The Shroud

by Harold Robbins

  “Not enough to get killed for,” I said. “Why did you have your friend try to kill me?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Have you ever seen me resort to violence?”

  I had to admit, I hadn’t personally seen him harm anyone, but death seemed to follow in his wake.

  I heard Turkish voices and music in the background. He was in a bar.

  “You don’t seemed surprised to hear that someone tried to kill me.”

  “Perhaps you should look closer to your own activities. You’re flirting with danger with your new friend.”

  I sucked in a deep breath.

  The only person who had seen me with Yuri was Vahid. I was sure now that Lipton told Vahid to terminate me.

  The line went dead.

  I pressed the receive button and then went to the received calls menu. The call from Lipton was recorded there, but it wouldn’t ring back.

  26

  I left the pizza shop and walked briskly back to the bed-and-breakfast, angry and working off nervous energy.

  I didn’t know what to make of the conversation with Lipton, but one thing was loud and clear—he made a mistake when he admitted knowing about Yuri. That was why he suddenly hung up.

  The webs that I was getting tangled in whipped up that free-flowing anxiety and sense of dread that I’d had since a man tried to strangle me in my apartment.

  For the hundredth time I cursed my stupidity for getting mixed up in one of Lipton’s schemes again. Play with the devil and you’ll get burnt, as the saying goes. And if it isn’t a saying, it should be.

  I felt squeezed between a rock and a hard spot.

  Good sense told me I should go back to New York and pure fright reminded me that there were people in New York who wanted me dead—and they didn’t even know me.

  One thing I did know—I wasn’t going to permit myself to be staked out anymore as bait. Going on with the quest was imperative. Not for the money—I no longer had any illusions that I would actually get millions of dollars. Nor did I feel I had to do any more to earn what I’d gotten up to now—being strangled and having a truck roll over me were priceless.

  I was going to continue taking my own path. Even if Lipton called back, I’d find some way to evade him, putting him off while I checked things out myself. And I was going to start immediately.

  Ismet mentioned that the Image was transferred to Istanbul. If so, it would have come into the custody of the patriarch of Constantinople about a thousand years ago. The patriarch had been considered first among the heads of the Eastern Orthodox denominations, the pope in Rome being the patriarch of the Western church.

  The fact that the transfer took place a millennium ago didn’t matter. One thing about religious organizations—they were museums of religious artifacts and religious traditions. If anyone alive knew about the Image, it would be scholars in Istanbul’s patriarch organization.

  When I got back to the bed-and-breakfast, I asked the woman at the front desk how I could contact the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Istanbul. Fortunately, I was in a tourist establishment and it wasn’t the first time she’d been asked the question.

  “It’s still called the Patriarchate of Constantinople, not Istanbul,” she said.

  I had assumed that the official name of the sect had been changed when the name of the city was changed.

  “They call the residency and headquarters of the patriarch the Phanar. It’s the Orthodox equivalent of the Vatican in Rome. It’s not far from the Sultanahmet. I can give instructions to a taxi driver for you.”

  “Can you make a phone call for me first? I need a Turkish speaker to call the Phanar for me. I don’t think I’d get far with English.”

  I explained that I wanted to set up a meeting at the Phanar with an English-speaking scholar who could discuss an icon called the Mandylion.

  “Tell them I’m doing an article for a magazine. I’ll be happy to pay a fee, give a donation, or whatever they like. But I need to have the meeting as soon as possible.”

  Thirty minutes and five phone calls later, a meeting was set up with a Father Dimitrios for nine o’clock in the morning. I tried for that evening, but got nowhere.

  I gave her a hundred-dollar tip from my expense money and went to my room. The tip was more than the tariff for the room, but she had earned it with her insistence over the phone.

  I was drained and having another attack of free-flowing anxiety because I felt something wasn’t right.

  I was in Istanbul, hiding out in a hotel, and had made a serious step toward unraveling some of the mystery that had entangled me.

  Things were going too well.

  There had to be a catch.

  27

  Lipton hung up from talking to Maddy and uttered a foul description of her that ended in “slut.”

  He spoke the accusation out loud but no one seemed to care. He was in a crowded cellar bar that had a gay clientele and was almost shoulder to shoulder with birds of a feather who as far as he could tell, all spoke Turkish.

  In fact, so far no one seemed to have understood anything he said, not even when he told one fellow that he looked like José Ferrer and asked him if he wanted to repeat the movie rape scene in which Ferrer, playing a Turkish bey, inferably rapes Lawrence of Arabia after capturing the British officer. Lipton even volunteered to play Lawrence, but the man simply stared at him.

  Old age. I’m not as attractive as I once was, he lamented.

  Lipton ordered a martini by pointing at bottles.

  Like many native English speakers, he was spoiled by the widespread use of his own language around the world and had come to expect that most people in the world spoke some English.

  He attributed the lack of English in the bar to its working-class patrons. If he stayed in Istanbul much longer, he’d have to go to an Internet café and check out gay bars with a higher-class patronage.

