Cry in the Night
Authors: Carolyn G. Hart
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
CRY IN THE NIGHT
An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author
PUBLISHING HISTORY
InterMix eBook edition / September 2012
Copyright © 2012 by Carolyn Hart.
Excerpt from
What the Cat Saw
copyright © 2012 by Carolyn Hart.
Cover design by Jason Gill. Temple photo: Gary 718 / Shutterstock (25942819).
Moon photo: Zinaida / Shutterstock (8221670).
All rights reserved.
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375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
ISBN: 978-1-101-59261-8
INTERMIX
InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.
INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
To the memory of Henrietta Von Tunglen
Author’s Note:
This story occurred in 1982. At that time the location of the missing treasure found in the novel was among the great mysteries of archeology. In 1993, it was learned that much of the treasure had been taken by the Russians as war booty and placed in The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts. But it is always possible that some of the treasure followed another path to Mexico and that a young museum curator in 1982 was caught up in a deadly search for gold.
Chapter 1
The first time I ever saw him, he was furious.
He leaned forward, his right hand jabbing toward us. His words were harsh, clipped, uncompromising: “You are responsible, you and you and you”—he pointed at one and then another—“for murders and theft, pillage and bribery.”
I was surprised and a little shaken at the anger I sensed among his listeners. Though I don’t know why, really. Violence begets violence and certainly he was laying it on us.
“You talk on the phone to an art dealer and in Guatemala a forest guard is shot, in Greece a customs officer bribed, in Italy the
tombaroli
rifle another tomb.” He slammed his hand down hard on the lectern. “The reason why is you.”
His vivid blue eyes glared at us.
In the space before he spoke again, I looked at him and at his audience and saw them frozen in a moment of time. Perhaps I sometimes see things this way because, as an assistant museum curator, I have planned and arranged so many exhibits, everything from dioramas to tomb reconstructions. I never consciously decide to see anyone or anything in a timeless way, but sometimes, unexpectedly, everything comes to a standstill and, for an instant, I see a scene as distinctly and three-dimensionally as if it were carved in high relief.
It happened now.
Across the aisle, the director of a California museum smiled slightly, his cherubic face bland and unperturbed. Smoke wreathed gently upward from his pipe. Everything about him was plump and satisfied and indolent—his hands, the knobby bowl of his pipe, his slightly humped shoulders. Two rows forward, her haughty face in profile, a well-known curator from a southern museum reddened with indignation. Her chin lifted, her thin bloodless lips parted. She almost spoke.
But mostly, in that moment out of time, I saw him, those electric blue eyes, that shock of straw-colored hair, the bony face with a beaked nose and sunken cheeks. The collar of his shirt was frayed and he had nicked under his chin when he shaved.
As quickly as it had stopped, time moved on, the reel turned, the Californian drew on his pipe, the southern curator grimaced, and he began to speak again, his voice urgent and angry.
I wasn’t listening. Instead, I watched him, wondering at my response to him.
Every woman, if she’s honest, will own to a private and personal picture of the man she would like to meet. The angry man standing on the auditorium stage had nothing in common with my imagined man. That idealized portrait, though dim and a little obscure, was surely of a more pleasant-mannered, equable man, the kind of man who liked to walk a spaniel in autumn woods and talk quietly over a candlelit dinner.
That portrait didn’t fit this violent, iconoclastic, skinny fighter. He would be lucky if he got out of the auditorium without a punch in the nose, though museum curators are more likely to fight with words than fists. Maybe. There was a huge fellow in the left front row who kept moving impatiently as if he would like to jump up and lunge at the speaker.
It wasn’t that I wanted peace at any price. Just almost any price. I wanted no part of quarrels, controversies, or battles. No hassles, please. That was why, I admit it, I had chosen to become an Egyptologist. One reason, at least. There are few scholarly disputes over ancient Egypt’s art and history. There aren’t many revisionists in the ranks. It’s all there, as vivid and clear on limestone walls as it was four thousand years ago. The ancient Egyptians were an attractive people, confident, secure, joyous, supremely sure of their place in a well-ordered world. I admired that confidence, envied it, because I lived in a precarious, uncertain world where you couldn’t be sure the verities of one decade would even be in the ballpark the next. I took comfort in long settled history during the turbulent decade of the seventies, happy to immerse myself in the past.
