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“How did you respond?”
“I tried to talk him into opening the box. You should have seen him. He began to frighten me, Mr. Pendergast. He was a madman.”
Pendergast nodded. “How so?”
“He laughed maniacally and said I was missing the opportunity of a lifetime. He said he would take it to London, where he knew a collector.”
“The opportunity of a lifetime? Do you know what he meant by that?”
“He babbled some nonsense about changing the world.
Pazzesco
.”
“Do you know which collector he pla
“He didn’t mention a name. But I know most of them.” He scribbled on a piece of paper, handed it to Pendergast. “Here are a few names to start with.”
“Why did he come to you?” Pendergast asked. Morin spread his hands. “Why did you come to me, Mr. Pendergast? I am the premier dealer in Asian antiquities in Italy.”
“Yes, it’s true; no one has better pieces than you do—because no one is less scrupulous.”
“There’s your answer,” Morin said, not without a touch of pride.
The door chimes rang insistently, repeatedly, and there was a banging sound.
“Polizia!”
came a muffled voice.
“Lavinia?” Morin called. “Please send the police away with my thanks. The undesirable has been taken care of.” He turned back to Pendergast. “Have I satisfied your curiosity?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“I trust those documents in your briefcase won’t fall into the wrong hands.”
Pendergast flipped the briefcase up and opened it. Out spilled a number of old newspapers.
Morin looked at him, his face reddening, and then a sudden smile broke out. “You are as unscrupulous as I am.”
“One fights fire with fire.”
“You made all that up, didn’t you?”
Pendergast snapped the briefcase shut. “Yes—except for my comment on that Vishnu with Consorts. But I’m sure you will find some rich businessman who will buy it and enjoy it, and be none the wiser.”
“Thank you. I intend to.” Then he stood and ushered Pendergast toward the door.
8
ARECENT RAIN HAD SLICKED THE STREETS OF CROYDON, A GRIM commercial suburb on the southern fringes of London. It was two o’clock in the morning, and Aloysius Pendergast stood on the corner of Cairo New Road and Tamworth. Cars rushed along the A23 and a train flashed past on the London-to-Southampton railway. An ugly, seventies-era hotel rose up at the corner of the block, its poured-cement façade streaked with soot and damp. Pendergast adjusted his hat and tightened his Burberry around his neck, tucked his Chapman game bag under his arm, and then approached the glass entry doors of the hotel. The doors were locked and he pressed a buzzer. A moment later an answering buzz unlocked the door.
He entered a brightly lit lobby smelling of onions and cigarette smoke. Stained polyester carpeting in blue and gold covered the floor, and the walls were encased in a waterproof-finished textured gold wallpaper. A Muzak version of “Strawberry Fields Forever” drifted through the lobby. At one end, a clerk with long hair, mashed a bit on one side of his skull, waited sullenly for him at the reception desk.
“A room, please.” Pendergast kept his collars turned up and stood in a way that blocked most of his face. He spoke in a gruff voice with a Midlands accent.
“Name?”
“Crowther.”
The clerk shoved a card over to Pendergast, who filled it in with a false name and address.
“Mode of payment?”
Pendergast took a sheaf of pound notes from his pocket and paid in cash.
The man gave him a swift glance. “Luggage?”
“Bloody airline misplaced it.”
The clerk handed him a card key and disappeared into the back, no doubt to go back to sleep. Pendergast took his card key and went to the bank of elevators.
He took the elevator to his floor—the fourth—but did not get off. After the doors closed again, he remained on the elevator while it waited at the floor. He opened his bag, took out a small magnetic card-reading device, swiped his card through it, and studied the readout that appeared on the small LCD screen. After a moment he punched in some other numbers, slowly repassed the card through the reader, and tucked the device back into his bag. Then he pressed the button for the seventh floor and waited while the car rose.
The doors rolled back on a hall that was brightly lit with fluorescent tubes. It was empty, the same blue-and-gold rug stretching the length of the building, doors lining both walls. Pendergast exited the elevator, walked quickly to room 714, then paused to listen. It was quiet within, the lights out.
He inserted his key card, and the door snapped ajar with a little trill and a green light. He slowly eased it open and stepped inside, quickly shutting it behind him.
With any luck, he would simply locate the box and steal away without waking the inhabitant. But he was uneasy. He had done a bit of research into Jordan Ambrose. The man came from an upper-middle-class family in Boulder, Colorado; he was an expert snowboarder, climber, and mountain bike rider who had dropped out of college to climb the Seven Summits. It was an accomplishment claimed by only two hundred people in the world, summiting the highest peak on each of the seven continents, and it took him four years. After that, he had become a highly paid professional mountaineer, guiding trips to Everest, K2, and the Three Sisters. During the winter he made money doing extreme snowboarding stunts for videos and also collected money from endorsements. The expedition to Dhaulagiri had been a well-organized and financed attempt to scale the unclimbed west face of the mountain, one of the last epic climbs left in the world, a staggering twelve-thousand-foot sheer face of rotten rock and ice swept by avalanches, high winds, and temperature swings from day to night of fifty to sixty degrees. Thirty-two climbers had already died in the attempt, and Ambrose’s group would add five more fatalities to the list. They hadn’t even made it halfway up.
That Ambrose had survived was extraordinary. That he had made it to the monastery was nothing short of miraculous.
And then, everything he had done since the monastery had been out of character—begi
Why had he stolen the Agozyen? Why had he carted it all over Europe, not looking to sell it, but trying to arrange for some kind of partnership? What was the purpose of this “partnership” he sought? Why had he refused to show it to anyone? And why had he made no effort to contact the families of the five dead climbers—who were all close friends of his—something utterly at variance with the climbing ethic?