Aaron Elkins: A Deceptive Clarity

"And is there really anything for him to worry about?"

"I don't think so. The army has quite a professional operation mounted here, as competent as you'd be likely to find in the United States. And if the Defense Department isn't expert in security, well, who is?"

I nodded. "What makes you think I'd carry any weight with him? I've never met him."

"I know that, but he thinks very highly of you. He's read that monograph of yours on the Spanish mannerists in the new edition of Arnoldi, and he was telling me all about a highly complimentary review of your new book in the Bollettino d'arte. He's impressed with your scholarship- told me so very frankly. And of course I agreed with him- very frankly."

Two compliments from Peter van Cortlandt in one day. Surely a record.

"But let's not worry about signor Bolzano right now." He smiled at me somewhat mischievously, which was not a typical way for him to smile. "Tell me, what did you say when Tony told you about the, ah, forgery I seem to have uncovered in the midst of The Plundered Past?"

"The…?" I couldn't help laughing. Good old Tony. What was it he'd said? The usual little problems? "That must have slipped his mind, too. You know Tony; he tries not to get too involved in details."

After a moment Peter laughed, too. "Yes, I know Tony." He looked at his watch. "Well, that can wait, too. Chris, I have to catch a plane in a couple of hours. What do you say to lunch? Do you like Kranzler's?"

I left my bags at the reception desk, and twenty minutes later we stepped out of a taxi in downtown Berlin in front of the Cafe Kranzler. I hadn't been inside it for four years, not since the last time I'd come to Berlin. It had been at a table on the balcony that I'd tried unsuccessfully to talk Wildenberg into lowering his price on a carved, fifteenth-century Riemenschneider tryptich. I hadn't been sorry I'd failed to get it for the museum, and in fact I hadn't tried as hard as I might have. Riemenschneider was one of those great artists (one of those many great artists) whom I soberly appreciated, but whose work I just plain didn't like. That was true, I'm afraid, for the grim, grotesque German Gothic as a whole. It's not that I don't recognize great art when I see it, you understand; it's just that I know what I like.

A hell of an attitude for an art curator.

The Kranzler hadn't changed at all, not a bit. Gaudy in a decorous, old-maidish way, a bit too self-consciously grand and sedate, it was an institution, the only one of the great old cafes on the Kurfurstendamm to have survived the war, and to enter it was to walk into the Berlin of the Twenties.

It was quite crowded, largely with elderly women in green hats who commanded their tables with a distinct air of de jure possession. One of them, presiding over a kannchen of coffee and a Deutsche Zeitung provided by the cafe, nodded regally as we passed. I returned the gesture respectfully. Probably remembered me, I thought. No doubt she'd been at the same table four years ago in 1982. Given reasonable odds, I would have bet she'd been there in 1922.

"Upstairs?" Peter suggested.

"Fine."

We climbed the spiral marble staircase, winding past a central pillar of white and gold mosaic, and found a table at the window. I sat looking east along the Kurfurstendamm, toward Berlin's riveting memorial to the destruction of war: the black, gutted stump of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church, cowering so incongruously among angular, modern buildings of glass, like a bewildered dinosaur that had wandered into the twentieth century and didn't know how to get out. Closer, the Ku'damm was lined with chic stores and garish theaters with four- and five-story marquees. (INDIANA JONES UND DER TEMPEL DES TODES! proclaimed twenty-foot-high green letters directly across the street.)

"Peter," I said, "this forgery you mentioned…"

"Yes?" He looked at his watch. "Let's order first, shall we? My flight leaves Tegel at two-fifteen."

Among Peter's many impressive qualities was his ability to attract the attention of a waiter or waitress when he wanted it. This was difficult enough in the United States; in Europe, where it was a maddening part of the waiter's art not to "intrude," it was near-marvelous. Without moving his calm gaze from my face, he raised a casual, elegant hand.

The sleeve of his dark gray jacket slipped away from his wrist, showing a taintless French cuff of palest ivory. Peter van Cortlandt had the cleanest shirt cuffs of any man I knew. There had been a time when I'd suspected that in the privacy of his office he slipped a pair of accountant's celluloid cuffs over them, but the answer turned out to be much more characteristic of the fastidious Peter: He changed his shirt every day before lunch, and then again when he left the museum at four.

"Bitte?" The waitresses wore black dresses with frilly little pink aprons and pink bows in their hair, so that they looked like French maids in a play. They did not, however, look silly; for the Kranzler it was just right.

I ordered wiener schnitzel, pommes frites, salad, and a large beer.

"Hungry?" Peter asked.

I shrugged apologetically. "No breakfast."

His urbane face wouldn't show it, of course, but I knew he didn't approve of my eating habits. Peter never ate fried foods, and he had once told me without any attempt to be facetious (Peter was rarely facetious) that he had never had a McDonald's hamburger, never had a Hostess Twinkie, never had beer from a can. He thought he had once had a taco, and it hadn't been too bad, but it had been a long time ago and he wasn't really sure.

Without bothering to look at the menu, he ordered Rhine salmon with asparagus and a half-bottle of Riesling. "Now," he said, "while I'm away in Frankfurt you can familiarize yourself with the files. We've got Room 2100 of Columbia House as our office, and Corporal Jessick-he's our clerk-will know who you are."

"All right. What takes you to Frankfurt, by the way?"

"Oh, there's a small problem with a Greco that the Frankfurter Kunstmuseum is lending us."

"The Kunstmuseum? I thought everything in The Plundered Past was from Bolzano's collection."

"It is, but this one had been on loan to the Kunstmuseum for the last four years. So, in effect, we're borrowing it from them, and that's complicated things. The show's opened and closed in Naples without it, and now we open in Berlin in just a few weeks."

"But what's the problem?"

Peter's lips thinned slightly. "Insurance. I'm meeting with them at ten a.m., and I have every hope of bringing the painting back with me when I return."

"Ten tomorrow? But why not fly out in the morning? It can't be more than two hours to Frankfurt."

Peter smiled. "I'm afraid I'm not much of a shuttle diplomat. No, I prefer to arrive the evening before, have a good dinner, relax at a decent hotel-and be fresh and rested when it comes to business the next day. It makes good sense."

So he had told me before. So Tony reminded me whenever I was reluctant to spend too much of the museum's money when traveling. I must be the only person in the world who gets chewed out regularly because his expense account isn't extravagant enough.

"Anyway," Peter said, sipping the wine, which had just been placed before him, and according it a brief nod of acceptance, "I'd like to stay in Frankfurt through Friday and do a little museum-hopping. Can you believe that I've been here five months and I've yet to visit the Stadel? Can you manage without me until Saturday?"

"Sure." I took a long swallow of my Schultheiss, rediscovering with pleasure how large a large beer is in Germany. "Now how about telling me about this forgery-"

This time it was the waitress Who interrupted, setting down our lunches.

"Ah," Peter said, "shall we tuck in? I'm hungry myself."