The Looters Read online

  “Madison, darling.”

  “Angela. You look dazzling.” And she did, dammit.

  We gave each other superficial pecks on the cheek.

  My next obstacle was Eric’s assistant, Monica Spencer. I called her Nurse Ratched, from the book and the movie One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest, starring Jack Nicholson and produced by Michael Douglas. Louise Fletcher got an Oscar for playing Ratched, the bitch nurse who took great delight in tormenting patients in the mental institution Ken Kesey had created.

  Frankly, I hated Monica. She was the type of person who would take serious delight if she heard someone had gotten fired for having doctor appointments for Stage 4 cancer.

  “Monica,” I said, showing no warmth in my voice.

  I went out of my way to treat Monica neutrally. I didn’t show my disrespect or kiss up to her. She’d take disrespect as a challenge—and ass kissing as a victory. My own tactic amounted to barely tolerating her, a response that left her confused.

  I was spared further conversation with her because Neal grabbed me and gave me a big hug. “Congratulations, Madison. This is your night.” He acted like he hadn’t seen me in ages. He whispered in my ear, “Let’s get together afterward.”

  I smiled and nodded. Great, another night of passionate abandon with him… and a faked orgasm. And Angela thought she was a good actress.

  As the room filled with distinguished guests, I found myself wishing my parents were here. I missed them a lot. I had no man in my life, no really close friends. People I’d meet would try to socialize with me—guys asking me out for dates, women wanting to get together with me for girl talk—but after I turned them down repeatedly, they would veer off and stop asking. It suddenly dawned on me that I hadn’t been invited to a Halloween party or New Year’s bash for years. Being a workaholic didn’t leave much time for friends.

  I wandered over to look at my crowning achievement. The Mask of Semiramis needed a body, and we gave her one. I had an elegant feminine figure created from clay shipped in from the Babylonian site.

  Baked clay was symbolic of the Middle East: The ingredient of pottery that played a large role in the daily lives of people there for thousands of years, it was used for cooking, serving, and storing foods, as the “canvas” for works of art, the “pages” of the first “books” and accounting tablets the laws of the land were printed on. It even became the building blocks of palaces and walls.

  The clay Semiramis wore her mask as she sat on her golden throne. I had other clay figures with similar masks around her. It was a death scene in which Semiramis was having the heir to the throne murdered because he stood in the way of her own son having the position.

  “Too Hollywoodish,” Eric scoffed when I told him my plan.

  “Exactly,” I said. “People love to be entertained.”

  He also objected to the expense of importing clay from near the Babylon site in Iraq. “Use Silly Putty instead. Much cheaper.”

  Unimaginative little shit. If he had his way, the mask would be sitting in a typical glass case with a little white identification card next to it.

  When everyone we counted as mandatory had arrived, I took my place next to Hiram and Eric and glowed as Hiram made a speech about the history of Queen Semiramis and the mask that had been passed down over the centuries to kings, queens, and conquerors. He didn’t exactly say he had acquired it because of his own kingly status, but he certainly implied it.

  A significant player in the Semiramis acquisition wasn’t present. Sir Henri Lipton, the London art dealer who had guided the piece to auction, wasn’t able to attend. We were preempted by a garden party for the queen, his assistant said.

  A man standing with the Iraqi delegation caught my attention. He frowned at me, almost angrily. I didn’t recognize him, so I assumed he wasn’t someone I had personally offended.

  He still wore his raincoat, and his hair had dried in tangles from the rain outside. Rather odd, since most of the people in the room had arrived by car and checked their coats after entering.

  My inclination was that he was a lower-ranking member of the Iraqi UN delegation, maybe even someone recently arrived who hadn’t shaken off hometown dust yet.

  He suddenly stepped forward and shouted, “It’s stolen!”

  Hiram stopped in midsentence and stared at him.

  We all did. I gaped, wide-eyed.

