The Looters Read Online Free

would be the centerpiece of the Piedmont’s collection. Not only did it have to be unique, one of a kind, but it also had to be eye grabbing, a museum piece that would generate publicity from the media and covetous envy from the other museums and collectors.
    The relic I threw down the gauntlet on was a piece connected to an Assyrian queen who had made an indelible mark on the history of war and lust.
    Most people had probably never heard of Assyria or, if it sounded familiar, didn’t remember where it was located, though they’d heard of Babylon, its most famous city—the location of the Tower of Babel and one of the wonders of the ancient world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I wasn’t surprised about the ignorance of most people about geography—how many of us could have identified Iraq or Afghanistan on a world atlas before the War on Terrorism had begun?
    Going back several thousand years, Assyria was truly one of the greatest Middle Eastern empires. It rose to power around the same epoch that Egypt of the mighty pharaohs was declining. Much of the empire was located in Mesopotamia, the region we now call Iraq. Babylon itself was in its day the art and cultural center of Western civilization.
    The antiquity I was bidding on tonight was a golden death mask of history’s first great warrior-queen: Sammu-ramat. The Greeks called her Semiramis, and that was the name she went under in the worlds of art and literature.
    The story of this ninth century B.C. Assyrian beauty was a fascinating tale of war, lust, and romance. My research revealed that her relationship with her kingly husband was the basis for a central theme of romantic fiction popular right up to our present time, the
roman d’aventure:
tales of faithful lovers who are forced apart and are reunited only after numerous adventures.
    On the darker side of art was her notorious ability to incite more than the rape of empires: The mask carried a curse that passed to people who possessed it over the past three thousand years.
What nonsense
, I thought. But the legend of a curse made the value soar.

Chapter 3
    As I waited impatiently for the bidding to start, people were still straggling into the room at the last minute, some with bidding paddles, some without.
    The auctioneer, Neal Nathan, had just arrived, making his way to the rostrum. He carried his precious black book with him. Neal would be checking prices in the book as the auction went on because it showed the “reserves,” the minimum prices the sellers had set. The prices were written in code so only the auctioneer would know the secret amounts. It also spelled out bids made by people who were not able to, or preferred not to, attend the auction.
    Two assistants sat next to the podium, ready to handle phone bids. On the back wall was the currency conversion board for those bids placed with foreign currency.
    I knew that my lot would not be first on the block. Auctions were choreographed like Russian ballets, every moment rehearsed for weeks, sometimes months, in advance. While the order of offerings was customized for every sale, typically the star of the show was presented for bid about halfway through the event.
    The catalog for tonight’s auction listed 150 lots. A bidder’s valuable tool, the catalog listed each numbered lot for sale, the description and ownership information, and the anticipated bid value.
    I wore hands-free cell phone gear. A three-way conference call would take place between Hiram, who would make the final decision, Eric, who would offer his opinion, and myself, who would no doubt be blamed if anything went wrong. I would place my hand across my mouth to keep my lips from being read—it wouldn’t be the first time a bidder had a lip-reader at an auction to discover an opponent’s position.
    I didn’t know exactly how high Hiram would go, but I had a pretty good idea because I had been nudging him closer and closer to the figure I guessed it would take to get the piece.