The Altar Of Bones Part 27

The man caught his breath as the light from the shop's crystal chandeliers glimmered in the jewels and gilt paint on the Virgin's crown and robe.

"Why, it's ... exquisite," he said, but Zoe thought he'd been about to say something else.

His hands hovered in the air over the icon, as if he yearned to touch it but didn't dare. "Yes, it is really rather extraordinary. I would like to examine it under more direct light. May I?"

"Please do. My grandmother said it's been in the family for generations. Didn't she, honey?"

Zoe turned to look at Ry, and her mouth nearly fell open. He had morphed into a completely different person-his face looked softer, emptier, as if he'd dropped about fifty points off his IQ. And although he couldn't make himself grow shorter or less buff, the way he slouched against the counter, his shoulders drooping, he didn't look nearly so tough and threatening anymore.

And, oh, boy-he was giving her this hot look, a very hot look, that clearly said he was picturing her naked right now. Naked and s.e.x-sweaty, and lying underneath him- Anthony Lovely cleared his throat. "Tell me, Mrs...."

Zoe jerked her fascinated gaze off Ry and turned back to the antiques dealer. "Uh, Suzie Carpenter, with a z z. My husband's name is Jake Carpenter. We just got married."

"Yes, so you said. May I ask, how extensive is your knowledge of religious icons?"

"Just that they're, you know, these religious things," Zoe said, hoping she sounded clueless enough. "But I want to know more, now that I've got one."

Anthony Lovely s.h.i.+fted his coffee and the folded-up newspaper farther down the counter and picked up a green gooseneck lamp from over by the cash register.

"Because of the veneration in which they were held by the Orthodox Church," he said, "Russian icons had to conform to strict formal rules, with fixed patterns repeated over and over again. There were severe repercussions for those artists who dared to deviate from the norm. Being whipped to death with a wire flail, for example."

Zoe shuddered. "Oh, but that's terrible."

"Indeed." Lovely set the lamp down on the counter. "Which is what makes this particular icon of yours so special-because its subject matter so completely violates all the rules, don't you see?"

He reached beneath the counter and brought out a box of thin plastic gloves, so the oil from his skin wouldn't get onto the wood. He took a black velvet cloth from out of a drawer, smoothed it out, then reverently laid the icon down on top of it.

Zoe felt a pang of guilt over the cavalier way she and Ry had been handling it, poking and prying and shaking it to see if it had a hidden compartment. She'd even jumped into the Seine with it.

"Normally," Lovely said, bending at the waist and adjusting his bifocals up, then down, then up again, "the Virgin is depicted holding the Christ child in her arms, or with her hands folded in prayer. But instead, what we have here is a rather macabre drinking cup. Carved out of a human skull, no less."

"It is kind of creepy looking," Zoe said, with another shudder. "Do you think it has some special meaning?"

"To the artist, perhaps. The Church, I rather suspect, would have been horrified at the very idea."

Lovely lost himself in his thoughts for a moment, and his eyes, Zoe thought, were almost wors.h.i.+pful as he looked at the icon. He loves this He loves this, she thought. Not only the icons-he loves Russia herself, her history, her dark and deep mysteries. He loves it all the way to his soul Not only the icons-he loves Russia herself, her history, her dark and deep mysteries. He loves it all the way to his soul.

He huffed a little laugh. "Yes, horrified indeed. And they probably would have looked askance at this Virgin, too, for she's not your typical, flat-faced saint who conforms to a dictated ideal. Rather, there's a mischievous, whimsical quality about her, don't you think? As if she has a secret she is teasing us with, only she will never tell. I have to believe the artist used a real person as a model. Her heart-shaped face and prominent cheekbones, the strongly arched brows. And her eyes, they are almost catlike-"

He stopped himself, looked up at Zoe, then back down to the icon. "How utterly extraordinary. The Virgin, she is ... You two look enough alike to be sisters."

Slowly, he raised his gaze back up to Zoe's face, and she saw suspicion come into his kind eyes. "How long did you say this has been in your family?"

Zoe didn't dare look at Ry. "Oh, a long time," she said, her voice cracking hoa.r.s.ely. "Grandmother never really said."

Lovely stared at her for several interminable seconds, then said, "I wonder ... Is it mere serendipity you look so much like her, Mrs. Carpenter? Or do you perhaps believe she was a real woman, from a real place?"

A real place. Zoe looked down at the Virgin. She sat on a golden throne, and the throne floated above a lake that was shaped rather like a shoe. At the heel of the shoe was what looked like a pile of rocks. And at the toe end was a waterfall.

"Are you saying you think this lake really exists somewhere?"

