The Gold of Thrace Read online

  She led the way to her office along a corridor crammed with crates and painted backdrops for displays. “Please excuse the mess,” she said. “We’re getting ready for a new exhibit. Opens Tuesday.”

  They reached her office and she gestured toward the seat facing the desk. “I have only a few minutes.”

  “Dr. Hochstadtler…” Tamar hesitated, not sure of how to begin.

  “Maria, please.”

  “Has anyone offered you a mosaic floor from a Roman villa?” Tamar asked.

  “You asked Gilberto? I heard he recently acquired one.”

  “That one is from a villa near Pompeii. I’m looking for one from Turkey.”

  “Turkey?”

  “It was stolen from my site.”

  The curator shook her head and sighed. “There’s a lot of that lately. It’s getting worse.” She crossed her arms. “We won’t deal with things like that. We always check for provenance.” She looked over at Tamar. “I can keep an eye out. You have pictures?”

  “The mosaic disappeared overnight, before we had time to photograph it.”

  Maria pondered for a moment, fingering her chin with her thumb. “Come to dinner tonight. Leandro Aristides will be there. He might know. He’s from Istanbul, a specialist in Turkish antiquities. He keeps his ear to the ground, has radar that picks up everything.”

  ***

  Tamar returned to the Euler and found a message from Gilberto. She called and he asked if she could come for lunch, that he had something interesting to show her. “Not tomorrow,” he said. “I have to be elsewhere. Friday. Make it Friday. Tell Enzio to come along too, if you see him.”

  She told him that Enzio was in Lyon, visiting his mother.

  “His mother is dead,” Gilberto said. “Died a long time ago. They were close. When she died, he changed his name to Enzio, her maiden name.” He paused. “Lyon, you say?”

  “Is that significant?”

  “He goes there lately. Before that, he went to Paris.” He paused again. “Never mind. I think I know. Friday then, for lunch.”

  ***

  The evening at Hochstadtler’s began with Tamar proffering a bouquet of five roses and, again, vigorous handshakes all around—to Maria Hochstadtler and her husband, to their two daughters, chestnut-haired and solemn like their father, dimpled like their mother.

  They all look like Holbeins, she thought. Everyone in Basel looks like a Holbein to me, and she wondered if she had spent too much time wandering the Kunstmuseum.

  “Maximillian Hochstadtler,” Maria’s husband said as he pumped Tamar’s arm. “Call me Max.”

  “Tamar Saticoy. Call me Tamar.”

  “Ah! The American professor. Friend of Gilberto Dela Barcolo.” He smiled. “Gilberto of the red carpet.” The last was said with a bit of disdain, as if the red carpet that covered the stairs at the entrance to Gilberto’s house were a little too ostentatious, a little indecent, and hinted of worse going on inside.

  Tamar looked around the room, at the cherry wood trim around doors and windows, at the cream colored walls. The taupe sofa and staid brown leather chairs gathered decently around a mahogany coffee table, the lawyer’s bookcase with cloth books neatly lined up at the lip of the shelves, the slightly faded oriental rug all contrasted with the sybaritic splendor of Gilberto’s house.

  Max kept talking without stop. He was a chemist who worked for one of the pharmaceutical houses in Basel, he told Tamar. He apologized for polluting the Rhine and asked how she liked the city, how she liked the museums, if she had visited the tiergarten, the zoological garden.

  “I was at the Kunstmuseum this afternoon,” she said.

  “Ah, then you met my ancestors.”

  He disappeared with a smile into another room and came back carrying a postcard.

  “The family Hochstadtler,” he said and handed her the card with a flourish.

  It was a photograph of a painting from the museum, a Holbein. No wonder they look like Holbeins, Tamar thought, scanning their faces. All of Basel is full of living, four-hundred-year-old Holbeins.

  ***

  “Leandro was an antiquities dealer. He’s from Istanbul originally,” Maria was telling Tamar in the kitchen as she found a vase for the roses while her daughters filled bowls of ox-tail soup. “He sold a Byzantine collection to Dumbarton Oakes for over two million dollars and retired. Now he’s working for his own pleasure, but he still knows what’s going on in the market. Not much gets past him.”

