“Your job is to tell me if something goes wrong,” Sylvia Becker shouted at Michael Barrow, “not to go around shooting people. You’ve put the entire syndicate at risk, you moron. My family worked damned hard to build up this organization, and I will not have it jeopardized by clowns like you who don’t stop to consider what they’re doing.”
“I thought —” Barrow began, but she cut him short, her voice harsh and abrasive.
“No, Mike, you didn’t think. That’s the trouble. And how the hell did he get a look at that bone in the first place?” She paused for a moment before snapping, “For God’s sake don’t tell me you actually showed it to him.”
“Of course, I didn’t, Sylvia. I left it on a shelf, that’s all. It wasn’t stuck out in the middle of the room. I suppose I forgot it was there, but I didn’t think he’d notice it.”
Sylvia’s anger became luminous as she shouted, “You didn’t think he’d notice it? Are you serious? That bone is a Chinese artifact, and you told me Preston’s an archeologist and sinologist. And you didn’t think he’d notice?” She ground out her black Turkish cigarette. “I’m surrounded by imbeciles.”
“It wasn’t a routine acquisition,” Barrow pointed out in an attempt at self-defense. “The bone wasn’t stolen. It’s your personal property and you’re selling it. There was no reason to hide it like we hide the other stuff. This operation’s perfectly legit.”
“My property?” Sylvia retorted. “I have no idea where it came from or who it might once have belonged to. All I know about it is that it came into my family’s possession at the end of the war. It might well have been stolen, and in which case someone may want it back. My great-grandfather was mixed up with Nazi treasure thieves, so God knows what the bone might really be, weird though it is.”
“I’m sorry,” Barrow said, withering under Sylvia’s onslaught. “I should have realized…” His voice trailed off.
“You’re damn right you should,” she muttered, almost growling.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated quietly, but the apology seemed only to enflame her further.
“Well,” she said, her slight German accent laden with vitriolic sarcasm, “being sorry doesn’t help us much, does it? As usual with all you people, if you make a mess, I’m the one who has to clean it up.”
Jesus, thought Barrow, and Terry sent a picture of it to his professor at Oxford. Maybe I’ll have to take him out as well, except I have no idea what his name was. I should have made a note of it before I smashed Terry’s phone. If I tell her about that, she’ll have a seizure.
“And there’s another thing,” Sylvia was continuing. “What possessed you to move the body? Why didn’t you just leave it where it was instead of loading it into your car, of all things?”
“I wanted to hide it,” said Barrow. “I didn’t want it discovered until I got clear. As far as I know, it hasn’t been found yet.”
Sylvia turned in the direction of a short, thick-set man in a nondescript, gray overcoat who sat inconspicuously by the door, and he stood up, anticipating her question.
“Carl?”
“I’m here, Fraulein Becker.” His German accent gave his deep voice a guttural timbre.
“Find a way to get rid of Mike’s car,” she told him. “It’s probably got blood stains and God knows what all over it.”
“Ja, of course,” and turning to Barrow he snapped his fingers and held out his hand. “Keys.”
“And dump his gun somewhere as well,” Sylvia added, before bursting out, “My God, I don’t believe this. How could you have been so bloody, bloody stupid? We could lose everything. How many times have I told all of you that I’m the only one who approves maximum responses? If we have to eliminate someone, I set it up. No one else. It’s happened enough times for you to know it by now. It’s a security issue. It’s meant to prevent exactly the sort of mess we’re in now.”
Barrow, feeling humiliated and angry, handed over his car keys without a word, and retrieved the gun from his coat pocket. He loved his sporty little car and his gun gave him a sense of importance, but he knew he would never see either of them again. The man in the raincoat left the room, saying no more than, “Leave it all to me.”
Watching Carl go, Barrow realized he had left the gun’s silencer at home. Too late now, he thought, fighting off a momentary panic as he resumed his seat. I’ll have to remember to get rid of it myself somehow.
As the door closed, Sylvia sat back in her chair, breathing a long sigh as an eloquent expression of sheer exasperation. Reaching to her left, she found the polished mahogany table beside her chair, and patted her way across the top until she located a pack of cigarettes wrapped in gold foil. Lighting a black cigarette, she drew in a lung-full of smoke. Her mother had begun smoking Turkish tobacco when Sylvia was a child. Directly she left school, she tried it herself, and came to enjoy it. She indulged frequently, despite the fact that her mother was now confined almost permanently to her house in Berlin as emphysema slowly robbed her of breath and life.
