Gabriel's Horn by Alex Archer Page A

properly positioned to show it off to its best advantage, the young women stepped aside.
    After referencing the three-by-five card that accompanied the piece, the auctioneer said, “This six-piece tea service was once owned by President Andrew Jackson while he resided in the White House. The set has been authenticated as having been made by Jabez Gorham himself very early in his career.”
    Salome checked the details of the tea set in her catalog out of habit. The tea service was worth quite a bit.
    Salome quietly wondered how and where the auction house had gotten its hands on such a prize.
    Once the bidding began, it went fast and furious. Bids were increased with the movement of a finger, the tap of an identifying number or simply the wiggle of an eyebrow.
    Salome kept track of the bidding, not at all surprised at the brisk pace. Major buyers had known the service was going to be present. Auction houses in the Hague didn’t often get such things.
    Salome immediately wondered if the tea service had been stolen at some point, or was even a very good replica. Either was possible. If a theft had occurred long enough ago, and if it had happened in another country, it was possible to get away with such a thing. Especially if documentation was provided that checked out against art-theft lists generated by Interpol and other international police agencies.
    The tea service finally sold, but it was for at least, she judged, twenty percent over fair market value. That told her whoever had purchased it had bought it out of love, not as an investment. It was worth making note of, and she did. But it was a mental note. Nothing she ever thought or observed or noticed was recorded anywhere. Her insight was much too valuable.
    Once the tea service was taken away, the two buxom beauties brought out the next piece. When Salome saw it, she stopped breathing for just a moment.
    She trusted that she gave no outward sign. To the room she was prim and proper. The elegant Versace business suit—with pants, not a skirt—was the foundation of her professional image. Her brunette hair, parted on the left, hung to her shoulders and stayed carefully in place.
    “The next item up for bid,” the auctioneer announced, “is a painting by a little-known Venetian artist Virgil Carolini.”
    Salome knew that was not true. Virgil Carolini’s brush had never touched the canvas in the antique frame sitting at the front of the room.
    “Carolini’s works are starting to find favor with collectors around the world,” the auctioneer said. “Some said he was a madman, that the visions he wrought so carefully on the canvas were merely fever dreams he’d trapped in paint.”
    A naked man lounged on a bearskin rug in front of a fire. He was beautiful. The fire warmed the man’s dusky skin and backlit him so that the shadows gave him partial modesty. His black hair gleamed and framed his face in ringlets. He was huge and proportioned evenly, godlike in every way.
    “Oh, my,” one of the female buyers gasped.
    Salome regained control of herself. During her thirty-six years, twenty-nine of them spent chasing objets d’art beginning with her father when she was very young, she’d only felt this near the loss of control a handful of times. She took a slow breath and let it out.
    Another woman laughed.
    “He’s rather…large, isn’t he?” the woman asked, but Salome could tell from the woman’s reaction that she hoped this was no fantasy.
    “Who was the model?” another woman asked.
    “It doesn’t matter,” a man grumbled. “Whoever he was, he’s long dead. And the artist probably embellished that anyway.”
    The auctioneer smiled a little, and it was the first emotion Salome had seen out of the man the whole long morning.
    “Actually, if the rumors about this piece are true—” the auctioneer couched his terms salaciously “—the model could still be alive.”
    Salome’s pulse quickened. She hadn’t expected the auction house to have any