A Triple Thriller Fest (114 page)

Nick sat on a rug in front of the fireplace. He played with a set of wooden horses, but jumped to his feet when they entered and ran to Tess.

“Did you win?” Just a couple of days in the States and he’d already switched back to English. “Papá said you were fighting Germans and Russians. Did they break down the gates? Was anyone killed?”

“Nobody was killed, not for real. It’s just a play war. But yes, we won, and the gates held.”

“What are you doing, Papá? Are you angry?”

“We’re just having a talk,” Tess said. “Right, Peter?”

Peter spoke to the boy in French. “Nick, do you want to see the blacksmith working? The fire gets so hot the metal turns red, and then he can hammer it into whatever shape he wants.”

“Yeah, let’s go. Come on, Tess, you come, too.” He grabbed her hand.

“No, Nick,” Peter said. “Henri is going to take you. Tess and I have to talk.”

Nick pouted and Henri looked none too happy to be sent away with a child. Moments after they left, two men brought Dmitri. Peter told them all to sit at the banquet table, then sent off his men. Only Tess, Dmitri, Lars, and Peter remained.

“Isn’t this the point where we rush you, overpower you and take your sword, then hold you hostage until they let us out of the castle?” Tess asked.

“Knock it off, Tess, this isn’t a joke.”

“I know it’s not, I saw what’s in your basement.”

“What exactly did you see?” Lars asked. “I caught one hell of glimpse, but that was all.”

Tess told him. His eyes widened. Peter stood and walked to the fireplace, whewre he stood with his back facing them. Firelight reflected off his face and body.

“You’re no better than Borisenko,” she said. “A goddamn looter.”

“Right, sure.” Peter turned. “The world’s most clever thief. Did you see all the Rembrandts in the crates? How about the Venus de Milo? The Mona Lisa? Girl with a Pearl Earring. Oh, and about twenty versions of Van Gogh’s Sunflowers.”

He shook his head. “Get real, Tess. Whatever you think you know, you don’t.”

“Well, we’re waiting.”

“Tess, think about the Baghdad Museum after the fall of Iraq.”

“First the Baghdad Museum,” Tess said, “next the Louvre? Is that your point? Hadn’t heard that the Germans were massing troops at the border.”

Peter didn’t crack a smile. “Tess, you look at the world and you see stability. It’s been peaceful for sixty years—more or less—and you assume the world will stay that way.”

“No, I don’t. I think it’s getting
better.
You look at anything: health, technology, poverty reduction—”

“Global warming,” Lars interrupted. “Overpopulation. Shrinking ecosystems.”

“Vaccinations,” Tess countered. “Penicillin. Universal literacy. End of slavery and the spread of human rights and democracy.” She lifted a hand. “Of course you can point out exceptions. But the world is in good shape and getting better all the time. Those big problems, I have no doubt we’ll solve them.”

“All you’re talking about is change,” Peter said. “We both agree that the world is changing—it always does—but surely you don’t think the world will always change for the better? You’re a historian, Tess, you know better than that.”

“The world is different now.”

“That’s what they always say, it’s different now. Nothing lasts forever. I look at human civilization and I see this massive, speculative bubble. We’re expanding exponentially in every direction, and sooner or later that bubble is going to pop.”

“We survived the oil shocks,” Tess said. “The so-called Y2K bug. Even 9/11.”

“And we were lucky. What if a terrorist smuggles a nuke into Manhattan or London?”

“Is that what your stash is about?” Dmitri asked. His voice was calm, his gaze distant. “Preserving culture through some future Dark Ages?”

Peter nodded. “Yes, exactly. You know what that vault was built for? Not sports cars, that came later. It’s a bomb shelter. Some guy in the 50s convinced himself the Soviets were about to nuke the U.S.”

“And it never happened,” Tess said.

“Point is,” Peter said, “that vault could survive an ice age. Ten thousand years from now someone could come down and read my books, and find our artifacts and reconstruct much of human history and civilization.”

“But in the meanwhile, you’re stealing stuff from museums?”

Peter blinked. “No, of course not. I haven’t stolen anything.”

“So they’re fakes,” she said. “Very elaborate, very expensive, and very expert reproductions.”

“That’s one way to look at it.”

“One way? I don’t understand, Peter, either they’re fakes or they’re the real things.”

