Bestiary

again.

Al-Kalli reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a slim, ivory-colored envelope. “But I don’t want you to think I am ungrateful,” he said, handing it to Beth. Then he turned on his well-polished heel, nodded to a speechless Mrs. Cabot, and left. There was a faint scent of Bay Rum in the air.

Beth stood stock-still, as did Mrs. Cabot, until Elvis shrugged and said, “It’s not like we don’t have our own copies of everything.”

That was true. But without the actual book, Beth thought, what good did it all do? It was like a wonderful review of a movie no one could see, an authoritative article on a painting never to be exhibited, an exegesis of a text no one could ever read. Worse, without a public source, or an authentic artifact, to point to, it was like an exercise in the fantastic. None of it could, or would, ever be taken seriously.

She turned the envelope over in her hand. It was closed, to her surprise, with red sealing wax, on which the initials MAK had been impressed; she hadn’t seen anything like it outside the movies, where people like Sir Thomas More got missives from the Archbishop of Canterbury. She broke the seal and removed two cashier’s checks — the first, in the amount of one million dollars, was made out to the Getty Conservation Institute. She passed it wordlessly to Mrs. Cabot. The second check, she had no idea what to do with. It was made out to her personally, in the amount of one hundred thousand dollars. Elvis craned his neck to get a good look at it, then whistled.

“Whoa,” he said, “looks to me like that includes a hefty bonus for your executive assistant.”

Beth wanted to say that she couldn’t accept this, but al-Kalli was already gone. Mrs. Cabot came closer, and Beth held it out for her to see. “Should I just tear it up?” Beth said.

“It’s a cashier’s check,” Mrs. Cabot said, “it’d be like tearing up the actual money.”

“What should I do with it?”

Mrs. Cabot looked puzzled, too. She was running all the ethical standards through her mind, but it wasn’t clear exactly which one was being violated. Al-Kalli wasn’t asking Beth to lie about anything; he wasn’t enlisting her official support in a dubious claim. He wasn’t asking her to back up a suspicious provenance or declare something to be the work of an Old Master that had been previously attributed to a lowly apprentice. In fact, he was removing the object in question from all such considerations. So it clearly wasn’t a bribe — it was a gift. But the Getty did have in place a clear and strictly enforced policy that required all museum employees to report anything at all that might represent, in any way, a conflict of interest. And on those grounds alone, the check had to be declared, cleared, and only then, possibly released.

“I say cash it, quick,” Elvis whispered in Beth’s direction, then scooted out before Mrs. Cabot could admonish him.

“I’ll have to take this to the CFO’s office,” Mrs. Cabot said of the million-dollar check. “And I might as well take that one, too, for safekeeping,” she continued, snatching it out of Beth’s hand. “The museum counsel will have to decide whether or not you can accept it.”

Mrs. Cabot left, too, now, and Beth suddenly found herself bereft in her own office — alone, in the late afternoon, without The Beasts of Eden, and without the king’s ransom she had just been holding in her hand. She didn’t hold out much hope of ever seeing it again — Mrs. Cabot would find a way either to have it returned or, if al-Kalli consented, deposited instead in the museum’s coffers. Nobody ever became a museum curator for the money… but still, it had been nice to feel rich, even if it was only for a minute or two.

There was one thing, however, she did have left. Sliding open the bottom drawer of her desk, and lifting out a folder purposely mislabeled “Personal Correspondence,” she removed the original, eleventh-century letter that had been hidden in the bestiary. As she held its fragile pages in her hand, she felt that maybe the label wasn’t so misleading after all. It did feel as though it had been written to her, as if she were its most appropriate and appreciative audience. No one would ever have known it even existed had it not been for Beth’s sleuthing. And if it hadn’t been for her breach of professional ethics now, the letter would once again be in the possession of its rightful owner, on its way back to Bel-Air… and oblivion. She knew she should feel guilty about the ethical questions — her training in New York and London had always stressed the highest professional standards — but if she were perfectly honest with herself, she felt instead as if she had saved something precious from an all-consuming fire.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Even though he knew it wasn’t true, the funny thing about the al-Kalli estate was that it had been laid out as if it were designed to withstand an assault. There was only one road that led up to it, it commanded the high ground from all sides, it was surrounded by a stone wall with only one other entrance apart from the main gate. Still, there were plenty of things Greer saw that could use improvement. For instance, there was no reason not to place some razor wire atop the back and side walls; yes, there were all kinds of codes and property restrictions for Bel-Air homeowners, but if you didn’t actually ask permission, it couldn’t be refused, right? And if you concealed the wire with some vines and shrubbery — which wasn’t hard — what was the problem? That back gate, the one where Greer had first penetrated the grounds, also needed some serious attention. It should have had a dual-focus, night-vision surveillance camera mounted above it, and the feed should go either to a control center in the main house or at least to the front gate, which was manned twenty-four hours anyway. Greer had mentioned a few of these things to al-Kalli, who’d simply said, “Do what you think is necessary,” and then kind of brushed him aside. Greer had the sense that something else was really on his mind.

He could guess what it was. It was that weird damn menagerie he kept. The place gave Greer, a guy who had seen plenty of bad shit in his time, the creeps. From the outside, you couldn’t hear or see or smell a thing; it was sealed up tighter than a drum. But at least once a day, Greer felt he ought to look in as part of his routine patrol. This morning, he’d found that paleontologist, Carter Cox, in there with Rashid. Rashid, in his usual white coat, was trying to explain something about one of the animals — the one that had spat the green crap on Greer’s neck — and Cox, Greer could tell, was just waiting for him to finish with the blather so he could tell him what was really up.

“The air,” Cox finally said, “is very pure — I understand that.”

“We have the best filters, imported from Germany,” Rashid rattled on, “they are made for nuclear facilities.”

Cox had glanced over at Greer, nodded, then replied to the indignant Rashid. “The air is too pure,” Carter said. “That’s part of the problem.”

“How can good air be bad?” Rashid challenged him.

“These creatures have very elaborate breathing mechanisms,” he said. “They actually need to act as their own filters, to take in and process the particulate matter. It acts as a kind of stimulant.”

Rashid looked baffled.

“It keeps their airways and lungs clear and operative.”

“The humidity does that,” Rashid said. “We keep a constant level in the facility at all times.”

Cox looked increasingly impatient. Greer had the feeling this Rashid guy was putting up nothing but resistance. “The saichania—”

“The basilisk,” Rashid corrected him.

“Okay, the basilisk is capable of humidifying the air for itself. It needs to do that. If the air comes in too wet, it just gets wetter once the basilisks take a breath, which is why they’re having so much trouble with their respiration.”

Greer wondered how Cox could know any of this. And yet he had the sense that he did. And even Greer could see that these animals were in a bad way. They lumbered around in their pens like they were drunk; they dropped clumps of fur on the carefully raked ground; the bird — if you could call that massive flying contraption a bird — left bright red feathers floating in its wake. Greer could never wait to get back outside again and clear his own lungs; the place smelled vaguely like an animal shelter where he’d worked one summer as a kid.

But those animals had been regularly put down.

When he was done with his rounds of the estate, Greer usually hung out on the grounds for a while; he wanted to look like he was earning his money and not just taking pay-offs to keep his mouth shut. And he thought, if he put his mind to it, he might actually be able to make something of this gig; he had a natural bent for security