The Illumination (6 page)

 

Lita surveyed the uneven stacks and piles that had accumulated across Natalie's desk while she was in Italy, and thought better of adding to the chaos. Instead, she slid open the center drawer where Natalie kept her appointment calendar and nestled the
pouch up-front, where she couldn't miss it, between the yellow marking pens and the stash of peanut M&Ms.

She made a mental note to call Natalie and tell her she had a gift waiting from Dana.

But then the phones started ringing, and the printer jammed twice while she was trying to churn out thirty collated copies of the report Dennis wanted on his desk by 3:00
P.M
., and she forgot all about the pouch she'd tucked inside Natalie's desk.

She didn't even remember it when Natalie said good night and sailed out at 4:30 for a meeting with a private collector before her weekly dinner with her friend Peggy.

Lita's memory wasn't jogged until the phone call came from Rusty Sutherland's wife.

 

 

 

Natalie couldn't decide which annoyed her more—Lita's forgetfulness in not informing her about the package until she was halfway through dessert or her carelessness in not asking Rusty Sutherland's wife for a phone number.

It was frustrating to think that she'd been at her desk nearly four hours unaware that a present from Dana was right inside the top middle drawer. Impatience and excitement chafed at her as she left her old grad school study buddy, Peggy Lim, at Serendipity 3, polishing off her after-dinner Yudufundu Fruit and Fudge, and grabbed a cab back to the museum five minutes after Lita called her.

Natalie's heels clattered up the stone steps, echoing loudly in the cloud-filtered moonlight. Reaching the wide double bronze doors, she fished her plastic security card out of her handbag.

Moments later she was exiting the elevator on the fourth floor and striding past the reception desk and the bank of lush floor plants towering nearly to the pressed-tin ceiling.

The museum feels different at night,
she thought, catching a glimpse of her reflection as she swept past the window just beyond the reception desk and turned down the low-lit corridor leading to the offices. The building was hushed and sleepy now. By daylight there was a pulse of energy in the museum, a
thrumming in the air as visitors and staff shared a breath of the ancient world.

The offices were all on the top floor. In the carpeted halls and galleries below, a wealth of culture glimmered beneath discreet spotlights. Golden bowls and jeweled goblets from third-century Sicily. Thirteenth-century flasks from Mameluke, Egypt. Persian candlesticks forged of bronze. Ancient Phoenician and Roman glass. A three-thousand-year-old mosaic from the Galilee in Israel. All were among the most prestigious centerpieces of the permanent exhibits, as were extensive examples of fine Islamic pottery, pre-Christian talismans, and Babylonian jewelry.

Natalie's footsteps hastened as she neared her office, thinking about Lita's description of the pouch Dana had sent. It was decorated with a
mati,
Lita had told her, using the Greek name for the amulet designed to ward off the evil eye.

She wondered if Rusty was home by now. According to Lita, his wife had sounded almost in tears when she called at five o'clock. Rusty had phoned her from JFK before noon, while waiting for his baggage, to say he only had to make one quick stop at the Devereaux to drop off a package for Natalie, and then he'd be on the train.

But he'd never called back to tell her which train to meet, and he wasn't answering his cell phone. His wife hadn't heard a word from him since midday.

He must be home by now,
Natalie told herself, as she switched on her office light and hurried around the desk.

The pouch was exactly where Lita had said it would be. Natalie scooped it up, moved that her sister had reached out to her in this way. With practiced fingers she tested the texture of the cracked leather. Switching on the desk lamp, she peered at the hand-rendered image of the large bold eye with its blue iris and thick black outline. Her instant impression was that the pouch was old, worn with sand and time.

Where did Dana get this?
she wondered, intrigued. The leather and the knots on the black drawstrings reminded her, in feel and in workmanship, of ancient Sumerian money pouches she'd studied from Lebanon.

She carefully loosened the fastenings. The brief note from Dana—
A tiny treasure from the Middle East
—brought a wry smile, but it faded as she spilled the “treasure” into her palm.

