The Gold of Thrace (13 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

Basel, Switzerland, August 16, 1990

As spectators gathered around the gaping parapet and looked down into the Rhine, Tamar backed away. At the edge of the crowd, she shed the rain slicker and hat, turned, and crossed the bridge onto Rheinsprung in Gross Basel.

She walked a few blocks to Markplatz, hailed a taxi, and rode back to the Euler. Her hand trembled as she tried to pay the driver. What did he say? Twenty francs, thirty francs?

She gave him three ten-franc notes and ran into the hotel.

In her room she sat at the desk and gazed into space, still shaking.

She stayed in the chair, not moving for the better part of an hour, then cradled her head in her arms on the desk and closed her eyes. And still, Demitrius’ shocked face behind the broken windshield, the sight of the car plunging off the bridge, haunted her. She pictured him, trapped in the car—water swirling around him, gasping for breath—and shuddered.

She turned on the television and watched a man and woman speak to each other in some incomprehensible language, watched shapes move around on the television screen until the room was lit only by the blue light reflected from the screen.

After a while, she realized that she was hungry and went downstairs into the bar. She ordered a filtered coffee, a bottle of water, and the kind of grilled cheese sandwich they made at the bar that they called toast. She sat back and closed her eyes, waiting for the waiter to bring her order.

She opened her eyes when she heard the waiter approach with the sandwich and coffee, and saw Enzio come into the bar, carrying a small package and smiling.

“I brought you something from Lyon,” he said and sat next to her.

He put the package in front of her on the table. “For you.”

“Can I open it?”

He laughed and nodded.

She removed the wrapper. “Chocolates?”

“What did you think I would bring?”

She knew she should thank him, but all she could think of was the package of
Basler Ballen
and the shattered windshield after she had hurled it.

She took a sip of coffee. It burned her mouth. Her hand began to shake, and she gripped the handle of the cup so hard that it snapped. She dropped the cup and watched the coffee spread across the top of the table and cascade to the floor.

Enzio reached for her arm and moved her to the next table. He set the box of chocolates down and signaled the waiter, ordered another sandwich and a sherry.

She watched the waiter sop up the spilled coffee and Enzio asked her what was wrong.

“It’s nothing,” she said.

She dabbed at the spots on her blouse with a napkin and tried to smile, to think of something amusing to say.

“Bringing chocolates to Switzerland?” she finally said. “Like coals to Newcastle?”

“Like fleas to Mesopotamia.”

She succeeded in smiling at that. She wadded up the napkin and finished unwrapping the box.

She thanked him and offered him one.

“They’re for you,” he told her. “Chocolate is good for you. Gets your endorphins going, makes you happy.”

She couldn’t answer. Tears stung her eyes and she felt foolish.

“You missed me that much?” He offered the open box again. “An endorphin or two?”

The waiter brought the sandwich and the glass of sherry and set them down in front of Tamar.

“Drink your sherry and eat your chocolates,” Enzio told her. “You need to think of something good.” He took a chocolate from the box and handed it to her. “If you could think of something good, you can do anything, you can take flight and soar.”

“Soaring is not what it’s cracked up to be,” she said. “I heard a story once about a little yellow bird who lived in a cage by a window.” She lifted the chocolate and inspected it. “One day a skylark came by and saw the little yellow bird cooped up in the cage and felt sorry for her. ‘Come with me, little bird,’ he said, ‘and we will soar above the clouds and into the great blue sky.’ ‘And in the great blue sky,’ the yellow bird asked, ‘is there a perch?’”

She popped the chocolate into her mouth. Enzio closed the box. He reached into his pocket for a packet wrapped in tissue and tied with a string.

“Another gift?” she asked.

“Not really.” He unwrapped the tissue and put the spiral gold bracelet on the table between them.

She picked it up, examined the horse’s head at one end and the coiled tail at the other. “The bracelet Gilberto gave me.” She looked around for Herr Keller, not sure of what to do. “You stole it from my room. I called the police, you know.”

“I got this from the police. It was in Demitrius’ hotel room.”

“Demitrius?”

Demitrius behind the splintered windshield. Demitrius trapped in a flooded car.

She tried a bite of sandwich. It was dry and tasteless, and stuck between her teeth.

“About Demitrius…” she began, then paused.

“They arrested him this afternoon,” Enzio said.

He’s alive.

“Demitrius stole the bracelet?” she asked. Somehow he got out of the car. “What made the police suspect him?”

“They were waiting for him on another matter.”

“The accident?”

“Accident?”

“He skidded off the Mittlere Bridge into the Rhine,” she said. Enzio raised his eyebrows and gave her a puzzled look.

“I’m not sure what happened,” she said. “I only heard about it. Did he get out of the car before it sank?”