  He pounded the air with his fist. “Sammu-ramat was looted from the Iraqi museum as American troops entered Baghdad.” He turned to the audience and touched his head. “I was there. I was attacked and almost murdered when I tried to stop the looting.”

  All eyes and cameras were on him as he demanded that the mask be returned to the people of Iraq.

  Hiram and Eric both shouted for security.

  “It’s not true! We have the provenance!” I yelled.

  “American and Iraqi soldiers looted it from the museum!”

  My God—this is insane! I ran toward him waving my arms, flapping them like a seagull running on the beach, as I tried to attract the cameras off of him and onto me. I acted instinctively, a drowning rat clutching for a life raft that keeps slipping away.

  Before security hustled him out of the room, he tossed out handouts with a faded picture of the Semiramis, along with his name and address. I grabbed one of the handouts.

  “Ladies and Gentlemen,” Hiram said, calling the room back to order, “I apologize for the intrusion. The man is obviously a lunatic. As you all know, there have been a number of incidents around the world where crazies have attacked great works of art. Remember the attack on Michelangelo’s David….”

  As Hiram rambled on, I left the stage and quickly ran down the corridor for the front doors.

  The handout said his name was Abdullah ibn Hussein and had a Jamaica Plains address in Queens. He was no doubt a nutcase, some whacked-out Iraqi who wanted everything that came out of the country in the last ten thousand years returned, but I had to make sure myself. I saw all my hard work—my career—being mauled by this crazy old man.

  What had caused my sudden bolt from the room had been the grainy black-and-white picture of the Semiramis in his handout. Printed from an old photograph, it was a bit fuzzy, but one thing shouted to me: The mask was on a worktable.

  That didn’t say much unless you had spent your life around a museum and knew what a restoration workbench looked like.

  Chapter 14

  The rain had picked up from what it had been when I came in earlier. Naturally, I rushed out of the building without a hat or coat. I spotted the intruder a hundred feet up the street and I yelled to him.

  “Mr. ibn Hussein—wait!”

  He waited for me, a forlorn little skinny man with wet hair who needed a haircut and new shoes.

  “I have to talk to you about the mask.”

  “It was stolen. It belongs to my people.”

  “That’s not true. I have a provenance, the paperwork.”

  “Your paperwork is a lie.”

  “Who are you to say such a thing? We’ve had experts—”

  “I was a curator at the Iraqi National Museum. I know the piece; it came to the museum over fifty years ago after the people of my village discovered it. It belongs to the Iraqi museum. It’s part of our cultural history.”

  “We investigated the history of the piece. It was never at the museum.”

  “Look at my papers. Look at the picture.”

  “The picture could have been taken anywhere—and of an imitation of the mask. You can’t tell me that a piece as famous and valuable as this was at the museum. It’s not cataloged; it’s not on the list of items stolen—”

  “Over fifteen thousand pieces were taken, most of them not cataloged. The catalog for those that were inventoried was also stolen. Valuable pieces were deliberately kept out of catalogs to keep Saddam and the tyrants before him from stealing them.” He grabbed my arm. “Listen to me. I spent most of my life at the museum. I was there because my father had died protectin
g Sammu-ramat, and the duty became mine. It was stolen by American soldiers—”

  “Miss Dupre!”

  Nurse Ratched had come up behind me with an umbrella. “Mr. Piedmont wants you back in the museum immediately. The police will take care of this intruder.”

  He backed away, frightened. “You’re all the same. Thieves and robbers.” He spit and spun around, walking away.

  “Wait!” I yelled.

  He quickened his pace and didn’t turn around. He came from a country where the word “police” meant so much more.

  Ratched confronted me. “You shouldn’t get yourself involved with—”

  “Shut the fuck up.”

  It was the first time I had seen her speechless. I ran for cover back into the building and headed for the bathroom to check my outfit and fix my wet hair.

  I leaned on a washbasin and closed my eyes, shutting them tight. How could this be happening to me?