“That’s too simplistic.”

He unclasped his cloak and the others followed his lead. There was a draft in the great hall, but it was overly warm by the fireplace.

“Suppose for a moment that civilization collapsed,” Peter said. “And Paris were sacked. Mobs break into the Louvre and destroy its treasures, or best, smuggle them out to sell. What would happen in two hundred years, generations after the collapse, when someone found my vault? Wouldn’t they know what they’d found, based on old books, if nothing else?”

“So they’re potential replacements,” Tess said.

“Again, that’s the wrong word, but you’re getting closer. Look, I saw that you’d opened the box holding Winged Victory. Why is that one of the most famous statues in the world?”

“What kind of question is that? Art History 101?” she asked. “Look at it. The wings outstretched and intricately detailed, the robes look as if they’re blown by a sea breeze. It’s a perfect sculpture.”

“Oh, it’s brilliant,” Peter said. “But it’s not perfect. Modern sculptors have better technique and tools. And Winged Victory is corroded by time. It’s missing its arms and head, for god’s sake. How is that perfect?”

“You’re twisting the meaning of the word perfect,” Lars said. He stood to one side, wearing a puzzled expression that Tess hadn’t seen before. “Winged Victory is perfect because…well, because it is.”

“It’s perfect, Lars, because of its context,” Peter said. “Its origin is a mystery, but not so much that we can’t make good guesses. And we know how it was found and its history since then. The missing head only adds to its value. There are lots of beautiful, valuable things in this world, but very few like Winged Victory, which are priceless.”

“So what you’re saying is that after a collapse,” Tess began tentatively, “your replicas will have the same context? They’ll take the place of the destroyed objects?”

“You’re getting close,” Peter said. “Replicas aren’t good enough, and neither are replacements. We’ve got to preserve the context, too.”

“It’s like those lost Greek manuscripts,” Lars said, “you know, that we’ve reconstructed based solely on how they were quoted in other, surviving texts. They don’t survive in original translation, but we still have them.”

“I like that analogy, very good,” Peter said. “I’m going to steal it next time I have to explain to someone.”

“Fine, you’re all very clever,” Tess said, “Problem is, I don’t believe any of it.”

A half smile crossed Peter’s face. “Is that because you don’t
want
to believe, because you’re convinced I’m up to no good?”

“Your best friend is Alexander Borisenko. That guy is the world’s biggest smuggler of artifacts.”

“You’re wrong.”

Tess snorted. “I’ve been on his trail for months. What about the gold dagger, the Akkadian King?”

“He bought them to keep them out of the hands of a private collector in Saudi Arabia. He was planning all along to return the artifacts to Baghdad when he thought they would be safe. Borisenko is just like you, only he’s better at it. And he’s got money to buy his artifacts.”

Tess looked to Dmitri for help. “You know Borisenko, he’s a bastard. A corrupt, greedy bastard. He looted Russia of its oil and now he’s looting the world of its heritage. Tell Peter he’s wrong.”

“I think I understand,” Dmitri said. “This castle, and the war, it’s not a game, it’s training. For after.”

“Yes, exactly.” Peter turned back toward the fireplace.

The pieces came together in Tess’s mind. “You’re counting on a collapse, aren’t you? You think the world as we know it is going to come to an end. Do you think it’s oil that’s going to kill it? We run out and that’s it?”

“Maybe, I’d say ten, fifteen percent chance. Odds are good we’ll find new supplies or that we’ll make a relatively smooth transition to some other power source.”

“But that’s not much of a chance,” she said.

“I talked to some disease guy after the SARS scare and he thinks that there’s a one to two percent chance of a super plague—Black Death style—in any given decade,” Peter said.

“That’s just speculation,” Tess said. “And even over a century, that doesn’t add up to a huge threat.”

“Also, I’d argue that just because we haven’t seen a nuclear war, doesn’t mean that it won’t happen. More countries have nuclear weapons all the time.” Peter rubbed at his chin. “So I’d throw that in there, too. Then you’ve got the big natural disasters. The potential of a collapse due to climate change, which could be global warming-induced famine, or maybe a new ice age. Who knows? And what about those super volcanoes that lurk around the world, or even an asteroid strike.”

“The more arguments you give, the less convincing it sounds,” Tess said. “I could be hit by lightning next time I step outside, you can’t worry about that sort of thing.”

