The Price of Inheritance (35 page)

“Really, that's too bad. Maybe I'm wrong. You can't do anything about Texas anyway, can you?”

“How strong is your hunch?”

“I recognize that it's a stretch, but I just think there's a reason Adam never went to Sotheby's Middle East auctions and only to Christie's. If you're working with someone on shady deals, you don't ever want to be associated with them, even legitimately. I think they kept a professional distance on purpose.”

“And you really think Max is flying to Houston to sell this bowl to Elizabeth.”

“I really do think that, yes. What time does his flight get into Houston?”

“He leaves London at nine
A.M.
It's a ten-hour flight and London is six hours ahead, so if there are no delays, he'll land in Texas at one
P.M.
Maybe we should see if London will alert someone at the airport, look for it in his luggage when he goes through security.”

“Not worth it. Max Sebastian is not that stupid. He clearly had a buyer in the U.S., which is why he had an American marine bring it back here. He got it back in Newport, and he definitely hasn't taken it out of the country. I bet the bowl is already in Houston or someone will bring it there.”

“You're probably right. That is, if he's planning on selling it in Houston, but we don't know that.”

“No, we don't.” I stopped to think about Elizabeth. It didn't make perfect sense when I explained it to Jeff, but it did if you knew Elizabeth. She was artful. Her deceit had been executed with precision during the auction, and even in this case, Max was the one who was slipping, not her.

“What if you just had someone watching her house in the afternoon tomorrow? Just in case Max does go there.”

“Because you have a hunch.”

“Yes, exactly.”

“I seriously doubt I can make that happen. It's outside of my jurisdiction and it's not a lead, it's a guess.”

I didn't reply but I knew he could imagine my pleading face.

“Fine. Give me her address just in case. I've reported it to the FBI's art crime team, which is how London began to move. They have a keen interest in cases like this. They might follow up, but remember, this isn't exactly the Gardner heist.”

I recited Elizabeth's address and phone number from memory.

I didn't sleep that night. I bit my nails until there wasn't anything to bite. I opened all my windows so I could convince myself that I wasn't suffocating. I checked prices on plane tickets to Houston and had to remind myself that I couldn't exactly place Max Sebastian under citizen's arrest if I was right. When the sun started to rise, I drove to Sachuest Point, to the beach close to where I'd gone to school, and watched the day break. I'd been doing it a lot lately, thinking about Tyler. Greg had tried to contact me once to talk about him, but I hadn't answered. I'd avoided going anywhere I might see Greg and if I saw a flicker of red in anyone's hair, I went quickly the other way. I knew what he would say, his boastful face, his dismissal of Tyler. I couldn't bear to have that conversation. I knew I couldn't talk to him, didn't know when I'd see him, but I wished then that I at least knew where Tyler was watching the sun rise.

I stayed on the beach all day. I looked on as tourists put up big colorful umbrellas and lathered their children in sunscreen. I watched a group of girls point toward the school and I wondered if they were getting ready to go to St. George's in the fall. I put my feet in the water and let the cold seep into me. After 2
P.M.,
1
P.M.
Texas time, I kept my phone ringer turned on as high as it could go and checked it every five minutes. At 8
P.M.
, I watched the sun set. I'd been on and around the beach for fourteen hours. I hadn't eaten, my face felt burnt, and I hadn't heard from Jeff. I turned my ringer down, put my phone in my bag, and drove home.

Four days later, I finally got a phone call. It wasn't from Captain Ambrose with Newport police or Brian Van Ness with NCIS. It was from a man named Ryan Barton, from the FBI art crime team.

“Do you want the bottom line or do you want all the details?” he asked immediately. He had one of those hard voices where the intonation almost never changed.

“I want both. Start with the bottom line and then give me the details if that's okay.”

“Bottom line. Adam Tumlinson was a huge crook. Max Sebastian is an even bigger crook.”

“And Tyler Ford?”

