The Venetian Betrayal

“And who are you? Certainly not the owner of a Greco-Roman museum.”

“On the contrary. I do own it, and I want to be paid for my destroyed goods. Hence the high price.”

Thorvaldsen reached into his pocket and removed a clear plastic case, which he tossed. Viktor caught it with both hands. Malone watched as their guest dropped the medallion into his open palm. About the size of a fifty-cent piece, pewter-colored, with symbols etched on both faces. Viktor removed a jeweler’s loop from his pocket.

“You an expert?” Malone asked.

“I know enough.”

“The microengravings are there,” Thorvaldsen said. “Greek letters.

ZH. Zeta. Eta. It’s amazing the ancients possessed the ability to engrave them.”

Viktor continued his examination.

“Satisfied?” Malone asked.

VIKTOR STUDIED THE MEDALLION, AND THOUGH HE DIDN’T HAVE his microscope or scales, this one seemed genuine.

Actually, the best specimen so far.

He’d come unarmed because he wanted these men to think themselves in charge. Finesse, not force, was needed here. One thing worried him, though. Where was the woman?

He glanced up and allowed the loop to drop into his right hand. “Might I examine it closer, at the window? I need better light.”

“By all means,” the older man said.

“What’s your name?” Viktor asked.

“How about Ptolemy?”

Viktor gri

“The first. Alexander’s most opportunistic general. Claimed Egypt for his prize after Alexander died. Smart man. His heirs held it for centuries.”

He shook his head. “In the end, the Romans defeated them.”

“Like my museum. Nothing lasts.”

Viktor stepped close to the dusky pane. The man with the gun stood guard at the doorway. He’d only need an instant. As he positioned himself within the shafts of sunlight, his back momentarily to them, he made his move.

CASSIOPEIA SAW A MAN APPEAR FROM THE TREES ON THE FAR SIDE of the house. He was young, thin, and agile. Though last night she’d not seen the faces of either of the two who’d torched the museum, she recognized the nimble gait and careful approach.

One of the thieves.

Heading straight for Thorvaldsen’s car.

Thorough, she’d give them that, but not necessarily careful, especially considering that they knew someone was at least a few steps ahead of them.

She watched as the man plunged a knife into both rear tires, then withdrew.

MALONE CAUGHT THE SWITCH. VIKTOR HAD DROPPED THE LOOP into his right hand while his left held the medallion. But as the loop was replaced to Viktor’s eye and the examination restarted, he noticed that the medallion was now in the right hand, the index finger and thumb of the left hand curled inward, palming the coin.

Not bad. Combined skillfully with the act of moving toward the window and finding the right light. Perfect misdirection.

His gaze caught Thorvaldsen’s, but the Dane quickly nodded that he’d seen it, too. Viktor was holding the coin in the light, studying it through the loop. Thorvaldsen shook his head, which signaled let it go.

Malone asked again, “You satisfied?”

Viktor dropped the jeweler’s loop into his left hand and pocketed it, along with the real medallion. He then held up the coin he’d switched out, surely the fake from the museum, now returned. “It’s genuine.”

“Worth fifty thousand euros?” Thorvaldsen asked.

Viktor nodded. “I’ll have the money wired. You tell me where.”

“Call tomorrow to the number from the medallion, as you did earlier, and we’ll arrange a trade.”

“Just drop it back in its case,” Malone said.

Viktor walked to the table. “This is quite a game you two are playing.”

“It’s no game,” Thorvaldsen said.

“Fifty thousand euros?”

“Like I said, you destroyed my museum.”

Malone spotted the confidence in Viktor’s careful eyes. The man had entered a situation not knowing his enemy, thinking himself smarter, and that was always dangerous.

Malone, though, had committed a worse mistake.

He’d volunteered, trusting only that his two friends knew what they were doing.

EIGHTEEN

XINYANG PROVINCE, CHINA

3:00 P.M.

ZOVASTINA STARED OUT OF THE HELICOPTER AS THEY LEFT FEDERATION airspace and flew into extreme western China. Once the area had been a tightly sealed back door to the Soviet Union, guarded by masses of troops. Now the borders were open. Unrestricted transportation and trade. China had been one of the first to formally recognize the Federation, and treaties between the two nations assured that travel and commerce flowed freely.

Xinyang province constituted sixteen percent of China. Mostly mountains and desert, loaded with natural resources. Wholly different from the rest of the country. Less communism. Heavy Islam. Once called East Turkestan, its identity was traceable far more to central Asia than the Middle Kingdom.

The Venetian League had been instrumental in formalizing friendly relations with the Chinese, another reason she’d chosen to join the group. The Great Western Economic Expansion began five years ago, when Beijing started pouring billions into infrastructure and redevelopment all across Xinyang. League members had received many of the contracts for petrochemicals, mining, machine works, road improvements, and construction. Its friends in the Chinese capital were many, as money spoke as loudly in the communist world as anywhere else, and she’d used those co

The flight from Samarkand was a little over an hour in the high-speed chopper. She’d made the trek many times and, as always, stared below at the rough terrain, imagining the ancient caravans that once made their way east and west along its famed Silk Road. Jade, coral, linens, glass, gold, iron, garlic, tea-even dwarfs, nubile women, and horses so fierce they were said to have sweated blood-were all traded. Alexander the Great never made it this far east, but Marco Polo had definitely walked that earth.

Ahead, she spotted Kashgar.

The city sat on the edge of the Taklimakan Desert, a hundred and twenty kilometers east from the Federation border, within the shadows of the snowy Pamirs, some of the highest and most barren mountains in the world. A bejeweled oasis, China ’s western-most metropolis, it had existed, like Samarkand, for over two thousand years. Once a place of bustling open markets and crowded bazaars, now it was consumed by dust, wails, and the falsetto cries of muezzins summoning men to prayer in its four thousand mosques. Three hundred and fifty thousand people lived among its hotels, warehouses, businesses, and shrines. The town walls were long gone and a superhighway, another part of the great economic expansion, now encircled and directed green taxis in all directions.

The helicopter banked north where the landscape buckled. The desert was not far to the east. Taklimakan literally meant “go in and you won’t come out.” An apt description for a place with winds so hot they could, and did, kill entire caravans within minutes.

She spotted their destination.

A black-glass building in the center of a rock-strewn meadow, the begi