The Alliance

By Scott Klug

“Indiana Jones meets the DaVinci Code” WSJ 7/19/13
For Father Pete Farrell, it begins with a horrifying phone call. The Archbishop of St Petersburg is found hung upside down in the world-renowned Hermitage museum with his throat slit in what appears to be a ritual murder. Missing are priceless relics from an international exhibition. Left behind is a cryptic warning written in a mixture of ancient languages.
The one-time Special Forces soldier turned Jesuit Priest knows he can’t solve the crime alone. He cobbles together an unlikely alliance including a Rabbi, Buddhist Monk and Sufi mystic. But what first appears to be a simple case of stolen antiquities is so much more.
The four men of faith confront an ancient evil, and a sinister conspiracy whose tentacles stretch from Stockholm to Singapore. What they face on a sacred Tibetan mountain shrouded in legend and myth will rattle all of them to their core. At the heart of the thriller is a Green Beret turned Priest who is an expert in the black market sale of stolen artifacts. When you stare down evil, a few prayers can help, but so can a well-aimed sniper rifle.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott Klug
• Release date: Nov 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311118349

Scott Klug

Scott Klug is a former United States Congressman, an Emmy award winning journalist, and a relentless world traveler. A long time student of comparative religion and archaeology. "Over the last 20 years I've visited a number of sites in this book and I knew somewhere in between the dark alleys of Stockholm and an obscure Buddhist temple in Sri Lanka there was a good story lurking. I've always contended the occult traditions of major faiths have more in common than most people think. And just maybe there is an alliance of Holy Men of different faiths willing to battle together to put a stop to evil. I never really wanted to be a politician. I always wanted to be an archaeologist when I grew up. So welcome to my first novel. Think The Da Vinci Code meets "Indiana Jones." Scott Klug is the Managing Director of Public Affairs at the national law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP. He also co-chairs the firm's Client Service Team. For eight years, Klug represented Madison, Wisconsin in the U.S. Congress, where he developed an expertise in health care, insurance, financial services, telecommunications and energy policy. Before his career in politics, Klug was an Emmy Award winning reporter for television stations in Washington, D.C., Seattle and his native Wisconsin. Before he joined Foley he founded a regional magazine and book publishing company which he sold in 2007. He holds an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Wisconsin, a Master's in journalism from Northwestern and a B.A. from Lawrence University. A seasoned world traveler, Mr. Klug has led training programs on journalism and political campaigns for the U.S. State Department in Venezuela, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates; for the International Republican Institute in Indonesia and Guatemala and for Internews in Uzbekistan. During his tenure in Congress, he led delegations to the U.K., New Zealand, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. He also participated in other trips to Algeria, Uganda, South Africa and Zimbabwe, Oman, Jordan, Egypt, Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan Show Less

Book preview

Chapter 1

Father Pete Farrell slipped on a pair of beat-up Nikes and bent to touch his toes. Make that tried to touch his toes. He shook his head to try wake up. Five thirty was way too early, even if he had been doing the same routine for fifteen years. The priest had already said his morning spiritual exercises, downed a bowl of granola with blueberries, and walked the three blocks to the gym. It was amazing how quiet a city of a million people could be right after sunrise. The first shift workers at Miller Beer and Harley Davidson were just getting ready to head to work. Some of his peers marveled how he could be so happy in a beer-and-shot kind of town. His friends knew him as a scholar with an international reputation, who was never happier than when he had a passport in hand and a backpack on his shoulder. They forgot that he’d grown up in Baltimore, near the once-tough, now-trendy bars of Fells Point. Like Milwaukee, his hometown wore its blue-collar roots proudly; never polished, but always friendly.

He sucked in a deep breath and hit the long, looping indoor track at Marquette University. He was feeling every bit as old as his fifty years. His knees reminded him of the tough mountain climbs of the Pacific Northwest in Special Forces training. His left ankle ached from two decades of basketball games. His right shoulder still hurt from a violent throw in a Chinese martial arts school nearly five years ago. Some mornings were just that way.

