The setting for the Byzantine Fire was a large and intricately carved ring of pure gold, in which the central figure of the ruby was surrounded by fourteen tiny blue-and-white sapphires. While this perhaps doubled the overall value, it was the stone's history—ranging through religious wars, thefts, treaties, murders, diplomacy at the highest level, matters of national pride and ethnic identity and theologic significance—that raised it beyond all questions of value; the Byzantine Fire was priceless, like the Kohinoor Diamond.
Therefore, security during this first move of the Byzantine Fire in nearly ninety years was extremely tight. This morning, three separate teams of armed couriers had left the Chicago Natural History Museum, traveling by three different routes to New York City, and not until departure had even the couriers themselves known which team would carry the ring. It was now nearly midnight in New York, and the team with the ring had just been met at the TWA terminal in Kennedy Airport by a security escort from the United States Mission to the United Nations. This new group would carry the ring the rest of the way into Manhattan, to U.S. Mission headquarters in United Nations Plaza, in preparation for tomorrow's ceremony, when the Byzantine Fire would be gravely and solemnly returned to the sovereign nation of Turkey (which in fact had never owned it). After which, thank God, the damn thing would be Turkey's problem.
Until then, however, it remained America's problem, and there was a certain tension among the eight Americans crowded into this small, bare room in the security area of the TWA terminal.