"Indeed, I do." Lovely made a little circular motion over the icon with his hand. "We see the lake, the rocks, the waterfall, as if from above, a bird's-eye view. Yet the Virgin we see head-on, and out of perspective to everything else. It's as if the artist painted a map of a place he knew, his home perhaps, and then placed the Virgin on top of it."

"Did you hear that, honey?" Zoe said, turning to Ry. "He thinks the lake in my icon might be a real place. Wouldn't it be cool to go there and see it?"

Ry shrugged. "Whatever."

She turned back to the antiques dealer and beamed a smile at him. "Do you know where in Russia it might be, Mr. Lovely?"

Lovely smiled as well. "If the artist depicted the place where he lived, then it would be somewhere in Siberia. One can tell this from the paint he used, you see. The colors in the Virgin's robe, for instance, orange, vermilion, and turquoise, are distinctly Siberian. And applied with a sureness of touch I've rarely seen surpa.s.sed. Indeed, in the hands of a lesser master such colors might easily have a.s.sumed a primitive garishness of the sort we often encounter in folk art."

Zoe's heart pounded so hard with excitement, she was almost dancing with it. The icon was a map to a real place, a lake somewhere in Siberia. If they found the lake, could they find the altar of bones?

"The colors really are beautiful," she said. "And so vivid still, for being painted so long ago."

"It is all rather wonderful, is it not? The amazing freshness of the color is due to a technique of great durability called encaustic, in which the pigments are suspended in hot wax. It is a technique, by the by, which helps us to date it to around the time of Ivan the Terrible. That is, the sixteenth century."

Lovely stared reverently down at the icon, then he sighed. "The embossed silver overlay on the cup and the gold-leaf paint on the crown were added a couple of centuries later. Rather a pity, for it compromises the integrity of the piece."

"But what about those jewels on it?" Ry said. "Those've got to be worth something, right?"

"Ah, yes. The jewels." Lovely took a jeweler's loupe out of his suit pocket, put it to his eye, and brought his face so close he was within a millimeter of brus.h.i.+ng noses with the Virgin. "I see that we have a diamond, onyx, iolite ...," he said, as he moved the loupe from one jewel to the other. "Fire opal, aquamarine, sapphire ..." He ended with the largest jewel, the one embedded on the forehead of the silver skull cup. "Ruby."

He straightened, tucking the loupe back into his pocket. "Regrettably, they are all thoroughly modern. PostWorld War Two, I would say, and of rather inferior quality and cut. The original jewels were probably removed by someone who needed the money."

My great-grandmother, Zoe thought. Lena Orlova. Had she sold the jewels to keep her and her baby alive in Shanghai during the j.a.panese occupation? Anna Larina had said Lena married a jewel merchant after the war. These later jewels had probably come from him.

But what had always seemed most strange to Zoe about the jewels was the way they'd been placed on the icon so haphazardly. Not only were no two of the jewels alike, but it looked as if they'd just been plopped down on a whim, with no thought for artistry or symmetry.

The Virgin's gold crown, for instance-why no jewels there? Yet in the sky on either side of the crown, floating up among the clouds, the artist had put a fire opal and an aquamarine. No jewels were on the Virgin's robe either, as you would have expected, but the iolite had been stuck in the middle of the pile of rocks, and the sapphire was in the waterfall.

It made no sense. The only jewel that seemed to be where it ought to be was the big ruby in the middle of the skull's forehead.

"So what are you telling us?" Ry asked, s.h.i.+fting his weight and slouching even more to lean his elbows on the spotless gla.s.s countertop. "Is the icon worth something, or isn't it?"

Lovely gave Ry's elbows a scathing look. "It is virtually impossible to put a specific value on such a unique piece as this. I can tell you that a well-preserved Siberian icon, circa early seventeenth century, recently went at Sotheby's for nine hundred thousand pounds sterling."

"Holy s.h.i.+t," Ry said, and Zoe almost laughed at the genuine shock she heard in his voice. Then she remembered her plunge in the Seine with nine hundred thousand pounds sterling worth of icon in her satchel, and that wild motorcycle ride through the streets of Paris, and she got a little queasy herself.

"Yes, quite," Lovely said. "And if you are interested in selling, then I might be able to put you in touch with a potential buyer. He lives just outside of Budapest, but he's a serious collector of Siberian icons, and an expert in Siberian folklore and artifacts. In fact, he-"

Lovely caught himself up and looked off into the distance, seeming to think about whether he wanted to say more.

Zoe decided to take a chance on leveling with the dealer just a little. "Mr. Lovely, I would never part with my grandmother's icon, any more than I would cut off my right arm and sell it, because it is a part of me, my heritage. But I would really like to talk to this man."