It was a pendant. Heavy. Striking. It gleamed up at her like a small golden egg, encrusted with jewels of lapis lazuli, carnelian, and jasper.
The classic eye, one of the most ancient symbols of protection.
Carried or worn by people across the earth nearly since the dawn of time, it was among the oldest, most pervasive talismans in the world.

For nearly five thousand years the image of the eye had been written about, drawn, carved, and displayed. If eyes truly were the windows of the soul, as stated by Lao-tzu, the ancient Chinese philosopher who had written the greatest treatise on Taoism, it was no wonder that humans had always feared the envious glance, the evil intention glinting from one pair of eyes to another.

From the beginning, Natalie knew well, people have always found a prolonged stare unnerving. That's why, throughout history, most cultures have replicated the open eye as a protective amulet—like the one in her hand—to reflect back the evil effects of a suspect gaze.

She'd always found it fascinating that people in the Middle East, since the days of early Sumeria, believed that light was generated in the heart and projected outward through the eyes, and that an evil heart cast an evil eye capable of harming whatever it looked upon.

It seemed that humans had always worried that a covetous undercurrent flowed beneath every glance of admiration. That one could cause intentional or inadvertent harm with the naked eye. In many languages and through many centuries, there was a single name for the feared glance—the evil eye.

The Italians called it
malocchio,
the Scots
droch shuil,
the Jews
ayin ha'ra.
In Spanish it was
mal de ojo,
in Polish
oko proroka,
in Farsi
bla band
. And the Greeks called it
matiasma
.

Even the Torah spoke of the evil eye. In the Book of Proverbs, King Solomon cautioned, “Eat not the bread of him that hath an evil eye.” And St. Paul wrote in the New Testament, “Oh foolish Galatians, who has cast the evil eye upon you?”

The evil eye had intrigued the ancient Romans Cicero, Virgil, and Pliny, all of whom had commented on it in their writings. As did the first-century Greek historian Plutarch, who wrote that certain men's eyes could bring harm to infants and young animals whose bodies were still weak and vulnerable, but that these same gazes couldn't wield the same power over adults. Except for Thebans, of course. Plutarch was convinced that their eyes possessed the power to harm both infants and adults.

Natalie had spent years examining and cataloging hundreds of protective eyes from the ancient Middle East and Mediterranean basin. The eye amulets had come from Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Africa, Italy, Turkey, Persia, Iraq, and Israel.

But she felt a special spark of excitement as she tilted the eye pendant from Dana beneath the lamp. Though she'd inspected countless amulets painted or engraved with the protective eye, she'd never come across one quite like this.

Like the others she'd studied, it was old and outlined as if with the greasy kohl commonly employed by men and women alike to protect the eyes of the wearer since before the days of Cleopatra.

But the eyes on this pouch and amulet were different. They were doubly encircled with thick blue borders of lapis lazuli. And the red stones forming the irises—carnelian, she guessed—were not set against the usual background of white, but against a sea of yellow. She wondered if the yellow stones were jaspers. All three of those gems had been used for adornment as far back as the Babylonian period.

Lost in thought, Natalie chewed her lip. There was a heft to the darkened gold setting—and she'd bet her fifth-century Etruscan amulet emblazoned with the head of Medusa that the setting
was
of real gold—that told her this pendant was crafted for someone of wealth and importance. From what she could deduce on first glance, this necklace was far from the trinket Dana's note had jokingly suggested.

Dana has no idea what this is,
she thought, shaking her head.
But then, neither do I.

And there wouldn't be time to properly investigate it, she realized with a disappointed sigh, not until she'd dug out from
a backlog of work that could fill an Egyptian burial chamber. Still, it was an enticing mystery waiting to be solved. More important, it was an overture from her sister, an opening for a much-needed conversation.

A sliver of apprehension suddenly tingled through her. She hoped to God Dana hadn't bought this pendant on the black market, inadvertently paying next to nothing for an unrecognized treasure that had been looted in Iraq at the start of the war.

