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xp_logsWanda and Artie investigate another theft. Or possibly just a miscataloguing - university security really sucks.
Artie smiled at the grad student in the lab. "We're here to see the prof?" he said, holding up a notebook and then, at the quizzical look the man gave him flipped back a page - "I have pharyngitis" was scrawled on it, in red marker. "BTW, the graduate student union is doing a lunch for doctoral students and it's starting now. The Latvian cultural society is doing drinks for it and it's on now, in Building S."
"I think Carol is seeing a student.... I should tell you're here. What sort of lunch?"
"Sausages. Cheese. Cake. A..." Artie stopped writing and held out the flier. "Lots of that" he wrote, pointing at the sklanddrausis, whatever the hell that was and then, emphatically at the vodka cocktails.
Wanda's smile looked a little wobbly as she leaned in to whisper, "They're very good," she said, accent suddenly twice as thick and heavy as normal. "I should know, I helped them test out the drinks as the cultural attache, yes?"
The grad student looked beyond interested but hesitant as he glanced back towards where the offices were. Wanda waved her hands at her. "Go! We can wait for the professor out here. If you do not go now, you just know you will get there to find nothing. The sklanddrausis and the good drinks will be completely ..."
He was already packing his backpack. "Those damned biology guys are going to eat everything in sight," he muttered, jogging off. "Just wait on that bench! Carol should be done in about fifteen minutes!"
When he was gone, Wanda sighed a little and said mournfully, "I always did enjoy a good sklanddrausis. Don't suppose we could nip in on our way out..."
Artie shrugged, flicking his eyes up to the camera. A visible bubble of illusion covered it and the one in the lab's storage room, obscuring their vision. The lab's showed the two of them sitting there, fiddling with phones before giving up and leaving. The storage room was empty. It was always empty. He stood, heading into the storage room, opening drawers quickly, one after another.
"No one ever lets me eat sklannddrausis," Wanda bemoaned as she set to work as well. A pair of gloves were pulled out of her pockets as she sat down at the abandoned computer. It was nearly as old as the building itself and, thankfully, didn't have much in the way of security. In fact, the log-in was taped onto the desk under the keyboard. She made a face as she logged in. "Ridiculous but useful. Artie," she called back quietly, "the information is here. According to their recent logbooks, someone just checked back in the papers we're looking for."
Artie nodded, opening the drawer she pointed at, carefully lifting papers out one at a time, each one laid between sheets of cardboard with cataloging details written on the outside and instructions for conservation. "Not here," he said in the end, before noticing the post-it note that read out for conservation and examination on table 2 in lab. Sally XOXO. "It's in the lab."
The lab. Wanda pulled out a small map that she'd stuffed into her pocket and studied it quickly. "Two floors down from us and the fastest way will be past the Professor's office." Which, from the sounds of it, Carol and the student she was seeing were wrapping up their meeting. Wanda could hear voices behind the door getting closer. If they had to backtrack, they would end up losing time.
Instead, she glanced at the door and gave a small smile when a muffled voice could be heard yelling as the door suddenly jammed. "I love old buildings," Wanda said, closing out of files and nodding down the hall. "Go, quietly. The jammed door will take them some time to fix but better safe than sorry."
Artie nodded, letting the illusions covering the cameras vanish as he left, hurrying toward the lab. The door itself was locked and a sign taped to the door saying please remember to lock up. He had the lock picked in a moment and walked into ... papery chaos. Various works were on treatment tables around the room, along with conservation notes, signs explaining that we don't eat in the lab and printouts of Archer saying 'this is how we get ants'. The page was on table 3. Artie slipped it back into the cardboard sleeve and that into an art folio.
He made sure to lock the door behind himself.
Artie hadn't been the only one keeping busy. While he headed through the hall and downstairs, Wanda had blocked out the sounds of the cursing and banging coming from Carol's office. Now they were really on borrowed time as the Professor was probably calling for reinforcements, though she hoped the maintenance crew took their sweet time.
Still, one could never tell. So, with a few curses of her own directed at the computer in front of her, Wanda set about falsifying some university paperwork. Her strengths weren't the same as Doug's or someone else - hold up what she was doing and have someone really examine it and it would fall through. But if the older woman knew one thing very well, it was academia. One didn't need fancy tricks here. One just had to know how to gum up the works with too much paperwork.
