Golden Relic (2 page)

Pierre, his expression a mixture of disbelief and trepidation, returned to the table. "We have a
problem," he stated quietly.

"Another one?" Maggie asked.

"The van transporting some of the exhibits for the 'Pre-Columbian Treasures of the Americas'
exhibition has been hijacked en route from the airport." Pierre's statement was met with stony
silence. He cleared his throat. "The thieves have acquired an Aztec dagger, a gold Sicán ceremonial
mask, three Toltec figurines and the, em, Tahuantinsuyu Bracelet."

It was 6.30 am, but even so the airport bar was crowded with passengers,
well-wishing families and friends and a bizarre variety of yet-to-be checked in luggage, including a
unicycle, a surfboard, and what looked to Maggie like a suitcase-sized stealth bomber wrapped in
brown paper.

Pierre struggled through the throng and handed Maggie a cup of coffee before taking his seat.
"What do you suppose an American is doing in Paris with a surfboard?" he asked.

"Perhaps he thinks he's in Texas," Maggie suggested.

"I don't think there is surfing in that Paris either," Pierre stated.

Maggie shrugged, "Maybe he's taking my flight to Sydney. Do you really care?"

"No, but I am trying to…"

"I am going home, Pierre," Maggie said, placing her hand affectionately on his arm. "There is
absolutely nothing you could say or offer to make me stay, so you may as well say goodbye now.
There's no need to wait till my plane leaves."

"But Maggie, we see each other so rarely these days. And I do so enjoy your company," Pierre
said, placing his hand over hers.

Maggie nearly choked on her coffee. "This tactic is beneath even you, Pierre," she laughed. "Are
you saying that you wish me to stay here and share the flack from this hijacking, help you face the
criticism regarding the safety and feasibility of eclectic exhibitions like yours, and deal with the
international fallout in general, because you enjoy my company?"

Pierre shrugged and smiled. "What can I say, Maggie? I…"

"You can say 'goodbye Maggie' - that's what you can say," she said.

"This is a nightmare," Pierre intoned.

"That is an understatement, my friend," Maggie said. "But you don't really think Jorge is right
about Escobar being behind the hijacking?"

"I doubt it," Pierre said. "That would mean his demand for a hearing of his case for rightful
ownership was a complete charade. His claim on the bracelet, as you say, was dubious but if it was a
sham to cover his part in a plot to steal the artefact in question then it didn't work because
Escobar was the first person that Jorge accused."

"I agree," Maggie said, "but only because I find it impossible to imagine Dr Pablo Escobar as a
criminal mastermind. I don't believe anyone could pretend to be that incompetent. Mind you if the
real brains behind this operation sent Escobar in as the court jester then he certainly succeeded in
creating a diversion."

"Merde, merde, merde," Pierre snarled, uncharacteristically. He shrugged at Maggie's surprised
look. "I don't have energy for anything else at the moment," he said.

"There is one thing you haven't considered yet," Maggie said, trying to sound positive. "Maybe
this has nothing to do with the Tahuantinsuyu Bracelet - specifically I mean."

"I don't understand," Pierre said.

"Correct me if I'm wrong, okay, but the Sicán ceremonial mask that was also hijacked was the one
from the London collection wasn't it?" When Pierre nodded, Maggie continued. "The same mask that
Alistair Nash found near Batán Grande in the early seventies and agreed to lend to your exhibition
just before he died last year?" Pierre nodded again. "What do you think it's worth?"

"I have no idea," Pierre admitted.

"It's solid gold," Maggie reminded him. "It's worth twenty times what the Tahuantinsuyu Bracelet
is worth - both for its intrinsic value and as a cultural artefact. I mean at least there's no
question about where it came from. So maybe that's what the thieves were after; or perhaps they were
just after what they could get."

Pierre looked miserable, so Maggie smiled and said, "of course the field of investigation is much
narrower if we limit our, sorry, if you limit your suspicions to Escobar and the bracelet."

"Oh Maggie, please stay," Pierre pleaded. "Your thoughts on this debacle are much clearer than
mine."

"That's because, unlike you, I am not accepting responsibility for this debacle."

Pierre ran his hand through his hair. "It is my fault, isn't it?"

