House of War

by Scott Mariani

  ‘It’s all my fault,’ he muttered, struggling to contain his emotion, when Ben had finished. ‘She was … I felt … that is to say, I had no idea she was there in the warehouse. Not until afterwards, as we were due to come back from Libya and she was acting so strangely around me that I had to ask her what was wrong. Then she told me what she’d witnessed. She was furious with me, threatened to resign, called me all kinds of names. I tried to explain myself, but she wouldn’t listen and we argued for a long time. But I swear I knew nothing about a video. She didn’t tell me she had filmed us.’

  ‘Luckily for you, she didn’t just take it straight to the authorities,’ Ben said. ‘Instead, when she got back home she tried to contact a reporter called Françoise Schell.’

  ‘I know that name.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. She wrote an article on terrorist organisations and the antiquities trade. Right up your street. That’s how Romy found her, too. But unluckily for Romy, her closeness to your work made your little terrorist pals suspicious. She was being followed, and her apartment phone was almost certainly tapped. That’s the only way they could have known about her call to Françoise, and the anonymous message she left her saying that she knew about a criminal conspiracy concerning a shipment and some kind of terror plot unfolding.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Segal groaned. He wiped a tear. His hand was trembling.

  ‘At which point, she needed to be eliminated, and fast, before she shared any more of what she knew with anyone. And Nazim al-Kassar was obviously happy to do the job himself. A highly motivated individual, our Nazim. It wasn’t enough for him to kill Romy. The reporter is dead, too. And so would I be, if he’d had his way. Except I don’t kill too easily.’

  Segal was shaking his head in anguish. ‘I don’t understand. How is it that you know so much about Nazim al-Kassar?’

  Ben said, ‘It’s a small world when you operate in certain circles. Let’s just say there’s history between us. The kind of history that makes him want me dead just as badly as I want to see him get what he deserves. But we’re not here to talk about me, Julien. You have a great deal of explaining to do. Who exactly is Nazim to you, and what the hell are you involved in?’

  ‘Tell them,’ Margot Segal urged her husband. ‘We need to know everything, Julien.’

  ‘And I have nothing to hide any longer,’ Segal replied, collecting himself. ‘Not any more. So here it is. The whole truth.’

  Chapter 46

  Segal said, ‘It all began years ago. Back in 2015, I spent some time working in Syria with a colleague called Salim Youssef. A wonderful man whom I loved and respected very much. He was really a mentor to me, almost a father figure. His passion for ancient art and treasures was one of the reasons I got into this business in the first place.’

  Roth hadn’t spoken a word until now, but he’d been listening carefully. ‘Salim Youssef was murdered by Daesh forces, during their big push across Iraq and Syria in 2015, right before they established the new Caliphate.’

  Segal frowned, and his eyes became misty and faraway as he relived the moment from his past. ‘I was there, right at his side when it happened. We were in an ancient temple outside Palmyra. Everyone else had fled, knowing that the jihadist army was advancing closer every minute. Salim and I were desperately trying to evacuate as many artifacts as we could from the temple, because we knew all too well what those vandals would do to these priceless treasures in the name of religious supremacy. We had already managed to transport some in Salim’s small truck to a hiding place nearby, in the hope that we could return afterwards to rescue them. A vain one, probably, but we had to try. Anyhow, we were too late. Before we could reload the truck, a group of Islamist soldiers arrived and entered the temple. Nine of them, heavily armed, the leader dressed in black. They understood exactly what we were doing, and demanded to know where we’d hidden the remainder of the artifacts.’

  Ben could tell where the story was going. ‘And Salim refused to tell them.’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was the bravest man I ever knew. You should have seen the way he stood up to them right to the end, denouncing them as savages and betrayers of their faith. To my shame, I had no such courage. I was completely paralysed with dread.’ Segal paused to reflect sadly, then went on: ‘They made us kneel on the temple floor. The leader took out his knife. I remember it so clearly. He … he decapitated Salim.’

  Margot was staring at her husband with wide eyes. ‘Julien, you never told me any of this. You seemed upset when you came back from Syria, but I thought it was just because of the invasion.’

