Aaron Elkins: A Deceptive Clarity

"I still say it was an inside job," grumbled Flittner through a dense cloud of smoke pouring from mouth, nostrils, and-so it seemed-ears.

"And I," Gadney said, seizing the gauntlet, "say it was not."

To display the depth of his conviction, he placed his cup in its saucer with an audaciously audible clink. He and Flittner, I had noticed earlier, rarely missed an opportunity to differ. This was one of the few times Gadney had held his own.

Harry had been listening alertly, his hand tugging at his beard or sometimes at his hair, his black eyes jumping from speaker to speaker. "Well, well," he said, "that's really interesting. I'm glad to have your ideas."

"Ha, ha," Flittner commented.

"No, I mean it," Harry said.

"I have another idea," Gadney ventured.

Predictably, Flittner sneered. Or maybe he didn't. Some people have srnile lines permanently implanted on their faces, and some have frown lines. Flittner had sneer lines, as if he'd done it too often and now his mouth was permanently set.

"Yeah?" Harry said to Gadney with interest. "What?"

"I wonder if it's occurred to anyone that the Heinrich-Schliemann-Grundung might have had a hand in this?"

I leaned inquisitively toward him. "The…"

He didn't hear me, but Anne, sitting next to me, did. She leaned over, close enough so that I smelled her scent: citrus and citrus blossoms, faint but ravishing. "Die Heinrich-Schliemann-Grundung. It means-"

"Ich spreche deutsch," I said crisply, cutting her off in midsentence and midsmile. Her clear eyes widened momentarily, but she wasn't any more surprised than I was. What, I wondered, did I have to be curt about? And why would I want to put off a sensational-looking, single female (no ring, anyway) who was trying to be friendly? I had no idea.

Anyway, die Heinrich-Schliemann-Grundung obviously meant the Heinrich Schliemann Foundation-whatever that meant.

"Heinrich Schliemann?" I asked Gadney.

Anne had another try. "He was a German archaeologist-"

Incredibly, I did it again. "I know who Heinrich Schliemann was," I snapped, regretting it instantly; and I'm sorry to say that it sounded as snotty as it looks.

This time she drew stiffly back. "Of course you'd know, Dr. Norgren," she said, coolly polite. "Forgive me; that was silly of me."

"No," I said, "not at all." I meant to be contrite, but it's hard to say "Not at all" without a touch of the regal. Hard for me, anyway. It was the sort of thing Peter said frequentiy. "That is," I bumbled on, "I know who Schliemann was, but I don't have the foggiest" -I sounded more like Peter with every word- "idea what he could have to do with…"

I hesitated invitingly, but she had been twice burned, and she wasn't having any more, and who could blame her? It was Robey who responded.

"Hm?" he said. "What? Schliemann?" He slowly tamped tobacco into a blackened pipe. "Well, you know how he had all that trouble with the Turkish government, a hundred years back or so, about his excavations at Troy? How they wouldn't let him take his finds out of Turkey and back to Germany?"

I nodded.

"Well, this group named themselves after him because they don't want to see Germany 'cheated' again. They say that whatever the Nazis took during the war shouldn't have been given back, and they're talking about a formal claim-a suit on behalf of the German people-on the three paintings from the Hallstatt cave. They don't see why Bolzano should get them back."

"Incredible," I said, the first sensible comment I'd made in a while.

"What's so incredible about it?" Flittner said abruptly. "The rules of war. How much art would be in the Louvre if Napoleon hadn't raped the rest of Europe? To the victors belong the spoils. What's the difference in this case?"

Gadney rifted his eyes and tossed his head minutely, as if he had borne this sort of thing more times than any human being should have to. But he sat in stoic silence.

"I think there is a difference," I began, ready to have my first real say, and arranging my thoughts on this venerable issue, but Anne got there before me, and much more pithily.

"They weren't the victors," she said simply.

'Exactly," Flittner said, as bitterly as if he'd signed the surrender himself. "We're the victors, so we make the rules."

"Well," Robey said, his Archaic smile shining gently forth, "let's enjoy it while we can. How often do the good guys get to make the rules?"

That appeared to be a reasonable end to an unpromising avenue, and while Robey went through the pipe smoker's slow voluptuous, lighting-up ritual, the rest of us held our peace.

"Anyway, Chris," he finally said behind a slowly twisting web of blue smoke, "this Schliemann group spends its time writing nasty letters to us and to the press-'The Plundered Past is an insult to the German people, nothing but American propaganda'-that kind of thing. They don't get any support, thank God."

"I have to disagree," Flittner said. "There are a lot of people who see this show as nothing more than self-serving propaganda. Which we all know it is, even if we don't have the guts to admit it."

Robey dug peacefully at his pipe with a gimmicky tool while his mind drifted elsewhere. Anne listened impassively. Gadney rolled up his eyes again and made a put-upon face. I kept waiting for him to say, "Oh… really!" but he restrained himself. All three, it was clear, had heard Flittner on this subject before. Only Harry was attentive and interested, his forefinger curled in his beard.

Seeking a fresh audience, Flittner swung his long, somber face back and forth from Harry to me as he spoke. "Even in the Bundestag-a couple of weeks ago Katzenhaven got up and demanded to know how much this show is costing the German government."

He was not a careful shaver, I noticed; stubble glinted like shards of mica here and there along his jawline. A spattering of ash was on his jacket, and while he spoke he dropped some more from the cigarette in his hand.

"But it isn't costing them anything, Earl," Anne said. "You know that"

"I know, of course I know." Impatiently, he flicked more ash on himself. "I'm using it as an illustration. The-oh, the hell with it." He slumped back in his chair.

"Listen, let me say something at this point," Harry said. We've asked the Polizei to look into this Schliemann gang-"

"They're not a gang" Flittner interrupted. "They're a political foundation. Jesus Christ."

"Excuse me, this Schliemann Foundation. Except that they're not a bona-fide foundation. They're not on record, they don't have an address, they don't sign their letters with their real names. For all anybody knows, they could be one old Nazi crank sitting home alone grinding out crackpot letters." He winced as Flittner reared up to protest, but stuck to his guns. "Excuse me, Dr. Flittner, but that's the way they look to me. They've got no support, even from the lunatic fringe."

"Now look here, Major," Flittner said angrily, "it seems to me you're being damned free with your-"

"What I think Harry's saying, Earl," Robey cut in smoothly, "is that they wouldn't have the expertise to get into the storage room the way those two men did."

"Right," Harry said amiably, "that's all I'm saying. Or the money to buy somebody else's expertise." He smiled winningly at Flittner, who subsided, detonating another gush of smoke from his facial orifices.

An airman entered with a message. Robey read it and stood up. "Telephone," he said. "Why don't you take over, Harry?"

"You bet, Colonel. Well, I think we better get on to talking about what we do to prevent a repeat of what happened. Now, Captain Romero of my staff is an expert in this stuff, and he's been working with Captain Greene here on a new… what's he call it, Anne?"

"An intrusion-detection system."

"Right, an intrusion-detection system. Now, these things are pretty complicated, but I want to try to explain, because it means procedures are going to be a little different starting in a few days."