The Elizabethan Secret (Lang Reilly Series Book 9) (3 page)

4.

Shropshire, England

That Evening

              Lang wondered if the wood-burning oven in which the rabbit pie had been cooked added to the taste or if the exercise of the hunt had given him extra appetite. Either way, he pushed back from the rough wooden table with contentment. Draining the last of his Welsh ale, a malty Breconshire, from a pewter mug, he glanced around the single room that was the downstairs of Llywen’s cottage.

              The rustic setting, he supposed, added to the feeling of accomplishment in feasting on the day’s game, contrary to the reservations he had felt at the scene of the kill. The wood stove provided the only source of heat and the bulk of the light. The only other illumination came from two stand lamps fitted with those super low wattage bulbs the English seemed to favor. On her perch, Vitoria’s yellow eyes were brighter.

              Daisy was gently snoring in front of the stove. Elmer was restlessly pacing his cage, a wire enclosure not so much confinement but fortress against any change in temperament Victoria might undergo. The only other sounds were the squeak of the hand pump as his host drew water to wash the dishes and twigs of a towering ash scraping against the cottage’s half timbering as though seeking admission. Sepulchral silence compared to the  hum of passing traffic, distant (or not so distant) sirens or the rumble of arriving or departing aircraft that punctuated Lang’s nights at home, sounds that had become unnoticed white noise, until, here, they were absent.

              Lang wondered if he was going to be able to sleep.

              Llywen turned from the stone sink and counter where he had stacked the chipped and mismatched dinner dishes, brandishing a bottle whose ruby contents were unmistakable. “Warre’s vintage ’94. Should be just about drinkable by now.”

              “Drinkable” was a major understatement.

              Lang sniffed the fruity aroma and let the first raspberry-cherry-nutty Port burn its way down his throat before he reached into his jacket pocket.
              “Bought a couple of Montecristo number twos in Edinburgh just in case I ran across a bottle of vintage port.”

              At Gurt’s insistence, he had given up the Cuban cigars he had so cherished rather than set a bad example for his young son, Manfred. But neither mother nor son were here tonight.

              So why did he feel like he was cheating on both of them as he clipped the pyramido top, held a wooden match under the tip, and sent fragrant blue smoke puffing toward the ceiling?

              The two sat in lumpy horse-hair stuffed chairs, facing each other on either side of the stove. Neither man spoke, the fortified wine and cigars being more than ample company. All he needed now to be a proper English squire, Lang thought, was to have half a dozen fox hounds sleeping at his feet.

              The spell was broken by the first two bars of Glen Miller’s
Chattanooga Choo-Choo
, the ring tone of his iPhone. The screen showed a familiar number in the States.

            
 
“Hi Gurt! Checking up on me?”

              “Manfred wants to know when you’re coming home. He has festered me all day to call.”

              Gurt’s English, near perfect, occasionally lapsed.

             
“
You mea
n
‘pestered,’ don’t you? ‘Fester’ means to irritate or inflame.”

              “Is the same. Anyway, I thought I might come and join you in London.”

             
“
London?
 
I didn’t intend . . .”

              “You have an email from that man at Christie’s.”

              Lang realized he had not checked his electronic messages since arriving at Llewyn’s cottage. Then he had to search his memory. “Brame or Brom . . .?

              “Eustis Bromley. He said an Elizabethan linenfold paneled coffer was coming up for auction next week.”

              “Oh yeah. I saw one last time I was in London. Thought it would look great in our bedroom.”

              “There is something wrong with what we have?”

              Gurt saw little value in what she described as ”old used furniture,“ preferring the practical. Conversely, Lang had acquired a taste and some knowledge of antiques after losing everything he had owned when there had been an attempt to kill him by blowing up the condominium in which he then lived. His pieces were a combination of the flamboyant Louis XIV style and the more staid, Georgian, mahogany. There was something about the sturdy oak of the Elizabethans, the functionality of joined, rather than nailed parts that had appealed to him.

