The Angel of Eden (18 page)

February 22, 2005

That evening I took Evelyn out for dinner. She wasn't in the best of moods but she'd dressed up for the occasion and brightened considerably when she heard where we were going: Ilili, a place I relished too. It served some of the tastiest lamb and Lebanese sausage in the city.

She admired the light-filled space, the walls covered with copper-colored squares of cedar, the oval tables and red leatherette chairs.

We chatted about nothing in particular until our food was served. I felt a familiar pang of concern to see how badly her fingers
were twisted from the arthritis; at times, she had difficulty using her fork.

“I'm going to Turkey for a couple weeks, dear,” I said finally. “Can't hack any more dark winter days. Planning on doing some sightseeing at Pergamon.”

“I know it, John.”

I set my fork down. “How did you find out?”

“That girl came to visit. Yesterday. Bennet. The one who is writing the article about you. She is very sweet. She brought me a lovely scarf.”

“Oh? She didn't mention that to me. What did she say?”

“She was very excited to be going with you to be her expert on the old ruins. ‘Much better than taking one of those tours,' she told me. Samuel, he would have liked her.”

I was far from an expert on Turkish antiquities. I cast around for some reply that sounded convincing. “She's taking her responsibilities as a writer very seriously by documenting everything firsthand.”

Evelyn narrowed her eyes and gave me a long look. “It's time you had a companion. You are too much alone. And kids are better with younger fathers.”

“Kids? Whoa. I barely know Bennet.” I tried desperately to change the subject. “Did she say exactly where we're going?”

“Istanbul and Pergamon.”

I let out a sigh of relief. The last thing I wanted was for Evelyn to know about Kandovan.

For the remainder of our dinner I managed to deflect any further forays into the question of matrimony. Before we left the restaurant I asked a waiter to snap a picture of us on my phone. Then I took Evelyn home, made sure she wouldn't need anything while I was gone, and gave her a long hug goodbye. She was only
in her late fifties, but when her illness got the best of her she seemed more like a fragile eighty-year-old.

A weight settled on my shoulders as I walked out of her building into the gloomy February night. A feeling that I'd never see her again. No matter how hard I tried to shake it, that feeling followed me all the way home.

The next morning things rapidly got worse.

Twenty-Five

February 23, 2005

B
ennet had gone out to do some errands for our trip and I was thumbing through source books deciding which I could take without overloading my luggage when I heard a not too subtle knock on the door. “Who is it?” I said, not recognizing the face peering through the eyehole.

“Detective Shea, Suffolk County police force. Madison. Need to talk to you.”

He'd brought a small army. Two uniformed NYPD officers stood on either side and behind him were a man and a woman, both wearing navy blue jackets emblazoned with FBI in yellow block letters. Loki ran over, growling. I scooped her up before she had a chance to do any damage.

The two uniforms stepped in, followed by Shea and the others.

“What's up?” I said.

“Need to take a look around. It's official,” Shea said.

He thrust a paper at me. I scanned it, saw it was a search
warrant, and passed it back with my free hand. “I don't see why this is necessary. I'm a suspect now?”

He grinned. “More like I need to weed people out. It was a homicide. I like to be thorough.” He nodded to the FBI officers. “They're helping me out here with some forensics. Which way's your bedroom?”

Odd that he'd ask for my bedroom first. I showed him where it was and the poker-faced FBI officers trooped into the room with their heavy bags.

“Have a seat,” Shea said. He and the uniformed cops remained standing. I plopped myself down, Loki squirming in my arms. Ordering me around in my own place irritated me. It felt like a home invasion and I suppose that's what it was, although of a genteel variety—so far.

Shea's gaze lit on the glass cabinets where I kept some of Samuel's less valuable Iraqi artifacts. “Where'd those come from?”

For a second I worried that Strauss had made good on his threat and accused me of stealing his artifacts. But I dismissed the idea almost as quickly—Strauss had been pleased when I told him I was going to Turkey. “Most of them belonged to my brother. He was an archaeologist. Some are mine.”

“Is that your whole collection?”

“I have more in secure storage.”

“I'll need to see those too. 'Fraid we're going to have to take these with us. Get them checked out.”

I couldn't keep the anger out of my voice. “No way. Surely you don't think I'd be dumb enough to keep stolen goods here. They're all completely legitimate. I have the documentation on them. You can have someone come and check all that out if you want. And you couldn't just throw them into bags anyway. They'd have to be packed by an expert.”

Shea sat down opposite me, probably to lower the tension a bit. Perhaps sensing he'd gone too far, he said, “All right. I'll have the techs photograph everything today and send someone over to check out your storage. Do you have a safety deposit key for the ones you've stored?”

“It's a number code. I'll have to go to the vault with whoever you send. I gather this is all because items were stolen from Tricia Ross?”

“I can confirm that,” Shea said, “but won't give you a description of the missing articles. You can see why there's an issue … given your past history.”

