The Black Madonna

by Davis Bunn

  Then it hit her. Danton was angry. At her.

  Danton took her silence as assent. “My company is LEM. LEM stands for Lifestyle Enhancement Managers. We are a luxury concierge service. I assume you have heard of such?”

  “Sorry. That’s a new one.” This guy isn’t just miffed, she thought. He is livid. But why? Had he expected her to fail at the auction? Then why fly her over when she succeeded?

  “My group has clients in eighteen countries. There is nowhere on earth we do not operate. And no service we will not offer, so long as it does not breach the laws of the country in question. Anything from hiring a private yacht on six hours’ notice to handling all financial correspondence for a retired executive. No service is too large or too small. Our clients like to call us wish fulfillers.”

  Storm realized what it was. Raphael Danton liked to hold all the cards.

  Why had he chosen her? Simple. Because she was desperate. Danton did not want her hungry. He wanted her scared. A guy able to offer her this level of luxury was also a guy willing to take it away. He had rescued her from the precipice, and he expected her to grovel. Instead, she was giving him lip.

  Storm said quietly, “I see.”

  “I have no interest in a second-rate oil by Ivan Pokhitonov. But my client does. The same client who insists that the Amethyst Clock both exists and is coming up for sale. Your task is to track this clock down and buy it.”

  “What if I prove the clock is a fake?”

  “Do so with the item in your possession, Ms. Syrrell.”

  “You will collect your commission on a fraud?”

  “I will do what my client requests.”

  Storm nodded slowly. It was all coming clear. The world was full of dealers on the edge who would pawn off a fake as the real thing. What Danton wanted was a dealer whose reputation was beyond question. So that when they hunted down a clock they both knew was a total scam, the seller would treat the offer as real. The question was, of course, why either Danton or his mystery client was so eager to buy an obvious fake.

  “There is an auction in Marbella starting at nine tomorrow morning. I want you on this afternoon’s flight from Heathrow.” Danton pulled an envelope from the file and slid it across the polished table. “Your flight, hotel, and a description of the four items I hereby order you to acquire.”

  STORM HAD NO IDEA WHAT she’d expected to find in Spain. But it certainly would not have been this.

  Of course, she was so zapped out on the six-hour time change and the two flights and the missed night and the luxury and the money, it was entirely possible she was staring at a mirage.

  But she didn’t think so. Over her cell phone she said to Claudia, “Say that again.”

  “Your new banker pal, Gerald Geldorf, called to say there was another deposit of two million dollars this afternoon.” Claudia gave that a beat, then asked, “Where are you?”

  “Marbella.” Storm stared out her window at a Mediterranean sunset. “Or maybe heaven. I’m not sure.”

  “Didn’t you go to London?”

  “That was three limos ago.”

  Her hotel was a former Moorish castle perched on a rock promontory jutting into the Med like a rust-colored tooth. The ancient stone breakwater was rimmed by a road and topped by a pedestrian walkway. The seafront promenade was as packed as the road. Streetlights formed a glowing yellow necklace along the shorefront. Old women dressed in black were accompanied by entire families. Trysting lovers lined the wall. Children raced about waving balloons and ice cream. Their speech and soft footfalls were as musical as the waves frothing the shoreline.

  To her right stretched tourist mania. Hundreds of villas and apartment towers and hotels, all colored in Disneyesque pastels. The structures filled every square inch of level space and crawled up the sloping hillsides. Hundreds of pools sparkled in the sunset like illuminated dominoes.

  Storm said, “I need everything you can dig up on the Amethyst Clock.”

  “Is this some kind of joke?”

  “Yes. Of the two-million-dollar variety. And while you’re checking, let it slip that we’re in the market to make an acquisition.”

  “We’ll be the laughingstock of every dealer in the Western Hemisphere.”

  “And what are we now?”

  “Storm . . .”

  “What?”

  Claudia sighed away her protests. Then she said, “A legal aide at Baxter and Bow called. She has documents that require your attention. She requested your current address.”

