Lethal Legacy

NINETEEN

“If you’re looking for the Holy Grail of rare maps,” the petite librarian said to us, grinning as she gazed at the woodcut that Mike had placed on the table in front of her, “this is as good as it gets.”

Bea Dutton was in charge of the map division of the library, home to more than half a million of them and more than twenty thousand atlases and books about cartography. Jill had called her to come in to the office early, moments after Mike made his find, and she appeared within the hour.

“Did you know this map was missing?” Mike asked.

“What do you mean?” Bea said. Her white cotton gloves-a tool of her trade-looked more civilized than Mike’s plastic ones. She was short and slight, and leaned her elbows on the long trestle table to get a good look at her subject.

“I’m sure you must know exactly when something as precious as this disappeared from your collection.”

“You’ve made a bad assumption, Detective. We’ve never had a map like this under our roof. I can’t even imagine what this portion of it was doing here. I’ve been waiting a professional lifetime to see if another one of these treasures came to market. The only known original in the world is in the Library of Congress. Didn’t Jill tell you?”

“This is your bailiwick, Bea,” Jill said. “I’ve seen it on your wish list but really didn’t know whether or not we owned any of the individual panels.”

“Let me explain what you’ve found here,” Bea said, inviting Mercer, Mike, and me to sit around the table. We were on the first floor of the library, in an elegant room with dark wood paneling, three long tables, and copies of antiquarian maps of all varieties mounted in gilded frames along its walls. Only the coat of arms of the City of New York on each pedestal of the tables betrayed that we weren’t being entertained in a fancy British manor home. “That is, if I can take my eyes off it. You’re looking at one of the pieces of what many people call America ’s birth certificate.”

Mercer looked closely at the ancient drawing. “How so?”

“This panel is part of a map that was the very first document in the world on which the word ‘ America ’ appears as the name for a body of land in the Western Hemisphere.”

Mike bent forward to look for the notation.

“Not on this particular fragment, Mike. Remember, there are twelve pieces of this beauty, each the same size as this. Once joined together, the map is four feet tall by eight feet wide. It’s quite an unusual masterpiece.”

“Who created it?” I asked. “What made it so special?”

“The primary author was Martin Waldseemüller, a German cleric and cartographer who spent his life in Saint-Dié, France, part of a small intellectual circle there. Until this was published in 1507, the European body of knowledge about the world’s geography was entirely based on the second-century work of Ptolemy. This map,” Bea said, tapping her gloved finger on the table, “radically changed the worldview.”

“In what way?” Mike asked.

“Think of it, Detective. The Spanish and Portuguese kept returning to Europe at the end of the fifteenth century with dramatic news of explorations down the African coast and across the Atlantic, where no Europeans had ever been before. To us, this map looks incredibly accurate, but to his contemporaries, Martin’s map ignited a great deal of debate. It presented a revolutionary vision of the world.”

“Why?”

“This was the first document ever created that depicted a Western Hemisphere, standing alone between two oceans, the first to represent the Pacific as a separate body of water, and the first to give the new world its own name: ‘America.’ In those times, they were completely radical ideas.”

Mercer’s huge frame was bent over the table as he examined the fine print in the woodcut. “Used to be, according to Ptolemy, the Atlantic stretched from Europe and Asia right over to Japan, Cathay, and India, with a little bit of terra incognita along the way.”

“Exactly,” Bea said.

“What about Columbus?” Mike asked. “He was over here before Vespucci. How come he didn’t get the whole caboodle named for Christoforo instead of Amerigo?”

“Well, that’s another reason this map was so controversial. Both men made several voyages across the Atlantic. Vespucci enjoyed more popularity throughout Europe because he wrote many publications that were read widely by intellectuals and explorers-he was a best seller in his day-and he actually went farther down the coastline of South America, convinced there was another ocean, entirely separate, on the western side of that landmass,” Bea said. “ Columbus, on the other hand, died in disgrace. Do you remember your history?”

“Yeah, I guess he did the first Terra Nova perp walk, didn’t he?” Mike said. “He was the governor of Hispaniola, and the king had him arrested for mismanagement.”

“Right. He also maintained, till his dying day, that he had reached Asia on one of his voyages. It was Vespucci who realized that both he and Columbus had come upon another continent-not Asia, not the Indies -that most Europeans didn’t know existed. So he got the credit,” Bea said. “It’s kind of remarkable when you think that this single obscure mapmaker-as great as he was-chose the name for the entire Western Hemisphere.”

“And that he named it for a man who was still alive at the time, Amerigo Vespucci. No waiting for the verdict of history or going the traditional route of naming it for a mythological figure,” Mercer said, straightening up.

