Paul Christopher - Michelangelo_s Notebook

“Why do you think he’d be doing something like that?”

“I’m not sure. Protecting him for some reason, I suppose.”

“Anything else?”

“Not really, except that you seemed awfully interested in that painting in the museum. Looked like a dingy Picasso knockoff.”

“It’s by Juan Gris.”

“The cubist?” Gris, a Spaniard like Picasso as well as his neighbor in Paris, had been one of the early exponents of the style along with George Braque. She’d studied him briefly in her second year. If Valentine was right, the painting was worth a lot of money.

“If the painting is genuine it’s an untitled canvas from 1927. It shouldn’t be there.”

“Why not?” said Finn. “Another generous ex-student?”

“Doubtful,” answered Valentine. “It was looted by the Nazis in 1941 from the Wildenstein Gallery in Paris and hasn’t been seen or heard of since.”

“How would it turn up here?”

“Now that’s a mystery, isn’t it?”

They reached the rental car. The Taurus was still there. The Jaguar was gone. “We can presume the Taurus is Miss Mimble’s.”

“I thought the Jag belonged to Wharton.”

“So did I until I saw the aerial photograph behind his desk. It shows quite a large house tucked in behind the main building. The headmaster’s residence.”

“So who owns the Jag?”

“The person who was smoking the pipe in Wharton’s office just before we came in.”

“Shit,” muttered Finn. “We should have got the plate number.”

“It was a New York World War Two veterans plate. 1LGS2699.”

Somehow she wasn’t surprised that he remembered the number. “Colonel Gatty?”

“Probably. Easy enough to find out.” He tossed Finn the keys. “You drive.” She unlocked the car and got behind the wheel. Valentine climbed in the other side. He reached down, picked his laptop case up from under the seat and plugged it into the empty lighter socket. He booted up the computer, turned on the GPRS wireless modem and tapped his way effortlessly into the New York Department of Motor Vehicles database. Finn ran the car up the long drive and then turned onto the road that led back to the highway. Within a few minutes Valentine had what he wanted.

“It’s Gatty. He lives near the Museum of Natural History.”

“That didn’t take long.”

“Anything Afghani terrorists can do, I can do better.” He grinned. He punched a key on the laptop and closed it. They drove back to New York.

Night was falling and the nighthawks were making their swooping, booming mating calls in the purple sky overhead. Instead of being dark, the farmhouse and the outbuildings were bathed in light from half a dozen security lamps on tall poles, lit by the chugging of a small portable generator somewhere. Who had the gasoline to light up a stupid farmhouse these days, making it an easy target for Allied planes overhead, or passing patrols? But Allied flights never got this close to the Swiss border, and there weren’t any patrols wandering around in this area except for them. This was a dead zone, where whatever war that existed was a private one.

They had made a cold camp just inside the tree line using the remains of an old dry stone fence covered with bramble for cover. One of the spooks, Taggart, was whispering to Cornwall, who was making notes using a small pad and his pocket flash. Everyone else was having M-3 meat and vegetable stew or M-1 meat and beans, which tasted as bad as it looked cold and not much better heated. Not that the sergeant much cared; after eating that shit for three years all over Europe his taste buds were cardboard anyway. Shit filled you up just like good stuff and it all came out the same-C-3 accessory-pack toilet paper. Like everyone said, it was a shitty war.

Wonder of wonders, Cornwall was actually talking to him.

“Sergeant.”

“Sir.”

“We’re going to need to get a little closer to the farm.”

“We, sir?”

“You and a patrol. As many men as you think you need.” Stupid fucking question. I need the whole fucking U.S. Army if you’ve got it to spare. The light from the German lamps twinkled off the man’s glasses like he had no eyes at all. He had a voice like a history teacher, like he knew everything in the fucking world. A drone. “What do you want to know, sir?”

“Reconnoiter the situation, Sergeant. How many men, weapons-that kind of thing.”

“Fine.” They were going to do the hard part and Cornwall and McPhail and Taggart were going to sit back here and talk about art. Jesus!

He chose Teitelbaum and Reid because they could keep their mouths shut. They slipped over the hedge and through the last of the trees just after the moon had set. It took them almost an hour to make their way down to the narrow dirt road that ran in front of the farm. It was just on the edge of the pools of light thrown by the pole lamps and offered enough shadow and cover in the roadside ditch to keep the sentries from seeing them.

The sergeant got out his binoculars and swung them slowly from left to right. Everything was the same as it had been before, only closer. He could see the break in the bramble-covered stone wall and the post and a few splintered pieces of wood that had once been the gate into the place. There was a guard just visible on the left side, looking miserable in a canvas rain cape even though it had stopped raining hours ago. The sergeant could see the glow of a cigarette moving in an arc from the man’s hand to his mouth. It would have been an easy shot, payback for Hayes, but who the fuck cared about Hayes anyway? If the sniper was still in the tower of the abbey he’d pick up the muzzle flash and take him out easy as one two three. No, this was a look-see, no more.

The sergeant could also see that getting over the stone wall was going to be a bitch. Too high and covered with brambles. They’d get hung up like birds in a fucking net. As far as he could see they’d have to go through the front gate if they were going to go in at all. On the other hand, if he told that to Cornwall or either of the other two phony officers, they’d probably do it and wind up getting them all killed. Like somebody told him back before France, to know more was to have more. He told Teitelbaum and Reid to park it, gave them the evening password and told them he’d be back in a while. If they smoked and got themselves picked off by the sniper in the abbey ruins, that was their lookout.

He slipped back into the trees and moved north. He’d seen the big topo map that Cornwall carried and he knew there was the vague possibility of one of those monster King Tigers coming down the road and blowing them all to hell with its 88mm, but he hadn’t seen one yet and he didn’t think he was likely to. The worst he’d seen was a burned-out old Panzer I that looked like it dated back to the Spanish civil war lying half in the ditch at the top of the hill. He’d been sidetracked with the OSS dudes and as long as they didn’t do anything stupid that was fine with him. He was no hero-that was for sure. At this point all he wanted was to do his time and then go back to Canarsie.

He moved through the trees, his eyes automatically scanning the ground for deadfalls or trip wires, his ears cocked by long practice to the sounds around him, his mind in some kind of automatic autonomic state that was more animal than human, ready to react at any moment to any sight or sound that was out of the natural order of things. Eventually he reached another drainage ditch, this one leading to a culvert that ran under the road to the field on the other side. If there was going to be any kind of warning mechanism, mines or trips he knew it would be here, but there was nothing. The plates on the trucks said SS but this was no crack unit. Those pricks, hell, even the straight army types would know better than to leave their flank open like this. He checked the ground carefully; no cigarette butts, no matches or food waste, no stink of piss that would give away a perimeter guard. Nothing. He smiled to himself, glad he’d left the others behind. Something was going on here, something as squirrelly as Cornwall and his two so-called lieutenants.