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  She found Elias seated at his desk, wearing glasses that magnified his eyes to the point of absurdity. The sight of him forced her to smile, and she was glad she’d come.

  He seemed genuinely surprised to see her. She’d caught him wrapping a fist-sized object in newspaper and tucking it into a drawer. “What are you working on?” she asked as she sat in one if the chairs in front of his desk.

  “Nothing worth the time it would take to look at.”

  “Tio,” she began, still considering how best to approach him, “I’m hoping you can help.” She stammered slightly as she continued, “Khara wants to sell a few pieces of jewelry to fund her trip back to Egypt.”

  Elias sat back in his chair, lacing his hands together behind his head. He seemed to take pleasure in this paternal opportunity. “That could be a bit of a quandary, no? According to your theory, anything in her possession is already thousands of years old. Please tell me you’ve come up with something more plausible.”

  “I’m afraid not.” She took two bracelets from her bag and laid them on the desk. “I thought you might know how to go about—”

  Her uncle was reading her and making no attempt to hide it. “Of course, there are outlets for any trinket that hails from Egypt. I could recommend someone, perhaps.”

  Victoria stared into her lap. “We need to turn these pieces into cash as quickly as possible.”

  Her uncle’s eyes narrowed. “We? I don’t like the sound of that.”

  Really, it’s just a favor.”

  He put the glasses with the thick lenses back on reluctantly. “All right, then, let’s have a look.” A moment later, he whispered, “Dios mio.”

  The black mantel clock ticked loudly on the credenza as her uncle’s trembling hands reached for the bangles. He examined each stone, one by one, paying extraordinary attention to the empty settings. Finally, he looked up at her with an expression she had never seen before.

  “Egyptology is not my specialty. More research would have to be done, but I would guess they’re quite valuable. It could take months, even longer, to establish the provenance of these pieces. They can’t just appear on the antiquities market out of thin air; there are laws and treaties that must be obeyed. This is not the same as asking for favors from Immigration and Naturalization, you know. She has no right to ask you for this kind of help.”

  “Months?” Victoria questioned, frowning. “We don’t have that kind of time.”

  “Getting the best value requires patience. Besides, what’s her hurry?” Her uncle snapped the golden bands together and pulled them apart repeatedly.

  “It’s complicated. What could something like these bring? I mean, without drawing attention to the seller?” Elias threw up his hands. “Who knows? I’ll know more when I pass it along for more qualified eyes to examine. Will you leave these with me?”

  “Who better?” Victoria rose and walked around the desk to kiss her uncle’s forehead, which was damp and very warm. “Gotta go,” she said, patting his shoulder.

  “Marta won’t be happy about the kinds of favors you’re doing for this girl,” he called out as she walked toward the dock door. “Perhaps it would be best not to trouble her. She spends enough time worrying about you as it is.”

  Victoria nodded and kept walking. Reaching into her purse, she felt the third bracelet still at the bottom of her bag, the one she could not bring herself to hand over, even to her uncle. The Lady of the Castle belonged with Khara.

  Chapter Thirteen Elias

  Pre-Columbian art was his specialty. He had spent his career studying the mysterious Olmec as they evolved into the first great culture of Mesoamerica before mysteriously vanishing. Egyptology? Better left to the blue-blooded British or, when absolutely necessary, the Egyptians themselves. Besides, if his expertise was lacking, his contacts were plentiful and always happy to do him a favor.

  He had been blessed with a kind of sixth sense regarding works of art, and this pair of bracelets had the scent of a relic. Elias believed that because he had dedicated his life to preservation, such things often sought him out. And wasn’t this proof? He had done nothing to coax them from their resting place, but here these amazing beauties were.

  Elias had tossed Catholicism aside early in life, embracing history as his true religion. While his classmates were chasing soccer balls or pulling pigtails, he spent every free moment at the local museum. This distressed his socially ambitious mother, who deemed his love for ancient things and places unholy and a family disgrace. She never understood that it was a thing completely out of his control. He became averse to spending any more time than necessary in their comfortable home. When she condemned his first summer job—hunting artifacts in the verdant swamps of Tabasco—as menial, he left home for good.