She settled herself more comfortably, assuming the position she habitually adopted when smoking, holding the cigarette in her left hand while resting her left elbow in the palm of her right hand. As she smoked, the anger making her hands tremble slightly gradually subsided. Barrow, and the two others left with her in the room, stayed silent. They knew if Sylvia’s volatile temper had anything remotely resembling a redeeming feature, it was that it was almost always short-lived, and so they waited for the storm to abate. Sylvia often said the best way to die quickly is to make decisions when you’re angry, so although her outbursts of rage were fierce and frequent, she knew herself well enough to exercise control when she needed it. Her pungent — some said dreadful — black cigarettes were her faithful helpers.
After about two minutes, each of which stretched like eons to Mike Barrow, she sat forward again, apparently composed, and there was a palpable relaxation everywhere around the room.
“All right,” she said, stubbing out the cigarette, “we have some business to attend to. Are the twins still here?”
The two men left in the room with Barrow had said nothing thus far. They sat somewhat rigidly on a sofa, as though feeling out of place in the spacious sitting room of the flat in London’s fashionable Russell Square. The furnishings were opulent. Oil paintings, some of them dark with age, adorned the walls, while crystal and porcelain pieces stood on tables and shelves. Barrow was impressed by the room and had tried to emulate it in his Knightsbridge flat.
Sylvia’s mother, Gabriella, had purchased the flat shortly after her own mother, Ellen’s, death in 2001, and eventually it had become the head office of the syndicate. Sylvia, now in virtual control of the organization, much preferred London to Berlin, and did not often see her ailing mother except when she needed advice. Gabriella’s lungs were occluded by the tar and grime of a lifetime of smoking, but her mind was still as sharp as a snake’s fang, and Sylvia knew it.
She sat in a large leather armchair; her slim, elegant legs crossed. She wore a dark blue dress, perfectly cut and tailored for her five-foot-six-inch stature. Her nails were manicured to perfection, and her long, blonde hair covered her shoulders, framing an oval face with wide-set green eyes. Her complexion was flawless. Mike Barrow had always regarded her as an incandescently beautiful woman, in spite of the black, wrap-around glasses she habitually wore. Beside her chair, stretched languidly on the thick carpet, sprawled a golden retriever wearing a harness and handle.
“Mike,” she said, “I want you out of London quickly. Can you be trusted to carry that oracle bone to the client in Caen without shooting anybody?” Her tone was sarcastic, but without its former causticity.
“I’ll be fine, Sylvia,” he answered, trying not to sound as annoyed as he felt. He was convinced leaving Terry Preston to go blabbing to his old professor — what the hell was his name, anyway — would have been a fatal mistake, bringing more trouble down on everyone than killing him ever would. Yes, he knew maximum response, Sylvia’s quaint euphemism for killing, was her call, but there hadn’t been time for the niceties in this case. He also knew Sylvia’s first and most important principle was obey the rules, but he was sure he had done the right thing, in spite of what she said. He had taken the initiative and killed his best friend for the good of the syndicate, and he felt ill-used by Sylvia Becker and deeply resentful.
“You better be fine,” Sylvia snapped. “If you screw up like that again, it’ll be you they find stuffed in an alley somewhere with a stiletto in your eye. Do I make myself abundantly clear?”
Her tone was almost conversational by now, which made her words all the more menacing, and the hair on the back of Barrow’s neck rose. The syndicate was at the very core of Sylvia Becker’s being, and she would defend it with all the ferocity of a lioness her cubs. She had killed to safeguard it before, and by God she would certainly do it again if required.
“Yes, Sylvia,” he said, “but I really think I —”
“Leave it, Mike,” she said, anger beginning to creep back into her voice, and Barrow backed off.
“All right,” she said, “you should be out of London no later than this evening, preferably sooner. You know the delivery arrangements in Caen?”
“Yes, I’ve memorized the address, and we use the doorstep drop system.”
“Correct,” said Sylvia. “The client has a secretary and he’ll receive the merchandise from you. He’ll be expecting Paul Ellis, so use the right ID. As you know, this is not a top tier security delivery because the bone hasn’t been stolen, or at least not recently.”
In a top tier security delivery, Barrow would pass the merchandise to a known syndicate agent but the delivery might actually involve a further chain of several other people, none of them knowing the names of anyone else in the string, but all of them aware of the syndicate’s second principle, obey your own orders and don’t ask unnecessary questions. Occasionally, Barrow knew who the client was, but not as a rule.
“Got it,” said Barrow. “It’s certainly not the same as when I delivered that old manuscript last year to our man in Bordeaux. The Paul Ellis ID is good for another couple of years at least.”
“Ah, yes, Bordeaux,” said Sylvia, with a smile, her tone now quite mellow. “The tenth century Qur’an we acquired from the Topkapi Palace Museum in Istanbul. That was a complicated operation. The museum security was a real challenge.”
