“Because the more time that passes before the pieces of the map are reunited, the greater the likelihood they will never be found,” Hunt said.

“And there’s much less value to the individual pieces than to the work as a whole,” Mike said. “But if your grandfather bought it intact, how did it get broken up?”

“Because Jasper Hunt Jr. was mad.”

“Your sister mentioned that.”

“First honest thing I’ve heard out of her mouth in ages,” Hunt said. “We hardly knew him-he died when we were very young-but the stories about him are legion. He was all about games and pranks and tricks, Mr. Chapman. The older he got, the more difficult. Like many rich men, he wanted to take it all with him. Very torn about whether he should create a legacy that would outlive him or go out like a pharaoh, with all his worldly goods surrounding him for the long ride.”

“How did he come to buy the map?” I asked.

“According to my father, Grandpapa was thirty years old when the discovery of this map was made by Josef Fischer. The news spread worldwide, of course, and even though Jasper’s interest was primarily in books, like most collectors he was fascinated with the idea that one could still uncover such treasures, untouched over time, in a personal library. And so he made a plan.”

“And what was that?” Mike asked.

“Jasper asked his curator to study the small royal families of Europe, like the Waldburgs of Wolfegg Castle, where the map was found. Kingdoms, principalities, and duchies that had libraries in 1507, when the great map was printed, and had perhaps managed to hang on to those residences throughout the four intervening centuries. It was well known that royals were among the first to buy these documents at the time they were printed.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Mercer said.

“By the time they finished a careful survey of European history three years later, Jasper was surprised to see how few of the existing properties had not been pillaged or changed hands numerous times. So he and his curator-and his personal banker-decided to embark on a grand tour of the continent.”

“Just to search for that map?” I asked.

“The ostensible purpose was that the great American book collector Jasper Hunt Jr. was making a pilgrimage to Europe ’s oldest royal libraries in order to add to his own. But Grandpapa was also counting on the fact that while many of these princes had retained their titles, they had lost most of their riches and their long-gone feudal lifestyles. Some of them might be ready to offer to sell him valuable works-maybe even the great world map.”

“But wouldn’t there already have been a feeding frenzy, after the announcement of the discovery of the one map?”

“Actually not, Mr. Wallace,” Hunt said. “You see, Prince Waldburg had no intention of selling his. The great excitement at the time was that it existed at all, and in such perfect condition. Cartographers everywhere wanted to see and study it, but the prince made it clear that there was never to be a price tag placed on the map, so it was never assigned a commercial value in the marketplace. A century later-just a few years ago-we all learned that the Library of Congress had made known its interest in acquiring the map.”

“So your grandfather never knew that it was worth millions of dollars?” I asked.

“Grandpapa had a great eye for the rare and beautiful, but not even he could have guessed the price this would have ultimately been worth. No one could have.”

“How did he find it?”

“In 1905, they were traveling through Belgium and the Netherlands, actually making some magnificent purchases of incunabula and very old illustrated manuscripts, when Jasper was summoned by Prince Albert of Monaco-Albert the First,” Hunt said. “The two had known each other for quite some time because Albert had married a rich American girl from New Orleans whose family was well acquainted with the Hunts. It seems that Albert got word of Jasper’s search, and from Jasper’s perspective, the Grimaldi family was high on his list of prospects. They had ruled Monaco since the thirteenth century, and being in such an important strategic position on the Mediterranean seaport, would likely have been interested in a map of the New World at the time it first appeared.”

“Yeah, but the Grimaldis had been chased out of town at least once,” Mike said. “They didn’t retain possession of their palace for that whole passage of time.”

Talbot Hunt’s furrowed brow suggested his puzzlement at Mike’s display of knowledge, which was doubtless some factoid of military history. “You’re right, Detective. That, too, was part of Prince Albert ’s story.

“Don’t forget that Monaco is built on top of a rock, Detective-literally, a fortress atop a great cliff above a strategic harbor, with ramparts constructed all around to reinforce it. Before the Grimaldis fled the palace during the French Revolution, they were able to stash many of their treasures-crown jewels, the art collection amassed by Prince Honoré, and a good portion of the royal library-inside a series of catacombs built into the rock in medieval times. Everything still high and dry when the next generation was restored to the palace thirty years later.”

“Why did Albert contact your grandfather?”

“Word had spread throughout these European principalities about the questions Jasper was asking during his travels. And Albert was an unusual prince for his time, far more interested in intellectual pursuits than most others. In fact, he is best remembered as an explorer-a very serious oceanographer-which explains his attachment to maps.”

“There’s a great oceanographic museum in Monaco, isn’t there?” I asked.

“Indeed. And it was founded by Albert-in 1906.”

“One year after your grandfather met with him.”

“And thanks to Grandpapa’s largesse,” Talbot Hunt said. “You see, Princess Alice-the rich American wife-left Albert a few years earlier, after he slapped her in the face during an evening at the opera, when he learned she was having an affair with a famous composer.”

“Like you say, Coop”-Mike pointed at me-“nothing new about domestic violence.”

“And when Alice walked out, she took her sizable dowry with her. By selling the 1507 world map to my grandfather, Prince Albert pocketed a small fortune for himself and was able to establish the oceanographic museum and library, which is still thriving today.”

“Nobody in the principality complained that he was deaccessioning such a rare document?”

“Ms. Cooper, I daresay not many people knew of its existence. My father claims that Albert told Grandpapa that the panels of the great map had been protected because they were inside a series of books-books that had intrigued Albert from the time he was a young child.”

“Do you know which books?” I asked.

“Certainly. Some time after the Grimaldis returned to power in 1814, the royal library acquired the entire collection of the Description de l’Égypte. All twenty-four volumes. Where the pieces of the map had been stored for safekeeping during the revolution, I don’t suppose we’ll ever know. But whoever found them thereafter decided that the double elephant folios of the Napoleonic expedition would be just the right size to protect the panels.”

“What are they?” Mike asked.

“The Description of Egypt was the largest publication in the world at that time-in its physical size, not in the number of copies-and a very prized possession, too,” Jill Gibson explained. “Napoleon led a failed invasion of Egypt in 1798.”

“I know that. The British defeated him in the Mediterranean and his troops were cut off from France,” Mike said. “He abandoned his army and went home.”

“But a horde of civilians accompanied the military, and stayed on in Egypt to create an exhaustive and meticulously drawn catalog of everything from the obelisks and large statues along the Nile, to the great tombs, to the flora and fauna,” Jill said.