The Monuments Men Murders: The Art of Murder 4

by Josh Lanyon

  Jason shook his hand. “It’s great to finally meet you, Mr. de Haan. You’ve done incredible work on this case.” He meant that. He had the greatest respect for de Haan despite the can of worms de Haan’s investigation had opened up for him personally.

  He asked about de Haan’s trip as they managed to squeeze in at the lunch counter.

  Once they got the niceties out of the way, de Haan said, “Mr. Thompson is still refusing to speak to me. He says I must speak to Quilletta.”

  Quilletta McCoy was Bert’s sister. There was a great-niece as well, but Bert and Quilletta were Roy Thompson’s primary heirs. To them had gone all Roy’s worldly possessions, including his spoils of war. In that idiosyncratic cache of stolen art and artifacts was the tantalizing possibility of a missing legendary Vermeer painting known as A Gentleman Washing His Hands in a Perspectival Room with Figures, Artful and Rare, last listed in a Dutch auction catalog in 1696.

  The possibility of the Vermeer was what most excited—and worried—Jason. A rediscovered Vermeer was always going to attract a huge amount of media attention. And attention of any kind was the last thing he wanted. For a lot of reasons.

  “Don’t worry, we’ll speak to Quilletta,” Jason said. “And Thompson is sure as hell going to speak to me.”

  “I like your certainty, Agent West.”

  Jason shrugged. He had experience in convincing people it was in their best interests to talk to him.

  “Not everyone in your government has been so cooperative.”

  No surprise there.

  Jason said, “Regardless, there’s no excuse for what Captain Thompson did—it reflects on his unit and the entire US occupying force.”

  “This is how I view it. The man was a thief. His is a family of thieves.”

  Well… It wasn’t quite that simple. Thompson’s heirs believed they had a legitimate and legal claim to items that had been in their family for over seventy years. And they weren’t alone in thinking that.

  Jason said, “At least Captain Thompson was there, at least he served. He’d seen combat. He’d seen…maybe too much. His motives could have been mixed. His family…they don’t necessarily understand that they’re attempting to hang on to stolen art.”

  “Not just stolen art—the cultural treasures of another country!”

  True. But Jason wished de Haan could be a little less passionate about it. Or at least keep his voice down.

  According to de Haan’s painstaking research at the National Archives in Maryland, in 1945, Captain Roy Thompson had been part of the US occupying forces in the southwest region of Bavaria, where a treasure trove of art and cultural artifacts stolen by the Nazis had been discovered in the tunnels beneath a castle.

  Jason didn’t doubt de Haan’s research—or deductions.

  The problem he had was with Captain Thompson’s claim that he had been allowed to remove the items by a commanding officer, one Emerson Harley.

  Problematic because Harley had been one of the legendary Monuments Men, whose mission was the “Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas.” In fact, Harley had been Deputy Chief of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program.

  Doubly problematic because Harley was Jason’s grandfather.

  Not just his grandfather, but his boyhood idol. It was because of Emerson Harley’s courageous efforts to preserve and protect the world’s cultural heritage that Jason had taken his love of art and passion for history and joined the FBI’s Art Crime Team.

  Hearing that Harley had not only turned a blind eye to what amounted to theft and looting, but had possibly been complicit was horrifying.

  Not that Jason believed it. The idea was preposterous. But that didn’t mean Grandpa Harley—or at least his good name—was unassailable. If mud was thrown, some of it would stick. That was inevitable, unless the accusations were nullified before they could ever be cast.

  Emerson Harley had passed away four years ago and could not defend his name. Thompson had died one year ago and was also unavailable for questioning. Jason’s only potential witnesses were the remaining Thompson family members. And regarding the provenance of the stolen art, the Thompsons currently denied having the items in question in their possession—while simultaneously trying to establish their legal claim to those “liberated” pieces they had already tried to sell.

  “I understand. We’re going to do everything we can to fix this.”

  De Haan smiled faintly. “You’re still young enough to be idealistic, Agent West.”

