by Estelle Ryan
“Dinner will be ready in twenty minutes.” Vinnie’s voice interrupted my concentration and I glared at him. He lifted his hands defensively. “Just saying. You’ve been at those computers for the last four hours and barely moved. It’s time you took a break.”
“Go away, Vinnie.” It was the eleventh time I had shooed him away in the last four hours. He had been pestering me to take breaks, drink tea, lie down or stretch my muscles after the first half an hour I opened the computers on the dining room table. He was the worst nagging bodyguard anyone ever had the fortune to have.
He just gave me a warm smile and walked back to the kitchen. Something mouth-watering was cooking on the stove. It smelled better than any Italian restaurant I had ever been to. He might just live up to the reputation he and Colin tried to convince me of. I was surprised how non-intrusive I was finding his presence. Having the body of a giant wrestler, he moved with surprising grace. So quietly that I often lost track of where he was in my apartment.
While I was engrossed in my research, he cleaned up all the broken bits and pieces that had escaped his first clean-up and tried to organise my space. I appreciated his efforts, but was hard pushed not to jump up every time he touched something and put it down at a wrong angle. Eventually we had agreed that he would just clean up and I would position everything later. Now I wanted to focus on finding more information, because I had reached a dead end.
This was beyond frustrating. I was going to have to ask for Colin’s help. Again. I had found this pattern and I need another set of eyes and, to my greatest disgust, expected Colin’s eyes as an insider to take me past my own law-abiding limitations.
“Hello, Jenny.” Colin’s deep voice startled me out of my thoughts.
“How did you get in?”
His lifted left eyebrow was the only answer I got.
“I have a front door.”
“It’s not as much fun.” There was a smile in his voice and I heard Vinnie chuckle in the kitchen. I closed my eyes and took a calming breath. I was not going to let these two men anger me. Colin pulled a chair closer and sat down. As usual he was close enough for me to feel his body heat, but not too close to crowd me. “What’s new?”
“Tell me about art auctions at sea.” I walked closer and sat down next to him, facing my computers.
He looked at me for a few seconds before he answered. “What makes you think I know about art auctions at sea?”
“The question you just asked me.” Really. Did people truly not realise how much they revealed when they avoided questions? “And the probability that you have run across this in your past criminal activities.”
“Why don’t you just call a spade a spade?”
I was well acquainted with this particular expression. “Are you denying that you have a past in crime?”
“She’s got you there, dude.” Vinnie appeared next to me with arms full of crockery. “Where are we going to eat?”
“I’ll move the computers to the other side of the table and you can set up on this side.” My computers were arranged in the centre of my long dining room table and were taking up too much space.
“If you could do that now, please. The food is almost done.”
“Nice duds, Vin.” Colin stood up and gave me room to rearrange my workspace.
“Thanks, dude.” Vinnie looked down at the floral apron that he had managed to dig out of a linen cupboard. I vaguely remembered receiving it as a holiday gift from someone. Since I seldom cooked anything that could splatter, I had placed it in the linen cupboard and promptly forgotten about it. The angry flowers on the hard material made me thankful that I had never fully opened that gift. Somehow Vinnie’s size made the flowers look less intimidating.
It took less than five minutes to set the table and be seated with steaming plates of delicious looking fettuccini. The first few mouthfuls were followed by compliments from Colin and me, and beaming smiles from Vinnie. It didn’t take long for Colin to get back on topic. “Art auctions at sea is a tricky business. You see, it is a no man’s land. The admiralty law is in power, but there are a lot of gray areas. No specific country’s laws apply while you are at sea. Mostly, if a forged artwork is sold at sea, or someone is conned at sea, the individual does not have much power. In the last five years there have been many scandals involving art auctions at sea. But still they are mostly swept under the rug. Um, kept quiet.”
“So if a stolen artefact is sold at an art auction at sea, we might never know about it?”
“Exactly.”
“How big is the market for such auctions?”
