Unknown

SUNDAY, JULY 11

The Antiquities Room, which was the historical section of the Gotland Regional Museum on Strandgatan in Visby, was deserted on this Sunday morning. The entrance hall seemed chilly in contrast to the heat outside on the street, and there wasn't a sound. His footsteps echoed across the stone floor. In the museum reception area, the girl sitting behind the glass window was deeply absorbed in her book. She didn't seem to hear him approach. He was forced to clear his throat twice before she finally looked up. He met her gaze behind the horn-rimmed glasses and paid for a ticket without uttering a word. For appearance's sake he strolled without interest through the rooms with the picture stones, the prehistoric graves, and the reconstructed Stone Age settlements. He seemed to be the only visitor. On a dazzling Sunday during summer vacation, people preferred to spend the day at the beach or in their summer houses rather than in a museum. The weather suited his purposes perfectly.

He climbed the stone stairway that would take him to what really interested him: the treasure chamber. Whenever he stepped inside he was seized by a feeling of melancholy. Here was only a fraction of all the riches that had been plucked from the Gotland soil since the excavations on the island had started in earnest during the 1960s-caches of silver, jewelry, and coins.

Per square mile, Gotland had produced a larger quantity of Viking Age treasures than anywhere else in the world. No fewer than seven hundred Viking Age silver hoards had been dug up. The most famous was known as the Spillings treasure, the world's largest silver cache from the Viking Age. It was dug up in Spillings in Othem parish on Gotland in 1999. The treasure weighed 148 pounds and contained, among other things: 14,300 coins, almost five hundred armlets, twenty-five rings, and loose silver.

Several of the coins in the Spillings treasure were sensational-in particular, the one called the Moses coin, minted in the Khazarian kingdom, which was eastern Europe's most powerful state during the eighth and ninth centuries. The Moses coin was the first archaeological artifact that tied Judaism to the Khazars, which made it unique in the world.

Sometimes he would spend long periods of time in here, lost in his own fantasies about the coin. It bore the Arabic inscription Musa rasul Allah — "Moses is God's messenger." Researchers had interpreted this to be of Jewish origin, alluding to the biblical Moses, who had led the Israelites out of Egypt and received the Ten Commandments from God on Mt. Sinai.

He'd heard talk that the coin might be moved to the Museum of National Antiquities in Stockholm, where it could be viewed by a larger number of visitors. Yet another sacrilege.

He sat down on a bench along the wall in order to run through the plan in his mind one last time. So far no one else had turned up.

Lining the walls were display cases holding silver coins-Arabic, German, Irish, Bohemian, Hungarian, Italian, and even Swedish.

It was not those coins that interested him. He'd been stealing that sort of artifact for years from significantly easier venues than this museum, where any theft from one of the cases would of course be quickly noticed.

This time he had a considerably loftier goal, and it had been carefully planned. The price he had been offered was so high that he couldn't resist the temptation, even though it did involve some risk.

Selling ancient artifacts from Gotland was no problem for him. Since they were going to end up on the mainland anyway, he might as well earn a bit of cash from them. Then he could at least control where they would go. Besides, he used the money for a purpose that would have pleased his Viking Age forefathers. It was a way of completing the circle; that was how he chose to view it. Deep inside he felt that the artifacts belonged to him, at least much more than they belonged to the people in power who made the decisions about removing them from the island. Some of the objects he kept for himself. He had his favorites.

In a glass case in the middle of the room was a gleaming armlet of the purest gold. It was the largest single gold object from the Viking Age on Gotland, and it had been dug up in Sundre parish. The bracelet was made of twenty-four-carat gold and had been dated to approximately a.d. 1000. It was extremely rare to find gold artifacts from the Viking Age, and here lay the largest one, with only a glass wall separating him from it.

He got up and went out to the stairwell. He looked down at the reception area. The girl in the cashier's booth was still reading her book. He glanced at his watch. It was noon. Everyone would be going to lunch except for the cashier. That was what he was waiting for. The risk of being discovered was nonexistent, and his disguise would prevent anyone from pointing him out afterward. He summoned all his powers of concentration, pulled on the thin gloves, and made a quick round of the rooms on the upper floor. Not a soul.

He could hear voices from the ground floor. The employees were on their way out for lunch. The front door slammed. Now he was alone with the cashier.

The museum had no surveillance cameras, but a few years back it had been equipped with an alarm system. He had found out how it could be disconnected, so that detail had been solved.

He took a small screwdriver out of his pocket and unscrewed the glass case from its pedestal. The whole time he kept his ears open for any sound on the stairs-he didn't want to be caught in the act. Then it was just a matter of lifting off the top part, setting it carefully on the stone floor, and taking out the armlet. He replaced the case and calmly walked down the stairs. The cashier still had her nose in her book. It almost looked as if she were asleep. Unnoticed, he slipped out the door and disappeared down the street.