“I'd never set foot in her home before. Her neighbor can attest to that.”

“Still got to check it out.”

“And you're referring to my past history
saving
a stolen antiquity and restoring it to the authorities? Talk to Paul Gentile, he's a detective with the NYPD.”

He gave me a lukewarm grin. “Already have. He speaks well of you.”

Shea spent the next while asking for details on what had transpired during my two forays into Iraq. I had a feeling it was just to keep me talking.

On Shea's request, one of the techies snapped photos of the artifacts in the cabinet while I photocopied the provenance documents. I let Loki run around at that point—I was pissed off enough not to care whether she got in their way.

Shea insisted I stay in the living room while the techies did an extensive search of it and the rest of the apartment. I sat and watched them create an unholy mess, taking virtually everything out and leaving it on the floor. They missed my hollow book, though, throwing it in with the others scattered across the floor. I got some satisfaction from that.

But the male techie's eyes lit up as he ran his fingers along a center shelf of the cleared bookcase. My heart sank. Then came the click and one of the back wooden panels dropped down to reveal the wall safe hidden behind. The friend who'd sublet the apartment had it installed for his own stuff but it now contained the treasure chest my brother had given me when I was a child. I'd completely forgotten to tell Shea about it and now it would look as though that was deliberate.

Shea jerked his thumb toward the safe. “Open for us please and then stand back.”

“I just forgot about it,” I said, knowing how weak that sounded. “Sure.”

I punched in the numbers and the door swung outward. The techie reached in and pulled out the chest. He crouched, opened it up, then spread a large clear plastic bag on the floor and laid out the contents: my seven gold coins, a copper medallion with an image of a vulture stamped on it, a cameo in its enameled box, a stone cylinder seal, a golden key.

Shea heaved a sigh. “You've got papers for these?”

“No. They were a gift from my brother. I've had them since I was a child. My former housekeeper can vouch for that.”

“No papers. I'll have to take them in.” He nodded to the techie, who put each object into a separate zip-locked bag.

“I'd like you to photograph them all right now, in case there's any damage done while they're in your possession,” I said curtly.

“Okay, Jess.” Shea nodded at the woman, who proceeded to snap pictures of every item.

I cursed myself silently for keeping the chest here rather than leaving it in the vault. I hated the thought of losing the pieces, even temporarily. Of all the possessions of my childhood, these were the most precious to me. “When will I get them back?”

“When I'm satisfied they aren't stolen.”

They were packing up now. Before leaving they took a swab of my saliva. “We've got your fingerprints on file,” Shea said, “but no DNA. Appreciate your cooperation. I'll send the antiquities expert over tomorrow. And I'll be in touch.”

My place was an infernal mess: drawers left open, their contents strewn about haphazardly, cushions overturned, carpets rolled up, books heaped on the floor. The minute the door closed behind them, I marched into my bedroom. The bed had been completely stripped and some of my clothes laid out on it in a strange kind of tableau, as if they'd been photographing them. The rest of my jackets, shirts, and pants lay in a pile beside the bed on the floor but my sock and underwear drawers seemed untouched. How weird was that? I couldn't guess what their motive was.

Half an hour later Bennet walked in to find me slouched on the sofa amid the devastation. Her first instinct was to burst out laughing. Then I told her what had happened—and she spent the rest of the evening helping me straighten up.

The next day I accompanied Shea's antiquities expert to the storage vault. He was an older man, a professor at Yale who'd known Samuel, and he acted like a kid in a candy store when he saw the quality of objects my brother had collected. I was curious about what had been stolen from Tricia Ross and still confounded as to why they'd photographed my clothes, but didn't manage to pry anything new out of him. In the end, he seemed satisfied that everything was legit. I heard nothing further from Shea. All I wanted now was to escape the city.

Two days later, Bennet and I left JFK at noon on a Turkish Airlines flight bound for Istanbul.

Part Two

THE DEVIL'S THRONE

I know your works and where you dwell … where Satan's Throne is.

—REVELATION 2:13

Twenty-Six

February 26, 2005

Istanbul, Turkey

D
uring the flight Bennet confessed that, except for a gap year spent trekking around Europe, she'd never left the U.S. I'd wanted to go straight to Pergamon, but given her excitement about the trip it wouldn't be fair to deny her the chance to see Istanbul. We made it smoothly through customs, found our baggage, and hailed a taxi. When we entered the old city—the site of the original Constantinople—the streets were largely empty, the historic area a lonely place in February without its flocks of tourists. Bennet's lovely gray eyes grew wider as we passed narrow cobblestone streets, each one its own flamboyant bazaar of shops with rich kilims, oriental lamps in a rainbow of colors, copper and bronze vessels swinging from awnings. And dominating it all, like an aging monarch surveying her domain, were the spires and dome of the Hagia Sophia.