“Oh, Jen-girl.” Vinnie dabbed daintily at his mouth with a stark white napkin. “Art sold on the black market is in humungous demand. Colin here is the expert, but even a redneck like me knows about this.”
“Your neck isn’t red. Are you referring to the subculture in America of unskilled, uneducated, inbred communities? You can’t possibly come from such a community, Vinnie. You exhibit none of the typical traits. I know. I read up on that socio-economic group once.”
There was a stunned silence around the table. Vinnie glanced at Colin before both of them burst out laughing. I looked at them in confusion.
“My bad, Jen-girl.” Vinnie was still chuckling. “I mean, my mistake. What I meant was that someone as unsophisticated as I also knows about the high demand for stolen art.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“Jenny,” Colin sobered, but the lines around his eyes were still relaxed from the laughter. “We didn’t laugh at you. Your black and white rationality is just so refreshing that it made us laugh. Until I met you, I didn’t realise just how many things we say that mean something completely different.”
“Is that why people laugh at things I say?”
“Possibly.” Colin wanted to say something else, but Vinnie was faster.
“Jen-girl, I would never laugh at you for any other reason. You are the most interesting, intelligent, wonderful woman I’ve ever met. Apart from my mother, of course.”
At that moment I realised that they were feeling guilty for laughing at something I had said. Usually people laughed from shock at something I said and then they would turn away in discomfort. These two men were trying to apologise and make me feel more comfortable with myself. I didn’t know how I felt about it, so I moved back to safer territory.
“I found thirty-three ships singularly owned,” I said. “Twenty-three cargo ships and ten cruise ships. All of these ships are smaller in size. The cruise ships interested me more, so I researched them on the internet. They cater mostly to the affluent. Their cruises offer excessive luxury and are shockingly priced.”
“There certainly are enough billionaires in Russia to afford these cruises,” Vinnie groused.
“But that isn’t the best part.” I was restless with excitement. “All of these companies are owned by the same two entities.”
“No way.” Vinnie leaned back in his chair.
“Who?” Colin asked.
“Kozlevich ZAO owns a ninety-nine percent share of all thirty-three companies. The other one percent belongs to a private holder.”
“That’s strange. Did you find out who this private holder is?”
“Unfortunately not.” It had been a frustrating and fruitless search. “I also don’t know who owns Kozlevich ZAO.”
“What does the ZAO stand for?” Colin asked.
“It is a Russian closed joint-stock company. The shares in Kozlevich are held by a limited number of shareholders.” My brow contracted in a scowl. “I found limited information about the cruise ships Kozlevich owns. Of the ten cruise ships, all of them advertised their art auctions as a coveted activity. These cruise ships are noticeably similar in size, design, routes, offers and marketing.”
“Quite the researcher, aintcha?” Vinnie looked at me with something akin to awe.
“Were any specific paintings listed?” Colin asked.
“I was just going to start looking into it.”
&
nbsp; “This is one of the easiest ways of moving black market art. Have you thought of what happens to the money gained from the auctions? Who holds the coffers?”
“Not yet,” I admitted reluctantly.
Vinnie pushed his chair back. “Would you like anything else to eat or can I clear the table?”
I looked down with surprise at my empty plate and realised that I had just emptied a very large serving of fettuccini. “Vinnie, this was delicious. Thank you so much.”
“My pleasure.” He took my plate and stacked Colin’s on it. “You two can bicker about the case on full stomachs now. I will clean up and find something to do while you two save the art world.”
“Thanks, Vin,” Colin said. “You make a very pretty housewife. Do you want to darn my socks?”
“Fuck off, dude.” Strangely, there was no malice when Vinnie growled at Colin before stomping into the kitchen. I had never witnessed this kind of interplay between males. It had been intensively discussed during my studies and I even knew a few euphemisms related to male bonding rituals. I just didn’t know how to use them appropriately in conversation and I surely didn’t want to be laughed at again. So once again, I returned to a safe topic.