  ‘I still can barely bring myself to talk about it,’ Segal said miserably. ‘That was the first time I ever met that murdering maniac Nazim al-Kassar. He was the leader. The man with the knife. He slaughtered poor Salim like an animal, as though it was nothing to him. The severed head fell on the floor right beside me. I truly, truly believed that mine would be next. When I heard the words “Now it’s your turn” I almost choked with terror.’

  Margot covered her face with her hands. ‘Oh, God. Julien.’

  ‘Nazim’s had plenty of practice at slicing off heads,’ Ben said. ‘And worse things.’

  ‘I can’t imagine anything worse than what I witnessed that day,’ Segal said. ‘I still have nightmares. But the biggest nightmare is what has become of my life since. I’ve often wished that they had killed me, too.’

  That was too much for Margot to hear. She burst into tears.

  Segal went on, ‘But I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t have the courage to die the way Salim did. On my knees, I begged them to spare my life. Told them I’d do anything if they would let me go. I offered to lead them to where Salim and I had hidden the artifacts from the temple. Then I told them who I was, and about all the contacts I had across the world, and how I could help them to get their hands on a lot more. I truly didn’t care what they did with them, whether they smashed them to pieces or took them as booty, as long as they agreed to let me go.’

  ‘You sold out,’ Ben said. ‘Not just yourself, but the brave man who’d just died to protect what he believed in.’

  ‘Yes, I was a coward,’ Segal said. ‘And I did what cowards do best. I survived. At first I was certain that Nazim was tricking me. But he was true to his word, because he suddenly had a use for me. The truth was that he had no intention of smashing up the artifacts. They were far too valuable for that.’

  ‘And that’s how you became his partner in crime.’

  ‘God help me, it wasn’t out of choice. I came home to Margot, and never said a word about what had happened in Syria, and got back to work, and prayed every day that it was over and I’d never hear from them again. Then a few weeks later, I got the call. Nazim al-Kassar was in Amsterdam and wanted to set up a business meeting.’

  ‘That sounds real cosy,’ Roth sneered.

  ‘I was convinced I wouldn’t return from Amsterdam alive. But I reasoned that they could kill me anytime they wanted, so what choice did I have? We met in a suite at the Pulitzer Hotel and he told me his plan. You see, whatever else Nazim al-Kassar might be, he isn’t just some mindless idealist. Above all he’s a businessman. A very serious businessman. He always kept an eye to the future, seeing ahead to the day when ISIL would be defeated in open warfare, and the jihadists would need to look to other tactics. Working from the inside, infiltrating lucrative trades like mine and using every penny to further their cause.’

  Segal went on, ‘And that was how it began. For the last four years they’ve been using me to bring illegally obtained antiquities into Europe for them to sell to raise funds for expanding their jihadist networks in France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Britain, everywhere. With my reputation and contacts, they were guaranteed a secure and steady trade route from various ports of the Middle East into Europe. I made sure that all the paperwork was always in order, but giving false destinations for the items, using straw buyers who were either bribed to take part in the fraud or were sometimes fictitious. Over the years I b
rought in over eleven million euros’ worth of merchandise for them.’

  ‘Taking a nice commission for yourself, I’ll bet,’ Ben said.

  ‘I wouldn’t have accepted a single cent of that money,’ Segal protested. ‘Not even if it had been offered. Which it wasn’t. While they’ve been getting rich, the bastards have sucked me dry, like vampires. I’m close to losing everything I worked so hard to build. I can barely afford the rent on the Paris offices any longer. The house is remortgaged, too.’

  Margot stared at him in horror. ‘Our beautiful home?’

  He shrugged. ‘What else could I do? They made me their dhimmi, their slave. I was powerless to stop it. Don’t you think I wanted to? Two years ago, I plucked up the courage to tell Nazim, “That’s it, I’m done.” Some days later an envelope arrived at the office, addressed to me personally. It had photographs inside.’

  ‘Photographs?’ she asked him. ‘Of what?’

