The Looters Read online

  “Didn’t you tell me that Sammu-ramat brings bad luck?”

  He waved away her concerns without looking at her, his attention drawn to a news story about the sale at auction being repeated. A reporter was interviewing the Piedmont Museum curator, Madison Dupre, and Abdullah wanted to hear it.

  “You said she brought bad luck.”

  “Shhh. A tale to frighten children.”

  “I don’t think so. Your father was murdered after he possessed it. The museum he gave it to was looted. You were nearly killed and forced to flee. You told me that Sammu-ramat killed her own husband and lovers. I wonder, Father,” a look of concern in her eyes now, “whether you should continue—”

  He slapped his hands and jumped up and down on the edge of the couch.

  “Aha! I have them; I have them. This time I have them for certain. The mask they call Semiramis is the mask that was stolen from the museum.” He stood and beamed at his daughter. “I have the proof.”

  Asima didn’t respond. Her attention was drawn to the mask being shown on the news program. She had expected the mask to have the features of a beautiful woman. But the facial features went beyond beauty, conveying instead something darker and more sinister.

  “Allah be merciful! She’s evil!”

  EMERGENCY RED LIST OF IRAQI ANTIQUITIES AT RISK

  The International Council of Museums (ICOM) announces the official publication of its Emergency Red List of Iraqi Antiquities at Risk, describing types of objects especially at risk or likely to have been stolen from Iraq….

  Cultural heritage in Iraq has suffered seriously as a result of war. Many objects have been looted and stolen from museums and archaeological sites and risk appearing on the market through illicit trafficking.

  Although the Iraq museum in Baghdad is not the only place that has suffered, it is certainly by far the most important institution. The museum has been looted and is missing a great part of its former collection.

  The Iraq museum is a national archaeological museum that serves as the repository for all artifacts from excavations in Iraq. It contains hundreds of thousands of objects covering 10,000 years of human civilization, representing many different cultures and styles.

  The bulk of the collection dates between 8000 B.C. and A.D. 1800, and comprises objects made of clay, stone, pottery, metal, bone, ivory, cloth, paper, glass, and wood.

  Chapter 7

  Manhattan

  After I completed the arrangements for delivery of the Semiramis, I made my way to Neal’s office. I wasn’t interested in the other lots still left to be auctioned. I already had what I wanted. I knew Neal was going to mingle a bit after the auction before he returned to his office. He would still be on a high from nervous energy.

  I was on my own high. I had finally managed to find the centerpiece for the museum. Hiram was thrilled, even though he was out $55 million. A drop in the bucket to him. The ultrarich didn’t worry about spending an outrageous sum of money for something they had to have.

  Hiram would give me a nice bonus. I certainly deserved it. But I had to check whether white crocodiles were an endangered species. And the balance on my black American Express card. If I wasn’t careful, I’d miss a payment and my card would become an endangered species.

  Aaak! I took deep breaths and paced the office, ready to soar up to the sixteen-foot ceiling with nervous energy. I could scream for joy. My God, I’ve done it.

  I thought about the past year that I had been working at the Piedmont Museum. I had worked hard and put in long hours to bring in the right pieces for the museum. The pressure was intense at times, but I was determined not to go out that “revolving door” like the other curators.

  A tough business, but I had kicked ass! You had to be one step ahead of the game because other people were looking for the same things, and the more money you had to spend, the more control you had. Of course it helped to know the right people who would help you acquire what you wanted. Like Neal. That’s how I looked at it. Maybe it was unscrupulous, but it was a fact of life in the art world.

  In the end all that mattered was getting something no one else had.

  I had soared so high, my brain felt breathless. I collapsed in the leather chair in front of Neal’s desk and leaned back my head.

  Driven, that’s what I had been, what had brought me to this moment. You went after it no matter what the cost. I suppose indirectly it was something I had picked up from my parents. Their mistake was not going after what they wanted in life but just dreaming about it. They weren’t really unhappy. I just think secretly they wished things had turned out differently.

  I didn’t want that to happen to me.

  My mother dreamed of being a dancer and ended up being a homemaker and librarian. Most women would think that’s great. My father ended up as an instructor in art history at a small community college in Ohio and never completed his education to get his Ph.D. Teaching community college, like being a librarian, was an occupation that transcended merely working for a living because it had elements of the arts and public service attached.

  Sadly, for him, what my father really wanted was to be Indiana Jones and do archaeological digs in places like Egypt, Hellenistic Turkey, and Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Wouldn’t we all like to be Indie? But a bad leg barely allowed my father to hobble around Native American sites. His lone claim to fame was mentioned in a National Enquirer story when he “investigated” the New Mexico Roswell site for alien presence. I was a freshman in high school at the time, and kids were merciless with their jokes.

  My parents were the epitome of Henry David Thoreau’s contention that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” Quiet desperation. Providing for a family when you’d rather be onstage or on a dig. They were killed in a car accident soon after I graduated from college. I miss them both.

  They nurtured me and loved me, but I always sensed in them a little disappointment about the road they took in life. I heard a song on an oldies radio station that reminded me of my parents’ attitudes: In Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” each time the narrator experienced something new in life and when she had her first love affair she expressed her disappointment by asking if that was all there was to it, concluding, “If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing.”

