Brooklyn Knight (25 page)

“Ungari is on his way here.”

“But we knew that,” the professor answered, not actually looking up from his paperwork, “didn’t we?”

“I don’t mean he’s still heading to America, Knight. I mean he’s here, in New York, and headed for the museum.”

“Oh well,” responded the professor matter-of-factly, “that seems logical.” Setting aside the report in which he
had been pretending to have a deep interest, Knight finally looked up at the FBI man, telling him;

“His entire reason for leaving Syria in the first place was to come to the museum, to examine the Dream Stone—correct? Well, and to visit with his old friend, of course, namely myself. So, I don’t understand the fuss. I mean, why in heavens wouldn’t he head straight here?”

“Fine.” Klein spat the single word. Taking pity on the FBI man, the curator told him;

“Listen, I do understand that you are, trite as the cliché might sound, simply doing your job. And given the circumstances and all the, well, all the crazy shit, for lack of a better phrase, that has been going on around here, it’s probably for the best that we have you here to do your job.”

Klein stared at the professor for a long moment, not certain what to make of his last little speech. The agent’s surface instinct was to feel a measured amount of relief, his ability to hope flooding him with the suggestion that he might finally be able to relax a bit around this impossible character cruel Fate had introduced into his life. Knight, or at least the man’s antics, had been twisting the FBI agent’s guts in continual knots. His stomach’s acid content had escalated dramatically since the museum assignment had started, and his stress levels along with it. He had not been sleeping well, either.

“Professor,” he said after a cautious moment’s pause, “I would so greatly love to believe that’s how you really feel.”

“Oh, you can,” answered Knight, allowing his tone to flood with sincerity. With his being in such close proximity with the agent after melding their minds, Klein’s every thought came to the curator with echoing clarity. Until the mixture the professor had slipped into the water at the meeting the day before wore off, it would be impossible for the man to hide the slightest idea or feeling from Knight.
Thus it was that he now knew for certain the FBI man was seriously attempting to do a job he believed in, without any real animosity or suspicion aimed at Knight himself—excepting, of course, for that which he deserved for having acted as he had toward the man.

There you go
, he thought,
getting yourself in trouble once again because you think you’re so clever
. Feeling a marked level of genuine sympathy for Klein at that moment, the professor told him quietly;

“I suppose I should actually render unto you an apology. I’ve displayed some of the classic arrogance of the ivory-towered academic toward you, I’m afraid. And for no good reason. You really do believe this Morand person might be a threat, and I have no proof to the otherwise.”

Klein simply continued to stare at the curator. The agent greatly wanted to believe what he was hearing. He possessed a sharp set of instincts for sizing people up, for knowing when they were telling the truth or simply some portion of it with which they wished to distract. Knight had proved to be such a troublesome enigma so far, however, even with his usually reliable judgment telling him the professor was finally dealing with him squarely, still the agent found a segment of his mind urging him to caution simply because Knight had proved to be so adept at jerking him around. Giving in to his hopes, he answered;

“I don’t necessarily believe Bakur, and I use the name he wishes people to believe is his because I don’t want to encourage any slipup—”

“Of course.”

“I don’t believe Bakur is plotting against the museum, or that he’s up to anything specific at the moment. It’s simply my job to watch such characters. And when they’re connected to cases like this one, explosions in public forums, mysterious fires in government facilities …” The agent spread his hands wide in a plaintive
gesture, hoping to encourage more cooperative remarks from the professor. Knight obliged him, answering;

“No, I completely understand. I do. And I understand that I haven’t been much help, either. All I can say in my defense is that I’m very protective of my museum, and … well, no man likes to admit such, but—”

“But,” filled in Klein, suddenly feeling a certain sympathy toward the curator, “it’s kind of rattling to be around dead bodies and people shooting at each other, and explosions, and being forced to run from burning buildings—all in a very short period of time? If that’s where you were going, don’t worry about it. I’ve been trained for such eventualities, and I think I’d be a bit off my feed if I’d gone through everything you have in the past couple of days, myself.”

