Gold of Kings Read online

  Harry decided he might as well talk about him, since Sean was on both their minds. “I got to know your grandfather about fifteen years ago.”

  “Is this where I’m supposed to say you can’t be that old?”

  “Ouch.”

  “How old are you, Harry?”

  “Eat all your sandwich and I might tell you.” When she turned over the top bread and picked up a morsel of meat, he said, “I’m old enough to know better. But stick me in a suit and put a pretty lady on my arm, hey. Suddenly I’m open to arguments to the contrary.”

  “Having you here makes me feel like he’s a lot closer.”

  He found himself swallowing sorrow solid as a brick. “Funny. I was thinking the very same thing about you.”

  They savored a shared silence. Then, “So you guys met.”

  “Yeah, back before the last ice age. I’d heard about this guy, a gallery owner who had an interest in some pieces of mine. Which was completely new. Back then, treasure dogs sold through middlemen. Gallery types wouldn’t touch us with a barge pole. They took their cue from museum directors and the bureaucrats, who claimed we were all thieves. When we got together, Sean struck me as a real hard case.”

  “Right the first time,” Storm said.

  “He knew his stuff, though. And he asked questions about what he didn’t know. I didn’t trust him at first, and he didn’t have trouble with that either. He had no idea where the boundaries were between what he could ask and what I couldn’t answer. He just took what I gave. He ate information. He devoured it. I had no idea what to make of this guy, running a major art house, down on his hands and knees on this carpet that cost more than my boat, tracking on a hand-drawn map as I explained how we found the stern hold of my latest salvage. The stern hold, see, that’s where—”

  Storm took up the line. “The captain kept a strongbox in his stern cabin where his owners stored gold for the voyage home. They made two keys to the strongbox, which the captain could not open. One key locked it in the New World or the Spice Islands, the other opened it back in Europe. The richest passengers also had their cabins at the rear, many of whom traveled with their own strongboxes. The captain usually had another chest where steerage passengers could store their valuables.”

  “You’re definitely Sean’s granddaughter.”

  “That’s right,” Storm said. “I am.”

  “Sean refused to buy anything outright. He said he’d front me what I needed for the next voyage, and keep the rest for when I got back, minus his cut. This was…”

  “Unheard of,” Storm said. “Impossible.”

  “You got to understand, my profession attracts a lot of scallywags. A lot of salvagers are one notch above pirates. You can imagine what happened when word got around there was this gallery owner who was offering to handle salvaged goods for a commission.”

  “He got laughed at.”

  “Right out of the bars from Banda Ache to Jamaica. But there was something about him, I don’t know.”

  “You trusted him,” Storm said. “And you made a friend.”

  “A year or so later, I took him out on a salvage operation. We were working a merchant vessel that went down off the coast of Cozumel, just happened to land on a reef outcropping shallow enough for us to dive. Sean had never strapped into diving gear before. The guy was like a kid on safari. First time down, he found a gold chain. Just plucked it out of the sand. Almost blew his ventilator, shouting and dancing around.”

  “He kept it in his office. I never knew where it came from.” She gave that a beat, then, “I don’t want to go to the reception tonight.”

  Harry started picking meat off Storm’s sandwich. “If you’re looking for somebody to talk about obligations and all that, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

  “Sean would want me to go.”

  “I’ll tell you something about your grandfather. He’d either be your best buddy or make you want to beat him with a ball-peen hammer. Which I almost did, the last time we met.” Harry ate another bite. “Go, don’t go. Nobody here’s gonna complain one way or the other.”

  THAT EVENING, AS STORM TURNED the car into the Breakers Hotel drive, Harry plucked a word right out of her head. “Memories.”

  She dragged up enough air to ask, “Sean brought you here?”

  “For the most expensive burger I’ve ever tasted. A hundred bucks.” They joined the line of cars waiting to divulge their glitzy loads. He inspected her in the glare of hotel lights. “You look great, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” Storm wore a vintage Balenciaga gown she had found in a Palm Beach–style garage sale. It was fashioned in the thirties Art Deco style, of black and white silk velvet. “It was still in the dry cleaner’s bag from last year.”