  The kitchen was not like the other rooms Tamar had seen. It was another world, slick white and stainless steel, with bins that opened and shut and pulled out with the touch of a button.

  When the doorbell rang, Maria signaled her daughters to finish ladling the soup and rushed into the foyer. Tamar followed.

  Leandro Aristides, balding, mustachioed like a Turk, arrived breathless and smiling and carrying a bottle of wine. He presented his exquisite, elegant wife. The astonishingly beautiful Madame Aristides, with her dark hair, thick and shining and tinged with auburn, and her sad, russet eyes, stood next to him almost motionless, inclining her head slightly through a new round of handshakes. On the middle finger of her right hand, she wore an enormous, luminous pearl as faultless as her face.

  Dinner began with the ox-tail soup, followed by Coquille St. Jacques, then veal and morels cooked in a cream sauce.

  Tamar sat across the table from Aristides’ wife and gazed at the pearl and watched Madame Aristides pushing food around on her plate with her fork. She ate little, just picked at the seafood of the Coquille St. Jacques and moved it to the side of the plate.

  “In the beginning,” Madame Aristides said to Tamar as she saw Tamar stare at the pearl, “God created a white jewel from his own precious soul.”

  Aristides looked startled. He seemed to give his wife a warning look of disapproval, and Tamar turned away.

  “The dinner is delicious,” she said to Maria, and saw Aristides’ wife move another scallop to the side. “You’re a true gourmet cook.”

  Maria shrugged and smiled and tilted her head. “Don’t be so impressed. The soup was Knorr, the Coquille St. Jacques come from the ready food counter at the Coop. For the rest of the dinner my daughters helped. The menu is typically Swiss, typically Basler.”

  “And what brings you to Basel?” Aristides asked.

  “I’m looking for a mosaic floor from a Roman villa.”

  Aristides raised his eyebrows in question. “Gilberto has one.” He leaned back in his chair and contemplated Tamar. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Tamar’s fork hovered over her plate. Could Aristides be trusted? She looked across at the silent Madame Aristides, who didn’t smile, who didn’t move her mouth. Her perfect face was expressionless, as if she were afraid that any emotion would leave scars.

  It was Maria who broke the silence. “Tamar is looking for one that was stolen from her site.”

  “What site is that?” he asked.

  Tamar put down her fork and played with the napkin on her lap. “Tepe Hazarfen,” she said at last.

  “Tepe Hazarfen? In Turkey?” Aristides narrowed his eyes and contemplated her. “I know someone who may be able to help you. He’ll be coming in to Basel tomorrow. I’ll make inquiries.”

  Maria’s daughters cleared the plates and emerged from the kitchen with slices of apples arranged on a board around an enormous wheel of cheese.

  “From the mountains,” Maria told her guests. “This cheese is found only in Switzerland. Too delicate to export.”

  They ended the dinner with crisp, tart slices of apple and with cheese spread on segments of Basel’s special hard rolls.

  Before they left for the evening, Aristides told Tamar to come by his place the day after next. “I’ll introduce you to the man I’m expecting.” He reached into his pocket and took out a card case. “We are at Engelgasse 7, Apartment 7A,” he said and handed a one of the cards to Tamar. “Eleven o’clock.�
��

  ***

  Tamar crossed her arms across her chest in the chill evening air as she got into the taxi to drive back to the Euler. It had begun to drizzle. By the time she reached the hotel, it was pouring. She ran through the rain into the lobby. Before she went upstairs, she stopped in the bar to buy a bottle of water and looked around for Enzio before she remembered that he had gone to Lyon. She was surprised at how much she missed their nightly chat.

  Herr Keller was in the bar, ready to spend a long evening talking. He asked if she were enjoying her stay, how she liked Basel, if she had been to the museums, how she liked the food.

  She told him she had gone to the Kunstmuseum and the Antiquities Museum, that she just been to dinner where she ate Swiss specialties—veal with morels, and a cheese from the mountains.

