Chapter Two #2
“He’s right,” Harley said. “I’m a moron.
I got talked into insuring some stuff I should never have even considered.
It was all because as bank president I was still in charge of the stupid antiquities insurance department.
I knew we didn’t have the money to back up all of the policies we were acquiring but a couple of the board members were insistent.
They said it gave us unequaled prestige.
And they were right about that. Besides, the premiums were excellent, and the risk of theft or damage seemed small to none.
I mean, what were the chances of someone stealing a sarcophagus? ”
Gabriela leaned forward. “Excuse me? A sarcophagus?”
“King Tut’s brother’s,” Rafer said. “Actually, it wasn’t the sarcophagus. It was the inner coffin.”
“Omigod,” Gabriela said. “You aren’t serious.”
“Give her the list,” Rafer said to Harley.
Harley slid a folder over to Gabriela. “This is embarrassing. I can’t believe I let myself get talked into this mess.”
“A couple Van Goghs from the Musée d’Orsay in Paris, valued at five hundred million dollars,” Gabriela read out loud. “The Rosetta Stone from the British Museum, valued at seven hundred fifty million dollars.” She looked up at Harley. “You insured the Rosetta Stone?”
Harley nodded. “Yup.”
Gabriela continued reading. “You also insured the coffin for four hundred seventy-five million dollars.”
“It sounds better if you refer to it as a sarcophagus,” Harley said.
“They’re almost the same thing and sometimes the words are interchangeable.
When we were writing up the policy, we thought a four-hundred-seventy-five-million-dollar coffin sounded too expensive.
I mean, you can get a top-of-the-line casket at Costco for a couple grand.
So, we wrote it up as a sarcophagus. Costco doesn’t sell any of those. ”
“I don’t care what you call it, it’s a lot of money to spend on a mummy,” Rafer said. “Was the mummy included?”
“No, the mummy wasn’t insured. At least not under our policy. And honestly, the sarcophagus might have been overinsured a little, but the guys on the board didn’t seem to care. It was solid gold. The Egyptians were big on gold. They mined it along the Nile and in the eastern desert,” Harley said.
“And now it’s missing,” Gabriela said.
Harley nodded. “It’s missing. Almost everything I insured is missing.”
Gabriela scanned two more pages of missing art and artifacts. “Unbelievable. It’s a joke, right? I’m getting punked?” She looked at Harley. “How did you even manage to insure so many things in such a short period of time?”
“I had an assistant,” Harley said.
Rafer nodded affirmation and smiled at Gabriela. “He slept with her too.”
“And the board of directors helped,” Harley said. “I didn’t sleep with any of them.”
Everyone clinked their wineglass in a toast to Harley’s restraint.
“I read through the folder,” Rafer said. “It includes detailed information about the items and timeline descriptions of the thefts. They all occurred last month.”
“This is huge if it’s true,” Gabriela said. “Why haven’t I heard anything about any of this?”
“So far, the museums have hidden the losses from the public,” Harley said.
“The museums wanted to keep a lid on it while investigators are working to solve the crimes. Some of the museums have substituted replicas for some of the stuff, like the Rosetta Stone and the sarcophagus. If any of this leaked out, it wouldn’t be good for the museums. No one’s going to rush to the British Museum to see a fake Rosetta Stone.
And it would be even more of a disaster for the bank.
Total value for the loses is close to twelve billion dollars.
The bank has only about five billion dollars in cash to cover the claims. If someone leaks that the bank is in financial trouble of this magnitude, there could be a run on the bank.
The federal regulators would intervene, and it would be a massive scandal. ”
“And on a personal level, massive misery for Harley, who isn’t looking good,” Rafer said.
“He has no paper trail of being directed to make the bad investments. It’s only his word against the board of directors’.
And the board consists of a very powerful group of men with serious political connections.
Unless the missing crap is recovered soon, someone is going to jail, and Harley is set up perfectly to take the hit. ”
“This isn’t just some ridiculous scheme to get me to go traipsing all around the world with you, is it?” Gabriela asked Rafer.
“Sweetheart, if I wanted to traipse with someone, it wouldn’t be you. I’m in this for Harley. We’re here because you find things. You’re good at it. And we need you to find the stolen pieces.”
“Boy, this is just like old times,” Harley said. “For as long as I can remember, you two fought like cats and dogs. Then next thing you’d be all lovey-dovey.”
“Lovey-dovey is no longer part of our relationship,” Gabriela said. “Lovey-dovey was negated in the divorce agreement.”
Rafer leaned toward Harley. “Secretly, she still has the hots for me.”
It was true, Gabriela thought. She still was attracted to him.
And she’d fight the attraction to her death…
or his. She pushed her chair back and stood.
“I need to unpack and get some sleep. We can take this up again in the morning. As you’ve probably already discovered, there are extra blankets in the linen closet in the hall. ”
Gabriela thought it was unlikely that Harley would go to jail for making bad banking decisions.
He might be prohibited from pursuing another finance-related job.
And if the bank failed and its investors lost money beyond what was FDIC insured, she imagined his life could get very unpleasant.
Harley could suck it up and live through all this.
What nagged at her was the killing of the former bank president and the fact that some of the board members coerced Harley into taking foolish risks.
These two things were red flags that she couldn’t ignore.