CRESCENT OF STEEL AND DARKNESS

Chapter 4

Martin Fitzgerald felt light softly pushing on his eyelids, and fluttered them open. Dim bulbs hung naked from gray concrete; there was more gray concrete under and behind him, cold and not quite smooth. Something was pulling his arms straight up, biting into his wrists, not letting him bring hand to throbbing head…handcuffs. Probably his own at that, wound around a heavy conduit clamped high on the wall. Martin rolled his eyes up, incredulous: Where the hell am I, and how did I get here?

"Oh! You're awake!"

Instantly he glanced toward the quiet gasp, just a touch above a whisper. Across the concrete room, perched on a stool about five feet away between him and the gray metal door beyond, was a vague shape loosely draped in black fabric. In front of itself it clutched a big white square – a sketch pad – and an artist's pencil in pale hands; above the pad was the only other uncovered area, an even paler face. A face Martin recognized with no surprise: "Alexa Duhaine?" The sad green eyes looked to the floor, with no answer. "We've been looking for you."

"I know," she said, almost too low to hear. "I'm sorry. I never expected that."

Treading very lightly, desperate to read the situation, Martin kept his own voice soft and sympathetic. "Your colleagues and neighbors are very worried about you."

She sniffed. "I find that hard to believe." A vein of bitterness ran through the words.

"Believe it, Miss Duhaine – may I call you Lexi?" She nodded, still not looking at him. "You were only gone a day before the Metropolitan Museum brought in the FBI. I'm Special Agent Martin Fitzgerald, of the Missing Persons division."

"Well, consider me found." The bitterness remained. "Your loss and no one's gain, I'm afraid. I really am sorry; I never thought it would come to this. I was sure I could just drop out of sight for a little while and no one would notice – or maybe they'd be glad to be rid of me." With a swish of black cotton cloth, she rose from the stool, slowly turned away.

Panic stabbed him: No, she can't leave now! I have to keep her talking, learn what's going on and why… Quietly, gently he said, "Lexi…you were sketching me, weren't you?" She squeezed her eyes shut and clasped the pad to her breast where she stood. "Please, may I see?"

"No!" The vehemence surprised him. "It's crude, just a scrawl. You don't want to."

Martin put on a sad, sweet smile. "You were drawing me without my knowledge. Don't I deserve a look?" When she bit her lip and refused to look at him, he softened his tone even more. "Please?" Slowly she turned toward him, eyes still closed, and rotated the pad.

He caught his breath, almost disbelieving his eyes. Lexi Duhaine had created no quick impression of the eye, but a careful and detailed drawing in the classic style, and Martin himself was only the starting point. Yes, the figure was recognizably him; she had drawn him from the shoulders up, arms pulled above his head and wrists pinioned in chains, but to his surprise, the artist had undressed him – and with remarkable accuracy. The strained shoulders and whipcord muscle of the arms were uncannily close to the reality. She had taken even further, more astonishing liberties with her depiction: She had drawn a young man with the captive's face, eyes closed and head slumped against his cruelly pulled arm, but there was no unconsciousness or sleep in him. The eyes were squeezed shut against some horror too dark or glory too bright to bear; every line of the perfect countenance was strained in inseparable ecstasy and suffering, its beauty and its pain fused into a single exquisite passion – the face of a saint. "My God," he gasped.

Her face reddened within its black cocoon. "It's nothing."

"It's beautiful!" Reluctantly he forced his gaze from the intoxicating picture and looked to her. "I haven't seen anything close since the last time I was at the Met just to look. No wonder your curator had such high praise for you!" He noted how her blush deepened, and went on. "I didn't think anyone could still draw like that. Tell me, have you ever tried exhibiting your own work?"

Unexpectedly she glared hard at him. "Exhibit this sort of thing? It's not even art!"

"Not art? With all due respect, if that's not art, then what is?"

"Lay people just don't understand." Her glare had softened to a slightly amused condescension. "There's not much training in the visual arts in the FBI, is there?"

He smiled ruefully. "You got that right. We do have a few specialists in art theft and forgery, but I'm not one of them."

"Maybe there's too much training in the visual arts in my milieu. Suffice it to say that this sort of thing – " she tapped her pad – "was art once upon a time, but today it's mere illustration."

"So if Ingres or Vermeer were working today, they'd be mere illustrators?"

Lexi gave a bitter chuckle. "If Ingres or Vermeer were working today, it'd be with video cameras, electronic effects, and lots of subtext, if they were even artists at all. Knowing their relation to the power structure, they'd probably be in advertising. And Leonardo da Vinci would be designing weapons. Let me explain." Her voice slipped into the cadence of the lecture hall. "The defining essence of art is transgression – the defying of boundaries."

