Artifact (22 page)

The Gregor Estate was desolate in the dark night. A harsh wind rippled through the smattering of trees. The ravine that ran along one side of the large house was black in the darkness of the night, creating the ominous sensation that we were at the edge of a dark void.

“It was Gregor family jewels that were supposedly stolen by you,” I said. “The police officers told me they received a fax from Sir Edward Gregor of London. This family is the key to the treasure after all.”

I broke off. “I don’t suppose you can break us in?” I wasn’t sure if I was joking.

Lane turned toward me with a mischievous glimmer in his eye.

“Not without research,” he said. “There could be dogs, alarms, who knows what. You’ll have to wait until it opens. Now, are you going to tell me exactly what you’ve pieced together?”

“I suppose you’re right that it doesn’t make sense to break in,” I consented. “But it doesn’t matter. I can tell you what’s going on. Think about what we learned when we first came here. Willoughby Gregor, the man who built this estate, was a Company man. His son Connor worked for the British Raj, not the Company. It was much more organized by then. Connor wasn’t the one who made the fortune that created this estate. His father did. And I know how he did it.
By stealing the Rajasthan Rubies
. Connor is portrayed in the role of patriarch in those portraits we saw at the estate because he was the one to make a big deal of the family’s wealth. His father Willoughby wouldn’t have wanted to show off his wealth because of how he created his fortune. We didn’t pay enough attention to the timing.”

“But it wasn’t easy for the British to steal treasures of such significance just because they were in power,” Lane said.

“I know,” I said. “But there was one period of time where it would have been possible. I cannot believe that I was so blind before. This estate was built in the late 1850s. That’s right after the Sepoy Uprising, India’s first battle for independence from Britain, in 1857. Rupert didn’t get the scope of my research wrong after all. This uprising was a huge deal in its implications, and led to the end of control of the British East India Company and the creation of the British Raj.

“Sepoys were the Indian soldiers employed by the Company, and some foolish moves on the part of the British led to an uprising in Delhi. The British were entirely unprepared. The Sepoy soldiers were both Hindu and Muslim, and rumors began circulating that the new rifle cartridges, that had to be bitten before being inserted into the rifles, were greased with cow and pig fat, which was obviously unacceptable to the Hindus and Muslims. This was going on amidst the backdrop of rumors of forced conversion to Christianity, and the Doctrine of Lapse was in full swing—” I broke off as I noticed Lane’s face displayed a combination of amusement and impatience.

“The history lesson is important,” I said. “Mass chaos broke out, too many people died, and property was destroyed and stolen. At the end of the uprising—also called The Great Mutiny, for obvious reasons—the Mughal Empire was finished, and the East India Company was abolished in favor of rule directly from the British Crown.”

“A time of chaos,” Lane said. “A perfect time for looting a treasure.”

“Exactly. You can see the importance of the turmoil. All sorts of people were displaced and treasures of all kinds were looted. That whole year, while the power structure was established, the meticulous record-keeping of the British fell apart.”

“But what does that have to do with the
bean nighe
?” Lane asked.

“The answer is inside the estate,” I said, “along with the answer to where the treasure is hidden.”

“You’re not going to tell me how you suspect it was done and how it tells us where the rest of the treasure is?”

“It sounds silly if I don’t show you. I can show you as soon as the estate opens. Relax. I know now that no one is going to break through the car window and yank me out—”

“I really wish you would stop saying things like that.” Lane ran his fingers though his hair, looking nervously out of the car.

“I got you out of jail,” I said. “You’ve been holding out on me a lot longer than I have on you. Now tell. And start at the beginning. I know it must be a long story. We have time. Talk.”

Lane sighed, and though his face remained stoic his eyes smiled at me.

“Jones, you have got to be the most exceptional woman I have ever met.”

“Don’t you dare get sentimental on me, I liked you just fine before. And that’s not the beginning.”

“Shall I start with my father?” Lane said. “Isn’t that where one is supposed to start?”

“Only if I was going to psychoanalyze you.”

“Please don’t. But it makes sense anyway. My father did business overseas, so I spent most of my childhood in the American schools in too many European and Asian countries to count.”

“Your foreign languages,” I said. “And the cigarettes Nadia liked.”