Tomorrow, she promised herself, she'd have to make time to check the latest list of antiquities still unaccounted for—and pray she wouldn't see this evil eye pendant staring back at her from her computer screen.

As she lifted the pendant by its chain to slip it back into the pouch, Natalie paused, once again struck by its heft.
But it isn't only the gold,
she realized with a start.
There's something inside.

She reached for her magnifying glass and peered at the metal ring through which the chain was threaded, probing it to see if it doubled as a clasp. But it didn't—the pendant wouldn't open, and its surface appeared intact. She couldn't detect a seam anywhere in the gold.

Suddenly her concentration was broken by the sound of a drawer closing.
What was that?
It seemed to have come from down the hall.

A moment later, the sound came again.

Who else is up here after hours? Dennis? Did he leave his wedding ring in his desk again?

Her eyes narrowed at the thought of the Armani-obsessed associate curator whose office was a few doors down. Dennis Bellweather considered himself hot stuff, with his five published pieces in
Art News
magazine and his frequent lunch dates with a series of women half his age.
You'd think by now the little Lothario would be more adept at juggling his double life.

Just then she heard a crash and she rushed around the desk.

“Den—” But the word died in her throat as a figure appeared in Dennis's doorway twenty feet away. And it wasn't Dennis.

It was a man, but one tall and twice Dennis's girth, with shoulders hewn from either sweat or steroids. He could have
been a linebacker for the Giants, except he wasn't wearing a red-striped helmet or a royal blue uniform. He was wearing a black ski mask, black gloves, and baggy gray sweats.

After the first thump of fear slammed through her chest, logic spun out an answer.
Valerie finally hired a private detective to nail the scumbag.
As the thought flashed through her mind, the stranger started toward her with a lumbering gait.

“Quiet,” he warned in a throaty baritone, lengthening his strides to close the gap between them.

“Security!” Natalie took a step backward, shouting at the top of her lungs.

He burst into a sprint, charging toward her. Heart hammering, she veered to the left, darting toward the reception desk and the alarm button on the underside of Lita's keyboard shelf. Private detective or no, he was moving like a man determined to shut her up.

She made it only three strides down the hallway before she heard him directly behind her. At that, her training kicked in, and she spun to face him.

He couldn't slow down fast enough, and his momentum was exactly what she'd counted on. Her arm shot out, the heel of her palm aimed toward his nose as she leaned her body into the slam. Reflexively, her other fist—the one clutching tight to the pendant—shot up to protect her face.

Ski Mask grunted at the impact, stunned by the sharp jolt of pain and the blood spurting from his nostrils. Through the eye slits in his mask, she could see the pain glaring from amber-flecked brown eyes. Without giving him an instant to recover, she drove her heel down hard on his instep.

The maneuvers bought her another second. She lunged for the reception area once again, but as she rushed toward the desk and the buzzer, her heel caught on the wheeled base of Lita's chair and she tumbled against the bookshelves lining the wall, her shoe flying in the opposite direction.

Then she felt his hands tangling in her hair. He was on her in a fury, dragging her backward as pain ripped from her hairline to her nape. The force of his grip brought tears.

“I'll take this, ma'am.” His voice was thick with a mouthful
of blood. A faint drawl tinged his words. He grabbed her hand in a fist the size of a gorilla's and began prying her fingers from the pendant.

In the instant it took her to realize what he was after, her fingers clamped tighter around the amulet and she fought back, ramming her free elbow backward and up toward his sternum.

“Security!”
she screamed again, frantic.
“Zone 6!”

His foot hooked around hers, brought her down hard. She hit the carpet like a roped calf. As he dropped down to straddle her and grabbed for the pendant once more, she pitched it past him—sending it deep into the leafy jungle of plants.

To her shock, he scrambled to his feet to lurch after it. On his hands and knees, he began groping among the porcelain pots cradling split-leaf philodendron and ficus. She clambered to her feet and saw the thin beam of his penlight probing the dirt, fronds, and carpet. The sound of voices and pounding footsteps filled the stairwell.