Damn,
thought Knight, the side of his mouth curling into a smile,
I think I’m going to have to like this fellow. Well, there goes my standing with all the liberals on the board
. The professor felt his smile spreading across his entire face as a voice from the back of his mind added;

Which means, of course, there goes your standing with the
entire
board
. Extending his hand across his desk, Knight looked the FBI man squarely in the eye, then asked;

“Do you think we might start back at the beginning, with you being pretty much the same person you have been since you arrived, and me attempting to be … well, shall we say, more of a grown-up?” Taking Knight’s hand, Klein answered;

“At this moment, nothing would please me better, sir.”

The two men shook hands, both relaxing as contact with each other told them all their senses could comfortably absorb. Both were possessed of strong defensive shields and impressive skills when it came to analyzing the motives of others. Both of them were men hard put-upon when it came to trusting new people. They had
reached that instance with one another where a decision had to be made one way or the other, though, and both were relieved to finally have found a point where they could be comfortable in the other’s presence.

As they released each other’s hand, the phone on Knight’s desk rang. Excusing himself, the professor answered his call. He did so quickly, giving instructions to have someone escorted to his office. Replacing his handheld phone in its charger, he looked up at Klein, then said;

“As I’m certain you’ve deduced, it seems I have visitors. Care to guess who?”

“Ungari and Bakur have arrived, I take it?”

“And will be here in a matter of minutes.” The FBI man nodded to Knight, then, finally cracking a smile of his own, said;

“Okay then—I guess it’s showtime.”

“Dr. Ashur Ungari,” said Knight in his most formal voice, “may I introduce Mr. Martin Klein. Marty is the museum’s newly appointed liaison to the outside world in all matters governmental.”

“Pleased, I am most certain,” said the doctor, taking the FBI man’s hand. “And while we are making with introductions, might I introduce my own governmental attaché, Hamid Bakur.” While the thinner, shorter man who had arrived with Ungari moved forward to shake hands with both Knight and Klein, the doctor expounded further, adding;

“Hamid is working with me as my assistant, and also as my official contact with the Syrian government—given to me by the Syrian government.”

A natural actor, the FBI man betrayed no reaction when Ungari so casually announced Bakur’s true nature. The agent’s mind raced over what such might possibly mean. It obviously indicated that the doctor understood
his assistant’s true assignment, to keep his eyes on Ungari and report all that happened at the Memak’tori dig site back to the Syrian government. But, wondered Klein, did the doctor know Bakur’s other connections? Was Ungari trying to tell Knight or himself something?

Probably not,
the agent thought.
After all, even if he had all the facts on Bakur’s terrorist connections and was trying to warn us about something, there’d be no need to do so in public, in front of him.

The FBI man, on the one hand, found himself trusting Ungari more in that moment. Yes, the suspicious parts of the agent’s brain were feeding him a score of devious reasons as to why the doctor had made his introduction the way he did, but Klein chose to ignore them. Standing in the man’s presence, shaking his hand, Klein felt no sinister vibrations. Following his gut instinct, he found himself willing to relax his guard slightly as far as Ungari was concerned—at least for the moment.

Knight, on the other hand, was not quite the thespian Klein was. The professor had come up with the idea of introducing the FBI man as a museum employee. He did have a quick and agile mind; of that there was no doubt. But, in many ways Knight was not an overly duplicitous man. Upon hearing his old friend introduce his assistant as a functionary of the Syrians, he could not help raising one eyebrow. Catching the motion, in a tone heavy with challenge, Bakur asked;

“Something distresses you, Professor?”

“Oh heavens, I think ‘distress’ might be too strong a word,” answered Knight politely. “Let us say instead that I was simply surprised.”

“And at what would your surprise be aimed? At the fact that the Syrian government takes an interest in what happens to its national treasures? That after more than a hundred years of open theft on
the part of the West, that finally we would say ‘no more’ to those who would rob us of all they could carry away?”