“That’s why I understand that feeling of yours about not quite fitting in, not like you’re supposed to.” He tapped an unlit cigarette against his leg nervously. “It’s strange, telling the story of my life—the real one, I mean—to anyone.”

A gust of wind shook the car. The night sky was clear above us, but clouds loomed in the distance.

“I had a natural aptitude for linguistics,” Lane continued, “along with a natural skepticism of everything my father did. All of his wealthy associates cared more about their vacation homes and mistresses than their wives and children.”

He paused and looked out into the night instead of facing me, seeming to search for what he wanted to say.

“Superficially, I fit in everywhere I went,” he said, “picking up the language easily. You’d think it was something I should have been happy about. But I wasn’t. They were so contented to play by their rules, using morally questionable business practices to keep their yachts and their caviar coming. No one even likes caviar. They think they’re supposed to savor it, so they buy it and pretend to.

“It was a game. Imitating their mannerisms, their accents, their speech patterns. By the time I left for college in England, I didn’t have any grand dreams of what to do with my life. All I had was bitterness.”

“So you just decided to become a jewel thief?”

“It wasn’t a conscious choice.” He rubbed his eyes, his lean fingers bumping up against the thick frames of his glasses in the process. “This isn’t easy for me, you know. For all I know you could turn me in.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Do I have any right to think that you wouldn’t?” He cast his eyes downward. When I squeezed his hand, he looked back up at me.

“It wasn’t a conscious choice,” he said. “I flitted around to various groups, always pretending to be someone I wasn’t. Then I met a man. John. I guess you could call him my mentor. He showed me something more productive I could do with my talents.

“I’m not going to lie to you and say I was altruistic—fighting the system to change the world, or being Robin Hood, or any nonsense like that. But I never stole from anyone who couldn’t afford it, and I never used a weapon—John taught me that—so I never hurt anyone, either monetarily or physically. I just helped myself. And got even with them.”

It all made perfect sense from everything that I had seen in him. I didn’t want to forgive him, or make excuses for him. But I didn’t want to judge him either.

“It happened without me realizing how far I’d come,” he said. “I was good. Good enough that I wasn’t afraid of getting caught. I assumed a different persona and was a completely different person in every city.

“You know what it feels like,” he said. “Fitting in on the surface, but wanting something more, even if you can’t grasp what that something is.”

“What did you steal?” I asked him. But I thought I already knew the answer.

“Mostly jewelry. Sometimes art. But jewelry is easiest to sneak out of the country.”

“That’s why you knew about this treasure—and what it was called!”

“I’m afraid so. It’s not quite as bad as you make it sound, though. I hadn’t put it together until you brought me the photograph. No one had. Not scholars, and not people with, ah, other ideas in mind, either. There were vague rumors in certain circles of a piece of the Rajasthan Rubies existing, like there was speculation in academic circles that artwork showing the jewels might have depicted real jewelry, but nothing concrete—no proof—so I had to piece things together.”

“But how did I find you in that office at Berkeley?”

“My tiny little art history graduate student office? That really is my office.”

“You really are a graduate student?”

“Of course. I wasn’t faking that. I merely didn’t tell you how I came by the knowledge of jewelry and art that got me there.” He paused and tried to gauge my expression in the dim light.

“You’re wondering why I gave it all up for the luxurious offerings of my thirty-five-square-foot graduate student office?”

“It does make one wonder.”

“France,” he said. “A few years ago.What happened in France is what made me get out.”

He paused, struggling with himself again. “It’s a miserable story. What I was involved in was no longer so clear-cut. I had enough money by that point that I didn’t really need to—”

“What did you do with all the money?”

“I have it. It’s tucked away.”

“You still
have
it?”

“You’ll notice it comes in handy.” He indicated our rather extravagant car. “What, you didn’t think I was going to say I gave it all away to charity, did you? I’m not Robin Hood, remember?”

“But you….”

He waited for me to finish, but I didn’t know what I wanted to say. I wanted to kick him and comfort him, turn him in and protect him, watch him rot in jail alone and never stop holding him. None of these contradictory things could be expressed in words. Not by me at any rate.