  “We have other things,” he told her. “Specialties of Basel, like our own chocolates, Basler Ballen. You must try them. Buy a few boxes for your friends back in America.”

  She thought of the department secretaries and the dean who arranged for grants for her summer digs, and asked for the best place to buy the chocolates.

  He told her about a shop in Klein Basel, across the river, “Where they make the best Basler Ballen. They also do the preserves that we serve with breakfast,” he told her and he gave Tamar the address.

  ***

  Upstairs, her room had been readied for the night. Her bed was opened, the drapes were pulled, and a small glass of cassis stood on the nightstand next to the bed.

  She listened to the rain, wondering if Aristides or his friend could give her news about the mosaic. She turned on the floor lamp, dropped into the armchair, and reached for the museum catalogue that she had bought that afternoon. She had left the bookmark on the page about the Holbein, but now the bookmark was wedged between the last page of the catalogue and the cover. She looked around the room. Nothing was as she had left it. There must be a different maid, she thought, someone who rearranges everything, and she felt a little annoyed. And then, foolish.

  She dropped the catalogue on the bedside table next to the cassis and examined the room more carefully. The door of the armoire that held the television was open; the television was extended to the end of the track and pointed toward the window. Her shoes were on the other side of the closet, the notepad that was usually next to the telephone was on the table under the catalogue. She pulled open a dresser drawer and found her clothes tumbled and in disarray. She opened the top drawer. The gold bracelet that Gilberto had given her was gone.

  She reached for the telephone, asked to speak to Herr Keller, and then decided to go downstairs and report the theft personally. She waited impatiently for the elevator, went down to the lobby, found Herr Keller in the bar, and told him about the missing bracelet.

  He seemed insulted. “A gold bracelet, you say?” He called the waiter and ordered a sherry for her. “You looked carefully? You may have misplaced it. Perhaps in your purse? Perhaps a pocket?”

  She shook her head and asked him to call the police.

  He hemmed and hawed and assured her that everyone on the staff at the Euler was honest, and finally agreed to call the police. She sat forward in the chair, tapping her foot, drumming her fingers on the table, waiting for the police to arrive. Finally a sandy-haired man dressed in a black leather trench coat, Herr Fischer, a detective, swept into the bar and sat at the table next to Tamar.

  She repeated the story of the missing bracelet for the detective. She told him it was ancient Thracian gold and he raised his eyebrows. He checked her room, examined the dresser and dusted it for fingerprints.

  They went back downstairs and sat in the bar, where she drew a hasty sketch of the bracelet on a napkin for him. He assured her he would call her if he found anything.

  When they finished, she went back upstairs, still shaken, feeling violated and imprudent. I should have taken more care, she thought. I should have put it in the hotel safe.

  ***

  By the time she was ready for bed, the rain had turned to hail and she heard the staccato ping of hailstones against the windows. Then came the thunder, rumbling and crashing with occasional flashes of lightning that penetrated the drapes. She began to count the seconds between the lightning and the claps of thunder, waiting for the storm to come closer and then fade away.

  The thunder raged all night, like an angry admonition from the sky. She lay awake, listening to the furious storm. The room filled with static electricity, and seemed to be arcing and sparking as her heart began to pound with a sense of foreboding.

  Maybe reading something dull would put her to sleep. In the dark, she felt for the museum catalogue and turned on the lamp. It opened to the page about Holbein.

  She began to scan the catalogue and fell into a fitful sleep, conscious of the glow of the lamp, never sure if she was awake or asleep as images of abstract paintings and gold bracelets passed through her head, and a dark Mercedes bore down on her while she was running, running to escape. It’s Demitrius, she was saying to Alex as the Mercedes chased her down, Demitrius is the danger.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Lyons, France, August 16, 1990

  He arrived in Lyon at the Gare de la Part-Dieu and took a taxi to the apartment hotel on Boulevard des Belges, right across from the Parc de la Tête d’Or.

  He opened the apartment door with the key card he had received in the mail yesterday. He dropped his briefcase on the coffee table and went straight to the computer on the desk in the corner. He turned it on and entered his password, then a second password and a code number. He waited. There was a message for him.