“Tyler Ford is a small- to medium-size crook. But more than anything, he was a kid being very stupid. Actually, I should tell you all this in person. I'm in Newport. Would you like to meet? There's a coffee shop next to the police station on Broadway. Do you know it?”

“Do I know it? This is my town.” I hung up the phone and for the first time since Tyler had left Newport, it did feel like my town again.

I nearly killed three pedestrians getting to Broadway, and when I parked and ran out, a man in his late forties with a thick build and a bald head was sitting by the window with two coffees. He handed me one when I came in and then introduced himself.

“I know a lot about you. Probably an unfair amount, so forgive me when I talk to you like we've met before.”

“I'll do my best.”

“Let's walk,” he said, motioning outside with his head. I followed Ryan onto the sidewalk and we headed away from town.

“Did you arrest Max Sebastian? Was he at Elizabeth's?” I asked immediately.

“It's a complicated story, but one that's going to be in the news in a couple of days, so I wanted you to hear it from me first.”

I looked at him like he was about to tell me that the moon landings were staged.

“I have to ask, how could you have guessed that Max was going to Elizabeth's? Did you really guess or did you have a tip?”

“So he did go there?”

“Yes. He went there. The bowl was taken from him right outside her gate and he was brought in for questioning. So how did you know?”

“I didn't know exactly. It was a mix of things. It was a hunch first. When Captain Ambrose from the Newport Police Department said Max was going to Houston, I immediately thought of Elizabeth because she's very rich, not very ethical, and could be working on a new collection. But right after I met Jeff a few days ago, I thought of something else. I had mentioned Elizabeth's name to Tyler a few months ago and I still remember the way he shifted his weight, fidgeted, and stood up when I said it. There was almost recognition. I didn't sense it then, but now that I look back on it, there was.”

“The name Noah Kulik. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No. I've never heard that name.”

“He was a marine, too. He served around the same time Tyler did but they don't seem to know each other. Or if Noah knew Tyler, he's not talking.”

“You spoke to him already? Did Max name him?”

“Of course. Him and everyone else on earth. He's trying pretty hard to get a deal.”

“Will he get a deal?”

“I doubt it.”

We turned the corner and stood single file as a group of tourists passed us with shopping bags.

“So when are you going to tell me everything?”

“Everything, I can't tell you everything. It's a surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, complicated story. How is your knowledge of the Crusades?”

I looked at him with wide eyes and stopped on the sidewalk.

“The Crusades? You can't be serious.”

He nodded.

“My knowledge of the Crusades is rusty.”

“Then this will be even more complicated. Bear with me.”

He pointed to a side street that gave onto Easton Pond and we walked toward the water. We slowed down and he looked at me, my expectant face, and started to explain the last ninety-six hours.

“In the mid-nineties, Adam Tumlinson purchased a letter from Max Sebastian—on the black market, not through Sotheby's. This letter, which Elizabeth is in possession of and which she claims she only recently found, is extremely rare and very old. It's from the twelfth century and was written by Maimonides. Does that name register with you at all?”

“Vaguely. Jewish philosopher and scholar of some sort.”

“Right. He was a little more than that, but that's fine for now. Anyway, in this letter, which is in Hebrew, Maimonides is telling a story of working as a personal doctor for Salah al-Din Abu 'l-Muzaffer Yusuf ibn Ayyub ibn Shadi, or just Saladin to you and me, the first sultan of Egypt and Syria.”

“Wait, this was a real letter, penned by Maimonides?”

“Yes, we actually have it now.”

“That must have cost millions. I wonder how Max even got that.”

“I don't know,” he said, pointing to a bench near the water that was now empty. I nodded and we walked forward.

“In the letter, Maimonides specifically writes about Saladin ordering him to bring fruit—specifically plums and pears—and snow to his enemy, Richard the Lionheart, also known as Richard the First of England, to give him relief from fever.”

“Richard the First. You cannot be serious.”

“It gets better. Listen.”

I shut my mouth and let him continue. After another sentence I interrupted him again.

“I'm sorry but are you saying that at the end of the twelfth century a famous Jewish doctor was working for Saladin, a Sunni Muslim, as his personal physician?”

