Night Train to Memphis - Elizabeth Peters [133]
‘Stealing an entire tomb is certainly a challenge.’
‘Your sympathetic understanding touches me more than I can say.’ He opened the can and drank deeply before going on. ‘It isn’t the entire tomb, you know. Only a few selected walls.’
‘I still find it difficult to believe. How he hoped to get away with it – ”
‘Oh, he’ll get away with it,’ John said calmly. ‘Unless we can stop him. It’s a pity, in a way. This might have been the high point of my distinguisbed career. You can see why the idea appealed to me.’
‘When did it start appealing?’
John settled himself more comfortably. ‘My first arrangement with Blenkiron concerned the princess’s diadem. You ought to have noticed the anomaly of that item during your encounter with my friends in Rome. All the other jewellery we – er – replaced was Renaissance or later in date, and it was all in private collections. The diadem was in the Cairo Museum, and only a fanatical collector would want an item that could never be displayed. You might have postulated a man like Blenkiron – obscenely wealthy and totally unscrupulous-when you saw that.’
‘Don’t hassle me, John. I’m trying very hard to be nice.’
‘Are you? Sorry, I hadn’t noticed. As I was saying, the beauty of my arrangement with Blenkiron was that I only had to liberate the objects from the museum. They stayed in the country, so there were no nerve-racking encounters with customs. The only exception was the Tetisheri statuette. He was so besotted with it he insisted on carrying it around with him. However, smuggling antiquities into Egypt isn’t as difficult as smuggling them out.’
‘So the one in the British Museum is a fake.’
John chuckled. ‘Ironically enough, Blenkiron’s is probably a fake as well. It wasn’t only the analysis of the paint that cast doubts on the one I removed from the B.M.; there’s something a bit off about the hieroglyphs. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that the first one was manufactured by the great-grandfather of the little old forger in Gurnah who made the second one for me. Manufacturing forgeries is an old tradition there.’
‘How did you find him?’
‘It’s a long story,’ John said. ‘Reaching back into the mists of the past, and replete with details Schmidt would undoubtedly find extremely romantic’
‘Then don’t tell it now. The British Museum must have been a real test of your skills. Their security measures are pretty good.’
‘I shan’t respond to your subtle hints, darling, so don’t bother asking how I did it. Trade secrets, you know. However, I will say that the theatrical plots concocted by writers and producers of thrillers are completely unworkable, especially the ones that depend on esoteric equipment. The more complicated a gadget, the more likely it is to break down just when you need it.’
He paused for refreshment before going on. ‘The idea of stealing Tetisheri’s tomb came to Blenkiron soon after the Getty people began working on the other queen’s tomb – that of Nefertari. It was really rather a clever idea. Restoring the reliefs was precisely the sort of philanthropic endeavour people had come to expect of him, and it gave him a perfect opportunity to have them copied. There was even a suggestion that a replica of the tomb might be made, in order to satisfy tourists without endangering the original. If at any point his activities had been discovered he could claim that’s what he was doing, as a boyish surprise for his good friends in the EAO. It was a monumental job, of course, but as Feisal pointed out, Blenkiron’s rich enough to buy all the expertise he needs.’
‘And the experts,’ I murmured. ‘Poor Jean-Louis.’
‘That was one of the most difficult aspects, actually,’ John said. ‘You’d be surprised how many honest scholars there are. They had to he approached very, very carefully. But there aren’t many positions in archaeology open, and there are a lot of poor, overeducated devils like Mazarin and Feisal seeking employment. Mazarin wasn’t the one I would have chosen. Instead of admitting his own venality he had to convince himself he was guided by noble motives. Such men are