The Looters (40 page)

Getting masks for the switches wasn’t difficult. The Piedmont Museum bookstore sold good reproductions of the Semiramis.

Wearing a head scarf and dark glasses and looking like someone in the Witness Protection Program trying to disguise herself, I waited in a taxi two blocks from the museum as Gwyn went in to buy masks.

I needed my own mask for the switch that I would be making, so I had her get several and gave her a good reason. “That way we can practice your switch without worrying about damaging a mask.”

When we got back, Coby examined one of the reproductions. I assured him that it looked really good. “I was the one who had the reproductions made for sale. I insisted they look real. There’s not much detail on the original, so it wasn’t hard to do.”

“But what about the weight?” he said. “She’s probably handled the Semiramis. So have you. How does it compare in weight?”

“Close enough.” The Semiramis was thin gold. The bookstore mask was stamped out of a lighter metal but a bit thicker. All in all, the outfit I commissioned, a group of artists who did repair and reproduction work for museums and galleries, had done a super job on the masks.

We bought a mannequin similar to the one at the museum display so Gwyn could practice making a switch as she took the mask off the display queen and handed it to Angela.

When the day of reckoning came, I had horrible stage fright. I stared at the blue-eyed Babylonian king in the mirror and wondered if colored contacts were how movie stars all got their blue eyes.

Besides my shocking blue eyes, I wore a tall, cone-shaped hat that resembled a beehive and covered half my head, a long, curly black Babylonian beard that came up to the hat and covered most of my face, and a floor-length robe big enough for two people. The only identifiable part of my body left uncovered was my nose. And I had never been accused of having a unique snout.

To make the disguise bulletproof, all I had to do was keep my mouth shut.

Gwyn was dressed the same but used her own eye color.

The arrangements with the PR assistant at the museum had been made, the “camera crew” had their equipment and manners down pat, and Gwyn and I were decked out like we-three-kings-of-Orient.

“It’s a go, Houston,” I told the assembly. I smiled bravely and prayed no one saw how scared I was.

I secretly made one alteration to my costume.

I stuck the spare Semiramis mock-up mask in an inside pouch of my robe. I hadn’t figured out how I would get the mask from Gwyn to make the switch. I would have to play it by ear, probably tell her I wanted to examine it.

I knew what I would do with the mask once I had it in my hand: take a taxi to the Jamaica Plains apartment of Abdullah’s daughter and give it to her. Because of the sacrifices her father and grandfather made, she should have the honor of returning it.

Then I would run like hell, because there would be some awfully angry SEALs looking for me.

***

I think I was the only nervous person when we arrived at the Piedmont after closing time to film Angela with the mask. Gwyn and the SEALs talked and joked like they were on their way to a party. God, what nerves of steel. My nerves were stretched rubber bands ready to snap. How they could be calm was beyond my understanding. I imagined Angela taking one look at me and screaming that it was Dupre in disguise.

Was I just plain whacked-out from stress to imagine I could really fool anyone at the museum? And that we could switch the Semiramis? I knew that almost every major museum art theft was low-tech. But could Gwyn really make a switch with Eric standing by and a security guard watching the monitor of an overhead camera?

I had to be the only one with any common sense if the others didn’t realize how crazy the plan was… and the only one with enough common sense to be scared, too. They say psychopaths don’t have human feelings like fear and pity. If you have to be sane to be scared, I was the only one who wasn’t crazy.

Coby read my fears. “No guts, no glory.”

“You can have the glory. Just drop me off at the nearest airport so I can get a ticket to someplace where no one wants to kill me or arrest me.”

Approaching the building in a van with the others, I was certain that I saw police helicopters and unmarked police cars. I half-expected Agent Nunes to be at the museum to greet me with a pair of handcuffs as I entered.

I recognized the guard who let us in and was tempted to say,
Hi
,
Carol
.

Carol looked at me and smiled. I kept a straight face and jaws locked and hoped she didn’t see through the disguise.

Eric and Angela were waiting in front of the Semiramis display. A makeup artist was putting the finishing touches on Angela’s face.