  The message I drew from the song was that the woman saw life fatalistically—that she had no control over the world. Instead, her role in the world around her was predestined by fate. And that was my parents’ attitudes: They wanted something different but took what the gods doled out… and ending up wishing they had taken a different path.

  A driving force that I recognized in myself was a reaction to my parents’ fatalistic sense of defeat… a fear of ending up with a wish list on my deathbed. And that I had inherited the fear as a genetic defect.

  That’s why I just kept dancing.

  ***

  I wasn’t sure what time it was when I felt Neal’s lips nuzzling at my neck. His breath smelled of alcohol. He had a bottle of champagne and two glasses with him.

  “Hey, wake up, sleepyhead.”

  “I guess I dozed off. What time is it?”

  “Late. Sorry. I saw an opportunity to drum up some business for the auction house and I couldn’t pass on it. Ben Raygun, the cable billionaire, died, you know. I was talking to the widow. She needs to unload some things. You know how it is. Forgive me?”

  His job entailed not only bringing down the gavel at the auction house but also bringing in business. Finding ways to bring in collections for the auction house was always a challenge. It always came down to knowing the right people at the right time, both when they were alive… and especially when they died. Nothing warmed the cockles of an auctioneer’s heart more than a big estate sale of art to pay death taxes.

  “Sure, I understand. Business first, pleasure later.”

  “Let’s have a toast.” Neal filled our glasses with champagne. “Here’s to finding your masterpiece… and my making
millions… so to speak.”

  Neal downed his drink quickly.

  “You looked pretty calm up there tonight,” I said.

  “I actually felt good. It’s not easy looking cool and calm when you have to make the company’s payroll for the next few months in just a few minutes. Hey—for a moment there, I thought your friend Hamad was going to outbid you.”

  “He’s not my friend,” I said with a testy voice.

  “Oh, a little touchy, are we?”

  “I don’t like that man.”

  “He’s superrich.”

  “Not interested.”

  “Handsome.”

  “Not interested. He confuses women with camels. What I am interested in is eating. Let’s go and talk about your making millions.”

  I started to get up, but Neal put his hand over my breast. “How about a quick fuck before we eat? I’m horny as hell. Feel me.” He took my hand and put it on his hard crotch.

  I wasn’t in the mood for a session of heavy sex, either. “I can fix that real quick.”

  “That’s what I like about you. You know how to please a man.”

  I unzipped his pants and started massaging his penis in a steady rhythm while I French-kissed him. It didn’t take him long to explode in my hands.

  “Okay, let’s go now. I’m starving.”

  Chapter 8

  Hiram had planned a social gathering for the following evening to celebrate his newest addition to the museum. After passing through ground-floor security that a president would have felt safe having, I took the elevator up to Hiram’s penthouse. A private elevator, of course. Hiram had the top three floors of a thirty-two-story building.

  This was the first time I had been invited to the penthouse. I considered it a signal that I had arrived, transcending from a mere employee—a member of the great unwashed masses—to part of the executive inner circle. Like getting the proverbial key to the executives’ washroom.

  I smothered an excited giggle at the thought.

  According to Neal, the penthouse was ritzy. I figured it would be something out of Architectural Digest. What Hiram lacked in taste he made up for in money to buy the best. If I had his big bucks, I’d probably surround myself with luxurious things, too. Being superrich was never going to happen to me, not unless I married it, but I was curious about how the anointed ones lived.

  I stepped off the elevator into the reception area and into the arms of two more security guards. Only these two were in tuxedos. The foyer was capacious, with walls of pale green Italian marble and an enormous rug portraying the cosmic sea called Varu-Karta from ancient Persian cosmography. Eric told me the rug once belonged to the Shah of Iran.

  I identified myself, and a security guard relayed news of my presence to another person standing at the double doors to the penthouse.

  “Good evening, Ms. Dupre,” the greeter said, opening the door for me. I noticed a mike on his lapel. My name was being transmitted inside.

  An image of servants shouting the entrance of a guest into a great hall in Shakespearean times popped into my head and I almost giggled again. Actually, I was so excited when I was getting dressed for this evening that I had opened a bottle of champagne and sipped a glass as I soaked in my spa-tub. I might have had more than one glass, because I was feeling a little light-headed.

  I stepped through the double doors into the living space and was welcomed by Hiram’s wife.

  “Madison, darling, come in, I’m so glad you’re here; this is as much your night as the rest of us.”

  She gave me a friendly cheek-to-cheek greeting on each cheek, Hollywood style.

  I wanted to ask her who “the rest of us” were who deserved credit, other than Hiram for spending thirty seconds writing a check, but I just smiled and told her how beautiful she looked. Rich bitch that she was, her outfit was gorgeous. “I love your outfit.”

  She wore a couture beaded white evening dress that complemented her golden tanned skin. Around her neck was an elaborate twenty-four-stone drop emerald necklace and matching earrings. No doubt worth millions, I quickly calculated in my head. I couldn’t help but notice her sparkling diamond ring on her left hand that almost blinded me when I approached.

