The breeze that rattled the bare branches of the trees by the curbside lifted Sylvia Becker’s long, blonde hair off her shoulders as she walked with Lombardi at her side towards the house her family had owned since the war, where her mother still lived, and where she stayed whenever she was in Berlin. A morning walk was a ritual for her. She found it allowed her to think, to plan, and prepare her mind for the day. Wearing a long coat against the chill of the cloud-shrouded morning, she held the handle of Lombardi’s harness in her left hand and kept her right deep in the voluminous pocket of her coat. She held her head erect, her eyes, concealed behind her dark glasses, saw nothing, yet guided by Lombardi, she walked as purposefully and directly as any sighted person. Lombardi steered her unerringly around a pair of cyclists who had dismounted and become engaged in an animated conversation in the middle of the broad sidewalk. The two young men stopped talking and watched as she passed.
“Too bad you can’t see what hot-looking guys we are,” jeered one. “You don’t know what you’re missing, sweetheart.”
“Get screwed,” Sylvia called over her shoulder, and the two cyclists gaped in shock, staring as Lombardi guided her to the front door of the house and brought her to a halt. She unlocked the door, and with a command of forward to Lombardi, the two disappeared inside.
“Stand, wait,” she said, and Lombardi, doing as he was told, watched as she took off her coat and hung it on an ornate brass hook by the door. The entrance hall they were now in was well-lit and spacious with a slate floor and a large centrally placed pedestal table of milk-white, flawless Carrara marble. The table bore a tall vase of Bohemian cut crystal laden with fresh flowers replenished each morning by Sylvia’s express instruction. Dominating the far wall opposite the door was a large painting, an original Picasso, acquired by Sylvia’s grandmother in 2000, a year before her death on nine-eleven. As was her habit, Sylvia paused for a moment to savor the fulsome fragrance of the flowers before turning to the dog waiting patiently at her side.
Stooping to remove Lombardi’s harness, Sylvia said, “Dismiss,” at which the dog, now officially off duty, vanished in the direction of the kitchen where a bowl of water was always waiting. She trailed her hand along the left-hand wall until her fingers found the button for the lift installed when Gabriella could no longer manage the stairs. In truth, she had no need to navigate in this manner; she had been brought up in this house, and knew every one of its halls, corridors, and rooms. However, as a very little girl, barely understanding the nature of her disability, her mother had taught her to find her way using the walls for guidance, and the technique became a habitual reminder of her mother’s abiding love and steadfast support.
The lift’s polished doors opened, and Sylvia was conveyed to the upper floor and her mother’s rooms. She stepped confidently into the sitting room where Gabby sat reading, a blue knitted shawl around her shoulders in spite of the room’s warmth. She looked up, smiling, as Sylvia entered.
“Good walk?” she asked in German, her voice rasping and harsh from the emphysema which clogged her lungs.
“Yes, thanks.” Sylvia felt for the large sofa, settled herself, and snapped, “Coffee.”
“Freda isn’t here yet,” said Gabby, and Sylvia made a clicking, exasperated, noise with her tongue.
“Well, where the hell is she? Honestly, Mother, I wonder why you bother to keep her on. She’s hopeless.”
Before Gabby could answer, a short woman of about sixty entered the room. She was very rotund, wore glasses as round as she was, and had her iron-gray hair drawn severely beck into a tight bun at the nape of her neck.
“Back from your walk, Fraulein Becker?”
“Obviously I am,” said Sylvia, impatiently, “and I want my coffee.”
“Yes, Fraulein Becker, at once.”
“You shouldn’t speak to her like that,” Gabby chided, after Freda left the room. “She looks after me very well, and this job is all she has since Wilhelm died. They had no children. She is alone.”
“Yes, yes, I know the story.” Sylvia leaned back on the deep, leather sofa and crossed her legs with a voluminous sigh. “But I find her far from efficient.”
“Wilhelm was one of the best acquisitions men we ever had in Europe,” said Gabby.
“Oh, yes he was,” snorted Sylvia, “when he was sober, which wasn’t all that often. Freda would have been comfortably off if he hadn’t drunk his money away.”
