The Painted Messiah

by Craig Smith

  'I thought I was going to lose you,' she whispered.

  'Cramps,' he said.

  'They don't ask how, they just ask how far down. Are you good now?'

  'I'm good.'

  'Team Two, we are in place. Repeat. We are in place.'

  The Palace Hotel, Lucerne

  From the rooftop of the Palace Hotel Sir Julian Corbeau pulled his gaze from the explosion of colour in the sky over Lucerne and fixed his eyes upon the Contessa Claudia de Medici, a slender, middle aged woman standing close to the parapet. She had been in the country almost two decades without once venturing out to a social gathering of this sort. Corbeau wondered why she had finally relented. It wasn't a fondness for fireworks, he was sure of that. The bankers never failed to invite her, of course, but it was only a matter of form.

  Her sole extravagance was her annual party for a hundred or so of Switzerland's social elite. Everyone Corbeau knew attended it. It was, they liked to say, the party of the year - littered with luminaries from around the world. When they had begun, Corbeau's troubles in America had created something of a scandal, and that may have been the reason she had overlooked him, but more recently, as America-bashing had become something more than just posturing, Julian Corbeau had enjoyed a burgeoning reputation in Europe. To be positively vain about it, Sir Julian was fashionable again. And still she had not extended an invitation.

  He could not, of course, approach her directly like some blushing schoolboy anxious for her attention. He would not give her the satisfaction. He mingled with others. He talked about politics and society, as one does. He even talked briefly about a business venture with a French concern. Eventually, the contessa's name came up. The famous parties she threw. Hadn't he been to one of them? No, Corbeau answered. In fact, he said, he had been under the impression she was Jewish.

  A bit of surprise at this. Not at all!

  'My mistake,' Corbeau answered with a slight smile, noticing with satisfaction the sudden doubt in the other's face.

  'Worth I don't know how many million,' the gentleman offered, as if that might make up for failings of the blood.

  'Certainly not the de Medici family?'

  'Married a poor cousin, I believe.' A careful, thoughtful sip of champagne. 'Got a title for her troubles, as I understand it. I believe she brought the money into the marriage, however.'

  'Divorced, then?'

  'I really don't know. She's very mysterious about her private life. I think he might have died, come to think of it.'

  'Any idea how she came by her money?'

  'I'm not sure, but I'll vouch for this, she has plenty of it.'

  As the man who was speaking to him at the moment

  happened to be an officer in one of Switzerland's leading banks, Corbeau was quite sure of the contessa's bona fides. In fact, he had rarely seen such passion in a Swiss banker's eyes.

  'And yet one never sees her,' Corbeau offered, as if baffled by her failure to embrace Swiss society.

  'Rarely, I'd say. Shy of publicity mostly. When she accepted this evening, she wanted assurances there would be no cameras.'

  'I wonder why.'

  'If you can believe it, I think she is a genuinely humble person.'

  'I was under the impression that humility had gone out of style.'

  The banker laughed politely. 'An extraordinary woman, by all accounts. May I introduce you?'

  She had lovely eyes, the contessa, so much so that one hardly noticed she refused to extend her hand. 'I've heard a great deal about you,' she said in French, though she was not French. The dusky skin and cool dark eyes intimated a far older race. She wore an exquisite ruby at her neck in a setting that looked to be a skilful imitation of jewellery from the Roman Empire, if not an original. Instead of a wedding band the Contessa de Medici wore an extraordinary antique cameo ring. It depicted two lovers holding hands. It might have been a Baroque fantasy of Arcadia, worth how many hundreds of thousands, one could only guess, but Corbeau was inclined to believe it was an original, worth closer to a million.

  Corbeau's response to her courtesy was humorously self-effacing, a skill he had learned only with great difficulty. 'One should never listen to rumours. They are always so painfully accurate.'

  'Rumours are all I can afford. You see, my work keeps me too busy to get out much.'

  'You mustn't be a slave to your work. Life is to be lived!'

  'I'm a slave to my passion, Sir Julian, which is scholarship.'

  'The contessa is an author of some repute,' the banker remarked in a well-schooled French that sounded like a pale imitation compared to the contessa's.

