But she’d changed all that. The canal was now gone, the river restored. Most of her counterparts had seemed doomed to mimic their conquerors, but her brain had never atrophied from vodka. She’d always kept her eye on the prize, and learned how to both seize and hold power.
“Two hundred tons of communist anthrax was neutralized here,” she told the crowd. “Every bit of their poison is gone. And we made the Soviets pay for it.”
The crowd roared their approval.
“Let me tell you something. Once we were free, away from Moscow ’s choke hold, they had the audacity to say we owed them money.” Her arms rose into the air. “Can you imagine? They rape our land. Destroy our sea. Poison the soil with their germs. And we owe them money?” She saw thousands of heads shake. “That’s exactly what I said, too. No.”
She scanned the faces staring back at her, each bathed in bright midday sunshine.
“So we made the Soviets pay to clean up their own mess. And we closed their canal, which was sucking the life from our ancient sea.”
Never did she use the singular “I.” Always “we.”
“Many of you I’m sure, as I do, remember the tigers, wild boar, and waterfowl that thrived in the Amu Darya delta. The millions of fish that filled the Aral Sea. Our scientists know that one hundred and seventy-eight species once lived here. Now, only thirty-eight remain. Soviet progress.” She shook her head. “The virtues of communism.” She smirked. “Criminals. That’s what they were. Plain, ordinary criminals.”
The canal had been a failure not only environmentally but also structurally. Seepage and flooding had been common. Like the Soviets themselves, who cared little for efficiency, the canal lost more water than it ever delivered. As the Aral Sea dried to nothing, Vozrozhdeniya Island eventually became a peninsula, connected to the shore, and the fear rose that land mammals and reptiles would carry off the deadly biological toxins. Not anymore. The land was clean. Declared so by a United Nations inspection team, which labeled the effort “masterful.”
She raised her fist to the air. “And we told those Soviet criminals that if we could, we’d sentence each one of them to our prisons.”
The people roared more approval.
“This town of Kantubek, where we stand, here in its central plaza, has risen from the ashes. The Soviets reduced it to rubble. Now free Federation citizens will live here, in peace and harmony, on an island that is also reborn. The Aral itself is returning, its water levels rising each year, man-made desert once again becoming seabed. This is an example of what we can achieve. Our land. Our water.” She hesitated. “Our heritage.”
The crowd erupted.
Her gaze raked the faces, soaking in the anticipation her message seemed to generate. She loved being among the people. And they loved her. Acquiring power was one thing. Keeping it, quite another.
And she planned to keep it.
“My fellow citizens, know that we can do anything if we set our minds to it. How many across the globe declared we could not consolidate? How many said we’d split thanks to civil war? How many claimed we were incapable of governing ourselves? Twice we’ve conducted national elections. Free and open, with many candidates. No one can say that either contest was not fair.” She paused. “We have a constitution that guarantees human rights, along with personal, political, and intellectual freedom.”
She was enjoying this moment. The reopening of Vozrozhdeniya Island was certainly an event that demanded her presence. Federation television, along with three new independent broadcasting channels that she’d licensed to Venetian League members, were spreading her message nationwide. Those new station owners had privately promised control over what they produced, all part of the camaraderie League membership offered to fellow members, and she was glad for their presence. Hard to argue that she controlled the media when, from all outward appearances, she did not.
She stared out at the rebuilt town, its brick and stone buildings erected in the style of a century ago. Kantubek would once again be populated. Her Interior ministry had reported that ten thousand had applied for land grants on the island, another indication of the confidence the people placed in her since so many were willing to live where only twenty years ago nothing would have survived.
“Stability is the basis of everything,” she roared.
Her catchphrase, used repeatedly over the past fifteen years.
“Today, we christen this island in the name of the people of the Central Asian Federation. May our union last forever.”
She stepped from the podium as the crowd applauded.
Three of her guardsmen quickly closed ranks and escorted her off the dais. Her helicopter was waiting, as was a plane that would take her west, to Venice, where the answers to so many questions awaited.
THIRTY-FOUR
VENICE
2:15 P.M.
MALONE STOOD BESIDE CASSIOPEIA AS SHE PILOTED THE MOTORBOAT out into the lagoon. They’d flown from Copenhagen on a direct flight, landing at Aeroporto Marco Polo an hour ago. He’d visited Venice many times in years past on assignments with the Magellan Billet. It was familiar territory, expansive and isolated, but its heart remained compact, about two miles long and a mile wide-and had wisely managed for centuries to keep the world at bay.
The boat’s bow was pointed northeast, away from the center, leading them past the glass-making center of Murano, straight for Torcello, one of the many squats of land that dotted the Venetian lagoon.
They’d rented the launch near the airport, a sleek wooden craft with enclosed cabins fore and aft. Frisky outboards skimmed the low-riding hull across the choppy swells, churning the green water behind them into a lime foam.
Over breakfast, Cassiopeia had told him about the final elephant medallion. She and Thorvaldsen had charted the thefts across Europe, noticing early on that the decadrachms in Venice and Samarkand seemed to be ignored. That was why they’d been reasonably sure the Copenhagen medallion would be next. After the fourth was stolen from a private collector in France three weeks ago, she and Thorvaldsen had waited patiently.
“They held the Venice medallion last for a reason,” Cassiopeia said to him over the engines. One of the city water buses chugged past, heading in the opposite direction. “I guess you’d like to know why?”
“The thought did occur to me.”
“Ely believed Alexander the Great may be inside St. Mark’s tomb.”
Interesting idea. Different. Nuts.
“Long story,” she said, “but he may be right. The body in St. Mark’s basilica is supposedly of a two-thousand-year-old mummy. St. Mark was mummified in Alexandria, after he died in the first century CE. Alexander is three hundred years older and was mummified, too. But in the fourth century, when Alexander disappeared from his tomb, Mark’s remains suddenly appeared in Alexandria.”
“I assume you have more evidence than that?”
“Irina Zovastina is obsessed with Alexander the Great. Ely told me all about it. She has a private collection of Greek art, an expansive library, and fashions herself an expert on Homer and the Iliad. Now she’s sending guardsmen out to collect elephant medallions and leave no trail. And the coin in Samarkand goes completely untouched.” She shook her head. “They waited for this theft to be last, so they could be near St. Mark’s.”
“I’ve been inside that basilica,” he said. “The saint’s sarcophagus is under the main altar, which weighs tons. You’d need hydraulic lifts and lots of time to get inside it. That’s impossible considering the basilica is the city’s number one tourist attraction.”
“I don’t know how she intends to do it, but I’m convinced she’s going to make a try for that tomb.”