Гарри Гаррисон - Montezuma’s Revenge

“We have brought the specialist here.”

“Who is it? Billy Schultz?”

Billy smiled happily with the assumption and Sones brushed it off.

“No. He is our operational backup man. A specialist. The painting authority is in the other room.”

“And wondering very much when you were going to let me out,” the husky voice said from the doorway.

“Come in, I was just going to call you. The ‘St. Sebastian’ is here.”

She entered. A wide-hipped, long-legged, short-skirted young woman with a wealth of blond hair that dropped well below her shoulders. Her face was full-featured and attractive, in a large Slavonic way, her bosom full, also in the Slavonic way, so much so that the top button of her white blouse had opened under the strain. She looked dark-eyedly at Tony from under long lashes, one eye closed halfway because of the smoke that rose from the cigarette that projected straight up from a silver holder shaped like a small pipe that she held between her teeth.

“I am Lizveta Zlotnikova.” Her accent was Russian, slight but still irrevocably there.

“Tony Hawkin.” He thrashed slightly as if wanting to rise but did not, extending his hand upward instead. She seized it and shook it twice, and strongly, from the elbow, as though she were pumping water.

“Miss Zlotnikova is our authority,” Sones said, handing the painting to her. “Co-opted from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. An authority on restoration and dating. Is the painting real?”

She took it from him with great respect and held it under the light tilting it backward and forward slowly. The smoke curled up into her eye and, around the silver holder, she whispered, “Boshe-moir! ”

“What did you say?”

“That was merely an expletive of appreciation drawn out of me involuntarily.”

“Then this is the authentic thing?”

“I cannot tell truthfully until I have examined samples of the wood and the paint chemically and by spectroanalysis. Also X-ray plates must be made. These assure positive identification.”

“Which we will want. But can you tell us something, a rough professional guess or the like that we can operate on?”

“I can do that. The color is incredible, the brushwork that of a genius. If it is a forgery it is so exceptional that the forger must be a master.”

“Good enough. Do you agree, Hawkin?”

“I do. Completely!”

Lizveta Zlotnikova put the painting carefully back into its case and turned to face Tony, her open eye sighting across the tip of her cigarette as though the holder itself were a gun. “I did not know that you were an expert too, it was not told me. What museum are you associated with?”

“It’s not that simple—”

“Indeed? Please explain.”

“Enough of that,” Sones broke in. “There is no need for you to have that information on a classified operation. Why don’t you start work on the analysis now?”

“It is very late.”

“Stalin used to work all night,” Tony said brightly. “Did his best work then they say.”

“What is the meaning of that?” The cigarette gun aimed again, more deadly than ever. “Are you insinuating that I am an unconverted Stalinoid cult of personality non-revisionist?”

“No, of course, nothing of the sort. Just that, you know, it seems to be in the Russian personality, night work, you know ...” His voice ran down into silence under the arctic stare of those pitiless dark eyes.

“I am not here to be insulted. I am Georgian not Russian as you seem to think. A legitimate refugee from artistic persecution, now alien resident in the United States of America. Apologies are in order.”

“I apologize, sincerely, no insult intended.”

“The analysis if you do not mind.” Sones was being firm. Lizveta Zlotnikova considered the apology, accepted it in the end with a disdainful sniff, then took the painting into the other room and slammed the door.

“What did you do that for?” Sones asked.

“I didn’t do anything, just made a comment. What is everyone being so touchy about anyway?”

“She thought you were accusing her of being a Soviet agent.”

“Well, I wasn’t, probably the last thought from my mind considering the fact that the FBI brought her here.”

Sones bent over the chair and cupped his hand, whispering,

“See that you do not do it again, we do not want her suspicious. It so happens that she is a Soviet agent.”

“And you brought her down on this operation!”

“Not so loud. Yes, it was all planned in advance. We do not want it known we have blown her cover, so we are letting her get information here that is of no importance to the Soviets.”

“Why not? Everyone else seems interested.”

“In this way the next information that we send through her they will assume is true but will in reality be false. So no more remarks about Stalin if you do not mind.”

“Could I please have another drink?”

“I’ll get it,” Billy squeaked.

“Join me?” Tony asked, ever the host since the previous evening.

“Never drink on the job, thanks.”

Well he certainly did, almost continuously it seemed. Not since the Army, either. He sipped deep. Was there meaning or a message in that? If there was it evaded him.

“How do I get the painting back to D’Isernia?” he asked.

“Arrangements are being made. Tomorrow ...”

The crash of breaking glass in the other room was clearly audible through the door.

Tony was nearest and the sudden noise sent him springing from the chair, whiskey sloshing, grabbing the handle. The other two agents were at his shoulder when he threw it wide; all of them were spectators of a silent tableau.

The window had been broken, it lay in slivers on the floor, and Lizveta Zlotnikova stood before it. Passing the painting through the raw opening in the glass.

There was a quick view of a man’s face on the other side. Then painting and face were gone.

“Keep her here, Hawkin,” Sones ordered, turning, bounding away, drawing his gun at the same time, following Billy Schultz who already had the outside door open.

They exited very fast, guns awave, while Tony turned to look at Lizveta Zlotnikova who showed no signs of any attempted escape. Instead she was wringing her hands before her, bending back and forth in the grip of strong emotion, gulping in breath after deep breath—so deep in fact that the heaving of her impressive bosom had burst another button from the moorings of her blouse—while a great tear formed at the corner of each eye.

“What happened?” he asked, but she only shook her head, the motion dislodging the burgeoning tears which ran slowly down her cheeks. They stood in this manner, facing each other across the room, until Sones returned, closing the door behind him but keeping the gun ready in his hand.

“Got away clean, no trace at all. Schultz is still looking, not that it will do much good.” There was anger behind every gas chopped-off word, the first emotion Tony had ever seen him display. “Now you, tell us who he was, why did you do it, speak up?”

Lizveta Zlotnikova brushed the tears away fiercely, no doubt angered at her display of weak emotion before a brace of Amen fascist swine, then stamped over to the end table and lighted a cigarette before she answered.

“I do not know the man and it is insult of you to suggest it. 1 passed the window and the glass broke, he must have been or watching me and waited for the moment when I was close, the painting in my hand. He ordered me in Russian to hand it over. I had no choice.”

“You could have refused, he would not have killed you, it would have gained him nothing.”