“That’s right,” said one of the rigid men on the sofa, speaking for the first time. “Had to shoot a guard, though. Too bad, that. Otherwise it was pretty cleanly done.”
“Sylvia,” Barrow ventured, diffidently, “I know that Chinese bone thing has been in your family a long time. Are you sure you really want to get rid of it? Pardon my asking, but…” his voice trailed off, as Sylvia snorted. It was a derisive, contemptuous sound.
“It’s worth money,” she said. “My mother got someone to decipher it, and it’s very significant in Chinese history, although I have no idea why. Mother’s too sick to care very much anymore, and obviously I can’t see the damn thing. Apparently, my grandmother used to say it reminded her of the war and the tough times, although I never knew what the connection was. Anyway, our client is paying a quarter-of-a-million dollars for it, which is all I care about.”
“A very easy acquisition,” commented the second rigid man on the sofa.
“Yes, but we have a much more difficult one facing us now, Graham,” Sylvia said, leaning back in her deep leather chair again. “This is a new project and I want to get the general planning done for this one before I go back to Berlin tomorrow to pay my goodwill visit to my mother.”
“Sylvia,” said Graham, “if you want to, you can leave the planning work to us. Just give us the target details and we’ll look after the rest. You can go off to Germany and not have to worry.”
Sylvia answered the question by remaining completely silent, and Barrow simply waited to see what would come next. Graham’s remark was ill-advised, and he should have known better. The awkward silence was finally broken by the man sitting next to Graham.
“What’s the operation, Sylvia?”
“There’s a new client,” Sylvia began. “He’s in China. Shanghai, to be precise. He’s been vetted and given number one-five-two-nine. He collects sculpture, mainly Chinese, of course, but he has interests in all styles. Seems to think it’s very prestigious, or something. Anyway, he’s in the market for something Greek. Specifically, bronze, not too large, and preferably of considerable rarity. I put Research to work on it, and they suggested something by Polykleitos should work.”
“Who’s she?” asked the second man, grinning, but Sylvia only sighed. The pun was not particularly funny, but Graham guffawed while Sylvia made an exasperated clicking sound with her tongue.
“Richard, you constantly remind me of why I employ you for your skills as a thief, and not as an advisor on fine art and antiquities.”
“Well, I just never heard of that person before,” said Richard, a man of about forty with close-set dark eyes, and a think mop of unruly brown hair.
“She is a he, actually,” said Sylvia, in an elaborately patient voice. “A Greek sculptor of the fifth century BC. He’s known as one of the greatest masters, but the works of his that have survived are too large for the most part. They’re too difficult for us to deal with in logistical terms. It wouldn’t be impossible, but even this client isn’t willing to take the risk, let alone cover the cost. Not that he’s short of a pound, I’ll tell you. But we’re in luck. Research found a small statue which may, in fact, be the working model or study for one of his most famous pieces, the Doryphoros, or Spear-carrier. It’s only about a meter in height, and the client agreed with our recommendation to go with it.”
“Sounds like another museum job,” said Graham, a man of Richard’s age, but of lighter complexion and hair color. He also had a rather large nose which tended to dominate his facial appearance. He and Richard were not twins, not even brothers, but Sylvia always called them the twins, and so did everyone else. They certainly were not gay, although gossip said they certainly were.
Sylvia shook her head, her long, honey-blonde hair swaying gently in a manner Barrow found deliciously alluring.
“We did think we’d have to go to Greece for this one, but I spoke to our agent in Athens, and he told me about this particular piece. Fortunately for us, it’s here in England, in a private house in Norfolk belonging to the Robertson-Hyde family. It seems one of their ancestors picked it up on a grand tour in the eighteenth century sometime and brought it home. Well-off country gentlemen did that sort of thing in those days, you know. Our agent tells me the statue is something of a cause célèbre in Greece because of its uniqueness. The National Historical Museum in Athens asked for it back, then demanded it back, and finally offered to buy it back, but the Robertson-Hyde family won’t give it up. They say it was legitimately purchased, even if it was two-hundred-and-fifty years ago. The Shanghai client is willing to pay up to three million dollars for it, so we made the usual agreement.”
