“Hmmm,” he replied, thoughtful.
What was her part in all of this? Hardly the starving artist. A terrorist? Like her brother?
She thought back to that first encounter at the London gallery, the showing Alyia Malik was preparing with those themes of blood and death. And Jonathan Callish, the adoring, proud husband.
“She knew people,” Marcus replied. “Others who were also interested in ancient artifacts.”
Of course, Kris thought.
“Callish's partner in the Paris gallery.”
A cold hollow feeling settled in her stomach. It was no secret that priceless pieces of artwork had been disappearing from the Middle East since the first Gulf War, the funds used to fund terrorist activities that included the slaughter of innocent men, women, and children from countless villages and towns, child abductions, girls paired-off with terrorist fighters, boys drafted into paramilitary groups, and weapons used against coalition forces, people like James Morgan...like her brother. And countless others who had paid the ultimate price.
It all came together—Faridani or Malik, his real name, and someone with connections to the Middle East and stolen artifacts. He didn't bother to deny it. And he needed an expert who could authenticate ancient art for prospective clients—black market artifacts stolen out of the Middle East and other places, then sold to the highest bidder, priceless pieces of artwork hidden away in private galleries, that funded terrorist activities. And people died.
Not unlike the Germans during World War II. They even had a name for the agency created by the Nazis. The ERR—Einsatzstab Reichsleiter. Just a different time and place, but the crimes and brutality were the same.
“The explosion in Paris?” she asked, still struggling with the fact that he was alive. Very much alive, and dangerous.
He shrugged. “You were late that morning.”
Someone else in the wrong place at the wrong time, she thought, like London, like a Paris nightclub, and other unfortunate casualties. That was what he intended to happen, except, as he had already told her, she was late that morning and would have been just another casualty in the war on terror.
It was all about greed and revenge, about choices and decisions Marcus Aronson had made decades earlier. He'd lived his life since hating Cate and everything she had achieved—the career he felt should have been his, the bestselling novels she wrote that were a reminder of what he might have had and what he had thrown away, the former lover who tried to help him, had protected him all those years, and had gone to him with that photograph and an incredible story.
Envy, greed, revenge, with one more thrown in. Betrayal.
“What's in this for you?”
He half turned. “Recognition, possibly a book, with the names changed to protect the innocent, of course.”
“You betrayed a friend for a few minutes of fame? You son-of-a-bitch!” She kicked out with her feet in a futile effort to reach him, to knock him out of the chair, to wipe that self-satisfied, cold expression off his face.
He shook his head. “So brave, so reckless, and so futile.” He stood then as two others entered the chamber and joined him—Alyia Malik, and a man who bore a striking resemblance and had to be her brother, Hasan Malik.
They were both dressed in black pants, turtleneck shirts, and boots—the shadows she had glimpsed in the van before the hood was pulled over her face.
Valentine moaned softly as she was dragged to her feet. Malik struck her.
“Let her go.” Kris told Aronson. “She doesn't know anything.”
“Oh no, my dear,” he replied in that professorial tone as if delivering a lecture to a student.
“You are going to help us find the tapestry, and she is going to be...shall we say, motivation?”
They didn't have the copy of Micheleine's letter! She realized it now. They hadn't found it. It was smoldering in the ashes of the woodstove in the farmhouse. They hadn't found it!
And when they found the tapestry? If it was there?
She knew the answer. Neither she or Valentine would be left alive to tell about it.
They would simply be left there, like so many others who had died a century earlier, who had carved their names and symbols into the walls, and on lists etched into memorials in London, Paris, and at Lochaber, Scotland. The tapestry would find its way into some collector's hands at an exorbitant price that would be used to fund more terrorism, more deaths.
She was dragged to her feet. Then both she and Valentine were pulled through the opening of the chamber out into the passage that connected countless tunnels and rooms.
The prayer whispered through her thoughts, something she'd convinced herself she didn't believe in or needed.
Please God...
