The Mask of Troy (7 page)

 

T
he man in the greatcoat turned left off the busy street and strode into the forecourt of the British Museum, swiftly negotiating the milling groups of tourists and the puddles that had spread over the pavement like quicksilver. The drizzle that had enveloped London all morning was now a persistent rain, and he clicked open his umbrella. His phone buzzed and he stopped, holding the phone to his ear with one hand and his umbrella with the other, peering out under the brim at the imposing columns of the museum façade. He replied quickly, snapped the phone shut, checked his watch and remained still for a moment, glancing up at the pediment sculptures above the columns, at Sir Richard Westmacott’s allegorical figures depicting the rise of civilization, culminating in the central female holding a golden orb and sceptre.

He curled his lip, and snorted. Even the gilding seemed dull in this weather. He was contemptuous of it, of the entire museum, a neoclassical folly of the first order. As a student he had been to the temple at Priene in Turkey that had inspired Sir John Soane’s design for the museum, and had seen with his own eyes the power of ancient architecture in its setting, the mastery of man over the elements. And at Linz in Austria he had traced the plan of the greatest museum ever devised, walked the streets with the blueprint in his head, populated the phantom galleries with all the works of art that had once been collected for the highest cause ever conceived. It was a museum to harness the power of the past, to radiate it, not to trap it like this one. A museum from the greatest architect of them all. A museum for the thousand-year Reich.
The Führermuseum
.

He ran up the steps under the pediment, closed the umbrella and shook it, and then walked through the front door into the museum vestibule. He nodded at several familiar faces coming out of the museum, students and colleagues, faces he recognized from his lecture at the academy the evening before. It had been an exhilarating event, the culmination of a career that had seen him rise from star student to professor in less than a dozen years, and now recipient of the most prestigious medal of his profession. He had been recognized for his study of architecture in the cause of fascism.
A warning from history
, he had called it. He revelled in the irony. He had never made any secret of his own family’s past, his father a member of the Hitler Youth, his grandfather an SS officer. He had used it to explain his fascination with Nazi architecture, almost as if his research were an atonement, part of the upwelling of guilt in modern Germany he so despised. He had argued that the genius of Linz lay not with Hitler but with the architects commissioned to draw up the blueprint, to build the great scale model in the bunker in Berlin that had so captivated the Führer in his final days.

But this was a lie. He knew where the true genius lay. It lay with the Führer himself, in the dream that had elevated Hitler above those who had betrayed him, those who had lost the war. The museum was his platform for apotheosis, for his ascent beyond earthly existence. Nothing had concerned the Führer more in his final hours, not even the Jewish question. The man knew the words of Hitler’s final will and testament by heart.
It is my most sincere wish that this bequest be duly executed
. He felt a thrill course through him. The time had come. And he would be the one to do it.
The will of the Führer would be done
.

He entered the museum and veered left, past the cloakroom and into the ancient world galleries. He looked down the hall into the heart of the museum with its colossal Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, pharaohs and god-kings and human-headed lions, and felt an upwelling of anger at this dislocated mass of fragments, at those who had ripped these pieces from the monuments and palaces that had given them meaning. He stopped before the doorway of the Bronze Age Greece gallery and gazed at the green limestone half-columns on either side, taken from the entrance to the Treasury of Atreus, the great circular tomb outside the citadel of Mycenae in Greece. He reached out and put the flat of his hand against the lefthand column, pressing against the carved zigzag motifs on the shaft. Here, at least, he felt a frisson from the past, as if the columns still retained an echo of their original purpose, guarding the treasure vault within.

He let his hand drop and walked into the gallery, stopping for a moment in front of a case containing a dazzling collection of beaten gold jewellery and precious stones, amethyst from Egypt, lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, a beautiful one-handled golden goblet. In the case beside it was a nondescript row of pots from Troy, one with a crude face in relief, another still retaining a label in Heinrich Schliemann’s own hand.
Schliemann
. The pots were the only artefacts in the exhibit from the fabled site. The man reflected on the fickle nature of discovery, on how so many of the great works in the museum had come to light not through scientific excavation but through chance finds, often shrouded in mystery. Schliemann had dug a great trench through the centre of the mound at Troy, and for years the whereabouts of his richest finds had been unknown. It was as if human nature - greed and deceit and ego - had added another layer to archaeology, a layer that needed to be excavated through the archives and museums and vaults of Europe, through understanding the psychology and motivations of men like Schliemann, before the truth could be revealed. That had been his task, for today. And now it was near completion. The greatest treasures would be uncovered, greater than any in this woefully sparse gallery.

