The Curse (3 page)

The “provenance” of an item in my business basically refers to its chain of ownership. It's like buying a house—you have to check to make sure the party you're buying from is the legal owner.

However, houses have ownership histories that are easy to examine, while it can be difficult and even impossible to trace the owner of art pieces thousands of years old that might have passed through many hands over the millenniums or had been dug out the ground yesterday.

Artifacts by the tens of thousands have made their way from antiquity sites in Europe, Africa, the Middle East, India, the Far East, and the Americas, be it legitimately, by conquest, or by just plain looting.

It wasn't that long ago that colonial empires were emptying archaeological sites around the world. Some regions have had one conqueror after another loot their historical treasures. Looting occurs all around the planet even today—there are thieves in Cambodia using electric saws to cut out pieces of irreplaceable Khmer art, peasants in Iraq looting Babylonian sites in order to feed their families, even construction workers in Italy who occasionally find rare artifacts when digging and sell them on the black market.

All in all, it wasn't that big a deal for me to have accidentally purchased at auction a piece that turned out to be looted—except for the fact that I paid more than fifty million for it and had to violate a few laws of man and nature to get it back to where it belonged.

Unfortunately, the international art trade was literally a cottage industry with all the major players knowing—and spying—on each other. It wasn't easy to keep a low profile when you had once run with the big dogs.

Since nobody wanted to hire me I became self-employed as an art appraiser and investigator; that meant I got paid when clients wrote a check, which usually didn't always happen in a timely manner.

Morty eyed me as I came back to bed. He didn't seem to care that I had just lost my computer and my flash drive. He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.

He had the right idea.

I was about to crawl back under the covers and cover my head when I saw the white envelope that had been slipped under my door.

My first thought was that it was an eviction notice from my landlord, but I quickly rejected that notion. As bad as the geek bastard with the bullhorn, he would have served the notice by pounding on my door and yelling so the whole damn building could hear him, which is what he'll be doing when he finds my window broken.

A bill collector was also definitely high on my list, but there were other candidates. The lock on the entry door hadn't been working longer than my shower had been dripping, permitting entry by the army of restaurant menu distributors that littered the city, along with muggers, rapists, and anyone else who wanted to step inside where the hallways were dark because the landlord used refrigerator bulbs to light them.

As I bent to pick up the envelope, I heard a tiny, almost timid tap on the door.

I took a peek through the door peephole and saw a woman with cinnamon-colored skin, rather dark wild hair, and Middle Eastern features.

I couldn't see much through the little round opening but I could see that she looked nervous and stressed.

I opened the door a little, keeping my shoulder against it, and asked, “Can I help you?”

She stared at me as if she was puzzled, even dazed. The first thing that struck me was that she'd had a bad drug trip.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

She pulled a blade out of her pocket and lurched forward, jabbing it at me.

I immediately shoved the door forward with my shoulder. The pointed end of what looked like a letter opener went into the wood.

She pushed against the door and I pushed back in panic as hard as I could. The door finally closed and the latch caught. She kicked at the door as I ran for my phone.

As I frantically pressed 911 on my cell phone, I raced for the window.

This was New York—I could be sliced and diced by this crazy woman by the time it took police to arrive.

I shouted “Help!” out the window as the 911 line rang and rang and then I got an inspired idea, remembering what I'd been told at a self-defense class to shout in an emergency: Don't shout help because no one wants to get involved.

Instead, I screamed, “Fire! Fire!”

 

 

The sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one.

—RUDYARD KIPLING, “TOMLINSON”

5

Cursed
. That's how I felt about my life. A computer geek bill collector disgraces me to the whole city and a wild-eyed woman tries to ventilate me with a letter opener—all on the same morning.

Some sort of biblical retribution for a life not well spent?

Bad karma for something I did in a past life?

Did I offend those three goddesses the Greeks called the Fates?

Someone who didn't like my art advice tormenting me with a Gypsy's evil eye?

A woman paying me back for sleeping with her man by sticking pins in a voodoo doll?

Getting involved with the gold mask of that Babylonian queen that's said to have caused more misfortune than God smit Egypt with?

The list seemed endless.

I didn't know the source of the damnation, but it seemed obvious that I was throwing snake eyes and it wasn't even Friday the thirteenth.

After I screamed “Fire!” I shouted to the maniacal woman on the other side of the door that the cops were on their way.

As I cautiously went back to the door with a butcher knife in hand and looked through the peephole, I didn't see any sign of the crazy woman.

I guess telling her the cops were coming scared her off, but I wasn't about to open the door to find out if she was still there ready to pounce on me.

Screaming fire and yelling hadn't helped, of course.

No one came to my rescue, but that was no surprise. Sometimes living in New York made me feel like I was on a deserted island even though I rubbed elbows with people every time I left my apartment.

Finally, a 911 operator came on that sounded like she learned her English in Bangladesh—or maybe she was in Bangladesh for that matter—and took my report.

The first thing she wanted to know was whether it was a “domestic dispute.” I assured her that I had no relatives who wanted to poke holes in me with a letter opener.

Knowing my blood hadn't been spilled and the assailant wasn't in sight meant she wasn't going to waste officers on someone who survived, so I told her that the crazy woman was still somewhere in building looking for victims.

I took some deep breaths to get my nerves under control while I waited for the police.

The whole thing was bizarre.

My computer ends up trashed, a complete stranger tries to poke holes in me … what else could happen today?

Morty jumped on the bed and went back to his usual spot. He had dove under the bed when I started yelling for help.

I grabbed the white envelope.

My name had been written in pencil on it.

