Aaron Elkins: A Deceptive Clarity

We were still deep in the intricacies of protocol when the door opened and closed, snapping me out of a near-doze.

"Ah," Robey said, looking up from some woolgathering of his own, "come in. Let's see, I think some of you have met Major, uh…"

"Gucci. Like the shoes."

"Did you say, er, 'Major'?" Gadney asked.

"That's right," Harry said with a smile. "I'm just lucky. They don't make me wear a monkey suit."

Gadney's surprise was understandable. Harry looked about as much like a major as I did a curator. He was wearing the same baggy, gray, shawl-collared cardigan he'd had on at the hospital, shapeless brown pants, and loafers that had never seen polish. With pennies in them. The bulky sweater made him look not bigger but smaller than he was, and shabby besides; and a slight stoop made him seem frail and scholarly. His short, gray-splotched beard was neatly trimmed at the neck but grew unchecked up his cheeks, giving him a gaunt, rabbinical air.

"I hadn't known one could have a beard in the army," Flittner muttered rudely to the tabletop.

"Sure," Harry said pleasantly, "if it's for medical reasons. I got shot in the face a couple of years ago in Athens and I couldn't shave for a while. I forgot to tell 'em when it healed, and they forgot to tell me to shave."

There was a thick silence as he shambled across the room. Even Flittner had the decency to look embarrassed.

Harry flopped down in the chair next to Robey. "No thanks," he replied to the offer of coffee. "I don't drink it. Wouldn't mind some of that mineral water, though."

Robey passed him a small green bottle of Appolinaris. Harry poured it into a glass and took a long drink while he looked from face to face around the table with sharp, smiling eyes.

"Hey, Chris, glad to see you up. How's the old schnozz?"

"The old schnozz is fine, thanks. The old head's still a little fuzzy."

He laughed, emptied the rest of the bottle into his glass, and wiped a drop of moisture from his beard with the back of a finger. "Well, let me set your minds at ease. First, as some of you know, we found the'truck they used. It was on base, in the pool lot behind the education center. The four missing crates were all in it." His eyes lit on me again. "What's so surprising, Chris?"

"I didn't realize they'd gotten away with anything."

"Oh yeah. None of the originals; only four of the copies." He took out his bulging little notebook and snapped the rubber band off it, letting it roll up around his wrist. "Let's see…" He began to read aloud: "One van Gogh-"

A corner of Flittner's unkempt mustache lifted in a faint sneer. "Van Gukh."

"Really?" Harry said.

"V'n Khakh" Gadney corrected mildly, eliciting a glare from Flittner. "I believe that's closer to the Dutch." With a finger, he delicately brushed at his own tidy, pale mustache.

"Well, thanks," Harry said brightly. "Thanks a lot. I'll remember that. Van Hah."

"Also a Cranach, a Vermeer, and a Poussin," Gadney said, pronouncing carefully, no doubt for Flittner's benefit. "All of them having considerable value, copies or not. Are any of them damaged?"

"We haven't looked at them yet, but the crates are all OK."

"Then don't worry about the paintings," Flittner said.

"What about the two men?" Anne Greene asked. "Have they been caught?"

"No," Harry said, "and to be honest we don't have a clue. Obviously, they got on base without any problem, so it looks like they had forged IDs."

Robey smiled. "Maybe that's what you ought to try, Chris."

"Not at all," Gadney said primly. "I'll have a proper card for him before the day is out."

"Why did they want to get on the base in the first place?" I asked Harry. "And why leave the truck there? Why didn't they just drive away with it?"

It was Anne who answered. "Maybe you don't understand the layout here yet, Dr. Norgren. Columbia House fronts on the street, but it forms part of the perimeter of Tempelhof. The only way to get a truck around to the back of the building, where the storage room is, is to drive onto the base."

"That's exactly right," Harry said, "and that's exactly what they did. They got hold of a beer truck authorized to deliver on base, drove it around to the courtyard behind this building, knocked out the outside guard with what we think was an electronic stun gun, then chloroformed him, and finally cut through the door with some kind of laser tool. The back door's down in the stairwell, so there wasn't anybody to see."

"Stun gun, laser tool," Robey said in his vague, musing way. "Seems like pretty up-to-date technology. They must be professionals."

"Oh yeah, for sure." Harry drank some more mineral water, tossing it into his mouth like a slug of whiskey. "When Chris scared them off, they didn't dare go tearing back out through the gate in a Schultheiss beer truck. So they left it in a protected corner of the lot, with the paintings, and as far as we know they just walked out the gate." He held out his hands, palms up. "That's all we know."

"You have no idea who might be behind this?" Gadney asked.

Harry shook his head. "As my British pals like to say, we're pursuing our inquiries. We're in touch with Interpol-they keep a file of international art thieves: MOs, connections, and so on. So far, nothing."

Flittner, slumped gracelessly in his chair, sighed gustily, shaking out a match he'd used to light still another cigarette. The first two fingers of his left hand were the color of tobacco. "You don't need Interpol," he mumbled into his chest. "It was an inside job."

The rest of us looked at him.

"It stands to reason, doesn't it?" he growled, as if we were arguing with him. "They knew just where the paintings were stored, didn't they? They were scheduled to be in the storage room for less than twenty-four hours, but they knew anyway. And they knew exactly where the storage room was, and that it had a back door, and how to get to the back door. That's not exactly public knowledge. It's somebody in the damn army."

Gadney shook his head. "No, I'm afraid I can't agree with that, Earl. If it was, er, an inside job, they'd never have bothered with the copies."

Robey, staring at the ceiling, hands clasped behind his neck, drifted hack into the conversation. "That's an interesting point, Earl. They couldn't very well have been insiders, could they?" He turned thoughtful eyes on Harry. "Or professionals either. Pros wouldn't fool around with the fakes, would they? Not with the real things sitting right there."

Anne shook her head. "That isn't necessarily so. Everything was still packed up. How could they tell what was in each crate? And," she said, turning to Flittner, "the copies were all at the back of the room near the outside door, isn't that right?"

"So?"

"Well, then, they probably just started nearest the back door; that would be the easiest way. I imagine they were going to take everything. There weren't that many crates."

"That could very well be," Gadney said approvingly. "In any case, it strongly supports my position that inside knowledge was not involved. After all, the acquisition number of each painting is clearly stenciled on its crate. Surely anyone connected with the show would be familiar with the numbering system, and would never have touched the reproductions."

I put in my two cents' worth. "I don't think that's necessarily true, either. From what I saw of the storage room, it was stuffed to bursting with crates. Even if those guys understood the numbering, there wasn't enough room to walk around looking for the right stencils. If I'd been stealing them, I'd have done what Anne said-start near the back door and keep going till I had them all. It would have been faster than trying to pick and choose."

This not only made sense to me but gave me the chance to agree with Anne.