by Davis Bunn
GOLD of KINGS
GOLD of KINGS
A NOVEL
Davis Bunn
A Howard / Touchstone Book
PUBLISHED BY SIMON & SCHUSTER
NEW YORK LONDON TORONTO SYDNEY
Published by Howard Books and Touchstone Books,
divisions of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.
Gold of Kings © 2009 by Davis Bunn
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Touchstone Subsidiary Rights Department, Simon & Schuster, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008043705
ISBN-13: 978-1-4391-6396-2
ISBN-10: 1-4391-6396-0
HOWARD, TOUCHSTONE, and colophons are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Edited by David Lambert
Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonandSchuster.com
TO PAUL AND MARION FIDDES
Your wisdom and example have enlarged our vision
more than you will ever know.
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FIVE
THIRTY-SIX
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-EIGHT
THIRTY-NINE
FORTY
FORTY-ONE
FORTY-TWO
FORTY-THREE
FORTY-FOUR
FORTY-FIVE
FORTY-SIX
FORTY-SEVEN
FORTY-EIGHT
FORTY-NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY-ONE
FIFTY-TWO
FIFTY-THREE
FIFTY-FOUR
FIFTY-FIVE
FIFTY-SIX
FIFTY-SEVEN
FIFTY-EIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Researching this story has been the work of dreams, and the people who helped shape the tale include a number of new friends. Among them is Jane A. Levine, formerly the assistant federal prosecutor of New York, now vice president of compliance at Sotheby’s. The importance of Jane’s input cannot be overstated. Also helping with research on the international trade in art and treasures was Judy Oppel, director of the Palm Beach Art and Antiquities Fair, and her assistant, Caitland MacEntyre. My thanks also to James Sheeran, Publisher of Palm Beach Society magazine. And a very special note of gratitude to Herbert Horsley, proprietor of the Trafalgar Square antiques shop in Vero Beach, and one of the nation’s leading collectors of fore-edged books. Thanks must also go to my mother, Becky Bunn, an expert in the American Jacobean movement, for instilling in me a love of all things old and rare and beautiful.
Debbie Bernstein, a former CIA operative now with DOD intel, has helped immensely in shaping today’s Washington scene and Interpol’s connection. Brian Hunter, former AF special ops, has aided considerably in getting the feel as well as the vision of our most highly trained hunters. Thanks also to James P. Wynne, special agent with the FBI.
Bob Marx is one of the world’s most highly acclaimed treasure hunters. His help was invaluable, and his tales a treasure trove. His wife, Jennifer, is a renowned expert in the molecular sourcing of ancient gold artifacts. Mel Fisher’s entire organization went out of their way to assist in structuring a true-to-life overview of the modern treasure salvage business. Thanks also to Dr. Alan Marumoto, a radiologist whose weekend passion is aiding in finding underwater wrecks, and to Tom Morrisey, editor of Sport Diver magazine.
Roberta Harris-Eckstein is chief librarian at the Leo Baeck College. Her assistance was vital in several areas, especially in the accurate portrayal of early Judaic history, the contents of the Copper Scroll, and Josephus’ description of the Second Temple.
There was considerable difficulty in knowing which names to use for cities in what is now Turkish Cyprus. Even the locals seemed to switch back and forth between the former Greek names and the newer Turkish ones. The older the inhabitant, the more he tended to rely on the Greek. In most cases, I have stuck to the modern Turkish renditions. But in one case, Kyrenia, I have avoided the Turkish name of Girne. The reason is simply that almost all the locals I spoke with kept to the Greek name. Like everything else attached to the island’s current tragic state, any such decision is going to raise the hackles of some people somewhere. I can only say that no offense was intended. Cyprus was one of the most breathtakingly beautiful places I have ever visited. Wherever I went, I was met with a hospitality that humbled me. The very earth seemed to breathe history, as though the past four thousand years walked alongside me. I have tried to instill in this story a bit of the wonder I discovered while visiting that amazing land.
I am deeply indebted to Dave Lambert, for his gentle skills as editor and guide through the publishing process. I am also most grateful to others within Simon & Schuster who have contributed so much, particularly John Howard, Denny Boultinghouse, and Mark Gompertz.
And to my wife, Isabella, who has encouraged me through yet another mystery quest, I can only offer my heartfelt thanks and love.
ONE
THE RAIN PELTING SEVENTH AVENUE tasted of diesel and big-city friction. Sean Syrrell stared out the limo’s open window and let the day weep for him.