"What sort of boundaries?" Martin wished desperately for a way to move this conversation on to something useful, but didn't yet see his chance…

"All sorts. Boundaries of gender, class, race, permissibility, everything. Until recently art was another way of justifying the power structure and establishing its boundaries, just like religion, philosophy, law, morality, science, et cetera. But now the job of the artist is to expose and subvert the power structure, through transgression of the boundaries which that structure must define to protect its own existence. A drawing like this – " again she tapped the pad – "might impress you visually, but what can you learn from it about the power relations that define you? What can such an image actually reveal?Nothing!"

"Oh, I disagree. It may not exactly transgress anything, as you say, but it reveals something people rarely think of – something ultimately important."

"Oh?" Truculence had crept in. "What?"

He licked his lips, choosing his words carefully. "How a hero dies."

Lexi went silent the way a punctured beach ball goes limp. She stared at her drawing for a long time. Eventually she answered, all the pedagogical certainty leached from her tone. "That's the sort of thing art was about in the old days…Auden knew that: 'About suffering they were never wrong, the Old Masters'…" She looked at him, actually meeting his eyes for the first time; the sadness in hers surprised and almost frightened him. "That's why I do what I do. Conservation work, I mean. I've got the hand for it, and the eye; even if I don't have the heart and mind that it takes, at least I'm doing something. We're far beyond the prejudices and superstitions they had back then, but progress can't be everything…" She sighed, very deeply. "This way, I'll save more than anyone else when Europe goes down."

She'd trailed off, just as Martin felt her getting somewhere. "Go on."

Lexi repeated the sigh. "Europe is finished. Culturally, it's nothing but a time capsule – a time capsule containing almost everything in the world worth caring about. Painting, sculpture, architecture, music; my profession exists to preserve it. Our major enemy used to be only time, but soon the whole continent is going to be controlled by a culture permanently at war with most of it."

"Really?"

She nodded. "Think about it. Since 1970 over twenty million Muslims have emigrated to Europe legally, and no one can even count the illegals. Most came and are coming for economic opportunity; they have no intention of becoming culturally French or Swedish or Dutch or what have you. That in itself might not be a problem, but most of their mosques and leaders are Salafi or Wahhabi, running on Saudi money and fundamentalist doctrine. You know what that means, don't you?" When he looked at her innocently and shook his head, she went on, voice closer to trembling. "Church architecture, instrumental music, Christian and mythological subjects, the depiction of the visible world: all forbidden. The entire Western artistic tradition is a sin…and all probably going to be destroyed as soon as they have the political power to do it."

"You really think it'll come to that?"

A shudder. "Who wants to take the risk? Everyone saw what happened to the Buddhas of Bamiyan. It's less well known that the museum curators in Kabul only saved their collections by burying them. Considering European demographics, it's only a matter of time for the Prado, the Rijksmuseum, Notre-Dame-du-Paris, all of them. That's why I'm here, why I did it. One person's moral purity is a small price to pay to save humanity's greatest achievements."

Martin felt his heart speed up as he finally got close to some answers. He kept the innocent look and tone. "I don't understand."

"He promised me that if I helped him get the sword, he'd see to it that the great collections and cathedrals would be preserved unharmed to the limit of his ability."

"Who is he, and how could he make that promise?"

She shrugged, rippling the black drapery concealing her. "He makes us call him 'master.' Not that it means anything to me. He claims that the sword I – I helped him steal is a dhu'l-fakar like the sword of the Prophet, which conveys spiritual and royal power. You probably didn't know that while Christian kings were anointed and crowned to symbolize their authority, Islamic kings were invested with royal swords. He says that possession of this sword makes him caliph of collective Islam – and once the jihad succeeds, of the entire world." Another shrug. "Let him call himself whatever he wants, as long as he can talk his crazy friends out of burning the Louvre in ten years!"

"So it was you who turned off the security cameras and unlocked the door." Carefully Martin made himself sound sympathetic, with no hint of accusation as yet.

"I'm not ashamed to admit it to you, either. Yes, what I did was wrong, on the surface, but it's like being a rebel spy: you have to lie, cheat, even betray, but only for something far more important than your own integrity!"

"It wasn't just your integrity that was sacrificed, Lexi," Martin said quietly. "A guard was murdered. And if you don't mind admitting guilt to a federal agent…well… that's a pretty sure sign that I shouldn't count on walking out of here."

