The Artifact (20 page)

“I do not like this,” Nero said. “Not a single adversary to the Madigan woman has made themselves known, but there are possibly several elements vying for the same prize.”

“Not our bailiwick,” Shogun admitted.

“Right-o,” Brit said decisively. “This is not about acquiring a precious treasure, it is first about beating out one or more competitors—obviously ruthless, resolved, with skills and resources we do not have.”

Boer sounded disappointed. “So, give it up?”

“Resort to the strategy we should have adopted in the bloody first place,” Brit told them. “Keep an eye and ear out for when the treasure surfaces, then work out a plan to take it wherever resides.”

“I’d like to find those blokes that did Yank in,” Boer said.

“So would we all.” Brit acknowledged. “But our payoff is the artifact, remember. Revenge is sweet, but should not ignore the reason Yank is no longer with us.”

“I hated doing that.” Sammy said, as they pulled out of the Bancroft driveway faintly illuminated by their parking lights.

Andrea repositioned her left leg with both hands in an attempt to get comfortable. “Trying to get information out of a regular hospital is bad enough, but these mental institutions act like they were secretly implanting new brains for old.”

“I don’t think they know what they’re doing with mental illness,” Sammy replied. “Most people are reluctant to tell the world about any serious mental disease they have, especially something like depression, obsessive compulsion, schizophrenia.”

“Or whatever I’ve got.”

“At least it’s not your brain. Some benign nerve disorder, I’ll betcha.”

They were silent for several moments until she noticed that Sammy was more preoccupied with the rearview mirrors than the road ahead.

“Iraqis, the competition, other thieves, take your pick.” Sammy took the next exit ramp off I-40 north, then made a ‘U’ turn under the highway, getting back on I-25 heading south. He glanced in his side mirror. “Right behind us.”

“I’m not keen about getting pushed out in traffic again.”

Sam had reported the attack on Andy to the police, who had determined that the two muggers had a rap sheet of several pages and were hirelings commissioned by a cutout they had yet to apprehend. Which did not lessen the possibility that the prime instigator behind the assault would not order another attack.

They had been watching the reporter’s condo in three eight-hour shifts from various nondescript cars since she and Sammy had gone and come on various errands and appointments with her doctor. When a taxi had double-parked in front of her building and Sammy emerged from the entrance with overnight luggage to speak to the driver, Eddie DiBiasio pressed a key on his cell phone.

“It looks like they’re going out of town,” he said into the fold-up device, then listened for almost a minute before breaking the connection to address Johnny ‘The Shiv’ Capaldi behind the wheel.

Their quarry emerged from her building ten minutes later, Andrea visibly frustrated by her awkward attempts moving from her wheelchair into the back seat of the taxi, then Sammy and the driver struggled to collapse the device before fitting it into the trunk.

The white Mercedes with the two Iraqis pulled out from the curb to follow the taxi, with a gray ’02 Pontiac a discreet distance behind it. Johnny started the engine of the black Chrysler sedan and merged into traffic. The technicians had found a parking place for their Verizon communications van a half block down from Andrea’s condo and had been waiting patiently when they received the call.

“They went to the airport,” Eddie told them, “the Arabs are parked. Take your time.

Within the next ten minutes, the two techs had shouldered their bags, locked the van, and were standing in Andrea’s living room. They placed a bug in every room in her condo, avoiding the landline phones, the first place any searcher would look. They were about to leave the condo when the bearded man pointed to an apparently new motorized wheelchair still folded in its plastic cover leaning against the wall by the entrance. The second man fished around in his bag while the first tech unscrewed the left vinyl armrest of the chair. They inserted a miniature listening device and thumb-sized GPS tracker under a corner of the seat padding, secured it back in position and left the condo. The bearded man sat in the rear of the van checking the receptivity of their handiwork as the second man drove away, reporting the details of their successful mission to Eddie, still waiting in the short-term parking lot of National Airport. Eddie immediately relayed the news to the consigliore in Providence.

It was mid-afternoon the following day when Sammy unlocked the door to Andrea’s condo and

stepped into the foyer. Andy rolled into the room and turned on the lights on her way to the kitchen where she filled a glass with ice and vodka as Sammy brought her bags into her bedroom.

“Can you use the head on your own?” he asked her.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were trying get a close-up to see what it looks like.”

“Maybe I am. I can still appreciate the female form as an
objet d’art
.”

“Let me know when you take up sketching and I’ll consider it. Meantime, turn on the tube, will you?”.

When she returned to the living room, Sam helped her out of the wheelchair and onto the sofa, then sat down beside her. The TV was on, but muted.

“I called Timmy in Boston while you were in there—my museum friend that’s been keeping an eye out for any rumors about the artifact treasure.”

Andy took a long swallow of vodka, her expression dejected, her mind still grappling with the horrific news of her mysterious illness, and the pathetic condition of George Mitchell stashed away in a government insane asylum by the military after sacrificing his mind for a country now using him as some kind of pawn in a high-stakes international game he certainly could not comprehend.

