Solomon's Jar (3 page)

She found it appropriate, somehow. And the slow motions were easy on her nose. It was still tender from having been broken when she did the face-plant against the cliff in Peru.

 

A
FTER SHE HAD GONE
for a run in the rain, then come back and spent twenty minutes stretching, she showered and occupied herself fixing dinner. Then she watched part of the DVD set that had arrived in the mail while she was away, the first season of
Ally McBeal.
She didn't really watch much television, and hated waiting from one episode to the next of a show. She much preferred being able to watch as many episodes as she cared to at a sitting. Besides, she'd always harbored a sneaking prejudice for artifacts of the past…even the very recent past.

Leaving the television turned on for a little bit of light and motion, but no sound, she settled herself back on the window seat to see what had developed in her newsgroups.

As the colored shadows played disregarded across her face, and outside the great light went down and the little lights came on in fairy profusion, she went back to alt.archaeology.esoterica. The post about Solomon's Jar had elicited a new slew of comments. She scanned the headers.

The majority remained abusive. As usual, she found that once the comments nested more than a couple of removes from the main thread they had little or nothing to do with the ostensible topic. So she concentrated on comments on the original post, and immediate replies to them.

One username caught her eye: [email protected], a British domain. She had seen the name before. Often. He was a quixotic defender of the borderlands of respectability, of the realm of the possible—who nonetheless spoke knowingly in the jargon of archaeology. And never once in screaming caps. Seeker23 even knew that
it's
isn't a possessive, a rare attainment anywhere on the Net.

She downloaded the comments he—or she, but the tone caused her to sense the poster was masculine—had posted. Mostly they were calm pleas for open minds. But one uncharacteristic sally made her sit up and open her eyes.

 

There are even rumors that the crew of a Greek fishing trawler who found the supposed jar were mysteriously slaughtered on board afterward. Such a massacre did take place, in Corfu a couple of months ago. It's possible, always, that was merely coincidence. But I hope Trees is exercising due caution.

 

That brought him a positive flame tsunami, of course. Annja paid no attention. She could have recited most of the contents of the negative responses aloud without ever reading them anyway.

She minimized her newsreader window and fired up Firefox. A Google search of news items brought a number of hits from the wire services. Six Slain In Fishing-Boat Massacre, she read. The crewmen had been found hacked to death as the boat lay tied at the dock in its home port on the island of Corfu.

Annja closed her computer and stared out the window. The rain had started up again. The hard little lights across the East River seemed somehow muted, as well as blurred by chill tentacles of rain that stretched across the windowpane, that ran down the glass like the fingertips of dying men….

Shuddering at the sound of unheard screams, the nape of her neck tingling, she opened the computer up again and went to a travel site to check flight times and prices to the Netherlands.

A string of Balinese brass bells tinkled musically to announce her as Annja pushed her way into the little shop in Amsterdam.

Inside was warm, dark and fusty after the late North Sea afternoon with its high, pallid sky and brisk spring breezes off the IJ estuary. She closed the door as gently as she could, not wanting more racket from the string of tiny bells, while contradictorily saying “Hello?” at normal conversational volume.

Great, she told herself. I try to sneak in while announcing myself out loud. She sighed. She had a lot left to get used to, it seemed.

No one answered. She looked around.

The bronze plaque outside had described the estab
lishment as Trees's Schatwinkel. What trees had to do with it she wasn't sure; the somewhat skinny lime trees on the street hadn't struck her as anything to name a shop after. Her first impression was that it was like her own home, but more so. The walls were lined with shelves of books, some glassed in as if to indicate rarer and more expensive volumes. The muted glow, which became more apparent as her eyes accustomed themselves to indoors, came from lights on the sculpted and painted metal ceiling. They were turned to spill illumination down the bookcases, and a few discreetly spotlit displays. Tables of artifacts were crowded between the bookshelves, along with some glassed-in cases.

The street sounds were muted to a near subliminal murmur. The tiny shop had the sort of reflective quiet she always associated with such places, along with museums and cathedrals. Its smell struck her as unusual, though. Along with the usual dust and mildew one encountered in such places, however scrupulously kept up, and the smell of old paper and leather and paint, her nostrils detected incense and a particular if unidentifiable sweetish smell. There was something else that underlay it all, but she couldn't yet define it.