When Artie showed up, Wanda was exiting out of a program and standing up. "They'll have no idea," she said, both of them heading towards the exit as Carol's curses and threats increased in volume. "When they finally go to take a look, it'll appear that it's been transferred several times and possibly lost."
Artie grinned at her, giving a thumbs up and signing "Thanks."
Marie-Ange and Artie talk to the curator of a small museum where another piece has gone missing.
It was the office at the back of a small museum. "So, Mr Zhang left all of this to the museum when he died?" Artie asked, through his synthesizer.
"No, he left it to his niece and she didn't know what to do with it, so she lent it to us and you have to understand that most of it was junk and ... this place is only three rooms as it is, and we're only open three days a week so why would anyone even rob this place and the insurance after this is going to kill us."
He nodded sympathetically.
"No, you don't understand! Most of it was junk - 18th, 19th century plates and things but none of it was worth anything much."
"All fragile though." Marie-Ange said, understandingly. "It looks as though whoever stole it was not terribly careful, which is a shame." She slipped on a glove - cotton, white - and picked up one of the shards of plate. "Are you certain this was 18th century?" She asked, holding it up.
Artie nodded, typed "Yes. Look at the overglaze and colours used." He picked up another piece. "Old motifs but there's half a Qianlong seal."
Marie-Ange shook her head, fiercely, and strands of her hair fell around her face. "This is a shame - even if it was junk, it is beautiful junk." She handed one of the shards to Artie, and made the quick sign for 'remember' with her free hand as she passed it to him. "If it had just been me, you could have almost convinced me it was second century Qin. He..." she pointed at Artie "is much better at remembering all those little pieces. Very skilled work though. It takes artistic skill to replicate this sort of thing."
Artie nodded, picking the pieces up carefully, one at a time and placing them on a tray, memorizing them. He'd be able to sit down later and try to reassemble the vase. Maybe. He let the other two talk while he worked.
"I know it is probably difficult to tell with all of the..." Marie-Ange panned the room, taking in smashed pottery and broken shelves and glass.. "damage, but is anything missing? It looks like simple vandalism, but - but I think we both know that you would not have called my friend if it was anything like simple vandalism."
The curator nodded. "There's a vase. That's why I called him. It was another newer piece but if you didn't know that...."
Emma and Wade schmooze at an arts behest and investigate another theft.
There were chairs and little tables at one side of the gallery. The woman in her early 20s sitting with her great grandmother was playing with her phone, clearly bored as the old woman spoke to Emma and Wade.
Emma was incredibly practiced at concealing a smile, so no-one would ever have noticed a single twitch on her mouth. A bored Generation Y playing with her phone was hardly something you expected to see in Mongolia, except for the fact that it had skipped a whole generation of technology without even noticing it.
"We know that it seems strange to be coming to a gallery in Ulan Bator for an American arts bequest," said Emma, her telepathically stolen dictionary rendering her Mongolian flawless. "But my backers are particularly interested in obtaining objects from the Chinese dynasties to flesh out the Asian art section of the bequest. They are..." she waved a hand in a descriptive circle, "completists. They wish to explore art across the ages and the continents. Like a... library. A seed bank. They consider the world is a dangerous place and wish to keep parts of all of it safe." She tilted her head deferentially. "And your gallery is famous for its Tang Dynasty pieces." Emma didn't mention that this was due to the elderly woman's long-deceased husband's legendary reputation as a grave-robber and antiquities thief. It would, after all, have been rude.
Wade smiled his most charming smile and said, his Mongolian only passable as getting the entire language dumped in his head wasn't really an option at the moment, "Personally, I think the bequest would benefit from some of the smaller sculptures from the dynasty Miss Frost mentioned. But it is also, at the moment, light on militarily significant artifacts. I'd heard your collection contained some of the best examples of Tang Dynasty blades ever discovered." Hey, even if they were here on official business, there was no harm in actually looking at things he wanted to look at. And if he played his cards right, maybe they'd let him see some of the cannons.
Emma shot Wade an amused glance and turned back to the great-grandmother. "Sarangerel," she said, deferentially. "My companion is correct. I understand you have many Tang blades and these may prove of great value to others that I know. But I am more particularly interested in objects of the household. Things that may seem insignificant but show that there was time for the making of beautiful things. I understand that you have a number of items of pottery that may be exactly what my backers are looking for."