              That, plus owning a piece dating back four centuries to the time when a small island was becoming a world super power was a bit of a kick, too.

              “Lang?”

              “Er, yeah?”

              “Manfred wants to speak to you.”

              “Hi, daddy!”

              “Hi, Manfred. What did you and Grumps do today? Did you learn anything in school?”

              Childish laugh. “You know Grumps doesn’t go to school. He’s a dog.”

              A recitation of the little boy’s day so far followed by, “Momma says it’s night where you are. What did you do today?”

              Lang swallowed, unsure how spending the better part of a day in the killing of a bunny rabbit would be viewed by an eight year old. Certainly nothing laudable, even if the instrument had been an evil-eyed, winged assassin. “Business, just dull old business. And I’m having after-dinner drinks with an old friend.”

              He sure wasn’t going to mention the cigar.

              “Now put your mother on, will you?”

              Which, after ”I love you, daddy,“ Manfred did.

              He and Gurt discussed arrangements for the trip to Christie’s.

              “I should be home before then. We can come over together.”

             
If the damnably suspicious Scotts can be persuaded by then.

5.

71o 17’44”N, 156o 45’59”W

200 Miles off Barrow, Alaska, Arctic Ocean

At Approximately the Same Time

              Captain First Rank Igor Samanov was understandably proud of the Borei Class nuclear submarine
Yuri Dolgoruky.
Armed with the new Bulava missiles, she and her one-hundred-nine man crew were more than a match for anything America had afloat, or more accurately, submerged.

              She had been under sixty meters of ice since leaving the Northern Fleet’s base at Severomorsk three weeks ago, two-and-a-half  weeks of stealthily patrolling just outside the exclusive economic zone set by both the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea and the 1996 Ottawa Declaration creating the eight member Arctic Council.

              Originally the Council had been an association of the countries bordering the Arctic Ocean. Its sole function had been debating the supposed effects of global warming on indigenous humans and animals. All of that had changed once the scope of the deposits of oil and natural gas had been discovered and receding ice had raised the possibility of accessibility. Then the Council had become an economic organization. Since, like the United Nations, its actions were subject to veto, it could do little more than bewail the despoliation of the very region it was created to preserve.

              That was the real reason the
Yuri Dolgoruky
was
conducting what would appear to be a routine military patrol here at the top of the world, cruising between those sea-floor features oceanographers called the Canada Basin and the Chukchi Plateau. The area was suspected of containing the largest single natural gas deposit ever known.

              When and if the Canadians or Americans started to exploit what could be the greatest national windfall ever, Russia wanted to be the first to know. Once oil rigs were in place, Russia would complain to the Council of the likely adverse environmental impact: Damage to the habitat of bowhead, beluga and narwhales, walruses, seals, the native Inupiat people, and the entire American population of polar bears.

              Not that environmental preservation was Russian policy, far from it. Crippling the economy of its greatest rival, the United States, was.

              For years, the American media had trumpeted every oil or chemical spill, every drought, every flood, and any other natural or man-made disaster it could find and no small number it created. If one believed what was on the television screen every night, only a fool would drink the water, breath the unfiltered air, or expose a square inch of skin to carcinogenic sunlight. Revelation that the much-vilified oil and gas companies were about to send the polar bear to join the passenger pigeon into extinction would, the theory went, cause the politicians, always more sensitive to the wind direction than a weather vane, to put a stop to any drilling.

              If not, the Council would readily pass a resolution condemning the United States’ disregard of the delicate ecosystem. The small Scandinavian members outnumbered the United States and its ally, Canada. The American people, or a significant number of them, believed debating societies like the United Nations or the Arctic Council actually mattered and would be more concerned about the country’s “image” than its national interest.

              Americans were strange people.

              His thoughts were interrupted by Chief Ship Petty Officer Karov. “Sir?”

