The Secret Price of History. Gayle Ridinger
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of an Indian father and an Italian mother. He got a good education. He became an expert in Ancient art and religion…which makes him a colleague of a sort of the dead man. He's clean—never had any dealings with the justice system. But have a look here. This is the list of Arjan's received calls…and this is the list of the people Arjan placed calls to."
Mineo leaned forward and saw there were two lines that Dardanoni had highlighted in red. "This is a real multi-level examination," he said ironically. "What's next? The list of the listings of the listings?"
"If need be, we'll take it to ten levels," Dardanoni said severely. "…But look at Arjan's calls…dry-cleaner's, museums, friends, a restaurant, the information number of the Dutch train network, a Surinamese take-away joint, a bookseller…and then these three numbers, for a total of four received telephone calls."
"Who do they belong to?"
"The first was received from Chinese Bear. The second from a cloned SIM card. Someone who was in Milan. Who had a cell phone that didn't correspond to any real name. Someone who didn't want to be traced, who wanted to stay in hiding. I say, Mineo, we have a respected religious scholar who likes to contact someone who uses a cloned cell. What do you make of that? And then, fifteen minutes later, Gupta received a call from Chinese Bear. Pretty strange, eh?"
"I'll alert Milan. They can try to figure out what part of the city the cloned cell phone was in."
"I'm one step ahead of you, Mineo. The signal came briefly from downtown Milan, but unfortunately, it never reappeared again."
"So we're talking about someone with access to a good number of cloned SIM cards."
"Disposables—throw it away as you go."
"And the fourth?"
"From a place in Virginia. Near Washington DC in America."
"And so what we going to do about it?"
"Nothing."
"Nothing?" echoed Mineo, incredulous.
"If I ask the Dutch police to question Arjan Vittorio Gupta on the basis on what we have in hand, they'll laugh in my face."
Mineo stood up from the chair next to Dardanoni's, thinking resentfully, 'But why did he make me give up the game? Just to have a chair-warmer to talk to?'
"Let's return to the crime itself. First hypothesis: the homicide stems from a war between two gangs or sects—the Mithraists versus another group of strange religious fanatics." Dardanoni paused thoughtfully, then continued, "Only there's no record anywhere in the world of such post-mithraic gangs. I say let's rule that out."
Mineo knew Dardanoni well. He had almost certainly come up with a theory.
Perhaps this evening wasn't going to be a complete wash-out after all.
"But why would anyone commit a crime like that?" Dardanoni went on. "It's getting a lot of media coverage."
"Well, boss? You think the murderer wanted to send a message? A horrible murder just to send a message?"
"Could be a warning at an international level. A sort of signal to say 'I haven't found what I'm looking for but I know that you have it, and if you don't give it to me you'll meet with a horrible end.'"
"Meanwhile the 'you'-who-has-that-thing is going to go ballistic."
"And make mistakes...which will give away his identity...and if we don't find him fast enough, he'll be murdered. The murderer just wants to find him in possession of 'the thing' first. Mineo, the murderer could have been convinced that Chinese Bear knew where that thing was located. Then he changed his strategy and massacred him."
Mineo felt a god-awful tingle down his spine when his boss used the term Chinese Bear. Dardanoni was s a real Northerner—they didn't come any colder than that. "This would explain the photo nailed to the poor guy's chest," he said. "The murderer is looking for the statue or whatever the heck it is."
He didn't trust the cryptic smile on Dardanoni's face, and so he added,
"What kind of probability are we talking about here? Two percent?"
"You're an optimist. I thought you'd say less than that. A two- percent chance is worth pursuing. It's much better than a zero-percent chance."
The evening was getting on and Mineo stood up a second time.
"I'm going home, boss," he said.
He had hoped for a nod or a 'ciao' from Dardanoni but there was none forthcoming. The detective simply continued meditating at his computer screen.
"'Night," Mineo said at the door.
From behind him came Dardanoni's parting orders: "The investigation is by right ours because the first crime has happened in Rome. I expect there will be more. I want you, Mineo, to keep tabs on any strange crimes that happen in Italy, especially if there's an Indian involved, or if there is anything mentioned in the newspaper called the Washington Post. And while you're at it, read all the issues on-line of the Washington Post from the past month."
"Boss, you know that I don't know English."
"Well, Mineo, then look at them, pick out the names."
"Boss, I did find out a small thing regarding the lock on the cage in the mithraeum. It's made in China but sold in America by Wal-Mart."
"I imagined something like that," Dardanoni nodded. "So the murderer is probably either American or someone who has recently been to the States."
Mineo blinked at Dardanoni's determined face. 'All that determination,' he thought, 'when in reality we are still at square one.' "Forget what I said, boss," he coughed, as he finally opened the door. "We're way below that two percent."
Amsterdam, the Netherlands - August 4, 2008
"Hello, Ms. Cebrelli."
Just off the plane at Schiphol Airport and feeling groggy from a non-existent night of two hours' sleep—the second transatlantic crossing of her life after that of her high-school French class to Paris, Angie accepted Arjan Vittorio Gupta's less-than-firm handshake with a simple and somewhat shy, "Hi."
Small and chubby, Gupta was wearing an odd close-fitting cap, light-blue and visor-less, which was revealing of his Indian side. The first thing she'd mentioned on the phone to him was Brenda's name. That had made it all easy. He knew now that Angie had inherited a medallion that looked identical to the one in the photo on Kevin's body. He agreed it was 'important' and that they 'should meet.'
And yet his coming to meet her plane was not something she was expecting.
"It's my pleasure," he insisted. "I live in Utrecht, about 20 minutes from Amsterdam."
His English was good and above all student-friendly—with just a touch of an Italian accent in his high voice. During the train ride to Utrecht, he noticed that she kept looking again and again at his blue cap, and said, "It means I'm a Parsi. Ever heard of that?"
"No. Are there many of you in the world?"
"No, only about a hundred thousand. We're a tiny Indian minority with Zoroastrian beliefs, descendents of ancient Persians who came to India about a thousand years ago. You really should know about us, because your Three Wise Men, the ones at Christmas time, you know? they were Zoroastrian."
She nodded receptively.
"Actually, it's my dad who's the true Parsi. He was sent out of India to study—the Parsis can do that, being the elite of Indian society—and while he was abroad he married an Italian girl, which was against the rules. A Parsi can only marry another Parsi, in other words." A half-gleeful, half rueful smile crept over Arjan's face. "But my dad was crafty," he continued. "He kept his marriage to my mother a secret for some time, and then when I was big enough to travel, he put on the mystery act—he pretended that his wife had serious health problems and was too sick to come to India. I remember six or seven times going to Bombay without Mama. To Four Corners, the Parsi quarter. It was beautiful to me. No noise,