On her far-flung trips with Rafi, Peggy had become an accomplished archaeological photographer, and she had landed more than enough freelance assignments, contributing pictures to the New York Times Travel Magazine, Bon Appétit, National Geographic and half a dozen other periodicals.
But something was missing, and Peggy knew exactly what it was: she craved the adrenaline rush of the truly unknown. Since coming back from Africa and losing track of her cousin Doc, she’d missed the…excitement and adventure that seemed to follow the ex–U.S. Army Ranger. It had been like that even when she was a girl.
It was Doc who’d taught her not to be afraid of heights and had calmly and efficiently taught her the skills of rock climbing in the Adirondacks. It was Doc who’d also taught her to hunt and fish and use a gun.
It was their uncle Henry the professor who’d given Peggy her first camera and taught her how to use it, but it was Doc who’d given her the courage to reach the places where’d she’d taken the first photographs that really mattered to her: the summit of Mount Skylight, the fourth-highest mountain in the Adirondacks; at sunset, a lone gray wolf in the winter at Yellowstone; and a hibernating twelve-hundred-pound Kodiak bear in Alaska. It was Doc who’d started her on a lifelong quest for adventure, and somehow she knew the quest wasn’t over yet.
One thing was sure: no one was going to find the adventure of a lifetime on the main street of Torquay. So, at the next corner, she turned left, away from the sea, and began climbing a narrow residential street of low attached bungalow-style dwellings that climbed up a seriously steep hill. It was not the most likely path to any kind of adventure at all, but the kids in the Narnia books had found it through a cupboard door, and Harry Potter had found it on platform 9¾ in King’s Cross Station, so you never really knew, then, did you? Anyway, the exercise would do her good; she’d had one too many orders of ye olde fish and chips in the past few days.
There were a few shops on her way up the street; the English version of a 7-Eleven, with ads for fruity-flavored vodka coolers in the window. There was a hairstylist called British Hairways, where the customers under their dryers looked as though they were all in their eighties. And a prosthetic store called Lend You a Hand had a single bright pink artificial leg in an otherwise empty window. Peggy would probably find the Bates Motel around the next bend.
What she did find was Weatherby and Sons Auction House, a ragtag assembly of a plastered bungalow attached to something at the rear that might have been a two-story carriage house turned into a commercial garage and a third stumpy-looking building with a pair of firmly closed barn-sized doors.
Between the stumpy building and the garage lay a paved driveway that seemed to be doubling as a parking lot. At the end of the drive there was an overhead aluminum door, slid three-quarters open. The roll-up door had a sign over it that read AUCTION TODAY. The car in the parking lot was a Jaguar XKR convertible, this year’s model. The auction business was doing well by somebody. Peggy turned down the drive and ducked under the aluminum door.
The interior of the auction house was like the biggest, most chaotic yard sale in the world: rowboats sat in the rafters; chandeliers and harpoons were hanging from the beams; a stack of twisted narwhal tusks lay in one corner along with an equal number of ancient-looking bamboo fly rods and an enormous stuffed Scottish stag with a rack of eighteen-point antlers. The stag looked dusty, the glass eyes cloudy. Probably not a lot of buyers for stuffed giant Scottish stags in these days of fiscal responsibility. There was a stage at the front of the hall, with perhaps a hundred or so folding chairs in front of it, most of them filled with people waving numbered paddles around as they bid on one item after another. Easels were set up on the stage to display works of art. There were a movable display wall full of hanging musical instruments and several tables with smaller and medium-sized objects to be sold. The auctioneer stood at a podium in the center of the stage, and a crew of workers, male and female, carted things on and off the raised platform. An old man with grizzled stubble and thin hair slicked back with something that looked like Vaseline handed her a paddle and said, “There you go, dearie. Have fun.” Then he pointed her to an empty seat at the end of an aisle halfway to the auction stage. She took her seat and noticed that the number on her paddle was 666—not a particularly auspicious number for someone who’d shivered her way through all five of the Omen movies.
The items went by quickly: six Regency chairs for twenty-two hundred pounds, the lot; a Georgian silver porringer for a thousand; a Royal Winton circus jug for three hundred sixty pounds…. The list went on and on. Throughout every lot that went up, Peggy noticed that the paddle in the lap of the man beside her never twitched. He was in his fifties, with the high cheekbones and dark deep-set eyes of a Russian or a Slav. His hair was too long—well over his nape. But his salt-and-pepper beard was perfectly groomed, and his suit looked very expensive. The man’s hands were strong, well-manicured, but with the raw knuckles and the calluses of someone who had spent a lot of time outdoors. He certainly didn’t give the impression of someone who’d be interested in silver porridge pots. After fifteen minutes, he made a frustrated grunting sound, stood up and left.
The next lot was a hodgepodge of household effects from a man named Raleigh Miller, who, according to the auctioneer, had lived to the ripe old age of one hundred ten in a room at the back of the Hole in the Wall Pub on Park Lane for as long as anyone could remember. He would come down to the pub each evening for a bottle of Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout and an order of fish and chips, both of which he took back to his room.
