And suddenly they started dying. It was Kramer who told him about the box, Kramer who discussed the nightmares he was having, Kramer who led him to delve into the dark corners of Sumerian mythology, but it wasn’t until just after Damien Patchett died that he found out the truth about Roddam. Roddam was dead. He had been found in the IRIS office in Concord one week after Tobias and Bacci returned home, the first of the men involved in the Al-Adhamiya raid to do so. It had passed the rest of them by, if any of them had even cared, because Roddam wasn’t his real name: it was Nailon, Jack Nailon. He’d fallen asleep on the couch in his office with a lit cigar in an ashtray on the couch arm, and with too much whiskey in his system and on his clothes. He had burned to death, they said.

Except that Roddam, or Nailon, or whatever his real name was, didn’t drink. That was what he remembered from the beer night at the base, when he and Roddam had exchanged a couple of words after he had offered Roddam a beer. Roddam was a diabetic and suffered from high blood pressure. He couldn’t drink alcohol and he didn’t smoke. He didn’t know why that hadn’t come up during the investigation into Roddam’s death. Maybe, like everything else about Roddam, his medical history was uncertain, hidden. But then he recalled some of the things that Tobias had begun to say about Roddam before Tobias went home: Roddam was unreliable. Roddam wasn’t one of us. Roddam was causing trouble in Quebec. Roddam wanted a bigger cut. As though he were preparing the way for Roddam’s removal.

He’d brought up Roddam’s death after Damien’s funeral. He’d brought up lots of stuff because he was sad, and he was drunk, and he missed Mel, and he was sure going to miss Damien. If Roddam wasn’t in charge, then who was? Tobias was classic NCO material. He didn’t originate ideas, he just put them into action, and this was a complicated operation.

And Tobias had told him to keep quiet, to mind his own business, because a man in a wheelchair was vulnerable, and cripples had accidents all the time.

After that, he’d started carrying the gun under his chair.

29

The Collector was now only steps behind Herod. He felt himself drawing closer to him, and as he did so his fears increased.

Herod was an unusual case. The Collector might even have viewed him simply as an interesting challenge, like a hunter who finds that the animal he is pursuing has displayed unexpected depths of cunning, had he not become increasingly concerned about the man’s ultimate purpose, and the imminence of its fulfillment. Herod had concealed himself well, and the Collector had only been able to find traces of him: deals, and threats, made; lives ruined, and bodies left unburied; items purchased, or taken from the dead. It was the nature of these artifacts – occult, arcane – that had first drawn the Collector’s attention. Carefully, he had tried to discern a pattern. There seemed to be no distinct historical period to which Herod was attracted, and the items themselves were baffling in their variety and relative value. The Collector had only the peculiar sense that this was the reflection of a consciousness, as though Herod were furnishing a room in preparation for the arrival of an honored guest, so that the visitor might be surrounded by treasures and curios that were familiar or of interest to him; or preparing a museum display which would only come together for the viewer when the main exhibit was finally put in place.

The Collector had come close to confronting Herod on a number of occasions, but the man had always slipped away. It was as though he had been forewarned about the Collector’s approach, and had found ways to avoid him, even if it meant sacrificing an item that he desired, for the Collector had made certain to bait his traps well. The Collector had already decided to dispose of Herod some years before. Herod had killed a child, a young boy, whose father had reneged on a deal, and in the Collector’s mind Herod had damned himself by that action. It was one of Herod’s apparent peculiarities that he seemed to regard himself, and those with whom he dealt, as being bound by some twisted notion of honor, the rules of which appeared to be set by Herod, and Herod alone.

But if the Collector had experienced any doubts about the legitimacy of killing Herod, they had been swept away when he began to learn of Herod’s inquiries into the treasures looted from the Iraq Museum. That had given the Collector his first real inkling of what was being sought. He had heard rumors about the box, but had disregarded them. There were so many such tales, going right back to the original legend of Pandora, yet this one was different, because Herod was interested in it, and Herod did not embark on fruitless searches. Herod had an end in sight, and everything that he did served it.

Herod had been in contact with Rochman in Paris, anxious to establish the source of the seals that he had acquired. Rochman had proved uncooperative, for Herod did not have the funds necessary to engage in a serious bid for the items, even had Herod been interested in purchasing them, which he was not. Herod, in turn, had seemed oddly reluctant to threaten Rochman in order to force the information from him. The Collector had noted that Herod used violence only against the weak, like a playground bully. The House of Rochman was well established, and had influence. If Herod crossed it, he would risk alienating a clique of unscrupulous and wealthy dealers who would, at best, ostracize him, or, as was more likely, move against him. The Collector did not doubt that anyone getting into a conflict with Herod would suffer for it along the way, but a battle with men seeking to protect a billion dollar industry dependent on the secret movement of stolen antiquities could only end with Herod’s annihilation.

So Herod had backed off, biding his time. Now a number of seals had appeared in a town in Maine, for as soon as Rojas began seeking ways to turn gold and jewels into hard cash, rumors had spread. It was not only the dealers, and Herod, who would be drawn by them. The federal government was already taking an interest, for Rochman had begun to talk in an effort to save himself and his business. The seals in his possession had come from Locker 5 in the basement of the Iraq Museum, as had the seals currently available for sale in Maine. Rochman’s seals were a down payment for his advice on valuations, and for his help in sourcing buyers. In time, he would give all that he knew to the investigators, and it would only be a matter of days before they would start to close in on all involved.

The Collector knew of Dr. Al-Daini, and he believed that the Iraqi was ultimately seeking the box, even as he set about recovering the other treasures lost in 2003. The Collector had made inquiries, and had learned that Al-Daini was now on his way to the US. He would fly into Boston, and be taken straight from there to a disused motel in the town of Langdon, Maine.

The men who were transporting the stolen artifacts from the motel had been careless. A pair of small alabaster figures had been found lying in the long grass, and had quickly been identified as part of a hoard discovered at Tell es Sawwan, on the left bank of the Tigris, in 1964, and subsequently looted from the Iraq Museum. The body of a man had also been discovered at the motel, sealed into a room from the inside, dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound having first apparently fired at some unknown threat.

The body had been discovered by the detective, Charlie Parker.

There were no coincidences, the Collector knew, not where Parker was concerned. He was part of something that he did not understand; that, in truth, the Collector did not fully understand either. Now, once again, he and Parker were circling the same quarry, like twin moons orbiting a dark, unknown planet.