Chapter 21
The pre-auction viewing ran from six to seven p.m, and Frederica spent most of it being Amelia Ferraro.
She even wore a dress with caped sleeves that softened how strong her arms and shoulders were and highlighted her long legs.
She left her hair out, taming the waves with a little oil and letting them fall naturally.
It always softened her, and that was what she needed to look like tonight. Soft, rich, and entitled.
Amelia would be comfortable in rooms like this. She had spent twelve years handling objects of the kind on display. It was a converted upper floor of a townhouse in the First District, with pale walls, discreet lighting, and the kind of security that wore blazers instead of uniforms.
Amelia moved with the unhurried authority, like she knew what she was looking at and wasn't performing for anyone.
She made notes in the small leather-bound catalog Altun's contact had arranged.
She asked one question of the viewing supervisor, something specific about the documented provenance of a Flemish grimoire in case two, and the supervisor's answer was detailed and slightly nervous, which was exactly the right dynamic for a woman of Amelia Ferraro's credentials.
Dario, for his part, was perfect. He stood at her shoulder when the moment called for a husband's presence, drifted away when the room gave him something useful to attend to, and made her laugh twice with his casual observances of other attending members.
The mirror was in case seven. The obsidian surface was behind a sheet of UV-filtered glass, mounted in its original silver frame on a velvet stand.
The photograph Altun had shared hadn't captured the darkness's quality. In person, the surface was not simply black obsidian. It was black, absorbing light rather than reflecting it, with a depth that suggested the glass went deeper than it should.
The silver frame was hand-worked, the scrolled designs worn smooth with handling, the metal darkened in the grooves.
Frederica stood in front of it for the regulated two minutes that was all the viewing supervisor allowed per piece. It was enough to give her an unwelcome sensation that something on the other side of the glass was looking back at her that wasn't a reflection.
Creepy fucking object, she thought and tried to hide the goose bumps that had risen on her skin.
She made a note in the catalog about conservation concerns, a hairline fracture along the lower left of the frame, the style consistent with the period, and moved on.
Dario appeared at her left shoulder as she moved to case eight. His fingers found the small of her back for a moment, guiding rather than directing. The warmth of his hand through the fabric of her dress lasted only a moment before he dropped it.
"It is in case seven," she said, very quietly. "Don't look into its surface."
"Noted," he said, at the same volume.
Nothing else needed to be said. They both knew what the mirror was and what they would do about it.
The auction officially began at eight p.m after drinks were refilled and guests had enough time to mingle.
The room was arranged with the confident minimalism of events that charged enough per seat to assume their guests didn't need anything as crude as comfort.
Forty chairs, ten rows of four, angled toward a low stage where the auctioneer stood patiently.
The pieces from the pre-auction viewing were brought through one by one, each in its case, each introduced in the precise, uninflected language of someone being paid to describe objects without speculating about what they had been used for or where they had come from.
Frederica sat with her catalog in her lap and studied the room instead.
Twenty-two buyers. Eighteen men, four women. Three clearly acting as proxies.
The security was better than the Ephesus Museum. She counted six guards in this room alone, professional, one at each entrance, and two working the room's perimeter. No visible weapons, but the jacket cuts on two of them were wrong in ways that confirmed they were carrying.
The auctioneer's assistant was another bodyguard. Frederica clocked the earpiece and the other woman's body language, which belonged to someone whose actual job was watching for trouble.
Dario had his bidding paddle and a glass of the wine that had been served from a side table. He was working the room from his seat, just radiating a kind of attentive stillness that made people around him feel he was interested in them.
Frederica had watched him do it in Ephesus, and yet she still couldn't figure out how he managed it. It was a type of charisma that couldn't be manufactured. You were born with it, or you weren't.
Cases one through six moved through without incident. She bid on two to establish the Ferraros as present and serious, and not specifically here for one item.
Case seven and the mirror came through. The room shifted, people leaning slightly forward because something significant was on the block. Three paddles went up on the opening bid.
One of them belonged to a man Frederica hadn't noticed in her initial sweep. She frowned. That wasn't like her. She noticed everyone.
He was seated toward the rear left, where she would have sat if she hadn't needed to play the Amelia role, because it was close to the exits.
Frederica leaned closer to Dario and smiled as she whispered in his ear. "Tesoro mio, do you know that man?"
"No, I hadn't noticed him," he replied, and something flickered in his eyes. This man hadn't been on the guest list, and Dario hadn't spotted him either. That made it doubly strange.
