Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared, page 17
part #2 of Rarities Unlimited Series
An artist holding the brooch, dreaming the designs, incising the symbols in solid gold. Every stroke a prayer to the gods who ruled sky and lightning and sun-blaze, the burning wheel of life turning and returning, and man so small, so weak, so weary . . .
Risa blew out a breath, shook off the waking dream, and forced herself to concentrate on the here and now.
The artifact was handmade. Definitely. The irregularities were reassuring. They gave the piece a feeling of warmth where so much machine-made jewelry could be cold. The design was classically Celtic—a series of abstract, sinuous lines that “flowered” periodically into a three-part design that evoked bird heads. Throughout the circle of the brooch there were three such flowerings with three “leaves” each, and the second of each of the three leaves was intricately enameled in red glass. A zigzag of raised gold separated the enameled from the plain gold in a design that suggested both a wheel and an eye. The bird head on either side of the enameled design had a smaller version of the complex, three-part design cut into the metal itself.
The long, tapering pin was decorated with the same design. Somehow the artist had managed to adjust the design so that the proportions remained balanced along the narrowing length of the fastening itself, all the way down to a point that was still keen enough to penetrate cloth. The complexity was staggering, as was the skill. The ancient artist had had only his own eyes and prayers, yet a modern curator needed a microscope to appreciate his work.
The sound of Shane’s dainty Turkish coffee cup being returned to its equally dainty saucer told Risa that she had been quiet long enough.
“Yes,” she said blandly without looking up, “a rather nice bit of jewelry. It’s in excellent condition. Rather too excellent for my comfort. Most items that have been around since the sixth or seventh century a.d. show more wear. A lot more.”
“Not if they have been someone’s prized possession,” Smith-White said smoothly. “Think of the pope’s ritual items, sacred symbols in gold lovingly stored and passed from generation to generation, used only on occasions of highest ceremony.”
Then how did they end up in your hands? Risa asked silently, sardonically. Doubtless Shane was thinking the same thing. Problem was, he didn’t care as much about provenance as she did.
Saying nothing, Risa took another long look at the brooch. She made sure when she finally swung the lamp away that she gave the security camera a good, unimpaired view of the piece. She had a mountain of research to do and damned little time to do it in.
She would have given a lot for the database at Rarities Unlimited.
Casually she turned the brooch over to give the camera a shot at the other side—also beautifully incised—before she picked up the gold and returned it to Smith-White.
He put the brooch in its velvet-lined tray, then left it on the coffee table for Shane to admire and, hopefully, desire enough to pay half a million dollars for. Minimum. Deliberately Smith-White refilled his tiny coffee cup and sip-sucked noisily in the approved Turkish manner until only the grittiest dregs remained in the cup.
The guard shifted to his other hip.
Risa waited and thought again about ruining her manicure on Smith-White. She glanced at her watch.
So did Shane.
Smith-White took the hint. He reached into the aluminum carrying case again.
“This is another nice bit,” he said. “It’s a votive offering presented to a very, very powerful Druid or made at his behest for an important religious ceremony. My guess would be winter solstice, when those poor shivering bastards prayed for the sun to return on its appointed rounds.”
He didn’t wait for Shane to ask for the object. He simply held out the stylized horse figurine in its velvet-lined tray. Shane picked up the figurine, then almost dropped it at the jolt of energy that sizzled through his hand.
“The weight of gold is always surprising, isn’t it?” Smith-White said with a satisfied smile.
Risa knew it was more than that. Shane had handled enough gold that its heft didn’t take him by surprise.
But something certainly had.
When Shane glanced from the horse to her, she knew he would be buying it along with the brooch.
Bloody hell, as Niall would say.
With rapidly failing patience, Risa waited for Shane to pass the object over for her to inspect. Instead of simply giving it to her, he slid one hand under hers before he put the object in her palm with the other. She didn’t know which shocked her more—the heat of his hand or the bolt of sensation that went through her when the horse met her palm. She did know one thing: if he hadn’t been bracing her hand, she would have dropped the priceless figurine.
A look at the infinite green of his eyes told her that he knew it, too.
“Thank you,” she said in a husky voice.
His smile said that it had been his pleasure.
Without a word she got up and stalked over to her worktable. She held on to the horse with both hands the whole way. The original burning sensation had subsided, but the tingling of her palm went clear to the back of her eyes.
It was Wales all over again.
Dizziness like dark lightning, the soundless cries of people long dead worshipping gods who had also died . . .
Ruthlessly she crushed the thought and the sense of time swirling around her in a silent storm. Letting out a breath, she focused the microscope on the horse.
Like the brooch, the horse was handmade, probably cast through the lost-wax technique, incised with symbols, and undoubtedly Celtic. Unlike the brooch, it was of very early Celtic design, rather than late. The decorations didn’t cover the available surface. Instead, they were concentrated along the barrel of the horse. The major symbol was the wheel of the sun inscribed on both sleek sides of the figurine. Each wheel had three equally spaced smaller wheels etched around its rim. In place of hooves a sun wheel grew at the base of each leg. The effect was both elegant and powerful. Whoever had created the figurine had been an extraordinary artist as well as a skilled craftsman.