  His great fortune in life was to have found the ultimate treasure while still a young man—or, as Marta often reminded him, his treasure found him in search of a free meal. On the day of their wedding, his mother pulled him aside, her patrician features ugly with jealousy. “You could have any wealthy debutante and you choose her? This, this peasant girl I wouldn’t have peeling chilies in the kitchen! You do this to torture me. Marry her, and you won’t get another penny from this family,” she spat.

  Why the image of his mother’s angry face had come to him at this moment, he did not know. Elias locked the door. The ornate furnishings in his office, liquidated from the estate of a long-forgotten Spanish governor, lent a colonial ambiance to the room. He settled into a burgundy velvet armchair normally used by visitors, then tested the door to be sure it was locked.

  He smiled at the possibility that another great treasure had come his way. Jeweler’s loupe in his eye, he fondled and stroked the bracelets; it was as if two exquisite virgins had just offered their naked bodies to him. Satisfied, he made his way to the file cabinet. From the third drawer, he took a square of white flannel and wrapped the bracelets in it.

  When he returned to his desk, he removed a faux panel from its front, revealing an opening the size of a shoe box. Elias retrieved the bundle he had stashed during his niece’s surprise visit and allowed himself a moment to admire the singular elegance of the jade mask before returning the Olmec piece and bracelets into the secret space. He reached in further to remove a cell phone, and turned it on.

  “I need to see you as quickly as possible.”

  A mild voice with a disdainful air answered, “I thought you wanted to lay low for a while.”

  Elias remained unruffled. “I did, but something rather unique has presented itself.”

  “Well, now…” Arlan Mieley took a lengthy pause to puff on his hand-carved English pipe. “Not a Mesoamerican piece, then?”

  “No.”

  “The last-minute airfare will be outrageous.”

  “You won’t be sorry.” Elias ended the call, and then paid close attention to the exact replacement of the fake panel.

  They arranged a meeting for three o’clock the next afternoon at the private tennis club tucked into the hillside of the Franklin Mountains, where Elias was an established member. The nearby hotel sent an occasional guest for lessons, and although Arlan Mieley had been visiting the club for almost twenty years, there was no discernible improvement in his tennis game.

  Sunglasses on, Elias waited courtside, scanning the empty surroundings. He did not worry they would be noticed; the sunbaked clay of the court at that hour was discouragement enough. His crisp white clothing complimented his skin and, at the age when most men’s bodies turned soft, he was as lean and sinewy as a matador—no easy feat given the sublime dinners Marta set before him. He spent most lunch hours at the gym, and could easily bench press more than he weighed. He readily admitted that of all his sins, vanity was his most constant offense.

  Moments later, Arlan Mieley crossed the court with a gait that could best be described as unpredictable. It seemed to Elias that he neither reflected nor absorbed light. Rarely attracting a first and almost never a second glance, he moved through
life continually trying to dodge his shameful past.

  They did not exchange greetings. Elias unzipped a white vinyl tennis bag and placed it in his partner’s lap. Mieley exhaled heavily in anticipation of what was inside and reached into the pocket of his shirt.

  “Shit! I left my glasses in the room.”

  “A little nervous? Here, use mine.” Elias proffered his Wayfarers, which had been modified for such occasions. “Come on,” he said, bouncing the ball on his racquet, “we should at least practice a bit.” He rose, throwing the ball against the clay a few times while Arlan made clucking noises.

  Mieley set the bag down as though it was packed full of plastic explosives. “I don’t believe what I’ve seen!” he exclaimed, his deep-set, grey eyes wide. “Where did you get them?”

  “They practically walked into my office,” Elias explained nonchalantly and motioned his partner to the other side of the net. “My suspicions are correct?”

  Mieley made no attempt to join him. “You are the…the luckiest son of a bitch I’ve ever met.” He shook his head. “Do you have any idea what they could be worth?”