“The alarms are off,” Eric told Coby, our film director. “But we have video surveillance from every angle. None of your people are to touch anything but the mask. And they must take utter care in handling it.”

Eric hung around long enough to let Angela know that he was there if she needed anything and then disappeared, because he wasn’t the one who was going to have his picture taken. Besides the prying eyes of the overhead cameras, one guard was posted in the room with us, but he stayed back, out of the way, and seemed to be more interested in watching movie star Angela than the rest of us.

That meant there was one less eye on the mask.

When we were ready to take our places to start filming, Coby had Angela take her place seated in front of the mannequin, Gwyn standing behind her on the right, so she could take the mask off the mannequin and hand it to Angela at the proper moment, and me standing next to Angela, on her left side.

As I started to take my place behind her, Angela stared at me. Really stared. In fact, glared at me. Jaw slack. Mouth open.

I began to melt down. Sweat poured from my underarms. My heart pounded against my chest. Had she seen through my disguise?

“Where did you get those eyes?”

I stared dumbly at her. Then stared into her eyes.

Holy shit—she is wearing the same shade of bright blue.

Coby stepped between us. “She’s not going to be facing the camera. I’ll have her look off to the side.”

“She can look off to the side behind me. I don’t want her next to me. You,” she snapped at Gwyn, “change places with her.”

No!
I couldn’t change places with Gwyn—she had to make the switch. I had a copy of the mask hidden in my robe, but it was in a pouch only accessible from the inside. Gwyn’s robe had a slit on the outside to slip the mask through. And she was the sleight-of-hand artist capable of doing it with the security cameras rolling.

I didn’t know what to do, so I stood frozen and did nothing.

“Are you dense?” Angela asked. “Answer me!”

“She’s mute. She can’t talk,” Coby said.

“She can hear, can’t she? Tell her to take her place behind me. And look away from the camera. Or this shoot is off.”

“Take your place,” Coby said. “Behind her.” He didn’t sound like the old, confident-even-in-a-hurricane Coby.

Oh… my… God.
I couldn’t do the switch. But like a mechanical doll, I automatically took up a position behind Angela. My knees shook. Sweat was streaking down the side of my face and into my long beard.

“Your beard’s crooked,” Gwyn whispered.

Her eyes told me she wasn’t completely composed. No doubt she had imagined the door to a prison cell slamming shut when Angela reversed our roles. Gwyn stepped up in front of me and pretended to adjust my beard with one hand while she nudged me with the mock-up mask. I took the mask but didn’t have anywhere to hide it. I kept it tight against my robe and hoped the folds would conceal it.

My left knee shook so bad I almost fell. Hypocrite that I am, I again silently beseeched the Good Lord for help. I hadn’t been in a church since Sunday school and hadn’t needed God for anything as long as I could remember, but as my father used to say, there are no atheists in the foxholes.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to ask for heavenly intervention to rob a museum, but I had pure motives.

When the camera crew was in position, Coby said, “First we are shooting Ms. St. John without the mask. When I signal you, remove the mask from the display and hand it to her. Never look directly at the camera.”

It took a couple seconds to realize that he was talking to me. I repeated the words to myself:
Remove the mask from the display and give it to her
. And make a switch. Sure. I might as well rip off my beard and scream to be arrested. I was screwed. And for the first time, I saw something akin to worry in Coby’s face: His usually calm features were locked tightly.

The fact that he and Gwyn were silently panicking didn’t do much for my own confidence level.

The camera rolled.

Coby gestured at me.

I stared at him.

He grimaced and gestured again.
Give her the mask
, he silently mouthed.

Time to make the switch.

I turned and detached the mask from the gizmo that made it look as if the mannequin-queen were holding it. I fumbled it. The mask dropped to the floor at my feet.

The world stood still. Not a sound could be heard.

The sounds of silence were shattered by Angela’s scream. The shrill outburst sent a jolt of pure panic juice shooting from my toes to my head.

I bent down to grab the mask. As I bent over, I switched the fake mask to my right hand and picked up the Semiramis with my free hand, keeping the real mask concealed in the folds of the baggy robe.