Lexi flushed again, scarlet set in black. "I had nothing to do with that! It was all Derek's idea, and he's a hyena! The old fanatic will listen to him, but never to me! Don't you think I'd have talked him out of it if he'd listen to a woman?" She was on her feet, near tears, the pad and pencil dropped and her voice rising to a scream. "I can't deal with it anymore! He couldn't have gotten his precious sword without me, but I still get treated like dirt by all of them! I even have to wear this goddamn abaya, and it's like wearing three layers of sacking – and I feel lucky he didn't force me all the way into a burqa! It's not my goddamn religion! It's not Derek's either, but they let him get away with normal clothes, and he's just as much an infidel as I am, if not more so!"

That was when the door banged open. Lexi instantly whirled in a blur of black, and let out a strangled cry when she saw the tall white-robed man in the doorway, glaring darkly at her from between his black-and-white-checkered keffiyeh and his long, unkempt gray beard. With a shriek she grabbed up her sketch pad and rushed for the door, trying to push past him, but he grabbed her arms with long skinny fingers and held her in a grip that belied his age. "Kufr whore!" he spat. "What are you doing in here alone with a man? Must I beat you to teach you proper conduct?"

Lexi squirmed uselessly. "NO! Please! I mean, he's in handcuffs; what could we be doing? I only wanted to draw a picture – "

The bearded man spat at her pad. "A picture! Remember this, you stupid cow: On the Day of Judgment, Allah shall bring your pictures before you and invite you to give them life as He gave life to His creations. And when you cannot, you and all the other creators of idols will be cast into the eternal fire along with your blasphemous works."

Lexi stopped squirming and stiffened in his grip, the pad flopping to her side. "Whatever. I can think of worse company for eternity than Caravaggio and Donatello. Please, can I go?"

With a glare of contempt, he snapped his grip as if casting her away in disgust. "The Word of Allah is true: 'Therefore the righteous women are devoutly obedient, and guard in absence what Allah would have them guard.' You are not to be alone with this man, or any other, behind a closed door; do you understand me?"

Lexi sighed. "Of course I understand you. But what does the Qu'ran say about the unrighteous women?"

He snorted through his beard. "You kufr think mockery is so funny. But Allah is al-Shadid al-'Iqab, the Strict in Punishment, and to Him mockery is not funny at all. And the Holy Qu'ran also says: 'For the worst of beasts in the sight of Allah are those who reject Him: they will not believe.' You are lucky to still be alive, after all I have put up with from you." He folded his arms. "Go to your room. And keep that paper out of my sight or I shall be forced to burn it."

"Yes master, right away master, how high master," Lexi muttered as she passed on through the door, beating a retreat up the stairs.

Her footsteps rose out of earshot, leaving the concrete cellar silent except for Martin's heavy breathing as he tried to bottle up his indignation. Over folded arms, the robed man swept a satisfied gaze over his prisoner; when their eyes met, Martin felt that gaze, and his anger began to give way to an even more basic emotion.

xxxx

"Have you found any more leads on Derek Shaftoe?" Jack Malone came up behind Sam Spade and hovered at her shoulder, studying her computer screen.

"Nothing useful yet. Since that Village apartment of his turned up snake-eyes, I've been trying to find some other properties where he might go to earth." She gave a snort of frustration. "So far I've come up with nothing substantive. But if you want to read nostalgic metalheads gushing about how brilliant this creep is, I can get you a dumpster-load of that."

From her own cubicle, Vivian Johnson told much the same story. "For the kind of fortune this guy made in the nineties, I'm finding very little financial activity."

Malone looked up. "Maybe most of it went up his nose, like a lot of his colleagues. Or he could have a gambling problem."

"I don't think so, Jack." Fingers pecking at her keyboard like sparrows, Johnson rapidly shuffled between views of several credit and records databases. "I'm thinking more in terms of pseudonyms, dummy corporations, that sort of thing."

"I think Viv's on to something." A tense Danny Taylor rose from his own research. "There was something definitely wrong about this guy, something creepy."

"Which certainly isn't incompatible with expensive addictions," Malone reminded them all.

"No, of course not, Jack, but that's not what I mean," Danny persisted. "He could have a jones or two; it wouldn't surprise me a bit if he did. In fact, it'd surprise me if he didn't. I mean something else…it's hard to explain."

"Keep trying," Johnson urged him.

"He was...secretive. Not in any sophisticated way, though; definitely the guy's not a good actor, or a good liar. More like a little kid with a secret that he's just bursting to tell someone, but can't, at least not yet. Am I making any sense?"

"You're making a lot of sense," affirmed Malone. "Especially if that secret is about how he and Martin slipped out of that bar in an eyeblink without being seen by anyone. Meanwhile, keep at it. Has anyone heard from the CSIs yet?"

"They haven't called," Danny answered. "I guess they're still processing that stuff they picked up at the scene."