Along with the books the store was crammed with a variety of artifacts, from age-blackened icons hung in the niches between bookcases to various coins in glass display cases. In one case near Annja lay an exquisite
wheel-lock pistol with an ebony stock intricately inlaid in silver; beside it lay a scrap of Egyptian papyrus inscribed with faded hieroglyphs. Annja couldn't read them; they were too far out of her own scope.

A quick survey told her most if not all of the merchandise on display had likely come from private collections—including the rather nice trilobite fossil resting on its own pedestal to the left of the cash register. None of it, at a guess, was extremely valuable, in part because of clouded provenance.

Perhaps more importantly, none of the artifacts looked to her like illicit antiquities. It was basically a curio shop, and the items for sale would range in price alongside high-end souvenirs or contemporary artworks in the modest little galleries that catered to tourists in the Old Town district of the city's center.

But then, she thought, if they are trafficking in illegal antiquities, they'd hardly have them out front in the display cases.

She was surprised that no one had emerged to the sound of the bells or her own cautious greeting. Perhaps the Dutch were unusually law-abiding, although she'd seen her share of panhandlers and tough, drawn street people working the canals and narrow streets. Still, she guessed the proprietors knew their own business.

In the back of the shop a door opened onto what was presumably a storeroom. A dingy yellow light spilled
out into the small main shop. No doubt the clerk or proprietor was back there somewhere, most likely in the bathroom. In the meantime, Annja walked up to the cash register and looked around.

She saw nothing out of the ordinary. There were small items like chocolates wrapped in brightly colored foil for sale in baskets on the counter, and on the wall behind hung what she guessed were licenses and permits of various sorts, along with a number of small framed lithographs from various time periods. Half-tucked under a rubber mat meant to keep metallic objects from marring the glass countertop a business card caught her eye.

She pulled it out with the tip of a finger. It was slightly yellowish off-white, like old ivory. One end was printed in dark green, with a stylized tree showing through in the color of the paper. In the same dark green was embossed The White Tree and below it, Metaphysical Inquiries and a UK address complete with phone number and e-mail.

She slipped it back where it had been.

She looked around. Still no sign of life in the place. Perhaps the staff had slipped out back into the alley for a smoke to abide by the stringent EU antismoking laws.

Annja slipped behind the counter. She wasn't sure what she was looking for; she only hoped she'd know if she found it.

Unconsciously she realized her nose was wrinkling. There was an unmistakably off smell mingling with all the others. The air was still and definitely beginning to cloy.

A phone with a digital display sat beside the register. The command buttons were unsurprisingly labeled in Dutch. They looked fairly conventional. She hit a sequence of keys she hoped would bring up the last number to have called the shop. A numeral string obediently appeared. Annja was surprised to see a New York area code.

Little bells rang as the front door suddenly swung open.

A young man entered the shop. For a moment the bright light from outside gave the impression he was surrounded by a nimbus of light. Then he stepped in and shut the door, and the illusion was gone.

He looked to be about Annja's height, five foot ten. Slim, he wore a white shirt with an open collar and the sleeves rolled up to midforearm and blue jeans. His hair was dark and curly and hung down around his ears. When he stepped forward with a smile she saw his complexion was pale, with very pink cheeks. His eyes were penetrant blue.

“Do you work here?” he asked in English as he came up to the counter. His accent was British.

“Oh, ah, no. I'm sorry. I was just making a phone call,” Annja replied.

It was a clumsy evasion. She saw suspicion flicker in his eyes. They narrowed, and his smile slipped.

“Where's the proprietor?” he asked.

“I don't know, actually,” she said. “I came in and there was nobody here.”

“So you just went around behind the cash register?” His tone was challenging.

She shrugged. “I just got into town. I needed to call my hotel.”

He leaned forward to peer over the counter. “You're wearing a cell phone at your waist.”

Annja smiled sheepishly. “Battery's dead. Isn't that the way it always goes?”

“You came to an antiquities shop before you even checked into your hotel?”

“I'm really very fascinated by antiquities. It's like a hobby.” She patted the backpack she was still wearing. “I travel light, anyway.”

He scowled as he looked at the backpack. For a moment she thought he would demand she open it to prove she hadn't filled it with purloined goods.

“Oh, really,” he said. “American, aren't you?”

“Yes. You can always tell, huh?” Maybe if I play stupid enough he'll get exasperated and go away, she thought. She felt a bit of a pang at the thought; it was too bad they were getting off on the wrong foot like this.

“What sort of antiquities, then?” he asked. “Americans aren't usually interested in the past.”

