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The clock on the dashboard indicated they were nearing the afternoon rush hour. They should get moving, but he had more questions. “These photos, they’d make it impossible for someone to buy these artifacts and put them on public display, right?”
“Yes. These photos would undermine any fake provenance. A museum or individual who displayed them would be admitting they’d purchased the artifacts from terrorists, which isn’t a good look for most of the world.”
“Didn’t that craft store chain—Hobby Lobby—buy a bunch of stolen artifacts for their Bible museum? Were they ever punished?”
“Thousands of the artifacts Hobby Lobby acquired were originally from Iraq—either looted directly from sites or items looted from the Iraq Museum in 2003. There’ve been multiple rounds of repatriation and fines, including the return of five thousand five hundred artifacts in 2017 along with a three million dollar fine. In the most recent round of repatriation, Iraq reclaimed more than seventeen thousand artifacts that had been previously held by the Museum of the Bible. Thousands more artifacts have been returned to Egypt. It’s sickening that no Americans went to jail for what they did. To the best of my knowledge, the only arrests made were of artifact brokers in Israel. The charge was tax evasion.”
“No one from the museum was arrested?”
“No one. Their own experts warned them as early as 2010 that the types of artifacts they sought to acquire had a high probability of being looted, but they made the purchases anyway, likely knowing exactly what they were buying.”
“Likely being the keyword.”
“Exactly. Without proof, they were only guilty of being on the receiving end of the smuggling, which meant fines and forfeiture, but no arrests.” She paused, then added, “The FBI takes a different view of artifacts and art than they do theft of other types. The goal is always preservation and recovery of the object first and foremost. Punishment in the form of prosecution is secondary. Really, it’s probably tertiary. Collecting fines or taxes being secondary. And the DOJ did that in this case. I’m sure arrests were never on the table.”
“You think there’s any connection between your dig and the Bible museum?”
She shook her head. “I’m sure the feds have the museum acquisitions department under a microscope at this point. My guess is these artifacts are bound for a private collection, never to be seen again.”
“But if they do show up, you’ve got proof now that will send the buyer to jail.”
“The seller to jail if they can be identified. The buyer will play dumb, get a slap on the wrist, and pay a fine. Meanwhile, Fahd died to protect artifacts like these. It’s no wonder the archaeological community hates me. I think I’d hate me too.”
“You’ve got Morgan and my friend’s wife, Audrey.”
She let out a sad laugh. “Two archaeologists on Team Diana. Go me.”
He took her hand and brought it to his lips. “You’ve got me.”
“I’m afraid of the situation I’ve put you in.”
“Sweetheart, I’m a SEAL. My job is all about being put in dire situations.”
She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. I’d take a HALO jump over this any day.”
“Have you ever HALOed?”
“No, but it’s got to be better than this.”
He thought about it for a moment, remembering the jump into the storm last winter and being pelted with balls of ice, then landing in a lake that was only a few degrees above freezing. “Compared to what you’re facing? Yeah. Piece of cake.”
Back on the road, Diana returned her focus to the photos on the screen. “Do you think Freya will be able to track the IP address the photos were sent from?”
“If she can’t, maybe Raptor can.”
“You’re so certain Raptor is going to help us?”
“Call me an optimist.”
She choked on a laugh. “You don’t strike me as the optimistic type.”
“I’m crushed.”
She glanced at the small screen. She had twenty-two photos. Low res, but enough detail to be identifiable. She felt sick at seeing them as much as relieved. It made it all the more real somehow, those weeks in the desert. “I’d give anything to know what’s happened to the site.”
“Is it being monitored by the Jordanian government now?”
She nodded. “In theory, anyway. I gave them the coordinates and told them everything I could about where we dug and what we found. The site is similar to—but much smaller than—the Nabataean city of Hegra.” She shook her head, realizing that would mean nothing to Chris. Strange to realize the boundaries of the bubble she’d lived in since grad school, where everyone knew archaeological sites in the Middle East by name and not just the big ones like Petra and Palmyra. The little guys were important too.
