Whatever. Tomas had Nahum’s engraving now. The enormity of his duplicity staggered me. He’d betrayed me and left Laurel to die. I’d tear him apart if I ever got near him again.
Anger is a useless ally. It fogs the mind. But even with my senses on full alert I wouldn’t have seen it coming. As I passed through the Amsterdam entrance the jester, lurking behind the high stone wall, jammed a gun into my belly.
He pulled the trigger.
Pain roared through my gut and then seemed to expand, turning my whole body into one gigantic, throbbing wave of hurt. I fell, twitching on the sidewalk like a slaughtered lamb. I couldn’t breathe. I had a vague memory of being dragged into a vehicle, the stink of exhaust, a woman’s voice. When I tried to move, my body lay like a dead weight.
“Where is it?” Eris glared at me. She yanked open my bag, and swore when she realized it was empty.
“He shot me.” I tried to raise my hand and press it to my abdomen.
“
Still groggy, I raised myself up to a sitting position, sucked in a couple of deep breaths, and closing my trembling fist, took a violent swing at her. She easily deflected it and twisted my arm painfully behind my back. She pulled out the Taser.
“You’d like more of this? Fifteen hundred volts straight to your temple this time?”
“Then you’ll
She frowned in exasperation. “Okay, I’m repeating myself here.
Where did you put it?”
“It wasn’t there.”
“You’re lying.” She clicked something on the stun gun and pressed it against my temple.
A phone rang. Eris reached into her purse and pulled it out. After a brief, terse conversation, she looked out the window and then turned to me, smiling. “We’re just about there,” she said. “He’s going to come down to see you.”
“Whoever he is, he can screw off too.” “We’ll dig it out of you then.”
Twenty-six
The car pulled into a sizeable parking garage that I assumed belonged to the building on West Thirty-fourth Street. We stopped at a loading platform. Eris and the jester hustled me roughly through the gloomy space and up a few steps to a steel door.
At first glance the room we entered reminded me of a funeral parlor, a ritzy one dressed up for rich folk. Plush mushroom-colored broadloom covered every inch of the floor. A large silver vase sat on a Queen Anne buffet, the top so glossy it reflected the vessel perfectly. Embossed around its base were the signs of the five ancient planets I’d seen on the Alchemy Archives website: Jupiter, Venus, Mars, Saturn, and Mercury. A cloying scent hung in the air, as if someone had tried to cover up a bad odor with cheap floral spray. The place carried with it a kind of hush, of breath caught in the throat, like you find in an emergency waiting room or at the side of a grave.
“Sit here.” Eris motioned to a row of upholstered chairs.
I glanced around the room, trying to find some way to make a break for it, and heard a voice behind me.
“I think this time we’ll have a more honest conversation.”
When I turned, Jacob Ward was standing a few feet away. My momentary surprise faded. Here, I had no doubt, was Jupiter. I couldn’t imagine him in any role but that of kingpin. My mind raced. Jacob Ward was Tomas’s contact. Had this whole thing been a setup? Ward had a keen enough interest in the period and deep enough pockets to buy the artifact. But if he and Tomas had Nahum’s engraving, why was Ward strong-arming me now?
“I’ll say one thing for you, Ward, you’ve got talent. How have you managed to hide the fact that you’re no better than some deadbeat killer in Rikers?”
He reddened slightly and ran a hand over his jaw as though I’d just spit on his face.
“Where’s Laurel? Take me to her right now.”
The way he was dressed, black bespoke suit, plain white shirt, conservative tie, made him look like a funeral director. I saw him twitch, the only hint at the tension he carried.
“I quite enjoyed your company at my home, John. Let’s avoid getting off on the wrong foot today.” He took a few steps forward and gave me a pat on the shoulder, the kind of gesture an uncle would make toward a favored nephew.
I jerked away from his pudgy hand, in no frame of mind for any pretense of politeness. “You didn’t answer me. I said I want to see her.”
“And what if we refuse? You’ll come out swinging, both gun barrels blazing?” He laughed. “Madison, think of this as a dogfight. We’re the rottweilers and you’re the poodle—one of the small ones. It’s no contest. Let’s go somewhere else to talk; people are always coming and going through here.”
Venting my rage might make me feel better, but it wouldn’t help Laurel. I’d be further ahead playing along with them and finding some angle I could exploit. We walked down the corridor to an elevator. The jester wandered off, leaving Eris as rearguard behind us. Ward pressed the button for the fifth floor and we exited into a huge room. Floor to ceiling, the height of the place rose almost two stories. The space was circular and vast. It had no windows; I assumed the ones I’d seen on the exterior had been blocked off. The walls were finished with expensive paper in lustrous white. The ceiling, a gentle dome, was topped with an oval central skylight framed in bronze. I could see an ellipse of sky overhead but most of the light came indirectly, the actual fixtures probably hidden behind the rolled cornice. The room had an otherworldly cold, flat tone. Around its circumference was a series of glass-fronted cases customized for the circular walls.
Ward swept his arm in a wide arc. “Our gallery,” he said.
White plastic monitors, each with a row of winking green lights, were affixed to the cases. Almost two-thirds contained artifacts, and the rest books and manuscripts. I assumed not all of them were legitimate, having either been looted or fabricated. I thought I could identify a statue stolen from the National Museum. With one phone call, I could probably clear up a significant number of open FBI files.
“The glass is shatterproof,” Ward said. “You could set off a grenade in here and it wouldn’t break. The whole thing is screened against ultraviolet light. Inside there’s even a separate airflow system; it keeps the atmosphere humid and at a constant temperature. As you probably know, Iraqi soil is very salty. When clay objects are removed from the earth they dry out, crack, and disintegrate. I make time every day to come in here. You can feel them, you know, the ancient craftsmen speaking to you through the glass.”
Many of the books and manuscripts had pages that were parchment thin and brownish, the pages almost transparent, fragile as elderly skin. They perched on small wooden platforms or custom frames like miniature lecterns. I pressed my hand against the glass to slide it open, forgetting it would have been locked.
“The artifacts are available to buyers but this section is my own collection. Some of them are very rare. I can get one out if you want to see it.” Ward pointed to a leather-bound tome with clasps like I’d seen on the
He gestured to the right.
“You really believe in all those preposterous fairy stories? Immortality? Alchemy?”
Ward colored. “Explain why Himmler took it seriously then. He planned to use alchemical gold to finance the Nazi Party.”
“You’re expecting the engraving to lead you to, what, some kind of formula to make gold?”
