House of War. Scott Mariani

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      ‘You’re the client. It’s none of my business what’s on there. I only looked at the first few seconds. Long enough to see what it isn’t.’ Thierry handed over the phone. Ben took it and sat at the table to look.

      The video was less than a minute long. That made each second of its duration seem all the more precious, assuming the clip was of any value at all. After the first five seconds, Ben’s heart was beginning to sink, because he could hardly make anything out. Everything was dark and jerky, just a confusion of shapes and shadows. All that was clearly visible was the purple time and date stamp in the bottom left corner of the screen, which just confirmed the date on the file label, from three days ago.

      Seven seconds in, something appeared on the right-hand edge of the frame, and moved inwards to fill a third of the screen. It was the vertical edge of what appeared to be a concrete wall, pitted and craggy. The camera’s focus sharpened on that, making the background even more blurry and indistinct. All Ben could glean from what he was seeing was that the person doing the filming – presumably Romy herself, though he had no way to be certain – was shooting the video clip in a furtive, clandestine way from behind the wall, not wanting to be seen. She, if it was her, seemed to be trying to angle the camera past its edge, around the corner, to film something happening further away. But the lighting was just too dark to see what.

      Ben said, ‘This is terrible.’

      Thierry shrugged. ‘You get what you get, man.’

      As bad as the visual quality was, the audio was even worse. All Ben could hear through the phone’s tinny speaker was a lot of white noise. The phone mic was picking up all kinds of background sounds. He was sure he could hear Romy’s breathing, which was restrained, like someone trying to remain undetected, but fast and urgent, like someone very afraid of getting caught. He thought back to the one and only time he’d seen her alive. She’d been frightened then, too. Clearly terrified of whoever she thought was following her.

      Had Romy witnessed something, Ben wondered. What were you doing? What did you see?

      Somewhere in the middle of the white noise, barely audible, was the sound of muffled voices. Two of them, Ben thought. Both men, judging from the low-range tones. He strained his ears to catch what was being said, but it was impossible to make out.

      ‘Is there anything you can do to make the sound clearer?’ he asked Thierry.

      ‘Hey, I’m a genius, not a bloody magician. You might be able to clean it up a little, but not without access to some decent audio editing software. Even then, no guarantees. You can’t bring out what isn’t there to start with.’

      Ben said nothing, and went on watching what he couldn’t see and listening to what he couldn’t hear. Then, eighteen seconds in, Romy must have shifted position slightly because the vertical edge of the wall suddenly slid out of shot towards the right. The camera’s autofocus was suddenly able to latch onto more of the background and suck more light from the murky shadows. The audio was still bad, but now Ben could make out more visual detail.

      The scene had taken place inside some kind of warehouse or industrial building, or it could have been a cellar: a large, dimly-lit space with concrete pillars holding up the roof. Ben realised it was another of the same pillars, not a wall, that Romy was hiding behind to film the clip on her phone. She was doing her best to keep the camera steady, but the picture kept jerking and wandering and made it hard to see. Ben started freeze-framing the clip to get a better look.

      At the far end of the warehouse, or cellar, rows of strange whitish objects were lined up against a wall. Some seemed to be covered with shrouds or tarpaulins, others were more clearly visible. Ben realised that they were statues. Old ones, he guessed by the look of them. Some were human figures, others of animals and mythical beasts. Some smaller in size, others so tall and large that they loomed up towards the ceiling of the warehouse. Ben let the playback roll for a few more seconds, then paused it again to catch a clear view of a massive stone creature that appeared to have the head and face of a man, the body of an elephant. Or maybe a bull. Either way it was an enormous piece of sculpture that stood nearly as high as the rafter beams, several metres tall.

      It looked oddly familiar to him. Where had he seen something like it before? He thought back, then flashed on a memory of the one time he’d ever visited the Louvre museum, right here in Paris, years ago, and seen similar exhibits on display. Those had dated back several millennia, he remembered. Brought to France within the last couple of centuries, from some ancient part of what was now the Middle East.

      Then Ben recalled a more recent memory, of his conversation with Romy’s colleague Jeanne at the Institute, and Jeanne telling him that Romy had recently returned from a field trip overseas. He wished he knew more about where she’d gone. He could only guess that, since her work involved the preservation of ancient works of art like these, her field trips might take her to places where such objects were kept warehoused between being salvaged from their original homes and being relocated to museums in Europe and elsewhere. That much made sense – but what didn’t make sense was why she was filming this so secretively, as though she wasn’t supposed to be there. Who was she hiding from?

      Ben unpaused the image and let the video play on. Nearly half a minute into the clip the image shifted again, panning a few degrees to the left. Ben realised that Romy was keeping so carefully hidden behind her pillar that she couldn’t actually see what she was trying to film, and was just taking pot luck at aiming the camera. The picture went wildly jerky for a few moments, then steadied again.

      And that was when Ben saw the two men whose indistinct voices he could hear garbled in the background. It was just a brief glimpse, and he had to pause, rewind and pause again until he was able to freeze the frame just right. The pair were standing about midway between where Romy was hiding and the statues lined against the far wall. The angle of the shot captured them both in profile, side-on to the camera. From their body language it was clear that the conversation was intense and serious. One man was taller and darker than the other, but they were too small to make out their faces.

      He asked Thierry, ‘Can I zoom in on this?’

      Thierry tutted at Ben’s lack of expertise. ‘How can a guy be so damn good at some things, and so completely hopeless at others?’ He leaned over and showed Ben how to make the image bigger.

      The zoomed-in shot of the two men was a little blurry, but clear enough.

      The shorter man on the right was older, thicker around the middle and wearing the sort of light-coloured suit that well-to-do Europeans used to wear in tropical countries. He had a full head of silver hair and a craggy face, deeply tanned. Ben recognised him from his photo on the Institute website. It was Julien Segal, the archaeologist, Romy’s employer.

      Which still didn’t explain why Romy was hiding from him and filming the conversation in secret. But the identity of the man on the left explained a great deal.

      Taller, more powerfully built, dressed all in black and seemingly doing most of the talking, the man on the left was Nazim al-Kassar.

       Chapter 15

      Ben stared at the small, frozen image in his hands. And so now, at last, the first pieces of the puzzle were lining up together. What connection existed between a reputed antiquities conservation expert and a notorious terrorist, he couldn’t begin to understand. Just the fact that Segal was talking to Nazim at all was a glaring red alarm beacon. And here they were, caught on camera together, only days ago.

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