  Part of his prejudice about a blue-collar bar was due to his own background, which was more akin to the men around him in the bar than the milieu of high social prominence and a knighthood he had enjoyed before that world came crashing down.

  He had been born and raised in an industrial working-class neighborhood of Liverpool. His father worked as a laborer in a food canning plant. Lipton tried to avoid the same fate by boxing, doing well in amateur matches in his teens, but had ended up having to get a steady job.

  He loaded and unloaded delivery trucks, until one of his deliveries had brought him into contact with the owner of an art gallery in a better part of the city. The gallery owner had recognized several things in Lipton—he was gay, desperate for a better life, and sharp … and he was capable of being completely ruthless.

  The man took him in as his lover and apprentice.

  From that helping hand, Henry Lipton, later to be Sir Henri Lipton, rose to dominate the world of Mediterranean antiquities.

  Along the way, he abandoned the man who had launched him, rewrote the history of his early life, and applied his innate ruthlessness to his best advantage.

  All that success had culminated in Lipton believing he was untouchable. And caused him to get even more aggressive about how he acquired the artifacts he sold.

  The difference between antiquities legally traded and contraband ones tended to be murky. If the item came out of the ground from one of the great archeological venues such as Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Greece before the twentieth century, it probably made its way legally to collectors in New York, London, or Paris because many countries then didn’t have laws banning the export of their cultural artifacts.

  Even after laws were instituted banning the export of historically significant antiquities, the distinction between legal and illegal items was still hazy because of their very nature.

  A three-thousand-year-old Roman vase found intentionally by looters digging at night at a known archeological site—or even dug up accidentally by workers—in Italy and smuggled out to be sold for millions in another country had no history
of ownership, had never been cataloged by a museum or a government agency, and was completely unknown to the world until it appeared on an auction table in London or New York.

  The seller, of course, would have to provide the buyer with a provenance—an ownership history showing that the vase left Italy prior to the enactment of that country’s laws prohibiting the export of antiquities … but it wasn’t difficult to construct a fraudulent provenance because most of the alleged owners were long dead and the current one was getting a piece of the action.

  It was a dirty little system in which collectors and museums all knew they were turning a blind eye, but justified it on the grounds that, more often than not, the items being smuggled out were from third world countries that were incapable of preserving them.

  The argument, of course, fell on deaf ears in a first world country like Italy that works hard to preserve its cultural history.

  With the demand for antiquities far greater than the supply, and the amounts offered commonly being in the tens of millions of dollars for good pieces, the temptation to venture into overt smuggling and forged provenances was too much for a man of Lipton’s fragile financial morality.

  Lipton dove right in without realizing the water was shallow and that a big rock was waiting to hit him on the head.

  The “rock” turned out to be a violent madman who destroyed his gallery, his reputation, and nearly his life, and brought him to this point in life … to a working-class bar in Istanbul, hiding from people who wanted something from him, and were just as ruthless about getting it as Lipton had been.

  Lipton had found the bar through a man at his hotel, but knew enough to be discreet about his sexual preference in the city. Homosexuality wasn’t illegal in Turkey; it was tolerated rather than wholly accepted. He was told public exhibits of it, though, could result in arrest under vaguely worded “public morality” laws.

  Lipton already had downed three double vodka martinis and was working on a fourth.

  The alcohol turned his face red, igniting the rosacea that inflamed the cheeks of many pale-skinned Britons and other northern Europeans. It also made the traces of subtle scars, from the plastic surgery he underwent after escaping the inferno at his gallery, more noticeable.

  “Buy me a drink?”

  He turned to face a young man who had slipped up beside him at the crowded bar.

  Lipton gave him the once-over—about twenty-five, thin build, a few pockmarks on his face from some childhood malady, a gold chain around his neck, tight-fitting shiny black pants and shirt.

  He instantly tagged him as a type he’d seen in dozens of bars in the past: a prostitute.

  “Thank God someone in this place speaks English.”

  Lipton waved over the bartender and the young man ordered an expensive brandy.

  “Kemal,” the young man said, offering a handshake.

  Lipton took it and said, “Smith. How much English do you speak?”

  “Little bit.” He gave Lipton’s hand a caress before he let go.

  The touch from the attractive youth sent a tingle through Lipton.

  “You live in city?” Kemal asked.

  “No. Here on business.”

  “What business?”

  “Plastics,” Lipton said. “I’m sure I know what yours is. The oldest one in the Bible.”

  Kemal didn’t get the reference and Lipton shook his head. “An old English expression.”

  As Lipton stood at the bar and talked to the prostitute, he realized how old and tired he suddenly felt. Maybe it was the liquor. He had always been hyperactive. He had boxed in college, a one-hundred-and-eighteen-pound bantamweight, though the years had added twenty-five more pounds. Even now, he wasn’t flabby. He still exercised and prided himself on being quick on his feet for a man showing his age of sixty-two.

  Right now he felt depressed and in need of some tender loving care. TLC with a price tag had to suffice when nothing else was available.

  “I live close,” Kemal told him.

  Lipton paid for a bottle of the brandy the young man favored and followed him out of the bar.

