“Mr. Montaine said not to get our hopes up.”

“Those guys ran a serious risk killing your colleague with so many witnesses like that.”

“They play rough. I’m sure I’m on their hit list too.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

Thalia turned and studied him. “Who’s going to protect you? That guy almost split open your head, and his friend tried to run you over.”

“I’ll be more prepared next time.”

“I hope so.” Thalia sighed.

“What’s the plan?”

“We have some leads in Greece. A local collector in Athens has agreed to help us. He’s one of the more honest kind, or at least he likes to think of himself as one. He buys only pieces with a good provenance. He says he’s appalled that archaeological sites are being ripped apart. He’s going to pose as a buyer and try to get some of these thugs to come out of the woodwork. That’s when we’ll pounce.”

Heinrich studied the woman. She didn’t look like much, just a petite scholarly type, but he saw steel in her. She stood erect and had a hard glint in her eye. Her voice didn’t waver when she talked about stalking the gang of dangerous criminals who had killed her colleague.

“You’re taking an awful risk just to save a bunch of old bits and pieces,” he said.

“They’re more than that,” she replied with some heat. “They’re the heritage of my parents’ country, the heritage of the entire Western world! Every artifact is a clue to piecing together the past. When something is taken from a museum, no one can study it anymore. And even worse, the thieves are digging up archaeological sites. That way they don’t have to worry about what they sell being on the stolen artifacts register. Archaeology is an exact science. It’s not just digging up old pots and statues. We can reconstruct how buildings were laid out, or whether a certain type of statue came before another one just by the layers of soil in which they lie. Careful excavation is vital to understanding our past. When thieves rip apart a site looking for treasure, they ruin the record of the past forever.”

Heinrich was taken aback by the strength of her conviction. Being a college dropout, he’d never had much time for academics. He didn’t think they were educated idiots like a lot of people did. On the contrary, he felt they were wasting their intelligence on pointless research. But to listen to how Thalia Georgiades talked, she was embarked on a noble quest to preserve the history of mankind, and there weren’t too many things more important than that. In his own way, Heinrich was obsessed with the past too. He imagined how he would feel if some gang members was going around smashing all the turn-of-the-century music they could find. It would make him pretty pissed off.