The Mask of Atreus (25 page)

"In part," said Tonya. "But there's more. Whatever my father saw in that box fairly blew his mind. When the MPs arrived, they immediately cleared all the soldiers back to their vehicles. There was this one young officer, white--of course--

who was running the show. Now, you have to remember what it 206

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was like back then between blacks and whites. The white soldiers resented the kind of equality that had been given to the black troops, even if it was actually nothing like real equality. When the black units were being trained in the U.S., it was said that there was at least one black soldier killed by white mobs every weekend when the troops were allowed to visit the neighboring towns. The military police were frequently involved, and if they didn't actually do the killing themselves--which sometimes they did--they sure as hell made no effort to prosecute those who did, military or civilian.

"Many of the blacks thought they'd never see actual service, and it was only the massive loss of tank crews after D-day that got them to France in anything other than a supply and service capacity. Still, they were treated as cowards, unfit to serve," she said, a new bitterness coming into her voice,

"by a lot of the white commanders, even though the 761st was continually applauded by those whites who worked close to them for their valor and determination under fire. Even as they died to protect their country, that country didn't want to know them."

She settled back and took a calming breath.

Deborah said nothing but watched and listened, afraid of breaking the fragile truce.

"So anyway," said Tonya, "while everything was being taken off, the truck and the crate inside it were being guarded by this one MP. Morris never got his name, but he said he was this good old Southern boy who made his feelings about the platoon quite clear, called them 'nigger troops' to their faces, suggested that they would steal anything of value in the truck. When they asked what was inside, he drew his sidearm and said he'd blow a hole in the next one to come near it."

"The tankers withdrew to their vehicles, but my father went back. About two minutes later, Morris heard a shot, then two more. The MP came back and told them that one of the Germans had still been alive, that he had shot my father before the MP could finish him. 207

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"They all knew it was a lie, but they also knew that any kind of protest on their part would get them arrested or worse. Morris's gunner became the tank's new commander, and they assigned a new trainee to take his place.

"Morris was the last surviving member of the crew. The gunner who had been made commander was killed by a mine three days after the convoy incident, and the rest died off gradually over the years. Morris succumbed to the cancer four weeks ago."

Sensing something else was coming, Deborah waited.

"But," said Tonya, leaning forward, "he said that my father had seen something 'wild' in that crate, something he didn't want to discuss till he'd gotten a better look at it, and Morris was convinced that it wasn't just the usual black-white stuff that got him killed that day: it was something about what was in that box. That's why I threw my job in to get close to it. That's why I'm here now with you."

For a while Deborah said nothing; then she nodded. "You remember there was a homeless man killed near the museum the night Richard died?" she said.

Tonya nodded. "They said it wasn't connected," she said.

"It might not be," said Deborah. "But here's the thing. I spoke to his daughter. He was Russian and--get this--a member of the KGB, or the organization which became the KGB."

"What was he doing in Atlanta?"

"I'm not sure," said Deborah, "but I'm beginning to think he was chasing the same box that your father saw on the back of that German truck."

Tonya's eyes widened, then narrowed almost as dramatically.

"He was carrying a letter," said Deborah. "Most of it was too badly damaged to read, but there's a reference to some

'remains' which the letter writer believed never made it to their destination, a town in Germany called Magdeburg. I haven't checked yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to find it sitting right on the Swiss border. Whatever those 'remains'

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were--and they could be human remains, could therefore be the body of Agamemnon himself--your father helped stop them from leaving the country, I'm sure of it.

"The Russians," she added, "grabbed a lot of ancient antiquities from Berlin. They still have them. This batch, however, the biggest, richest, most legendary trove of the lot, slipped through their fingers. Fifty years later, they are still looking for them."

There was a long silence between them. Beyond the table a car horn blew and someone shouted to a friend in Greek and someone else laughed loudly in response, but the two women barely heard any of it, sitting instead quite still, their eyes locked on each other.

CHAPTER 44

The two women ordered lunch, something that should--

Deborah thought--have felt surreal, given the nature of their relationship in the States and the fact that Tonya had held her at gunpoint only an hour earlier. But it didn't. Instead there seemed to be a tacit and unexpected unity forged between them that went well beyond their both being Americans (and uncommon ones at that) in a strange land. They were both fairly tough-minded women trying to make sense of loss and tragedy, trying--it had to be said--without much success.

Deborah told Tonya everything: Richard, Marcus, her e-mails to Calvin (though not their tentative flirtation, if that was what it was), and the cryptic warning she had received before the attempt on her life at the Acrocorinth. She told her everything she knew about Agamemnon's body, about Schliemann's checkered reputation as an archaeologist, about the MVD, even about that damned ship prow whose sudden reappearance had set so much of what had happened in motion.

"And this guy Marcus has disappeared?" said Tonya.

"So far as I can tell," said Deborah. "I haven't been able to reach him in Corinth or Athens. He may have left the country, for all I know."

"You think he was the one trying to kill you yesterday?"

"It wasn't him personally, I'm pretty sure of that," said Deborah, eyes narrowed. "But whether he set it up . . . I don't know. I don't think so, and I don't see what he would gain by it, but I don't really see what
anyone
would gain by it, so that doesn't get me very far."

There was another thoughtful pause, and then Tonya asked 210

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the question that had been hanging over them since they had started to pool information.

"So," she said. "Now what?"

Deborah just shook her head. She had absolutely no idea.

"I'm ready to go home," she said. "I don't see what else there is to do. You?"

"Well, I was going to shoot you," she said, grinning. "It's still kind of tempting actually. I don't know who would take over at the museum, but they couldn't be as big a control freak as you."

"Thanks," said Deborah, returning her grin.