              “Yes?”

              “The navigation systems are not functioning.”

              Not surprising. Ionospheric effects frequently rendered both GPS and GNSS navigational satellite signals useless in the polar region because of the relatively low elevation of those satellites to the pole. Complicating matters was the relative uselessness of a compass here. Since true north and magnetic north were not the same, complicated calculations were necessary to reconcile the two, which could be as much as seventy-five degrees apart. And that was if the compass was not subject to spinning or wobbling as was common in these latitudes.

              Captain Samanov sighed. Although the ship’s sophisticated sonar would prevent it from smashing into any underwater peaks, it could not guarantee the ship would not wander inside the two hundred mile limit. With satellites that could guide a submarine across an ocean without surfacing, take a photograph of something as small as an automobile tag and photograph solar systems invisible to the largest earth-bound telescopes, surely someone could come up with a navigational device that worked in the polar regions.

              It couldn’t happen soon enough for Captain First Rank Igor. The last thing he wanted was a repetition of the 1981 incident in which the Soviet U137 ran aground only two kilometers from a Swedish Naval base. The captain had claimed navigational error to a more than skeptical world. He had been a school boy at the time but he still remembered the unfortunate commander’s disgrace.

              He, and Russia, would do whatever had to be done to prevent a reoccurrence of that humiliation.  

6.

Christie’s, London

8 King Street, St. James

19:20 British Summertime

Three Days Later

              An unseasonable thunderstorm was rumbling its way across the city when the cab stopped to let Lang and Gurt out in front of the four-story town house that had been the London home to the world’s largest auction house of luxury items since 1823. Inventory went from fine art to jewelry to fine wines. In the twentieth century real estate from chateaux on the Loire to plantations on the bayou were added to lots up for bid. The house’s first auction had been held in 1766 when John Christie had held a sale of the effects of an estate.

              Lang paid the cabbie before stepping out into the downpour. He clutched the auction catalogue in one hand, trying to keep it reasonably dry. Ostensibly merely a listing of the lots to be auctioned off tonight, its artful color photography and descriptions made the book a treasure in itself. Worldwide, these catalogues had an audience, the vast majority of whom would never set foot in any of the house’s fifty-seven offices in thirty-two countries. Even at over fifty dollars each, Christie’s catalogues had a subscription rate any number of magazines might envy.

              With his other hand, Lang hoisted an umbrella, thankful its spring loading required only the touch of a button. There was a click and the umbrella opened as anticipated. The surprise came when a gust of cold and very wet wind snapped the cloth inside out, leaving Lang holding what, in the blurred light of the street, could have been mistaken for a dead sapling.

              His reaction was a string of expletives best lost in the wind.

              Gurt, raincoat forming a canopy over her head, exited the cab as it pulled away. She stopped long enough to share her covering with Lang before they both made a dash for the shelter of Christie’s open door.

              The lobby was tall, crowded, and illuminated by a line of huge crystal chandeliers. It smelled of money. Rarely do ordinary folk attend an auction where only an occasional item goes for as low as a thousand dollars. In an effort at egalitarianism, Christie’s also maintained an auction house in Kensington for the “middle market.”

              The room also smelled of wet socks since there were probably seventy to a hundred pair dripping on the marble floor. Was it his imagination or could Lang actually hear his own socks sloshing inside his shoes with each step?

              Lang had become inured to the looks, glances, and stares Gurt received in any gathering. Even in a modestly cut dress and medium heels, her near six foot, statuesque figure, blond hair, and sculpted face could have come right off a
Saint Pauli Girl
bottle, absent the overflowing beer steins. If she was aware she drew the attention of nearly every man and the envy of almost all the women, she did not acknowledge it.

              The reason for the crowd here in the lobby became instantly apparent: Tuxedoed waiters circulating with trays of Champagne flutes. Lang’s mood improved marginally as he took two and handed one to Gurt.