I was, then, orderly, reasonable, temperate. Why did I feel an immediate attraction to an obviously intemperate, vituperative man?
His cheeks curved inward, emphasizing the long line of his mouth. . . . I shook myself mentally. Okay, Sheila, he’s obviously undernourished. Probably too busy scrapping with people to eat regular meals. Big deal. But my eyes lingered on his mouth until I forced them down to the notebook in my lap.
It was heavily scored with doodles—interlocking black circles bordering the title of his talk, “Museum Responsibility in the Art Trade.” An innocuous title for an explosive topic. The speaker was a visiting curator at the National Museum of Anthropology, Mexico City. His name was Jeremiah Elliot. I raised an eyebrow at that, wondering if his parents had a presentiment. Jeremiah, indeed.
With some measure of objectivity restored, I looked at him once again and began to listen, making an occasional note. I was, after all, expected to submit a report on the different sessions I had attended at this conference. This was the closing day. I would catch the Metroliner home to New York this evening.
I probably wouldn’t make too detailed a report on Jeremiah Elliot’s topic. It wouldn’t be well received at my museum, this equating of murder and mayhem with an open acquisition policy.
I wondered suddenly if he had read my mind when he said bitingly, “At some museums, they call it an open acquisition policy. That’s a fancy name for receiving stolen goods.”
I must have moved in protest in my seat because those cold blue eyes fastened on me. “Every illicit sale fuels the market. Interpol periodically lists the most wanted missing art. Recently the list included about two dozen paintings, some of them are worth a million dollars each. That doesn’t even hint at the real market. Right now, today, there is at least a hundred million dollars’ worth of stolen art at large.”
He paused to let us mull over that figure, then said emphatically, “This figure is for art stolen from churches and private collections and small museums—art of record. It doesn’t even count the artifacts plundered from Etruscan tombs or jungle-hidden sites in Mexico and Guatemala. These last are the worst losses of all because they include pottery and stelae that archeologists haven’t seen in place. The minute an artifact is taken from its original site it’s no longer of any value in piecing together a picture of the past. This art sells like hotcakes at diamond prices to American museums.”
He shoved a hand through his unruly hair, then stared in turn at each person in the small auditorium. He was gentler when he spoke again. “This convention has drawn almost three hundred museum people. I see”—he paused, totting up the figure—“twenty-seven people in here. Now, all of you knew what my topic was when you came in here this morning because you chose to attend this session. I’m hoping that some of you, maybe all of you, really listened, because you are the only ones who can make a difference. All the laws, all the international agreements, won’t help if museum directors keep on buying art and artifacts that don’t have an honest pedigree.”
He stepped out from behind the lectern and moved to the edge of the stage. “You are the ones who can wipe out the international art thefts. You can start by having your museum adopt the policy of prohibiting purchase of pilfered artifacts. The Field Museum has done it. So have the museums of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.”
He looked at each of us in turn.
“What has your museum done?”
That, of course, was his wrap-up, and I thought, I hoped (but why should I care?), that the program was going to end pleasantly. There was a general rustle, notebooks snapping shut, the click of attaché cases closing.
The big fellow in the front row stood. He was imposing and he knew it—tall, husky, thick gray hair, fashionable wire glasses. He had a big voice to match, the kind of voice that echoes comfortably from a rostrum.
“I can tell you what my museum does, Dr. Elliot.” His tone was bluff and hearty. “It’s in the business of protecting the art of the world for the present and the future. When we are offered a magnificent object, we don’t look at it and say, ‘Oh, that’s Etruscan; that belongs to Italy.’ Art does not
belong
to anybody. The finest works of man can be appreciated by all peoples.”
The rustling stopped. The wait for Dr. Elliot’s answer was amused and expectant.
Jeremiah Elliot nodded slowly, then asked, “Your museum has one of the finest collections of pre-Columbian artifacts, doesn’t it?”
The big man nodded.
“So that’s an interest of yours. If someone offers you a Mayan stele in excellent condition but without provenance, would you buy it?”