“I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule. I like antiquities of all kinds.”

“Like this figurine here?” he asked, tapping a finger on the glass above a four-inch tall statue of a bearded warrior with a conical helmet and staring eyes. “Viking, wouldn't you say?”

“Oh, no,” she said. “Eleventh-century Friesian.”

He looked at her. Uh-oh, she thought. I let my stupid slip, there.

“You do know your antiquities, don't you?” he murmured. “Have you really no idea where the owner of the shop is?”

She shook her head. “Like I said, I just came in—”

He held up a hand. “I know. To use the phone. Well, don't you
wonder
why no one's come out to ask what we're about, then?”

“They're out to lunch?”

He looked at her levelly for a moment. She could tell he was dying to remark that they weren't the only ones. She seemed to have recouped her airhead bona fides.

“I think I'll just have a look in the back room,” he said.

“I'm not sure that's a good idea,” she said, moving out from behind the counter. He glanced at her, more with curiosity than anything else. She realized she didn't have a very good pretext for preventing him. Indeed, she wasn't even sure what her reason was. But she didn't want him looking in the back room.

His slightly snubbed nose wrinkled. “Do you smell something odd?”

“Yes,” she said. “A little bit…stale, I guess. Maybe a rat died in the baseboards.”

“If you don't mind I'll have a look in the back, make sure nothing's wrong,” he said, and stepped past her.

He froze in the entryway. “Oh, my God,” he said.

 

T
HE PROPRIETOR HAD BEEN
stout, middle-aged and female. She wore a skirt and practical shoes with white ankle socks. And that was about all Annja could tell. Because her face was a crumpled pudding of blood, her upper garment was soaked and her hair was dyed and soggy with the stuff. Blood was splashed in bright sprays and swatches on the cardboard boxes and crates to either side of the body. It was congealing in pools on the scuffed linoleum floor. There were even suspicious stains on the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling overhead.

The smell was blatant now that she knew what it was. It was a smell most archaeologists were quite unfamiliar with: they had few occasions to deal with fresh death. Annja knew it all too well. But the incense and other odors had masked it.

She pushed past the young man to kneel by the body. She touched a bit of blue-white neck between blood rivulets. The skin was cool and gummy, and there was no
pulse, confirming what the smell, and the visual evidence, had told her already.

Something lay by Annja's left shoe. She looked down. It was a small oblong box with gaudy colors and unfamiliar writing. “Clove cigarettes!” she exclaimed. Some of the other kids at the orphanage had tried smoking them, to hide the vice from the nuns. It never worked. Nothing ever fooled the nuns. “That's what that spice smell was.”

“Don't touch anything!” the young man said.

“I won't,” she said, standing. The tips of her fingers felt strange where they had touched the dead skin, and she felt an urge to wash them. Maybe you never get used to this sort of thing, she thought.

“Shouldn't we call the authorities?” he asked. He was shaking.

“Not from here,” she said, “unless you feel like answering a lot of questions for some very skeptical police officers. There's nothing we can do for her now.”

“But we have to do something!”

“Really?” She cocked a brow at him. There didn't seem any point in keeping up the bubble-head act any longer.

With a musical ripple of sound the front door opened once again.

The young man went tense. Annja looked past him as three men entered the shop. The first was on the small side, at least a couple of inches shorter than she
was, wearing a tan suit over a shirt with an open collar. He was trim and moved with unusual assurance and economy. His hair was cropped short and seemed to be light and receding. With him standing in the darker outer room it was impossible to tell more.

The two who came in behind him towered over him. One was lean, dark haired and unshaved, wearing a shiny suit coat over, of all things, a white T-shirt with horizontal blue stripes. The other was more like a granite slab. His suit fit as if he went to a tailor who specialized in circus chimps.

Annja's life experience had taught her enough to make the two big guys as cheap goons immediately. The smaller man was a different order of being entirely, she knew at once. Not any nicer, perhaps. But he wouldn't come cheap. Not at all.

“Excuse me,” he said, coming forward. His English was excellent but strongly Russian accented. “Are you Trees, by any chance?”

Then he stopped. Intuition-flash told her he recognized the smell before he saw the body in its graceless supine sprawl on the linoleum.

He rapped out a command to his men. Annja didn't understand much Russian. But she didn't need to.

There was no mistaking the intent of the two henchmen as they advanced toward her and the youthful Englishman.