He was a creature of habit. The army had molded him that way. And the Jesuits added another level of discipline on top. These early-morning, two-mile runs, and the sit-ups that followed, helped him gear up for the classes ahead. Today started off with a small graduate seminar on the history of relics in the church. Hours later it was a large auditorium packed with freshmen and a survey course on comparative religion. Finals would just be a few weeks away.

Outside, spring had finally arrived in Wisconsin. A warm breeze was blowing off of Lake Michigan. Three days from now he would be in California, savoring even warmer winds off the Pacific coastline. He was going to be in San Diego for a weekend seminar on the illegal trade of cultural artifacts. If he was lucky he could swap his gym runs one morning and hit the beaches of Corona del Mar with its beautiful white sand, towering cliffs, rock formations lining the shore, and spectacular homes on the bluffs above. Hard to tell if he could make it work, given Southern California traffic. Anyway, he could hope.

He always looked forward to these conferences. Great stories over a glass of wine at a table packed with old friends—a blend of detectives, clerics, museum curators, and antique dealers—their conversation thick with accents from around the world, some from the archeological homelands of Cambodia, Peru, Iran, and Turkey. And some from places where you could find buyers with expensive and exquisite tastes: Moscow, New York, Paris, Hong Kong, and Dubai.

Of course, the buyers wouldn’t exist without the crooks and thieves who supplied them. They lived pretty much anywhere. Some were second-story burglars who delicately pilfered treasures from the homes of the rich and famous. Others were a whirlwind of destruction, using axes and shovels to flatten three thousand old tombs looking for a fistful of coins. Some were peasants trying to scrape out a living, but the really successful dealers in illegal treasures were sleazy high rollers, selling mankind’s treasure to collectors as soulless as they are.

The trip to California wouldn’t be long; he had to be back for finals. And then it would be the start of summer basketball camps. His chance to draw up a few X’s and O’s, and see if he could still hit from beyond the arc. It was less a jump shot these days than a bad set shot. He remembered the days when he could dunk a basketball. But it was hard to shoot a jump shot these days, when he could barely make it over a deck of cards. Now his game looked more like a scratchy black-and-white film of Bob Cousy or George Mikan or some other fossil. Getting old was not fun. He picked up the pace, trying to outrun what he knew he could never beat.

* * *

Halfway around the world, hints of summer were arriving in northern Russia. In St. Petersburg, the flowers were beginning to bud and the birch trees were finally cloaked in bright leaves. Archbishop Alexander had been looking forward to this night for months. Tomorrow his beloved Hermitage Museum was going to open an exhibit of religious art and relics from around the world. It had taken nearly a year to negotiate a collection of more than fifty pieces, treasures rarely seen outside

His car and driver were waiting for him outside Metropolitan’s House, the official residence of the leader of St. Petersburg’s Russian Orthodox community. Across the street was the spectacular St.Trinity Cathedral, part of the historic Alexander Nevsky Monastery established by Peter the Great himself in 1797. The bustling monastery had enjoyed a great revitalization with the collapse of communism. The archbishop took great pride in his role in topping the godless state. Today young men from all over Russia came to reclaim the country’s spiritual heritage. As the car moved down the street it passed Tikhvin Cemetery where many of the country’s greats lay buried including the writer Fyodor Dostoevsky. His epitaph is also the epigraph of his final novel, The Brothers Karamazov. Verily, Verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it dies, it bringeth forth much fruit. When he felt overwhelmed, the archbishop could always find a moment of peace sitting on a stone bench near the tombstone of his favorite writer.

The site of the exhibit was the Winter Palace, once the home of the czars, which dazzled Europe when it was built more than two hundred and fifty years ago. It was once the official residence of members of the Romanov dynasty, including Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia. He remembered one passage about the construction of the city that had stuck with him since he first read it as a child. When one knows that the localities in this city were an impassable marsh less than fifty years ago, one mid-eighteenth-century traveler wrote about St. Petersburg, on first seeing it, one might well believe that it was made by magic.

