The Looters

by Harold Robbins

  “You are one gutsy woman. Do you always tell murderers that they’re murderers, right to their faces?”

  “I’m insane.” And revved up.

  He nodded. “That, too.”

  “Why did you kill those people? Is the money really worth it?”

  He sighed. “Okay, let’s clear this up right now. Look me in the eye. Do I really strike you as someone who could kill people?”

  I looked into his probing eyes. “I think so. You look like you can be a bastard when you want to be.”

  “I forgot eyes are mirrors to the soul. So let me rephrase the question. Do I look like I’m crazy enough to blow up a building with unarmed people in it with a rocket launcher?”

  I had to think about that one. I didn’t want to believe he was a killer, but I couldn’t be sure of anything anymore. Things weren’t making any sense.

  “Who exactly is Viktor Milan? Besides a liar and bastard.”

  “Is that any way to talk to someone you made passionate love to?”

  “You’re avoiding my questions?”

  “I am an enigma.”

  “You are a shit.”

  “Okay.” He nodded and pursed his lips. “You earned the right to know. Viktor Milan is… I guess he’s what lawyers call a legal fiction. It’s a made-up name. Like Microsoft or IBM or General Motors. It’s like if your name is John Blow and you want to start a company named Jack Shit, you have to get a legal paper that says you’re John Blow doing business as Jack Shit.”

  I nodded like a bobbing doll. “Is that lecture supposed to explain anything? We’re talking murder and thievery, not Business 101. Why don’t you try plain English?”

  “That answer was supposed to point out that there are millions of people operating companies under names besides their own. Viktor Milan was created so we could do business under a prestigious international-sounding name in one of the world’s financial capitals.”

  “Wasn’t it also created so you could forge provenances without getting caught?”

  He tried to smother a smirk, but it didn’t work. “That, too.”

  “So you’re the crooked bastard that created the fraudulent provenance that ruined my life and got people killed. If I had a gun, you sonofabitch, I’d shoot you, really shoot you where it hurts.”

  That didn’t make much sense to me, either, but I was seething.

  “I haven’t killed anyone. Yet. But I’m working up to it.”

  “If you didn’t kill Lipton and the others, who did?”

  “That’s a good question. The only thing I can tell you is that it wasn’t me.”

  “You’re lying, of course, lying, lying, lying.” I shook an accusatory finger at him. “Does not compute. If you didn’t do it, you know who did. The killings all go back to your phony provenances and the looting of the Iraqi museum.”

  He made a noncommittal listening response, then said, “Since you know so much, why don’t you tell me.”

  “All right, I don’t believe you blew up Lipton’s gallery. Not personally, at least, though you might have arranged for it. But I have proof that you murdered Abdullah, the Iraqi curator.”

  He acted like I had just slapped him in the face.

  Steering me with a grip on my arm, he turned us around and started back toward the boathouse. My heart started beating faster. Had I said too much?

  “Has it occurred to you, Miss Know-It-All, that if I was a cold-blooded killer, you would be digging a hole for yourself right now?”

  The thought had occurred to me, but my life was in ruins and I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I was so frustrated, I could have thrown myself at him and beaten him with my fists. I felt tears coming, but I fought them back. “I want the truth from you.”

  “One thing I’ve learned in life is that there is more than one version of the truth in most situations. But let’s take it one a step at a time. I didn’t kill Abdullah. In fact, I saved his life once. I didn’t kill Lipton and the others. I also wasn’t aware they were going to be killed and the place torched.”

  “Tell me about Abdullah.”

  “He was a stupid old man.” He shook his head. “No, that’s unfair. He should have just kept his mouth shut. He was too…”

  “Idealistic?”

  “Yeah, a real romantic in a world without pity. He didn’t understand that no one cared about what he was willing to give his life for, not even the people in his own country. Yeah, I saved his life, but getting his head whacked didn’t teach him to keep his mouth shut. Ultimately it got him killed.”