The shorter man spoke in clipped, polite sentences, his tone that of a polished academic. There was nothing of the accusatory to be found within his voice, just, of course, his words themselves.

Speaking in just such a hypothetical tone, the professor answered him, asking;

“Heavens, are you saying the Syrian government feels the Brooklyn Museum is out to plunder the Memak’tori site?”

“Why would it not?” Bakur’s eyes flashed ever so slightly as he said, “It is not a person, after all. People can be judged for their qualities, for integrity, for honor—a corporation cannot. And, is a museum anything more than that? For all the marble columns and solemn sense of history, is all of this with which you surround yourself, Professor Knight, anything more than just another business?”

“Since you have history on your side, Mr. Bakur,” replied Knight, working to draw the man out further, “let’s not go down any foolish paths. All men have trouble in their past. No one’s ancestors come off particularly clean. Countries other than yours come to mind, where what are now considered as treasures were then thought of as merely lumps of rock to be removed. Amazing, the ignorance of one’s own culture some peoples can maintain.”

“Especially when such ignorance is encouraged by those who would victimize such innocence.”

“Well said,” admitted Knight. “But then, sir, that’s why we have laws about such things these days. Or are you of the type who doesn’t know how to forgive or forget?”

“Gentlemen,” broke in Ungari, his tone revealing he was somewhat concerned where the tempers of his assistant and his friend might lead them, “surely we—”

“Doctor,” said Bakur, cutting into Ungari’s interruption, his
tone still silkenly calm, “the professor has asked a question—he wonders if the memory of the Syrian people can be mollified with ephemeral trinkets. I think he might possibly be an honest man, one who believes the West can truly police itself, despite the ever-building mountain of crushing evidence to the contrary.”

“I believe my question concerned the Syrian people’s disposition toward the Brooklyn Museum.” Allowing a bit of his actual feelings to color his voice, Knight continued, saying, “To be perfectly frank, I could care less what the rest of the world does or thinks. My only concern is the reputation of my little slice of the world—this particular set of walls and the history of all mankind which they contain. And, I tell you, sir, that I shall defend it as dearly as you or anyone else will defend what is theirs.”

“Very impassioned, Professor,” responded Bakur smoothly. “I am quite certain your ancestor, the man for whom I assume you were named, the Piers Knight who helped create your precious Brooklyn Museum—your great-great-grandfather, yes?—he, too, must have felt quite certain this ‘noble’ establishment of yours was correct in all its dealings.” Adjusting his thick, horn-rimmed glasses, more for the reason to make a dramatic pause than anything else, Ungari’s assistant then added;

“Tell me, how many of the acquisitions he made for the Brooklyn Museum were justly compensated? Pieces like the so-called Dream Stone, which, of course, the viewing of such is why we are here in the first place?”

“Professor,” came Klein’s voice, a certain shakiness foreshadowing his following words, “perhaps this would be a good time to tell the gentlemen what has happened—yes?”

“Something has happened?” Ungari’s voice was shot through with concern. Unlike the pleasant tones of his assistant, the doctor’s words conveyed a dread he seemed incapable of concealing. As he turned his head back and forth from Knight to the FBI man
posing as his assistant, the professor finally answered his old friend, saying quietly;

“The Dream Stone has been destroyed.”

The doctor’s reaction to the news was one of utter shock, followed by an unbelieving fury. Cursing in Egyptian, he managed to rein in his anger after a moment, at which time Klein related the story of the attempted theft. The professor allowed the agent to do so, both of them assuming that “the museum’s liaison to the outside world in all matters governmental” would be the one to pass along such information. Of course, knowing far more of the details of the incidents, Knight felt far safer letting Klein do the talking, since he only had the official version of the story and thus could not possibly let any secrets slip.

While the FBI man explained all that had happened, the professor wondered about Bakur’s reaction to the news. He was the one, after all, who seemed so concerned over the stolen treasures of Syria, and yet here was one, possibly one of the most important ever discovered, one with the potential to unlock some of history’s greatest secrets, now lost to all time.