Sarangerel gave a noise that could best be described as a harrumph, the kind of snort that was always best when delivered by wizened Mongolian great-grandmother bandit queens turned art curators. "I have blades, like your friend is asking for. And pottery. All kinds, all dynasties. The blades I can show you. The pottery, may depend on what you want. All the pottery is..." She made a hand gesture of scattering something widely.
Wade's expression sharpened at the possibility of looking at the blades. He did hazard a guess, though, and ask, "Broken?" Because pottery was typically broken if it was super old. Also, he wasn't supposed to know much about pottery, he was the military history guy. His dissertation was about elephants.
Sarangerel's glance was sharp, belying her age. "Not broken," she said and the look that she gave to Emma clearly questioned why she was associating with such an unwise boy. "Out of order. There was a thief, some foolish one, broke in a week or so ago. Turned all the pots all over, every place. Altan there," she indicated the girl on the phone, "is supposed to be putting them back in their place, but she is always lazy. Always on that thing."
Emma suppressed a grin at the universal complaints of the old towards the young. "A thief?" she asked, with just the right amount of nonchalance. "Did they steal anything important?"
The Mongolian woman snorted again. "A forgery," she said. "A vase. Looks like Tang Dynasty, but was Qing. Worth less than something bought in the markets. Hope they try and sell it to someone clever. They will be laughed at. Hit in head, hopefully."
That's another Qing forgery, Wade thought at Emma, attempting to modulate his thoughts so he wasn't shouting at her. He wore a bland smile because eh. Pottery. Can we still look at the blades?
Emma did a thing in Wade's head that made it clear that, while her outside face was still smiling blandly at the curator, her inside face was rolling her eyes at him VERY HARD. "Well, a Qing forgery is not useful to my backers, anyway," she said. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to show me the pottery, even if it is in disarray. I'm sure that, if the right piece is found, I can offer you enough money to make it worth the inconvenience." She glanced at Altan for a moment. "And perhaps, to ensure our conversations are not interrupted, Altan would be kind enough to show my colleague the blades. And I understand you may also have cannons?" The things I do for you, she sent into Wade's head.
Keeping his smile in place, Wade let his enthusiasm for the suggestion about seeing the blades show through even as he thought, Best negotiator ever. How many motherfucking sonnets do I owe you now? I think I'm up to twelve.
I'm just waiting for you to publish the anthology, replied Emma. Now let's go and look at things that go bang.
Wade and Wanda are outraged that an Awesome Pointy Thing has also gone missing.
"Wade, if you could grab the print outs from over there, they'll show us what was lifted in the recent museum heist." Wanda made a noise of disgust and slammed down the stack of papers she'd been holding onto the table in front of her. And then did it again for good measure. "I use the word heist loosely! The museum directors should be ashamed! One night guard, asleep most of the time; a handful of day guards, possibly asleep most of the time; and the shoddiest camera system I have ever seen in my life."
She threw her hands up in the air. "Does no one take pride in their work anymore?"
Looking over the schematics Doug had sent them, Wade frowned his disgust. "Jesus Christ, three of these cameras are only for show. Oh my God, they - Wanda." His voice dropped, urgency evident. "Wanda, they have an almost completely intact Yuan Dynasty suit of armor here. Can we please ask our sneaky-sneak friends to steal it so that we can put it somewhere better? Like with my collection of other Yuan Dynasty things that I keep in a special vault in Switzerland that's climate controlled and everything? Please? Before someone else steals it and it disappears completely and I never get to see it again?"
The noise she made in the back of her throat was as close to girlish squealing as Wanda got - outside of anything to do with shoe sales and ancient artifacts. She crowded Wade for a moment to look at the description and she shook the paper at him. "Wade," she hissed, "they are only missing three pieces! Three! And they are housing it at this ... this dump of a place that I shall not even dare to call a museum?" Wanda fixed him with a look. "We are only calling in our sneaky-sneak friends if you take me to your special Swiss vault that I have heard so much about but never seen. Deal?"
"Deal," Wade said immediately. "Absolutely deal. This deal is made, no takebacks." The most important matter, for the moment, taken care of, the mercenary looked back over the information they'd gathered from this place, the descriptions of security as well as the blueprints and detailed security intel, and said, "It's no wonder someone broke in here, easy-peasy, and made off with that Qing Dynasty thing. And there's no evidence for a case against anyone."