  I stared at his SEAL cap. “How did you save his life?”

  “We’ll go into that in a moment.”

  He led me up to the boathouse and the speedboat tied up at the pier. The boat was nosed toward the bay.

  “I want you to meet some friends,” he said.

  Cold fear gripped me. It must have shown on my face. I was ready to make a run for it. He took my arm firmly and led me to the boat.

  “They’re out there,” he said.

  A large fishing boat sat in the distance.

  “Over the sunken galleon?” I asked. “Is that how you’re bringing up the treasure?”

  “Your mother apparently never told you that curiosity killed the cat. So does having a big mouth.”

  He led me aboard the speedboat.

  “Things have gotten a little more high-tech than sending down a lone diver in a diving suit. We use a million-dollar robot with cameras for eyes that probes the wreck. And we have a high-powered suction tube that can bring small items to the surface. Before we get to the point of finding treasure, we need to find the sunken vessel.

  “It used to just take a pirate’s treasure map, some quill scratches on a piece of leather by Long John Silver. Things have changed. Now we start with a vague historic record of the region where a ship went down, preferably a Spanish galleon with a bellyful of Inca and Aztec gold and silver. Almost always the history record is full of holes because where the ship went down is a matter of conjecture.”

  As he talked, he pulled in the plastic bumpers that kept the boat from rubbing against the dock.

  “Using all the clues we get from records and rumors of the day, we refine the ship’s location with GPS tracking and imaging. Once we pin down a manageable area in which to make a focused search, we use sonar, sound waves, and ground-penetrating radar to map the ocean floor for forms that fit a ship’s contours.”

  “That makes you nothing more than a high-tech thief.”

  He pretended to wince at the accusation as he started the engine. “I consider myself a savior and custodian of antiquities.”

  I screeched. “My God—you’re delusional.”

  He grabbed a beer out of a cold box in the cockpit and asked, “Beer? Soda with a little arsenic chaser?”

  “No, thanks.”

  He steered the boat toward the larger vessel in the distance. He kept the throttle low, with the boat barely making headway in the water. Obviously he wanted to talk before we reached the bigger boat.

  He peered at me again over a swig of beer. “You realize that everything I say is my word against yours.”

  I made a zipping motion across my lips. “My lips are sealed.”

  I didn’t volunteer that I’d already used his name in vain in a voice-mail message to an FBI agent.

  “You’re lying again,” he said, “but after falling in love with you, I find myself completely at your mercy.”

  “You’re confusing lust with love. And I’m sorry I made love with a thief and a murderer.” Good girl, Madison; that should help your present hopeless situation.

  “All right, let’s deal with your uninformed prejudices. There’s a ship out in the bay, at the bottom. It went down around three hundred years ago with a rich cargo. No one cares about it. It sits at the bottom of the bay, covered by sand. Lost, ignored, abandoned, no one to love it.”

  “You love it. At least the rich cargo.”

  “My motives are not important. My
job is to find the sunken galleon. After I find it, to recover the treasure—”

  “Treasure to you, precious cultural relics to the people of Spain.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Okay, let’s deal with that theory. You think of me as a thief. I see myself as another Lord Elgin.”

  I burst out laughing. I howled. “You are delusional.”

  “Lord Elgin was the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire in the early 1800s. At the time, the vast Turkish empire, ruled by a sultan in Istanbul, included Greece, along with much of the rest of the Balkans.”

  “I’m familiar with the Elgin tale. And historical geography.”

  “I should have thought of that myself, you being a… what did you call yourself? A pimp?”

  “Bastard.”

  “Let me refresh your memory. While he was visiting Athens, Elgin saw the Parthenon and other irreplaceable relics of Western civilization deteriorating and even being deliberately damaged. He watched soldiers use marble sculptures thousands of years old as target practice for their muskets. At an earlier time, when Venice was fighting the Ottoman Empire, the Parthenon was used as a powder magazine by the Turks. It blew up, destroying the center of the building.”