The printed writing was neat and legible. Probably written by any older person because it wasn't the way people usually wrote today. They mostly scribbled when they had to actually write something since they spent most of their time using a computer keyboard or texting.

Also, there was no return address. And who used pencils anymore? People still wrote with pens, but addressing an envelope in pencil? I wasn't sure I even owned a pencil.

It occurred to me that a bill collector might have come up with a clever way to get my attention.

Inside the envelope was a newspaper clipping with a phone number at the top, written in pencil again, with the same neat and legible writing, and what appeared to be a poor photocopy of an article from a pseudoscientific magazine.

I didn't recognize the phone number.

My first suspicion of the natty handwriting was a bastard named Henri Lipton. I thought I had gotten rid of him two years ago when his London antique gallery had gone up in flames with him in it.

No such luck.

Like the devil that comes to call to make a deal with you when you are at your weakest level, Lipton had returned from the grave a few months ago and offered me a job.

My mistake was accepting it. I soon realized that I shouldn't have let my need for money get in the way of survival. But how can you refuse a chance to make a buck when you desperately need it?

The clipping was one of those society page photos of people in evening dress chatting at what I assumed was a society or charity affair.

The photo had been trimmed down to just show several women standing together. I could make out some hieroglyphics on the wall behind the women. I couldn't see much of the glyphs, but was sure they were a modern reproduction.

The written description that ordinarily would have appeared beneath a newspaper photo wasn't there, but I recognized the woman in the center, a dowager of London society, Lady Candace Berkshire Vanderbilt.

Anyone involved in Mediterranean region antiquities would recognize her name.

As a museum curator with a particular interest in Egyptian antiquities, I knew quite a bit about her because her grandfather, Gordon Nelson Vanderbilt, had been one of the wealthy backers of Howard Carter.

Grandfather Vanderbilt, along with Lord Carnarvon and others, had financed Carter's search for a pharaoh's tomb back in the 1920s. Carter had found King Tutankhamen … and the rest was history.

Of course, part of that history had to do with the mummy's revenge: Lord Carnarvon died soon afterwards from what was thought to have been an infected mosquito bite, Vanderbilt croaked the following year from food poisoning, and the curse of the mummy was off and running.

Vanderbilt also incurred considerable controversy because his wife was seen at a society gathering wearing an ancient Egyptian necklace, raising suspicion that it belonged in the Tut collection, even though he had claimed that he bought it on the open market.

His wife drowned when she fell and bumped her head in a bathtub and the newspapers had a field day again about the curse.

The current Mrs. Berkshire Vanderbilt had the necklace on in the picture. Somewhere along the line she had married a British lord and became a lady. I was surprised she was wearing it because I'd read she donated it to the Smithsonian, but the picture could have been taken before she gave it to the museum.

Nothing about the picture, other than it had been sent to me with a mysterious phone number, grabbed my interest. There was nothing new or sensational about Mrs. Vanderbilt or the necklace. The curse stories were decades old.

I studied the picture, wondering why it was sent to me.

Who sent it was another question.

And was there any money in it for me? And Morty. The damn cat had gone “green” and ate only fish not on the mercury or endangered species list. He used only biodegradable cat litter.

Studying the picture, I realized that the woman Lady Candace was talking to was also wearing a necklace that looked familiar to me.

I got out my magnifing glass and took a closer look. I recognized the necklace because I'd seen it before.

The Isis necklace.

The last time I'd seen the necklace was at the Egyptian Museum five or six years ago, where it should be. It had been part of the Tut exhibit.

How did the necklace get from the museum to this woman's neck?

The more I looked at the picture though, the more I realized that this necklace belonged in a museum, not on some rich woman's neck.

Someone obviously knew my weakness for protecting antiquities.

The title of the magazine article deepened the mystery:
“The Mummy's Revenge After Howard Carter Looted the Tomb.”

6

Howard Carter was the Holy Grail of archaeology. He lacked a university education in archaeology, yet gained a reputation as an outstanding archaeologist and Egyptologist even before he made the most stunning antiquities find in history. And he didn't just make a lucky find—he spent more than thirty years digging, bringing up a lot of dry holes along with some good finds, before he hit the jackpot.

The word “looting” and Howard Carter's name were also not in anyway synonomous: artifacts were his babies and he treated them with a rare reverence and respect.

I'd worked and studied antiquities for half my life and I never heard a bad word about the man.

The magazine that carried the mummy's revenge story was little more than a tabloid with scientific pretentions. I'd seen it near the checkout at grocery stores, with glaring headlines about ancient aliens and farm girls who have two-headed babies.

I would never have read the article if it hadn't come with an intriguing picture about the Isis necklace.

The article began with tantalizing details about the curse of the pharaohs thrown upon those who violated their tombs. Hollywood characterized it as the revenge of mummies and turned it into a cottage industry after strange events made the news following the opening of King Tut's tomb.

The first event revolved around Howard Carter, a snake, and a canary.

Soon after opening the King Tut burial chambers, Carter sent an aide back to his house to retrieve something. As the man approached the house, he heard what he called a “faint, almost human cry.” As he came to the entrance, he found a cobra curled up in the birdcage that hung there. It had Carter's canary in its mouth.

The cobra was the symbol of Egypt's pharaohs and the incident set off speculation that the ancient curse that was supposed to punish those who defiled the resting places of kings had struck.

To the Egyptian workers at the dig, Carter had not been killed by the cobra because he had handled the opening of the tomb with great care and reverence. But they wondered who the revenge would be reaped upon.

The legend grew as unusual deaths occurred among a group of people that had some association with King Tut's tomb. Some of the deaths occurred among those directly involved with Howard Carter and the excavation, but some people had merely been visitors Carter permitted onto the site.