“Some swimmers pulled him out. The car is a total loss. When he got back to the Drei Konig, the police were waiting.”

“They arrested him for skidding off the bridge?”

Enzio shook his head. “He’s an accomplished forger and con artist. His real name is Dimitar Konstantinov.”

“He’s Bulgarian, not Greek?”

Enzio nodded. “He forges antiquities, whole collections.” He pointed to the bracelet. “Like this bracelet from Chatham’s collection of Thracian gold.”

“And sells them for the real thing?”

“It’s more complicated than that. What he would do was manufacture a whole collection, like the Bactrian hoard you saw at Gilberto’s, using real gold. He and Irena would arrange for the collection to be exhibited, insured by a museum. They would steal it, collect the insurance, melt it down, and start all over with a new collection.”

“How do you know?”

“We’ve been after him for some time.”

“You and your mother?”

He smiled at that.

“Why did it take so long to arrest him?” she asked.

“We didn’t have proof until now.”

“The coin you stole?”

“Now we know the coin is modern. The bracelet may be too.”

“How do you know?”

“We tested the coin.”

“Your mother and you?”

He smiled at that again.

“Your mother lives in Lyon? What’s her name?”

She waited for his answer. “Your mother gathers evidence to arrest people and she lives in Lyon where she has a lab. I think I know her name. She just moved to Lyon from Paris?”

“Yes,” Enzio said.

“Because the food is better in Lyon?”

She took a bite of sandwich, then picked up the bracelet and examined it. “How can you tell if it’s modern?” She looked closely at the finely chased finish. “It’s made by the lost wax method, the same technique they used for ancient gold.”

“We use a new test for authenticating archaeological gold, state of the art.”

She turned the bracelet over in her hand. “What kind of test?”

“Archaeological gold contains uranium 238 as a trace element. With radioactive decay, the uranium produces helium. When the metal is heated to the melting point, all accumulated helium escapes and establishes a zero time for measuring when the artifact is manufactured. Accumulation of helium starts when the gold is cast and can be measured with a mass spectrometer.”

“As a trace element? In parts per million?”

“Exactly.”

“And the coin?”

“Not a bit of helium. Not even a trace. Not even 0.0001 in ppm—parts per million.”

“So the coin is modern.”

“Born yesterday,” Enzio said.

“What about Irena?” Tamar asked. “Did the police arrest her too?”

“She’s gone. The suitcase with the Bactrian hoard went with her. She’s probably halfway to South America by now, looking for a new partner.”

Tamar fingered the bracelet. “This bracelet was part of the Thracian gold that Chatham was taking to the British Museum?”

Enzio nodded.

“So Demitrius, or Dimitar, or whatever his name is, killed Chatham.”

“Not likely,” Enzio said. “When Demitrius saw you wearing the bracelet, he thought that you stole the Thracian gold.”

“So he….”

“Tried to run you off the bridge. Gilberto said he got the bracelet from one of his runners. My guess is that something went wrong this time, someone else killed Chatham and found the gold after they killed him. A windfall.”

Tamar took another bite of the sandwich and decided that she was hungrier than she thought. She signaled the waiter and asked for a menu.

“There’s another reason that I don’t think Demitrius killed Chatham,” Enzio said. He leaned forward. “Orman Çelibi was killed in The Hague.”

“Orman?” Tamar put down the sandwich. It tasted bitter.

“Two co-directors of Tepe Hazarfen have been killed,” Enzio said. “You are the only one left.”

This time, she spilled the sherry.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Basel, Switzerland, August 17, 1990

Tamar walked to Hohenstrasse through streets still damp from a nighttime drizzle and smelling of wet cement. Gilberto had told her to come by at ten o’clock, to wear comfortable shoes. He had smiled and rubbed his hands with anticipation and said, “You like Roman mosaics, no?”

A Mercedes limousine stood at the curb outside of Gilberto’s house. The man she had seen at the basement door the other day leaned against the fender, smoking a cigarette. Today, he wore a gray chauffeur’s uniform. Closer up, she saw that what she had thought was a sneer was a scar on the right side of his face that ran from his lip and across his cheek.

Before she could go up the walk, Gilberto appeared. He carried a picnic basket and led her to the limousine. With a bow and a grand gesture, he opened the door.

Inside, all gray leather and burled wood, Tamar sat in the back seat and stretched out her legs, luxuriating in the feel of the butter-soft leather against her back.

Gilberto sat next to her, placed the basket on the floor, clapped his hands, said, “I have a surprise for you,” and grinned.

“A mosaic?” she asked, nursing a faint hope that he had found it.

“Better than that.”

She aimed her foot at the basket. “We’re going on a picnic?”

