Nasir shot a drop-dead glance in the marine’s direction. “I understand. They were too busy guarding the oil wells.” The unsympathetic expression on his nut-brown face suggested that he would have preferred bloodshed to looting.
“I’m as sickened as you are,” she said. “This is terrible.”
“Well, it’s not as bad as it seems here,” Nasir said with unexpected optimism. “The artifacts taken from this case were minor items. Fortunately, the museum had put together a contingency plan after the 1991 invasion. The curators moved most of the artifacts to safe rooms known only to the five most senior museum officers.”
“That’s wonderful, Professor!”
Nasir’s sunny mood was short-lived. He tugged fretfully at his beard. “I wish the rest of the news were as good,” he said with a doleful note in his voice. “Other parts of the museum did not fare as well. The thieves looted the greatest treasures of Mesopotamia. They took the sacred vase and the mask of Warka, the Bassetki statue, the ivory of the lioness attacking the Nubian, and the twin copper bulls.”
“Those objects are priceless!”
“Unlike the petty thieves we chased out of the museum, the people who removed the more-valuable antiquities were sophisticated. They bypassed the Black Obelisk, for instance.”
“They must have known that the original is in the Louvre.”
Nasir’s lips tightened in a grim smile. “They didn’t touch any copies. They were very organized and selective. Come, I’ll show you.”
Nasir led the way to the aboveground storage rooms. The shelves lining the walls were empty. Dozens of jars, vessels, and shards littered the floor. Carina kicked away an army uniform.
“The Republican Guards spent time here as well,” she said. “Any idea of how much is missing?”
“It will take years to assess the loss. I’m estimating around three thousand or so pieces gone. I wish I could say that was the worst of it.”
They walked into a gallery that displayed Roman antiquities. The professor pushed aside a corner shelf to reveal a hidden door whose glass paneling had been smashed and steel grate bent back. He fumbled in his pocket for a candle and a cigarette lighter. They descended the narrow set of stairs to metal doors that were wide-open, with no sign of forced entry. A wall sealed the space beyond the door. The concrete bricks had been pried away to make a large opening.
They climbed through the opening into a hot and airless room. An acrid stench assaulted their nostrils. Footprints on the dusty floor had been cordoned off with yellow tape placed at the crime scene by a team of investigators.
Carina glanced around. “Where are we?”
“The basement storage area. There are five rooms down here. Few people in the museum even know this place exists. That’s why we thought the collection was safe. We were wrong, as you can see.”
He moved the candle in an arc. Its yellow light fell upon dozens of plastic fishing boxes thrown willy-nilly around the room.
“I’ve never seen such absolute chaos,” Carina whispered.
“The boxes held cylinder seals, beads, coins, glass bottles, amulets, and jewelry. Thousands of items are missing.” He brought the candle over to dozens of larger plastic boxes that lined the walls. “They didn’t bother with these. Apparently, they knew they were empty.”
Corporal O’Leary surveyed the wreckage with a street fighter’s eye for entrances and exits. “If you don’t mind my asking sir, how’d they know how to find this place?”
Nasir’s heavy features drooped and he gave a glum nod of his head. “You Americans aren’t the only ones who have reason to be embarrassed. We suspect someone on our staff with intimate knowledge of the museum alerted the thieves to this room. We have fingerprinted our staff, except for the head of security, who has not come back to reclaim his job.”
“I was wondering why I didn’t see any evidence of the door being forced,” Carina said.
“The thieves came into the basement the same way we did, but they had forgotten torches or never expected they would need them.” He picked up a piece of burned rubber foam. “They used this material from upstairs for torchlight. The stuff burns quickly and the fumes would have been terrible. We found a set of keys on the floor. They probably dropped the keys and couldn’t find them. They missed thirty cabinets with our best cylinder seals and tens of thousands of gold and silver coins. I’d guess about ten thousand excavated artifacts are missing. Hundreds of boxes were left intact, praise Allah.”
They filed through a doorway into a larger space filled with antiquities of every size and shape. “These are objects that were given a preliminary identification and were to be absorbed into the main collection as work allowed. Some have been stored here for years.”
“The footprints lead in here,” Carina said.
“The thieves evidently thought there was something of value in this room. We would have no way of knowing until we go over our inventory. We are far too busy trying to retrieve more precious items.”
“I heard there was an amnesty,” she said.
“That’s right. It has somewhat restored some of my faith in human nature. People have brought in thousands of items, including the mask of Warka. I expect that objects will continue to be returned, but, as you know, the most valuable ones are probably in the possession of some wealthy collector in New York or London.”
Carina sighed in agreement. The thefts had been carefully planned. The invasion took weeks to gear up. Unscrupulous dealers in Europe and the United States could take advance orders for specific objects from rich clients.
The antiquities business had become almost as lucrative as drug trafficking. London and New York were the main markets. Stolen antiquities from illegal excavations in Greece, Italy, and South America were often laundered through Switzerland, where objects can gain legal title after only five years in the country.