  I finished it for him. “So Elgin grabbed everything he could and shipped it off to Britain.”

  “Shipped it off where it is safe and sound today in the British Museum, rather than being damaged and destroyed by war, theft, and neglect. The world can appreciate irreplaceable works done thousands of years ago because Lord Elgin saved them. The marble reliefs are there, along with a lot of other priceless antiquities like the Rosetta Stone, which provided the key to reading ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs.”

  “Are you aware there are a few million Greeks who believe that those antiquities belong back in Greece? Not to mention that I’m sure the Rosetta Stone is just one of a long list of antiquities the Egyptians would like to see returned.”

  “Sure, like the Semiramis and the dozens of other artifacts you have at the Piedmont.”

  “Those were bought legitimately. Not stolen from the people of the Middle East.”

  He scoffed. “Where were those millions of people when their country was being destroyed by war, looting, and neglect?”

  I raised my eyebrows. “Helpless? Hungry?”

  “Exactly, but that’s not an excuse. You know that probably fifteen thousand artifacts were looted from the Iraqi museum.”

  I nodded. “While the literary heritage of the nation burned in the national library.”

  “My recollection was that Saddam’s boys trashed the library to hide evidence against him and them. Apparently modern history of his atrocities was stored there, too. But let’s get back to the fifteen thousand museum artifacts. Let’s assume that some dudes did rip off—”

  “You’re one of the dudes.”

  “—a few items, even some very valuable ones. That left about fourteen thousand, nine hundred for the local mob to steal and/or destroy.”

  We were still only halfway to the fishing vessel. My paranoia was growing. What was he going to do once we got there? He and his modern-day pirates could murder me and feed me to the sharks. No body, no proof of a crime.

  “Is this going to be one of those no corpus delicti things?” I asked.

  Chapter 42

  “A what?”

  “Are you going to murder me and dump my body in the sea so I’ll never be found? If you’re not, would you please mind telling me what’s going on?”

  He took another swig of beer. “Okay. Here’s the bottom line. As you can see from my cap, I was once a Navy SEAL. So were my partners, all except Gwyn, but she was also Navy and is half-fish. You’re going to meet them shortly.” He waved the beer bottle at the fishing boat. “There were five of us SEALs, all part of the same unit. I told you what a SEAL is.”

  “Some kind of frogman. Only you fight everywhere.” I wondered if Gwyn was his girlfriend.

  “Yeah, that’s about it. To wear the trident, the insignia of a SEAL, means you’ve survived the toughest military training in the world.”

  “I guess they train you to kill in more ways than any other soldiers. That should make you very proud.”

  “Yeah, it does, especially when some wiseass civilian who I’ve protected from foreign enemies wants to get sarcastic.”

  “What foreign enemies have you and your pals protected me from?”

  “That big bad wolf Saddam. We were in Desert Storm and Desert Sabre, the first Gulf War.” He grinned. “We got into a little trouble during that one.”

  “Uh-huh. A little trouble as in…?”

  “You have to understand. It’s hard to be part of the sea, to have salt water in your blood, and not have a fascination for sunken treasure. It goes with the territory. When we were in the Persian Gulf, we heard stories about ships that had gone down over the centuries carrying treasure. The Gulf was once famous for its pearls. Gwyn, who was a Navy communications officer, did some research and found the record of a shipment of pearls that were being sent from a potentate in Baghdad to an Indian raja as a wedding gift. We located the wreck and recovered the pearls.”

  I shrugged and shook my head. “That doesn’t sound too bad. I thought you were going to tell me you stole Saddam’s gold or something.”

  “We didn’t think it was so bad, but the Navy got its nose bent out of shape because we used Navy time and equipment to locate the wreck and recover the pearls.”