As if on cue, Malone's telephone jangled. "Maybe that's them now. Malone." He listened…and listened. As the seconds passed by without their commander responding, the others looked up from their work and waited, wondering. And as they waited, Malone's face suddenly darkened, and he slammed down the phone without having spoken a word into it.

"Jack?" asked a worried Johnson. "Why'd you hang up?"

"He did first," Malone growled. "After claiming to be from a special-ops Bureau division, knowing about the Met robbery and Lexi Duhaine, and demanding a meeting with us at three-thirty – at a location he chose."

Sam came to her feet. "Jack, I'm coming! If they have Martin – "

"We're all going together," Malone declared. "And whether they have Martin or not, we're going to get some answers."

xxxx

At the NYPD crime lab, Mac Taylor was quietly relieved that Danny Messer and Aiden Burn had been called out to an unrelated crime scene. He and Stella Bonasera had briefly discussed bringing in the two to consult on this case, but in the end they agreed on the only possible decision. No doubt it would have been both useful and comforting to have the help of their younger colleagues, but the mysterious vanishing of the FBI's man showed that the stakes had risen too high – as had the risks.

"Come and have a look at this, Mac," said Bonasera in a mere whisper. As Taylor approached, she indicated the petri dish where she had mounted the three curved black objects found in the bar. "Do you make anything of them?"

"No," an admiring glance at her, "but I'll bet you already have."

"Not exactly," she admitted, "but I finally found an analogue. Look here." She fitted a slide under the stereoscopic microscope, whose lenses were set to a low magnification.

Taylor peered in to see an array of small black curves like tiny versions of the ones in the dish. "Interesting. What are these?"

"This is where it gets too interesting." She swallowed to clear her throat. "That slide shows exoskeleton samples from the leg of a cricket."

He looked from the microscope to his colleague. "I was afraid it was something like that. So what on earth is this? Immense bits of chitin?" He picked up the petri dish, studying the black curves, not wanting to believe the size of them.

"Unless chemical analysis shows anything different, and so far it hasn't. What about that stuff you collected?"

"Glad you asked – I think." Now it was the turn of his petri dish and the slimy, pale lump within. "I ran the usual tests on this. As far as I can tell, the stuff is just a common mix of saliva and nasal mucus…with one difference." Moving efficiently and without flourish, he pinched a slip of litmus paper between his thumb and forefinger, swept it across the sample, and held it up. Bonasera's eyes widened as red flamed across the test slip like a flush of anger, and Taylor went on coolly, "As I said, one difference: a pH approximately that of sulfuric acid. Whoever produced this could spit through an inch of drywall."

For a moment she forgot to breathe. "My God, Mac…what could we possibly be dealing with?"

His eyes were grim. "I should say that I wish I knew…but part of me isn't eager to find out." The voice dropped low and quiet. "If 'the sleep of reason produces monsters,' that rumble you hear outside isn't traffic, Stella; it's reason snoring."

"And she's having a nightmare…"

Neither could say anything more at the moment.

They were rescued from silence by the telephone. "Taylor." Bonasera watched her chief as he listened; his eyes widened in astonishment at first, then narrowed and went hot. Finally he spoke. "I'll need your name and shield number for confirmation." A few more seconds of listening, then Taylor lowered the phone from his ear, staring at it as if it had betrayed him; then he closed and pocketed it, and turned to answer her unasked question. "That supposedly was the FBI."

"Not Agent Malone." It was a statement, not a question.

"No, and wouldn't give me a name. He said that they're aware of our investigation, and want to share some information about the robbery at the Met." He paused. "Stella…he said they know how and why James Abbott died."

"But we don't even know that! And when their people were here, they were just as much at a loss as we are!" She considered. "I wonder who debriefed Agents Malone and Johnson…"

"I wonder why we were just told to come to the address of a private garbage hauler instead of the federal building."

"What!" Bonasera stared at him incredulously.

Taylor nodded. "He was very specific. We're to come to Waste Management Services at three-thirty."

"That place down on the West Side, near the rail yards?" He nodded again. "Why there?"

"I don't know. And why did he specify the three of us by name?" Answering her further astonishment, he went on, "They want me, you, and Flack. No one else. That's exactly what he said."

"This doesn't sound good, Mac. We'll need backup."

He slowly shook his head. "They were way ahead of you. He made sure to point out that if we're followed, they'll know, and we'll get nothing."

The color was draining from Bonasera's face. "I don't think that call came from the feds."

"I don't either. I think whoever set up Malone's team is now doing us the honor of our own trap."

She didn't need to state her agreement. "Are you going to go?"

"You and Flack must decide for yourselves." He almost smiled. "I'm going."

"Not alone." She was firm. "And I know Flack will say the same."

TO BE CONTINUED