  “Not a clue. Our agreement has always been that you handle the documents and negotiations, no?”

  Sweat trickled from Mieley’s temples and upper lip; two wet, misshapen circles marked his shirt. “Are there other pieces?” he asked, brushing back the thin patch of brown hair that sat high on his forehead. “What if they were pilfered from a larger collection?” A protruding upper lip and a weak chin made his smile look more like a grimace. Only Arlan’s aquiline nose saved his face from complete disaster.

  “Leave that to me,” Elias snapped. “What’s your best estimate of their worth?”

  “Five million for the pair—maybe more. I’ll have to identify which dynasty they’re from. If the original owner was someone of importance, the price could be higher, much higher. They look to be Old or Middle Kingdom at the least.” Arlan licked his lips. “The seller obviously has no idea what he has— why would he have come to you?”

  “Lower your voice. When will you know more?”

  “A couple of weeks at most. My god, we’ll have to fight collectors off with a stick! I’ll need to use the shed behind the museum to disguise them.”

  “Too risky. There must be some other way.”

  “For all we know, photos of them have already been circulated. You don’t want to take a chance on losing them to some overenthusiastic TSA clerk, do you?”

  Elias twirled his mustache. “Then wait until after ten. I’ll make sure the alarm is turned off, but security in the main building will still be working, so stay away from the entrances.”

  “I’m invisible, remember? In the meantime, promise your seller anything. There’s got to be more where these came from.”

  “Doubtful, but I’ll make inquiries. Perhaps we would be wise not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “Don’t let this golden goose go to someone else for a higher price. Just this once, perhaps I could approach—”

  “Absolutely not.”

  Elias saw Arlan’s scowl and decided to appease him. “Perhaps we could entice some loyalty with a deposit. Nothing overgenerous, but enough to show our good intentions and buy us some time for the authentication.”

  “My thoughts exactly. Would $50,000 do? I’ll send it the usual way as soon as I get back.”

  “I think that will work.” Elias nodded, slung the empty bag over his shoulder, and left the court.

  Mieley stood up. “We’ve got a good thing going, and it’s just gotten considerably better.” His gray eyes had darkened like a summer storm and, for a moment, Elias felt the blue skies of his mostly well-lived life threatened.

  Chapter Fourteen Mieley

  Having parked his black Land Rover a block away from the small shop in Brooklyn, Arlan Mieley pulled down the brim of his plaid golf cap. No one would notice him, but this was no time to take chances.

  The excitement in the voice of Max Cotts, the elderly authenticator, assured Arlan that his days of living in the shadows were numbered. Max had urged him to come as quickly as possible. The pieces had never been seen or catalogued before. There were some extraordinary possibilities, but the respected Egyptologist had several questions.

  Twenty-five years before, Arlan had been a promising student of Egyptology. His tenacity and intellect earned admiration from his instructors and peers. A brilliant future had been within his grasp—traveling the world in search of ancient treasure, contributing regularly to National Geographic, perhaps even hosting a television show of his own. But his career took a nosedive because he had plagiarized parts of his dissertation. All his dreams, the hands and minds that had encouraged him, suddenly vanished. The worst humiliation, however, was his Midwestern parents no longer asking him to come home to manage the family farm.

  His father was not the sort of man inclined to believe his son’s emotional outbursts were a direct result of his superior intelligence, and suggested that the structure and discipline of military life would be the solution. It was then that Arlan disappeared, going to a place no one in his family would ever visit —New York City.

  Most of his first hungry months were spent in a rat— infested apartment only slightly larger than the jail cell he felt he deserved. He cleaned floors at a gallery specializing in the authentication of antiquities so that the musty smells and tattered pages he considered his only friends would be close by. Having noted that not all the authenticators, particularly the young apprentices, cleared their desks before leaving for the day, Arlan’s nights of discovery began, and a different career took shape.

  He read everything—documents researching provenance, insurance appraisals, custody forms. Then he returned them just as he had found them, having taken meticulous notes about sources and collectors.