  Jason smiled too. “You seem pretty idealistic yourself, Mr. de Haan. I’m sure plenty of people told you at the start of your search that you were never going to find these pieces.”

  “That is more true than you are aware.”

  De Haan did not know of Jason’s personal connection to the case. No one did. No one could, because if his personal connection was discovered, Jason would be off the investigation in nothing flat and it would be handed over to another agent. An agent who might be willing to accept how things first appeared on paper as fact, an agent who wouldn’t be willing to keep digging and digging, because he—or she—hadn’t had the advantage of actually knowing Emerson Harley.

  In Jason’s opinion, his lack of objectivity was a plus because he knew going in that there was no chance in hell his grandfather had turned a blind eye, let alone condoned, the theft of the world’s cultural treasures. He knew there was more to the story. Knew he had to keep digging to get to the truth.

  “You’ve already done the hard part,” Jason said. “Now it’s a matter of sifting through the conflicting accounts.”

  J.J. joined them. He patted his pocket, his smile smug. “Ready to roll?”

  Jason shook his head, said, “This is my partner, Special Agent Russell. Special Agent Russell, meet Hans de Haan, the art historian and private investigator hired by the Aaldenberg van Apeldoorn Museum.”

  He was relieved when Russell said, “Right. I read your notes on the case.” Not something you could ever take for granted with Russell, who was counting the minutes until he was reassigned.

  They shook hands, and Jason said to de Haan, “Do you want to follow us out to the ranch?”

  De Haan assented, and they left the restaurant together.

  As J.J. started the rental sedan’s engine, he announced over the blast of air conditioning, “I just had breakfast with the girl I’m going to marry.”

  “The girl?” Jason repeated. “Did you notice this girl lives a thousand miles away from you?”

  “Yes. That’s not going to be a problem. She’s got to be dying to get out of Siberia.”

  “Oh boy,” Jason murmured, programming the car’s GPS.

  “Hey, your pal Kennedy lives double that, and I don’t see you complaining.”

  “I’m not the complaining type.”

  J.J. hooted with laughter and put the car into drive.

  Big Sky Guest Ranch offered day trips to nearby Yellowstone National Park, an abundance of hiking trails, sparkling mountain streams for fishing, and whitewater rafting excursions on the Yellowstone River.

  “The absolute best in Western hospitality,” the chirpy redhead manning the front desk assured the three of them. She wore a short black denim skirt, a gray T-shirt with black stars, and a brass replica sheriff’s badge, which read: Big Sky Deputy.

  Jason told her it all sounded wonderful. He and J.J. offered their own IDs, and Jason asked to speak to Bert Thompson.

  The redhead’s face fell, she buzzed Thompson, informed him the FBI was in the lobby, and then listened to him rant, casting apologetic looks at Jason and J.J. as she tried to muffle the speaker.

  “…be damned…can go to hell…my tax dollars…”

  De Haan, hovering impatiently behind them, muttered, “See? They will whitewall us.”

  Jason winked at him, said gravely to the receptionist, “Make sure Mr. Thompson understands we’re perfectly happy to wait here until it’s convenient for him to speak with us.�
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  She cleared her throat, conveyed the message, and winced at the response.

  “He’s, um, under a lot of stress,” she whispered to Jason.

  Jason turned to J.J. “He’s under a lot of stress.”

  “That’s a shame. Do you have the Wi-Fi password?” J.J. asked her. “We might as well file some reports while we wait in your lobby.”

  “Great idea,” Jason said. “I need to phone my contact at the Department of Health and Human Services.”

  Two minutes and twenty-eight seconds later, the Big Sky Trail Boss himself slammed out of an office down a long hallway and strode into the knotty-pine lobby.

  “What part of no comment do you fellows not understand?” he demanded.

  Jason had seen several photos of Roy Thompson, and his nephew resembled him—same short dark hair and keen dark eyes—though he was shorter, stockier, and quite a bit grayer than the Roy of the WWII photographs.

  “The part where you confuse federal agents with the members of the press,” Jason replied.

  Thompson threw an anguished look at the circle of guests playing cards at a table in the lobby living room. “Do you mind taking this outside?”