“Yes, he was a problem sometimes, but he was very valuable to us, notwithstanding.”
Barely able to finish the sentence, Gabby dissolved into a prolonged fit of coughing and choking which racked her whole body, leaving her gasping for breath, her face gray and her eyes staring. She groped for the oxygen mask at the side of her chair and put it over her nose and mouth. Sylvia waited until her breathing became less labored.
“I take it Freda still doesn’t know I had to have Wilhelm killed?”
“Of course, she doesn’t,” said Gabby, setting the mask aside, her voice hoarse, “and you had no choice, anyhow. There was too great a risk of his talking too much as his drinking took over his life.”
At that point, Freda entered carrying a tray bearing a cup and saucer, a small cut-glass jug of cream, and a silver coffee carafe. Placing it on the low table in front of Sylvia, she said, “Your coffee, Fraulein. Allow me.” She filled the cup, added a dash of cream, and set the cup on the table within Sylvia’s reach. “There you are. It’s at twelve o’clock. Will there be anything else?”
“No. Lunch at the usual time, and see the rolls are fresh today. Yesterday’s were like sawdust.”
“Yes Fraulein. I’m sorry.”
Freda withdrew, and Sylvia, leaning forward, moved her right hand slowly across the tabletop until she located the cup. She took a sip, then said, grudgingly, “Well, there’s one thing to say about Freda. She makes a good cup of coffee.”
“Sylvia,” said Gabby, “you usually go straight to your office when you come back from a walk, but here you are. What’s on your mind?”
Sylvia put down her cup and sat silent for a few moments. This was the usual prelude to her raising a problem, so her mother waited, her breathing still labored. Sylvia lit a black cigarette.
“What is it, Sylvia?” Gabby croaked. “You know I don’t like you smoking. I don’t want you to end up like me.”
Sylvia ignored the remark. She liked to smoke.
“I don’t know if this will lead to anything awkward,” she began, exhaling a stream of aromatic blue Turkish smoke towards the ceiling, “but do you remember just over eighteen months ago, Mike Barrow went and shot a friend of his because he saw that old Chinese oracle bone we kept at home for so long? It was just before I sold it to a client in France.”
“Yes, I do,” wheezed Gabby. “You got Carl to sort it out.”
“That’s right. Everything seemed fine, the whole thing died down. Mike was questioned and things got a little tense, but his story and alibi held up. I thought it was all over and we’d dodged the bullet, so to speak, However, Mike has been questioned again, and a day or two ago a couple of detectives showed up at Carl’s flat and began to grill him. He says all they wanted to know about was the company he used when he moved, and there were no difficulties. But what worries me is that Carl’s not all that bright when it comes to this sort of thing. I mean, he doesn’t think on his feet very well. Mike’s okay, but Carl’s doubtful. I wouldn’t have kept him with us, except he’s very good at logistics. He’s even handled a couple of overseas maximum response cases, including getting that bastard in Colombia for me. He’s completely reliable for that sort of work.”
“How did you find this out?” Gabby asked.
“Carl let me know immediately they left his flat.”
“Why would they want to know about his movers?”
“I have no idea. It’s so bizarre, but that’s what makes me afraid something somewhere, may have gone sideways.”
“This is a time for patience and a steady nerve,” Gabby declared, after a pause. “Carl’s got to hang about long enough for the police to check him out thoroughly, otherwise it will arouse suspicion. I’d say two days, and then he should disappear for several months. And I do mean disappear. Russia, South America. Somewhere he can’t be traced. He’ll know how to do that. They had no evidence against him in the first instance, so I doubt they’ll find any this time.”
“What if he’s questioned again?” Sylvia asked, grinding out her cigarette as if she were trying to kill it.
“You make sure you get to him first,” said her mother. “Rehearse everything if you have to. As many times as it takes until you’re sure of him.”
“I was thinking of something less time-consuming,” said Sylvia.
“You mean…what do you call it…maximum response?”
“I’m considering that option, yes.”
“Are you certain it can be done cleanly?” Gabby took up the oxygen mask again and inhaled several rasping breaths.