The room must have been sparsely furnished because there weren’t too many household goods being offered and even fewer being auctioned. The final lot was a small steel footlocker, padlocked and rusted shut with a faded first-class travel sticker that said RMSP ALMANZORA. The apparent journey the box had taken was from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Southampton, arriving on August 26, 1928. Peggy did the math. If Miller had been a hundred ten years old when he had died, that meant he was been born in 1903. He’d been just twenty-five years old when he had departed on the RMSP Almanzora. What had a twenty-five-year-old British kid been doing in Uruguay, and where had he gotten the money for a first-class cabin? Interesting questions. The first price from the podium was two pounds. Peggy held up her paddle. No one else bid, once, twice, thrice, and it was hers. She went down to the stage, paid her two pounds, filled out the appropriate paperwork and received her prize. It weighed a ton, and Peggy asked if they could call her a taxi; walking back to the convention center would have been an impossibility. Not only did they call her a cab—they put the box on a little hand truck and called one of the younger assistants to haul it out to the curb for her.
“You know anything about this old guy Miller?” Peggy asked as they went up the main aisle.
“He was a bit of a loon, I know. Least, that’s what my uncle told me.”
“Your uncle?”
“Bert. He’s one of the barmen at the Hole in the Wall.”
“Why did your uncle Bert think he was crazy?”
“He was forever getting newspapers, not proper English ones but foreign—the El Observadorio or something. And A Vozey da Serra, sounded like.”
“Interesting,” said Peggy.
They reached the roll-up doors and went out into the sunlight. The dark man who’d sat beside her briefly in the auction room was smoking a cigarette, leaning on the rear fender of the Jag. He watched silently as the young assistant tipped the box off the hand truck and eased it onto the pavement.
“There you go, missus,” said the assistant. When she took a heavy one-pound coin and pressed it into the young man’s hand, he handed it back. “Not necessary, missus, but thank you all the same.” The young man smiled at her and headed inside the auction hall.
Peggy smiled back; it was the most politeness she’d received from a stranger since she’d done a photo essay for the New York Times Magazine on the Amish.
“How much did you pay fo
r the box?” asked the man leaning on the Jaguar. His accent was cultured but definitely Eastern European. At a guess she’d have thought Russian or maybe Czech. Whatever the accent, she didn’t like the tone.
“Why do you care?” Peggy responded.
“It should have been mine.”
“You weren’t there to bid on it.”
“A call of nature,” said the man.
“Well, I can’t help that,” said Peggy. She looked up the street, wishing the taxi would come.
“The box should have been mine,” the man repeated, a little more insistently.
“You mentioned that,” said Peggy.
“I will pay you for it,” said the man.
“I’m not selling it.”
“I will give you a hundred pounds for it. You will make a profit.”
“I don’t want a profit,” said Peggy, irritated. “I want the box, and it’s not for sale.” Why the hell did the guy with the Jaguar want a footlocker from 1928?
The taxi arrived, a boxy red Renault minivan with PRICE FIRST TAXI on the sliding door. The driver got out, opened the sliding door and hauled the footlocker inside. The man leaning on the Jaguar stepped forward and handed Peggy a business card.
“If you change your mind,” said the man. “My cell phone number is there. Anytime, day or night. I will await your call.” The last bit had a slightly sinister edge to it, as though something bad would happen if the call didn’t come.
“Don’t lose any sleep waiting.” Peggy took the card and got into the cab.
“Where to, missus?” the cabbie asked.
“Palace Hotel, please,” said Peggy.
“Right you are, missus.” The cab moved off.
Peggy looked at the card:
Dimitri Antonin Rogov
Expeditions
Custos Thesauri
“Custos Thesauri?” Rafi Wanounou laughed, staring at the card Peggy had handed him. “That’s ripe coming from a man like Dimitri Rogov! Latro Thesauri would be more like it.” They sat at the breakfast table in their room at the Palace Hotel, the rusty footlocker between them.
“So what does it mean? Who is he?” Peggy asked her archaeologist husband.
“Custos Thesauri means “keeper, or guardian, of the treasure” in Latin. Latro Thesauri is the opposite: the “thief of treasures.” Dimitri Rogov would make Lara Croft look like an amateur and your beloved Indiana Jones a bumbling boob.”
“How dare you cast aspersions on my secret love!” Peggy laughed. “You should look so good in a beat-up fedora.”
“You’re sounding more like my mother every day,” said Rafi, smiling back. The truth was, of course, that when Rafi had brought home a girl named Peggy Blackstock, his mother hadn’t been impressed. He told her the name in Yiddish was Schwarzekuh, but that didn’t seem to help much either.
“Seriously though,” said Rafi, “Rogov is infamous. He’s a tomb robber, a smuggler, a forger and an all-around thief. If he wants something, he’ll do just about anything to get it.”
“Well,” said Peggy, “maybe we should find out what’s inside.”
It took the better part of an hour. A hammer and chisel borrowed from hotel maintenance, as well as spraying around the edges of the lid with something called Cillit Bang, which came in a bottle with a bright pink label, finally did the trick.
The first thing out of the footlocker was the bundle of very frail-looking pinkish notebooks with faded designs on the covers. Rafi gently cut and removed the string. Then, putting on a pair of the latex gloves that he carried with him everywhere, he carefully opened the top notebook.
“Benn-zonna!” Rafi swore, his eyes widening as he stared down at the words in faint sepia-colored ink.
Being the Private Journals of
Lt. Col. (R.A) Percival Harrison Fawcett
in Search of the Lost City of Z
“I think it’s time we gave your cousin a call,” said Rafi slowly. “I think we’re going to need him.”
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Valley of the Templars ts-7 Page 25