“Yes. The letter is from 1192. The Jews and the Muslims got along okay back then.”

“Fine. So Saladin ordered his doctor to bring Richard the Lionheart—King of England and Crusader—fruit and snow. You know, I actually remember that from studying the Crusades in college. That's a very famous ‘give peace a chance' moment. And Saladin was following the Quran. Richard was sick, not a fair fight and all that.”

“I think it's worded slightly differently in the Quran,” said Ryan, smiling.

“I'm paraphrasing. So in this letter Maimonides explains that he was the one who brought the provisions to Richard?”

“Exactly. He was the one who did, and he also took the opportunity to spy on how many men and how much supplies Richard still had, but that's not relevant to this story. What is relevant is that Maimonides wrote in the letter that before he delivered everything to Richard, he carved the base of one of the bowls with the words ‘First and the Last,' which is the end of the fourth principle of faith—Maimonides's Thirteen Principles of Faith, which I'm sure you've heard of. They're still a pillar of Judaism today.”

“The fourth principle of faith? You mean, that line is not from the Bible? From the Book of Revelation? I thought it was, Blair Bari, a professor at Brown, did, and so did Tyler. I saw that passage underlined in blue pen in his personal King James Bible.”

“It's a common way to refer to God, but it's not from the Bible in this case. Maimonides wrote that it was a reference to the fourth principle from his Thirteen Principles of Faith: ‘I believe with perfect faith that the Creator, Blessed be His Name, is the first and the last.' ”

I had gone, in six months, from my Americentric existence to discussing the Crusades with an FBI agent in Newport. Life felt almost unrecognizable.

“So that bowl, the one that I had in my bag as I walked around a dive bar in Newport, and that had a fake bottom added to it, was the bowl that Maimonides delivered to Richard the Lionheart on behalf of Saladin in 1192.”

“That's exactly what I'm saying.”

“Holy shit.”

Ryan laughed loudly and looked at me, sitting by the water on a beautiful day in June leveled by my shock.

“Yeah, holy shit. There's more holy shit, too.”

“Wait, do you think Tyler knew any of this?”

“Tyler Ford? No way. I don't think anyone who worked with Max in the Middle East knew about this or they might have kept it and sold it themselves. Without that history, it's just an old clay bowl. What did you think it was worth?”

“When I knew it was in the museum? Four hundred, five hundred thousand.”

“Yeah, not anymore.”

“But how could it be in such perfect shape? It's over eight hundred years old.”

“I'll get to that. Let me backtrack. This letter that we found perfectly states what this bowl is. In it Maimonides describes the passage from the Quran—‘And God shall heal the breast of the believers'—painted inside the bowl in Arabic in deep green script and writes that he etched part of his fourth principle into the base in Hebrew. He describes carving it in with a medical knife that he had used as a court physician in Egypt. He wrote not only of the health of Richard the Lionheart but how the king of England had previously invited Maimonides to be his personal physician, an invitation that he declined. Maimonides had been a leading physician in Saladin's court since 1185 and was extremely respected in his profession. In the letter, Maimonides also perfectly details the appearance and beauty of the bowl: the green pattern, the off-white background, the fine brush detailing, the vegetal motifs. According to Max, after buying that letter, Adam Tumlinson wanted him to find the bowl.”

“And Max did.”

“He did but it took eight years. The letter was bought in 1995 and the bowl was discovered in 2003. January 2003.”

“The same year that the museum was looted.”

“Right. The bowl was found in a private home. It had been—supposedly, this could all be bullshit—but supposedly it had never been in a museum, always in private hands with the family, the descendants of Maimonides. Richard and Saladin reached an agreement in 1192 and Saladin died in March 1193. It's unclear how the bowl made its way back to Maimonides, but it could have been returned to him before Richard left for Europe. Max Sebastian or his people in the Middle East were able to obtain it in Jaffa, in Israel.”

“Jaffa, that's where Richard the First was in 1192, right? The Battle of Jaffa.”