“Yes. I know a Serbian woman who’s excellent. A real single shot professional. Uses a heavy caliber hand gun.”
“Maybe so,” said Gabby,” clearing her throat noisily, “but Carl’s death would only give the police a reason for investigating him more thoroughly. You never know what that might turn up.”
“True,” said Sylvia, nodding, “but it’s likely the police would concentrate on finding his killer, which they’ll never do, rather than looking into the stolen car thing.”
“Well,” said Gabby, nodding, “it’s your decision, but consider all the ramifications of whatever choice you make. Weigh the relative risks. You’re usually very cautious and thoughtful, Sylvia. Be so now.”
After lunching with her mother — the rolls warm from the oven — Sylvia excused herself and went downstairs to her office. There, seated at a large teak desk inset with brass strips at the edges and corners, she listened to several reports from the research department and dictated her comments using her computer’s voice recognition software. She answered three heavily encrypted emails, frequently consulting the open Internet and various databases — some on the Dark Web — everything being routed through the syndicate’s heavily fortified private server.
Midway through the afternoon, Sylvia heard the gentle padding of Lombardi’s paws on the think carpet and the metallic jingle of his collar as he trotted into the office. She held out her hand.
“Hello, my handsome friend. What are you up to, eh?”
The golden dog licked her hand with his very large, very wet tongue, then stretched out beside her chair where he soon began to snore quietly. His presence always calmed her thoughts, and by evening she had decided what to do about Carl Weber. The unexpected appearance of the police at his flat, and the connection which might well be made between Carl, Barrow’s car, and the death of Barrow’s friend had placed her in a risky position. It had been complete and utter stupidity on Barrow’s part to kill his friend, but it seemed the matter had been safely handled. Now it was clear something was still happening, but what was it? Carl had not been questioned previously, so why now, and why about his movers? It made no sense. She pondered these things, together with the overriding question of whether or not Carl could be relied upon. If he were suddenly confronted with new evidence, it could easily catch him off guard, and that could be disastrous.
There must be new evidence, she said to herself. Something must have turned up to link him with Barrow’s car, but what could that be, and if it implicated him, why didn’t they arrest him there and then? I can’t prep him for every possibility, for God’s sake.
At six o’clock, as she was dictating a message about a tenth century Russian icon of the Virgin Mother to someone in Prague code-named Stefan, Freda knocked before putting her head round the door.
“Dinner in half an hour, Fraulein Becker. Will you be joining your mother?”
“Dammit, Freda,” Sylvia blazed. “How many times have I told you to allow me time to pause the dictation after you knock, instead of just barging in and screwing everything up?”
The color fled from Freda’s round cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Fraulein, I —”
“All right, all right,” Sylvia interrupted. “Tell my mother I’ll join her at six.”
“Yes, Fraulein Becker,” said Freda, in little more than a whisper. “Thank you.”
Freda closed the door as soundlessly as she could, and Sylvia went back to her dictation after deleting Freda’s voice.
Stupid woman.
And before going upstairs for dinner, she called Mike Barrow with a coded summons to come to Berlin the following morning.
* * *
Barrow arrived at the house at ten-thirty the next morning, having paid a bin-full of the syndicate’s money for a flight at short notice. Freda answered his knock, greeting him warmly in accented English.
“Where’s Medusa?” he whispered, making Freda giggle, then try to look repentant.
“In her office, Herr Barrow. She said to send you straight in.”
“Are there many snakes in her hair this morning?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.” Freda could not stifle another giggle.
“Then we shall all be turned to stone,” he said, with great solemnity.
“It’s about time,” Sylvia growled, as he entered the well-appointed office, feeling his feet sink into the thick carpet. He remembered that carpet only too well. He had been responsible for shipping it to Germany from Shanghai whence it had come as a bonus to Sylvia from a client in grateful appreciation for her services in supplying a certain bronze statue. Her brusque words contrasted with Lombardi’s effusive greeting, and Barrow scratched his jaw.
“Hello Lombardi. How are you?”
He settled himself in a deeply upholstered leather chair whereupon the dog immediately turned around and presented his hindquarters to be scratched, bumping himself against Barrow’s legs in encouragement and eager anticipation. The ritual of welcome thus completed, the dog resumed his station by Sylvia’s chair.