  “Same event?”

  “Yes.”

  “With Sean?”

  “He used the event to announce I was taking over the Palm Beach shop.” It had also been the first time Sean had ever publicly introduced Storm as his granddaughter. She tried to offer Harry a smile. “Like you said, memories.”

  “Say the word, we’re out of here. Until then, we’ll tough it out together.”

  The car jockey opened her door and welcomed them to the Breakers. Storm started to rise from the car, then turned back. She inspected Harry carefully.

  “What?”

  She leaned forward and kissed Harry’s cheek. “Thanks for being here, Harry.”

  Harry didn’t speak. But he rubbed the spot where her lips had been and gave her a look she carried out into the night.

  Harry Bennett entered the Breakers Hotel with a boxer’s swagger and a total lack of guile. No matter how she might buff and shine the man, Harry would always remain a buccaneer. Wearing his midnight blue Armani and formal shirt with studs and black bow tie, Harry was handsome in the manner of a drill sergeant in full dress uniform. She gripped his arm and fed on his hard-earned confidence.

  The Breakers had originally been built as an afterthought to Flagler’s Royal Poinciana Hotel, which had stood three miles further inland. Guests had often requested rooms close enough to hear the surf, so a smaller inn of cedar and pine had been erected on the tip of Flagler’s ten square miles of Palm Beach Island. By the dawn of the twentieth century, the demand to stay in the inn nicknamed the Breakers by its regulars was greater than at the inland palace. When the inn burned down three years later, Flagler ordered a new beachfront structure built in the style that came to be known as the Gilded Age.

  The arriving guests made a stately procession down the Spanish baronial hall, beneath a cathedral ceiling adorned with royal crests. They passed through the main bar and entered the vast circular ballroom. For Storm, last year’s event had swept by in a flash of elation. Her necklace had become one of the evening’s most talked-over items. The emerald pendant had weighed in at sixty-one carats, the largest of twelve stones found in a stern lockbox on the Kristinya, a Dutch vessel sunk off Curacao in 1715. Storm had recounted the tale four times that night, until a Hollywood mogul bought it over champagne and canapés for his newest leading lady.

  This year’s reception was filled with cold shoulders and knowing smirks and poisoned hugs. Harry took up station a few steps back, his stone-like demeanor telling everybody he had no interest in small talk. Storm stood on the outskirts of a cluster that did not quite shut her out. When a quartet began playing Brahms, she decided she had endured more than enough.

  But a male voice chose that moment to say, “This must be so very hard for you, Ms. Syrrell.”

  Storm made a half turn and found herself facing the man whose photograph she had just seen inside an FBI file. “Do I know you?”

  “You have been pointed out to me.”

  Harry noticed the change and stepped forward. “Everything all right?”

  Storm lifted her chin, motioning him away. Harry took a step back, but his gaze never shifted. Storm said to the gentleman, “You worked with my grandfather?”

  “We did business together for m
any years.” He sipped from his glass, revealing a gold cuff link with the largest star sapphire she had ever seen. “I have an item for sale. One I wish you to handle for me.”

  Selim Arkut, that was the name Emma Webb had used. Storm put him down as Persian or Turkish, late sixties, black hair laced with silver, the profile of a nobleman, the nose of a bird of prey. “Our shop is in the process of closing.”

  “I am not offering the item to your shop, Ms. Syrrell, but to you personally.”

  The night swirled around her, only now it left her untouched. “Is the item in Palm Beach?”

  “Perhaps.”

  “How do you want—”

  “It would be best if our discussion remained confidential. Most particularly in regards to your aunt.”

  “What do you have against Claudia?”

  But the man had vanished, and her question was directed at empty air.