"And we have ruled out any of the locals with records. They were either still in prison or nowhere near the scene." She spread the paper out in front of her and frowned at it. Nothing was making sense. "With items like the Yuan Dynasty suit of armor, there were plenty of other items that could have been lifted. This was not a heist simply to steal as much as one could and sell it on the black market. This was a specific hit."
"Agreed," Wade said, nodding. "So why'd they want this Qing Dynasty vase, which is the only thing actually missing, when there's more valuable stuff in there that discerning collectors would pay bookoos of moola for? Like, it's a nice vase and all, but - c'mon. Yuan armor."
Wanda smiled at the tone in his voice and couldn't help but agree. "There are those with less discerning tastes," she pointed out, wandering back to her computer. "But beyond that there must be something else. Something mythical in nature that makes it more important than it might actually be?"
"Okay, so. Where'd it come from? Who found it? Who had it before this place?"
"Son of a bitch," Wanda sighed after a few moments. A variety of emotions crossed over her face before landing on resigned. "I have no idea but I might be able to find out. I have a variety of contacts I could call but we are under the gun so to speak." She would need to make copies of the details so she could relay them over the phone... "I will need to give Agatha Harkness a call, she may have heard something. In the meantime, we need to track how the museum came to own it in the first place."
Wanda bit her lip and looked over at Wade. "I would be interested in seeing who brokered those transactions and if it ended up in a poor security museum on purpose."
Every now and then, the tiny tweaks in this new Wanda didn't seem quite so tiny - like how she wasn't running herself ragged looking for whoever it was that'd killed Agatha Harkness. Shaking his head a little, Wade said, "My contacts won't be much good on that front, but Marie-Ange has the whole art thief network thing. I can see if Fe's got any intel, too, while you work your Agatha angle?"
There was going to need to be far more coffee. "Check with the ladies while I set another pot on to brew and then give Agatha a call. Meet back here in a few hours?" But she wasn't waiting for her answer. She really, really needed more coffee.
Emma Skypes Marie-Ange to tell he about her research into very old shoes.
Despite the telepathy, sometimes it was just easier to Skype. Emma raised her champagne flute as Marie-Ange appeared on screen. "I think we need to talk about shoes," she said. "Specifically, very tiny shoes, fit for a princess of the Qing dynasty." She frowned. "Have you ever seen a lotus shoe up close, Marie-Ange? I wear six-inch spike heels for fun and profit and I..." Emma stopped and thought for a second. "They are not pleasant things."
"I have seen pictures of them. I saw the x-ray of a woman's foot. I do not think I want to see the feet." Marie-Ange shuddered visibly. "I cannot - I just cannot imagine how it did not smell terribly. And how the smell did not dissuade people from continuing to do that. At least corset tops and stockings do not smell."
Emma raised an eyebrow. "Well, not unless... Now might not be the time to get into that." She took a moment to do a quick telepathic scan, making sure there were no eavesdroppers. "The Penang State Museum had a number of lotus shoes - not many, but it was a very nice collection. Note that I say was."
"I was hoping this was not going to be that conversation." Marie-Ange pulled a tablet computer into frame and started taking notes. "Shall I guess? Qing Dynasty, but some could be as old as Qin, perhaps, if they did such a thing then?" She flipped her stylus and tapped her tablet, sending a list to Emma's computer. "I have a list so far of the items taken, and some theories, but all very rough. Artie has not gotten back to me yet."
"They covered a range of dynasties," replied Emma. "But they found a lot of pieces in rubbish bins out the back. Like someone stole them all, then sat in the alley and ripped them all apart. There's no telling which ones they were actually looking for, but they've nearly all been destroyed."
"And the destruction means it is nearly impossible to tell if any are missing altogether." Marie-Ange guessed. "Artie and I spoke to a friend of a friend. Her gallery was vandalized, pots smashed, glass everywhere, and in all that, some Qing era forgeries stolen. I would bet real money that your shoe museum had some fake shoes, and they are all gone, not in little pieces in the rubbish bin."
“It would definitely fit the pattern so far,” Emma agreed. “I’ll be in this part of the world for a couple of days, so if you need me, just call. In the meantime, I’m going to drink to forget that there was ever such a thing as a lotus shoe or a foot that was made to fit in a lotus shoe. Chin chin.” Emma raised her glass at Marie-Ange in farewell as she cut the Skype connection.