"Ah, never mind. He must just remind me of someone from work," Frederica said, for the benefit of anyone listening in. Dario's hand on her thigh gave a slight squeeze to let her know they were both having the same suspicions.
Frederica risked another glance at the newcomer. Not large. Not immediately remarkable in any way identifiable way. The suit was good, the posture easy, the face that of a well-maintained man in his late fifties with blonde hair silvering at the temples and pale eyes.
There was something about those eyes, though, that made another sliver of unease run through her. Frederica didn't hesitate and raised her own paddle again for the mirror.
The bidding ran six rounds. The strange man matched every increment without hesitation or visible interest, the paddle going up with unhurried patience.
Dario came in on round four with a jump bid that should have shaken the room. The man's paddle went up before the auctioneer finished calling the new figure.
At round six, Dario leaned over. "He's going to take it," he said, voice below anything the nearest bidder could catch. She knew. She had known since round two.
"Never mind, darling," she said sweetly and let her paddle rest.
The auctioneer's hammer came down. The room applauded with the appreciation of people who pretended they hadn't wanted that particular piece.
Dario touched her hand once, and Frederica turned her palm up and let his fingers close around it for a moment before she released it.
"I need another wine," she said and rose to her feet. She went to get another full glass from the side tables, keeping up the appearance of being outbid, and needing a drink to soothe her disappointment.
The auctioneer had moved onto the next item when Frederica sensed someone moving up behind her. The back of her neck tingled in warning, and she had spent enough of her life trusting that particular instinct to turn her head before she had consciously decided to.
He moved to stand at the table beside her. Waiting to be noticed and entirely confident and calm.
"Forgive me," he said in Italian. It was flawless, but something else lived in the vowels, older and more northern that her ear couldn't quite place.
"I couldn't help observing you have very good instincts for case seven.
Most of the room was waiting for case nine.
" He tilted his head slightly. "You and your husband were the only other bidders who understood what it was. "
"My husband understood it," she said in Amelia's voice, which was measured and soft. "I told him to stop at round five."
A small smile. "Wise. I would have gone considerably higher."
He looked at her with an interest that was not quite social but more like someone identifying a specimen. "You were trained in Florence, yes? Private conservation?"
The smile on her face didn't change. "Is it that obvious?"
"You held your catalog differently when you stood in front of case seven. Most people hold it up, like a shield. You held it down. You were looking at the object, not simply performing an appreciation of it." He paused and gave her a small smile. "Do I know you? I swear, you remind me of someone."
The words were conversational. The eyes behind them were not. They were pale gray and moved over her face, as if he were looking for something specific.
Frederica held his gaze, and the prickling at the back of her neck again was one she normally associated with sniper positions and tripwires.
She didn't frighten easily. She had killed her first man at seventeen and hadn't lost sleep over it. She had been shot once, knifed twice, and had walked out of all three incidents.
This man stood in an elegant room in Vienna in a perfectly appropriate suit and spoke to her in perfect Italian, and she knew, with complete certainty and no rational basis whatsoever, that she was standing next to something that was equivalent to an unstable bomb.
"I'm sorry. I don't think we've met," she said, warm and politely regretful. "I'm sure I would remember. I'm very good with faces."
"Perhaps you are right," he agreed, still looking at her.
"But you resemble someone I knew a very long time ago.
" The pale eyes moved from her face to something just above her left temple before he brushed a lock of her hair back.
"She had a scar right here, too. A young woman with your particular quality of stillness. The same eyes. She was gifted."
"Past tense?" Frederica asked, her skin crawling as she pulled away from his cool fingers. Amelia wouldn't have smacked his hand away, so she didn't. She fought the urge to scratch the spot.
"We lost touch," he said pleasantly. "Time gets away on us all."
The earpiece in her right ear had been silent for most of the evening, Iz running passive observation from the safe house.
Iz's voice came through, very calm. "Frederica. Don't move. Don't change your expression. Serapis is looking at the feed."
She picked up a freshly filled wine glass. The gesture did nothing useful except give her hands something to do other than reach for the knife strapped to her thigh, safely hidden under her skirts. Her temple itched, and she had a large mouthful of wine.
Serapis's voice rumbled in her ear, stripped of its usual measured reserve."That is him. That is Agrippa. Dario, get her out of there. Don't let him see that you know, or he will kill you both before any weapon in that room clears its holster."