"No Pierre, it is not. But for a while to come it will feel like it is, and you will be the one
that everyone blames - except Professor Jorge who will continue to accuse Escobar, even if it turns
out the hijack was carried out by soccer hooligans who wanted the van and not its contents."

"You do realise you're going to miss the Writers' Festival because of this
so-called red tape. Are you listening, Sam?"

"Yes Jacqui, I'm listening," Sam lied, dragging her attention away from the acrobats
performing a gravity-defying act on the Southbank promenade below,
and back to her sister and the remains of their shared platter of anti pasto.

"I don't understand why you have to go to Canberra for six weeks to be reassigned to your new job
which is here in Melbourne," Jacqui continued, as she struggled back into her woollen coat. "I take
it this is a promotion?"

"Yes, it's a promotion," Sam said, piling a piece of bread with prosciutto and eggplant.

"Yeah, well, given the nature of bureaucracies like yours, you probably won't even get a bigger
desk let alone a new office. But they'll drag you all the way to our nation's capital just to give
you a new business card and say: 'there's a good little Special Agent, now off you go back to your
cubicle, next to the boring Detective Ben Muldoon, and we'll be in touch soon'. They're my taxes at
work flying you all over the country, you know," Jacqui stated, wagging her finger.

"They're my taxes too," Sam reminded her. "The ACB is a Federal organisation, Jacqui, that's why
I have to go to Canberra to be briefed for this new position. And even though I'll still be based in
Melbourne, I could be sent anywhere. At least my new boss, the Minister himself," Sam said,
straightening her back in mock respect, "doesn't deem it necessary for me to actually live in
Canberra in order to do my job."

"God forbid!" Jacqui exclaimed.

"Having explained all that to you again, there's a couple of other things I'd like to clear up.
I'm a detective not an agent. I hope you're not still telling your friends, and god knows who else,
that I'm a spy."

Jacqui rolled her eyes and looked everywhere but at Sam. "Not since you became a 'Special'
Detective."

"That was only last week," Sam said. Jacqui shrugged.

Sam ran her hands through her short
dark
hair and gazed at the red-headed fruitloop
opposite her, wondering for the umpteenth time which of them had been adopted, because they couldn't
possibly have come from the same gene pool. "I'm a cop, Jacqui. An ordinary, common or garden
variety cop. I like what I do, you don't have to make it more glamorous for me."

"I don't do it for you Sam, I do it for me. And I doubt your fellow Feds would appreciate being
called common."

"And another thing," Sam stated, "Ben is not boring, he's preoccupied."

"With tedium," Jacqui stated, taking her coat off again.

"What I don't understand," Sam said, moving a wine glass out of the way of her sister's flailing
arms, "is why you insisted we eat outside when you're not dressed for this weather."

"This weather?" Jacqui repeated. "But it's Spring, it's glorious!"

"Yes, but it's Melbourne Spring, which means warm, bright sunshine accompanied by a chilly wind
straight off Bass Strait, followed by a serious hot flush and a cooling shower of rain - all in the
space of one hour, with the likelihood of a hail storm later just for fun."

"Ha, ha," Jacqui said. "Will you answer your phone before I relieve you of it and chuck it in the
Yarra."

Sam was already reaching into the pocket of her jacket for her mobile. "Diamond," she answered
curtly.

"My name is Diamond. Sam Diamond." Jacqui's attempt at Sean Connery sounded a lot more like Mae
West.

"Oh, hi Ben," Sam was saying. "We were just talking about you. My sister thinks…"

Jacqui groaned and tried to hide behind her wine glass. "…that your life could do with a bit of
spicing up." Sam listened then put her hand over the receiver. "Ben wants to know if you'd like to
have dinner with him."

"Yeah, sure, why not," Jacqui said, waving her hands around. "How about tonight?"

"She says she'd love to, Ben, but tonight's out because she has to take me to the airport."

Watching Sam's raised eyebrows and knowing look, Jacqui started getting quite antsy until she
realised the half of the conversation she could hear obviously had nothing to do with her anymore,
consisting mostly as it did of responses like: "Really? Which boss? Why? Okay, put him on. Yes sir.
Well I'm not really dressed for work. No, yes I am dressed, but I'm at a restaurant. Of course, sir.
I'll be there in fifteen minutes." She hung up.