  ‘Of you, my darling,’ Segal confessed. ‘One taken while you were out shopping. The other at home, in the garden. There was no note, but none was needed. The warning was clear. If I didn’t keep helping them, they would kidnap or kill you.’

  Margot swallowed. A tear rolled down her face. She opened her mouth to speak, but she had no words.

  Tears welled out of her husband’s eyes, too, as he tried to make her understand. ‘I couldn’t tell anyone, least of all the police. These animals were ready to act on their threat at any moment. Nazim trusts nobody. I couldn’t move an inch.’ He turned to Ben. ‘You saw what he did to poor Romy.’

  ‘Go on,’ Ben said.

  ‘Then in August this year, Nazim contacted me again to tell me about his latest scheme. This was to be the start of a whole new venture, one that took a great deal of organising but promised to be the most lucrative for them yet.’

  ‘The big plan,’ Ben said. ‘The cargo from Tripoli.’

  Segal nodded.

  ‘What’s on the ship?’

  Segal replied, ‘Since it seems you’ve watched video footage of my meeting with Nazim inside the warehouse where the cargo was being stored prior to shipping, then you must already have seen it. We were standing right next to it as we talked.’

  ‘Statues?’

  Segal nodded. ‘The biggest artifacts they’ve ever forced me to smuggle into Europe for them. Each inside its own shipping container, requiring two trucks to transport them by road. They’re a pair of giant human-headed winged bulls, of the kind that existed long ago in ancient Mesopotamia.’

  ‘Lamassu.’

  ‘The guardians of the gateway. In the Akkadian language their name meant “protective spirits”. You seem to have more knowledge of this subject than I realised.’

  ‘I saw them in the Louvre, years ago,’ Ben said. ‘Watching Romy’s video brought the memory to mind. I went back there to check.’

  ‘So you have some idea of what’s involved. Similar examples are also on display at the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Others haven’t survived, such as the ones that were housed in the Mosul Museum before the filthy vandals of ISIL invaded the city and pounded them to pieces with sledgehammers. I’m quite certain that further magnificent examples are still waiting to be discovered beneath the sands of Iraq, Iran, Kuwait, Syria and Egypt, utterly priceless in value. However, I can assure you that you’ve never seen anything quite like the Lamassu on board the cargo ship, heading towards us even as we speak. These are quite different.’

  Ben asked, ‘In what way different?’

  Segal said, ‘Well, for a start, they’re not real.’

  Chapter 47

  ‘Full of surprises, aintcha, Mister Segal?’ Roth chuckled.

  ‘In terms of size and scale, they’re more or less identical to the exhibits you saw in Paris,’ Segal explained. ‘Otherwise, they’re nothing more than crude, poorly detailed replicas that only a blind man or a complete fool could possibly mistake for the real thing from less than a few feet away. They’re made of cheap plaster and were knocked together from moulded pieces in a backstreet workshop in Benghazi three months ago.’

  Segal gave a bitter laugh at the looks on their faces. ‘Oh, the deception is nothing particularly new. In 2015, when ISIL revealed their infamous video footage of the destruction of the artifacts in the Mosul Museum, archaeologists and historians the world over reacted in shock and dismay. What few people knew at the time, and only emerged later, was that about three-quarters of the pieces that the terrorists shattered with their hammers were modern plaster fakes.’

  ‘So what happened to the real ones?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Some had already been relocated to Baghdad years earlier, after the Iraq War. In fact the authorities tried to claim that not one original piece had been left in the Mosul Museum by the time the jihadis took the city. That was untrue, and a cover-up of the fact that their attempt to protect the treasures was slipshod at best. Many genuine artifacts were still in place when the ISIL forces arrived. The majority of which were whisked off for sale on the black market, but not before they were used to mould plaster substitutes to destroy for the cameras.’ Segal gave a dark smile. ‘A fact to which I can testify, as it was me who fenced a large number of the genuine stolen items. As for the fakes, they only had to be good enough to look convincing on low-resolution video footage, fooling viewers into believing that they were seeing the demolition of the genuine item.’

  ‘There’s no business like show business,’ Roth said. ‘Those devious sons of bitches.’