“Shall we check for more connections?” I was already moving to my computers and wasn’t surprised to find Colin sitting down next to me moments later.
“Let’s make that list of artworks sold at these auctions.” Colin’s suggestion was sensible and I returned to all the websites I had been to. When I reached for a pen to write down the art pieces, Colin was ready with my personal laptop. I took a shaky breath before I started naming first the paintings and then the sculptures I had found. Having another person work on my laptop was a first for me.
After an hour, I glanced at his progress and was satisfied that he had listed everything very neatly. I might be able to cope with yet another new development in my life. It took us another two hours before we were satisfied that we had exhausted all possible avenues of finding artworks that had been on offer or had been sold at these auctions. We had gone through promotional brochures, forums, shipping manifests and a few art collector websites that Colin directed me to.
Five hundred and thirty-nine works of art were listed. I was impressed. Any reputable auction house would be delighted to auction off so many valuable pieces. Very few of the artworks were from unknown artists. I stared at the computers, seeing nothing. There was a connection calling to me, but I just couldn’t catch it. I inhaled deeply and reached for a Mozart sonata in my mind. It only took seven bars of mentally written music. “Oh my god!”
I ignored Colin’s impatient questions next to me, grabbed my personal laptop away from him and started hitting the keys. Once I set the search parameters, I leaned back in my chair and waited. Colin was still making unhappy noises next to me, but I couldn’t let him distract me now. I knew something was going to click in my brain. It didn’t take long.
“Look at this!” I leaned closer to the computer screens and suddenly realised that Colin was sitting so close to me that our shoulders were touching. I subtly moved a bit to my right to make more space for him to look at the computer monitors.
“What am I looking at, Jenny?”
“This.” I pointed at the screen with my index finger. “Another connection.”
“Woman, if you don’t tell me right now what I’m looking at, I’m going to pour honey all over the inside of your fridge.”
I swung towards him in horror. “You would never do something so malicious to me.”
“Refuse to tell me what you’ve found and you’ll see just how malicious I can get.”
I started speaking very quickly. “Most of what I read about the art auctions at sea seemed to be very innocent. A few of the forums made me think that the people who attended had no idea that the art sold there might be illegal.”
“Are we sure that all the artworks were illegal?”
“Of course not. I’ve just taken the five hundred and thirty-nine artworks from these auctions that we have listed and searched for connections with the list of miraculously recovered artworks.” My voice was rising with excitement and I pointed at the screen again. “Look. Of the forty-seven miraculously recovered artworks, I have found twenty-nine that were sold at these auctions. Twenty-nine, Colin. Twenty-nine!”
Colin smiled. “We have more lines that we can draw between the boxes.”
I pulled my notepad closer. “First we have to draw another box for the art auctions. This connects to the recovered artworks, which by default connects to the non-existent private investigators. It also connects to the cruise ships, which then connects to Danielle, her boyfriend and Nikolay Chulkov.”
Vinnie’s deep voice started singing from the sitting area. I looked over and saw him lounging in one of my sofas, reading a newspaper. He was singing some song about the hip bone connected to the thigh bone and I frowned at him in irritation. Colin’s chuckle next to me indicated that Vinnie might be making an attempt at humour, so I refrained from asking him to desist his off-key singing.
I looked at my computer screen. A colourful promotional brochure advertised an art auction on a once-in-a-lifetime cruise. People were so gullible. There were not many products in life that could not be bought again. I changed the window to look at another brochure. More of the same promises and breathtaking photos. I changed the window again.
Colin’s body stiffened next to me so suddenly that I anticipated an attack. “What’s wrong?”
“Go back to the ...” He grunted in frustration. “Oh, just let me do it.”
I watched bemused and a bit annoyed as he moved into my personal space and started tapping away on the two computers. Leaning away to give him more space, or rather to give myself more space, I kept a close watch on the computer screens. It would be interesting to see what had caught his attention.