"How about a little shopping?" said Tonya, snapping on that sudden grin that shook ten years from her face, and squinting down to the tourist store across the street. "Cheers me up second only to church. How are you fixed for souvenirs?"

"Haven't bought a thing," said Deborah, smiling a little grudgingly. "Sure. What the hell."

They settled up and wandered over to the shop with its windows full of "Greece's finest antique reproductions" and went inside, looking a little ruefully at each other. However much they were putting a brave face on it, it was a woefully anticlimactic way to end their respective investigations. Both stopped awestruck just inside the doors. The place was vast, the size of an aircraft hangar, and every inch of it was filled with shelves, display cases, and wall hangings. Deborah gaped and took it all in: statues of all sizes in marble and plaster, miniature vases, bowls, and amphora, Geometric pieces and Cycladic sculpture like those which had invoked Moore and Picasso in the National Archaeological Museum, red and black classical urns adorned with scenes from mythology, bronze sphinxes and charioteers modeled on originals from Delphi, bulls' heads and axes based on those in Crete, Bronze Age, classical, and Roman pieces of every kind in every medium, some of them tacky bits of cheap tourist rubbish, some museum-quality replicas. Tonya picked up a little bronze Priapus and smirked.

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"These Greeks think pretty highly of themselves," she said.

Deborah barely heard her. Her brain was starting to run ahead, and her eyes were struggling to keep pace. Her legs followed and, for a moment, she forgot the throbbing in her ankle.

She ignored the cheap stuff. Even the midrange pieces, though well-executed, and perfect for the souvenirs she'd come in to buy, barely caught her eye. Her eyes were on the top shelves, where sat artifacts that would have looked at home in the National Archaeological Museum, pieces she could tell weren't real only because of the price tags. Because it wasn't their mere accuracy that made them special. They looked old, like they had just been taken from the ground. Pots, plates, even bronzes: they all looked like they were thousands of years old, and if that wasn't enough, Deborah was convinced that some of them weren't reproductions at all so much as new pieces inspired loosely by ancient artifacts. She hadn't seen anything like these pieces in Athens's many tourist shops or in Corinth. In fact, the only place she had seen anything like them was behind the bookcase in Richard's bedroom.

"Excuse me," she said, grabbing the hand of a salesgirl who seemed taken aback by her urgency. "Where do you get these?"

"All around," said the girl. "Some of them are made overseas."

Deborah could tell the girl wasn't really paying attention.

"No," she said, "not the whole store. Just these pieces. The expensive ones."

The girl, perhaps scenting a substantial commission, gave her all her attention now, and her mood became politely ingratiating.

"These are local," she said. "Very special works made by a single family who have been in the business of making the highest quality pieces for several generations. These are not reproductions. These are art."

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Deborah forced herself to calm down.

"I'm very interested in buying some," she said, gesturing vaguely toward a shelf of bronzes she couldn't possibly carry without a massive increase in her luggage space. "But I would really like to meet the artist."

Tonya had wandered over and was listening to this earnest exchange with bemused interest.

"I am sorry, madam," said the girl, "but the artists are very private. Sometimes they bring things to the shop, but usually they stay at home, where they have their own . . . what is the word? Where metal things are made."

"Forge?" suggested Tonya.

"Right," said the girl. "Forge."

"Where is that?" said Deborah.

"I'm sorry, madam, but I cannot tell you that. It is their home."

"Yes," said Deborah, "but--"

"I'm sorry. I cannot."

Deborah thought fast.

"Listen," she said. "I'm looking for something very specific, something that has to be commissioned. I've been looking at pieces all over country, and I've decided I want whoever made these pieces to make one specially for me."

"These are all unique," said the girl.

"Yes, but the piece I want has to be made to my specifications. If you connect me to the artist, I'd be happy to make sure that you get a commission as if we bought the piece here."

The girl hesitated, then shook her head. "I'm sorry," she said. "We can't do that."

"You still want it made of gold?" Tonya said to Deborah. The girl looked quickly at Deborah, who recovered her poise and said, "If they can do something that large."

The girl blinked. "Come with me, please," she said. CHAPTER 45

The house, an unremarkable white plastered structure, was on the other side of the village. The three women walked quickly, saying little, as if all feared that uttering a word would cost them the opportunity of a lifetime. The girl had alerted the family to the fact that they would be having visitors in a hushed phone call, and a boy of about ten was waiting barefoot at the door when they arrived, stroking a white, rail-thin cat.

He showed them through a plain, narrow hallway, past a kitchen which smelled of oregano, and into a living room where an elderly man and his wife were waiting, both dressed in dark, heavy fabrics. The room was surprisingly bare, a few framed black-and-white pictures the only decoration. The girl from the store spoke to the elderly couple in Greek, nodding toward Deborah. The man, who wore a heavy salt-and-pepper mustache, murmured but showed no readable signs. Eventually he muttered something to his wife, and she nodded once before turning her gaze onto Tonya appraisingly.

"What is it that you were looking for?" the old man said simply.

Deborah was surprised. She had assumed he would not speak English.

"Well," she said, "I don't know really . . ."

She looked at Tonya to buy herself a moment and then said suddenly, "A death mask. A gold death mask like the ones found in Mycenae."

She had said the magic words. The old man's face lit up in 214

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a smile. He spoke quickly to his wife, and she too began to beam broadly, babbling in Greek to the two Americans, her hands joined in front of her as if she was caught in the action of applauding. Then the old man was up on his feet and hobbling out of the room, waving for them to follow.

"Like the masks Herr Schliemann found, yes?"

"Yes."

He led them through the kitchen and out into a yard lined with sheds, several of which had metal chimneys.

"Kiln," he said, pointing to one. "Forge," he said, leading them to another.