“Even better.” He clasped her hand, leaned forward toward the driver and spoke to him in rapid Italian, saying something about Augst. Gilberto told the driver, as far as Tamar could make out, to take the route to Luzern and get off on exit eight. The driver said he knew the way.

“We’re going to Luzern?” Tamar asked.

Gilberto, still holding onto her hand, gave her a bemused look. “You speak Italian?”

“I don’t speak it. I understand a little.”

He raised an eyebrow and smiled. “Of course. You know Latin. You translate Italian into Latin, and from there to English.”

“Something like that. It makes for a thirty-second delay in processing,” she said.

Gilberto raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Better than better.” He chuckled and squeezed her hand again. “You’ll see, you’ll see.”

Better than what? And where were they going?

They reached the highway, riding past suburban houses, and drove out into the open country.

“The driver is Italian?” Tamar asked.

“Swiss. He’s from Ticino, from near Locarno on the Lago Maggiore. He grew up among pretty piazzas and colorful gardens in the shadow of the Castello Visconteo. It’s a museum now.” He squeezed her hand once more, as if there was a secret between them. “He’s a romantic, and he dreams that he could be the illegitimate descendant of the Visconti Dukes of Milan.”

“We all dream, don’t we?” the driver rumbled from the front seat.

Tamar leaned toward Gilbert and said in a low voice, “I saw him coming out of the basement door a few days ago.”

“Of course you did. He was probably making a delivery. He works for Helvetia Transport. I use them for shipping.”

The Rhine flowed past on the left side of the highway. Gilberto gestured out the window with his free arm to the scattered meadows with an occasional cow or two and the pungent-sweet smell of pasture peeking through the trees of the wooded suburbs on the other side of the car.

“You know, of course, the story about how God made the meadows of Switzerland.”

“I don’t remember.”

He laughed, and pressed Tamar’s hand again. “When God made the world and everything in it, he asked the Swiss what they wanted. ‘Give us some mountains,’ said the Swiss.” Gilberto pointed vaguely in the direction of the Juras in the distance, purple and gray through the mist. “So God gave them mountains. God saw that that was good, and asked the Swiss what else they wanted. ‘Give us some meadows between the mountains’, they said.”

Gilberto dropped Tamar’s hand to have both hands free to wave toward the meadows that nestled below the foothills and mountains of the Juras. “So God gave them meadows. God saw that that was good and asked what else the Swiss wanted. ‘Give us some cows to put in the meadows,’ they said. So God gave them cows. And God milked a cow, drank of the milk, and saw that it was good. ‘What else do you want?’ God asked. ‘Three francs fifty-three,’ the Swiss said.”

Gilberto leaned back in the seat and laughed. Tamar laughed with him. He hadn’t stopped smiling since they left Basel, and now he beamed as they pulled into a parking lot and stopped near a sign that said
Augusta Raurica
.

“This is Augst, oldest Roman city north of the Alps, with over 20,000 inhabitants in its heyday,” he told her as the driver came around to open the back door. “Now we take a journey back in time, and it has taken less than fifteen minutes to get here.”

Gilberto raised his eyebrows, and gave the driver half a nod. The driver nodded back, leaned against the trunk of the limousine and lit a cigarette.

“I’ve arranged a special treat,” Gilberto told Tamar at the entrance to the site.

He traced his fingers on the map at the entrance along the paths that led to the
curia
, to the Roman house, and to the baths. “First, the cellar of the
curia
,” he said at last, “the city hall.”

He led her into a little museum with exhibit cases holding small figurines, silver statuettes of Roman gods and goddesses, iron tools, jewelry, and the characteristic fine Roman tableware of the first and second century AD—red Terra Sigillata.

Past the vitrines, they descended a few steps into what had been the basement of the
curia
. With a grand sweep of his arm, Gilberto presented the display—an array of mosaics.

“Over forty-seven mosaics were found here,” he said. “From private houses and the baths, made from native materials—local limestone, glass, bits of broken ceramics. Most were simple geometric patterns, some with rosettes or vines.” He pointed to a mosaic separate from the others, with the figure of a gladiator and, in the center, a crater with a fountain springing from it surrounded by fish. “This one, the gladiator mosaic, was found in the house of a rich man.”

When a bell sounded from somewhere outside the
curia
, Gilberto grinned again.

“There it is,” he said. “Now we go into the Roman world and live like Romans for just a little while.”

He grabbed Tamar’s hand, rushing toward the Roman house, pulling her along behind him as if she were a child. A guide met them at the entrance to the house. She said “
Ave
,” in Latin, and led them to a changing room—a red-walled Roman bathing room with a small vitrine containing perfume bottles, a shelf piled with towels and togas, and an armless statue of Venus overlooking it all. The guide handed Gilberto a toga, Tamar a long tunic and peplos, and instructed them on how to dress as ancient Romans in simple Latin, illustrating her words with elaborate gestures.