  The bar was warm and the liquor had hit him, but as Lipton came into the cool night, he stopped and took deep breaths to get his feet steady under him. He was a seasoned drinker and he quickly had command of his head and legs again.

  Light rain had fallen earlier and a mist was still falling as he walked beside the young Turk.

  Kemal led Lipton up the street, chatting aimlessly about how he learned English from a teacher from Birmingham who had taken payment for the lessons in bed.

  As they stepped into an alley, Kemal suddenly bolted as two men came at Lipton.

  Lipton spun around as they grabbed him. One of the men slipped on the wet pavement and let go and went down, cursing in a language Lipton didn’t understand but knew wasn’t Turkish.

  The other man got a hold of him, getting an arm around his neck.

  Lipton twisted in the grip and his attacker let up the pressure as he lost traction on the slippery pavement.

  Lipton, smaller and shorter and thus harder to hold, managed to twist all the way around until he faced the man.

  As they came face-to-face, Lipton brought his fist straight up, putting his weight into it, connecting with the man’s jaw.

  The uppercut sent his assailant falling backwards over his partner, who was getting back on his feet.

  Lipton ran like hell—back to the main street and down the sidewalk in the direction of the only open business in the area, the cellar bar.

  Half a block down the street, the engine of a van parked at the curb revved and headlights came at him as Lipton dashed across the street to the side where the bar was located.

  The van skidded to a stop by him and two men leaped out as he ran down the sidewalk.

  Lipton swerved back onto the street, right in front of the van, dodging an oncoming car that laid on its horn as it almost hit him.

  He got back to the sidewalk and down the steps of the bar, nearly losing his footing, and bursting through the cellar.

  Conversation in the bar froze as the men stared at him.

  Catching his breath, he stared for a moment, and then grinned. “Drinks on the house.”

  Through some magic of linguistics, the phrase was understood by everyone in the bar.

  He pulled the brandy bottle out of his coat, uncapped it, and took a deep swig.

  Lipton knew his pursuers wouldn’t follow him into the bar. They weren’t Turks and would get quickly away to avoid the police. He hadn’t recognized their language, but he had a pretty good guess.

  Chechens. Karina’s thugs.

  They weren’t out to kill him—they wanted him alive. The little bitch wanted him in her claws.

  She wanted him very badly.

  He knew why. There was nothing personal about it. He simply had something she wanted.

  He had the key.

  Lipton had to make sure that he was the only one who did.

  Bringing Madison Dupre into his scheme had definitely been a mistake, he realized that now. He only chose her because he knew she was broke. He should have known better. She was too sharp to be taken in by the red herrings he had laid out.

  She still was in the dark; he knew that from their phone conversation. But she was up on the fact that he had been the choreographer of her near demise in Urfa.

  In short, Madison had leaped far ahead of where he had wanted her to be and had been dickering, if not actually plotting, with that Russian.

  He couldn’t afford to have an assistant whom he couldn’t dupe and lead around by a ring in her nose.

  28

  I dragged myself out of bed to find out it was dark outside and I was hungry again.

  When I came downstairs to go out and get something to eat, a surprise was waiting in the small lobby.

  “You’re like a disease,” I told Yuri, “an antibiotic-resistant, flesh-eating bacteria. Why aren’t you home with your wife and four kids?” />
  He grinned at her. “Actually my wife left me before we had the four children.”

  “Smart woman.”

  “All women are smart. That’s why I can’t find another one to marry me.”

  “Is there any chance it’s merely an incredible coincidence that you turned up at the same gin joint as me?”

  He blinked. “Gin joint?”

  “Never mind, it’s a line out of the movie Casablanca and I probably butchered it anyway. I hope you’ve come to tell me that you finally got your bosses in Moscow to live up to your promises to me and I can return home without being murdered.”

  “Ha! Even better—we have reservations at an excellent restaurant that is both romantic and unique.”

  “I hope it’s not my last supper,” I groaned.

  He gave me another strange look. I guess American gallows humor didn’t translate into Russian.

  “The restaurant’s walking distance,” he told me outside.

  “Apparently, instead of leaving no scent for bloodhounds, like Hansel and Gretel, I left a trail of bread crumbs right to my door.”

  He didn’t get it, and I decided to let up on the humor.

  The Sarnic restaurant was beneath the street by the Hagia Sophia, walking distance from my hotel. It was a delight.

  “It used to be a cistern to hold water for the city during Roman times, sixteen hundred years ago,” Yuri said.

  The walls were brick, while massive marble columns held up the high ceiling. Built by hand from earthy materials of brick and marble nearly two millenniums ago, it was still a solid structure, standing strong and proud.

  No question—it had been an ancient underground water storage area. But now it oozed with old-fashioned romanticism—a roaring fireplace, a piano player, wood tables and chairs, black wrought-iron dividers, and candles—hundreds and hundreds of candles, scattered all over.

  The candles flickered mystifying light and shadows on the iron grillwork, brick domes, and stone pillars. The fire and piano music added to the enchantment.