Bill
01-01-2009, 10:02 AM
Chapter I
"So how did this bust end up in the Thames?"
Joshua Carter reached for air to counteract the flush which he knew was flooding his face, and he knew that the flush would only deepen as soon as he thought about the flush and how his audience of thirty would perceive the flush. "Frankly," he began, bringing his hand to his chin as if to contemplate the question. He ended with "I don’t know," and the hand went to cover the lower half of his face.
"Perhaps it was lost by Vikings on their way back from raiding a Roman colony," one of Carter’s more chipper, and more American, tour listeners offered, in an apparent attempt to be helpful.
"No!"
There were gasps among the audience of thirty gathered around a bust of what appeared to be a Roman legionary, a set of distant-looking eyes dominant over a breastplate and twin shoulder plates. Those eyes looked through centuries at a bespectacled and besweatered Carter, who stamped his foot on the marble floor with each successive "No!," all three of them.
"The Romans were long gone from Britain by the time the Vikings arrived!" Carter had been gesticulating with his hands, and now both came down forcefully with "By centuries!"
The chipper listener had taken two steps back, backing up against her husband. "I didn’t know--"
"Of course you didn’t know!" Carter’s hands were flailing again, pausing only to allow his hand to push his glasses back up along the bridge of his nose. "No one ever knows! No one ever cares! But they should know, and they should care! History is who we are!"
When Carter’s hands stopped once more, they were above his shoulders, and a bored-looking security guard was leaning towards one ear. "Doctor Smith warned you about these outbursts, Doctor Carter," the guard whispered.
"Doctor Smith," Carter whispered back to himself, his eyes re-focusing on the present reality. The hands dropped to his sides, and he glanced at his watch without consulting it. The arms crossed themselves below a forced smile. "The museum will be closing shortly; now would be a good time to end the tour. Please be sure to visit the bookshop and--"
By the time Carter had finished his required sales litany, the crowd before he and the dutiful centurion had long since disappeared, with more than one muttered deprecation along the lines of "Mad Englishman." The museum’s deputy assistant curator poked at his glasses once
more, ran a hand through his unkempt hair, and promptly marched off to the stairwell which led to his cubbyhole office on the subterranean floor below.
It was from the corner of stairwell and hall that Joshua Carter stopped to look back at the bust centered against one wall between two enormous floor-to-ceiling windows which let in the gray light of a late London afternoon, the new addition’s prominent position in the gallery belying the museum’s lack of knowledge as to its provenance. Carter saw not only the bust; he also saw a man in a tweed jacket and blue bowtie standing before it. For one moment in time, the curator discerned a remarkable resemblance between the twin sets of features looking at one another across the span of centuries.
It was in the next moment that the man with the blue bowtie and tweed jacket flicked his right wrist. The hand below that wrist was then grasping something, and raising that something to the legionary’s decidedly un-Roman nose ...
"Stop him! Stop that man!" Carter shouted down the hallway, for the benefit of the two security guards loitering at the opposite end. They saw Carter, they saw the man Carter was pointing at, and they saw the same man drop his hand from the bust’s face and look quickly down each half-length of the gallery.
The moment after Carter had uttered the word "man," that "man" was sprinting directly towards him. Carter threw himself bodily at the would-be vandal, and was knocked bodily to the marble floor as a result of his effort.
When Carter looked up again the two guards, themselves having taken up the shout, were scurrying around him and down the flight of stairs, which the curator surmised the stranger had descended. Carter looked for his blood, found none, and gingerly pushed himself up into a standing position. He then walked down the hallway to inspect the bust, found it undamaged, and trotted back towards the stairs to assist in the apprehension of one who would dare to alter history.
It was at the bottom of the stairs, on the floor below, that Carter found the pair of guards congregated with another pair who had been stationed on that lower level, standing and discussing the various exits. "Well, where is he?" the deputy assistant curator demanded, not wanting to accept the fact that the stranger was nowhere to be seen.
Not one of the guards bothered to answer the question, but instead all four ventured forth from the foot of the staircase to guard the four possible venues of escape for the man in question.
Carter found himself alone on the lower floor, near closing time, and he sighed in resignation. He took a right down the hallway, taking the usual forty-three steps to the frosted-glass-and-wood door of his office, and he entered that office to begin that night’s session of research.
It was after he had closed the door behind himself that Carter noticed something amiss about the filing cabinet set against the wall opposite his desk: the top drawer was open. Carter opened his mouth to scream, but the man with the blue bowtie pounced from behind Carter’s desk, forced Carter’s body against the door, switched off the office light, and pressed his steel file beneath Carter’s Adam’s apple, all in a series of motions that took less than two seconds.