"Your plane leaves at 8 pm. I could have gone to dinner tonight," Jacqui stated.

"I'm not going to Canberra. At least not today," Sam said, pulling her wallet out of the back
pocket of her jeans. "I have to go check out a body at the museum."

"A body?" exclaimed Jacqui, a little too loud for Sam's liking. "But you don't do that any more.
You're with the Cultural Affairs Department now. Or have they changed their bloody minds again?"

"No, they haven't. Perhaps a dead body in the museum comes under the category of cultural murder.
Whatever the reason, this is officially my first assignment for the CAD, so I have to love you and
leave you. Here's my share of the bill," Sam said standing up and slipping a $20 note under the salt
shaker so it wouldn't be whisked into the river by the breeze that had just arrived from the Tropics
by way of the Antarctic.

"Do you want a lift?" Jacqui offered, not in the least concerned that the rest of her day had
just been casually unarranged by the person who'd arranged it in the first place.

"No thanks. I have to go to the office first, for a quick briefing, so I'll walk." Sam bent down
and gave Jacqui a peck on the cheek. "See you at home later. Unless of course you ring that little
cubicle of mine and arrange a date with the 'boring Ben Muldoon'."

"Hey," Jacqui shrugged. "I usually get my thrills vicariously by regaling my friends with lurid
and fictitious accounts of your adventures as a secret agent. Even boring Ben has got to be better
than that."

An hour later Sam alighted from a Swanston Street tram in front of the sweeping
steps of the green-domed State Library of Victoria. She was still trying to work out how a 'museum
curator' had been found murdered in a building that hadn't been a museum for over 12 months, but
then the rather disjointed briefing she'd been given from her new boss in Canberra via her old boss
in Melbourne had been confusing on almost every level.

A man was dead, 'possibly' murdered but probably not, in a building that no longer had anything
to do with the museum, yet someone from the museum had by-passed the Victoria Police and the State
Government completely and placed a call directly to the Federal Minister for Cultural Affairs, Sam's
soon-to-be boss. And why? Because that someone was convinced the man's death was an 'act of sabotage
with international ramifications'.

Good grief! Sam thought, passing between the columns of the Library's imposing facade. She was
often perplexed by how fast the paranoia virus was spreading through society as it rushed towards
the new millennium, and sometimes worried that it might be contagious. As if to confirm her thoughts
a woman - well-spoken, middle-aged, wearing a twin-set, pearls and a crisp tartan skirt - stopped in
front of her, nodded and said: "The government will get you, you mark my words."

Sam couldn't help herself. "It's my job to get you," she said.

Mrs-Middle-Class sidled away, swearing under her breath, and listing what sounded like the
ingredients for a batch of lamingtons.

Sam muttered a few words to herself, like "dipstick" and "one too many diet pills", to reassure
herself that all was hunky-dory in her world and then turned back to the task at hand. She
calculated that it had been at least fifteen years since she'd set foot in this grand old building
but she knew well the peace and quiet that lay beyond those unpretentious front doors. She'd spent
several months at a desk under the impossibly high vaulted ceiling of the Library's Reading Room
while she finished her Criminology thesis and wondered how they cleaned the windows.

Sam's memories fled in several horrified directions as she entered the foyer to find it packed
with a noisy, ratty, pubescent horde in untidy uniforms. Her initial head count produced a tally of
1003 high school students; her second count was a more realistic 33 - and one poor demented
teacher.

Sam made her way over to a uniformed police officer who was guarding against any incursions into
the roped-off hallway behind him and, judging by the look on his face, was also responsible for
scanning the crowd for terrorists. When she flashed her badge he smiled with relief, however, and
explained he was her escort.

"Can you fill me in?" Sam asked as they made their way into the section of the building that had,
for nearly a century until the previous year, housed the various collections of the Museum of
Victoria. Sam wondered where all those artefacts, those wondrous things she recalled from childhood
visits, were being stored while the new Melbourne Museum was being built.

'British flintlock cavalry pistol, .590 calibre, recovered after the Indian
Mutiny in 1857. Brought to Victoria by Viscount Canning, Governor General of India 1856-1862.'