A generation after the death of Peter the Great, the Winter Palace became the jewel of the new Russian capital with its broad streets and gilded bell towers painted tan with a slight hint of yellow.

Even though he had grown up here there were times when the city still dazzled him. Known as the northern Venice, St. Petersburg is a collection of forty-two islands connected by more than four hundred bridges. Built by Italian architects, its baroque and neoclassical buildings bore little resemblance to the great capital—Moscow—to the south, with its red brick and onion domes. Even today the bold colors of its landmarks stood in stark contrast to the flat gray skies of the spring twilight and the dark river Neva.

The Hermitage’s art collection had begun somewhat modestly. Catherine the Great bought two hundred and twenty-five paintings by Western European masters in 1764. Five years later her collection had grown by tenfold. She named the expanding palace that housed her paintings the Hermitage, her place of solitude. Today she would never recognize it. The lines are endless; the crush of tourists is constant. Although the Winter Palace has more than a thousand rooms, it can’t begin to display the three million works of art in its vaults. The museum’s vast collection dwarfs the Louvre.

Father Vakunin interrupted the archbishop’s thoughts as the midnight-blue Mercedes sped through the streets of Russia’s second-largest city. What are you most interested in seeing, Your Eminence? asked the young assistant.

The archbishop stared out the window for a moment, mulling his choices, and then turned to his colleague. I think the Shroud of Turin. The shroud that Catholics claim was the burial cloth of our Lord, he replied. It rarely leaves Italy. In fact, it was nearly destroyed in a fire hundreds of years ago, and ever since then it has been held under very tight security.

To get the treasure to Russia the archbishop had had to contact the Holy Father himself to call in a favor. He had laughed when the Holy Father had joked that the price would be a merger of the two churches. Actually, the Catholic Church had been very generous with its support of the project, sending another relic that rarely traveled outside of Spain, a similar burial cloth, the Sudarium of Oviedo, which, according to tradition, was used to wipe the face of Jesus after the crucifixion. Like the shroud, it too came from the Holy Land, but its history could be traced to the seventh century, six hundred years earlier than the shroud.

How about you, Father? the archbishop asked.

The younger priest stared down at his hands, deep in thought, not sure he could single out one item. Perhaps the skull of John the Baptist. I mean, how could anyone think they could really save a piece of his head from two thousand years ago, he said with a bemused look.

This relic was coming from the Muslim world, Istanbul and its famous Topkapi museum, where generations of sultans had proudly held the relic in the Ottoman Empire’s collection. The relic’s origins were a little murky, but the lore said it had been seized from knights heading back to Europe from the Crusades. It was probably the head of some poor knight killed in a battle somewhere in Syria or Lebanon, he thought to himself.

How many are real, Your Eminence?

I don’t think it really matters, Andrei. Maybe some of these are real, a hint of God’s presence on earth. Maybe they’re all charades. Personally, I think there is a hint of holiness in all of them, if for no other reason than the relics calls us all closer to God.

The car slid up to the curb, and the two priests were met by Exhibits Director Artur Yakunin and Colonel Ilia Akopov, who was in charge of security. The two men bowed deeply and, in a sign of respect, kissed the patriarch’s ring.

Artur, it is good to see you. You too, Colonel. We’re thrilled that you would open this exhibit to us for a private viewing, he said, putting his arm around the director. This exhibit is a great tribute to you, Artur. Years of work! You should be proud. This is an exhibit that will get the world’s attention.

Two soldiers swung open the doors for the visitors. A short elevator ride took them to the special exhibit display on the third floor.

Everything is here? No last-minute problems, Artur? asked the archbishop.

Not today, the curator answered, but some of the pieces from China and Iraq arrived just yesterday. Both governments demanded extra security. The black market for these kinds of antiquities has never been this hot. After all, if you can’t make money in the stock market or real estate, a three-thousand-year-old Babylonian tablet is a pretty good hedge against bad economic times. As you can see, he said, gesturing at the workmen ahead, those delays meant some extra work, but everything should be set for tomorrow, I hope.

