But the guy didn’t even acknowledge the question. “Come, Grandmother, if the best lawyers in England can’t help us, what are two kids—”
“Kids who robbed the Henley,” Hale added. Kat kicked him under the table again.
“—supposed to do about it?” Marshall finished.
“My parents found it, Katarina.” Suddenly, the woman’s hands were reaching out to hold Kat’s thin fingers in her own. “They found it—a hundred kilometers from Alexandria, just a stone’s throw from the sea. They found it—one of the treasure chambers of the last pharaoh in Egypt.”
“The last pharaoh…” Kat started.
The woman sighed and whispered, “I suppose you might know her better as Cleopatra.”
When Kat’s fingers began to tingle, she didn’t know if it was the woman’s words or her grasp that numbed her.
“Oh, it was a glorious sight. Cleopatra had known her empire’s days were numbered, and she’d taken great care to hide her finest treasures from the Romans. The chamber was the largest my parents had ever seen. Urns and statues and gold…so much gold. I remember playing hide-and-seek with the diggers in mountains of gold so high, they might as well have been made of sand.”
She unclasped the purse that sat on her lap and drew a faded black-and-white photograph from the inner lining. Her hands seemed especially frail as she held it, staring down at a memory.
“That was the happiest I’d ever been,” the woman said, holding the photo out to Kat and Hale like an offering. Kat leaned across the cheap diner table and studied the image of a young girl in a white dress standing among the treasures of a queen.
“What happened?” Hale said again.
“Kelly…happened,” the grandson spoke, and the sound of that name was all it took to wipe the smile from the woman’s face.
“I never liked him, and you should always trust the instincts of children,” she said, then laughed softly. “But I suppose you already know that.”
Kat nodded and said, “Go on.”
“Well, my parents found the chamber, and three days into the documentation process, my mother went into premature labor with my brother. It was terrible. We almost lost both of them. But my parents had discovered the find of their careers, so they were happy. My father had a young assistant whom he left to oversee the work while my mother recovered. Two weeks, my parents were gone. Two weeks.” The last words she said no louder than a whisper. “Do you know how much your life can change in two weeks?”
Kat felt Hale’s leg pressing against hers under the table, but neither of them said a word. Neither of them had to.
“He took it all, Miss Bishop. In the two weeks my mother lay near death, my parents’ assistant took everything they’d worked for their entire lives.”
“He claimed the find?” Kat guessed.
“Worse,” the woman said. “He packed everything up and began to sell it. Not one piece was logged. Nothing was chronicled or examined. Artifacts were crammed into steamers and hauled across the Mediterranean. History was sold to the highest bidder at a time when the world paid very well for the treasures of the kings. Or queens, as the case may be.”
Then the woman reached for a handkerchief, but she didn’t start to cry. She just studied Kat and Hale and told them, “My parents were discredited and penniless—the laughingstock of the archaeological world. The find of their careers was gone—taken by the person they’d trusted most.”
“But surely they’d told people?” Hale didn’t even try to hide the skepticism in his voice. “Surely someone knew what they’d been working on and what they’d found.”
“Oh, but it was a wild place, Mr. Hale. Those were dangerous times. Looters were everywhere—grave robbers, treasure seekers. Real archaeologists were incredibly careful with their work. Secrecy was paramount.”
“But after…” Kat started.
The woman huffed. “After? After, they were broken and abandoned. After, they had nothing but their pride and their children. I, Miss Bishop…My brother and I were the only things they carried out of that sand, and soon I too will turn to dust.” She took a deep breath, and her delicate hands gripped the handkerchief tighter. “It is too late for my parents to have what was theirs. But it’s not too late for Egypt to have what is Egypt’s.”
She placed her palms on the table and leaned forward, a new urgency in her eyes. It was the look of a woman with a purpose—a plan.
“There is a museum in Cairo that will take the stone if I can deliver it to them. They should have had it a half century ago, but better late than never.” Then she stopped. She seemed to be studying Kat anew when she said, “It must be a wonderful feeling to take something beautiful and return it to its rightful home. Wouldn’t you agree, Katarina?”
“What…” Kat shook her head. “What did Visily Romani tell you about me?”
“That you steal things.” Again, the woman gave a soft laugh. Kat tried to see something of the girl from the picture in her eyes, but too much time and sun and sand stood between them.
Hale sat up a little straighter. “Your parents’ assistant’s name was Kelly?”
The woman smiled. “Yes.”