She led them through the bathing process, all in Latin, showing them replicas of ancient bottles filled with oil that Romans used to anoint their bodies instead of soap, showing them the curved
strigilis
used for scraping off oil and residue as bathers prepared to plunge into the warm water of the
caldarium
before a quick, tingling dip into the cold water of the
frigidarium
. The guide reached for Tamar’s arm, rubbed it with fragrant oil smelling of lavender and ran the
strigilis
against her skin, scraping away the remnant of oil.

They went on to the Roman house and, heads covered, paid homage to the
lares
and
larerium
—the household gods— ensconced in a niche in the colonnaded atrium, before they visited rooms with bright frescoed walls that led from the central court.

They went through a kitchen that had ceramic pans and casseroles stacked on shelves, pottery storage jars, wooden barrels, and brick ovens. A wax figure stood at a table making sausages.

Sausages and a kitchen for the staid Helvetii, Tamar thought. No Artemis for them, no Priapos. She pictured an ancient Swiss housewife bustling through the day, cooking and shopping and scrubbing the color off of frescoes.

They toured bedrooms and workrooms, and ended in the
triclinium
, the dining room, lined with long couches. Here, too, was a patterned mosaic floor. The contents of their picnic basket that Gilberto brought—eggs and olives, bread and cheese, and apples—were laid out on small tables set before the couches.

They began the meal. “
Ex ovo usque ad malum
,” the guide told them. From the egg to the apple, from the beginning to the end. As they ate, the guide made polite conversation in Latin, asking if they were well, if they enjoyed the house, if they enjoyed being Roman.

At the end of the tour, they removed the Roman costumes and emerged from the house into a different time and place, where children ran, and tourists moved along the paths examining and exclaiming over the strangeness of the ancient world.

“Now for the public baths,” Gilberto said, taking Tamar’s elbow. “There were hot springs here,” he said. “For natural baths.” He led her to the ruins of the baths next to the remains of the Forum, a hypocaust, where the square remnants of columns stood.

Tamar’s vision of ancient Swiss captives of the Roman legions, forced to stoke the fires that heated the
caldarium
in the stifling basement of the baths, was interrupted by a loud exclamation, “
Defense de fumer
.”

Tamar turned to see a woman at the top of a small rise. The butt of the Frenchwoman’s anger was a man standing near a small wooden box-like structure, calmly smoking a cigarette, gazing at something or someone in the other direction. The man looked like Enzio.

“I think Enzio is here,” she told Gilberto.

“Not really? Where?”

When she turned back to show him, the man had disappeared.

Gilberto said, “Why would he be here, anyway?”

She could be mistaken, she thought, but still, she wondered why she saw Enzio when he wasn’t there.

She asked Gilberto about the boxy structure near where the Frenchwoman had been standing.

“Those are the steps that lead to the sewer from the baths.” He pointed to the knoll where the Frenchwoman stood. “The women’s baths were there, near the entrance to the sewer. The tunnel is open to tourists.”

“Let’s go down the steps to the sewer,” she said. “Let’s explore.”

“I’m too large for the tunnel. A sewer is the realm of rats. Not for the timid, or the tall.” He hesitated. “If you must go down….”

But she had already started down the steps at the opening of the structure.

Gilberto was right, she thought, as she descended into the tunnel and slithered along dank stones smelling of mold toward the dark end of the sewer. The vault of the ceiling wept moisture a scant few inches above her head; the damp walls closed in on either side. She moved slowly, creeping along carefully, wary of slipping on the slick stones.

She thought she heard flat, masculine footsteps of someone who had entered the tunnel, hesitant at first and then surer, moving a little faster, a little louder, clattering just behind her, coming so close that she could smell the scent of stale tobacco on his clothing.

There was no room to let someone by. She was ready to turn around to apologize for blocking the way, to squeeze against the fetid walls to let him pass.

She had almost turned when the blow to the back of her head came and knocked her onto the cold stones.

When she opened her eyes outside, she was flat on the grass, with a headache and a thousand faces looking down at her, speaking German, speaking French, speaking Italian.

And Gilberto, looking concerned, carrying a package.

“What happened?” he asked.

She sat up. She felt dizzy and her head hurt even more. Two of the people that crowded around her helped her to her feet.

“I’m not sure. I think someone hit me.”

He shook his head. “Too slippery. You slipped on the cobbles.”

He paused awkwardly and held out the package. “I bought you some books in the museum shop.”

Gilberto steadied her and she leaned against him. “It’s time to go back to Basel,” he said.

Back at the car, the driver leaned against the fender, smoking, looking the worse for wear. As she got into the limousine, Tamar noticed two buttons missing from his chauffeur’s uniform and a black smudge on his sleeve.