Barrow knew that did not mean a signed contract. Rather, it meant Sylvia, who was the only person ever to communicate directly with syndicate clients over matters of price and payment, had made a verbal agreement to supply the piece in question. The entire syndicate operated on the basis of what Sylvia — always ready to display her classical education — said was ultimo bonum fidei, which she translated as ultimate good faith, and Barrow and the others knew very well what happened to clients who did not possess that special virtue. The police in Bogota were still trying to discover how multibillionaire and celebrated drug lord, Juan Espino, ended up tied to a tree in the garden of his palatial mansion with his femoral artery cut. Known only as Client 1719, Espino had ordered a Sumerian alabaster vase, specifying it must be at least five thousand years old, and in pristine condition. Such a vase was duly acquired from an archeological museum in Jordan — the curator being short of money at the time — and smuggled to Cairo in the hold of an Arab fishing dhow. Then, following the transfer of some funds to an Egyptian shipping agent, the piece travelled to Colombia aboard a ship sailing from Porsaʿīd in a container marked Agricultural Machinery. The vase, carefully padded and packed, was concealed in the discharge chute of a combine harvester, and after offloading and being conveniently overlooked by a Customs and Excise inspector who then went out and bought himself a new car, Barrow had the implement transported to a location pre-arranged by Sylvia where Espino collected it a day later. Barrow had no idea who the client actually was; he simply had the machine parked where he was told to leave it. Sylvia arranged everything.
However, the bank draft used to transfer the hefty cost of the ancient vase to one of the syndicate’s many Swiss bank accounts proved worthless, and Espino refused to make good what he owed in spite of numerous negotiations and a personal visit from a frustrated and furious Sylvia Becker. He laughed at her and made crude and supercilious jokes about a woman trying to run a criminal organization — and a blind woman at that.
“Go back to England, Missy,” he sneered, “and leave such things to men who know what they’re doing and can see where they’re going.”
It had not proved a good career move for him, and it did not take long for the secret, dark world of illicit trading in antiquities to spawn the rumor that his death was a reward for trying to double-cross the implacable Athena, whoever she was. Barrow smiled to himself as he thought of the police trying to decide why there was a combine harvester in Espino’s driveway.
Thanks to the assistance of a local team of very professional housebreakers contracted by the syndicate’s agent in Bogota, the vase was retrieved, shipped north, and now resided in a secret vault in the home of a reclusive American financier with highly questionable ties to the Middle East and Russia who lived in a fortified mansion in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. He had done business with Sylvia before, and he always paid his bills.
Barrow was not a decision-maker; he was one of Sylvia’s delivery boys, and nothing more. However, she gave him the riskiest and most difficult jobs, and paid him very well for what he did. As he listened, he wondered if getting the Greek statue to China might present some technical challenges. It could be tricky, he reflected, but Sylvia, seeming to read his thoughts, said, “You shouldn’t have any trouble with the delivery, Mike. Our Polish friends are available to us again, and the client has what he calls influence at the port of Shanghai. You can fly there, meet the ship, and oversee the delivery in person. You’ll get full details nearer the time.”
“Sounds good to me,” said Barrow, smiling. “Nothing like a bit of official corruption to smooth things along.”
“Just don’t take a gun with you,” said Graham, smirking, and Barrow darted him an angry glance.
“That’s enough,” Sylvia snapped, and Richard subsided, a little crestfallen.
She provided Graham and Richard with the details of the sculpture’s location, and everything was quickly settled. She gave them instructions on how to effect the acquisition and all was agreed. She trusted them, and they had never let her down.
“So, I think we’re finished here,” she said, standing up, and the dog beside her chair, galvanized into action, scrambled to its feet and shook itself vigorously, its harness rattling and clattering. Putting her hand down, she found the handle on the dog’s back.
“Lombardi,” she said, firmly, but not at all roughly, “find the door, we’re going for a walk.”
Familiar with the routine, Barrow crossed the room, the dog threading its way around the chairs and tables with Sylvia at its side. Barrow opened the door, then closed it behind them.
“Why’s her dog called Lombardi?” asked Graham, as Barrow seated himself again. “I’ve often wondered about it.”
“I asked once,” said Barrow. “I thought maybe he’d been born in Italy or something like that, but it’s not that complicated. Lombardi was the dog’s name when she got him from the training school, and apparently it can’t be changed, which makes sense. She told me it’s all a matter of what the dog’s trained to recognize.”
“Weird,” said Graham. “Dogs are supposed to be called Prince, or Fido, or Rover, or something. I don’t much like dogs, anyway.”
“Was your mother frightened by a chihuahua?” Barrow asked, happy to return Graham’s recent barb, and Richard laughed before saying, “We had a dog when I was a kid. Lovely collie, she was. We called her Lady, because that’s what she was.”
“Lady,” said Graham, affecting an exaggeratedly snooty accent. “Sounds a bit toffee-nosed to me.”
“Shut up, you two,” said Barrow, grinning. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d like to go over the plan for this statue. It’s your job to pinch it, but it’s mine to take it off you and send it to bloody Shanghai.”