"Scream, and you die," a voice whispered in the darkness.
"No scream," Carter gasped out.
The pressure of the steel slackened, but only slightly. "Where are the records of that bust?"
"What bust?" Carter croaked.
The file’s pressure was greater than ever, and Carter gasped at the thought of his blood being drawn. "Bottom." He was back to gasping.
"Bottom drawer?"
"Yes."
The overhead light switched back on. "Retrieve it."
The file was removed from Carter’s throat, and he was pulled-pushed to the cabinet and pushed onto his knees before the bottom drawer. The steel point returned to his skin, this time behind one ear.
Carter did as he was told, opening the bottom drawer and rummaging through the files before quickly alighting on a Manila folder in the center.
"Give me the folder."
"The photo prints are at the bottom."
"Give it."
Carter made the motion of giving the stranger the folder, while in actuality pulling his hands quickly from the folder’s interior. The pull was quick enough to throw sand from the ancient city of Petra into the stranger’s eyes, and the move gave Carter the opportunity to push the steel away from his ear and to stand erect. He lunged for his furiously squinting captor, and knocked the steel out of his hand by knocking him to the floor.
Carter now lunged for the steel file, and within moments it was he who had its point at an opponent’s throat, from a straddling position which pinned his captor to the floor.
"Kill me," the stranger hissed from his prostrate position directly in front of the door.
Carter’s two hands on the steel wavered with shock, but then pressed more firmly against the jugular at Carter’s thought of being taunted.
"Kill me," the man repeated, again without a trace of mockery in either voice or visage.
The steel wavered once more, then fell with a clatter to the floor as Carter pushed himself off the intruder and slumped against the nearest side of his desk. Neither man moved from his respective position, Carter breathing heavily, and the curator simply asked, "Why?"
"Why?"
"Why would you want to deface an ancient Roman bust, especially one that looks like you? Why would you want to steal records of it? Why would you want to die?"
The stranger had pushed his torso up off the floor with an elbow and hand, but did not reach for the weapon lying on that same floor between the two of them. "Many questions, one answer." He looked not at Carter’s quizzical expression, but at the pack of cigarettes which formed a small bulge in the curator’s breast pocket. "Could you spare a fag?"
"So how did this bust end up in the Thames?"
Joshua Carter reached for air to counteract the flush which he knew was flooding his face, and he knew that the flush would only deepen as soon as he thought about the flush and how his audience of thirty would perceive the flush. "Frankly," he began, bringing his hand to his chin as if to contemplate the question. He ended with "I don’t know," and the hand went to cover the lower half of his face.
"Perhaps it was lost by Vikings on their way back from raiding a Roman colony," one of Carter’s more chipper, and more American, tour listeners offered, in an apparent attempt to be helpful.
"No!"
There were gasps among the audience of thirty gathered around a bust of what appeared to be a Roman legionary, a set of distant-looking eyes dominant over a breastplate and twin shoulder plates. Those eyes looked through centuries at a bespectacled and besweatered Carter, who stamped his foot on the marble floor with each successive "No!," all three of them.
"The Romans were long gone from Britain by the time the Vikings arrived!" Carter had been gesticulating with his hands, and now both came down forcefully with "By centuries!"
The chipper listener had taken two steps back, backing up against her husband. "I didn’t know--"
"Of course you didn’t know!" Carter’s hands were flailing again, pausing only to allow his hand to push his glasses back up along the bridge of his nose. "No one ever knows! No one ever cares! But they should know, and they should care! History is who we are!"
When Carter’s hands stopped once more, they were above his shoulders, and a bored-looking security guard was leaning towards one ear. "Doctor Smith warned you about these outbursts, Doctor Carter," the guard whispered.
"Doctor Smith," Carter whispered back to himself, his eyes re-focusing on the present reality. The hands dropped to his sides, and he glanced at his watch without consulting it. The arms crossed themselves below a forced smile. "The museum will be closing shortly; now would be a good time to end the tour. Please be sure to visit the bookshop and--"
By the time Carter had finished his required sales litany, the crowd before he and the dutiful centurion had long since disappeared, with more than one muttered deprecation along the lines of "Mad Englishman." The museum’s deputy assistant curator poked at his glasses once
more, ran a hand through his unkempt hair, and promptly marched off to the stairwell which led to his cubbyhole office on the subterranean floor below.
