The Mask of Atreus (30 page)

A. J. Hartley

The PA system rattled off the usual requests: tray tables stowed, seat backs in their upright and locked position . . .
Come on. If we're going down, let's just go.
Deborah stared through the window. The plane dipped through a wisp of cloud, and then there was the city, spread out and waiting. She tried to orient herself so she could figure out which suburb she was looking at, a way to keep her mind occupied, but she had no idea. Nothing looked familiar. It was all industrial complexes of warehouses and vast parking lots, then white houses barely visible through a mantle of trees, and large, heavily trafficked roads lined with gas stations. It could be anywhere. The stewardess who had warned her that she would be escorted off first sat in a folding seat by the cabin door and buckled herself in. For a brief moment, their eyes met, and then the woman looked quickly away. Caught without her professional smile, she looked tired and a little anxious. Deborah wondered if that last had something to do with her. The plane emitted a low whirr and clunk as its landing gear locked into position, a basic, mechanical sound that reminded everyone of the sheer unlikely physicality of this great metal tube actually flying.

She could see cars now, a MARTA bus, even a few of Atlanta's rare pedestrians, then treetops, power lines, and suddenly, almost life-size, a busy highway and an overpass. They crossed the road, three lanes in each direction, and a high wire fence, and then there were runways with painted symbols and letters striping acres of scrubby turf. There was another bump down of a few feet, a moment of stillness when the aircraft seemed to be gliding without engines or gravity, and then the soft push of wheels on asphalt and the tightening of brakes, so that Deborah felt herself falling forward into inertia. They were still taxiing toward the terminal when one of the male stewards, a young, athletic guy she imagined was gay, appeared beside her.

"Where are your things, Miss Miller?"

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She looked at him stupidly, then nodded to the overhead bin. He reached up and lifted the backpack and a shopping bag down.

"Anything else?"

"No."

"As soon as we stop," he said, as if they were about to set off on a roller coaster ride, "we'll head out."

She nodded and said nothing. Her mouth was dry, and she was glancing around, though what she was looking for, she didn't know. She remembered giving a piano recital when she was ten, peering around the curtain of the Brookline civics center hall to find her father in the audience, her hands sweating and unsteady. It felt a bit like that, like stage fright. The plane slowed, turned, reversed, adjusted, and pulled forward to a stop. Before the seat belt light pinged off, the steward beside her was helping her to her feet and leading her to the exit door. The woman who had been sitting there scuttled off, looking busy, eyes averted. Deborah's escort threw the lever on the latch mechanism and heaved the panel out of place, and the world came into view. In the mobile tunnel beyond the door, maintenance men and women in rainproof uniforms and fluorescent pink trimmed jackets moved aside to reveal a uniformed policeman. Standing beside him were Keene and Cerniga.

"Thanks," said Keene to the steward. "We'll take it from here."

The uniformed cop took her bags, and the steward disappeared back into the plane without a word.

"Will you come with us, please, Miss Miller," said Cerniga. "We have some questions about--"

"I'm not going with you," she said.

"One way or another, you are," said Keene, taking a step closer.

There was a commotion farther down the tunnel, and a man, tousle-haired and harried-looking, came running into view, a security guard at his heels. It was Calvin Bowers.

"Deborah," he called.

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"Get him out of here!" yelled Keene.

"They're trying to take me away!" Deborah shouted back to where Calvin, now half screened by the security guard, was straining to see what was going on.

"I'm her lawyer!" he shouted back. "You can't arrest her without taking me along."

"We're not making an arrest," said Cerniga, still watching Deborah, "though we can and will if this nonsense persists."

Calvin broke free and plunged the last few yards to join them. The security guard followed like a beaten cornerback.

"Can we get some other cops involved?" said Deborah to Calvin.

"You are perfectly safe," said Cerniga.

"With you?" she shot back. "Really? Let's see your badge."

Cerniga's face clouded.

