Sleight of Hand

CHAPTER Four

On Thursday, Dana Cutler got out of bed at three in the afternoon, ran five miles, then went through a set of calisthenics. When she finished a third set of fifty push-ups, she collapsed on the floor of the rec room in the basement of the house she shared with Jake Teeny. Jake, a photojournalist, was away on an Arctic expedition sponsored by National Geographic. Dana had met Jake six months before she was kidnapped, and he’d stood by her when she was in the hospital, visiting often and fighting hard to keep her spirits up, even when that seemed impossible. When she was released, he took her to lunch, dinner, and an occasional movie, but he had never tried to touch her until she fell in love with him and let him into her life. Dana had always been a loner until she fell in love. When Jake was gone she felt like a part of her was missing. Tonight, after writing a report on the Jorgenson case, she would try to find something on TV to numb her mind. Then she would go to sleep and wake up to another boring, unfulfilling day.

Dana’s last meal had been the beer and burger she’d downed at the sports bar during her surveillance of Lars Jorgenson, and she was starving. After a shower, she walked to the kitchen to scavenge the fixings for a sandwich. She had just opened the refrigerator door when her business phone rang.

“Cutler Investigations,” Dana said.

“Dana Cutler, please,” a woman said. Dana thought she heard a French accent.

“Speaking.”

“I would like to retain you.”

“To do what?” Dana asked.

“I would prefer that we not discuss the matter over the phone.”

Definitely French, Dana concluded.

“Okay, but can you give me some idea of what you want me to do. If it’s not the type of case I handle I can refer you to someone who does.”

“I really cannot say more. Your retainer will be very satisfactory if you accept the assignment. Meet me and I will pay you three thousand dollars for a consultation even if you do not take the case.”

The sum, which was way more than her normal rate, surprised Dana. “Where do you want to meet?” she asked.

“I do not know Washington. Perhaps you can suggest a place to rendezvous?”

“Are you hungry?”

“Non.”

“Well, I am. Why don’t we meet at Michelangelo’s? I know the owner and he’ll guarantee us privacy. The food is pretty good, too, if you change your mind about dinner.”



Michelangelo’s was a family-owned Italian restaurant located in sight of the Capitol dome, in an area that was shifting from decay to gentrification. Abandoned buildings and vacant lots could be found only blocks away from chic boutiques, renovated row houses owned by young professionals, and trendy restaurants. Michelangelo’s, which was anything but trendy, had been a constant in the neighborhood for over sixty years. Sam and Donna Mazzara opened it with their life savings after emigrating from Sicily. Donna had passed away seven years ago, but Sam still came to work every day. Their son, Victor, helped run the restaurant now.

Michelangelo’s was a few blocks from the offices of Exposed, a supermarket tabloid that had surprised establishment newspapers like the Washington Post and New York Times by winning prizes in journalism as a result of Dana’s investigative work. Patrick Gorman, the newspaper’s owner, ran a tab at Michelangelo’s, and Sam and Victor knew Dana. When she called, they set aside a small private dining room in the back for her to meet with her potential client. The room was paneled in dark wood and the lighting was subdued. Black-and-white photographs of Sicily hung on the walls. Dana sat at a table covered in a white tablecloth and ordered a small antipasto and spaghetti aglio e olio. The antipasto had just arrived when Victor opened the door to admit a woman who looked as exotic as her accent. She was carrying an attaché case and wore a trench coat. Dark glasses obscured her eyes, raven-black hair fell to her shoulders, she wore no rings on her fingers, and her lips were ruby red. Dana thought she’d fit in perfectly as the femme fatale in a 1940s film based on a Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett novel.

“Miss Cutler?” the woman asked.

Dana stood and offered her hand. The woman’s fingers barely touched Dana’s before she pulled her hand away.

“I am Margo Laurent.”

“Have a seat, Ms. Laurent,” Dana said as she motioned toward a chair on the other side of the table. Then she pointed her fork at her antipasto. “Sure you don’t want something to eat? The food here is great.”

“Thank you, but I am not hungry.”

“Suit yourself. I hope you don’t mind if I eat while we talk. I was up all night on a case and I’m starving.”

“Please.”

Dana waited for the woman to take off her coat. When she didn’t, Dana said, “So, Ms. Laurent, why do you want to hire me?”

“How much do you know about the Ottoman Empire?”

Dana had speared a piece of mortadella and a slice of provolone, but she paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.

“Turks, right?”

Laurent nodded.

Dana smiled apologetically. “I’m afraid that’s the extent of my knowledge. I was never much of a history buff.”