  ELEVEN

  THE NEXT MORNING, STORM LEFT Harry in charge of the booth while she went to rush several final items through the vetting process.

  Harry was no monk, and his absence of physical desire for this softly vulnerable woman astonished him. He did not feel fatherly. As Harry stood in the booth’s entrance and waited for the convention’s starting bell, he decided there was only one way to describe how Storm made him feel.

  He felt needed.

  Nothing—no smiling lady crossing a smoky bar with promise in her eyes, no find uncovered in a forest of coral and old bones—nothing felt quite so fine as the kiss she had laid upon his cheek. One touch to flesh scarred by a lot more than prison, and Harry tipped a mental hat to the lost friend who had sent him here.

  As soon as the gates opened, the convention center aisles became rivers of two-legged money. People strolled and shopped and greeted one another with confident tones and polished laughter. Harry made no attempt to hide Storm’s cheat sheet. He was amazed at both the prices he quoted and the way people didn’t even blink. An hour into the show, he had red reserve tags on two paintings, a jade sculpture, and one of the ruby amulets.

  As soon as he spotted the woman in the booth’s entryway, Harry knew her as Sean’s daughter. Claudia Syrrell was sophisticated, refined, and statuesque and carried her fifty-plus years with the same elegance as another woman might wear pearls.

  But she was not Sean.

  Storm carried the old man’s stamp. Claudia Syrrell merely bore the name.

  Claudia searched the booth for her niece. Even her frown was graceful. Harry said, “Ms. Syrrell?”

  “Yes.”

  “Harry Bennett. Storm got called away. She asked me to handle things for a second.”

  “How kind, Mr….”

  “Bennett.” He remembered manners drilled into him by a pair of Ivy League lieutenants. How a man never offered a lady his hand, but rather waited for her to decide if she wanted to shake. Which Claudia Syrrell most definitely did not. “I was very sorry to hear about Sean.”

  “Did you know my father, Mr. Bennett?”

  He liked the quiet sigh that inflected the name. An emotion too strong for even this stylish woman to fully disguise. “He was one of my closest friends.”

  She studied the vendor’s badge dangling from Harry’s neck. “Are you a collector?”

  “I have been. Most of it’s gone now.”

  “Sold through us, I hope.” Not even her cultured tones could quite mask the question’s mechanical quality. “Did you have any particular passion?”

  Harry noted the delicate way she pried. Her clients weren’t in the market for something. They collected. They didn’t shop for an item. They had a passion. As though the extra zeros required a different lingo. Harry replied, “Gold, jade, and porcelain mostly. Some silver and pewter, not enough of either. Most recently, sixteenth-century conquistadors’ booty.”

  “How very interesting. Three years ago, we carried quite an interesting line of Spanish gold artifacts from that same era.”

  Harry spotted Storm walking the aisle toward them. He saw how people paused in their shopping and their discussions. Some probably because of the shadow of loss she carried. But most of them, Harry surmised, because of the woman’s aura.

  He said to Claudia, “Actually, it was four years back.”

  She blinked. “They were yours?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re a salvager.”

  “That’s right.”

  “One of Sean’s unlikely crew.” She noticed Storm. “Well, hello there.”

  Storm kissed Claudia’s cheek. “You’ve met Harry.”

  Seeing the two women standing side by side only highlighted the difference between them. No doubt Claudia had a natural ease with clients and collectors. Yet Sean’s fire was missing from his daughter. The magnetism. The fierce enticement.

  Everything Storm had in double portions.

  Storm said, “Harry’s the man I told you about on the phone. He saved my life.”

  Harry knew Claudia wanted to dismiss the claim as overly dramatic. But all she said was, “Would you please excuse us for a moment, Mr. Bennett?”

  “No problem.” He started to turn away, then added, “I’m sorry for your loss. Truly.”

  “Our loss,” Storm softly corrected.

  Harry could see Storm’s aunt disliked the comment. He moved purposefully away, but as soon as Claudia returned her attention to her niece, Harry shifted behind the wall adjoining the next booth and listened.