  I hadn’t seen her in a couple of months and she looked like she had taken off years…. I was sure a surgeon’s knife had a lot to do with it. The perfectly white teeth she flashed were also the best smile money could buy.

  Yes, I was petty and spiteful when it came to Hiram’s wife. Besides being abundantly endowed with the beauty, grace, and charm that I had been so meagerly rationed with, she had married billions. And not once did she have to use her teeny-weenie little brain for anything.

  Prior to being Mrs. Hiram Piedmont III, she was Angela St. John, a not-too-famous actress in Hollywood.

  Hiram had met her in Beverly Hills buying a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes, and it had been love at first sight as soon as Angela found out he was a billionaire.

  That was nearly five years ago, when Angela was an actress pushing forty, a sin in Hollywood, where the only admired feminine attribute over forty was a bustline. She had been mostly a pretty showpiece in movies, often cast as the Other Woman, and that fit her personality nicely. She had a bitchy quality about her, part of that unique substance called charisma that movie stars must possess.

  Her acting was not uncommonly described as unintentionally funny.

  Okay, that wasn’t really true, but I still didn’t like the woman, though sometimes I wondered if I was being unjust. Maybe it was harder than I thought to be rich and beautiful and brainless.

  Neal said there was a five-year qualifier in Angela’s prenup with Hiram: If they stayed married five years and a day, she would get full spousal rights as opposed to what she would get from the prenuptial contract. They were fast approaching that magic date, and bets were being placed as to whether Hiram would file for divorce because she would get a bigger piece of him if he didn’t.

  I had my money on Angela. She was an attractive woman and no matter what I personally thought of her—in my old-fashioned, small-town mentality, a woman who married for money was a high-class whore—there was no denying that she was an appealing woman.

  Once she found out I wasn’t after her husband, she tolerated me well. Fortunately, antiquities and museums and anything else that required thinking bored her, except when it brought camera crews.

  While I found Hiram the Third uninteresting, I had to admit it wouldn’t be above me to take my turn on a casting-room couch for a chance to catch a billionaire. I know what that makes me, but as long as I was an expensive one, it didn’t bother my conscience at all. Simply marrying for money was a sin, but God would be forgiving if you married a whole lot of money.

  Besides, I was curious about what it would be like to have a disposable marriage where one simply trashed it and moved on….

  Hiram, of course, had no difficulty attracting beautiful women. He was on his third marriage and probably had at least one more in him. And I’m sure he didn’t fool himself into thinking that women were attracted to anything but his money.

  Angela touched the emerald earring on her right ear and excused herself. “Eric’s been looking for you. Some business matter, he said. Go get yourself a drink first,” she said, as if reading my mind.

  The earring obviously hid the receiver signaling an arriving guest.

  She flew off, leaving a whiff of perfume in her wake. I recognized the scent. Chanel No. 5. It had a distinctive smell that was hard to describe, a scent that had been around for decades, since the 1920s, in fact, and still retained its classy appeal. Personally, I preferred a more earthy, musky scent.

  I spotted Eric as I made my way across the wide-open room. The cavernous space was too big, bare, and open for a living room. Its only purpose was for parties, so I supposed it was the modern penthouse version of a stately old mansion’s ballroom.

  Eric was at the bar getting a drink. Even though the room was filled with people, it didn’t fee
l at all crowded. But like the auction house, the place smelled of money… magazine-quality interior design and furnishings and deep-pocket guests.

  Marble was everywhere—walls, floors, and pillars—along with an intricately coffered ceiling. Splattered around the room were old master paintings and sculptures that contrasted with a modern high-gloss black grand piano. Nothing hanging on the walls was worth less than a million.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised that the art style lent itself toward European paintings rather than antiquities. Hiram had no interest in either style, leaving the penthouse art collection up to his personal art curator and the museum’s Mesopotamian character in the hands of hired help like me.

  I walked by floor-to-ceiling windows that gave a stunning view outside. Neal mentioned the master bedroom level at the top of the building was surrounded by a terrace that captured a 360-degree view of the city.

  An eclectic mix of people was in the room. As I moved by the guests, I acknowledged those I knew. Along with Hiram’s superrich friends were the cream of the nation’s art scene, gallery owners and superrich collectors.

  Most of the people in the room were there to tell Hiram what a terrific addition he had made to the museum. In other words, to admire him. Only a couple of museum curators were there. Hiram obviously preferred to rub shoulders with money rather than knowledge.

  Even though I knew I looked good, I still felt underdressed in my simple but elegant dress compared to the haute couture—dressed people in the room. Should I have worn something more ostentatious? A line from the movie Working Girl suddenly popped into my mind, something about if a woman wore cheap clothes, people noticed the clothes, but if she wore expensive clothes, they noticed the woman.

  I wondered if people were staring at my clothes… or me. Why should I care anyway? That was my father’s practical voice. But the truth was, I guess a part of me did care.

  On my way over to the bar, I talked briefly to a couple of gallery owners whom I knew. Eric’s back was to me, so he hadn’t seen me yet.