The Medusa Amulet by Robert Masello

those words were?—the car rolled off down the snowy street.
    “What would you like me to do?” Escher asked, always on the lookout for action and preferably of the violent kind.
    “Nothing. Just sit still.” The man was like a hand grenade with the pin pulled out.
    As Schillinger kept watch from the backseat, Franco, wearing no coat against the bitterly cold wind, stood rooted to the spot. Even from this distance, across the width of Bughouse Square, he looked dazed, and Schillinger wondered what had transpired inside the library. Had he discovered yet what Schillinger had guessed the moment that the book had been revealed? That the illustrations were from the hand of the master artisan—and necromancer—Benvenuto Cellini? No one but someone steeped in the occult could have depicted the scenes so powerfully, or in such a distinctive style.
    For years, ever since meeting Monsieur Linz at an auction on Lake Como, Schillinger had been a part of the man’s web, keeping his eyes and ears open for anything that might be of value to someone of such dark and rarefied tastes. And now he had it. The small favors that Linz had done him in return—parceling out word of a long-lost Vermeer drawing, or a Hobbema landscape, about to emerge onto the black market—could now be repaid in spades.
    Schillinger reached for his phone and placed a call to France.
    “Oui?” the voice on the other end snapped. “Que voulez-vous?”
    Every time Schillinger had to speak to Emil Rigaud, he had to swallow his bile. To think that a former United States ambassador could be treated so contemptuously by a decommissioned French army captain, was infuriating, to say the least. But keeping his temper, he explained what he had just learned.
    “But how much do you think he knows,” Rigaud asked, “this David Franco?”
    “He’s a very intelligent young man,” Schillinger said, vaguely proud that they shared an alma mater, “but he’s just getting started. At this point, I suspect he knows only a bit less than I do.”
    Rigaud sighed, as if he’d heard this veiled complaint before. “We keep it that way for your own benefit, Joseph. If you knew more than what we tell you, if you took it upon yourself to start nosing around where you are not wanted, dire consequences could ensue.”
    Schillinger, insulted, went silent.
    “Comprendez-vous?”
    “Je comprends.”
    “Good,” Rigaud said. “Now call Gropius in Antwerp. Ask him about the small Corot oil that has just come to light.”
    Schillinger had always coveted a Corot. How did they know that? “Thank you, Emil.” Maybe he wasn’t such a bad sort after all. “But what would you like me to do about this David Franco? I have Ernst Escher with me here, and something,” he said, in a more sinister tone of voice, “could be done.”
    “Do nothing. When we have to, we will take care of things from our end.”
    “And Mrs. Van Owen? We move in similar circles. Her husband recently died. Perhaps I could become her friend and learn something more that way.” He felt absurdly like a young flunky, trying to ingratiate himself with the boss.
    “Monsieur Linz has the situation well in hand,” Rigaud replied, as if lecturing a schoolboy.
    “I’m sure he does, but I thought—”
    “Stop thinking, will you? Monsieur Linz is a Grand Master, and you are playing at tic-tac-toe. Call Gropius.” And then the line went dead.
    When the ambassador looked back toward the library, Franco was trudging up the steps like a man with the weight of the world on hisshoulders. What did he know that Schillinger didn’t? There were times, and this was one of them, when Schillinger felt that he was playing for penny antes when great stakes were being wagered all around him. Perhaps if he pursued his own interests a bit more strenuously, he would not only gain in the material sense—and his acquisitive instincts had not lessened with age—but he might find himself in a position to command some respect from