Sean gripped his chest with one hand, trying to compress his heart back into shape. His granddaughter managed to make the end of the block only because her aunt supported her. They turned the corner without a backward glance. Not till they were lost from view did Sean roll up his window.
Storm’s survival demanded that she be cut loose. He had fired her because it was the only way he could protect her. Sean knew the enemy was closing in. He had felt the killer’s breath for days. Storm was his last remaining hope for achieving his lifelong dream, and establishing his legacy.
But the knowledge he had been right to fire her did little to ease the knife-edged pain that shredded his heart.
The driver asked, “Everything okay, Mr. Syrrell?”
Sean glanced at the young man behind the wheel. The driver was new, but the company was the only one he used ever since the danger had been revealed. If the enemy wanted a way to monitor his movements in New York, he’d handed it to them on a platter. “Why don’t you go for a coffee or something. I’d like a moment.”
“No can do, sir. I leave the wheel, they pull my license.”
Sean stared blindly at the rain-streaked side window. He could only hope that one day Storm would understand, and tell Claudia, and the pair of them would forgive him.
Unless, of course, he was wrong and the
threat did not exist.
But he wasn’t wrong.
“Mr. Syrrell?”
Sean opened his door and rose from the car. “Drop my bags off at the hotel. We’re done for the day.”
Sean passed the Steinway showroom’s main entrance, turned the corner, pressed the buzzer beside the painted steel elevator doors, and gave his name. A white-suited apprentice grinned a hello and led him downstairs. Sean greeted the technicians, most of whom he knew by name. He chatted about recent acquisitions and listened as they spoke of their charges. The ladies in black. Always feminine. Always moody and temperamental. Always in need of a firm but gentle hand.
Among professional pianists, the Steinway showroom’s basement was a place of myth. The long room was clad in whitewashed concrete. Beneath exposed pipes and brutal fluorescent lights stood Steinway’s most valuable asset: their collection of concert pianos.
All but one were black. The exception had been finished in white as a personal favor to Billy Joel. Otherwise they looked identical. But each instrument was unique. The Steinway basement had been a place of pilgrimage for over a hundred years. Leonard Bernstein, Vladimir Horowitz, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Leon Fleisher, Elton John, Glenn Gould, Alfred Brendel, Mitsuko Uchida. They all came. An invitation to the Steinway basement meant entry to one of the world’s most exclusive musical circles.
Sean Syrrell had not been granted access because of his talent. As a pianist, he was mechanical. He did not play the keys so much as box with the music. He lacked the finesse required for greatness. But fifteen years ago, he had done Steinway a great favor. He had located and salvaged the grand that had graced the White Palace, summer home to the Russian czars.
After the Trotsky rebellion, the piano had vanished. For years the world believed that Stalin had placed it in his dacha, then in a drunken rage had chopped it up for firewood. But Sean had found it in a Krakow junk shop the year after the Berlin Wall fell, just one more bit of communist flotsam. He had smuggled it west, where Germany’s finest restorer had spent a year returning it to its original pristine state. It was now housed in the Steinway family’s private collection.
The basement was overseen by Steinway’s chief technician. He and an assistant were “juicing” the hammers of a new concert grand. Sean spent a few minutes listening and discussing the piano’s raw tones. Then he moved to his favorite. CD-18 was more or less retired from service after 109 years of touring. Occasionally it was brought out as a favor to a special Steinway client. The last time had been for a voice-piano duet—Lang Lang and Pavarotti. For fifteen years, Van Cliburn had begged Steinway to sell him the instrument. Yet here it remained.
Sean seated himself and ran through a trio of exercises. His hands were too stubby for concert-quality play, his manner at the keys too brusque. Added to that were his failing ears, which had lost a great deal of their higher-range tonality. And his strength, which these days was far more bluster than muscle. And his heart, which still thudded painfully from firing Storm.
This time, it took a great deal longer than usual to leave the world behind. He hovered, he drifted, yet he was not transported. The tragic elements of his unfolding fate held him down.
When peace finally entered his internal realm, Sean switched to an étude by Chopin. It was a courtly dance, even when thumped out by his bricklayer’s hands. The instrument was bell-like, a radiant sound that caused even his antiquated frame to resonate.
Between the first and second movement, his playing transported him away from the realm of business and debt and his own multitude of failings. He knew others believed he harbored an old man’s fantasy of playing on the concert stage. But that was rubbish. He was here because twice each year, for a few treasured moments, an instrument brought him as close to divinity as Sean Syrrell would ever come. At least, so long as he was chained to this traumatic ordeal called life.