  “Onze heure.” Eleven o’clock.

  He deleted the message and turned off the computer. He wandered into the kitchen and found only an opened box with three stale crackers and some crumbs, and decided to go out to dinner.

  He headed for the Rhône. He strolled leisurely, with the park on one side and the river on the other, past the rose garden, heavy with the aroma of damask roses, of tea roses, of old eglantines that wafted toward him. He continued on until he found an upscale bouchon, a café with a terrace facing the river on one of the quais. He ordered the specialty of the house, veal sausage—boudin blanc—and a bottle of local Beaujolais.

  Small sailboats slid along the water, music blaring, with shirtless teenaged boys, laughing and tanned, scrambling on the decks. Small motorboats passed with purple-haired women sunning topless, lying on their backs near the bow.

  He contemplated the young women in summer dresses who strolled along the plâge in the evening breeze and thought, with a mighty sigh, how little it took to make him truly content.

  He sat on the terrace and watched the river until he noticed the waiter hover near him impatiently. He looked around and saw that he was the last customer. He paid the bill, added a substantial tip, and left.

  In the morning, he returned to the same bouchon for breakfast.

  He ordered what he thought of as a typical French breakfast. He put two spoons of sugar into the fine Limoges cup on the table, and with a pitcher in each hand, simultaneously poured strong French coffee and foaming hot milk into it. He reached for a brioche, still warm from the oven and slick with butter, split it, added a dollop of chevre cheese. He slowly scanned Le Monde while eating, sipping his café-au-lait, looking up now and then to check for loiterers in the street. He noticed a few pedestrians: an occasional jogger; a couple, immersed in each other, leaning together, arms across each other’s shoulders.

  He took a second brioche, buttered it, and slathered it with apricot preserves. He bit into the brioche and savored the still fresh, tart-sweet taste of the apricots, glistening and golden, took another sip of café-au-lait and leaned back to watch the Rhône.

  He checked his watch. Nine o’clock. Still two hours to go.

  On an impulse, he left the restaurant and hailed a taxi to take him to the chocolatier on the other side of the Rhône and bought a half-kilo box of chocola
tes to bring back to Tamar. He took another taxi back to the apartment on the Rive Gauche and dropped off the box of chocolates before he headed for the Quai Charles de Gaulle. He wandered through the streets of La Cité, built for tourists and shoppers, and onto a piazza, checked his watch again, and then ducked into the passages that led into Interpol.

  At ten forty-eight he stood outside the new Interpol headquarters, gazing at the tall wrought iron fence and the reflecting pool that surrounded it like a medieval moat. A twentieth century version of a medieval castle, he thought as he strolled to the gate.

  He stopped at the glass booth at the entrance, gave the guard his card and identification number, and stood passively while the guard subjected him to a body search.

  He walked into the public area, the click of his footsteps and the buzz and hum of the glass elevators echoing through the soaring vault of the hollow-sounding atrium. He strolled over to the reception desk where a woman sat behind a console, the tip of her head just visible.

  When he reached the desk, she looked up at him with a stern-faced stare.

  His French wasn’t that good, so he spoke to her in English. “I’ve come to see my mother.”

  The receptionist rolled her eyes impatiently and gave him an unsympathetic look. “Your identification, sir.”

  He sighed, remembering that humor is not appreciated here, took out his wallet and passed the card over to her.

  She inspected it and said, “Place your thumb in the receptacle, please,” while she typed his name into the computer terminal on the console.

  He did what she told him and waited until he saw recognition in her eyes and she nodded when confirmation appeared on her screen. She turned and reached for a plastic card from the shelf behind her.

  “Your proximity card, sir.” She pointed to the corner of the public area separate from the bank of elevators. “Use that elevator over there, sir. Someone will meet you on the fifth floor.”

  He sauntered to the elevator, pushed the button, waited for the elevator cage to stop at the lobby floor, and stepped inside. There was a metal plate where there would ordinarily be a panel with buttons for floor selection. He put the “prox” card against the metal plate, the elevator door closed, and the number five appeared above the plate.