The Mask of Atreus (31 page)

Clever,
thought Deborah, suppressing the impulse to smile. By turning things back to him, she took attention off 258

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Deborah's response to this little fairy story. It was a good thing she had opted to keep Tonya's name out of her tales from Greece.

"Miss Miller?" said Tonya, her tone haughty, as if she was the curator and the Deborah the maid, "could I see you before you leave tonight with regard to my tax documents?"

"Sure," said Deborah, guarded.

As the maid--or rather the reporter--left, Deborah wondered why she was still here at all, and why she was trying to stay under the FBI's radar, especially since the two women had privately decided that the treasures they had been searching for were all copies anyway. Well, Tonya's last remark had set up a rendezvous of sorts, so she'd know before the night was out.

"I've got a question," said Keene, as the door closed behind Tonya. "If you had stolen this mask, what would you do with it?"

Deborah thought about it. Keene was probably making what passed in his less than subtle mind for a veiled accusation, but the question was valid nonetheless.

"I guess I'd try to get it on the black market, if I wasn't working on behalf of a specific buyer," she said. "Or I would lie low, bury it until things had died down a little, till everyone but the hard-core collectors had stopped looking for it."

Keene raised an eyebrow, but unironically. He may not have expected a real answer, but he thought the one he had gotten was helpful.

"And if they were working specifically for an interested party," said Cerniga, "say, the Greek government, and had come not to steal the mask but to inspect it?"

Deborah had tried to be vague about her conversations with Popadreus, but Cerniga had seen through her pretense.

"I guess I would do what I could to get it authenticated,"

she said.

"And how would they do that?"

Deborah sighed.

"Ideally, they would get the mask examined by an expert,"

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she said, "though I suppose the men in question could have been experts themselves. Then I would get it to a lab where real tests could be performed."

"Surely," said Cerniga, "if Richard was selling or giving the piece away, he would have proved its authenticity to the buyer beforehand."

"Not if it was not easily moved around," said Deborah,

"and not if he was keeping it secret. If he thought the mask might make him a target for less scrupulous dealers, he'd keep it hidden, give out only enough to get the buyer interested. In any case, he couldn't simply ship lab results to the buyer and expect them to accept his word for their authenticity. The buyer would want to oversee the tests themselves."

"I don't get it," said Keene. "If it's a big gold thing, then it's valuable. Why does it matter how old it is or where it came from?"

"Because," said Calvin, "this is not a matter of intrinsic value. It's a matter of cultural value, the mask's aesthetics, its historical associations, its links to myth and legend. That's what makes it priceless."

"I don't get it," Keene repeated, proud of the fact, as if thinking that this was all so much bullshit made him a bigger man and a straighter shooter.

"There's really no difference between intrinsic value and cultural value," said Deborah. "Gold is only valuable because people have decided they like it and it is comparatively rare. Diamonds, likewise. There's nothing essentially more valuable about diamonds than any other rare compound or element, except that people have decided they like them. This is just the same. But while gold and diamonds are continually being dug up from many places, a Mycenaean death mask is one of a kind. There won't be any more made, but since their value is impossible to separate from their age, who they may have belonged to and so on, the process of authentication is crucial."

"And how would they go about doing that?" said Cerniga.

"You said they'd do lab tests. Like what? Carbon dating?"

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"You can't carbon date gold," she said. "Radiocarbon dating measures the half-life of material that was once organic. It doesn't work for gold, not reliably."

"What other lab tests are there?"

"None that are scientifically reliable without hard evidence on provenance."

"So what the hell are we talking about this for?" said Cerniga.

"Other materials in the collection could be carbon dated,"

said Deborah. "Ceramics, for example. We don't know what else was in the case with the mask. If there are other items which purportedly came from the same site, dating them would give a better sense of the mask's authenticity."