  'The Forgotten Jerusalem,' Corbeau answered, using the English title. 'I believe it is the finest book I've ever read on the Roman occupation in the first century.'

  'Have you read a great deal of history, Sir Julian?'

  'Not much of value, I'm afraid, but more than most people, I'm sure. Books happen to be my passion. Of course, I still manage to find time for the occasional evening with friends, so perhaps my passion is not as all-consuming as it ought to be.'

  The banker, playing his part, explained that Corbeau possessed what was widely regarded as the finest private collection of occult literature in all of Europe.

  With a faint smile to soften her obvious distaste for him, she asked, 'Are you a magician, then?'

  It was a question Julian Corbeau generally despised. The contessa, however, seemed to understand what she was asking. Certainly she was a woman who knew the difference between parlour tricks and the work of a true magus.

  'I don't believe in nonsense.'

  'Perhaps I should have said adept.'

  'That's another matter altogether. Unfortunately, I'm nothing more than an amateur. I enjoy reading about men and women with true occult powers, but that is my limit. I'm not sure what I would command of a spirit if I could in fact conjure one!'

  'And I was under the impression that you are a man who knows exactly what he wants. You'll excuse me?'

  'Extraordinary woman,' the banker observed as the contessa walked away.

  Flushing angrily, Corbeau did not bother answering the fool. Extraordinary, she was, but there was something more to her than that. Corbeau knew hundreds of extraordinary people. It was his business to know extraordinary people! This one was different. This one had no fear of him.

  Lake Lucerne

  They put on their gloves as they waited for the second team to respond. For a moment there was no answer, and Kate repeated herself a third time. 'Team One in place. Do you read?'

  An old man's voice answered. 'Almost there, Girl.' His voice came again after a beat. 'On target!'

  Kate and Ethan began moving. A moment before they came off the rock and took hold of the retaining wall, floodlights washed over the entire property. A long wailing siren broke the silence. This was followed by several sharp blasts of a horn and a trill of electronic bleats. Over his headset Ethan heard a woman cursing in a rustic German dialect.

  'Who put the gate in the middle of the road?'

  The man soothed her, 'We made a wrong turn, sweetheart!'

  They were talking loudly, their windows rolled down so their slurring voices might carry to the guardhouse. 'I did not make a wrong turn!' the woman answered angrily. 'Someone put a gate in the road!' It was a well rehearsed script, two drunken Austrian tourists on a summer evening with their fender pushed against the front gate of a millionaire's estate and making it clear that the accident was entirely the property owner's fault. Meanwhile Kate and Ethan scrambled off the face of the cliff and moved into the shadows to each side of the property.

  They crouched in a shooter's tripod, one knee touching the earth, their dart rifles drawn and ready. For a moment nothing happened, and they were able to study the property for the first time up close. The house looked like a castle holding the high ground, but that was something of an illusion. Only the tower on the lakeside was actually medieval in its design. The house, though over a century old, was built
for comfort. A large terrace opened off several glass doors at the ground level. Above this was a columned balcony offering yet another view to the lake. The property was nicely sheltered to either side by a small forest. It was secured by high stone walls, except at the back of the property where a vertical face of rock reached down to the lake and prohibited all but the most intrepid trespassers.

  The lawn stretched out perhaps seventy yards from the house to the edge of the cliff. At the centre of it was a small concrete helicopter pad. Otherwise the area was open and green, giving a view to the lake and mountains beyond. Along each wall a gardener had indulged himself some years ago by planting numerous flowering shrubs and low, well-trimmed fruit trees. These presently kept the area closest to the wall in virtual darkness even when the security lights were shining and provided a natural screen against anyone looking out from within the house or monitoring the property with cameras.

  Chances were no one was looking at the back of the property. Kate had created too much interest with her scripted drama at the front gate. In his headset Ethan could hear two car doors opening and closing. The siren stopped abruptly. The lights remained on. 'I suppose you're going to stand there in your fancy uniform and say this is my fault!' The old woman was talking to a single guard.