“The flights were crowded, Sylvia,” Barrow said, “and I had to wait forever for a taxi from Tegel. I’ll be glad when the new airport’s finished, if it ever gets finished, that is.”
“Our agent in Istanbul has been in touch,” Sylvia said, without preamble, ignoring Barrow’s remark, “and we need to move very quickly.”
“What’s up?”
“Client one-four-six-nine has been wanting a specific item for over two years, but there’s been no way to fill the order until now.”
“What’s he want, for God’s sake,” Barrow asked, “an Egyptian mummy?”
“If that’s all it was,” said Sylvia, “we’d have done it in two weeks. No, the client is a woman, actually, and she wants a set of Sumerian cuneiform clay tablets with the Gilgamesh on them.”
“The what?”
“The Gilgamesh,” Sylvia repeated, an impatient barb in her voice. “You did go to school, didn’t you? It’s a Sumerian epic poem whose earliest versions date from the Third Dynasty…about two thousand BC or thereabouts. Bronze Age Mesopotamia. I presume you know where that is.”
Barrow said nothing. He knew when to keep silent
Sylvia was continuing, “Our client is interested in a later, more complete version, from somewhere about the thirteenth or twelfth century BC. Three sets of tablets like that are known to exist, all of them in museums in Iraq or Syria.”
“And how do we get hold of one?” asked Barrow, slightly nervous of the answer. “That part of the world is either blowing itself up or being blown up by someone else. I don’t recall ever hearing we had an agent anywhere there, and you surely don’t expect the twins to drop in and pick a set up.”
If he could have clawed back his words, he would have done so immediately, but they were out, and he cursed his impetuosity. It was not that Sylvia had very little sense of humor, it was that she had almost none at all.
“Don’t be stupid,” she snapped, slapping her hand on the top of her desk with a sound like a pistol shot, making Lombardi jump. “I may be blind, but I’m not an imbecile.”
She paused. Barrow waited. Was the silence ominous, or merely for effect? He could usually tell, but this time he was not sure.
“We have the tablets already,” she resumed, her tone more neutral, and Barrow breathed a quiet sigh of relief. His comment had been trivial, but Sylvia’s mercurial temperament was not to be trifled with.
“A supplier in Istanbul approached our agent there and showed him one tablet, saying he could provide a complete set for twenty-five-thousand Turkish lira, just under five thousand American dollars. Obviously, the supplier had no understanding of what he was selling. Apparently, the tablets had been smuggled into Turkey after being looted from a museum in Ramadi by soldiers of the Islamic State. After hearing of it, I negotiated an inclusive price with our client that will give us an enormous profit. It’s payable on delivery, of course, and the client’s now looking forward to seeing her new treasure.” Another pause, and Barrow thought, here it comes. “That’s where you come in,” Sylvia finished.
“Right,” said Barrow. “Have we bought the tablets already?”
“In a heartbeat, and everything’s complete,” said Sylvia, nodding. “Our agent in Istanbul has the tablets in safekeeping. What you have to do is pick them up and have them delivered to the client.”
“And the client is where, exactly?”
“Madrid. Not difficult. I’m told the soldiers who sacked Ramadi and looted the museum left such a hell of a mess the theft hasn’t even been properly reported yet, which is good news for us. It means no one will be on the lookout for the tablets. You can pack them in an ordinary briefcase and go by train. Security’s a lot tighter since the attacks in Paris and Brussels, so make sure you have a good story if the tablets are found during a search.”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Barrow. “I’ll use my Paul Ellis documents. They’ve never been a problem.”
“Just do as you’re told,” said Sylvia, her voice cool again, “and get the job done on time.”
“And I make the handover the same way I did with the Romanov pearls for the last client in Spain, do I?” asked Barrow, trying to overlook the implied threat in Sylvia’s words. He had heard it many times before, but it still had the power to unnerve him. From time to time he made direct contact with the lower echelons of a delivery network as he did in Indonesia, but he had never set eyes on any of the syndicate’s people in Spain. Only once had he ever handed merchandise directly to a client’s representative, and that had been the time he delivered the oracle bone in France.