  Too consumed to sleep or eat properly, he became lean for the first time in his life. He pilfered clothing from a cardboard box at the Salvation Army, his hair grew past his shoulders, and he rarely shaved. At work he made sure the floors were neither too clean nor too dirty while the schemer in him, the part that had stolen research and claimed it as his own, steadily consumed him.

  Arlan Mieley waited for destiny to tap him on the shoulder just once more, and it took two soul-killing years. The key to the smaller storeroom, the one with the most valuable pieces, was inadvertently left under a stack of papers. After that, events fell into place as if by magic. An ancient Sumarian piece vanished from the gallery’s storeroom. The farmer’s son knew plenty about supply and demand; collectors were thrilled to pay less, even if it meant fewer questions could be asked about a piece’s origin and how it had been procured.

  The unfortunate apprentice accused of the crime had been Mieley’s Nubiology classmate at UCLA. Arlan concluded that the man’s real crime had been snobbery. The morning the police led him away, they locked eyes, and there hadn’t been even a flicker of recognition. It was then that Arlan recognized that perhaps his best skill was being completely and utterly forgettable.

  Max Cotts, the best authenticator of Egyptian artifacts in the United States, had an office in a shabby section of New York’s jewelry district. Standing in front of the ground-floor entrance, Mieley took a deep breath. Nearby, frying waffle cones reminded him that he had skipped a meal or two. He opened the door slowly, taking care not to look up at the camera.

  “Shit!” Max Cotts exclaimed, jumping out of his seat, “you scared me. How long have you been standing there? Come on back.”

  Arlan followed the frail, silver-haired man down a short hallway narrowed by stacks of decaying cardboard boxes and lit by a single, exhausted bulb. At the end of the hallway was a cramped office. Cotts pulled a set of magnifying goggles over his eyes and sat down at the metal desk, which filled the tiny room. “Get the light, will you?”

  In near-darkness, Cotts turned a manila envelope upside— down and gave it a gentle shake. The bracelets slid onto the desk as he switched on a magnification lamp. “
The information on the bracelets themselves is relatively standard. I’m fairly certain they came from the Intermediate Period, just before the Middle Kingdom.”

  “I know that, Max.”

  “They’re coronation bracelets. They’ve never been seen before, and I can’t find them in any catalogs as far back as records of Egyptian artifacts exist.”

  “Good to know, but pharaohs often had jewelry designed for such occasions. I need to know which pharaoh and which wife.”

  “The coronation bracelets were made for the incoming pharaoh—and Arlan, they proclaim her to be Egypt’s first ruling queen.”

  “Bullshit. That’s five hundred years before Hatshepsut. Are you sure?”

  Scruffy old Max, renowned for his miserly ways, grinned from ear to ear before pulling a bottle of vintage Dom Perignon and two flutes from a tiny refrigerator behind his desk.

  “Listen, my friend; what you have here is the discovery of a lifetime.” Max opened the champagne with practiced hands, which surprised Arlan. “Here’s what we have so far. The name of our mysterious queen is not given, but she was the daughter of Pharaoh Pepy II. There is no evidence that she ever ruled with her father, and none that she ever ruled alone. Look here,” Cotts urged, showing Arlan the empty settings. “So what you have is a mystery of historical proportions. What happened to the woman known as the Lady of the Castle? Did someone find and raid her tomb? Not even the Egyptians know about her. I placed a call to Dr. Shenouda this morning to ask a few preliminary questions—”

  “I told you to keep this quiet!” Arlan shouted, suddenly feeling hot and dizzy. A shrill buzzing, like that of some monstrous mosquito, filled his ears. “I don’t need the secretary general of Egyptian antiquities looking into this.” Arlan clapped his hands over his ears, but too late; the sound was boring into his brain. “This is my discovery,” he wailed, “mine! If you get those self-righteous fanatics involved, they’ll claim that the discovery and everything attached to it belongs to Egypt!”