Artie smiled at the grad student in the lab. "We're here to see the prof?" he said, holding up a notebook and then, at the quizzical look the man gave him flipped back a page - "I have pharyngitis" was scrawled on it, in red marker. "BTW, the graduate student union is doing a lunch for doctoral students and it's starting now. The Latvian cultural society is doing drinks for it and it's on now, in Building S."
"I think Carol is seeing a student.... I should tell you're here. What sort of lunch?"
"Sausages. Cheese. Cake. A..." Artie stopped writing and held out the flier. "Lots of that" he wrote, pointing at the sklanddrausis, whatever the hell that was and then, emphatically at the vodka cocktails.
Wanda's smile looked a little wobbly as she leaned in to whisper, "They're very good," she said, accent suddenly twice as thick and heavy as normal. "I should know, I helped them test out the drinks as the cultural attache, yes?"
The grad student looked beyond interested but hesitant as he glanced back towards where the offices were. Wanda waved her hands at her. "Go! We can wait for the professor out here. If you do not go now, you just know you will get there to find nothing. The sklanddrausis and the good drinks will be completely ..."
He was already packing his backpack. "Those damned biology guys are going to eat everything in sight," he muttered, jogging off. "Just wait on that bench! Carol should be done in about fifteen minutes!"
When he was gone, Wanda sighed a little and said mournfully, "I always did enjoy a good sklanddrausis. Don't suppose we could nip in on our way out..."
Artie shrugged, flicking his eyes up to the camera. A visible bubble of illusion covered it and the one in the lab's storage room, obscuring their vision. The lab's showed the two of them sitting there, fiddling with phones before giving up and leaving. The storage room was empty. It was always empty. He stood, heading into the storage room, opening drawers quickly, one after another.
"No one ever lets me eat sklannddrausis," Wanda bemoaned as she set to work as well. A pair of gloves were pulled out of her pockets as she sat down at the abandoned computer. It was nearly as old as the building itself and, thankfully, didn't have much in the way of security. In fact, the log-in was taped onto the desk under the keyboard. She made a face as she logged in. "Ridiculous but useful. Artie," she called back quietly, "the information is here. According to their recent logbooks, someone just checked back in the papers we're looking for."
Artie nodded, opening the drawer she pointed at, carefully lifting papers out one at a time, each one laid between sheets of cardboard with cataloging details written on the outside and instructions for conservation. "Not here," he said in the end, before noticing the post-it note that read out for conservation and examination on table 2 in lab. Sally XOXO. "It's in the lab."
The lab. Wanda pulled out a small map that she'd stuffed into her pocket and studied it quickly. "Two floors down from us and the fastest way will be past the Professor's office." Which, from the sounds of it, Carol and the student she was seeing were wrapping up their meeting. Wanda could hear voices behind the door getting closer. If they had to backtrack, they would end up losing time.
Instead, she glanced at the door and gave a small smile when a muffled voice could be heard yelling as the door suddenly jammed. "I love old buildings," Wanda said, closing out of files and nodding down the hall. "Go, quietly. The jammed door will take them some time to fix but better safe than sorry."
Artie nodded, letting the illusions covering the cameras vanish as he left, hurrying toward the lab. The door itself was locked and a sign taped to the door saying please remember to lock up. He had the lock picked in a moment and walked into ... papery chaos. Various works were on treatment tables around the room, along with conservation notes, signs explaining that we don't eat in the lab and printouts of Archer saying 'this is how we get ants'. The page was on table 3. Artie slipped it back into the cardboard sleeve and that into an art folio.
He made sure to lock the door behind himself.
Artie hadn't been the only one keeping busy. While he headed through the hall and downstairs, Wanda had blocked out the sounds of the cursing and banging coming from Carol's office. Now they were really on borrowed time as the Professor was probably calling for reinforcements, though she hoped the maintenance crew took their sweet time.
Still, one could never tell. So, with a few curses of her own directed at the computer in front of her, Wanda set about falsifying some university paperwork. Her strengths weren't the same as Doug's or someone else - hold up what she was doing and have someone really examine it and it would fall through. But if the older woman knew one thing very well, it was academia. One didn't need fancy tricks here. One just had to know how to gum up the works with too much paperwork.
