“You should return them to their rightful owners. They are the only ones who can explain why someone would kill for them.”
Jade glared at him. “I know what I have to do, but for now, they are evidence in a murder investigation that doesn’t exist. They’ll get back to your friends in due time.”
“So, why are you telling me this?”
Zewinski ran her hands through her hair and waited a minute. “You don’t know it yet, but we’ll be working together after all. There was a meeting at the Interior Ministry earlier today, and we’ve been officially assigned to this entirely unofficial case.”
Marcas took a slow sip of his coffee to give himself some time to think.
“In case you don’t know it, I’m on vacation. I’m supposed to be off for another two weeks, and I have lots of fun activities planned, none of which include you. I’m really very sorry about your friend’s death, but I will not, under any circumstances, be involved in this case.”
Zewinski smiled. “But you don’t have a choice. Apparently one of the higher-ups is a fellow of the light — that’s what you call it, don’t you? And he wants you to illuminate this case. I’m no psychic, but I predict you’ll be getting a call from your superiors in no time at all.”
“Well, in that case, thanks for the heads up.”
“Look, I came to get things straight between us. If we’re going to work together, we need to be clear. I’m going to have to stick my nose into your apron-wearing clown act, and I’m not happy about it.”
Marcas set down his coffee.
“I’ll wait until I get my orders. In the meantime, I just have one question.”
“Shoot.”
“Why do you hate Freemasons so much?”
Her eyes hardened. She stood up abruptly and adjusted her coat.
“You’re right. I don’t like what you represent, and I know that Sophie died because of some scheming done by your devious little brothers, adepts of the Great Architect of the Universe. This meeting is over. We’ll see each other in a setting that’s more official before the day is out.”
Marcas stared at her as she turned her back and stomped out, slamming the cafeteria door. There was no way he would team up with that Valkyrie. He paid for the coffees and left, swearing under his breath. Why had he accepted that invitation to the embassy? Besides, he was supposed to fly to Washington next week to meet with American Freemasons at Georgetown University. They’d been planning the meeting for months to share information on alchemical iconography in eighteenth-century rituals.
As he left the library, though, he admitted that his plans were already ruined — a sister had died, after all.
20
His client was not going to be happy. His connection to Paris had been canceled — some anomalies in the plane’s hydraulic system. All the passengers en route to Paris had been asked to disembark at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam.
Bashir picked up his luggage — which held the precious Tebah Stone — without any grousing. He left that to the other travelers, most of them French, who were having a go at the airline employee trying to get them on other flights. He opted to take the train to Paris after spending a night in Amsterdam for the pleasure of it. After all, he wasn’t Bashir the feared Palestinian hit man now. He was Vittorio, a fun-loving Milanese Italian who liked wine and pretty women.
A little delay wouldn’t make any difference. What was so urgent about some archeological artifact? He knew practically nothing about his client, a certain Sol. Their contact was limited to e-mails sent through a series of addresses. “Meeting in Paris ASAP,” the most recent one read. “Contact Tuzet at the Plaza Athénée. Ask for the keys to his Daimler.”
He didn’t know who Tuzet was, but as long as he got paid, he couldn’t care less. Before leaving the airport, he swapped his suitcase full of travel souvenirs for a small carry-on for the stone and the accompanying documents. He also sent an encrypted e-mail to Sol, advising him of the delay and saying he would take a bullet train in the morning. He would arrive in the early afternoon.
Now he had some time to kill. He headed downtown. Perhaps he would visit the red-light district. He had heard of some fine restaurants, too. So maybe he would satisfy both appetites tonight: first a little food, then a little sex. Maybe more than a little of each. Strolling the streets and considering his options, he passed a Muslim mother in a niqab. The contrast between the exposed prostitutes in the windows of the red-light district and this mother, entirely covered to protect her from the eyes of men, was striking. Yet weren’t they the same? The prostitute exposed herself to please her male customers. The religious woman might say that she was covering to please God, but wasn’t she also doing it to please her husband — the man in her life who desired her? Bashir couldn’t help thinking how odd it was that Europeans were more shocked by a veil than a thong.
Secular and Islamic tensions had risen in this country since the slaying of a controversial movie producer, Theo Van Gogh. He had made a film focusing on the oppression of women in Islam, and in retaliation, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim had shot him to death. The slaying had fed the flames of anti-Islamic sentiment, and the people of the Netherlands, who liked to think of themselves as so open and tolerant, were witnessing the same growth of sectarianism that was affecting the rest of Europe. The extreme-right presence of the Vlaams Blok, along with its hateful nostalgia for the supremacy of the white race, was evidence of that.
Bashir didn’t like Jews, but he had no affection for contemporary fascists either. He had gone into a rage when he found a portrait of Adolph Hitler in the room of one of his young cousins who overflowed with admiration for the Führer.
This wasn’t an isolated incident. A certain portion of the Arab world saw Hitler as a dictator, yes, but also as a standard bearer for the fight against the Jewish peril. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated text first published in 1903 in Russia, could still be bought in souks all over the Middle East. In the nineteen twenties, Henry Ford had underwritten a half million copies of the publication, which described a Jewish plot to dominate the world.
Bashir found this grotesque admiration to be pitiful. The Germans had recruited the Arabs as partners during World War II to fight the British. Egypt’s Anwar el Sadat, who signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1979, had spied for German Field Marshal Edwin Rommel during the war. The grand mufti of Jerusalem, whom Hitler hosted with full honors in 1941, had blessed three Muslim SS divisions: Handschar, Kama, and Skandenberg. “The crescent and the swastika have the same enemy: the Star of David,” the mufti had said.
But Bashir knew that Nazi ideology classified Muslims as inferiors, not much better than Slavs or Latins.
He had met European neo-Nazis in training camps in Syria, Lebanon, and Libya. He knew these skinheads, who gave lip service to the Palestinian cause, would go home and organize racist attacks there.
Bashir had second thoughts about his evening plans. His taste for a tempting nightcap had waned. Instead, he turned toward the city center to find an Indonesian restaurant and order a rijsttafel, an assortment of small, tasty dishes the Dutch loved so much.
A bicycle bell rang out behind him, and he barely had time to jump out of the way to avoid being run over. Collecting himself, Bashir saw that he had landed in front of a shop with a window bearing a huge florescent-red mushroom on a dark purple background. The man who had almost hit him parked his bike in front of the same shop, smiled, and walked in. Bashir decided to follow and take a look around. Shelves holding hundreds of small bags containing mushrooms and spores lined the walls. It was like a garden center for potheads.