Lovely hesitated a moment longer, then nodded. "I have his card here somewhere."

He went to a drawer beneath the cash register and began to rummage through what to Zoe's eyes looked like several hundred business cards. "The odd thing is, he asked me once years ago to keep him in mind if I ever came across a Virgin holding a skull cup in her lap. It seemed such a strange request that I utterly dismissed it at the time.... Ah, here we are."

He brought the card to Zoe. "This should have everything you need. 'Denis Kuzmin, Professor Emeritus, 336 Piroska U., Szentendre, Hungary.' And a telephone number."

Zoe tucked the card in her back pocket, while Lovely carefully wrapped the icon back up in its sealskin pouch. Then he presented the pouch to her as if offering the crown jewels of England.

"Thank you for allowing me the pleasure, Mrs. Carpenter."

Zoe smiled back at him, feeling a little sad because she liked him, and yet she'd deceived him in a way, by not being herself.

"WHOOH, BOY," ZOE said, as the door to the Air de la Russie shut behind them with the tinkle of a bell. She was jazzed. said, as the door to the Air de la Russie shut behind them with the tinkle of a bell. She was jazzed.

"The lake in the icon is a real place, Ry, way up in Siberia somewhere. And sixteenth-century. It's weird to think there was a Keeper who looked like me yet lived so long ago. I feel like we're finally getting somewhere, though. How did I do? Was I clueless enough?"

Ry drew in a breath to speak, but Zoe put a finger over his lips. "No, don't say it, O'Malley. I know I just left myself wide-open for a real zinger of a comeback there, but you owe me a free pa.s.s, remember?"

He wrapped his hand around hers, but he left her finger where it was. His breath was hot on her skin as he spoke. "You did good. You charmed poor Mr. Lovely down to his toes, then wrung him dry."

He kept hold of her hand, Zoe noticed, as they started to cross the street, heading back toward the cafe where they'd had breakfast.

She said, "And we also got the name of someone who might know even more. I hope Hungarian is one of your fifteen languages."

Ry grinned at her and rattled off something that to Zoe's ears sounded like the warble of a wren.

"Well, I trust that was at least polite-"

Zoe cut herself off, gripping Ry's hand tighter and pulling him up short. She leaned in close to him, pretending to nuzzle his neck and whispered, "News kiosk. On the corner."

He kissed her chin and tipped his head so that he could see the racks of newspapers out of the corner of his eye. "Oh, s.h.i.+t," he said, kissed her nose, her cheek. "This is bad."

Yasmine Poole had made good on her threat. Racks of newspapers ringed the kiosk, and every single one of them had their pictures plastered all over the front pages, beneath six-inch headlines that screamed TERRORISTES TERRORISTES. They'd used her California driver's license and Ry's photo from his DEA badge.

Something like a premonition made Zoe turn just then and look back at the Air de la Russie. She saw Anthony Lovely pick up his coffee with one hand, while he shook open his newspaper with the other. The Starbucks cup stopped in midair, and his head jerked around to peer out the window.

"Really, really bad, Ry. Anthony Lovely just made us."

"I know you're scared," Ry said, his voice calm, and he smoothed the loose wisps of hair off her forehead with his fingertips. "But there's a metro entrance not far from here. We're going to walk there as if we haven't a care in the world, unless someone starts yelling. Then we run like h.e.l.l."

36.

ZOE HALF-EXPECTED Anthony Lovely to run out of his shop after them, yelling, "Stop, terrorists!" but he didn't. Anthony Lovely to run out of his shop after them, yelling, "Stop, terrorists!" but he didn't.

They made it to the metro without any commotion at all. Ry stopped at one of the underground shops and bought her a large, plain black scarf-to cover her head, he said-but she barely registered what he was doing. She felt dazed. All those racks upon racks of newspapers with her face on them, branding her a terrorist. She wanted it to be happening to another Zoe, one whose troubles she could make go away just by turning off her TV set.

"We really need those fake pa.s.sports now," Ry said, as he helped to tie the scarf around her head so that it completely covered her hair. "This guy I know, Kareem, he's got the soul of a Barbary pirate, but he's the best there is at forging doc.u.ments, and his mother Fatama is a master of disguise. Their lab, though, is near the Porte St.-Denis. It's a Muslim neighborhood now, and it's been declared a zone urbaine sensible zone urbaine sensible-that's a euphemism for a no-go zone, as in the cops won't go in there anymore, because of the riots and car burnings they've had there lately. So we'll need to take a few precautions, all right?"

"You take me to all the nicest places," she said, trying to smile, but it didn't come out right. She was scared, deep down scared. "Just don't leave me, though, okay?"