  Claudia asked, “How was the opening event?”

  “Harry made it bearable. Barely.”

  “You took that man to the Exhibition Ball?”

  “Sean trusted him.”

  “Sean had a soft spot when it came to such people. That man is a salvager, Storm. A treasure hound. They’re all borderline insane.” When Storm did not reply, Claudia’s voice rose a notch. “Take it from me. Give him one whiff of new treasure and he’d sell you to white slavers.”

  “I’m sorry. But you’re wrong.”

  A young woman stepped out of the neighboring booth and asked Harry, “Can I help you with something?”

  “Just looking, thanks.” Harry moved down the aisle. Storm’s words were nice. But what really wound his clock was the way she said it. He liked the idea that someone was so confident in him. He liked it a lot. Even when he didn’t feel the same way about himself.

  STORM FOUND HARRY PROWLING THE aisles, asked him to watch the booth, then joined Claudia for an early lunch. The convention center diner served cold sandwiches and soda in Palm Beach style. Tiny round tables were padded with layers of starched tablecloths. The chairs were plush and the waiters wore dinner jackets. The sandwiches were served on bone china, with little tureens of relish and Dijon mustard and a single orchid at each table.

  Claudia chose a table by the aisle. The chattering throng granted them a semblance of privacy. “I’m so tired my bones ache.”

  Storm did not need to ask if there was any news. It was written on Claudia’s face. “I didn’t know you were coming down.”

  “I’m not here for the show.” Claudia waited for the waiter to deposit her sandwich and cappuccino. She inspected the baguette wrapped in plastic. “Forty-two dollars for this?”

  “Forget the sandwich. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I’ve had more meetings. We’re facing unexpected debts, and we’re burdened with assets we can’t unload fast enough to help us through the crisis.”

  Every major dealer lived in terror of scandal. Syrrell’s had been struck twice in the space of ten months. A Chagall had been proven to be the work of a master forger, but only after it had been sold to a regional museum. The seller had by then vanished, so Sean had bought it back with funds from his own pocket. Five months later, an even more devastating crisis erupted: a Byzantine silver plate handled through a source Sean had thought to be impeccable turned out to have been stolen. Sean had been forced to swallow that one as well. His pockets might have been deep, but few dealers could handle two such hits in a y
ear and stay afloat.

  Storm said, “Sean had no choice. He had to pay them back.”

  “Storm, we left blame behind a long while ago.” Claudia took a single bite of her sandwich and pushed the plate to one side. “I’ve been living on coffee and fear.”

  “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “I’ve been approached by attorneys representing a buyer.”

  “That’s great. For which item?”

  “For the firm.”

  Storm felt her middle congeal into one frozen knot. “You can not be serious.”

  “I’m meeting their lawyers tonight. In Boca. But some important items have gone missing. Sean’s book of contacts for one.”

  “You’d give strangers his notebook?”

  “The buyer has offered a price high enough to clear our debts, and I’ll try to negotiate upward. He gets what he wants. Including the remaining items in Sean’s personal collection, which I also can’t find.”

  “The buyer knows about Sean’s private collection?”

  “His lawyers do. According to them, Sean recently acquired two new items. An illuminated manuscript and a chalice. How they obtained this information, I have no idea. But they have told me the deal won’t go forward without these items. I’ve searched everywhere.”

  “That’s why you’re here?” Had it not been for the news of the possible sale, Storm would have told her aunt everything. “Who wants to buy Syrrell’s?”

  “I am specifically ordered not to tell you.”

  “Why would they shut me out?”

  “They say it’s because you were fired.”

  “Harry says Sean fired me to protect me. Not that it worked.”

  That brought Claudia around. “You’ve told that salvager everything?”

  “Listen to what I’m saying, Claudia. What if the buyer is tied into these attacks?”

  “I wish you would listen. You are divulging secrets crucial to our company’s future to a man who is little more than a pirate.”