“Then he feminized it,” Bea said. “Don’t forget that, Alex. Asia and Europa got their names from mythical women-so that tradition of the feminine ending of a continent remained intact.”

“But it’s this little group of clerics and geographers who were so taken by Vespucci’s writings that they placed his name on this map?” I asked.

“No longer Terra Incognita or Terra Nova, as the new world was called by the ancients. Martin and his team just went ahead and christened these lands America -their very own idea,” Bea said, “and as soon as this work was published, cartographers everywhere adopted that name for the Western Hemisphere.”

“How many of these maps were printed at the time?” Mercer asked.

“A very sizable run for those days, actually. One thousand copies.”

“What became of them all, do you think?”

Bea smoothed her curly red hair with the back of her glove. “Like many objects of intellectual interest in the sixteenth century, part of the plan was to distribute them as widely as possible across Europe, to spread the new knowledge that the explorers were acquiring with each trip they made. That broad dissemination accounts for the loss of many things, and makes the ones that made it through time, warfare, pillaging, and the usual historical turmoil so very rare.”

“And its size?” I asked.

“Another problem indeed. The larger an old map, the rarer it has usually become. The huge size and very inconvenience of form of this one certainly quickened its destruction. It was so much greater than many of the charts of the day, folded once-never bound-inside an elephant folio. So the mere difficulty of keeping twelve large panels like this one in pristine condition, and not allowing the dozen sections of it to be separated, was an enormous obstacle to its survival.”

“What’s an elephant folio?” Mike asked.

“It’s the term for a very large book, Detective. Usually greater than two feet tall. That Audubon in which you found the map is actually a double elephant folio-easy to conceal your map in because it’s so large. Let me show you something.”

Bea got up from the table and disappeared behind the reference desk, returning minutes later with a volume of elephant-folio size.

“This one is a book of reproductions of famous maps,” she said, placing it beside the piece that Mike found inside the Audubon. “It will give you an idea of how startling the real thing is when you see all the panels joined together, as originally planned.”

She unfolded the enormous pages and spread them before us. The dozen individual engravings came together as a gigantic rectangular map of the world, separated by the seams of the individual pieces. The portion that Mike had discovered in the library’s attic, stashed under a water tank, was one from the top panel, in the third of four columns.

“It’s not only beautifully drawn,” I said, scanning the continents and islands, oceans and seas, and their relationships to one another. “But you’re right. It’s incredibly accurate for its time.”

“Men who’d never left their villages in Europe combined their own dreams of the greater world with this outpouring of information from the explorers,” Bea said. “Today, there is no more terra incognita. From your handheld GPS you can pull up a satellite image of your own backyard, or an atoll in the Pacific. These early maps charted the unknown, and they’re remarkably exciting for that reason.”

“You say there’s a complete original of this one at the Library of Congress?” Mike asked. “When was that found?”

“Don’t get too excited, Detective. More than a century ago. This sheet you stumbled over this morning is the first fresh sighting in a hundred years.”

“Tell us about the last one.”

Bea Dutton was as enthusiastic as she was knowledgeable about her cartographic history. “Have you ever heard of a German Jesuit priest named Josef Fischer?”

None of us had.

“A brilliant scholar and perhaps a bit of a rogue. There’s a very rare piece at Yale called the Vinland Map, purchased for the library there by the great philanthropist Paul Mellon. Had it been proved to be authentic, it would have shown that the Vikings predated Columbus ’s voyages to this continent by fifty years.”

“Sounds like you don’t think it’s real,” Mike said.

“Carbon-fourteen analysis dates the parchment to the 1430s, Mike, but a chemical study of the ink puts us in the 1920s. It’s on old paper-the kind you can slice right out of an ancient book, sad to say-but the ink gave it away.”

“So Father Fischer’s a fraud?”

“Well, most of us in the field think the only person he was trying to defraud-and embarrass-with his doctored map was the führer.”

“Then I’m all for the old boy already,” Mike said. “How’s that?”

“Hitler was using Norse history as Nazi propaganda. He likened the Norse to Aryans by claiming that their territorial ambitions were similar to his own empire-lust,” Bea said.

“So Fischer put the Roman Catholic Church in the mix,” Mike said. “Didn’t want the Nazis to get away with their propaganda without a little bit of religion thrown in.”

“There’s a lot of Catholic imagery in the Vinland Map,” Bea said, pointing out notations with her white glove in the same book of reproductions. “Father Fischer was so outraged by the Nazi persecution of the Jesuits that he just teased Hitler by creating this fake document. If the führer wanted to believe the Vikings led the way to the new world, Fischer wouldn’t let him have that victory unless he accepted that the Catholic Church was also along for the ride.”