“There!” Colin stared wide-eyed at my work-laptop screen. “I knew it.”
I realised how disagreeable it was to be left out of someone’s line of thought. “Colin, please tell me.”
“I’m willing to bet my freedom that these bastards are using charity organisations to wash their dirty money.” Anger put a strange strain on his voice. How come a thief was getting angry at someone laundering money? My attention was brought back to the screens with him tapping lightly on one. “In these promotional brochures they state that three percent of the money changing hands will be donated to the Foundation for Development of Sustainable Education. What does this mean?”
“What does what mean?”
“Development for Sustainable Education? It seems like one of those silly names chosen to cover a multitude of sins.” He shook his head and changed the screen to show another brochure. On this one, he had to zoom in on the bottom left hand corner to read the fine print. “The same here, although they don’t state the percentage.”
“How on earth did you notice that small writing?” I was in awe.
“I have a very practiced eye, Jenny.” His smile was pure evil. “It’s useful in my job.”
For the first time in my life I actually snorted. His job? The man did not have a job. Or did he? My thoughts were leading me to niggling suspicions about Colin and his so called life of crime. The more time I was spending with him, the more convinced I became that he was not the criminal he had led me to believe.
“Jenny, come back to earth.” Colin touched my wrist lightly to get my attention. “What are you thinking?”
“That you ...” I stopped myself just in time. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay.” He drew out the word with wariness in his voice and around his eyes. “Shall we see how many more charity connections we can find?”
I readily agreed and we divided the search areas. For the next half an hour we worked in silence, he on my work computer and I on the EDA computer. My eyes were growing wider in astonishment.
“What have you got so far?” he asked.
“I went through all
the marketing for these cruises that I could find. At some point each one of the ten cruise ships advertised their three percent donation to this Foundation. What did you find?”
“I did an internet search on the Foundation. It has quite an extensive website with loads of programmes listed.”
“Where are they based?”
“Patience, Jenny.” He smiled. “The charity was founded in Hungary nineteen years ago. At first it was purely a charity focussing on helping the disadvantaged by distributing food and other aid.”
“That was just after communism ended.”
“Yup. When Hungary joined the European Union in 2004, the Foundation immediately applied for EU funding and has expanded its work into the southern parts of Russia. There seem to be quite a few cross border programmes with Russia as one of the partners.”
“See? Russia is not all bad.”
“We’ll just have to agree to disagree on this point. More about this foundation.” He pointed at the computer screen. At least this time he didn’t touch it. I was going to have to clean all my computer monitors tonight. Colin liked to touch everything. “Since it is such an old charity organisation, they have a number of high profile individuals involved. You can look through all their programmes later, but the handful I’ve checked seems to be huge and complex. I’ve noticed that there are quite a few individuals donating large sums to this foundation too.”
“We need to check into all the Foundation’s finances. I’ll get Phillip to ask Manny to do that.” Colin was looking at the gallery of photos from the Foundation’s website. There were photos of gala evenings with beautiful people in beautiful clothes, photos of keys to small houses being given to families, streets being renovated and more along that line. Most photos had descriptions of the events being shown, complete with the names of everyone in the pictures. My attention was caught by one of the photos. The muscles in my back tensed.
“Wait, go back.”
“Which one?”
“The previous gala photo.”
Colin clicked back two photos and looked at me. “Something I should zoom in on?”
“I’m looking at the names of the guests photographed.”
The script wasn’t big enough to read from where we were sitting. Colin moved in closer and started reading out loud. “Selina Kowalska, supermodel; Leon Hofmann, Deputy Chief of Staff, Eurocorps; Sarah Crichton, Head of the EDA; Tomasz Kubanóv, philanthropist; Manfred Millard, Deputy Chief Executive for Strategy, EDA; Janus Kutor, actor.”
I gasped at the mention of Leon and Manny’s names being read out loud.