“Get her out of here before I kill her! Get that creature away from me!”

As Coby shot forward to grab me by the arm, I dropped the fake in Angela’s lap.

Coby took me to the side. “Stand right here. Do… not… move.” His eyes told me that he’d kill me if I budged an inch. He knew I had made the switch.

Coby and Gwyn calmed Angela with the medicine that worked best on her—flattery—and the shoot continued.

After Coby yelled, “Cut,” like a pro, Angela replaced the mask and stormed out immediately, but not without a good-bye comment to me: “Fucking moron.”

Strangely calm, I resisted the urge to taunt her with,
Ha-ha, I’ve got the mask; I’ve got the mask!
I kept it exactly where it was when I first grabbed it—pressed in a fold of the robe.

That meant I had to keep the hand holding it in an awkward position. If any guard took a good look at me, it would spell disaster.

We were heading for the door when Eric shouted Coby’s name. My knees melted and I felt as if I were going to pass out.

“You forgot to give us your insurance papers,” he told Coby.

Coby slapped his forehead. “Christ, sorry. They’re in the van; I’ll bring them back.”

I just walked quickly out as Eric told Coby and the others that they also needed to film the outside of the building.

As Coby lamented that they couldn’t do it now because of the lack of light, I made a run for a taxi parked outside. I told the driver, “Jamaica Plains. Hurry.”

Chapter 64

The driver pulled away from the curb and never said a word about my costume. Only in New York could a woman dressed as a Babylonian king get into a taxi without any questions being asked.

My insides were quivering gelatin. I had reacted out of pure instinct. The SEALs must have some murderous thoughts right now. And I would be the victim in all of them. God, I felt as if my feet were tangled in the webs I’d weaved and I was really to collapse.

We hadn’t gone far when the cabbie suddenly pulled into an alley and slammed on the brakes. The way out was blocked by a large gasoline tanker truck parked at a gas station at the far corner.

He turned in the seat and slid open the dirty Plexiglas window that’s supposed to separate drivers from robbers. He pointed a pistol at me. “Don’t move.”

I closed my eyes tight. Kidnapped again by an Iraqi. Same man, same taxi.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
I was so worried about the SEALs behind me, I hadn’t taken a good look at the driver.

Coby arrived in less than a minute and opened the door. He gestured for me to get out. I climbed out and tried to maintain a brave front, but I was dying inside. Caught red-handed trying to do the right thing.

“I was on my way back to the boat.”

“Where did she tell you to take her?” he asked the driver, who had gotten out and was standing on the other side of the cab.

“Jamaica Plains.”

Coby raised his eyebrows. “Funny. I don’t remember the boat being parked there.” He held out his hand. “Let me have it.”

“It belongs to—”

“Me. I stole it first. Give me the mask.”

“You promised to give it back to the Iraqis.”

“Did you really think I would do that?”

“No.”

“Then it wasn’t a real promise, was it?”

“That’s no—”

“Look, I’m actually going to keep my promise. The mask is going back to Iraq.”

“Fine. Then let’s get it to Abdullah’s daughter.”

“For a price.”

“What do you mean?”

“I want a finder’s fee.”

“What? How can you get a finder’s fee for something you stole in the first place?”

“Done all the time, remember. That’s the main reason high-profile art is stolen. It can’t be sold because it can’t be displayed, so it’s sold back to the owner for ten percent. In this case, we’re making the finder’s fee an even five mil.”

“A starving country isn’t going to pay millions to get back an antiquity.”

He shrugged. “Hiram will if they won’t.”

“Bastard.”

He grinned. “Thank you. I’ve worked hard at it. The mask?” He held out his hand.

The driver yelled something and then ran. He had yelled in Arabic and disappeared around a footpath that led between buildings.

Coby yelled, “Where you going?”

I looked to the rear and gasped. A large black SUV had pulled up to block the end of the alley we had entered.

Gwyn was in the driver’s seat.

The passenger door opened and Stocker got out, holding a machine gun.

Chapter 65

“
Get down!
” Coby shouted as he pulled a pistol.