A workman folding up a ladder and a painter hammering a can closed supplied evidence of the rush. It was clear that everyone had been pushed to the edge to get everything done by tomorrow morning, when the Russian and French presidents would be here to officially open the exhibit.

We will leave you to your thoughts, Your Eminence. We are going to finally grab something to eat. It’s been a few crazy days. We will return in an hour. Please call me on the phone if you have any questions, he said.

The archbishop and the priest stepped into the exhibit hall as the door swung closed behind them.

Straight ahead was a sliver of the true Cross. The tiny piece of wood was set in the St. Wenceslas Crown of Bohemia, featuring a carved set of dazzling sapphires. The archbishop knew hundreds of churches around the world claimed to hold a fragment of the Cross. Glued together, they would form a forest or two, not one simple wooden cross beam. In this display a tiny piece of wood had consecrated the rule of a king. God’s hand at work or a clever piece of propaganda constructed to keep a royal family on its throne? The priests glanced at one another, sharing an excited smile, and walked closer. Would an hour be nearly enough? The archbishop wondered. The door locked behind them.

* * *

On the other side of the Neva from the Hermitage, a set of eyes peered from Vasilevsky Island, carefully watching as the exhibits director and colonel walked down the street to a nearby block of restaurants. A small Zodiac hovered in the river, waiting for the signal to land. When they were out of sight, the spotter whispered a quiet go into his Bluetooth mouthpiece.

* * *

Several miles away, in the elegant Nevsky Prospekt neighborhood, a green computer screen created an eerie glow in a darkened penthouse apartment. This elegant avenue, named after medieval Russian warrior prince Alexander Nevsky, was packed with nightlife. With the window open, he could hear the nouveau riche at play. A loud forced laugh from a leggy blonde down below, her date easily three times her age. She had the looks; he had the money. It was the nature of the neighborhood. He shrugged off the distraction and moved like a concert pianist on the keyboards. One line of computer code unlocked the back doors of the Hermitage. Another shut down the security alarms. Now there was nothing to do but wait. The young man was a top computer hacker who had broken into Wall Street banks and the Chinese Air Force just for the fun of it. This was fun too, he thought, cracking open a Coke, but this was worth millions, probably many millions.

* * *

Within moments of arriving at the back of the Hermitage, the team was inside the back door. Five men dressed in black. Four armed with guns, earpieces, and large duffel bags. The fifth appeared to be some kind of a monk, tall and lanky with a black beard and wildly piercing eyes. Inside, one of the commandos whispered. Back at the computer, a finger pushed the enter key for the final time, and a third command was sent to the Hermitage’s server. The lights went out. They had forty-five minutes at best.

Chapter 2

Lev Dukor lived a double life. Actually maybe three lives. A detective by day. An enthusiastic father by night. And in the moments in between a respected Rabbi.

In the upstairs bedroom of his modest house, He slipped off his sports jacket and tie, and all but threw them on a nearby hanger. Next he removed his gun from the shoulder holster and carefully placed it on his nightstand. He then took the handcuffs out of his back pocket and slipped one of them into place between the trigger and the guard insuring the gun could not be accidentally discharged by a curious or playful child. With a house full of kids he never wanted to take any chances. He placed the revolver high up on the top of his Chester drawers. Before slipping on a well-worn cardigan he made a stop on the bathroom where he washed his hands and his thick beard.

The smell of supper and the giggles of kids called to him from below. He lumbered down the broad oak staircase, holding on to the railing as he descended. Two-thirds of the way down he found evidence of a crime. Jelly. One of the kids must have snuck a sandwich upstairs against their mother’s strict orders. He spit on his sleeve and wiped it away. A co-conspirator in the crime.

For Lev Dukor, the dinner hour was a precious thing. All day he was busy with police work, and he served as a respected rabbi in his spare time. Dinner was the time he caught up with his wife and five children.