It was from the corner of stairwell and hall that Joshua Carter stopped to look back at the bust centered against one wall between two enormous floor-to-ceiling windows which let in the gray light of a late London afternoon, the new addition’s prominent position in the gallery belying the museum’s lack of knowledge as to its provenance. Carter saw not only the bust; he also saw a man in a tweed jacket and blue bowtie standing before it. For one moment in time, the curator discerned a remarkable resemblance between the twin sets of features looking at one another across the span of centuries.
It was in the next moment that the man with the blue bowtie and tweed jacket flicked his right wrist. The hand below that wrist was then grasping something, and raising that something to the legionary’s decidedly un-Roman nose ...
"Stop him! Stop that man!" Carter shouted down the hallway, for the benefit of the two security guards loitering at the opposite end. They saw Carter, they saw the man Carter was pointing at, and they saw the same man drop his hand from the bust’s face and look quickly down each half-length of the gallery.
The moment after Carter had uttered the word "man," that "man" was sprinting directly towards him. Carter threw himself bodily at the would-be vandal, and was knocked bodily to the marble floor as a result of his effort.
When Carter looked up again the two guards, themselves having taken up the shout, were scurrying around him and down the flight of stairs, which the curator surmised the stranger had descended. Carter looked for his blood, found none, and gingerly pushed himself up into a standing position. He then walked down the hallway to inspect the bust, found it undamaged, and trotted back towards the stairs to assist in the apprehension of one who would dare to alter history.
It was at the bottom of the stairs, on the floor below, that Carter found the pair of guards congregated with another pair who had been stationed on that lower level, standing and discussing the various exits. "Well, where is he?" the deputy assistant curator demanded, not wanting to accept the fact that the stranger was nowhere to be seen.
Not one of the guards bothered to answer the question, but instead all four ventured forth from the foot of the staircase to guard the four possible venues of escape for the man in question.
Carter found himself alone on the lower floor, near closing time, and he sighed in resignation. He took a right down the hallway, taking the usual forty-three steps to the frosted-glass-and-wood door of his office, and he entered that office to begin that night’s session of research.
It was after he had closed the door behind himself that Carter noticed something amiss about the filing cabinet set against the wall opposite his desk: the top drawer was open. Carter opened his mouth to scream, but the man with the blue bowtie pounced from behind Carter’s desk, forced Carter’s body against the door, switched off the office light, and pressed his steel file beneath Carter’s Adam’s apple, all in a series of motions that took less than two seconds.
"Scream, and you die," a voice whispered in the darkness.
"No scream," Carter gasped out.
The pressure of the steel slackened, but only slightly. "Where are the records of that bust?"
"What bust?" Carter croaked.
The file’s pressure was greater than ever, and Carter gasped at the thought of his blood being drawn. "Bottom." He was back to gasping.
"Bottom drawer?"
"Yes."
The overhead light switched back on. "Retrieve it."
The file was removed from Carter’s throat, and he was pulled-pushed to the cabinet and pushed onto his knees before the bottom drawer. The steel point returned to his skin, this time behind one ear.
Carter did as he was told, opening the bottom drawer and rummaging through the files before quickly alighting on a Manila folder in the center.
"Give me the folder."
"The photo prints are at the bottom."
"Give it."
Carter made the motion of giving the stranger the folder, while in actuality pulling his hands quickly from the folder’s interior. The pull was quick enough to throw sand from the ancient city of Petra into the stranger’s eyes, and the move gave Carter the opportunity to push the steel away from his ear and to stand erect. He lunged for his furiously squinting captor, and knocked the steel out of his hand by knocking him to the floor.
Carter now lunged for the steel file, and within moments it was he who had its point at an opponent’s throat, from a straddling position which pinned his captor to the floor.
"Kill me," the stranger hissed from his prostrate position directly in front of the door.
Carter’s two hands on the steel wavered with shock, but then pressed more firmly against the jugular at Carter’s thought of being taunted.
"Kill me," the man repeated, again without a trace of mockery in either voice or visage.
The steel wavered once more, then fell with a clatter to the floor as Carter pushed himself off the intruder and slumped against the nearest side of his desk. Neither man moved from his respective position, Carter breathing heavily, and the curator simply asked, "Why?"
"Why?"
"Why would you want to deface an ancient Roman bust, especially one that looks like you? Why would you want to steal records of it? Why would you want to die?"
The stranger had pushed his torso up off the floor with an elbow and hand, but did not reach for the weapon lying on that same floor between the two of them. "Many questions, one answer." He looked not at Carter’s quizzical expression, but at the pack of cigarettes which formed a small bulge in the curator’s breast pocket. "Could you spare a fag?"