              He sipped tentatively. Lang was far from a connoisseur of bubbly. Twenty dollar a bottle California Mumm Brut or $1,900 Dom Perignon from Reims, France, it all tasted like a very light beer to his uneducated palate. Well, uneducated as to Champagne. A vertical tasting of post-World War II vintage Ports was as simple as differentiating between chocolate and vanilla. Likewise, the flavor, aroma, and finish of a Campbelton single malt were equally distinguishable from those of, say, an Islay.

              As the saying goes, pick your poison.

              The crowd was gradually filtering toward a pair of elevators that ascended to the top floor. As each person exited, he (or she) joined one of a half dozen lines in front of a long table to register and be assigned a cardboard paddle with a number printed on it. Instead of oral bidding, flashing these devices served. Unsubstantiated legend had it these paddles had originally been wood, a custom discontinued after a series of disputes between bidders became bloody when paddles became weapons.

              Behind the tables was a room where perhaps a hundred or so folding chairs faced a stage upon which was a single rostrum as might be found in any college lecture hall. To the stage’s right, a staff of ten manned both telephones and laptops. Although Christie’s had accepted bids by wire for nearly a century, cyber bidding was a relative novelty. 

              Lang and Gurt took seats on one of two aisles.

              Moments later, a cherubic little man, gavel in hand, entered stage left to light applause. Adjusting the microphone on the top of the rostrum, he began.

              “Welcome to Christie’s, Ladies and gentlemen,” he said in a plummy  accent that surely had its origins in Oxford or Cambridge. “As you know, tonight’s auction includes a number of fabulous items from the Elizabethan era. Among those is an addition to the catalogue, lots 226 through 230, a number of what appear to be scientific instruments that may well have belonged to Elizabethan scholar, navigator, cartographer, magician, and astronomer, John Dee. They were recently unearthed on what is believed to have been the site of his home in Mortlake.

              “Since it will be some time before Christie’s has another auction of items from this era, we decided to include these tonight. Those of you who wish may inspect them during the intermission.”

              “Adding items not in the catalogue?” an elderly gentleman behind Gurt and Lang grumbled. “Highly irregular!”

              And it was. Lang knew the list of items to be auctioned was made public via publishing the catalogue three to four months in advance of the auction, allowing potential patrons to make such travel and financial plans as might be necessary.

              The issue was forgotten as the auction began. The first few lots consisted of coarse sandy ware, brown or green with plain lead glaze. At the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign, fine china didn’t exist in England. That changed when the Portuguese established a trading base on the island of Macao. By the time of the queen’s death, finely decorated “China goods” were arriving. The name was reduced to simply “china,” a designation still in use today.

              Surprisingly, the fragile china had survived better than the stocky oak, function-over-form furniture of the era. It would be more than a century before the more workable if less-durable maple and walnut plus the exotica of imported woods allowed the simple beauty of Sheraton, the strong, curving lines of Queen Anne and the whimsy of Chippendale. Only two hunt tables and a decidedly uncomfortable looking chair were knocked down before the linenfold paneled coffer was wheeled out.

              The piece was perhaps four feet in height, sitting on four short, block legs. Lang’s previous inspection days earlier had concluded one of them had been clumsily repaired in the late sixteenth century (with pegs, not the more-expensive nails). The panels were carved in folds like small waves or linen as it is folded in a drawer. Age had turned the wood as dark as mahogany.

              “I thought you were not fond of carved furniture,” Gurt whispered.

              Not the busy carvings of hunt scenes and dead game so popular on the panels of chests of her native Germany, but he said, “Not quite the same.”

              Commencement of the bidding relieved him of further response.

              The auctioneer described the coffer, opening bidding at 4,000 pounds. Paddles flashed in hundred=pound increments but largely disappeared as interest lagged past 6,000. At 6,500, the coffer was knocked down to Lang.