As he sat down at the table, his fifteen-year-old daughter, Tanya, set down a bowl of potatoes and gave him a hug. He gave his thirteen-year-old son a pat on the back as he settled in next to his dad. The eight-year-old twins poured everyone tall glasses of lemonade and placed them around the table. They took turns planting wet kisses on each of his cheeks. At least where they thought his cheeks should be behind his thick black beard. Seth, now four, quietly closed his book and waited for his mom to place the roasted chicken on the table. When she settled in, the Dukor family bowed their heads in a quiet prayer.

Supper meant two rules in the household, rules that were always strictly enforced. No one could leave the table until everyone was finished, and no one could answer the phone if anyone was still eating. Even texting by his two teenagers was strictly forbidden. The dinner table protocol wasn’t his idea, but his wife’s, which she first promulgated when they had only one toddler. When your husband is not only a rabbi but also the head of homicide for the St. Petersburg Police Department, it is next to impossible to get his attention. If it wasn’t a crisis at the office, there was a crisis with someone in the community who wanted to get married or didn’t want to get married, someone who wanted to move to Israel or wanted to move back.

Everyone who knew the family knew the rule. His colleagues at the department knew it. His children’s friends knew it. Never call at six! My papa is strict, they were warned.

When the phone rang for a third time in a fifteen-minute span, he knew something was not right. His oldest daughter squirmed, hoping it was not the new boy at school calling her. She had just met him and she couldn’t remember if she’d told him about the family code. His thirteen-year-old son worried it was his new hockey coach. Whoever it was, he was in trouble. For the first time they could remember, the rabbi broke the rules. He stood up from the table and, with an audible sigh, picked up the receiver. When he sat down, even four-year-old Seth knew something was wrong. Because Lev didn’t just sit down. Pale and trembling, he collapsed into it.

Fifteen minutes later, his assistant detective, Ben Yoffe, pulled up outside the tired apartment complex. Like Detective Dukor, he was Jewish, and also like his mentor, he was studying to be a rabbi. But unlike Lev, he hoped to one day to quit the police force and have his own congregation with a proper synagogue. The fact that the two of them had been pushed together as partners was a running joke within the department. Some of the jibes were good-natured. Some were not. Anti-Semitism still simmered below the surface in northern Russia.

Lev came waddling down the steps to the curb. He was a big, muscular man. Part of it was genetics and part of it was decades of competitive weightlifting. Some of the muscles had given way to a middle-aged spread. He was clearly not happy that his evening had been disturbed but also visibly shaken by what he had been told.

Seth came sprinting down the stairs, overtaking them and jumping into a pair of waiting arms. He gave his adopted uncle a crushing hug around his neck. Uncle Ben, read me a story when you come back later. Please? he pleaded.

If it’s early enough. Now go help your mama. Ben lowered the young boy to the ground and playfully slapped him on his butt. A burst of energy sent the youngster bounding up the stairs and back into the house. He paused at the door, turning around and yelling back, Please, Uncle Ben? I will wait up for you! he shouted.

If it’s not too late, I promise, the young detective hollered back.

The rabbi had plopped into the passenger seat of the patrol car. Ben slid in and started the engine.

Do we know how many people are dead?

Four, we believe, Ben answered. The Russian Orthodox archbishop and his assistant. The museum director and one of the guards. We think they murdered the priests immediately. It’s possible that the museum director wandered in after dinner and was killed later. The guard was killed near the back door where the thieves escaped in a boat across the river.

Why are we assigned to the case? Lev asked. Two Jews sent to investigate the death of the city’s most powerful Orthodox leader. I don’t like this. He turned to look out the window, his right hand stroking his beard. He grew quiet and reached over to turn off the radio.

There’s a reason they picked you, Rabbi, Ben explained. You’ve investigated other stolen art cases in the past, and this was no second-story burglary. This was a sophisticated ring that targeted some of the world’s most unique religious treasures. Christian, Buddhist, Muslim, Jewish. And the priests weren’t just killed. They were executed. They are hanging upside down with their throats slashed. And the thieves left behind some kind of message. They wrote it on the walls of the exhibition.

God help us. Is there anything else?