“So what did Father Fischer have to do with finding my map?” Mike asked.

“See, you’ve got the fever already,” Bea said. “Your map, is it?”

Mike smiled at her. “I’ve got a lot of empty wall space in my crib. You tell me what I’m looking for and let’s go for the whole dozen panels. I’ll let you come visit any time you’d like.”

“That’s a deal, Mike,” Bea said, continuing her story. “Fischer was doing research in 1901, in a private library in a German castle. As happens with so many important discoveries in history, Fischer simply lucked upon something he’d never set out to find-in this case, a dusty portfolio in an obscure corner of a nobleman’s home. Cartographers had been searching for remnants of this particular lost map for so long that they had begun to believe the great Vespuccian model never really existed as such.”

“A complete accident, then?”

“Exactly. Prince Waldburg’s ancestors had collected maps for generations. While Fischer was studying papers of the early Norsemen in Greenland -his own personal area of interest-he came across a large manuscript that had been in the family for generations. It was a prize collection of the famous sixteenth-century globe maker named Johannes Schöner that had been acquired centuries earlier. Schöner, we figure, had purchased the Waldseemüller map of 1507 in order to incorporate its new worldview in his work so that he could use it to make his own globes more up-to-date.”

“What a find,” Mercer said.

“And especially because the twelve panels had never been assembled. Each one was carefully concealed inside the pages of this enormous folio, untouched for four centuries,” Bea said, shifting her attention back to the segment that Mike had found just a couple of hours earlier. “I’d say this looks just about faultless, too.”

“What became of the one that Father Fischer found?” Mike asked.

“It stayed in private hands-at the castle-for another hundred years. In 2003, one century and ten million dollars later, this map became the crown jewel of the Library of Congress. The universalis cosmographia.”

“What?” I asked.

“The world map of 1507 is how we know it as librarians. Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et Americi Vespucii aliorumque lustrationes. That’s its formal name.”

“A map of the world according to the tradition of Ptolemy and the voyages of Amerigo Vespucci,” Mike said, smiling at Bea, who looked surprised by his translation ability. “You don’t think those nuns at parochial school liked me for my good behavior, do you? My Latin wasn’t half bad.”

She flipped back to the copy in her book of reproductions and again unfolded it before us.

“What are the chances that Mike’s find is a forgery?” Mercer asked.

Bea Dutton frowned. “Because of what I told you about Father Fischer?”

More likely Mercer had asked that question because of rumors about Tina Barr.

“Yeah.”

“The Vinland Map presented an entirely different issue. The Vikings were the greatest explorers of the Middle Ages-nobody disputes that. They just never made maps. Not a single one,” Bea said. “They didn’t have a concept of the world that encouraged any of them to draw diagrams, so lots of scholars were skeptical about its authenticity from the get-go. Then there’s the ink. You know how ink is made?”

I’d never given it a thought. “Actually, I have no idea.”

“It’s the reaction between iron in ferrous sulfate and tannin from oak trees. Together they oxidize on a page and literally burn the letters or drawings into the paper. Over centuries, the blackened mark starts to turn brown.”

“And the Vinland Map ink?” Mercer asked.

“Document examiners subjected it to microprobe spectroscopy, which yielded a synthetic substance-something called anatase-that was in the ink. And that wasn’t manufactured until World War One. Heave-ho to the Vikings.”

“And this?”

“Look closely at it, Mercer.” Bea pushed the tip of the antique panel closer to us and started to explain it to us. “This is exquisitely elaborate, do you see?”

There was a masterfully drawn portrait of Vespucci, holding his navigational instruments, at the top of the large panel. Below him was the upper portion of the map, representing an area that was bordered by the Arctic Ocean, and below it a landmass with tiny writing that described interior regions and portrayed the topography of the area. Behind Vespucci was a chubby-cheeked figure-the northeast wind-blowing across the frigid waters.

“The detail is astonishing,” I said.

“See the inset?” Bea asked. On the upper-left quadrant of the panel was a small world map. “It’s actually different than the larger image, if you were to see them all assembled. As Vespucci completed more voyages, the latest descriptions were added to these smaller insets.”

“Too detailed to forge?” I asked.

“Not only that, Alex. The Vinland Map is just ink on parchment. This one is a woodcut. It’s truly a work of art, and I’d say impossible to re-create today. After all, we do have one original in Washington against which any discoveries like the one you made this morning can be compared.”

Mike was poring over the reproduction that Bea had unfolded. “Every section of this map tells its own story, doesn’t it?”

“That’s one of the things that’s so magical about it,” she said.

The margins of the twelve panels were festooned with figures of the wind and sea, and cartouches that chronicled the most important features of these newly charted territories.