              He and Gurt sat through the rest of the first half of the auction. As the crowd milled about during the intermission, he stood, stretched and edged into the adjacent aisle. Gurt also stood, collecting her rain coat.

              “I’m going to the business office, make arrangements to have my coffer shipped. I’d like to stay to take a look at those scientific instruments that may have belonged to John Dee.”

              There was a question on her face.

              “John Dee was quite a character. I’ll tell you about him.”

              “We have reservations at Club Gascon at 21:00.”

              Lang checked his watch. “Plenty of time. Just now coming up on 20:00. We’ll take a cab instead of the tube. Besides, it isn’t that far to West Smithfield.”

              She was digging in her purse as he walked away. “I’ll call and see if we can get a later reservation.”

              Lang made arrangements for Christie’s to draft his Barclay’s account for the 6,500 pounds plus shipping.

              “Where might I view the John Dee items?” he asked the rosy cheeked young lady behind the desk.

              “Number three gallery, right along there.” She pointed. “Last door before you reach the auction hall. And remember, Christie’s does not guarantee they really did belong to Mr. Dee.”

              The litigious society of America was spreading like the plague it was. Now even English clerks issued disclaimers.

              Compared to the vast auction hall, number three gallery was small. Perhaps a dozen pictures hung on the walls. Lang guessed they were painted by Rossetti or some other Pre-Raphaelite, that mid Victorian brotherhood of painters, poets, and critics with a predilection for Arthurian and Greek legend who had resolved to reform art to its true form but had faded into oblivion, if indeed they had ever emerged from it.

              The only other furnishings was a pair of jewelers’ showcases around which a dozen or so people clustered. Lang waited for an opening and edged his way next to the glass. He recognized two brass telescopes and a trio of hour glasses, progressing in size. He thought the large brass ring fitted with a sighting rule might be an astrolabe, used to measure the angle between the pole star and the horizon, something difficult on a pitching, rolling ship. It was the ancestor of the modern day sextant. A device that might have been an early spring-driven clock caught his attention before he noted what looked like a large, brass-case pocket watch, lot 228.

              He motioned to one of the attendants stationed along the wall like sentries and pointed. “May I have a closer look?”

              The man, a grizzled elder whose demeanor screamed ex-cop, detached himself from his post, reaching into his pocket. A key emerged on the end of a chain attached to his belt. He unlocked the glass top of the case and Lang lifted the object out.

              There was a catch. When pressed, the top snapped open like a pocket watch. But it was definitely not a time piece, at least not like any Lang had seen. There was no winding mechanism and its face had no hands, only a notch in the brass casing’s top where a watch’s stem might have been. Nor were there numbers, only groupings of one, two, or three barely distinguishable letters, forms and figures, either worn or rendered illegible by the clouded glass over the face. In the center was a small hole where Lang supposed something long lost had once been attached.

              “Know what this is?” he asked the attendant.

              The old man shook his head. “No idea, guv. I only get paid to make sure none o’ the lot gets nicked.” He smiled, displaying nicotine-stained teeth. “Not that any o’ this crowd of toffs would be knocking something off.”

              As Lang handed the object back, he noted a man standing just inside the door. Lang wasn’t sure what had caught his attention. Perhaps the ill-fitting, cheap suit that contrasted with the largely bespoke attire of most of Christie’s male customers. Maybe the man’s scowl at the screen of an iPhone as he texted.

              Something. . . .

              A closer look revealed a Cyrillic key pad.

              Interesting. An iPhone in Russia cost somewhere around a thousand dollars. For reasons Lang had never cared to understand, the Apple smart phone had either not caught on or the government/oligarchy had economic reasons to keep it out of the reach of ordinary citizens.

              A lot of those oligarchs had homes here in London, men to whom a thousand dollars for a phone would be but a trifle. But they also dressed lavishly if not flamboyantly, not in poorly fitted, off-the-rack suits. It was like seeing a battered junker in the driveway of a multimillion dollar mansion.