“Young man, if an artwork has reached the hands of a dealer and it is of great beauty, I see it as the responsibility of my museum to offer sanctuary.”
“You don’t care where it came from or how the piece got to you?”
The museum director shrugged. “We have to deal with the world as it is, young man.”
Elliot responded sharply, “It’s not the way the world is. It’s the way we’ve made it. If nobody bought stolen art, crooks wouldn’t move in. They do it for money, not to share art with the world. The going prices for great works of art are ten times higher today than they were twenty years ago. Art today is one of the best investments in the world. It attracts people who will do anything for money.”
He looked away from the museum director for a moment and seemed not to be looking at anything. When he spoke his voice was angry again. “I had the good luck, when I was first getting started in my field, to work at Tikal in Guatemala. It was great work and I met some great people. One of them was a forest guard, Pedro Arturo Sierra, who was very serious, very dedicated to helping protect his country’s past. In 1971, he interrupted some looting at La Naya, an isolated site. He identified some suspects, helped send them to jail. Some weeks later, he led a visiting archeologist to the same site. It was dusk. They set up camp, got a fire started to fix supper. Without warning, two shots rang out. The first one hit Sierra in the back. It knocked him around. The second shot caught him in the chest. He bled to death, there in the jungle. The killers gunned him down in reprisal because he had identified suspects in the earlier looting.”
Elliot turned away from the audience and gathered up a small sheaf of papers from the rostrum. He put the papers in his briefcase. “It’s a dirty game you play when you buy stolen art.”
This time he was finished, and a general disorderly exodus began. I was caught up behind a slow-moving clot of older women who were trying to decide where to go for lunch.
One of them twittered, “Edna, if you think we have the time, I would so like to have lunch at the Capitol restaurant. This is our last day and I’ve never had the bean soup and I promised myself I would, this trip.”
Edna was a massive lady in a picture hat. I wondered if she found it in the forties. She was obviously the leader of the group.
The little bank of women stopped, blocking the aisle, waiting for Edna to speak.
As a display of power and pecking order, it was fascinating.
A younger woman in wire-framed glasses with long straight hair said briskly, “Oh, we’ve plenty of time, Catherine. It’s just now a quarter to twelve. We’re free until one.”
But Catherine waited, half turned, for Edna to speak.
Edna scarcely even took pleasure in her dominance, it was so easy. She smiled at the younger woman. “Dear Key, I can tell this is your first visit to Washington in the summer. Why, it would take almost to one o’clock just to find a cab and, of course, it’s too far to walk in this heat. No, we’ve just time for a quick sandwich.” And then she was shepherding her flock through the doorway.
The younger woman hung back for an instant before she followed the others up the hall.
Delayed by this exchange, I reached the doorway just before Jeremiah Elliot. Head down, he was walking slowly as he arranged some papers in his briefcase.
And he heard, as clearly as I did, a laughing voice behind him: “Silly young fool; what does he think a museum is for?”
The “silly young fool” stopped him for an instant. His face reddened, his chin lifted, and he started to turn around. Instead, he lunged toward the doorway, furious, oblivious to anything in his way.
He cannoned into me, his briefcase still open. It spilled, of course, and his papers tumbled out. The impact of our collision bumped my purse off my arm. It snapped open and the contents clattered to the floor. “Sorry,” he muttered brusquely. He crouched and began to stuff loose papers back into his case.
He didn’t sound very damned sorry.
I glared at him and hoped uncharitably that the patches of sunburn on his bony face itched.
I managed to retrieve my billfold and key chain and compact, but I was just an instant too late to save my lipstick from crunching under the foot of the California museum director, who walked on with his companion, not even noticing.
As Jeremiah Elliot and I gathered up our loose possessions, the two of us were the only ones left in the auditorium.
Quite soon he had his precious papers all together and was closing his case.
I couldn’t find my lucky sixpence.
The floor was speckled gray marble that hides a multitude of sins, like mud from dirty shoes, scratches from the moving of chairs and tables, and any small objects that aren’t brightly colored.
I am a bit nearsighted, but I only use glasses for reading. I peered at the floor and my hands patted the marble in ever-widening circles.