. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
“You do that.” Al-Kalli signaled the butler, had a few words in his ear, then stood up at the head of the table and declared that dessert would be served in the garden, “along with a small musical diversion.”
On the way out, Carter was able to sidle up to Beth and ask in a low voice if Robin needed to be relieved soon.
“No, she said she can stay as long as we need. If it’s too late, she’ll just sleep over.”
Carter had sort of been hoping it would be a problem, and that he’d be able to use this excuse to leave early. Dinner parties weren’t his favorite pastime, but if Beth was having a good time—and it looked like she was—then he’d find a way to stick it out. Even if it meant—as all indications were pointing to—sitting through a string quartet concert under the stars. The musicians were gathered in a semicircle on the edge of the courtyard, just where the stones gave way to the manicured green lawn. Little round tables had been set up, with long flowin
g linen cloths, and tiny white lights had been threaded artfully through the overhanging branches of the jacaranda trees. Thankfully, there were no place cards in evidence here, so he wouldn’t be stuck with the Texas creationist again.
He was just guiding Beth to two seats at a table with the Critchleys (better the devil you know) when al-Kalli touched him by the elbow and drew him aside. Captain Greer, Carter noted, was standing a few feet away.
“I’m wondering if you would mind forgoing the concert,” al-Kalli said, “so that I might share something—something terribly important—with you.”
Skipping the concert was fine with Carter. He told Beth he’d be back shortly, and then followed al-Kalli into the porte cochere, where he found a four-seater golf cart waiting, and Jakob, whom he’d once seen at the Getty, at the wheel. Greer sat up front, perhaps so that he’d have more room for his bad leg, and Carter got in back with al-Kalli. Carter knew they weren’t going golfing, but other than that, he was completely mystified.
As the cart took off along a graveled pathway, Carter could hear the opening strains of a classical piece that sounded, even to his musically untrained ear, like Mozart. The music wafted through the warm night air, growing fainter as they passed out of sight of the house. The cart rumbled over a wooden footbridge, past a stable where Carter could see an Arab boy leading a docile horse back into its stall. Just how vast was this estate? Carter wondered again.
They continued along, parallel to what was plainly a service drive, until they saw, emerging from a thick copse of trees, what looked to Carter like a white airplane hangar. Did al-Kalli keep his own private air force? It wouldn’t have surprised him at this point.
Bestiary Page 27
