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She should have put the boot on before pumping gas, but she’d been in a hurry, and now she had regrets. Diana leaned against the side of the car, holding her nearly bare foot off the cold pavement as she filled the tank. At least this station had a kiosk right by the pumps so she’d been able to slip two twenties to the attendant to start the pump without having to cross a parking lot.
It shut off automatically when it hit forty dollars, and again, Diana was on the road. Her foot throbbed with unaccustomed freedom and use.
Before getting back on the interstate, she passed a strip mall, spotting the Historie sign prominent on the marquee.
Without taking a moment to think, she turned into the lot and drove down the packed parking lanes looking for an open spot.
Stores were open until ten on Mondays during the holiday season. Thirty minutes before closing, the lot was packed. She found a parking spot that faced the store and turned off the engine and headlights.
Historie was doing a booming business. The items they sold were artsy and beautiful, and each one came with a story. They were perfect gifts for the impossible-to-buy-for friend. At least, that was how Historie marketed itself, and people ate it up.
From inexpensive mugs decorated with historic quotes to licensed artwork, they had a full range of gifts. Shoppers could find two-dollar stocking stuffers or drop several thousand on Signature Line replicas.
She stared at the storefront, thinking of the artifacts she’d appraised and the ones she’d looted.
When was a replica as precious as the original?
She thought of Chris’s Lego fire engine ornament, more precious than the glass one it replaced, but this was different.
She’d done a lot of research on replicas before going to Jordan, and Bibi’s booth in the Friday market had particularly interested her because she had some of the highest quality work Diana had seen for the basic tourist market.
For a replica to be of value, it had to be made in the same manner as the original—handmade by artisans—of the same material, and at a one-to-one scale.
A true replica didn’t need to be indistinguishable from the original—there would be different coloration in the natural base material, among other things—but it should convey the spirit of the original to the degree of being nearly identical in form and artistry.
The Gardners employed some of the best in the business, and even their inexpensive, mass-produced replicas were quality.
Once a year, the family held a fundraiser in their mansion in Newport News, Virginia, in the gallery where all the Signature Line originals were displayed in a museum-like setting. Soon, that gallery would be moving to the new flagship store and museum just across town.
As far as she knew, the venue for the fundraiser would move to the museum as well. The money raised from the event went to children who’d been displaced in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. Boys like Jamal and Bassam and their unnamed sister.
Diana had attended last year’s gala, as it had been held in the spring, several weeks before she’d left for Jordan. She’d sipped wine and chatted with collectors and politicians and even a few famous actors who frequently were cast in historic epics. She wasn’t sure if they were looking for an endorsement deal or just loved the artistry and art, and really, it didn’t matter. The cause was one she believed in, and she’d felt good at the event and even proud of the work she was about to embark on for the retail chain.
Now she stared at the store with bitterness and regret. The Signature Line was a fraud. Not the artifacts themselves—she knew better than anyone exactly how real they were—but they were tainted just the same.
Acquired with blood and murder to fund terror.
With the news that Harun was the broker who’d handled most—all?—of the Signature Line acquisitions, it was easy to assume that each and every artifact in the family’s private collection was stolen goods.
She pulled the laptop from the seat next to her and powered on the VPN/hotspot and googled the parent company, Gardner Holdings. The store, Historie, had been around for three decades, but the Signature Line of replicas hadn’t launched until 2012. After the start of the Arab Spring.
Artifacts in the line came from all over—every region of Africa was represented, as were North and South Asia, Medieval Europe, and the Holy Roman Empire. But no time or place was better represented in the collection than the Middle East, from first recorded human activity to around AD 1000.
There were no New World artifacts in the Signature Line at all. Once upon a time, she’d thought the reason for that was because New World cultures were better suited to sell themselves to a US audience, but now she realized it had been naïve of her to think a corporation would hold back from that market to make room for Indigenous people to profit from their own history.
No. It made more sense that the Gardners just didn’t have a line on New World artifacts like they did the Old World. The line they had went through Harun straight to Rafiq.
Freya probably had numbers that would show the exponential growth of the company once the Signature Line was introduced, but anecdotally, Diana knew the leap in company value had been huge.
The Signature Line was Cabbage Patch dolls or Tickle Me Elmo or even the next new gaming system, but for the very wealthy, or even the wanna-be wealthy who were eager to show off their one Signature Line piece as an example of their smart tastes and affluence.
Diana didn’t blame them. The replicas were stunning. There were a few she’d eyed over the years, including one she’d considered purchasing for Salim’s parents, a replica of an artifact from Lebanon, their home country. It was a small statue—a woman’s face with a rounded body—from the Canaanite era.
In her work, she’d experienced something few people got to do: touch something that had been made thousands—in a few cases, even millions—of years ago by intentional hands.
It was incredible to hold a rock that had been shaped into a tool by an australopithecine two or three million years ago. To know a bipedal being had created the tool and used it for their survival was almost transcendent as far as understanding where life began and where humanity was now.
It wasn’t about the artifact, it was about what one could learn from it.