“Never mind that now,” said Sylvia, tartly. “You’ll get handover instructions once you check in with me from Madrid.”
It was always the same. Sylvia alone made contact with her network, acting as a go-between for deliveries. If she ever made notes, they were in braille, and were burned once final payment had been made and the file closed. Barrow knew Carl Weber usually handled that little chore. The files on clients, contracts, prices, and dates of transactions were in Sylvia’s laptop, deeply submerged and encrypted through a program designed uniquely for her by a Dark Web hacker in Pakistan who thought it was for the Taliban, his customary employers.
Sylvia herself was an enigmatic figure for the majority of syndicate staff who knew of her, but nothing about her. She was the puppet-master, the remote presence who, unseen, dominated everything and everyone. Only a select handful of syndicate staff had ever met Sylvia, but as her most experienced transport manager, as she called him, Barrow worked directly with her. He knew Carl and the twins, but no one else. Sylvia often spoke of the research department, yet Barrow had no idea where it was, nor who he, she, or they, actually were. He would have been surprised to learn they worked in a section of the Berlin house he believed to be closed off and disused.
“Well, I think that’s all for that,” said Sylvia, but Barrow interposed.
“Hang on,” he said. “How many of these tablets are there, and what’s their condition?”
“It’s a unique find,” said Sylvia. “The later Gilgamesh is on them, as I said, but there are a number of other poems as well, some of them unknown until now. There are thirty-one tablets, and the Istanbul agent says they’re fragile, but not brittle or crumbling. If we couldn’t transport them, he wouldn’t have bought them, cheap as they were.”
“Terrific,” said Barrow, and Sylvia actually chuckled. He stared at her, unsure he had heard properly.
“They’re quite small,” she went on, “and they’ll be well packed when you get them. Just don’t drop your briefcase.”
“When do I —”
“That’s all for that one,” Sylvia interrupted. “Now for item number two.”
“There’s more?” Barrow was still trying to get his head around the concept of carrying several million dollars’ worth of fragile clay tablets in a briefcase from Istanbul to Madrid. He had ghastly visions of arriving in Spain only to find his briefcase full of dust. Sylvia would pursue him to the gates of hell and beyond to exact a terrible revenge.
With that image in his mind, he did not particularly relish the thought of having a second operation to worry about, but he knew of old, objections were useless. They would be met with an angry tirade, all of which would amount to his being told to remember who he was, who made the decisions in the syndicate, and if he forgot that, he was a dead man. Her recent ephemeral flash of good humor did not signal an Ebenezer Scrooge-like change of character.
“Yes,” she said, “there is more. Client one-nine-zero-eight lives in Mexico. She has a passion for all things oriental and has more money than God. On a recent visit to China, she went to a museum in Jinan and saw a pearl and emerald necklace which once belonged to the Empress Wu.”
“Never heard of her,” Barrow said.
“Her full name was Wu Zetian,” said Sylvia. “She seized power in the late seventh century, creating a brief hiatus in the Tang Dynasty. She was the only female ruler of a unified Chinese empire in all its history. I’ve always admired her, as a matter of fact.”
I’m not surprised, Barrow thought, as Sylvia returned to the subject of the Mexican client.
“She wants the necklace she saw and will pay whatever we ask.”
“That’ll be a local acquisition job, then,” said Barrow, and Sylvia nodded.
“Our agent in Beijing has contracted with the necessary human resources,” Sylvia continued, “and the raid will take place shortly. Once the merchandise is acquired, I’ll let you know, and we’ll use the Panamanian Embassy again. Our contact there will ship the piece out of China in the diplomatic bag. He never charges very much, so it’s the best way to do it. Then it’s only a quick job for you to pick it up in Panama City and take it to Mexico. I’d use the Mexican Embassy in Beijing if I could, but our person there has been transferred to Lima and I haven’t been able to recruit a replacement so far.”
“Will I be able to do that after the Madrid shipment?” Barrow asked.
