The Venetian Betrayal (12 page)

Stephanie had been told that night was not the most threatening time for a visit to the renowned district. The morning desperation of passing junkies and the early-afternoon edginess of pimps waiting for the evening's business were usually more intense. But she'd been warned that the northern end, near the Nieuwmarkt, in an area just beyond the crowds, constantly exuded a quiet sense of menace. So she was on guard as she breached the invisible line and entered. Her eyes shot back and forth, like a prowling cat's, her course set straight for the cafe at the far end of the street.

The Jan Heuval occupied the ground floor of a three-story warehouse. A brown cafe, one of hundreds that dotted the Rembrandtplein. She shoved open the front door and immediately noticed the aroma of burning cannabis along with the absence of any "No Drugs Please" sign.

The cafe was jammed, its warm air saturated with a hallucinogenic fog scented like singed rope. The aroma of fried fish and roasted chestnuts mixed with the intoxicating waft and her eyes burned. She pushed back the hood and shook rain onto the foyer's already damp tiles.

Then she spotted Klaus Dyhr. Mid-thirties, blond-haired, pale, weathered face--exactly as he'd been described.

Not for the first time, she reminded herself why she was here. Returning a favor. Cassiopeia Vitt had asked her to contact Dyhr. And since she owed her friend at least one favor, she could hardly refuse the request. Before making contact she'd run a check and learned that Dyhr was Dutch born, German educated, and practiced chemistry for a local plastics manufacturer. His obsession was coin collecting--he supposedly possessed an impressive array--and one in particular had drawn the interest of her Muslim friend.

The Dutchman stood alone near a chest-high table, nursing a brown beer and munching fried fish. A rolled cigarette burned in an ashtray and the thick green fog curling upward was not from tobacco.

"I'm Stephanie Nelle," she said in English. "The woman who called."

"You said you were interested in buying."

She caught the curt tone that said, "Tell me what you want, pay me, and I'll be on my way." She also noticed his glassy eyes, which almost couldn't be helped. Even she was starting to feel a buzz. "Like I said on the phone, I want the elephant medallion."

He gulped a swallow of beer. "Why? It's of no consequence. I have many other coins worth much more. Good prices."

"I'm sure you do. But I want the medallion. You said it was for sale."

"I said it depends on what you want to pay."

"Can I see it?"

Klaus reached into his pocket. She accepted the offering and studied the oblong medallion through a plastic sleeve. A warrior on one side, a mounted war elephant challenging a horseman on the other. About the size of a fifty-cent piece, the images nearly eroded away.

"You know nothing of what that is, do you?" Klaus asked.

She decided to be honest. "I'm doing this for someone else."

"I want six thousand euros."

Cassiopeia had told her to pay whatever. Price was irrelevant. But staring at the sheaved piece, she wondered why something so nondescript would be so important.

"There are only eight known," he said. "Six thousand euros is a bargain."

"Only eight? Why sell it?"

He fingered the burning butt, sucked a deep drag, held it, then slowly whistled out thick smoke. "I need the money." His oily eyes returned their gaze downward, staring toward his beer.

"Things that bad?" she asked.

"You sound like you care."

Two men flanked Klaus. One was fair, the other tanned. Their faces and features were a conflicting mixture of Arab and Asian. Rain continued to pour outside, but the men's coats were dry. Fair grabbed Klaus's arm and a knife blade was pressed flat to the man's stomach. Tan wrapped an arm around her in a seemingly friendly embrace and brought the tip of another knife close to her ribs, pressing the blade into her coat.

"The medallion," Fair said, motioning with his head. "On the table."

She decided not to argue and calmly did as he asked.

"We'll be leaving now," Tan said, pocketing the coin. His breath stank of beer. "Stay here."

She had no intention of challenging them. She knew to respect weapons pointed at her.

The men wove their way to the front door and left the cafe.

"They took my coin," Klaus said, his voice rising. "I'm going after them."

She couldn't decide if it was foolishness or the drugs talking. "How about you let me handle it."

He appraised her with a suspicious gaze.

"I assure you," she said. "I came prepared."

Chapter
TWENTY-TWO

COPENHAGEN

7:45 P
. M
.

MALONE FINISHED HIS DINNER. HE WAS SITTING INSIDE THE CAFE Norden, a two-story restaurant that faced into the heart of Hojbro Plads. The evening had turned nasty with a brisk April shower dousing the nearly empty city square. He sat high and dry by an open window, on the upper floor, and enjoyed the rain.

"I appreciate you helping out today," Thorvaldsen said from across the table.

"Almost getting blown up? Twice? What are friends for?"

He finished the last of his tomato bisque soup. The cafe offered some of the best he'd ever eaten. He was full of questions, but realized answers, as always with Thorvaldsen, would be apportioned sparingly. "Back at that house, you and Cassiopeia talked about Alexander the Great's body. That you know where it is. How's that possible?"

"We've managed to learn a lot on the subject."

"Cassiopeia's friend at the museum in Samarkand?"

"More than a friend, Cotton."

He'd surmised as much. "Who was he?"

"Ely Lund. He grew up here, in Copenhagen. He and my son, Cai, were friends."

Malone caught the sadness when Thorvaldsen mentioned his dead son. His stomach also flip-flopped at the thought of that day two years ago, in Mexico City, when the young man was murdered. Malone had been there, on a Magellan Billet assignment, and brought down the shooters, but a bullet had found him, too. Losing a son. He couldn't imagine Gary, his own fifteen-year-old, dying.

"Whereas Cai wanted to serve in government, Ely loved history. He earned a doctorate and became an expert on Greek antiquity, working in several European museums before ending up in Samarkand. The cultural museum there has a superb collection, and the Central Asian Federation offered encouragements to science and art."

