My main reason for being here is so that people like you get to face your past. Most of my ancestors couldn’t afford any of the things for sale here, even when they were new and cheap. We had to be content with seeing them in shop windows, and seeing ourselves made fun of in advertisements and movies.”

Heinrich almost slipped into a defensive reaction, but his grandfather had been a Nazi war criminal, so he shut up and took his lumps.

After a few minutes of lecturing about America’s grim past, which seemed to make Jordan more uncomfortable than it did him, Heinrich got a chance to slip away and continue shopping.

The guys had cleared out, probably hearing that guy’s lecture from afar and beating a hasty retreat, so Heinrich wandered alone for a while until he spotted that archaeologist chick at another table at the far end of an aisle, just below the gallery. He glanced up at the gallery. He hadn’t been there yet. Maybe he’d find another good dealer.

But first he wanted to make another play.

He approached the stand, which he could see was filled with more Greek antiquities. The girl stood next to an academic man with thinning gray hair combed back in a European style. His hefty paunch was squeezed inside a tweed vest.

“Please don’t tell me she said no to me because she’s with him,” Heinrich muttered.

The two said something to each other as the older guy used his phone to take a photo of an artifact. The girl nodded and turned away, heading in Heinrich’s direction. Her eyes took him in and immediately focused on something else.

That disappointed Heinrich enough that he almost didn’t see the man in the gallery forty feet above heave a large chunk of marble and drop it right on the old guy’s head.

CHAPTER TWO

 

“Look out!” Heinrich shouted.

Too late. The marble slab crushed the man’s head like a watermelon, a spray of blood and brains shooting out in all directions. The man’s body fell to the ground with a thud, the marble ending up on top of him.

As people screamed and ran away, Heinrich glanced up at the gallery and caught sight of a young man ducking out of sight.

Heinrich hurried up to the murder victim. The marble slab was the torso of a Classical statue about half life-size. It lay on the man’s chest, the twisted limbs and pulped ruin of the man’s head making a mocking completion of the beautiful ancient form.

In less than a second, Heinrich took in every detail. The next instant, he was sprinting for the nearest stairway up to the gallery, a set of broad concrete steps not twenty yards away. He bowled over an old man, sending an armful of signed baseballs rolling in every direction, swerved around two guys (who hadn’t even noticed the murder just a few paces from them) haggling over a book of stamps, and took the steps three at a time.

When Heinrich got to the top, he didn’t see the murderer. However, he did see the startled wake he had left in the crowd. A stand had been knocked over and several people were shouting at someone well ahead of Heinrich. He followed the direction they were facing and spotted the murderer ducking around a corner.

Heinrich put on some speed and rounded the corner just in time to see that the man had passed the bathrooms and taken a left down a service passageway. The man glanced behind him and spotted his pursuer. Heinrich bolted after him, instinct making him take the corner the long way around.

Instinct saved him. The guy was just around the corner, in a stance that told Heinrich he had planned on tripping him up and stomping on his head once Heinrich was on the floor.

Instead they ended up facing one another, just out of reach.

Heinrich took a good look at the man. He had swarthy Mediterranean features and wore a loose white t-shirt and camouflage pants with running shoes. His face was dark with a thick unibrow over hard brown eyes. The instant he discovered he wasn’t going to be ambushing Heinrich, he had moved his broad-shouldered and thick-limbed body into a fighting position. A trained fighter for sure. Heinrich had been boxing for years and knew the type. This guy wasn’t in a boxing or a karate stance, though, just a basic self-defense stance.

“I suppose there’s no point in telling you to give up,” Heinrich said.

The only response he got was a right hook to the head with a meaty fist. Heinrich ducked back, dodging it easily. Less easily, he dodged the follow-through with the left.