  “Not at all. After you,” Jason said.

  They followed Thompson out onto the broad wooden porch that wrapped around the building.

  Thompson said to Jason, “I told you people you need to talk to Quilletta. I don’t know what more you want from me. I don’t know anything about stolen art.”

  “And yet it’s your name listed right along with hers as co-defendant in the lawsuit filed by the Aaldenberg van Apeldoorn Museum.”

  Thompson stuck his chest out. “That lawsuit doesn’t mean anything. A foreign museum can’t sue an American citizen.”

  “Au contraire, pardner,” Jason said. “Not to mention the fact that Uncle Sam is liable to get into the act very soon if somebody named Thompson doesn’t start demonstrating willingness to cooperate.”

  J.J. put in helpfully, “My partner is talking about a potential indictment for ‘conspiring to receive, possess, conceal, store, barter, sell, and dispose of stolen goods, and for receiving, possessing, concealing, storing, bartering, selling, and disposing of stolen goods.’”

  “There’s also the possibility of an IRS investigation.”

  “True,” J.J. said.

  De Haan broke in. “It’s too late to pretend you are acting in good faith when you ended off negotiations with the museum for the van Eyck in order to sell to a private collector!”

  Jason put his hand on de Haan’s arm. He could feel the older man shaking with agitation. This was personal for de Haan. He had spent years tracking down the missing pieces to that castle in Bavaria, and then more years following the trail of each and every US soldier tasked with protecting the recovered treasure. To be confronted with this final, outrageous obstacle was liable to be his breaking point.

  “This is blackmail,” Thompson said. “You can’t force me to answer your questions, federal agents or not.”

  “No. This is giving you one final chance to cooperate before we reach the point of no return,” Jason said. “Nobody wants a big, messy, and very expensive lawsuit, including the US government.”

  “Don’t give me that,” Thompson said. “You people live for your lawsuits. Well, I’ll tell you this for free. If Uncle Roy did take some souvenirs, it was just what everybody else was doing.”

  Proving that he did occasionally pay attention to Jason, J.J. said, “This isn’t about a flag or a German helmet or a confiscated Lugar. These are priceless works of art that belong to everybody.”

  “Yes, everybody,” Thompson said hotly. “Including us. You know what I don’t understand? Why the US government would be trying so goddamned hard to give those things back to the country who started the war in the first place!”

  “S-s-started the war!” de Haan began to stutter in outrage.

  Jason had heard this line of argument before. He said patiently, “The van Eyck was originally stolen from a cathedral in Belgium. Most of the paintings and jewelry were looted by the Nazis from museums or Jewish families in the Netherlands. The Belgian and Dutch people have a right—a legal and moral right—to reclaim their property.”

  “They didn’t rescue the property—the alleged property. American soldiers like my uncle did. The damned Dutch surrendered after one day.”

  De Haan turned purple and then white. Behind the spectacles, his mild eyes blazed into fury. “Two hundred thousand people in the Netherlands died—”

  “Okay, wait a minute.” Jason gave de Haan a warning look. “This isn’t up for debate. Mr. Thompson, you can refuse to answer our questions, but the investigation will continue. Your unwillingness to cooperate will be noted and used against you—”

  Thompson was not listening to him. Was not even looking at him. He stared past them. “What the hell?” he muttered.

  Jason automatically glanced over his shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ,” Thompson exclaimed, striding to the edge of the porch. “Is he out of his goddamned mind?”

  A disreputable-looking white pickup was barreling down the dirt road toward the ranch. Dust flew up in a cloud around the bouncing vehicle. A man in a red shirt and a cowboy hat hung halfway out the passenger-side window, holding what appeared to be an automatic rifle.

  Jason reached for his weapon as J.J. said, “Is that what I fucking think it is?”

  Yes, it fucking was.

  As the white truck hurtled beneath the towering timber ranch gate entry sign, the cowboy in the truck opened fire.

  Chapter Three

  Instinct—and training—kicked in.

  “Get down!” Jason knocked de Haan to the floor of the porch, aware of J.J. leaping left.