"How did Cassiopeia meet him?"

"I introduced them. Three years ago. Thought it would be good for them both."

He sipped his drink. "What happened?"

"He died. A little less than two months ago. She took it hard."

"She love him?"

Thorvaldsen shrugged. "Hard to say with her. Rarely do her emotions surface."

But they had earlier. Her sadness watching the museum burn. The distant stare out over the canal. Her refusal to meet his gaze. Nothing voiced. Only felt.

When they'd docked the motorboat at Christiangade, Malone had wanted answers, but Thorvaldsen had promised that over dinner all would be explained. So he'd been driven back to Copenhagen, slept a little, then worked in the bookstore the remainder of the day. A couple of times he drifted into the history section and found a few volumes on Alexander and Greece. But mainly he wondered what Thorvaldsen had meant by Cassiopeia needs your help.

Now he was beginning to understand.

Out the open window, across the square, he spotted Cassiopeia leaving his bookshop, dashing through the rain, something wrapped in a plastic bag tucked beneath one arm. Thirty minutes ago he'd given her the key to the store so she could use his computer and phone.

"Finding Alexander's body," Thorvaldsen said, "centers on Ely and the manuscript pages he uncovered. Ely initially asked Cassiopeia to locate the elephant medallions. But when we started to track them down, we discovered someone else was already looking."

"How did Ely connect the medallions to the manuscript?"

"He examined the one in Samarkand and found the microletters. ZH. They have a connection to the manuscript. After Ely died, Cassiopeia wanted to know what was happening."

"So she came to you for help?"

Thorvaldsen nodded. "I couldn't refuse."

He smiled. How many friends would buy an entire museum and duplicate everything inside just so it could burn to the ground?

Cassiopeia disappeared below the windowsill. He heard the cafe's main door below open and close, then footsteps climbing the metal stairway to the second floor.

"You've stayed wet a lot today," Malone said, as she reached the top.

Her hair was pulled into a ponytail, her jeans and pullover shirt splotched with rain. "Hard for a girl to look good."

"Not really."

She threw him a look. "A charmer tonight."

"I have my moments."

She removed his laptop from the plastic bag and said to Thorvaldsen, "I downloaded everything."

"If I'd known you were going to bring it over in the rain," Malone said, "I'd have insisted on a security deposit."

"You need to see this."

"I told him about Ely," Thorvaldsen said.

The dining room was dim and deserted. Malone ate here three or four times a week, always at the same table, near the same hour. He enjoyed the solitude.

Cassiopeia faced him.

"I'm sorry," he said, and meant it.

"I appreciate that."

"I appreciate you saving my ass."

"You would have found a way out. I just sped things up."

He recalled his predicament and wasn't so sure about her conclusion.

He wanted to ask more about Ely Lund, curious as to how he'd managed to crack her emotional vault. Like his own, there were a multitude of locks and alarms. But he kept silent--as always when feelings were unavoidable.

Cassiopeia switched on the laptop and brought several scanned images onto the screen. Words. Ghostly gray, fuzzy in places, and all in Greek.

"About a week after Alexander the Great died, in

BCE," Cassiopeia said, "Egyptian embalmers arrived in Babylon. Though it was summer, hot as hell, they found his corpse uncorrupted, its complexion still lifelike. That was taken as a sign from the gods of Alexander's greatness."

He'd read about that earlier. "Some sign. He was probably still alive, in a terminal coma."

"That's the modern consensus. But that medical state was unknown then. So they went about their task and mummified the body."

He shook his head. "Amazing. The greatest conqueror of his time, killed by embalmers."

Cassiopeia smiled in agreement. "Mummification usually took seventy days, the idea being to dry the body beyond further decay. But with Alexander, they used a different method. He was immersed in white honey."

He knew about honey, a substance that did not rot. Time would crystallize, but never destroy, its basic composition, which could easily be reconstituted with heat.

"The honey," she said, "would have preserved Alexander, inside and out, better than mummification. The body was eventually wrapped in gold cartonnage, then placed into a golden sarcophagus, dressed in robes and a crown, surrounded by more honey. That's where it stayed, in Babylon, for a year, while a gem-encrusted carriage was built. Then a funeral cortege set off from Babylon."

"Which is when the funerary games began," he said.

Cassiopeia nodded. "In a manner of speaking. Perdiccas, one of Alexander's generals, called an emergency meeting of the Companions the day after Alexander died. Roxane, Alexander's Asian wife, was six months pregnant. Perdiccas wanted to wait for the birth then decide what to do. If the child was a boy, he would be the rightful heir. But others balked. They weren't going to have a part-barbarian monarch. They wanted Alexander's half brother, Philip, as their king, though the man was, by all accounts, mentally ill."

Malone recalled the details of what he'd read earlier. Fighting actually broke out around Alexander's deathbed. Perdiccas then called an assembly of Macedonians and, to keep order, placed Alexander's corpse in their midst. The assembly voted to abandon the planned Arabia campaign and approved a division of the empire. Governorships were doled out to the Companions. Rebellion quickly erupted as the generals fought among themselves. In late summer, Roxane gave birth to a boy, christened Alexander IV. To keep the peace, a joint arrangement was conceived whereby the child and Philip, the half brother, were deemed king, though the Companions governed their respective portions of the empire, unconcerned with either.

"What was it," Malone asked, "six years later when the half brother was murdered by Olympias, Alexander's mother? She'd hated that child from birth, since Philip of Macedonia had divorced her to marry the mother. Then, a few years later, Roxane and Alexander IV were both poisoned. None of them ever ruled anything."

"Eventually, Alexander's sister was murdered, too," Thorvaldsen said. "His entire bloodline eradicated. Not a single legitimate heir survived. And the greatest empire in the world crumbled away."