He glanced at his watch again, and walked to the case at the rear. He leaned over and stared at a large painted pottery bowl. The painting showed an ancient warship with a double row of oars; beside it were two crude figures with triangular bodies, a man grasping a woman as if leading her into the ship. He glanced at the label. It was from Thebes, in Greece, from the eighth century BC, about the time when Homer might have lived, four centuries after the fall of Troy. He looked at the pot again. He saw a reflection in the case, a presence behind him.
So it begins
. It was a man’s voice, quiet, a mellifluous tone with a hint of a French accent. ‘When I was an undergraduate at Cambridge, I went to a lecture by an eminent linguist, a Professor Dillen, about fact and myth in Homer. He used the image of this painting as a centrepiece for his argument. The pot dates from the time of Homer. But does it? Homer could have been earlier. And those figures. Are they Theseus and Ariadne, or Paris and Helen? And is that any old warship, or is it a galley of the Trojan War? Where is the truth? Can we ever find it?’

The man replied quietly, still staring ahead. ‘The double layer of oars is an anachronism. Bronze Age galleys were probably paddled longboats. I have some interest from my own student days, as a rower in Heidelberg. And by chance, it was one of Dillen’s students, Howard, who found fragments of late Bronze Age ships on the beach at Troy that seemed to confirm it. But the question still needs to be laid to rest. We need a well-preserved shipwreck.’

‘Perhaps they will find one. Howard and his team are at Troy again.’

‘Indeed. This morning’s papers.’

‘Good. You have been keeping abreast of events. We will walk, Professor Raitz?’

Raitz turned, and saw a trim man, bearded, about thirty-five, with striking brown eyes and dark features, expensively dressed in a suit and a gaberdine raincoat. ‘Your Excellency.’

‘Don’t call me that. We don’t want to excite attention. Saumerre will do.’ He gestured with one hand, and they slowly made their way around the exhibits, pretending to study the artefacts. Raitz turned towards him, speaking quietly. ‘Howard’s daughter was in my office at the institute a few weeks ago. The Howard Gallery had a Dürer, given to Jack Howard’s father after the war by a friend of his who’d bought it at auction in Switzerland in 1945. The gallery had discovered it was a painting stolen - or should I say borrowed - by Reichsmarschall Göring, from a museum in Mainz. I have a reputation for facilitating the return of stolen works of art to the former Reich, and Miss Howard had come to me representing the gallery for that reason. Naturally, those wishing to return works to Jewish owners are politely told to go elsewhere. I do not deal with private ownership claims, only public museums and galleries.’

‘Of course. We know your reputation. That’s why I am here. You have open-door access to the back rooms of museums and galleries across Europe. And we know about Rebecca Howard.’ He took out an iPod and a photograph appeared, showing a vivacious-looking girl with long dark hair, wearing jeans and a T-shirt with the letters USMC on the front. ‘Seventeen years old, born in Naples to Elizabeth d’Agostino, an archaeologist with the Italian superintendency. She and Jack Howard ended their affair nine months previously, when d’Agostino returned from her studies at Cambridge to Naples at the insistence of her family, who are Mafia. She told Howard nothing of their daughter and arranged for her to be brought up by friends in New York State, where Rebecca is still at school. Howard first met his daughter less than two years ago, shortly after her mother had been murdered. Since then he’s involved Rebecca in an archaeological project in India and central Asia, where she acquired that shirt from a US Marine dive team in Kyrgyzstan. She and her father are very close. In fact, she’s become close to the whole team.’

‘Impressive surveillance.’

The man checked his watch. ‘Right now she’s at Troy. But she’s due back for a school trip to Paris in two days. She touches down at Heathrow from Istanbul at eleven thirty-five tomorrow morning.’

‘But what about now?’ Raitz said urgently. ‘You have brought what you promised?’