When Artie showed up, Wanda was exiting out of a program and standing up. "They'll have no idea," she said, both of them heading towards the exit as Carol's curses and threats increased in volume. "When they finally go to take a look, it'll appear that it's been transferred several times and possibly lost."
Artie grinned at her, giving a thumbs up and signing "Thanks."
Marie-Ange and Artie talk to the curator of a small museum where another piece has gone missing.
It was the office at the back of a small museum. "So, Mr Zhang left all of this to the museum when he died?" Artie asked, through his synthesizer.
"No, he left it to his niece and she didn't know what to do with it, so she lent it to us and you have to understand that most of it was junk and ... this place is only three rooms as it is, and we're only open three days a week so why would anyone even rob this place and the insurance after this is going to kill us."
He nodded sympathetically.
"No, you don't understand! Most of it was junk - 18th, 19th century plates and things but none of it was worth anything much."
"All fragile though." Marie-Ange said, understandingly. "It looks as though whoever stole it was not terribly careful, which is a shame." She slipped on a glove - cotton, white - and picked up one of the shards of plate. "Are you certain this was 18th century?" She asked, holding it up.
Artie nodded, typed "Yes. Look at the overglaze and colours used." He picked up another piece. "Old motifs but there's half a Qianlong seal."
Marie-Ange shook her head, fiercely, and strands of her hair fell around her face. "This is a shame - even if it was junk, it is beautiful junk." She handed one of the shards to Artie, and made the quick sign for 'remember' with her free hand as she passed it to him. "If it had just been me, you could have almost convinced me it was second century Qin. He..." she pointed at Artie "is much better at remembering all those little pieces. Very skilled work though. It takes artistic skill to replicate this sort of thing."
Artie nodded, picking the pieces up carefully, one at a time and placing them on a tray, memorizing them. He'd be able to sit down later and try to reassemble the vase. Maybe. He let the other two talk while he worked.
"I know it is probably difficult to tell with all of the..." Marie-Ange panned the room, taking in smashed pottery and broken shelves and glass.. "damage, but is anything missing? It looks like simple vandalism, but - but I think we both know that you would not have called my friend if it was anything like simple vandalism."
The curator nodded. "There's a vase. That's why I called him. It was another newer piece but if you didn't know that...."
Emma and Wade schmooze at an arts behest and investigate another theft.
There were chairs and little tables at one side of the gallery. The woman in her early 20s sitting with her great grandmother was playing with her phone, clearly bored as the old woman spoke to Emma and Wade.
Emma was incredibly practiced at concealing a smile, so no-one would ever have noticed a single twitch on her mouth. A bored Generation Y playing with her phone was hardly something you expected to see in Mongolia, except for the fact that it had skipped a whole generation of technology without even noticing it.
"We know that it seems strange to be coming to a gallery in Ulan Bator for an American arts bequest," said Emma, her telepathically stolen dictionary rendering her Mongolian flawless. "But my backers are particularly interested in obtaining objects from the Chinese dynasties to flesh out the Asian art section of the bequest. They are..." she waved a hand in a descriptive circle, "completists. They wish to explore art across the ages and the continents. Like a... library. A seed bank. They consider the world is a dangerous place and wish to keep parts of all of it safe." She tilted her head deferentially. "And your gallery is famous for its Tang Dynasty pieces." Emma didn't mention that this was due to the elderly woman's long-deceased husband's legendary reputation as a grave-robber and antiquities thief. It would, after all, have been rude.
Wade smiled his most charming smile and said, his Mongolian only passable as getting the entire language dumped in his head wasn't really an option at the moment, "Personally, I think the bequest would benefit from some of the smaller sculptures from the dynasty Miss Frost mentioned. But it is also, at the moment, light on militarily significant artifacts. I'd heard your collection contained some of the best examples of Tang Dynasty blades ever discovered." Hey, even if they were here on official business, there was no harm in actually looking at things he wanted to look at. And if he played his cards right, maybe they'd let him see some of the cannons.
Emma shot Wade an amused glance and turned back to the great-grandmother. "Sarangerel," she said, deferentially. "My companion is correct. I understand you have many Tang blades and these may prove of great value to others that I know. But I am more particularly interested in objects of the household. Things that may seem insignificant but show that there was time for the making of beautiful things. I understand that you have a number of items of pottery that may be exactly what my backers are looking for."