He had also lived at least four hundred years before Christ and had been influenced by the culture archaeologists called La Tène, after the site where this particular style of art was first found and studied. The wheels/hooves owed more to a time two hundred years earlier, called Hallstatt after a different archaeological site.
She made sure the hidden, overhead camera had a clear view before she walked back to the waiting men.
“Remarkable” was all she said as she set the horse in its velvet-lined tray. “There’s almost no blurring of the incised design after twenty-five hundred years. It might have been made yesterday.”
She only wished she could believe that it had. A fraud would have been easy to dismiss. But she was very much afraid that the artifact was as real as it was powerful.
“Next?” she asked flippantly.
Smith-White frowned. He had heard that Shane’s curator could be difficult, but this was the first time he’d encountered it personally. Saying nothing, he pulled a third artifact from the aluminum box.
“Another votive figurine,” he said to Shane. “Excellent condition.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Risa asked no one in particular.
Shane cut her a sideways look out of stone green eyes before he took the figurine. This time he was prepared for the searing jolt of recognition and power. His hand didn’t so much as quiver. Even as he admired the astounding complexity of the designs incised on the obviously potent stag, he passed the gold over to Risa. The challenging look in her eyes told him that if he braced her hand again she would dump the artifact in his lap. Smiling slightly, he placed the stag on her palm.
Other than a subtle jerk that only he noticed, she appeared to have no reaction. But the flare of her pupils told him that she had recognized the artifact on some primal level, just as he had.
That realization was as staggering as the densely inscribed designs on the figurine.
She dreamed.
She recognized.
And she was running from it as fast as she could.
Silently he vowed to find out why.
Risa put the stag under the microscope. When the artifact came into focus, she didn’t know whether to celebrate the extraordinary beauty that lay on her palm or to put her head on the table and weep for all that had been lost to time and could never be known again.
“Celtic,” she said huskily. “At least fourth or fifth century a.d. I’m looking at the beginning of the golden age of Celtic art, which culminated in the illuminations of the Book of Kells. The style of designs on this stag are closer to those of the Lindisfarne Gospels, at the beginning of the flowering of the illuminator’s art. It would be the work of a lifetime to decipher the complexities and interconnections of the symbolism on this figurine. And even after that lifetime I would enjoy only a fraction of the understanding, of the sheer emotional and intellectual impact, that someone from that time and place would experience in the stag’s presence. The context has been lost. So much . . . lost.”
Smith-White heard the reverence in Risa’s voice and wondered if he hadn’t made a mistake by showing the stag third instead of last. To him, the armband had been the most spectacular of the lot, which was why he had chosen to show it last. The stag was a nice piece, indeed very fine, but the designs were so intricate that they were dizzying to the modern eye. As far as he was concerned, the armband was much more imposing.
It remained to be seen if Shane’s curator would agree.
After positioning the stag for the ceiling camera, Risa reluctantly returned it to Smith-White.
“Again,” she said to Shane, “I have to point out how unlikely it is that gold work that detailed would retain its crispness through so many centuries.”
“Noted,” he said.
Before that line of discussion could continue, Smith-White pulled out the fourth and final artifact. “This is, quite simply, spectacular.”
Risa wanted to argue, but there was no point.
The piece was incredible.
Shane mentally braced himself to take the armlet. The jolt came hard and deep, then eased. He had felt other instants of recognition with other artifacts, but nothing to match this; it was like grabbing a bare electrical wire.
He stood and walked over to Risa, putting himself between her and Smith-White’s shrewd gray eyes.
“Brace yourself,” he said too softly for the other man to hear.
Warily she took the armlet. A flash of heat, a whirl of time, a rush of light-headedness, and then the present settled into its accustomed place.
Except that the look on Shane’s face told her it had taken her longer to come back than the few seconds of disorientation she remembered experiencing.
She didn’t object when he came with her to the worktable. She put the armband under the microscope and willed herself not to be drawn into its sinuous, potent designs. She told herself she was successful.
The gooseflesh rippling up her arms told her she was lying.
Designed for either muscular biceps or a very thin neck, the heavy gold band was perhaps three fingers wide and incised in such a way that light flowed over it as though the gold was constantly shifting, breathing, alive. Without magnification, the background designs had suggested the symmetrical basket-style decoration of the Snettisham hoard, but what caught the eye—and the breath—was the face that stared out at her through the mists of time.
Almond-shaped eyes of blue enamel and jet pupils, eyes that were empty yet all-seeing in an eerie way. High brow fit to wear a crown. Thin shadow line for a nose, no mouth. The face—or perhaps it was a skull—dominated the dense designs it sprang from. The designs themselves were highly abstract, interlaced lines symbolizing geese. A thick-beaked raven bracketed either side of the head/skull.
Raven of death, immortal geese, and man caught between, living through death to eternity.
She would have sworn she hadn’t spoken aloud, but beside her Shane said, “Yes.”