“Could be the reason that this piece of the map was stored in that particular book might point us to whatever Tina Barr-or her killer-was looking for,” Mike said, nodding to Mercer. “Maybe something in one of these images, or a link to the part of the world that’s portrayed in the fragment we found, you know?”

“The section of the map featuring Amerigo himself is stuck inside a book about American birds. Not a bad idea,” Mercer said. “Bea, is there any way to get a copy of the full map that’s reproduced here in your book?”

“You want the four-by-eight-foot version, I guess.”

Mike was right. If the stack of books deposited under the water tanks in the last twenty-four hours was connected to Tina Barr’s death, then this high-priced piece of a jigsaw puzzle might prove to be a clue.

“We’ve got a photocopy machine behind the reference desk that duplicates folio-size pages,” Bea said. “Just give me a minute and you’ll each have one to go.”

She disappeared around the corner just as there was a loud banging on the door.

“Ignore it,” Jill said. “We don’t open to the public until ten.”

“There’ll be no public today,” Mike said, checking his watch. “Crime scene techs will be swarming all over the library within the hour. Nobody’s getting in till the whole place is worked over.”

The banging didn’t stop. “May I check?” Jill asked.

Mike stood up as she walked to the door.

“Goddammit!” a voice thundered at her. “Get your foot out of the way and let me in.”

“I’ve got some police officers with me,” I heard her whisper to the man in the hallway. “Why don’t you wait in my office and I’ll meet you there shortly.”

“The hell with the police,” he said, pushing open the door so that Jill tripped over herself getting out of his way. “I’m here to get what belongs to me.”

There was no mistaking Talbot Hunt. The physical resemblance to his sister, Minerva, was striking, and the air of Hunt arrogance as he approached Mike Chapman was equally identifiable. He was tall and whippet thin, with straight dark hair and dark eyes.

“Talbot, I’d like you to meet Detectives Chapman and Wallace,” Jill said, trying to catch up with Hunt. “And Assistant District Attorney Alexandra Cooper.”

“I’ve already wasted two hours of my time yesterday with your colleagues,” Hunt said. “That business about my sister’s housekeeper-”

“‘Business’? Oh, you mean the fact that she was murdered in an apartment your sister owns, dressed exactly like her,” Mike said. “And the idea that she might have been killed because she was carrying a book that belongs to you, or that you say belongs to you.”

“Who says differently? Is it Minerva?” Hunt asked, talking to Mike but repeatedly glancing over at the map on the table.

“I don’t remember anyone inviting you here this morning,” Mike said.

“Some members of Ms. Gibson’s staff seem to place more value than she does on the library’s relationship with my family. Now I’d like to see the Audubon volume that you found,” Hunt said. “And my map.”

“Your book of psalms, your birds, your map,” Mike said, shaking his head. “I just can’t imagine the commissioner is looking to turn these things back over to you until he’s damn sure nothing that has gone on involves your indictment, Mr. Hunt.”

Hunt took a few steps toward the trestle table and Mercer stood to block his approach. Bea came back into the room with her arms full of copies of the map, and stopped short when she saw Talbot Hunt.

“It’s a panel from the world map, isn’t it?” Hunt asked. “Am I right, Ms. Dutton?”

“You are, Mr. Hunt.”

“That is mine, Detective,” he said, each word separated by a dramatic pause, as though a nail had been driven between them as he spoke. “My father’s lawyers will want to speak to you as soon as I reach them.”

“You’re telling me you knew about the existence of this particular map?” Mike asked. “That you knew it was here, at the library?”

Hunt didn’t seem to want to answer that question.

“Bea, I thought you said you’ve never seen one of these panels,” Mike said. “That the library never owned one.”

“That’s true,” the petite woman said, holding her ground. “I haven’t, and we don’t.”

“The world map of 1507,” Hunt said. “Martin Waldseemüller. The only known original is in the Library of Congress.”

“Tell me something I don’t already know, Mr. Hunt.” Mike peeled back the wrapper on a pack of Life Savers and popped one into his mouth.

“I can do that, Detective. I can tell you something almost nobody in the world knows,” Hunt said. “There’s another original of that 1507 map that survived. My grandfather bought it from the Grimaldis-the royal family of Monaco -more than a century ago.”

Bea Dutton’s head practically snapped as she turned it to look at Talbot Hunt. “You have the other pieces to complete this map?”

“We can race against each other to find the missing panels, Mr. Chapman, if you won’t agree to return this one to me,” Hunt said, choosing to ignore the earnest librarian. “I can leave you to your own devices.”

“That’s how come they gave me a gold shield,” Mike said, crunching the mint between his teeth.

“I can assure you that if you fail, someone else is bound to die.”