I’m sorry, but there is. Someone thought one of the thieves had a tattoo on his hand—a black bat against a light-blue background.

Spetsnaz? he exclaimed as the lights of the Hermitage appeared around the corner. He wondered to himself what the Russian Special Forces had to do with stolen art.

* * *

The third floor was sealed off with yellow evidence tape. A half-dozen police officers stood guard with machine guns drawn. Inside the chief of police and the mayor were huddled with a press attaché trying to figure out what they could say to reporters to keep the story off the front page of newspapers around the world.

The chief of police broke off his discussion to grab his old friend’s hand.

Sorry to call you at dinnertime, Medved, he said.

Since they’d been in the academy together, the chief had called him Medved, which means bear. Actually, in private he called him Yevrey Medved, or Jew bear, a reference to his hulking size and thick dark hair and beard. Lev never saw it as an insult but a nickname bestowed by a dear friend. In fact, much of the department called him Bear. The anti-Semites had no idea of the full nickname. The joke, Lev thought, was on them.

Look, Medved, I know the rule about dinner, but I needed you here, the chief continued. This is not simple crime where a thief steals an icon out of a small-town church. Multiple homicides, Special Forces, these strange writings on the wall. You’re the only one who can make any sense of this. You’re a student of world religions and stolen artifacts. No else knows where to start.

In the far corner of the room, Lev could see the body of the archbishop. He recognized him from his constant presence in the news. The priest had earned a national reputation as a man of tolerance and peace. Some hardliners didn’t like him. He pushed democracy and tolerance in an era where many longed for the old days of rule by an iron fist. He could understand the intense dislike for the small, gentle man, but why would anyone kill him like this, hung upside down from his ankles, gutted? Someone had sketched a symbol of sorts below him, written in red paint. Or, God forbid, the archbishop’s blood. He was a hardened, twenty-year-veteran cop, but the thought of what appeared to be a gruesome ritual slaying gave him the shivers.

On the four walls were four sentences written in different languages. And even more bizarrely, written in different colors. One was Russian. But the others were harder. One might be Arabic. Another looked something like Tibetan? And the fourth might be Sanskrit or some other ancient language.

How many objects were stolen? he asked a museum employee who was holding a clipboard with a list of the objects in the exhibition.

I’m not sure, Detective, he responded. Maybe ten out of fifty? And they left some of the more famous objects—the ones you would think would be most valuable—like the Shroud of Turin. The ones they took are much more obscure.

Where do we start, Lev? asked his assistant.

We may need some help. I know some friends I can call. They know more than I do about religious history and ancient languages. We have sort of an international alliance. We’ve worked together in the past on some other art rings.

Lev knew where to find the priest. That would be easy, in the States at a university. Thang would be harder. Last he heard Thang was at a remote monastery in Thailand? Cambodia? He knew how hard Thang was to find when he wouldn’t answer his phone. How would he find a guy in a place that probably had never even had a phone?

He looked around the horrific scene. This is not just a crime, he thought. This is a thing of evil.

* * *

Father Farrell had learned long ago that moderation in everything was a key principle of his beliefs. So was moderation in moderation. How else could he explain why the disciplined martial artist was now perched over a greasy bowl at Real Chili in downtown Milwaukee? Tonight Chili Five Ways was on his menu. Chili, spaghetti noodles, beans, onions, cheese, and oyster crackers mixed together. Extra onions, in fact.

The chili wasn’t really that hot these days. They had toned it down. When he was first studying for the priesthood here they used to call the hottest variation Green Bay. If you could eat one bowl, the second one was free. Even with his legendary cast-iron stomach he’d never made it through a whole one.

He reached for the Tabasco sauce and gave it a half-dozen shakes. He perched over the countertop and dug in. He was starving. His only food since breakfast had been a single container of yogurt. For lunch.

His dinner companion, Father Tom Driscoll, just shook his head in bewilderment. How a health nut like you can eat this stuff is beyond me, he said. I’ll stick to the grilled cheese. Not sure it’s healthy but at least I won’t taste it twenty times tonight.

