“No,” I corrected her, “we’re close.” Underneath the squares Hal had typed
“I have no idea what the man intended. This whole thing is a colossal waste of time,” Tomas said angrily.
Ari, always the peace negotiator, broke in. “From what I remember, John, when you showed us the preceding steps there was nothing too complex.”
OWL LA MEMOIR
TRANSMUTATION
“I thought the acrobatics with the last one were pretty tricky,” Laurel said.
“Perhaps for you, Laurel. But he wasn’t thinking about you when he assembled the thing. It was all meant for John. Why didn’t he leave this for you? You’re his heir, are you not?”
The four of us sat in silence, trying to work out what appeared to be an anagram. Ari, whose command of English was the weakest, found the exercise particularly frustrating. “I’m still thinking all the time about my work. It’s hard for me to concentrate.”
“The story you were following up in Washington?” Laurel asked.
“Yes.”
Realizing that I’d been left in the dark, Ari turned to me. “In Washington, before I came to New York, some contacts confirmed rumors circulating about Abu Ghraib.”
“What’s that?”
“A prison in Iraq. Occupation forces are sending interrogation squads in to torture prisoners. It’s going to happen outside the regular military command. This news is astounding. If it gets out, the whole Middle East will ignite.”
“You know this for a fact?”
“That is what I’m working on, yes.”
Tomas barged in, his impatience directed toward his brother this time. “Why are you bringing this up? We’ve got to concentrate on this damned game.”
Ari responded simply, “Not all of us can live in the past.”
Tomas flung some words back at him in Assyrian.
I broke the impasse by interrupting to ask Tomas about the accounts I’d found in Samuel’s writings. “Samuel’s journal mentioned a couple of obscure kings, one called Aza, the other, Mitta. Does that mean anything to you?”
The bad mood he’d been nursing flared into rage. He slapped the table with his hand. “You’d get a lot further if you concentrated on finding the engraving instead of sifting through every word Samuel wrote. And there’s one thing we’ve never resolved. I want it turned over to me when it’s found.”
“I’ll be taking it to the FBI,” I responded flatly.
His lips turned down in an ugly frown. “I won’t agree to that.”
What little patience I had left vanished in a blur of exasperation. “After all I’ve gone through, you expect me to hand you a stolen artifact worth millions? They’d jail me for that. All my efforts to build up my business would be destroyed.”
Tomas laughed bitterly. “From everything I’ve heard, you don’t know the meaning of hard work. You lived off Samuel. You actually killed your golden goose.”
My fist clenched and Ari clamped his hand down on my arm. “May we act like grown-ups here?” he said. “People are looking.”
The restaurant manager glanced toward our table, lifting her delicate, dark eyebrows. I notched my voice down. “Explain something. So far I’ve been carrying the heavy load. Laurel and I, our lives are in danger; my brother is dead; Laurel’s husband is dead. What exactly have you contributed? Why can’t you at least be more positive?”
Tomas threw me a look cold enough to paralyze a rattlesnake. “You think I’m getting a free ride? You don’t know the slightest thing about me. The danger we’re in now is nothing compared to the risk I’ll take to get the engraving home. Someone needs to take care of that end of things.”
Laurel scrunched up her napkin and threw it down. “That’s enough. This is getting out of hand. It’s time to see your professor, Tomas, anyway.”
Outside it felt as if the atmosphere had grown hotter. August in New York. Everybody who could had left the city. As for the rest, you could actually see steam rising out of their ears if you looked hard enough.
Jacob Ward lived on West Forty-fourth Street on a block lined with four-story brownstones, fancy black grates separating their pint-sized front gardens from the sidewalk. The Actors’ Studio, where Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg developed method acting, stood out prominently on the street. Legions of stars, Brando, De Niro, and Monroe, to name just a few, had honed their craft there.
When we arrived Ward ushered us into his generously proportioned hallway. He spoke genially to Tomas. “You’re lucky you got me at home. My kids are in Westhampton with my wife and the housekeeper. I only came back for a couple of meetings.”
“I was wondering whether you’ve heard from Hanna since we talked,” Tomas asked.
“No, I’m afraid not. But that’s not surprising. We didn’t correspond regularly.”
He shook my hand. “I’m told you’re Samuel Diakos’s brother. I knew him by reputation. I was so sorry to hear about the accident.” I mumbled my thanks. He took us downstairs to the garden level and suggested we sit outdoors.
Some people approach life with sheer energy, outshining those surrounding them. Ward, an undisputed star in the lecture hall, channeled much of this into his teaching. He looked more like a stock promoter than a professor. He had a beefy, florid face, handsome even if it carried a bit too much flesh. His suit and shirt were custom-made, ostentatious but expertly cut. He wore a Duchamp tie and a Ferragamo caramel leather belt. A rope of gold chain circled his wrist. His fingernails shone too brightly to be natural and I realized they’d been manicured.
In the garden we settled into comfortable lounge chairs, glasses of Perrier with lime twists in hand. A waterfall of ivy covered the wall of the neighboring townhouse. Overhead, a paper parrot floated in the tree branches. A cluster of large plants with broad, dark green leaves and trumpet-shaped white flowers mushroomed like jungle plants in the side beds. Two urns on either side of the kitchen doors were filled with double petunias, giving off a powdery, overly sweet scent like an old lady’s perfume.
Ward gestured toward the tree with his glass. “Would you believe we have a pair of cardinals here? Right in the heart of the city. I still think of this neighborhood as Hell’s Kitchen, even though they’ve changed the name to Clinton. A real estate promo. How wishy-washy is that?”
“After your former president?” Tomas asked.
Ward chuckled. “No, he’s hiding away in Westchester.” He leaned forward, resting his drink on his knee. “I grew up two blocks away from here. A humble third-floor flat. My wife, Miriam, got a generous inheritance. The kids were older and she wanted to do something with her time, so we took our capital and picked up a couple of these properties. We own the one immediately behind us. And one on Forty-seventh. Miriam renovated the heck out of them. In a couple of years real estate will peak and we’ll unload the other two.” He laughed. “When the cookie jar starts to look empty. But not this one. I want to hang on to it.”
It seemed overly personal information to be sharing with people he’d just met. But I sensed this was one of the ways he had of making people feel comfortable. By my estimate, the cookie jar had to be pretty full. He was talking upwards of twenty million dollars’ worth of real estate, not counting whatever they had in Westhampton.
He picked up his glass and crossed his legs. “Before we get into Nahum, may I ask why you’re interested? He’s pretty obscure. Daniel or Ezekiel, on the other hand, much juicier fodder for archaeological pursuits there.”