  Bullets laced across the log cabin exterior, shattering glass and sending white wood chips and the stuffing from the cushions on chairs flying. From inside the building came screams and shouts of terror.

  The automatic gunfire sent Jason’s heart thundering in his chest, and blood roared in his ears. For a vital second or two, black edged across the corners of his vision. He desperately, desperately, did not want to be shot again.

  “Move,” he urged de Haan, blindly pushing him to crawl to the end of the porch. De Haan didn’t budge, his terrified gaze frozen on the swift-approaching truck. Jason spared a sideways look and saw the ranch house door slam behind Thompson. J.J., like him, was flattened to the planks of the porch, taking aim at the ever-larger target.

  They were trained to handle this, but the surge of adrenaline was sickening. In a flash, Jason’s fine muscle control was gone, his vision narrowed down to pinpoints: the sunlight glinting off the shooter’s belt buckle, the tactical glasses the driver wore, the music blasting from inside the cab. Music?

  Beneath the tuttut-tuttut-tuttut of automatic gunfire, “Old Town Road” floated on the dry, dusty breeze.

  “Hans, move.” Jason steadied his Glock and fired at the truck’s right tire.

  The tire went with a bang, the truck lurched, veered right, and the driver lost control. As the vehicle began to spin out, the shooter lost his balance and swung his assault rifle skyward, still firing. Bullets ripped through roof of the porch and the overhanging tree branches. The air smelled acrid, a sulfuric mix of engine oil and propellant and burnt wood.

  Everything was happening at light speed, and yet somehow at the same time, in slow mo. Jason could hear J.J. swearing, hear de Haan praying, hear the people inside the building screaming and crying, hear his own quick, shallow breaths—which he immediately tried to slow and deepen. He took aim again.

  J.J. fired and the shooter flew back, flung forward, and fell out of the careening truck. He hit the ground like a rag doll. The truck crashed into a tree and sent a wooden swing flying across the yard. Jason scrambled up, jumped over the railing, and ran toward the truck as the driver’s door opened.

  “Out of the vehicle with your hands on your head. Do it now!”

 
The driver, blood streaming down his face, locked his hands behind his head, staggered out from behind the door, knelt—and then pitched forward in a face-plant.

  “Can’t nobody tell me nothin’…” repeated the voice on the radio.

  Jason reached the driver, weapon trained on the man’s inert form, ready to shoot if the asshole so much as twitched. He planted his knee in the guy’s back, holstered his weapon, yanked one limp arm back and cuffed him, cuffed his other wrist, and rolled the driver over.

  He was out cold.

  He was also young. Early twenties. Wispy blond hair and an even wispier attempt at a beard.

  Jesus Christ. Was this the Montana version of a drive-by?

  “Russell?” he yelled.

  “This fucker’s dead,” Russell shouted back. Like Jason, he sounded out of breath and pumped up on adrenaline.

  “Hans?”

  No answer.

  Jason looked back in alarm.

  Hans waved to him from the porch, clambered unsteadily to his feet. He dropped into one of the bullet-riddled chairs and put his face in his hands.

  The door to the main ranch house flew open, and a mob of people poured out, everyone shouting and talking at once.

  The Park County Sheriff’s Office arrived before the FBI, but not by much. First on-scene was Bozwin Police Chief Amos Sandford.

  Jason was unclear why the Bozwin chief of police had been summoned by Bert Thompson—Big Sky Guest Ranch was not even in the same county—but he was doing his best to cooperate.

  Sandford reminded him a bit of a disgruntled polar bear. He was a big man. Tall, broad, and heavy. Not fat—not yet—but getting there. He had eyes the color of dirty ice and a head of longish silvery-white hair that furthered the impression of a dangerous arctic animal woken too early from hibernation.

  He had been in the process of chewing out Jason and J.J. when the procession of government cars started down the long dirt road, and the sight of that cavalcade of shiny G-rides just made him louder and angrier.

  “I want to know what the hell the FBI is doing traipsing around in my backyard without so much as a by-your-leave.”