Sean detected a subtle shift in the chamber’s atmosphere. He was well aware of what it probably meant. He shut his eyes and turned to his favorite composer. Brahms was so very right for the moment, if indeed he was correct in thinking the moment had arrived.
Brahms above all composers had managed to form prayer into a series of notes. Yet Brahms had always been the hardest for Sean to play. Brahms required gentle eloquence. Normally Sean Syrrell played with all the gentleness of a drummer.
Today, however, Sean found himself able to perform the melody as it should be performed, as a supplicant with a lover’s heart.
Then Sean heard a different sound. A quiet hiss, accompanied by a puff of air on his cheek.
Sean opened his eyes in time to see a hand reflected in the piano’s mirrored surface, moving away from his face. It held a small crystal vial.
Sean’s cry of alarm was stifled by what felt like a hammer crashing into his chest. He doubled over the instrument, and his forehead slammed into the keyboard. But he heard none of it.
His entire being resonated with a single clarity of purpose, as strong as a funeral bell. He had been right all along.
Sean did not halt his playing. Even when his fingers slipped from the keys, still he played on.
His final thought was of Storm, which was only fitting. She was, after all, his one remaining earthbound hope.
He was carried along with notes that rose and rose until they joined in celestial perfection, transporting him into the realm he had prayed might find room for him. Even him.
TWO
FOR HIS THIRTY-NINTH BIRTHDAY, HARRY Bennett received a year and a day of unexpected freedom.
The present didn’t come gift wrapped. Bows and bangles were in short supply within the Barbados prison system. Harry did not mind. In fact, he had no idea he’d received anything at all. Harry had not even had a visitor in eleven months, since the last time his rotten lawyer had stopped by to inform him that his High Court appeal had been turned down. The same day Harry’s bank balance had finally reached zero. His lawyer had actually smiled at Harry. As though milking Harry Bennett had been his goal from the beginning.
The Barbados prison operated on what Harry called the uncertainty principle: don’t tell the inmates a thing. The first hint Harry had of coming change was when the guards called him from his cell. Which in itself was a major cause for celebration after three weeks of lockdown. There had been no reason for the lockdown, either. It had happened once before, when half of the guards had come down with gut rot and the prison director simply shut the prisoners in their cells until his staff was back to full strength.
The guards knew all about what lockdown did to a prisoner, sitting in a concrete box and watching the walls close in. So two of them came to fetch Harry. But Harry was in no mood to make trouble. They watched him silently count the steps. Two, three, four. Then hesitate. Even though there was no wall to force him to turn around, still he had to take a breath to break through the invisible barrier. One of the guards actually laughed.
They took him through the rattling cell-block doors and watched as he glanced down the long hall to the glass doors at the end. Through those doors were the induction office and the visitors’ center and the street. Prisoners always looked in that direction before taking the stairs up to the director’s office, where Harry assumed he was headed. Which was not a good thing. A visit with the prison director almost always ended up with time in the hole. Only today Harry was steered toward the guards’ station.
A packet wrapped in brown paper and tied with twine rested on top of the counter. Harry’s name and prisoner number and date of release were scrawled across the top.
Harry stared at the bundle.
“What’s the matter, treasure man? You don’t want it?”
Harry just kept staring at the bundle and the date written on the top. The day after his fortieth birthday. Three hundred and sixty-six days from now.
“Harry’s having such a fine time here with us, he don’t want to leave. Ain’t that right?” The guard shoved the bundle closer. “Go on, mon,” he said. “This be your getting-out d
ay.”
Harry stripped there at the counter and dressed in the poplin suit his rotten lawyer had bought for Harry’s court date, since Harry had been arrested wearing nothing but a pair of cutoffs and boat shoes. The arrest had come in what Harry knew for a fact were international waters, three miles beyond Barbados territory. But the Barbados government had wanted Harry’s treasure ship for itself. And the easiest way to keep from paying Harry Bennett his rightful commission was to arrest him for piracy.
Of course, there was also the matter of diving permits.
Which Harry Bennett did not have. Since he’d never entered Barbados waters.
Allegedly.
Once dressed, Harry did not let himself take a second look down to where freedom’s sunlight splashed hard against the glass doors. Even when the guards gripped him by the elbows and started down that long corridor, Harry kept his eyes on the concrete floor. The guards grew bored in lockdown. Dressing up Harry Bennett for his birthday and then apologizing for getting it wrong was just their sort of ticket. They’d be laughing about this for weeks.
But when they reached the bullet-proof door, the buzzer sounded. One guard pushed it open while the other slapped a pink release form in Harry’s hand. “You know the way from here.”