"We really don't have time for this," he began.

"I said, let's see your badge!" said Deborah, her voice louder than she had meant it to be and a trifle shrill. Cerniga shot Keene a sideways glance. The other detective shrugged fractionally and looked away. Cerniga pulled a sour face, reached into his jacket, and plucked out a black leather item the size and shape of a wallet. He flipped it open and held it up.

Deborah stared. The wallet contained a card with a picture of Cerniga on it, not unlike a driver's license, and three large letters: FBI.

CHAPTER 53

"FBI?" said Deborah. She glanced instinctively at Keene, who shrugged and nodded his assent. "Why didn't you say so before?"

"It wasn't considered necessary," said Cerniga.

"Wait a moment," said Calvin. "Why is this a federal case? Who has jurisdiction here?"

"I do," said Cerniga. Keene had taken a step back to watch. Deborah could sense his amusement.

"This is crazy," said Calvin, his indignation shaking off his professional restraint. "You can't pass yourself off as a cop and then--"

"Yes sir," said Cerniga, digging his heels in. "In this case I can do exactly that."

"I'm sorry," said the steward, reappearing at Deborah's elbow and looking shamefaced. "We have a planeload of people waiting to get off. Can you move this into the terminal building, please?"

Cerniga turned on his heel and led the way out. They passed through customs and passport control in a flurry of badges and explanations, still arguing among themselves. Ironically, considering she was the one being marched about in this degrading fashion, Deborah seemed the calmest of the group. After all, she told herself, it could have been much worse, and while she was baffled by Cerniga's duplicity, she felt a lot safer now than she had on the plane or, for that matter, at almost any moment since she had first overheard the policemen talking through the vents.

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Calvin was not so easily pacified.

"I still want to know why the Feds are even
involved
in this case!" he blustered.

"I told you already," said Keene. His enjoyment of the proceedings had quickly paled, and he had become his usual dour and irritable self again. "The stolen items have been moved across state borders, and there are international smuggling charges as well. Too big for us poor flatfeet, apparently."

The uniformed cop left them in a black-and-white at the curb. Deborah and the three men drove in Keene's elderly Oldsmobile (parked illegally right outside baggage claim) out of the circular airport system and onto Interstate 85, the cops in front, Deborah and Calvin in the overly hot and intimate back. No one spoke for several minutes. Deborah shot Calvin a glance. He was staring out of the window, frowning, but he turned toward her, apparently sensing her look, and smiled.

"Not the way I had wanted to welcome you back," he said. Deborah just nodded.

"Where do you want it?" said Keene from the front.

"What is that supposed to mean?" asked Calvin sharply.

"I'm just asking where the lady would like to be taken,"

said Keene. He grinned at Cerniga, who, so far as Deborah could see, did not react.

"I have a choice?" she said.

"You wanna go to your place, shower and such," said Keene, "or you wanna go to the museum?"

She didn't like the idea of Keene loitering while she was in the shower.

"The museum," she said. When she went home tonight, it would be alone to decompress, not to break out the best china and be politely interrogated.

And if Calvin wants to come with you?
she wondered.
Shut up.

She looked out of the window and bit her lip till the smile went away.

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* * *

"Let's go back to why you left the country," said Cerniga. He had become terse, even confrontational since the meeting at the airport, though whether this was because he had been forced to declare his status as an "agent" rather than simply a "detective," Deborah wasn't sure. It probably originated rather earlier. She got the distinct impression that he was not happy about her little overseas excursion, though no one, as she had been quick to point out, had actually forbidden her from leaving the country.

"I told you already," she said. They had been talking for an hour in the silent museum's tiny office, and she was beginning to lose patience.

"Miss Miller," he said, "I don't think I would have difficulty justifying charges for obstruction of justice based on your activities to date. If you continue to be uncooperative, I will have no choice but to press such charges."