Sarangerel gave a noise that could best be described as a harrumph, the kind of snort that was always best when delivered by wizened Mongolian great-grandmother bandit queens turned art curators. "I have blades, like your friend is asking for. And pottery. All kinds, all dynasties. The blades I can show you. The pottery, may depend on what you want. All the pottery is..." She made a hand gesture of scattering something widely.
Wade's expression sharpened at the possibility of looking at the blades. He did hazard a guess, though, and ask, "Broken?" Because pottery was typically broken if it was super old. Also, he wasn't supposed to know much about pottery, he was the military history guy. His dissertation was about elephants.
Sarangerel's glance was sharp, belying her age. "Not broken," she said and the look that she gave to Emma clearly questioned why she was associating with such an unwise boy. "Out of order. There was a thief, some foolish one, broke in a week or so ago. Turned all the pots all over, every place. Altan there," she indicated the girl on the phone, "is supposed to be putting them back in their place, but she is always lazy. Always on that thing."
Emma suppressed a grin at the universal complaints of the old towards the young. "A thief?" she asked, with just the right amount of nonchalance. "Did they steal anything important?"
The Mongolian woman snorted again. "A forgery," she said. "A vase. Looks like Tang Dynasty, but was Qing. Worth less than something bought in the markets. Hope they try and sell it to someone clever. They will be laughed at. Hit in head, hopefully."
That's another Qing forgery, Wade thought at Emma, attempting to modulate his thoughts so he wasn't shouting at her. He wore a bland smile because eh. Pottery. Can we still look at the blades?
Emma did a thing in Wade's head that made it clear that, while her outside face was still smiling blandly at the curator, her inside face was rolling her eyes at him VERY HARD. "Well, a Qing forgery is not useful to my backers, anyway," she said. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to show me the pottery, even if it is in disarray. I'm sure that, if the right piece is found, I can offer you enough money to make it worth the inconvenience." She glanced at Altan for a moment. "And perhaps, to ensure our conversations are not interrupted, Altan would be kind enough to show my colleague the blades. And I understand you may also have cannons?" The things I do for you, she sent into Wade's head.
Keeping his smile in place, Wade let his enthusiasm for the suggestion about seeing the blades show through even as he thought, Best negotiator ever. How many motherfucking sonnets do I owe you now? I think I'm up to twelve.
I'm just waiting for you to publish the anthology, replied Emma. Now let's go and look at things that go bang.
Wade and Wanda are outraged that an Awesome Pointy Thing has also gone missing.
"Wade, if you could grab the print outs from over there, they'll show us what was lifted in the recent museum heist." Wanda made a noise of disgust and slammed down the stack of papers she'd been holding onto the table in front of her. And then did it again for good measure. "I use the word heist loosely! The museum directors should be ashamed! One night guard, asleep most of the time; a handful of day guards, possibly asleep most of the time; and the shoddiest camera system I have ever seen in my life."
She threw her hands up in the air. "Does no one take pride in their work anymore?"
Looking over the schematics Doug had sent them, Wade frowned his disgust. "Jesus Christ, three of these cameras are only for show. Oh my God, they - Wanda." His voice dropped, urgency evident. "Wanda, they have an almost completely intact Yuan Dynasty suit of armor here. Can we please ask our sneaky-sneak friends to steal it so that we can put it somewhere better? Like with my collection of other Yuan Dynasty things that I keep in a special vault in Switzerland that's climate controlled and everything? Please? Before someone else steals it and it disappears completely and I never get to see it again?"
The noise she made in the back of her throat was as close to girlish squealing as Wanda got - outside of anything to do with shoe sales and ancient artifacts. She crowded Wade for a moment to look at the description and she shook the paper at him. "Wade," she hissed, "they are only missing three pieces! Three! And they are housing it at this ... this dump of a place that I shall not even dare to call a museum?" Wanda fixed him with a look. "We are only calling in our sneaky-sneak friends if you take me to your special Swiss vault that I have heard so much about but never seen. Deal?"
"Deal," Wade said immediately. "Absolutely deal. This deal is made, no takebacks." The most important matter, for the moment, taken care of, the mercenary looked back over the information they'd gathered from this place, the descriptions of security as well as the blueprints and detailed security intel, and said, "It's no wonder someone broke in here, easy-peasy, and made off with that Qing Dynasty thing. And there's no evidence for a case against anyone."