“Jenny, they’re all here. Manny, the head of the EDA, and this person from Eurocorps. There are simply too many people involved in this thing for it to be a coincidence.”
“I don’t believe in coincidences,” I said absently. My brain was on overdrive. “Leon Hofmann is Manny’s Eurocorps connection.”
“I beg your pardon?” Colin started to rise from his chair, but sat back down.
I repeated myself, much slower this time.
“Yet you don’t think Manny is involved?”
Even though I knew the answer, I still took time to think about it for the umpteenth time. “I’m as sure of him as I am of you.”
My answer brought an annoyed frown to Colin’s brow. “What does that mean?”
“I read you, Colin. Both you and Vinnie. If I were not convinced that you two intended no harm, I would never have allowed either of you in my life.” The rustle of newspaper being moved pulled my eyes to the living area. Vinnie was watching me with stunning intensity. “The same goes for Manny. I don’t know this Leon person, but I’m convinced that Manny is a good man. I might not like him, but I know that his interest in this case is pure.”
A look passed between the two men and I was convinced that it had something to do with Manny and Colin. At a later time I really wanted to find out what past those two shared. For now, my concern was this photo on my computer screen. “I’m meeting with Manny tomorrow and will ask him about this.”
“Forgive me if I don’t trust him at all.” Vinnie sounded truly put out about this.
“Why don’t you trust him, Vinnie?”
“Here it says that it was the annual Foundation ball two years ago. Give me a moment,” Colin interrupted. He gave Vinnie a warning glance, who responded by picking up the newspaper, pretending interest. Colin turned his attention back to the computer and opened another window to start a Google search. I decided to let the topic drop. For now. Vinnie, Colin and Manny’s past could wait.
“From what I can see here,” Colin said, “this gala is quite the event every year. It’s reported in most of the important newspapers. All the major players in the EU community are invited. It used to be held in Budapest until seven years ago. Since then it’s been moved here.”
“Where here?” I asked. I moved closer to look at the screen.
“Here, as in Strasbourg. The last seven years the annual gala event has taken place in La Maison Russie. The address is in a very old, very rich area. Oh, my.” He looked surprised. “Not only do they usually have some popular musician entertain the guests, but they also have auctions. Art auctions.”
“No shit.” The newspaper lay forgotten on Vinnie’s lap. “Doesn’t La Maison Russie mean the Russian House?”
“Yup. Interesting, isn’t it?” Colin answered.
“Go back to the photo.” Something was bothering me. Colin changed screens and waited for further instructions. My mind was racing, trying to get to whatever was nudging my memory. “Read the names again. Only the ones that are not EU related.”
“Selina Kowalska, supermodel; Tomasz Kubanóv, philanthropist; Janus Kutor, actor.” Colin zoomed in on the photo. The supermodel was stunning in her beauty, and the actor was a good looking middle-aged man. Kubanóv’s face was mostly hidden by the supermodel’s hairdo.
“I don’t see anything strange.” My frustrated sigh was drowned by a hard, insistent knock at my front door. The instant change in both men was disconcerting. Vinnie’s face changed to a hardness that in all honesty scared me a little. I was glad he was on my side. Colin’s whole body became quiet, reminding me of a large cat watching its prey.
“Expecting someone, Jenny?” Even his voice was quiet.
“No.” I glanced at my watch and saw that it was just past eleven. We had been working most of the afternoon and night.
“Take her into the back, dude. I’ll get the door.” Vinnie was already walking to the front door.
I was about to offer to see if I knew the visitor, but Colin touched my elbow, lifting me out of my chair. His touch was light, but firm. The fact that I didn’t mind being touched by him consumed my thoughts so much that I was surprised to find myself in my bedroom with Colin, who firmly closed and locked the door.
This new experience truly fascinated me and I was about to question Colin about it when loud voices reached us through the bedroom door. I groaned out loud when I recognized the visitor’s voice and reached for the first lock. This was not going to be fun.
Chapter FOURTEEN