  Could there be two masks? Duplicates? Not likely, unless we had paid over $50 million for a fake.

  What devastated me besides the accusation and the picture in the handout was a feeling that I had heard the simple truth from Abdullah. His claim that the mask had been looted left me breathless.

  Neal was standing nearby when I came out. We spoke in a confidential tone.

  “What’d that guy say?” Neal asked.

  “That the piece was looted.”

  “I heard that. What else? What’s his proof?”

  “He says he was the guardian of it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know; Christ, he said his father was murdered protecting it, then it passed down to him—”

  “The Keeper of the Flame. He’s a wacko.”

  Abdullah did sound like a crazy when I explained him.

  “Don’t worry; you have the provenance.”

  “Yes, I have a provenance.”

  A tiny voice of doubt crept in. I was certain we had a good provenance, I had had it examined for fraud, but right at the moment my whole life depended on a piece of paper.

  “Crazy or not,” I said, “he’s ruined the reception. My God, we’re going to be trashed in the news. I’d better go see Hiram and Eric.”

  As I came in, Angela intercepted me.

  “Put a smile on your face and keep it there. When newspeople ask you if the mask was stolen, look them straight in the eye and tell them that the poor man needs medical assistance.”

  Sound advice. I suppose movie stars spend a lot of time denying accusations.

  “I’m the one in need of medical assistance.”

  I dodged a reporter and made it to Eric. Hiram was busy with a group of collectors.

  I gave Eric a quick summary of what the man had said.

  “Get together the paperwork,” Eric said. “Get me a copy of the entire file. We’ll get it to our lawyers. They can get a restraining order against this madman.”

  I had started to walk away when Eric’s voice caused me to stop.

  “This is bad, very bad, a black eye for the museum. Hiram will not be happy tomorrow. You’d better hope the documentation is as good as you represented to us.”

  I almost reminded him that he had been taking credit for the Semiramis a moment ago but remembered my father’s advice about bosses. Besides, Eric was right—the mask was my project. And I would sink or swim with it.

  Right at the moment I needed a life vest.

  “Don’t answer any questions from anyone, not the newspeople nor the Iraqi delegation. We’ll talk tomorrow. Go out and mingle. Just pretend nothing’s happened.”

  Easy for him to say. The crowd was buzzing about the accusation.

  I put on a happy face and floated around the room, chatting up potential donors, jealous curators, and glad-handing politicians, acting as if nothing had happened, waving away the incident as just some crazy publicity stunt. What I really felt like doing was rushing home and hiding my head under the covers.

  The Piedmonts and Eric departed early. The artificial smiles they gave me as they left didn’t leave me with any warm feelings. It didn’t take much imagination to realize I was in deep trouble.

  Hiram’s parting words to me were that he wanted an explanation of what had happened. I told him I would get back to him in the morning with an answer. After I found out myself.

  Chapter 15

  Abdullah trembled as he hurried away from the two women in front of the museum. He wished he were home in bed. His knees were weak and his stomach in knots. Now his chest was tightening and he felt a stabbing pressure between his shoulder blades.

  He was a simple man, and appearing before “notables” and members of the news media had frightened him. His daughter had warned him… begged him not to do it. “Write a letter to the newspapers,” she pleaded.

  But like his own father, he had great moral courage that kept him from surrendering to his fears. “They won’t listen if they read about it. I have to shout the truth to be heard,” he told her.

  When he had left the apartment earlier he felt tense and fearful—fearing the unknown—as he moved his feet doggedly from the apartment and propelled himself toward the Piedmont.

  The violent image of his father confronting tomb robbers was embedded in his mind.

  Tomb robbers. That was how he thought of the people at the rich and powerful museum. Murderous thieves who stole his country’s heritage to put on display halfway around the world.