"And we have ruled out any of the locals with records. They were either still in prison or nowhere near the scene." She spread the paper out in front of her and frowned at it. Nothing was making sense. "With items like the Yuan Dynasty suit of armor, there were plenty of other items that could have been lifted. This was not a heist simply to steal as much as one could and sell it on the black market. This was a specific hit."
"Agreed," Wade said, nodding. "So why'd they want this Qing Dynasty vase, which is the only thing actually missing, when there's more valuable stuff in there that discerning collectors would pay bookoos of moola for? Like, it's a nice vase and all, but - c'mon. Yuan armor."
Wanda smiled at the tone in his voice and couldn't help but agree. "There are those with less discerning tastes," she pointed out, wandering back to her computer. "But beyond that there must be something else. Something mythical in nature that makes it more important than it might actually be?"
"Okay, so. Where'd it come from? Who found it? Who had it before this place?"
"Son of a bitch," Wanda sighed after a few moments. A variety of emotions crossed over her face before landing on resigned. "I have no idea but I might be able to find out. I have a variety of contacts I could call but we are under the gun so to speak." She would need to make copies of the details so she could relay them over the phone... "I will need to give Agatha Harkness a call, she may have heard something. In the meantime, we need to track how the museum came to own it in the first place."
Wanda bit her lip and looked over at Wade. "I would be interested in seeing who brokered those transactions and if it ended up in a poor security museum on purpose."
Every now and then, the tiny tweaks in this new Wanda didn't seem quite so tiny - like how she wasn't running herself ragged looking for whoever it was that'd killed Agatha Harkness. Shaking his head a little, Wade said, "My contacts won't be much good on that front, but Marie-Ange has the whole art thief network thing. I can see if Fe's got any intel, too, while you work your Agatha angle?"
There was going to need to be far more coffee. "Check with the ladies while I set another pot on to brew and then give Agatha a call. Meet back here in a few hours?" But she wasn't waiting for her answer. She really, really needed more coffee.
Emma Skypes Marie-Ange to tell he about her research into very old shoes.
Despite the telepathy, sometimes it was just easier to Skype. Emma raised her champagne flute as Marie-Ange appeared on screen. "I think we need to talk about shoes," she said. "Specifically, very tiny shoes, fit for a princess of the Qing dynasty." She frowned. "Have you ever seen a lotus shoe up close, Marie-Ange? I wear six-inch spike heels for fun and profit and I..." Emma stopped and thought for a second. "They are not pleasant things."
"I have seen pictures of them. I saw the x-ray of a woman's foot. I do not think I want to see the feet." Marie-Ange shuddered visibly. "I cannot - I just cannot imagine how it did not smell terribly. And how the smell did not dissuade people from continuing to do that. At least corset tops and stockings do not smell."
Emma raised an eyebrow. "Well, not unless... Now might not be the time to get into that." She took a moment to do a quick telepathic scan, making sure there were no eavesdroppers. "The Penang State Museum had a number of lotus shoes - not many, but it was a very nice collection. Note that I say was."
"I was hoping this was not going to be that conversation." Marie-Ange pulled a tablet computer into frame and started taking notes. "Shall I guess? Qing Dynasty, but some could be as old as Qin, perhaps, if they did such a thing then?" She flipped her stylus and tapped her tablet, sending a list to Emma's computer. "I have a list so far of the items taken, and some theories, but all very rough. Artie has not gotten back to me yet."
"They covered a range of dynasties," replied Emma. "But they found a lot of pieces in rubbish bins out the back. Like someone stole them all, then sat in the alley and ripped them all apart. There's no telling which ones they were actually looking for, but they've nearly all been destroyed."
"And the destruction means it is nearly impossible to tell if any are missing altogether." Marie-Ange guessed. "Artie and I spoke to a friend of a friend. Her gallery was vandalized, pots smashed, glass everywhere, and in all that, some Qing era forgeries stolen. I would bet real money that your shoe museum had some fake shoes, and they are all gone, not in little pieces in the rubbish bin."
“It would definitely fit the pattern so far,” Emma agreed. “I’ll be in this part of the world for a couple of days, so if you need me, just call. In the meantime, I’m going to drink to forget that there was ever such a thing as a lotus shoe or a foot that was made to fit in a lotus shoe. Chin chin.” Emma raised her glass at Marie-Ange in farewell as she cut the Skype connection.