Saumerre opened the flap of his coat and pulled out a document bag. He unzipped the top, and raised the contents enough for the other man to see the slightly foxed cover and the faded red capital letters along the top, in Gothic script.

Raitz stared at it. He was shaking with excitement, his voice hoarse. ‘You are certain this is genuine?’

Saumerre paused for a moment, then stared at Raitz. He spoke urgently, barely audible against the background noise of the museum. ‘I will let you in on a secret. A deadly secret. What you are about to embark on would destroy your career if it came out. What I am about to tell you would do more than destroy mine. It would put a bullet in the back of my neck.’

‘I understand,’ Raitz murmured, looking around, seeing that the gallery was empty. ‘You have my absolute word.’

‘You know my background from the media. Our embassy is in the news every day now. Officially I’m of North African descent, Algerian. But what you didn’t know is that one of my grandfathers was French, from Marseille. He was a small-time gangster, ran a petty crime ring, drugs, prostitution, protection rackets. He was arrested by the Vichy police in late 1940 and ended up in a concentration camp in Germany. His lifeline was that he’d trained originally as a chef, and they put him to work in a small labour camp near Belsen. In the final weeks of the war the camp was flooded with Jews force-marched there from Auschwitz, and in the chaos he escaped. But he knew what had been going on in the camp. What it had been built for. What was stored there.’

‘Is that it?’ Raitz whispered, his heart pounding with excitement. ‘What we’re after? Stolen works of art?’

‘There’s more.’ Saumerre paused, and steered Raitz over to the case containing the Troy artefacts, staring studiously at them as a class of schoolchildren streamed by. He waited until they had disappeared into the Egyptian gallery, then spoke again. ‘There is another secret.
Our secret
.’ He paused again, checking carefully around, then moved close to Raitz. ‘When my grandfather returned to Marseille, he picked up where he’d left off. There were rich opportunities in the years after the war. He already had an Algerian wife, and he extended his interests to French North Africa. It was the time of the French-Algerian war, and he profiteered. It became a multi-million-dollar business. When my father came of age, he inherited it.’

Raitz stared at him. ‘And now you?’

‘Keep your voice down. Please.’ Saumerre took out a handkerchief, and dabbed his forehead. ‘Perhaps I have said enough.’

‘I swear never to tell.’

Saumerre took a deep breath, then nodded. ‘You’re right. There’s no going back now. But you must understand. I have always kept my political career and my business interests strictly separate.’

‘What was your grandfather’s secret? What had he seen?
What did he know?
’

‘He told my father, and my father told me. As a boy, I was fascinated by the stories of lost Nazi loot, hidden away in lakes and bunkers and mines. I became determined to chase up any leads, to find what was left. We all know there’s more to be discovered. There’s a long list of works of art that have never been found. A huge fortune to be made.’

‘Stop there.’ Raitz stood back, suddenly wary. ‘We may be at cross-purposes. I thought you were behind my dream. I am not doing this for money.’

Saumerre put up his hand. ‘Relax. All of the paintings are yours. But this is a business arrangement. You have the paintings, we have the rest.’

‘What do you mean, the rest?’

Saumerre gestured at the cabinet. ‘What do you know about Schliemann’s lost treasure?’

Raitz stared at the pots. ‘You asked me to research it when we first made contact two weeks ago. Some of the gold from Troy went missing for years, then showed up in Moscow. That’s common knowledge. But there’s always been a question over whether Schliemann found more at Mycenae. Nothing’s ever been proven.’

‘We know,’ Saumerre said. ‘
We know
. And that’s our cut. We want gold, antiquities, unique items that have huge cachet as collateral in arms deals, pipeline deals, multi-million-dollar enterprises that can rest on a single handshake, a single gesture of goodwill. Yet you and I have much in common. I am an educated man too, a lover of the arts. One day we should come here and talk more about these marvels.’ He swept his hand about the room. ‘We may regret that some of the great cultural treasures might never end up in museums. But some have been lost for so long, stolen so long ago and never found, that their very loss has become part of our culture. Schliemann’s treasure, for example. And look around us here. Already there are too many wonders to comprehend. And for you, my friend, it is our price. There is no compromise.’