“The Ottoman Empire lasted from 1299 to 1923,” Laurent said. “In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, at the height of its power, it controlled territory in southeastern Europe, southwestern Asia, and North Africa. Constantinople was its capital city and the empire was at the center of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. At times, the empire’s tentacles reached into Persia, Egypt, Baghdad, Hungary, Transylvania, Moldavia, and the outskirts of Vienna. By the end of the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566 the empire’s population totaled fifteen million people.”

“Impressive,” Dana said before taking another forkful of Italian delicacies. She had no interest in Laurent’s history lesson, but three thousand bucks was three thousand bucks, so she pretended to find it fascinating.

“If you do not know about the Ottoman Empire, can I assume you’ve never heard of Gennadius or Mark of Ephesus?”

“You got me,” Dana said before eating a slice of prosciutto.

“In 1444, the court of Byzantium was desperate for Western assistance against the Turks and it agreed to a union with Rome, yielding on almost all of the important theological issues that divided the East and the West. For example, the unionists agreed to accept the concept of purgatory, which they had previously rejected.”

“Where is this going, Ms. Laurent?” asked Dana, whose patience was starting to fade.

“Bear with me. You need to understand the backstory before you can understand why I need your help.”

Dana shrugged. “It’s your dime.”

“Mark of Ephesus was concerned about the preservation of the Eastern Orthodox Church. He was the only bishop who refused to sign the union, and he spoke for the average Orthodox churchgoers who gathered around him. George Scholarius was a judge who made several speeches in favor of the union. When he returned to Byzantium, he saw how the lesser clergy and the common people opposed what they saw as the betrayal of their beliefs. He changed his mind and became a strong opponent of the union. When Mark died, on June 23, 1444, George became the leader of the anti-union camp. This brought him into disfavor with the court and he retired to a monastery and took the name Gennadius.

“In 1453, at the age of twenty-one, Sultan Mehmet II conquered Constantinople and cemented the status of the empire as the preeminent power in southeastern Europe. Mehmet wanted to assure the loyalty of the Greek population so they would not appeal to the West for liberation, which could have set off a new round of Crusades. He needed to find the cleric with the most hostility toward the West to help him cement the loyalty of the Greek populace. Gennadius was the natural choice.

“After Mehmet took Constantinople, Gennadius was captured by the Turks and sold as a slave. Mehmet’s men found Gennadius in Adrianople and brought him to the sultan on a beautiful horse from the imperial stable adorned with a silver saddle. The sultan received him in his suite while standing. The sultan rarely stood when receiving visitors, so this was a very rare display of respect.

“Mehmet persuaded Gennadius to be the first Patriarch of Constantinople under Islamic rule and personally gave him a gold, bejeweled scepter as the symbol of his authority. This scepter was immensely valuable, but it was only one of thousands of treasures belonging to the Ottoman sultans. No mention was made of it after Mehmet passed the Byzantine emperor’s symbol of power to the patriarch.”

Dana was suddenly drawn into Laurent’s tale and forgot about eating. Typically, her meetings with clients were laced with phrases like “cheating bastard” and “malingerer.” Dana couldn’t remember any insurance executive mentioning a silver saddle or a jewel-encrusted golden scepter.

“My grandfather, Antoine Girard, was a fascinating man,” Laurent said, changing the subject abruptly. “He studied archaeology and history at the Sorbonne and Oxford. He was a soldier of fortune and was involved in a number of famous archaeological digs. In 1922, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon found the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.”

“King Tut’s tomb?” asked Dana.

“Exactement. Antoine had a very minor role in the expedition, but he was there when the tomb was opened. Then he and Carter argued. My grandfather never revealed the basis of the dispute, but my father thought they might have fought over a woman both men had been seeing in Cairo, because that is where Antoine went after quitting the dig, and that is where he made his startling discovery.”

The door opened and Victor came in with Dana’s pasta. Laurent fell silent, and Dana, who had lost interest in her food, regretted the intrusion.

“What discovery?” Dana asked as soon as the door closed behind Victor.

“Antoine found the Ottoman scepter. An open-air market place in North Africa or the Middle East is called a souk, and the largest souk in Cairo is the Khan-el-Khalili. Have you been to Egypt, Miss Cutler?”

Dana shook her head. Her only trips outside the U.S. of A. had been chaperoning Jake when he was photographing swimsuit models in Tahiti and a disastrous week with a fellow cop in Acapulco.