He wasn't bluffing. He was angry, possibly even a little humiliated by the way she had slipped away and how little progress the case had apparently made in her absence. She had to be less adversarial. After all, however deceptive he might have been initially, as a federal agent he was, surely, an ally in getting to the heart of Richard's death. If she didn't treat him as such, she might yet find herself being considered as a serious suspect.

"OK," she said. "I left because my friend had been killed, because someone had been waiting for me in my apartment, and because I thought you weren't a real cop. I went to Greece because what little I knew about the circumstances of Richard's death pointed there, and I wanted to see if I could . . . I don't know."

"Play Nancy Drew," said Keene, not looking up from his notebook.

Deborah shrugged.

"I didn't know who I could trust," she said. "It made a kind of sense."

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"That must be the kind of sense you learn about in museum school," sneered Keene. "Out in the real world, it doesn't mean dick."

"There's no such thing as
museum school,
" said Deborah,

"but if you mean academia or some other aspect of the world I work in, it's just as real as what you do."

"Is that right?" said Keene, cocking his head as if he was daring her to throw a punch.

"Yes, that's right," she said, staring him down.

"And let's go over what you did in Greece one more time,"

said Cerniga, speaking loudly and levelly, shutting down the petulant spat that had flared up between Deborah and Keene for the third time in the last hour.

So far, Deborah had told them the truth about her trip to Greece in all but two respects. First, she had not revealed the idea that the missing death mask was actually being worn by a partially preserved corpse. The police still thought they were looking for an artifact of strictly monetary value. The idea that she had actually been pursuing the body of Agamemnon himself now seemed too preposterous to speak aloud. If she could keep it to herself, she might salvage the dignity of those who had been conned into looking for it in earnest: Richard, the antiquities and culture department of the Greek government, Sergei Voloshinov, maybe even Marcus, though she was in no mood to cut him any amount of slack.

She had tried to interest Cerniga in the dead Russian, but he was having none of it, and Keene had rolled his eyes at her use of the letter's reference to "remains" as evidence.

"Not even a coincidence," he scoffed. "There were two drug dealers killed in Fulton County the same night; you think they were out to buy themselves a Greek death mask too? Something nice to hang on the gun rack in their Mercedes, maybe?"

"The Russian isn't involved," said Cerniga, closing down his colleague's sarcasm in the only way he would accept.

"That case is closed."

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"I don't see where this conversation is getting us," said Calvin Bowers. He looked tired and a little gaunt, as if he had slept poorly the night before. "Why don't we resume this in the morning, if you have questions my client has not already answered several times."

There was a tap at the office door. Cerniga opened it, and Tonya, dressed in overalls of battleship gray and armed with a broom, put her head round the door.

"I'm going to lock up," she said. "Is there anything you need before I go?"

She didn't look at Deborah.

"Thanks," said Cerniga, shaking his head. "We're all set."

Tonya bobbed her head respectfully and began to back out. She stopped, apparently gripped by an afterthought, and turned to Deborah.

"Miss Miller," she said formally, "I'd like to give my two weeks' notice. I liked Mr. Dixon a lot, but with him gone, I don't think I'd fit in round here."

Deborah thought fast. The black woman's manner was snooty, defiant, and Keene's grin seemed to confirm that she was snubbing the new boss-missy. But there was something a little cautious in her eyes, something that said,
Play along
. . . The other thing that Deborah had not yet reported to the police about her trip was that she had met Tonya in Greece, that she too had a personal stake in the missing antiquities, however fake they appeared to be.

"Fine," she said, "but I'll dock your pay if this place isn't up to scratch when you finish. I've only been gone a few days, and it looks like you barely moved a mop in my absence. Were you even here?"

"I took the opportunity to visit family in Louisiana,"

Tonya said, her defiance ratcheting up a notch. "It's not like the museum was open, and the police were underfoot all the time. No offense," she added, nodding to Keene.

"None taken," he replied, enjoying himself.