The Looters Read Online Free Page B

back into a relationship. The psychobabble guide to true love and happiness in which I invested $24.95 said that sex was just titillation and that true love was a state of the heart that didn’t require erections or orgasms. Sure. That was a nice thought, but I needed a little titillation once in a while to keep my soul—and my bones—oiled.
    My friend Dillon, who married a rich oral surgeon, claimed that the best relationships were for love-and-money. I hadn’t found that combination yet. But right now I had the best of both worlds. I was dating a much younger stud, once my personal trainer, who was someone I could work up a sweat with when I wanted to, and dating Neal, who was rich, cultured, and whom I enjoyed spending an evening of dinner and conversation with, even though I had to fake my orgasms with him. Add a vibrator for nights alone and what more could a girl ask for?
    Neal tapped his wood gavel to bring the crowd to order.
    I half-listened to him as he auctioned off the early lots. When a second century B.C. Hellenistic vase that I had already turned thumbs down on came up for bid, Hiram’s voice came over my earpiece.
    “Why aren’t we bidding on that piece?”
    Eric and I had already discussed the piece and agreed we would not bid, but as usual, when the boss questioned anything, Eric remained silent and let me take the heat. Did I mention that Eric was a weasel?
    I covered my mouth and whispered, “I heard it has dirt on it.”
    “Dirt” meant there was a question in the chain of ownership. I started using the expression after Italian police put people on trial for buying antiquities that had been smuggled out of Italy. The police claimed that the items were not purchased from a legitimate collection but had been dug out of the ground by tomb robbers, a fairly common occurrence in antiquity-rich countries such as Italy.
    The items excavated at night from antiquity sites and smuggled across borders would have a “provenance” by the time they were placed on sale or the auction block. A provenance was a certification of origin, literally the item’s chain of ownership or history. Dealers and owners who sold antiquities and other works of art had to provide that evidence to prove that the piece was legally on the market.
    It wasn’t as hard as one might imagine to prove the chain of ownership of an antiquity, especially if it came through the typical route for the trade—illegally digging up an item that had been buried for thousands of years. Once the piece was in the hands of an unscrupulous dealer, usually in New York or London, the two main stages for selling stolen antiquities, a phony paper chain of ownership was created.
    What made this type of illicit trade so easy for criminals was having no recorded history of the piece. Since it wasn’t stolen from a place that had a record of it, like a museum or art gallery, prior to being dug up by the tomb robber, no one had seen the piece since its burial a couple thousand years ago.
    Italy, of course, was one of those countries with so much “ancient history” that even excavations for new construction often uncovered ancient sites. Many other Mediterranean regions rich in undiscovered sites—especially Greece, Turkey, Egypt, and Israel and the Middle East in general—also fell victim to people who became aware of a potential site in their backyard or around the corner and sneaked out at night with a shovel. These tomb robbers inadvertently end up destroying priceless pieces as they probe with metal bars and dig with picks and shovels, cheating the entire nation out of their cultural heritage.
    Some of these countries have thought of offering substantial rewards for discovering such sites but don’t because it would only start a gold rush stampede.
    In the case of the controversy between the antiquities buyers and the Italian authorities, the claim was made that several Italians had come across the antiquity site and surreptitiously dug up the