  Baxter and Bow was the Palm Beach law firm where Emma Webb had been inserted while keeping surveillance on Storm’s grandfather. Storm read the hotel’s address off the notepad by the phone, wondering why Emma had not called her directly. “Did they say what it was about?”

  “Only that it was a matter of utmost urgency and confidentiality. Is something wrong?”

  Storm hesitated, then replied, “Call them back as soon as we hang up. Tell them I’ll only be here for a couple more days.”

  SIX

  THE MAIN READING ROOM OF the Library of Congress was a cathedral to books and knowledge. The high-ceilinged chamber was rimmed by shelves and stained glass. Emma Webb sat in the only alcove where cell phones were permitted. She told Tip MacFarland, “Storm was right. This Amethyst Clock business is bogus from start to finish.”

  “Given the interest shown by the Langley brigade, I’m not certain we should be talking about this on an open line.”

  “And I’m telling you there is nothing for them to find.” Emma checked her notes. “Three hundred years ago, the best clocks in the world were made in London and were called chronometers. For two centuries, ships’ captains used them to calculate their latitudinal position. The best cost as much as a palace and were often encased in gold and precious stones. One of them came up recently for auction at Christie’s and sold for eleven million dollars.”

  “Doesn’t sound bogus to me.”

  “Here’s where we take a ninety-degree turn from reality. In the seventeen hundreds, Catherine the Great asked her cousin the king of England to let her send a royal clockmaker to study with London’s finest chronographer. This was a very big deal. Possession of an accurate chronograph meant the difference between a ship arriving at its destination and disaster. I’ve read reports of pirates attacking British ships when they were empty and the ship’s crew was on easy duty, just to take their clock. Their manufacture took as much as two years and was tied into alchemy and mysticism. The king refused the request, of course. Then Catherine threatened to shut England out of the Siberian fur trade. That is how vital they considered the issue.”

  “So where does the myth fit in?”

  “Because of what is claimed to have happened next. The clockmaker Catherine sent studied with the chronographer in London for nine years. During this time he managed to complete the clock Catherine wanted. And then he died.”

  “In London?”

  “Right. He never made it back. But his son did. Not to Russia, however. See, this clockmaker wasn’t Russian at all. He was Polish. And while he served the Empress Catherine, his son was a fierce Polish patriot.” She stopped. “I need to give you a little history lesson. It explains where this myth came from.”

  “Fire away.”

  “Catherine is called ‘Great’ because she almost doubled Russia’s size. Her conquests included a deal with the Prussians and Austro-Hungarians to split Poland into three parts and swallow the country whole. But Poland did not rest easy in her chains. There was a constant struggle by insurgents, which drew strength from the Polish Catholic Church. The Polish people paid a huge toll in horrible persecution for their loyalty to a country that didn’t exist anymore. The Russian rulers were infamous for their cruelty.”

  “Where does the legend fit in?”

  “This clockmaker’s son arrived in Kraków and took the chronograph intended for Catherine to some monk, a man revered as a saint even while he was still alive. And let me tell you, this chronograph
was supposed to have really been something.”

  “Fit for an empress.”

  “The clockmaker had hollowed out a solid block of amethyst, the largest stone of its kind ever found up to that point. He spent the last three years of his life creating the works, then in his final weeks he created a series of gold figurines to adorn the case.”

  “So the son takes the clock to this monk.”

  “Right. And the monk blesses the clock.” Emma paused.

  “And?”

  “According to legend, this blessing granted the clock the power to stop time.”

  “Get out.”

  “I’m just telling you what I’ve found. Long as the owner is in the same room as the clock, time stands still.”

  Tip gave that a beat, then said, “So this clock is blessed by a monk, acquires magical time-stopping powers, and then it vanishes. Three hundred years later, the CIA invades our turf because your friend is told to hunt it down.”

  “Pretty much.”

  “Does that make sense to you?”

  “Not a bit.”