Look, Tom, said Farrell. I love the people in the Midwest but I hate the food—mashed potatoes, gravy, and white bread. In the residence hall tonight, trust me, it will be pork roast, corn, and biscuits. Institutional starch.

When Father Farrell had studied in London, the English food had nearly done him in; the brussel sprouts cooked so long they turned from green to yellow. His refuge became Pakistani and Indian delis, where he developed a fondness for the hottest thing on the menu: chicken vindaloo, a sharply spicy Indian chicken dish that’s a wicked blend of curry, hot peppers, and tomato sauce.

Hey, did you see CNN tonight? asked Father Tom. Big theft of relics and other artwork somewhere in Russia.

Not in St. Petersburg, I hope. There’s a huge international exhibit with stuff like the Shroud of Turin on display. That would be devastating.

I think it was St. Petersburg. And if I heard right, the Orthodox bishop died of a heart attack during the robbery, his friend responded. Didn’t you do some art recovery work with Interpol or the FBI? Is this kind of art trafficking really big business?

A very lucrative business, Tom. There is a huge black market for ancient art, but like anything else it has its niche. Some folks want coins. Others want scrolls. Some nut jobs want relics and religious artwork.

Father Farrell had written his thesis on the explosive growth of illegal trafficking in ancient art. In the summer of 2008, three ancient icons, including one containing relics of St. Serguis Moscow’s patron saint, were stolen from St. Trinity, a church in the Moscow suburbs. The Russians were furious. This was a little like someone stealing George Washington’s teeth. A St. Petersburg detective got a tip that the icons were headed to a collector in New York City, so Father Farrell got a call for help. One of his friends in the business set up a sting. The arrests and publicity that followed landed the priest two things: a good friend in Russia and an international reputation.

So who are the likely thieves in the St. Petersburg case? asked Father Driscoll in between bites of his grilled cheese.

Could be anybody. Professionals, collectors, a religious zealot. And then there are those who are just fans of ancient art. There was a theft years ago in Cyprus where somebody stole a floor with a Roman mosaic. A whole frigging floor.

It was a weird business, full of eccentric collectors who only wanted specific kinds of objects. Some only wanted certain countries. At Heathrow a few years ago, cops had seized fifteen hundred coins from Afghanistan, all from the era of Alexander the Great. Iraq in particular was a disaster. Right after the Iraq war broke out there was a regular Indiana Jones express moving items out of the country through Syria. To this day the curators in Baghdad call a press conference every time they recover a headless statue from some foreign collector, but there are still fifteen thousand pieces missing from the national museum itself, most from ancient Babylonia, Sumer, and Assyria. Some folks will tell you that a hundred and fifty thousand cuneiform tablets go missing from Iraq each year. A few years ago thieves stole a shipment of ancient Hindu relics during transshipment at the airport, right out of a script from Goodfellas.

From time to time certain places in the world get hot. Today it’s Iraq, but about ten years ago it was Indian art. Much of it was stolen from temples and sold to private dealers around Asia. I helped bust that one too, he continued. Let me get another bowl of chili and I’ll tell you some more about it.

He gestured to the waitress but was interrupted when his phone rang. His ring tone was the theme from The Man from U.N.C.L.E. A middle-aged guy in the next booth over looked up from his Milwaukee Journal Sentinel sports page, laughed under his breath, and gave him a thumbs-up.

Farrell excused himself and stepped out of the restaurant.

He stared hard at the phone number and realized it was from overseas.

Father Farrell here.

Pete, it’s Lev. Have you seen CNN in the last hour?

No, I haven’t, but a buddy just asked me about it.

I need your help. There has been a major theft of artifacts from the Hermitage, said his friend in St. Petersburg.

From the exhibit! Aw, shit. Sorry about that. Priests shouldn’t be swearing in front of rabbis. Bad for interfaith dialogue. That’s what I was afraid of. If I heard right, the archbishop was touring the building at the time and died from a heart attack?

Not quite, said the rabbi. "The archbishop of St. Petersburg was murdered in what looks