So, that’s where I led my entourage.
I put the pedal down to make some time and had Calpurnia hack into the traffic lights to slow the pursuit cars down. Did I mention that gadgets like this give me a woody? They do.
The rain had chased all the neighbors indoors. Good. I parked behind the mansion, took some goodies from a lockbox in the back of my car, told Calpurnia to secure the vehicle, then ran through slanting rain to the back door. Ghost’s nails were padded with silicone tips that muffled the sound of him running with me.
The door was locked, but I was in a hurry and the place was a dump, so I kicked it in. I gave Ghost the order to range ahead to check and clear, while I made my way carefully through gloom and shadows and dust to the staircase. The place was by definition a death trap, with holes in the floor, exposed wiring, water damage, rat droppings, human waste, garbage, and refuse I did not want to even speculate about, and the skeleton of what looked like a raccoon. No idea how that got there, and don’t really want to know.
Calpurnia whispered like a ghost into my ear. “The Secret Service vehicles have arrived at your location. Total five agents.”
I smiled and faded into the shadows.
INTERLUDE THREE
Valen hired a boat to take him to the Kostas mansion, which was a sprawling and vulgar piece of real estate so vast it nearly qualified as its own city.
It squatted on a kind of peninsula that thrust so aggressively into the sea that from the air it looked very much like the Kostas family was making a “fuck you” statement to anyone who could afford to see it. That was entirely in keeping with what Valen remembered of Ari. The man was a sexual animal. More goat than bull, with unsavory appetites that he could never quite assuage, but who had enough money to keep trying — and to handle any resulting legal or financial consequences. If he had not been very good at what he did for the family business, no doubt they would have shipped him off to some remote spot and then erased it off the map. But Ari, despite deep character flaws, was brilliant. He could find anything for anyone, and then get them to pay more than the market would bear to possess it. A dealer of antiquities, rarities, and art for the most discerning clientele, he’d made his first billion by age twenty-three. That was above what he inherited as the second son of a dynastic family of procurers.
Ari met him at the dock. Barefoot and smiling; a deep-water tan, generous belly, and sparkling white teeth. White trousers and an untucked white shirt that opened midway down a hairy chest. As they hugged and slapped each other’s backs, Valen recalled the last time he’d seen his old college roommate. It had been a few days after graduation, when Valen helped Ari bury a body in an unmarked grave near San Gabriel Park. A college girl who had gone to the wrong party and whose body would never be found. Or, if it was found, would never be connected to Aristotle Kostas. Valen insured that by lining her grave with plastic tarps and dumping in ten gallons of bleach. There would be no forensics to collect and the bleach would ruin even the tissue samples. Ari, who’d sat on a tree stump trying out various just-in-case alibis, had done very little digging. He’d been too drunk.
Lunch was served on a private patio overlooking the flawless deep blue of the rippling waters of the Mediterranean. They ate grilled fish and vegetables and, being a good host, Ari had provided Old Rip Van Winkle twenty-five-year-old bourbon. The thirteen-thousand-dollars-a-bottle whiskey was very fine and went down exceptionally well.
“You never just come to visit,” he said as honey-soaked dessert pastries were laid out. “So, why are we here getting drunk on a Tuesday afternoon?”
Valen nodded. “I am in the market for something that needs a delicate touch but a long reach to find. You once told me that you could get anything that can be gotten. That’s how you phrased it.”
The young Greek gave a small shrug. “I have had some luck in that department.”
“Which is why I came to you first. I have been asked to find something.”
“You are not the buyer?”
“You know better than that,” said Valen. “I have no money, and you know that I haven’t pursued a career in seismology. No, since college I’ve become something of a fixer. I help facilitate things for parties who, for various reasons, choose or need to remain anonymous. I’m the fellow who goes and fetches what they want.”
Ari nodded, accepting it as something quite right and proper in the world as he knew it. “What is it you need to find, my friend?”
“Can I trust that our conversation is confidential?”
Ari pretended to be offended. “This is something you ask me? An old friend? A Kostas? I am wounded unto death, Valen. I am bleeding. See the cut all the way to my heart?”
“Yeah, yeah, cut it out. It’s a serious question, because I am working with serious people and it’s more than my life is worth to breach their trust. I ask because I am expected to ask.”
Ari grinned and patted Valen’s arm hard enough to nearly knock him out of his chair. Then the young Greek leaned forward and dropped his voice. “Tell me what you need and I will tell you how much it costs.”
“You mean you’ll tell me if you can procure it?”
Ari threw back his head and laughed. The guards glanced their way, but neither moved nor spoke. “No, Valen, you beautiful fool. If it is there, I can get it. Cost is the only factor.”
They smiled at each other.
“It has many names, but among a certain community of — shall we say — credulous believers, it is called Lemurian quartz. The green variety, not the white.”
“There’s a lot of green quartz out there. How will I know I’m getting the right stuff for you? I don’t want to waste a lot of my own time. No offense.”
“None taken,” said Valen. “Check your e-mail later. I sent a molecular profile to you. There are several kinds of quartz that are almost — but not quite — identical, and my employers are particular. To that end, I can provide a portable scanner to help you assess samples before you purchase. And, for any items you obtain that have been made from the Lemurian quartz — artworks, or whatever — we would like you to use luminescence dating to determine how long ago those minerals were last exposed to sunlight or sufficient heating. We are most interested in any green quartz objects older than 1000 B.C.E. Particularly any that are found on, or come from, Crete or neighboring Aegean islands.”
Ari sipped his wine. “Are you looking for Minoan artifacts? You’re confusing me. First you mention Lemurian quartz, but in the same breath you want stuff from where people thought Atlantis used to be. I mean, it’s pretty well accepted these days that Plato created Atlantis as a way of explaining the wonders of the Minoan culture, and that an eruption on Thera — what is now Santorini — was what destroyed their civilization. The submergence of some areas is the basis for the myth of the so-called continent of Atlantis sinking. Basically, exaggeration by Plato based on indifferent reportage by scholars of previous eras.”
Valen nodded, pleased at his friend’s expertise. “And correct, insofar as what you know. However, as with all things, there is much more to the story.”
Ari looked interested. “Tell me, then.”
“The first significant artifact of this special kind of green quartz was found in a chamber beneath Minoan temple ruins in Gournia, in Crete. The site was first excavated in 1903. There were several small hexagonal pieces recovered. Three are in the British Museum, four are at the University of Pennsylvania, but nine others went missing at some point after they were described and stored away. These nine were very special, Ari, because they had the same molecular structure as what I want you to find for me.”