Sleight of Hand - By Phillip Margolin Page 0,8

so this was a very rare display of respect.

“Mehmet persuaded Gennadius to be the first Patriarch of Constantinople under Islamic rule and personally gave him a gold, bejeweled scepter as the symbol of his authority. This scepter was immensely valuable, but it was only one of thousands of treasures belonging to the Ottoman sultans. No mention was made of it after Mehmet passed the Byzantine emperor’s symbol of power to the patriarch.”

Dana was suddenly drawn into Laurent’s tale and forgot about eating. Typically, her meetings with clients were laced with phrases like “cheating bastard” and “malingerer.” Dana couldn’t remember any insurance executive mentioning a silver saddle or a jewel-encrusted golden scepter.

“My grandfather, Antoine Girard, was a fascinating man,” Laurent said, changing the subject abruptly. “He studied archaeology and history at the Sorbonne and Oxford. He was a soldier of fortune and was involved in a number of famous archaeological digs. In 1922, Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon found the tomb of Tutankhamen in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt.”

“King Tut’s tomb?” asked Dana.

“Exactement. Antoine had a very minor role in the expedition, but he was there when the tomb was opened. Then he and Carter argued. My grandfather never revealed the basis of the dispute, but my father thought they might have fought over a woman both men had been seeing in Cairo, because that is where Antoine went after quitting the dig, and that is where he made his startling discovery.”

The door opened and Victor came in with Dana’s pasta. Laurent fell silent, and Dana, who had lost interest in her food, regretted the intrusion.

“What discovery?” Dana asked as soon as the door closed behind Victor.

“Antoine found the Ottoman scepter. An open-air market place in North Africa or the Middle East is called a souk, and the largest souk in Cairo is the Khan-el-Khalili. Have you been to Egypt, Miss Cutler?”

Dana shook her head. Her only trips outside the U.S. of A. had been chaperoning Jake when he was photographing swimsuit models in Tahiti and a disastrous week with a fellow cop in Acapulco.

“A pity. Cairo is fascinating, and the Khan-el-Khalili is one of its more exotic attractions. It is a winding maze packed tight with people, restaurants, coffeehouses, and shops selling all sorts of wares. On one of his trips to the souk, Antoine ventured into a shop that purported to sell Egyptian antiquities. Most of them were obvious fakes, but Antoine’s eye fell on an interesting item on a shelf in the back of the store. It was a jet-black scepter with no jewels, but there were indentations where jewels might have been at one time. More important, it resembled a gold scepter adorned with jewels Antoine had seen in a museum in Constantinople. Antoine suspected that the scepter was a copy, but something about it fascinated him. He bought it, along with several other items so the owner would not suspect his interest. When he got back to his hotel, he made a startling discovery.”

“It was the real deal?” Dana guessed.

Laurent nodded. “Underneath several layers of black paint was solid gold. But the scepter’s real value had nothing to do with gold. If Antoine had found the scepter that Mehmet gave to Gennadius, it would be priceless. Antoine spent ten years researching the scepter’s provenance and eventually came to the conclusion that it was, as you so charmingly put it, ‘the real deal.’ ”

“How do you know all this?”

“During a sojourn in Paris, Antoine married my grandmother, Marie Levêque. Marie was wealthy and had homes in Paris and Bordeaux. They lived together long enough for Antoine to father Pauline Girard, my mother. My family had a collection of letters Antoine wrote to Marie while he was in Turkey. In one of them, he says that he has uncovered documents that convinced him that the scepter was real.

“Shortly after she received the letter, Marie got word from the French embassy in Constantinople that Antoine had been murdered. Shortly after that, burglars ransacked her villa in Bordeaux, and an attempt was made to break into her home in Paris. Fortunately, the scepter was hidden in a safe in the basement of the Paris mansion.

“When Hitler came to power, Marie moved to America, where she had relatives. Eventually, Pauline married my father, Pierre Laurent, another wealthy émigré. Marie was highly intelligent and had many well-placed friends in the government. She anticipated Hitler’s invasion and the weakness of the French army and shipped a great deal of art to