“I handled it,” I told her.
I pulled out my phone and opened the Menopaws app which Minka had updated with a tracker. I watched the little dot that represented Natalie making its way back to the house, moving fast. In spite of Galina’s best efforts, the four of us had survived. I turned my face to the rising sun and smiled. We’d come out of a gunfight alive, we had kept Wolfie from getting killed, and for now the adrenaline was keeping all the aches and pains at bay. It was a good morning to be alive.
Chapter Twenty-Two
New York, 1994
“Ladies, thank you for beingso prompt. I am Marilyn Carstairs, Provenance.” The speaker stops to take a drink of water, spilling a little as she sets the glass down. She blots the tiny puddle with a tissue from her pocket and clears her throat.
“You don’t have to be nervous,” Helen tells her kindly.
Marilyn darts her gaze around the table at the foursome assembled for the meeting. “I’ve never met anyone in Exhibitions before. Actually, this is the first time I’ve done a briefing in person. Usually we just send the dossiers by courier,” she admits. She doesn’t want to say that she is nervous in a room with four killers, but she doesn’t need to. Like all predators, they can smell fear.
“We don’t bite,” Natalie says. “Unless it’s called for.” She grins, baring her teeth at the hapless woman from Provenance.
“Knock it off, Nat,” Billie says, but there’s no heat to it.“Marilyn? Why don’t you just tell us why we’re here.” She tries to be encouraging, but there’s an edge to her voice, an edge that says she’d rather be somewhere else. In-person briefings are rare for the Museum, reserved for extremely high-profile or complicated hits. And it’s been years since she worked with the others. They’ve been given assignments around the world, usually solo, sometimes in a group, but not all together, and Billie has been surprised to arrive at the meeting and find the others already in attendance.
There had been no inkling of a reunion, just a postcard of the Empire State Building. A coded message scribbled in pencil gave the exact address and time, but no further information. Her plane ticket had been waiting at the airport counter, a car had collected her at the other end. The Acquisitions agent behind the wheel had driven her straight to the rendezvous on 70th, a block away from the Explorers Club. The brownstone is unremarkable except for the security system which is as discreet as it is comprehensive. The door opens before she can knock, and another Acquisitions agent shows her to the meeting room. Billie sees several closed doors on the way, and behind them all is the hushed murmur of contained power. The air smells like wax and wood fires and burnt coffee.
She is shown in, the last of the four to arrive, and after a round of greetings, they are seated at a table stacked with folders. The files are dark blue, each marked with a seal in gold, falling stars surrounded by an elegantly lettered phrase. Fiat justitia ruat caelum, the motto of the Museum.Let justice be done though the heavens fall.Sitting on the far side of thetable is a woman in beige. It’s not just her clothes. Her skin, her hair, her very aura is beige. The pin in her lapel is a ladybug, the only sign of personality in her appearance. But when she spills the water during her introduction, Billie understands she is afraid of the killers in the room. Provenance agents are information people, gathering facts from resources all over the world, harvesting data and stockpiling it, carefully sorting and arranging until the patterns emerge. From those patterns, targets are identified for either recruitment or assassination. Marilyn Carstairs doesn’t know it, but they find her just as alarming as she finds them.
She clears her throat again and starts over, her voice a little firmer.
“I am here to brief you on your next assignment. I have prepared a set of files for each of you,” she adds, nodding towards the pile of folders in front of them. They reach for the top one on each stack. Inside is a photograph of a man in his forties, good-looking but not ostentatiously so. He is almost smiling at the camera, one side of his mouth quirked up into a lopsided attempt at a grin. He is dressed in khaki and holding a small Egyptian figurine. It is made of alabaster and wearing a solemn expression that the man seems to be gently mocking.
As they study their files, Marilyn pulls down a white screen and turns on a slide projector. She fumbles with a remote until an image beams onto the screen, the same photograph of the man in khaki.
“This is Fermín Bosque,” Marilyn tells them.
The name means nothing to them. Bosque is not famousor even infamous. He is simply the latest link in a chain that stretches back fifty years—a link which must be broken.
Natalie focuses on the artifact in his hands. “Is that a funerary figure?”
Traditionally, royal Egyptian tombs are crammed with the little statues. They represent those who would serve their masters in the afterlife, ensuring all comforts would be present, all needs met. Originals in good condition are rare and costly; cheap reproductions flood the tourist market. They make for handy souvenirs—tiny, wide-eyed figures that will go on to collect dust on suburban bookshelves for decades to come.
“Ushabti, actually,” Marilyn says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Late Twenty-First Dynasty. And authentic, although the gentleman in question went to great lengths to pretend otherwise.”
“Wait,” Mary Alice says, holding up a hand. “This guy wanted people to think an original artifact was fake? Isn’t it usually the other way around?”
“Not in this case,” Marilyn says. “Egypt has strict laws about exporting authentic items. So this gentleman disguises real artifacts as cheap reproductions in order to get them past Customs. The paperwork that establishes the provenance always travels separately so as not to tip off the authorities that he’s illegally shipping artifacts out of the country.”
“How does he disguise them?” Billie asks.
Marilyn explains, speaking more quickly, with more animation in her voice as she grows comfortable with her audience. “A variety of ways, depending upon the items. Theymight be painted over, dipped in plastic, covered in plaster of paris. Once he has them safely back in his workshop in England, he removes the disguises and restores them to their original condition.”
“That’s a hell of a risk,” Natalie says. “Egyptian antiquities aren’t exactly sturdy stuff. He could easily ruin a valuable piece.”
“That is a risk he’s apparently willing to take,” Marilyn replies. “After restoration, the pieces are sold to collectors, complete with the authentic Egyptian provenance. And if, for whatever reason, he cannot supply an authentic provenance, he isn’t above faking one.” She runs through the next few slides. There are more photographs, a few of a cluttered workshop, one of a happy collector posing with a newly acquired mummy mask.
After they’ve studied the picture for a moment, Marilyn switches to a fresh slide, this one with biographical data including the target’s name.
“You said his workshop is in England. Fermín Bosque doesn’t sound English,” Billie remarks.
“German by way of Argentina,” Marilyn explains.
Mary Alice looks up with a grin. “I smell a Nazi.”
“Your instincts are correct, Miss Tuttle. Fermín Bosque is the grandson of Albrecht Danner.” The next slide is black-and-white, taken at some sort of party function. Hanging in the background are wide banners marked with swastikas. In front of the banners is a small group, and in the center of that group is a familiar figure with a narrow toothbrush mustache and untidy hair. “Danner is standing to Hitler’s right,” sheexplains, pointing out the taller, slimmer man with a matching mustache. On the other side of the Führer is the unmistakable bulk of Hermann Göring. At the edge of the photograph are easels, each set with a painting in a heavy gilded frame.