“You let me worry about the timing,” said Sylvia. “You’ll be told what you need to know when you need to know it. I’m flying to China tomorrow morning for a meeting with the agent.”
* * *
Two weeks later, at eight o’clock in the evening, while Michael Barrow was quietly celebrating the safe handover of a briefcase full of undamaged clay tablets with a solitary drink in the bar of his Madrid hotel, a man on the other side of the world was buying an admission ticket to a museum. The man was about twenty-five, wearing an orange T-shirt and baggy brown trousers. The museum was the Shandong Museum on Yaojia Street in the Lixia District of southeast Jinan, capital city of Shandong, China’s easternmost province. Entering the museum, he meandered through the spacious galleries, pausing frequently, ostensibly studying the artifacts in their glass cases, but his eyes were not on the displays. He soon caught sight of what he was looking for. Two guards in smart green uniforms and peaked caps at the far end of the gallery.
Good, he said to himself, catching the eye of one of them who nodded almost imperceptibly.
As he moved amongst the exhibits, he looked as innocuous and unremarkable as any other visitor, and since the museum was closing shortly in any case, there were very few people in the gallery.
Perfect.
After about five minutes he turned aside and went into the public washroom where he entered one of the stalls and locked the door. Dropping his baggy trousers, he untied two pieces of string which held a length of steel pipe against the outside of his left thigh. Refastening his belt, he pulled a ski mask from his pocket and put it over his head. Pausing for a moment to slow his racing heart, he cautiously opened the door a crack and peered out. Seeing no one, he made for the door of the washroom, and after catching a deep breath, he burst out into the gallery.
Turning to his left he pelted into a display hall adjoining the main gallery and headed for a row of display cases against the far wall. Two or three visitors stared at him in bewilderment as he raced by them, but he paid no attention. Coming to an abrupt halt, his shoes squeaking on the linoleum floor, he brought the steel pipe down onto the glass top of a display case about half-way down the row, smashing it to smithereens. A second later he had reached into the shattered case, seized the object inside, and dropped it into his pocket. The entire episode had taken less than half a minute.
Immediately, an alarm siren began to shriek, and a bell nearby leapt into life with a harsh, deafening clang. There were only three visitors in the hall, and they fled for the doors in panic. A woman screamed as two security guards ran into the gallery. Drawing their pistols, they shouted, “You there. Halt. Stay where you are.”
The masked man, his escape route blocked, stood still, and then raised his hands in surrender.
With shouts, curses, and kicks, the would-be thief was dragged into a guardroom off the main gallery, and the alarms fell mercifully silent, their cacophonous clamor seeming to hang in the air even after it had ceased. The last of the terrified visitors rushed from the building and a crowd of curious spectators, attracted by the noise and tumult, began to collect outside. The excited mob spilled onto the road, and blaring horns contributed to the general commotion.
Under cover of this brawling chaos, the thief, his mask and weapon discarded, was cordially ushered out of a small side door by the guards who had apparently apprehended him only a few minutes earlier. He was now dressed in different clothing and carried a plain plastic shopping bag. Three weeks before, when the plan for the robbery was explained to him, he was assured the guards would be well paid in advance, and they had certainly acted as anticipated. The man walked calmly out into a narrow lane leading away from the main street and into a park with well-tended flowerbeds and clipped shrubbery. Mingling with the people enjoying the late afternoon sunshine, the man strolled across a broad expanse of grass to join a group of people at a bus stop. Several buses, each belching thick, black clouds of noxious diesel smoke and crowded with passengers, drew up in quick succession, and he boarded one of them. He disappeared with his shopping bag in the direction of Jinan’s main railway station where he had been told a foreigner would pay him and take the shopping bag from him.
That night, the television news reported that a man had stolen a valuable piece of ancient jewelry from the Shandong Museum on Yaojia Street. After his arrest, the thief unexpectedly drew a gun and escaped. The jewelry had not been recovered. The police were investigating. The museum guards were commended for their gallant attempt to prevent the robbery.
At eleven o’clock in the morning of that same day in Berlin, Sylvia Becker received a call on her mobile phone. After listening for a moment, she said, “Thank you,” and then placed a call of her own to Mexico.