“A pity. Cairo is fascinating, and the Khan-el-Khalili is one of its more exotic attractions. It is a winding maze packed tight with people, restaurants, coffeehouses, and shops selling all sorts of wares. On one of his trips to the souk, Antoine ventured into a shop that purported to sell Egyptian antiquities. Most of them were obvious fakes, but Antoine’s eye fell on an interesting item on a shelf in the back of the store. It was a jet-black scepter with no jewels, but there were indentations where jewels might have been at one time. More important, it resembled a gold scepter adorned with jewels Antoine had seen in a museum in Constantinople. Antoine suspected that the scepter was a copy, but something about it fascinated him. He bought it, along with several other items so the owner would not suspect his interest. When he got back to his hotel, he made a startling discovery.”

“It was the real deal?” Dana guessed.

Laurent nodded. “Underneath several layers of black paint was solid gold. But the scepter’s real value had nothing to do with gold. If Antoine had found the scepter that Mehmet gave to Gennadius, it would be priceless. Antoine spent ten years researching the scepter’s provenance and eventually came to the conclusion that it was, as you so charmingly put it, ‘the real deal.’ ”

“How do you know all this?”

“During a sojourn in Paris, Antoine married my grandmother, Marie Levêque. Marie was wealthy and had homes in Paris and Bordeaux. They lived together long enough for Antoine to father Pauline Girard, my mother. My family had a collection of letters Antoine wrote to Marie while he was in Turkey. In one of them, he says that he has uncovered documents that convinced him that the scepter was real.

“Shortly after she received the letter, Marie got word from the French embassy in Constantinople that Antoine had been murdered. Shortly after that, burglars ransacked her villa in Bordeaux, and an attempt was made to break into her home in Paris. Fortunately, the scepter was hidden in a safe in the basement of the Paris mansion.

“When Hitler came to power, Marie moved to America, where she had relatives. Eventually, Pauline married my father, Pierre Laurent, another wealthy émigré. Marie was highly intelligent and had many well-placed friends in the government. She anticipated Hitler’s invasion and the weakness of the French army and shipped a great deal of art to America before hostilities broke out. One object she included in her cargo was the scepter.

“While she was living in New York her mansion was burglarized on more than one occasion despite her having alarm systems installed and security guards posted. She could never prove it, but she suspected that the scepter was the object of these home invasions. Then, during a vacation in Europe after the war, Marie was kidnapped and murdered. Another burglary occurred soon after, and an inside job was suspected. Marie had told my mother the history of the scepter and where it was hidden. When she went to the place where Marie had hidden it, the scepter was gone.

“When I was growing up, I heard many stories about Antoine’s adventures, and the scepter was often mentioned. When I was a teenager, my mother showed me the letters that Antoine had written to Marie. I became fascinated with the scepter and the Ottoman Empire. I majored in history in college and made several attempts to track down the scepter. All of them were unsuccessful.

“Then I read that a Turkish businessman who had been hard hit by the recession was auctioning off his art collection. Among the items in the catalog was a gold scepter. The picture reminded me of my mother’s description. I traveled to New York for the auction and confronted the head of the house. I showed him my proof that the scepter was stolen property but it wasn’t strong enough and he said the present owner was willing to risk a lawsuit.

“I hired an attorney but he told me that the scepter had been withdrawn from the auction. Soon after I heard rumors of a private sale. I also learned that Otto Pickering, a professor specializing in art of the Ottoman Empire, had authenticated the scepter. And that is where my trail ran cold.”

“Did you talk to Pickering?”

“Despite repeated attempts to set up a meeting, he has refused to see me.”

“What is it that you want me to do?”

“I am terrified that the scepter will disappear for good if I do not act quickly. Otto Pickering is a recluse. He lives on an island off the coast of Washington State.”

Laurent placed the attaché case on the table and opened it. Inside were stacks of cash, a cell phone, and an airline ticket.

“I have purchased a first-class ticket on a flight to Seattle that leaves at midnight, and I have chartered a boat to take you to the island. Can you leave tonight?”

“That’s awfully short notice.”

“Miss Cutler, if we do not act immediately the scepter may disappear forever. The twenty-five-thousand-dollar retainer in this attaché case should compensate you for any inconvenience you might suffer.”

Dana ran through the projects she had on her desk. Most of them would keep. More important, none of them involved Constantinople, French soldiers of fortune, the Khan-el-Khalili in Cairo, and a mysterious golden scepter. It was no contest.

“I’ll be on the plane,” Dana said.

Laurent’s shoulders had been hunched from tension and she’d been holding her breath. Now she exhaled and her shoulders sagged.

“I cannot thank you enough.”

“How do you want me to report to you?”

“My number is programmed into the cell phone in the attaché case.”

Dana stood up. “I’m going home to pack. I’ll give you an update as soon as I talk to Otto Pickering.”