“I didn’t turn myself in or give the money back to people who in effect stole it in the first place,” he said. “That wouldn’t have set things right. Those people didn’t deserve the things I took from them. But I needed to find my own peace with the world. I’m not happy about some of the art and jewels that ended up in private collections. So here I am, giving something back to the world.”

“Saving history,” I said, “one artifact at a time.”

“Well, now that you’ve made my life sound like a Hallmark card for art historians, I really have no choice but to return to a life of crime.”

I swore.

“Nervous humor,” he said, misinterpreting my outburst.

“That’s not it,” I said. “That’s why you wanted to find the treasure!”

“You don’t have to yell. I’m right here.”

“You don’t want this to make your career,” I said, the truth hitting me. “You lied to me when you said that’s why you wanted to come to the UK. You don’t want to be famous, not even in your field. You want to hide. Your hair and thick glasses covering your memorable face, your clothes that blend into whatever environment you’re in. You don’t want to be remembered. You don’t want to find the treasure for yourself. You want to save it from them.”

“I thought that was rather obvious at this point.”

“
Nothing
is obvious at this point. And yes, I am aware that I’m yelling, thank you. You want to save the treasure from Rupert and Knox because they’re treasure hunters. You don’t know what the two of them will do with it, and you want to make sure the knowledge isn’t lost.”

“Did you hear something?” Lane asked, whipping his head around. I supposed he was used to listening for faint noises in his line of work.

“It’s my stomach,” I groaned. “I’m starving. We must have been here half the night.”

“At least.”

Sifting through my bag, I found a squished chocolate bar near the bottom. I offered Lane half. He declined, so I ate it myself.

“Now that you’re done with your psychoanalysis and your candy, you can tell me what you think we’ll find inside the estate. I know you need to see something to be sure, but I won’t hold it against you if you’re wrong. I promise.”

“Sorry,” I said. “There’s too damn much going on to keep my head straight to tell this right. All these distractions….”

I trailed off.

“Jaya?”

“The distractions.”

“You already said that.”

“He wouldn’t, would he?” I mumbled.

I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it before now.

“Lane, were you wondering why we were both sent on such pointless diversions today?”

“To get us out of the way, obviously. Divide and conquer.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” I said, “but with all that’s going on, I didn’t have time to think it through. Think about it. Even if you were stuck in jail for a few days, I would have realized the library was a fake errand soon enough.”

“The library? What library? I thought you took off because you said your ex made up some story about me being in on trying to kill him.”

“No,” I said. “That’s why I was mad, but that wasn’t the diversion. I received a fake call from a librarian at the British Library in London saying they had some information for me, so I used it as a way to get away from here. I didn’t think Rupert would have made up something like that, but I didn’t want to believe that you were…that you could have...I needed to think.”

“You mean there was another ploy meant specifically to get you out of the way?”

“Exactly.”

“That means the timing—”

“I know,” I said. “That means the timing is important. But why now?”

Lane swore. “I wasn’t arrested to keep me away from you and this situation,” he said. “Both of our diversions must have been meant to keep us away from something happening
tonight
.”

“Tonight? Why tonight? They’ve been here for ages.”

“But your ex hasn’t,” Lane answered, shaking his head. “You said he told you he was recuperating from the failed attempt on his life, but as soon as he was up to it he was going after the treasure. He knows he doesn’t have a lot of time since someone else is after it. He tried
last night
, but we were there and stopped him. So he had to make sure we’d be out of the way tonight.”

“But he doesn’t know where it is,” I insisted. Then I groaned. “Oh, God. He
thinks
he does, though. We’ve got to get back to the dig. Lane, we haven’t been seeing what’s right in front of us this whole time.”

“The cave,” Lane said.

I nodded. “There’s something at the site of this dig that has nothing to do with any of the ancient inhabitants of Scotland. Not the Picts. Not fairies. Not the gods of legends. I had half of the explanation of the treasure figured out, but our diversions gave us the answer to another piece of the puzzle. Our Indian treasure, the Rajasthan Rubies, it’s not only here in Scotland or on the grounds of this estate, but
hidden at the site of the dig
.”

“That’s why they’ve been digging at the cave right underneath the dig.”

“We’ve already wasted too much of the night. We’ve got to get to the dig before it’s too late.”