  “Okay. I guess we can assume that it’s not actually the clock they’re after. Which means your friend is probably about to face some serious heat. Where is she now?”

  “Marbella, Spain.”

  “You know what to do. MacFarland out.”

  THERE WERE CERTAIN DAYS EVERY spring when Washington held a solid grip on beauty. The Mall felt like the center of the universe, a perfect strip of green lawn and reflecting pool and minty trees and buildings that proclaimed the hopes of a great nation. Even the clouds drifted in proper formation through a sky of colonial blue. There were a few such days in April, more in May, and then they tapered off as the humid heat of June took hold.

  Emma descended the Library of Congress steps until she stood in the brilliant sunlight. Then she pretended to check her watch. She had another hour before she headed for Dulles to catch her flight to Spain. Emma wanted to stretch out her arms and do a little twirl, like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music. But she was a federal agent, and federal agents didn’t just dance down the stone steps of a federal building. Not even when she was green-lighted to trade the humdrum bureaucratic world for a trip to the Costa del Sol.

  Emma pulled out her phone and checked to see if Harry Bennett had called her back in the past ninety seconds. Emma and Harry had met while searching for Sean Syrrell’s killers. She was still working on precisely what best defined their relationship. The more intense her feelings became, the stronger grew her midnight fears. Even so, knowing this trip would bring her four thousand miles closer to Harry was yet another reason to break into song. Emma made do by lifting her face to the sun and breathing until her chest threatened to explode.

  Then she spotted the SUVs pulling up to the curb.

  The two vehicles were standard federal bombproof issue. Black, chunky, darkened windows. A man in a gray suit rose from the first vehicle and scoped the outer perimeter. A guard emerged from the second vehicle and opened the rear door. Pedestrians stopped and gawked, hoping someone important would appear. Instead, a priest rose to his feet and solemnly thanked the guard. The pedestrians returned to city rhythms, walking fast, talking faster.

  The first thing Emma noticed about the priest was how anxious he looked. The second was that he appeared to be taking aim straight for her.

  He climbed the stairs and asked, “Agent Emma Webb?”

  “Who wants to know?” It was no proper way to greet a foreign emissary, which the cleric probably was, given his ride. But there was something about the way he stood, slightly canted as though carrying a severe pain, that promised to wreck her day.

  “I am Father Gregor. I serve at the Vatican’s consulate.”

  Polish was her first guess. But she would have believed Belarusan or Ukrainian. A land that taught men the grace of formality, even their priests. A language so complex that fluency in another tongue never erased the verbal creases. “Since when does a Vatican staffer rate bulletproof transport and security details?”

  “The vehicles belong to an ally.” The brilliant sunlight only heightened the man’s evident worry. He was slender, a decade beyond middle age, and his hand shook slightly as he gestured toward where security still held the door. “Please, madame. Would you be so good as to grant me a few moments of your time?”

  The agent holding the rear door scoped her once, a two-second blast, then returned to checking the street. The other man never even glanced her way. They were tall and slender and taut and olive-skinned. Emma started to get in Father Gregor’s face, demanding to know who pulled the strings here. But the priest was already scuttling around to the opposite door, and the agent on her side had moved in as though to block incoming fire with his own body, pressing with wordless efficiency for Emma to move faster still. The instant she settled into the seat, the two cars pulled away in smooth tandem. Emma snapped, “Tell your driver to pull over.”

  “Madame, we feel it would perhaps be better if we continued—”

  “First you tell me what this is about. Either that or you let me out at the next light.”

  The leather seat squeaked as the priest shifted around, clearly unable to find a proper way to deliver his message. “Agent Webb, we are taking you home.”

  The car’s interior was compressed by the steel cage and the reinforced windows. Sound was condensed, voices flattened. Emma always felt as though she shared the air conditioner’s struggle to find a decent breath.

  One of the agents spoke into his wrist mike, saying the only word of Hebrew that Emma knew, “Beseder.” Which meant okay.

  Emma knew instantly the day was anything but. She fought for the air to ask, “Is it Harry?”