  “Oh, I see. You did it illegally. While other people were fighting a war, you were out diving for treasure with assets that the military needed.” I thought using the word “assets” gave a nice touch to my sarcasm. I’d heard talking-head generals on TV use the word.

  “Something like that, though it wasn’t much of a war. The brass were more annoyed because we wouldn’t turn over the pearls.”

  “So you got a court-martial.”

  “No, that would have given the SEALs a black eye. We parted company with the Navy with general discharges. There was too much pirate and adventure in us, anyway. The regimentation in the military is a killer, especially with a war that turned out to be all show but no go.

  “But because of the salt water in our blood, we had to keep our feet wet. We learned a lot about deep-sea diving and recovery while in the Navy, tech stuff that civilians would only learn at a world-class oceanography institute like Cousteau or Woods Hole. It would have been a shame to let all that knowledge go to waste. And we also borrowed some equipment before we left.”

  I nodded at the fishing boat we were slowly approaching. “And you used the stolen equipment to find sunken treasure. Illegally.”

  “That’s an interesting word. It doesn’t always mean the same thing wherever you go. You can say something in New York that gets you a laugh, whereas in North Korea they shoot you. The Spanish consider what we’re doing illegal. We don’t.”

  “You decide what laws you’ll obey.”

  “We decide what laws are reasonable. Do you know anything about the laws of the sea concerning salvaging sunken treasure?”

  I shook my head. “Not really.”

  “For the eight or ten or how many thousands of years we’ve had ships on the sea, the law has been real simple—finder’s keepers. If you can find it and recover it off the bottom of the ocean, it’s yours. Then some political genius decided that if the wreck was in the three-mile, or twelve-mile, or whatever limit they said their nation’s boundaries extended out to sea, they still had jurisdiction over it. Ever hear of Spanish ships called Juno and La Galga?”

  I pleaded ignorance again.

  “They both went down off the coast of Virginia, one in 1750, the other in 1802. We’re talking about wood galleons that have been on the bottom of the sea for two hundred to two hundred and fifty years. When salvagers located them, the Spanish government sued in a U.S. court, claiming the ships still belonged to them.”

  “Who won?”

  “The Spanish. The scenario even gets crazier. A
bout one hundred and fifty years ago, a paddle wheel steamer went down in deep water a couple hundred miles out to sea. It was carrying an enormous amount of gold from the California gold rush. It took about twenty years of clever thought, planning, raising millions of dollars, and raw courage to find the wreck in water eight thousand feet deep. When they brought up the gold, thirty-nine insurance companies were waiting to put claims on it.”

  He shook his head. “The bottom line is that there are too many governments making too many rules. All individual initiative is suppressed. We once had people who trekked pathless jungles, climbed the highest mountains; now most people are couch potatoes who watch TV reality shows about people lost on deserted islands—beachcombers who are followed around by a camera crew, of course. Look at the guys who sailed around the world in a balloon for the first time. Instead of cheering them, there were threats from some countries that they would be shot down if they flew over.”

  “You are a common thief of uncommon things. Just another tomb raider.”

  “So what’s an archaeologist but a tomb raider? You think King Tut’s mummy likes it any better because the guy who violated his tomb had a college degree? What’s a museum curator but just one more link in the chain of antiquities that have been ripped out of tombs with and without government permission? And this crap about not touching any ship that has gone down anywhere anytime in history. Hell, most of the countries that sent out those ships a thousand or two thousand years ago aren’t even in existence anymore. And the ones that are just let the stuff sit there rotting until someone with guts brings it up.”

  I said, “There are billions of people in this world. If we don’t have rules, we’ll have to live by the laws of the jungle. That’s fine… if you happen to be a muscle-bound ex—surfing bum.”

  “Ouch! Anyway, I’m not objecting to rules; it’s the chains I don’t like.”

  “So looting the Iraqi museum was an expression of your individual right to do what you wanted regardless of the law.”

  “We didn’t loot the museum. We went there and saved and preserved priceless artifacts.”