“I see what Peter means,” Dmitri said. “I mean, I don’t know if the world is going to come to an end, but I see his point. It’s like a game of roulette. You put a bet on one number, you’ll probably lose. You put down ten bets and you spin the wheel again and again, sooner or later you’ll get a payoff.”

“Only the payoff isn’t five to one or ten to one,” Peter said. “I’ve seen too much of the world’s financial system. It looks strong from a distance, you get close, you see its flaws. You hit it hard enough and it’s going to collapse, and you won’t rebuild it.”

“Even the Great Depression came to an end, eventually.”

“This isn’t the 1930s,” Peter said. “People can’t live on the food they grow on their own farms. And people can’t haul goods to market by horse-drawn cart. The economic system collapses and what’s going to happen? Mass starvation, wars, a civilization that devours itself.”

“Okay,” Tess said. “Playing along here, just for fun. How does the castle play into that? Are you saying we’re going to collapse so far we’ll go back to fighting our wars with crossbows and trebuchets? I don’t believe it. People could be living in mud huts, burning firewood for fuel and they’ll still have their guns. There’s so many weapons, ammunition, and explosives in this world that it won’t run out for generations. And the last thing people stop making will be new ammo.”

“I don’t know what the world is going to look like a hundred years from now, nobody does. We picked castles and medieval warfare because so many of us are medievalists. Guys like Niels, Henri, and Borisenko, and it’s not like we could fight our battles with artillery and F-16s.

“What I’m about,” Peter continued, “is building a team of people who have the money, the skills, and the connections to hold it together after the collapse.”

“And that’s why you brought Nick, too.” Tess thought about how Peter’s family had fled Algeria during the civil war.

“Nick might survive to see the end of the century. Or he might die in some upheaval twenty years from now. I need to make sure that doesn’t happen. He has to learn.”

She almost bought it, except for the same gleam in his eyes that she’d seen when he was talking about his ziggurat. “Admit it Peter, this isn’t about training for the end of the world. You think this will be cool, like those big battles you read about in my last book. You’ve got a big vault filled with treasure and you dressed all your friends in armor because it’s fun.”

Peter gave a smile so slight the others might have missed it, the way the firelight shadowed his face. He turned to Dmitri and Lars. “Now, are you in?”

“Just to be clear,” Dmitri said. “What do you mean by
in?”

“You’ll work for me. Money, whatever, isn’t an issue. You can buy your artifacts, we’ll reproduce them, then turn them over to museums. But you need to get into those same museums to get access to their best goods. A few bribes of the real stuff will help.”

It most certainly would. People didn’t work at the museums for the money. They would salivate over the antiquities Peter’s money could provide.

“And then what?” Tess asked. “Are you going to throw us out when we’re done? Isn’t that your style?”

It took Peter several seconds to smooth away the frown. “I’m not perfect, Tess, but I’m in this for the long haul.”

“I might have heard that before.”

“I’m in,” Lars said. “You and Tess can work out your own issues.”

Tess turned to him. “You’re going to quit your career, just like that?”

“It’s not a career, it’s a job.” Lars got up from the chair to physically join Peter by the fire and the way he carried himself told Tess that he was not just speaking out of excitement. “I took it because it gets me closest to the way things used to be. This thing, this is better.”

“The Viking warrior awakes. Valhalla, throw open your doors.”

“That’s the problem, I’m not a Viking. I’m more like that Greek manuscript, actually. My life is folded in bits and pieces into this modern world, where it doesn’t belong. I need a way to pull it out, put it together in one place.”

“What a crock of shit,” Tess said. She looked back to Peter. “How many others know about this? Everyone else in this war?”

“Most of the hired swords don’t know, except for you and Niels, Henri, a few others. Not that you’re hired swords, I mean,” he added quickly. “What I mean is that the rich guys know, the paid guys mostly don’t.”

“So Borisenko knows.”

“Right, Borisenko, Daria LeFevre, Chang—”

“Chang? That’s the Chinese guy who hangs out with your Arab friend?”

“From Singapore, but yeah. The ‘Arab friend’ is Mahmoud. He knows, too. He’s Algerian, but has lived in the Gulf since before the First Gulf War. Couple of Americans, McIves and Santini. Nigel Frank, from England.”