  ‘Not all the genuine pieces survived, however,’ Segal went on. ‘Among the priceless treasures they really did destroy in Mosul were the Lamassu winged bulls that were the museum’s prize exhibits. It was their sheer size that doomed them. They were too big and heavy for the authorities to move to safety in time, and for the same reason couldn’t be easily replicated, nor the real items sold off to rogue dealers. So the footage of their destruction was all too tragically real.’

  ‘And yet, the ones on the ship are copies,’ Ben said.

  ‘When I said that Nazim al-Kassar was a serious businessman, I meant it. He’s also far from stupid. The system for creating one-to-one scale plaster copies of such enormous statues was his idea. It was done by moulding separate plates which are then cemented together over a strong, light wooden frame and the joins plastered over to give the appearance of a single piece sculpted from a stone block.’

  Margot Segal looked confused. ‘I don’t understand. You risked everything and put our lives in danger to help these maniacs make millions selling smuggled antiquities in Europe. But those were always the real thing up until now, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, Chérie, I’m sorry to say they were.’

  ‘And these fakes you’re talking about, they were just decoys. Why would they go to the trouble of bringing in worthless plaster imitations that nobody would want to buy?’

  ‘That’s a good question,’ Ben said. ‘The answer is, because of what’s in them. Statues cast out of moulded plaster plates are hollow. Something that large, it would have a lot of empty space inside.’

  She looked at him.

  ‘You told me that you don’t know much about archaeology, Margot. But every kid I knew grew up hearing the legend of the Trojan horse. I’m sure you did as well.’

  Her expression was blank. ‘Yes, of course I know the story, but—’

  ‘The Greek army spent ten years besieging the ancient city of Troy before they had the plan to create a huge wooden horse. When the Trojans came out the next day to find the Greeks had all sailed away, they thought they’d won and brought the horse inside the city as a trophy of war. Unknown to them, it was hollow inside, and filled with enemy soldiers who sneaked out the following night, threw open the gates and let in the entire Greek army.’

  ‘He’s right, Chérie,’ Segal told his wife.

  ‘But what’s inside?’ she asked, bemused.

  ‘Not Greek soldiers, that’s for sure,’ Ben said. �
��And not a jihadist invasion force toting automatic weapons, either, because they’re already here. It’s a shipment of drugs. A lot of drugs. I’m guessing that the world of antiquities import is too dully respectable a trade to have yet attracted the suspicion of Europol’s narcotics division.’

  Segal hung his head. He looked utterly defeated. ‘So you knew.’

  ‘We came across the processing plant in the hideout where they were holding Margot,’ Ben told him. ‘The place was empty, apart from a pile of boxes containing about fifty thousand plastic bags, waiting to be packaged up full of narcotics.’

  ‘I have no idea where it is,’ Segal said. ‘You think Nazim would trust me with that kind of knowledge? But what I do know is that fifty thousand kilos is a conservative estimate. Nazim’s target figure is actually more like sixty-five thousand, split over multiple shipments. Each of the fake Lamassu contains about four and a half thousand kilograms, which was the most weight they could hold without breaking up.’

  Roth whistled. ‘Holy shit. Nine thousand keys is almost ten US tons. A kilo brick of cocaine is worth about twenty-five grand, street price. Heroin costs even more, about thirty-eight dollars a gram. Times nine thousand kilos, which is nine million grams, that’d come to …’ He paused for a moment as arithmetical wheels spun inside his head.

  Ben got there first. ‘Three hundred and forty-two million dollars.’

  ‘Crap on a cracker. We’re in the wrong goddamn business, amigo.’

  ‘What you or I would do with the money is one thing,’ Ben said. ‘It’s what Nazim would do with it that worries me. That much cash would pay for enough guns and bombs to declare war on Europe. And it’s only the first shipment.’ He wasn’t even going to try to calculate the overall value of the whole 65,000 kilos.

  Roth said, ‘Man, he’s looking at bringing in over seventy tons. The entire annual global heroin consumption is only about four hundred. Where’s he getting it all from? Afghanistan? No fuckin’ way. Pardon my French, Ma’am.’