  Why didn’t they put their own heritage on display? Why his? Just as they would be devastated if he dismantled the Statue of Liberty and shipped it to Iraq, how would these Americans feel if he dug up George Washington and took him back to Baghdad to be displayed as a dried skeleton in an open coffin? Or put the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in a glass case for Iraqi children to see as their teachers took them to the Baghdad museum?

  After Abdullah had blurted out his accusations and been escorted out of the museum by security, away from the excited questions of the news media, he walked swiftly down the street, blindly, more from nervous energy than anything else. He wasn’t sure where he was going.

  The rain had now turned into a cloudburst, as his America-wise daughter called it. He lacked a hat, and the rain ran down his head and face and soaked his collar. He felt a chill and worried that his malaria was acting up again.

  He slowed down his pace, realizing he was lost. He wasn’t familiar with the area and wasn’t sure which street would take him back to the underground station that he had exited earlier on his way to the museum.

  There were no taxis on the street; there never were when it rained, a phenomenon he heard others complain about but that he never understood. Where did the taxis all disappear to?

  The street he walked on was dark and quiet. A car had just turned on the same street and was moving slowly, almost as if it was looking for something or someone.

  Adrenaline kicked in. There were bad people everywhere, even in nice neighborhoods. Maybe the people in the car were going to rob him and beat him. Maybe kill him.

  He suddenly heard the car speed up. Abdullah started to run. It was a gut impulse. He almost knocked down a person as he rounded the corner.

  The car was almost beside him. He tried not to look at it, keeping his feet in motion and his focus in front of him, planning his next move.

  A familiar voice shouted out from the passenger side window, “Father! Stop! We’ve been trying to find you!”

  Chapter 16

  As soon as the last guests left, I rushed to review the provenance for the mask. Neal had already split earlier, which was fine with me, after I told him I was too bummed out to have sex with him. I’m sure he found somebody else to satisfy him. From looks I saw pass between him and Angela before, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something going.

  I took another look at the man’s handout as I made my way to the museum’s executive suite. Just as he had told me, it stated he was a former curator for the Iraqi museum. The title had diffe
rent meanings in different places, from someone in charge of the collections, as I was at the Piedmont, down to someone who swept the floors.

  Studying the fuzzy, grainy picture again, I didn’t see anything that clearly identified the location of the mask when it was photographed. It sat on a workbench, for sure. But I didn’t see anything that identified where the bench was.

  The fact the picture didn’t clearly infer that the location was the Iraqi museum was critical. Worse than artifacts that were freshly dug up by tomb robbers—pieces with actual dirt on them—were ones stolen from other museums and collectors. Those weren’t dirty metaphorically; they had stripes on them—prison stripes—because they usually could be identified and traced back to the rightful owner.

  Everyone in the art world was familiar with the looting of Iraqi antiquities following the American invasion in 2003. Many thousands of museum pieces had been stolen. No one knew the exact amount, although I’ve seen a figure of 15,000 or more mentioned. In addition, when the police restraints came off and the country turned to chaos as sectarian violence erupted and law and order broke down, thousands of antiquity sites had been invaded by tomb robbers who often inadvertently destroyed as much as they stole.

  At the same time the museum was being looted, priceless and irreplaceable books and manuscripts were being destroyed at the Iraqi National Library as flames devoured thousands of rare pieces.

  The devastation of knowledge and the cultural heritage of both the museum and the library had been compared to the burning of the great Library of Alexandria that came about as a result of the intrigues of Caesar and Cleopatra. By today’s standards, it would be like the destruction of both the Louvre and the Vatican Library.

  As would be expected, the availability of Middle Eastern artifacts shot up after the debacle.

  Certainly I bought some pieces; in fact, the best pieces in the Piedmont collection were acquired by me during the past year, but I always made sure to check the Art Loss Register first. Not that that act alone would fly about missing Iraqi museum pieces. Like everyone else in the business, because of the nature of the losses and the inadequacy of the record keeping at the museum I was well aware that not all of the losses were actually listed in the Register.