  They knew the owner of the estate was in town, a VIP guest at the Palace Hotel's rooftop party during the city's annual fireworks. If all went well, the five men assigned to his personal security would be with him. Two guards remained at the estate. With one at the driveway, the second would be in contact with the police, hopefully informing them that at the moment there appeared to be no reason for assistance.

  That left the two dogs for Kate and Ethan. They had come out of their kennels with the first alarm. Like the guards, they were focused on the situation at the front gate. When Kate blew her silent whistle, they came to a slight rise of land and looked anxiously for the source of the whistle. They were not inclined to leave the excitement at the front for less likely prospects here, but they were curious.

  'Dogs are coming,' Kate whispered. Ethan could not hear the sound, but both dogs did. They began running at the same instant, bounding almost playfully at first, not quite sure where to go. When they had covered about half the distance between the house and Kate, they seemed to locate her. As soon as they did, they flattened down in full attack. Ethan blew his whistle, and the dog closest to him changed course without breaking stride. Dropping his gun sights into the dog's dark mass, Ethan squeezed the trigger. The Doberman flinched, tumbled, and then somehow got to its feet again its hind legs kicking wildly as it struggled to continue the attack.

  Ethan dropped the dart rifle and pulled his knife as the animal lunged, but the drug had dulled its reactions. It fell short of him with a grunt and slid through the wet grass. The dog kicked once trying to get up, then groaned like a man in his bed and fell back for a long sleep. Ethan looked across at Kate. She was already pulling her dog by the skin of its neck into the thick foliage. Putting his knife back into its sheath, Ethan dragged his dog into the shadows, dropped his goggles into place, and started along the wall toward the house. Meanwhile the drama at the front gate continued. They wanted to see the owner. They weren't leaving until this was settled!

  When he was nearly to the house, Ethan heard Kate. 'Ready, Boy?'

  'Ready, Girl.' They cut across the lawn toward the terrace from either wall. A long loop of climbing rope hung over Kate's shoulder like a bandolier. They met under the house. Kate slowed her pace as she stepped first on Ethan's thigh, then his shoulder. Letting her momentum carry her up, she reached the second storey balcony guttering, kicked once and scrambled to safety. From there, she could throw her rope and grappling hook toward the tower roof. Meanwhile, it was Ethan's job to neutralize the second guard if Team Two could not take him down.

  He drew his Colt and moved toward the corner of the house, leading with a quick peek. A uniformed guard walked out of the guardhouse and ambled lazily toward the trouble at the front gate. Ethan pulled back into the shadows. Team Two had drawn both men. The woman signaled this fact with her slurred speech. 'And you! What do you want? I said I wanted to speak to the owner of this dump! I don't need another uniform in my face!' Her husband tried again to calm her. They were just working a job like everyone else, he said. She shouldn't be cursing these poor fellows.

  The second guard spoke in the same crisp High German as his partner. They were on private property. They were going to have to back up and leave unless they wanted to be arrested. Did they want to be arrested? Did they insist on going to jail for the night? There was no answer, nothing at all but the indistinct sound of two darts spitting out of two pistols simultaneously. Then Ethan heard the sound of two bodies hitting gravel. Kate and Ethan had twenty minutes, give or take - more than twice the time Kate had said they would use.

  Looking up, he saw Kate walking up the side of the tower, her rope stretching down from the roof. He pulled the flat crowbar from the sheath on his thigh. At the French doors of the terrace he broke in with a single twist of his wrist. The lights were on inside the house. He returned his crowbar to its sheath. Moving from room to room with his back close to the wall, Ethan swept his handgun's sights into the empty spaces.

  He heard in his headset Team Two's leader. Two sleeping at the gate! We're off!' The connection went dead.

  Ethan finished sweeping the ground floor and began up the grand stairway. At the landing he heard a muffled explosion both on his headset and directly overhead. Kate was taking out the top of the tower with Czech Semtex. Ethan worked from room to room on the second floor. Quick and dirty, just to be sure. Kate had drilled him on this part. The house should be empty, but they had to assume the worst: an overnight guest, a guard they didn't know about, Corbeau changing his plans. She called it the catastrophe factor. In the main hall again Ethan walked down a narrow corridor.