He cupped her face, tilting her head back so he could look into her eyes. "I'm gonna be right beside you every step of the way, Zoe. All the way through to the end. And you know I can kick b.u.t.t, because you've seen me do it, maybe even better than you."

She managed to smile at that.

But when they came up out of the metro station, all her fear came rus.h.i.+ng back, because it looked like a war zone. Blackened corpses of cars were everywhere, some still smoldering. Rocks, some the size of softb.a.l.l.s, littered the street.

Zoe kept her head down and they walked quickly, Ry gripping her upper arm, and she knew his other hand was wrapped around the gun in his pocket. This is his life This is his life, Zoe thought. This is what it's like all the time for him This is what it's like all the time for him. How could he bear it?

A rusty was.h.i.+ng machine lay on the sidewalk, its guts spilling out, and they had to walk out into the street to get around it. A block later they had to go around a refrigerator.

"Why do they just throw their stuff out in the street like that?" Zoe whispered.

"They drop them out of the windows onto the heads of the firemen and paramedics."

Zoe now wished she hadn't asked. She lowered her head even more and tried to keep from breaking into a run.

They pa.s.sed a burnt-out school, then ducked down the bas.e.m.e.nt steps of a government housing project. The door at the bottom of the steps opened in front of them, as if by magic, just long enough for them to slip quickly through. Then it swung shut with a loud snap of a lock, and Zoe jumped.

They found themselves in one large room, half the size of a basketball court. On one side was an array of computers, printers, and hologram and embossing machines. On the other side were tables strewn with wigs, fake beards and mustaches, tubes of skin dye, palettes of paints, and pots of glue. And underneath the tables, on the floor, bin after bin of prosthetic noses, chins, ears.

A tall, bearded man, who was sitting at a computer table, spoke to them without turning around. "This morning I am eating my muesli and watching your face all over CNN, and I think to myself, 'Kareem, you are a fool. You should be charging him double.' "

"You do and I'll tell your mother," Ry shot back. "She always did say you'd come to a bad end."

A tiny, ageless woman in a beautiful, flowing blue hijab came up to Zoe and took her hand. "Come. My name is Fatama. While the men drink tea and see which one has the smarter mouth, I will make you a new face."

FIVE HOURS LATER, Zoe was in the Charles de Gaulle Airport, staring at the metal pole barrier that isolated the pa.s.sport control booths from the departure area. You had pa.s.s through them first, before you could take yourself and your bags through security, and the lines were long, snaking into the seating area.

Okay, you can do this, Zoe, she told herself. You've got your ticket and your boarding pa.s.s in your hot little hand, so all you got to do is make it through security. You're going to walk up there and get in line, and smile at the man when he asks to see your pa.s.sport, like you haven't got a care in the world You've got your ticket and your boarding pa.s.s in your hot little hand, so all you got to do is make it through security. You're going to walk up there and get in line, and smile at the man when he asks to see your pa.s.sport, like you haven't got a care in the world.

She joined the tail end of the nearest line just as her face popped up on the TV set that hung suspended from the ceiling above the lounge chairs. She couldn't read the French that was scrolling across the screen, except for that one horrible word. Terroristes Terroristes.

Zoe ducked her head and turned away, as if the TV set itself might suddenly spot her and start blaring an alarm.

You can do this, Zoe. You can do this. ...

But her feet seemed to have other ideas. Her feet left the pa.s.sport control line and headed for a door sporting the ubiquitous blue silhouette of a woman in an A-line dress.

She stopped as the restroom door swung shut behind her and drew in a deep breath, feeling such an onrush of fear and despair it nearly drove her to her knees. How was she ever going to get out of this mess? The whole world thought she was a terrorist, but she didn't know what exactly they thought she had done. What the charges would be, or what chance she would have to prove her innocence.

But then, innocence or guilt, what did it matter? They would kill her long before she got to trial.

You can do this. She would would do it. Her feet would go back out there and get in that line because she had to. Getting on the plane was her only option now. do it. Her feet would go back out there and get in that line because she had to. Getting on the plane was her only option now.

She went to one of the sinks, turned on the tap, and splashed cold water on her face. She looked up and froze, startled by the stranger's face she saw in the mirror. A girl with short, spiked black hair dyed purple at the ends. Sallow skin and dark eyes the color of bruises. A ring piercing one eyebrow, a stud in her nose.

SHE WASN'T SURE how long she stood there, staring into the mirror. Her mind seemed to just drift away for a while. But then a loudspeaker high in the wall crackled something in French, snapping her back into the moment. how long she stood there, staring into the mirror. Her mind seemed to just drift away for a while. But then a loudspeaker high in the wall crackled something in French, snapping her back into the moment.