  The priest gave a fractional nod. “Madame, I regret to inform you that Harry Bennett is dead.”

  “That can’t be.”

  “It should not be, I agree. But it is.”

  “Harry was working on a dig. He told me he was perfectly safe.”

  “So the Israeli authorities assumed, Ms. Webb.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am afraid so.”

  “How? I mean, how did . . .”

  “An incendiary device.”

  Emma did not realize she was weeping until the priest pulled a clean handkerchief from his pocket and passed it over. “Harry was killed by a bomb? On a dig?”

  “No, madame. In Hebron.”

  The priest related what he knew, which was not much. Emma tried to listen, but her senses had become separated from the outside world. Not even time held her any longer, for one moment they were riding along the Mall and the next they were parked beneath the springtime trees flanking her Georgetown apartment.

  As soon as the car halted, the agent in the passenger seat opened his door and stepped out and waited for a man from the other vehicle to walk over and settle in. The newcomer swiveled in his seat so that he faced her as straight as he could and said, “Agent Webb, I wonder if you perhaps recall our last meeting.”

  Trying to see the man clearly was like looking through a translucent screen. She fought for enough air to say, “No.”

  “Rubin Kleinmann. I had the honor of serving as Israeli ambassador to the United States. I have handed over the responsibility to my successor and am preparing to return to my country next week.”

  “Th-the church,” she recalled, “Sean’s funeral.”

  “The funeral of my dear friend. Just so. May I say, Agent Webb, how deeply sorry I am for your loss.”

  “You’re certain?” Her swallow was a battleground trek. “Harry is . . .”

  “There is no doubt. I am sorry. Agent Webb, you must please forgive me for speaking with you at such a distressing time. But the matter is most pressing. When did you last have communication with Mr. Bennett?”

  She applied the now drenched handkerchief to her eyes. “Three days ago. Harry said something about driving to Hebron to check out a buy.”

  “Mr. Bennett was assisting us in tracking d
own counterfeiters of ancient artifacts operating inside the West Bank. Did he tell you of this?”

  “H-he said there was no danger.”

  “Agent Webb, please, this is crucial. Did Harry say anything about who he was planning to meet?”

  “Just that he thought he had found the source.”

  “Did he mention Russians?”

  “What?”

  “Did Mr. Bennett make any suggestion that Russians were involved in this trade? In the past they were heavily involved in the Palestinian insurrections; of course you know that.”

  “But all that stopped years ago.”

  “Yes. So we assumed as well.”

  “I-I don’t understand. You’re saying Harry got caught in West Bank crossfire?”

  The priest spoke with the professional manner of one who had often dealt with the recently bereaved. “We have heard through sources that Harry Bennett was the target.”

  “Harry had nothing to do with Russians.”

  The former ambassador said, “When we first heard this rumor, we discounted it as well. Hebron has been the flashpoint for several intifadas. We assumed Mr. Bennett was simply the unintended victim of internecine conflict. But our sources have now confirmed what the Vatican heard. We have checked very thoroughly. The attackers used a bomb in an attempt to mask their operations. And the Russians were most definitely involved.”

  But her mind could not get past the possibility that this was all some grotesque mistake. “Harry has more lives than a dozen cats. Maybe he escaped.”

  “I regret to tell you that we have received absolute confirmation of his demise.” The ambassador paused dutifully and then continued. “Agent Webb, please try to understand what has happened. We hired Harry Bennett thinking that the worst he might find was a counterfeiting organization that funneled money to insurgents. Instead, he seems to have uncovered an attempt by the Russians to reinsert themselves into our region. We know they have recently made overtures to Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon. But this is the first time we’ve found evidence of their operations inside the West Bank.”

  The priest said, “What is confusing to us, Agent Webb, is that the Palestinians themselves brought us this news. We have numerous projects within the community of Palestinian Christians, you see. An ally in Hebron came to our mission and reported that the Russians had been behind this. Why, our source did not know. But it was the Russians and their target was Mr. Bennett.”