  This, according to the plans of the house they had stolen from the city planner's office some months ago, would take him to the library and tower. 'Coming in, Girl,' he said. He kicked through the locked door and found a beautiful room. Along two of its vast walls were built-in bookshelves. The third wall offered a bank of windows with a view to the lake, and a large, perfectly arranged writing table. The fourth wall had a set of pocket doors at the centre. These were presently closed. Each door offered three cast iron ornaments fashioned into the likeness of small black ravens. They appeared to function as door handles or some kind of medieval locking mechanism. From what he knew of their man, Ethan didn't trust them. He thought they might be booby-trapped, something Gothic, mechanical, and deadly.

  'House is clear,' Ethan said, 'but stay away from the doors. I don't like the look of them.'

  'We're on the clock, Boy,' Kate answered.

  'Seven minutes,' he said.

  'Five is better.'

  The Palace Hotel, Lucerne

  Jeffrey Bremmer, Corbeau's director of security, stepped out of the shadows and signaled his employer. Corbeau excused himself, and walked toward the man with a bit of curiosity. Bremmer usually handled his job without involving Corbeau. 'What is it?' he asked.

  'A couple of drunks at the front gate set off the alarm.'

  Corbeau looked out across the lake. He disliked any sort of disturbance that was not of his own making. Officially, he was still a US fugitive. The US could not act against him because he was under Swiss protection, but that didn't mean bounty hunters wouldn't try it. The US attorney, in a fit of pique when Corbeau had jumped bail after his indictment, had offered a one million dollar bounty to anyone capable of delivering him to a government willing to extradite him. That meant getting him out of Switzerland. In eleven years, two different groups had been foolish enough to try it.

  'Austrians, apparently. A man and a woman . . . sixty-something. They've been instructed to leave, but they're not cooperating.'

  'Notify the police to be on standby, and give them one more warning.'

  'I'll take care o
f it.'

  As he watched Bremmer depart, cell phone to his ear, a strange dread took hold of Corbeau. It was not the first time the feeling had hit him. On three separate occasions over the past two weeks a wave of nausea had washed over him. His instincts told him his enemies were closer than he knew, but he could not locate the source. He had persuaded himself it was nothing, but nothing was suddenly becoming very insistent. Instinctively, he searched the rooftop looking for the contessa. She was gone. A camera spotted, no doubt.

  He looked at the crowd. There were very few strange faces. Of those he didn't know he saw no one capable of successfully spiriting him out of the country. It was possible that was the plan, of course, but it was more likely something was going on at the house that was not quite what it seemed . . .

  Well, the police were alerted. The road could be closed down in a matter of minutes. Everything should be — Bremmer returned. He made no signal this time. Corbeau understood the look and immediately walked toward him. 'I'm getting no response at the guardhouse.'

  'What about the police?'

  'They are sealing off the road.'

  'Good. Nothing more. I want to take care of this myself.'

  Bremmer's smile suggested just how much he loved his work. 'I thought you might. The SUV should be at the front door by the time we get there. The second team is already moving. They should be at the house in three minutes.'

  Lake Lucerne

  Ethan went first to the bookshelves, checking the titles out of curiosity. Not surprisingly, given the man they were robbing, most of the library was devoted to the esoteric. He saw Pietro Mora's Zekerboni, a seventeenth century treatise on magic that he knew had been found in Casanova's possession and was instrumental in getting the famed lover convicted of sorcery in 1755.

  He saw Aleister Crowley's Confessions, and fought the impulse to pick it from the shelves. He was sure it was a first edition. Crowley, at the height of his powers in the early twentieth century, was known as the wickedest man alive. He saw Madame Blavatsky's Isis, the complete works of John Dee, Dion Fortune's Through the Gates of Death, Eliphas Levi's master- works on magic, in the original French, Le Dome et rituel de la haute magie and Histoire de la magie. He saw Robert Fludd, W. E. Butler, Alice Bailey, Albertus Magnus, Pieto de Albano, Papus, Rudolph Steiner, and on and on. The library itself, book by book, if he could haul it out, was worth several million dollars on the open market, but tonight it was not part of the plan.