What Deborah didn't say was that one thing that could certainly be carbon dated was any fragment of a human body that might have been in with the mask. If Agamemnon himself had really been laid out in that little room behind the bookcase, a radiocarbon examination would probably be able to pinpoint the age of the tissue to within a hundred years or so. In the old days, a considerable amount of the tissue would have had to be destroyed in the course of the test--something archaeologists were understandably loath to try. As someone once said, "He who destroys a thing to discover what it is has left the path of wisdom." Anyway, accelerated mass spectrometry had changed all that. Now the better-funded labs (AMS machines ran in the millions of dollars) had the ability to get the same results from the tiniest fragment of testable material.

Such labs were, of course, few and far between, and if the Greeks had wanted to avail themselves of such a test, they would have a limited number of options in the United States. Fortunately for them and, Deborah thought, for her, she happened to know where there was one such lab not two hours'

drive away.

CHAPTER 54

"You need a ride home?" said Cerniga.

It was an awkward question. Calvin was standing at his elbow, and Deborah caught the way he looked quickly away. Cerniga had beaten him to the offer, and with her own car still parked in the parking lot of The Temple (unless they had had it towed), Deborah could think of no reason to say no.

"I have to deal with Tonya's employment papers before I leave," she said. "It might take a few minutes."

She didn't dare look at Calvin.

"I can wait," said Cerniga.

Deborah forced a smile and a "Thanks" before looking back to her desk and pushing papers around meaningfully.

"I guess I'll head out then," said Calvin.

Deborah looked up. For a second their eyes met and groaned their silent frustration.

"OK," she said. "I guess I'll see you tomorrow."

She didn't know what he was thinking, what he had been hoping might happen tonight--wasn't even certain what she had been thinking or hoping for herself--but he was clearly disappointed by Cerniga's professional chivalry.

"Right," he said. He hesitated for a second as if about to say something else, but he was just stalling, and when Cerniga turned to look at him, he began backing out. The sound of the door closing behind him had a finality that made her want to scream.

"You wanted to see the maid?"

"Right," said Deborah, coming back to herself. "I'll be back as soon as I can."

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And with this excuse, she left the room as quickly as she could manage without actually running. Calvin was almost out of the lobby door. She called him by name, and he stopped mid-stride and spun around. She remembered the first conversation they had had, and how he had irritated her by remarking that the tomahawk in the case not twenty feet from where he was standing now was the weapon of a barbaric culture. She smiled at the thought.

"What's up?" he said.

"Hey," said Deborah. "I'm sorry I have to . . ."

She gestured vaguely back toward the office.

"Right," he said, "no problem. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yes," she said, suddenly feeling stupid and girlish. "OK."

He lingered for a second, his upper body swaying slightly as if caught between contradictory impulses, and then he was smiling apologetically and pulling away.

"Tomorrow," he said.

"Yes."

"Looking forward to it."

She watched him walk away, unsure what more she really wanted right now.

Tonya was in the kitchen wringing out a mop in the sink. When she saw Deborah come in, she crossed hurriedly to her, checked over her shoulder, and pushed the door shut.

"Hey," she said, leaning into a brief embrace. "How you doing? OK?"

"Yeah," said Deborah. "Tired is all."

"I'll bet," said Tonya. The expression on her face was that of a concerned friend, and Deborah found herself wondering at how their relationship--which had always seemed so strained--had been altered by their encounter in Mycenae.

"Listen," she continued, her voice hushed, "I'm sorry about that before. Tell me you didn't say that you saw me out there."

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"I didn't."

"Thank God," said Tonya, her whole body registering the relief.

"Why?" said Deborah. "You know Cerniga is FBI, right?"

"Yeah," said Tonya. "He told me as soon as I got back, like that would make me spill all my secrets or something. I didn't believe it, but I called to check up. I'm pretty sure he's legit. But here's the thing. Why would the Feds be involved in this? It doesn't make sense."

"The body--and, for the record, I've only mentioned the mask, not the body itself--has been moved across state lines, probably been smuggled through international waters. That makes it a federal crime, doesn't it?"

"Sure," said Tonya, "but when did they know about that?"