“Timmy says there’s something weird going on in the rarefied echelons of ancient artifact authentication.”

“Like what?”

Some mid-range freelance antiquity experts, university professors of paleontology, archeology, ancient history have been reluctant to take on new projects during the past year or so.”

“The artifact treasure!” She slapped her thigh with the certainty of the revelation. “Well compensated, spread out among a bunch of experts so no one gets the whole picture.”

“Possible,” Sam acknowledged. “Likely.”

“Does your boy have any names to go with this rumor?”

Sam bridled at the term, ‘boy,’ but let it go. “He gave me the contact info for a half-dozen untenured college profs in small colleges that might be willing to talk for a modest incentive.”

“Make it damned modest, pal, I can’t compete with the rewards NNC and some of the other

news orgs are touting.”

collusion with thieves, stolen goods.”

“Maybe they took the assignment before your broadcast and are now sorry they accepted the project, anxious to get out of it.”

“Are you going to make those phone calls or keep jawing about hypothetical motives?”

Sammy pulled out his cell phone, moved to her escritoire and smoothed Timmy’s list out on the shallow surface. “If your disposition gets any more caustic, I’m going to stuff a one of my week-old gym socks in your pretty mouth.”

A grin of satisfaction brightened the face of Eddie DiBiasio as he removed the earphones that enabled him to monitor the bugging device on the motorized wheelchair Andy had only recently condescended to use. He pressed the key on his cell phone that rang the clean line in the back room of the bakery on Atwell’s Avenue in the Federal Hill section of Providence, Rhode Island.

When he heard the voice of his Uncle Vinnie, Eddie related the essence of the conversation he had overheard between the Madigan woman and her bodybuilder in her condominium. “Seems like they’re closing in on it.”

“Cause he knows what questions to ask, can offer the reward and won’t have to do no rough stuff to get his answers. Let them do the work.”

Sammy had no luck trying to get passed the secretaries of the first four experts or questioning the individuals themselves he found in their office. He employed several strategies, from pretending he was a reporter with knowledge of the artifacts, to an army captain threatening repercussions for anyone aiding or abetting the thieves in their traitorous theft. Sam took a break to use the bathroom and for a bottle of soda water, wondering how he could improve his results. When he returned from the kitchen, Andrea spoke for the first time since he began calling.

Sammy waited for twelve-thirty in the time zone of the last two names on his list when most people would be at lunch. The antiquities department secretary of the first college he called told him that Professor Johnson was not at his desk, but would return after his one o’clock lecture.

“Perhaps you can help me,” Sammy said. “I’m calling for Mr. Charles Geoff regarding the

authentication project he working on for us and would like to know when he’ll be finished.”

“Oh, you’d have to speak to the professor about that, sir. As you probably know, that’s an

extremely complex and confidential translation he’s working on alone.”

“Do you know about how many items he’s completed and how many more he has to go?”

“I think he’s working on the last dozen pages, so it shouldn’t take him much longer.”

“Thank you very much, ma’am, you’ve been really helpful,” Sammy said. “I won’t have to speak to Professor Johnson now after all.”.

Sammy turned to Andrea as he broke the connection, a smile competing with an expression of bewilderment on his face. “It’s not a treasure of golden icons and precious gems after all. It’s a document these guys are translating from some ancient language into English, probably.”

“What the hell kind of document could be so valuable that it’s worth all this subterfuge?”

“The thugs trying to get it still think it’s golden icons and gems worth millions. But Callaghan must know it’s true value and think it’s worth whatever game he’s playing, including tanking his army career.”

“Now we know what it is, we can force his hand.”

“As soon as we can find him.”

When Eddie overheard Sammy and Andrea’s speculation that the artifact was an ancient document, he called his Uncle Vinnie in Providence.

“If it’s an ancient manuscript they had to translate,” Eddie ventured, “could be something like the Dead Sea Scrolls.”

“Dead Sea don’t sound too valuable,” Uncle Vinnie said.

“One of the Qumran texts written in the first century are like passages in the Bible some scholars think influenced the early Christians.”

“You got a point, College Boy. Keep me inna pitcha. Don’t get involved ‘til we know if we can turn this,
capisce
?”

Andy’s peripheral vision noticed the television commercial end abruptly, cutting to a special news bulletin. She grabbed the TV remote and switched the sound on just as the attractive blond reporter began speaking with urgency as the image of the Albuquerque VA hospital loomed on the wall screen over her shoulder. “This just in. An unidentified patient was abducted from a Veterans’ Administration Mental Health Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico late last night by two men in black knit facemasks wielding automatic weapons. The victim is an Iraq War soldier recently transferred to the Albuquerque facility, with patient confidentiality protecting his name from release to the media. Bill Franklin, KAL-TV is on the scene with this live report. Bill?”