Risa grimly shook off the spell of the art. When she spoke, her tone was neutral. “The artist who created this was aware of every style from Hallstatt through all variations of La Tène and prefigured the avoidance of empty space in a design that became the hallmark of Celtic work as seen in the Book of Kells.”
“Are you saying he was alive in the ninth century a.d.?” Shane asked.
“Or she. I simply use the masculine form for convenience.” Risa made a swift movement of her hand before he could say anything more. “To answer your question, I would have to compare many artifacts, particularly ones that had been found in situ. Otherwise, dating is rather arbitrarily decided upon stylistic details. Unfortunately, styles remain static in one geographic area of the Celtic civilization and surge forward in another, which leads to all kinds of assumptions about age and source of a given artifact that are little more than educated guesses. Highly educated, granted, but still guesses.”
“Could this be sixth century?”
“Are you going to buy it?” she asked very softly.
“What do you think?”
“I think we should talk about provenance.”
“We’ll get to that.”
“Before or after the sale?” she shot back in a furious undertone.
He didn’t answer.
Rather bitterly she turned back to look at the gleaming armband that should have been malevolent but was simply, deeply powerful. Staring at it, she wondered why Shane bothered to pay her at all. Half the time he ignored her. The other half they fought like hell on fire.
The longer everyone avoided the subject of provenance, the more certain she was that she and her boss were about to have their last battle. There was absolutely no way in heaven or hell that these artifacts weren’t stolen. The only question was when and where.
And how many had died along the way.
Chapter 28
Las Vegas
November 3
Early afternoon
The silence in Miranda Seton’s house was thick enough to walk on. That was what Cherelle was doing, pacing back and forth, back and forth, living room to kitchen, kitchen to living room, a tense ghost wearing lime green silk.
Tim should have been back by now. If he was coming back.
If you don’t get that armband, don’t come back. Ever.
She had meant it then. She meant it now. But she really wanted that armband. The more she thought about giving away any part of the gold, the more she was afraid that there wouldn’t be enough left to get her where she wanted to be in life.
She didn’t know exactly where that was, but she knew it sure as hell wasn’t here.
Even dressed in a frayed leopard-patterned tunic over tights and ballet slippers, Miranda Seton was adept at fading into whatever room Cherelle wasn’t occupying. Bit by bit, a few moments at a time, Miranda had managed to do two things since the men left. The first was to put the living room back together. The second was to sip at a teapot full of vodka until the world took on its customary reassuring haze.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough vodka in all of Las Vegas for Tim’s mother to feel good about sharing space with her son’s grim, hard-bitten girlfriend, so Miranda just did her best to be invisible. After a lifetime of practice, she was good at it.
But it annoyed the hell out of her the way Cherelle scattered her things around like some kind of princess born to be waited on. Car keys, lipstick, a comb, a scarf, shoes, mascara brush, crumpled paper towels she had used for napkins, and God knows what else. It was a wonder the silly bitch ever found anything again unless someone followed her around picking up after her.
Finding herself back in the kitchen, Miranda took a healthy hit directly from the teapot spout. As she put the chicken-shaped pot down, she spotted yet another piece of Cherelle’s life scattered on the counter just behind the place where the teapot’s “nest” usually was. There was a wad of tissues there, too, as though Cherelle had been pawing through her huge new backpack/purse looking for something, throwing things right and left in her hurry to get to the bottom of the soft leather bag.
With the vodka streaking courage through her veins, Miranda grabbed the plastic room key and tissues and hurried out to the living room. She nearly ran into Cherelle when the girl turned around with a cat-quickness that startled Miranda. She was used to life lived at a slow and dreamy pace.
“What,” Cherelle snapped, a demand rather than a question.
“I’m tired of picking up your stuff, that’s what.” Miranda held out the evidence. “Look what I found in the kitchen.”
A swipe of Cherelle’s hand sent the electronically coded plastic rectangle and the crushed tissues flying over the back of the couch. The wadded tissues wedged between the wall and the top of the couch. The key kept going to the floor.
“That was dumb,” Miranda said. “How you going to get into your fancy hotel room now? You damn well aren’t staying here.”
“I’ll get there just like I did before, in the employee door by the east parking lot, turn left, employee elevator, fourteenth floor, turn right, six doors down on the right.”
The biting singsong mockery of Cherelle’s voice etched itself on Miranda’s brain. Just like that other voice, the sneering insults that even vodka couldn’t dim, Tim’s father telling her just how worthless she was. Now there would be more words to remember, more echoes of her own uselessness.
“Oh, aren’t we just soooo smart,” Miranda said with false awe. “Too bad it won’t do you any good without the key.”
Before Cherelle had a chance to tell Miranda just where she could shove the key she was so worried about, both women heard the bubbling, farting exhaust of Socks’s purple car pulling up along the curb in front of the house. As one, the two women rushed to the front door. Because Cherelle was bigger and quicker, she got there first and flung the door open.
Socks levered himself out of his low-slung car and swaggered up the walkway to the small house.
Tim was nowhere in sight.