Deborah saw her point, and it stilled her, like the echo of her panic when she first overheard Keene and Cerniga arguing through the vents in the bathroom.

"They came to investigate a murder, right?" said Tonya.

"They both came together. At that stage no one knew anything about smuggling or stolen goods, or at least they didn't say so. So why is the FBI involved? I called my buddy who works over at the Clayton County department and asked him what the most common reasons are that the Feds get involved in murder cases, and you know what he said?"

"What?"

"Hate crimes," she said.

"Hate crimes?"

"He didn't hesitate. First thing out of his mouth. Hate crimes."

And there it was again, that sense that she was completely off track, searching for all the wrong clues, putting together the wrong puzzle . . .

"But how could Richard's death be a hate crime?" said Deborah, shrugging off the familiar uncertainty. "He was white, male, and, so far as I know, straight. His wife had been dead a long time, but . . . No. He was straight."

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"But what if the hate crime they are looking into doesn't involve Richard at all?" said Tonya. "What if it happened years ago?"

Oh God,
Deborah thought,
here it comes.

"Your father?" she said. "You think they are investigating the death of your father?"

"I'm just saying," said Tonya, backing off a fraction. "I asked a lot of questions. I contacted the military authorities and even talked about getting him exhumed. I'm just wondering if someone decided to pursue it."

"Then why keep the investigation secret? Especially from you?"

"You've got me," she said. "But I'd rather play my cards kind of close to my chest right now. You see what I'm saying?"

Deborah nodded slowly, thoughtfully, but she had nothing else to say. Hate crimes? She didn't buy it, but she knew that to say so to Tonya would put their new friendship on very shaky grounds. For the reporter-turned-maid, the story of her father's death was too vital, too tied to other deeply emotive issues, for her to take skepticism about it lightly, and Deborah knew Tonya just enough to guess how she would react. She would be hardheaded, defensive, secretly hurt, and angry in ways that would shut her out.

Sound familiar?

Deborah stood there in silence, looking grave.

"Speaking of keeping things close to your chest," said Tonya, her manner abruptly becoming intimate and amused,

"I notice you've started wearing a little makeup and perfume, huh? I wondered when you'd figure out that your graduate school wouldn't actually strip you of your credentials if you came in a little girly once in a while."

Deborah waved the remark off, blushing. She had begun the day with the thinnest smear of lipstick and a couple of dots of Chanel No. 19, products she had been hoarding unused for almost as long as Schliemann's gold had been buried in Mycenae.

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"There was a time," said Deborah with mock hauteur,

"that maids knew their place."

"And weren't they just the good old days," said Tonya. She punctuated her remark with a whoop of derisive laughter and left the room, mop and bucket at the ready.

Deborah grinned, and then found herself coming back to their previous conversation, and the way it promised trouble for the future.

Hate crimes?

"By the way," said Tonya, sticking her head back round the door. "That town you said was near the Swiss border: what did you say it was called?"

"Magdeburg."

"Yeah, that's what I thought," said Tonya. "It isn't. At least, not that I could find. There's a Magdeburg close to Berlin, but there wouldn't be a lot of point in trying to smuggle stuff to another town a few miles over if the Allies were breathing down their necks, would there?"

"I guess not," said Deborah, frowning. "Maybe there's more than one."

"Maybe," said Tonya as she left.

Deborah logged on to the office computer, went online, and Googled "Magdeburg." The first page of results were all in German. One looked like it was about a theater, another was a tourist site, but none had maps locating the city in Germany as a whole, and the search engine's knowing prompt that she might want to try "Magde
n
burg" didn't help. The next page, however, produced something like a chamber of commerce site which was, impressively, in English. A link for directions took her to a map. Tonya was right. Magdeburg was indeed slap in the middle of the country, only a hundred miles or so southwest of Berlin, in what was called the Saxony-Anhalt province. Surely to send the body in that direction would have been to send it to the Western allies? And if the German intention 266