The Painted Messiah

by Craig Smith

  'I did, but he told me not to call him back.'

  'The situation has changed, Mr Malloy. We could use your help, if you're still offering it.'

  'What can I do for you?'

  'Julian Corbeau has Nicole North. I want to get her out.'

  'What's your interest in Dr North?'

  'Last night I watched Corbeau burn the flesh from her feet.' 'My God.'

  'This morning we called the people North told us to contact. They're acting as if they don't know what we're talking about. I'm assuming that means they're going to keep their painting and let Corbeau kill Nicole.'

  'And you don't care for that?'

  'I told her I'd get her out.'

  'What do you have in mind, exactly?'

  'Why don't we get together and talk about it?'

  'I'll be in Interlaken tonight. If you want to talk, it has-to be there.'

  'That's fine.'

  'I'll meet you in the park across from the Jungfrau Hotel at dusk. And come alone, if you don't mind.'

  Malloy passed the painting to Marcus over drinks and sandwiches, then walked out of the hotel and across the street. The sun had already set behind the mountains, the dusk arriving with a light fog. He kept his hands plunged into his coat pockets. His right hand held his tiny Sigma. His left went through the pocket lining and held the MAC-10 automatic pistol under his coat.

  In summertime the park would have been filled with backpackers and tourists, but in mid-October it was empty. The night was cold. He took a seat on the one of the benches well back from the road and wondered if he was about to make the biggest mistake of his life.

  When Kate Kenyon came toward him, she kept her hands in her pockets.

  'You know who I am?' she asked.

  'Lady Kenyon.'

  She smiled. 'That would make you Thomas Malloy.'

  'Where's Ethan?'

  'At the moment he has an AK-47 pointed at the back of your head.'

  Malloy let his coat slip back, exposing the MAC-10. 'Safety is off, in case you're giving signals.'

  'Have you talked with Corbeau?'

  'I don't really have anything to say to the man.'

  Kenyon brought a cell phone out of her coat pocket slowly. 'I have a number that will probably work. I want you to call him and set up an exchange for tomorrow morning. Tell him to have his helicopter at his house before six o'clock and you'll call him with instructions for the exchange between six and six- fifteen. Tell him you'll give him fifteen minutes to get to a place of your choosing - or the deal is off.'

  Malloy thought about this. 'What are we giving him when he gets there?'

  Kate smiled. 'His painting.'

  'I don't have it.'

  'Does he know that?'

  'No.' 'Then make the call, Mr Malloy. You look like you can play a pretty good game of poker.'

  'You want to explain how we're going to handle the exchange without the painting?'

  'Let's see if he takes the bait first.'

  The voice that answered spoke High German with the tone of a man taking a call from a subordinate. 'Yes?'

  'Mr Corbeau, please,' Malloy said in English. 'I have a painting of his I think he'd like to have back.'

  'Who is this?' the man answered in English.

  'Thomas Malloy.'

  'Give me your number. Someone will call you back within the hour.'

  'Get Corbeau on the phone now or I burn the painting.'

  'This will take a minute!'

  'Then take it.'

  After nearly a minute another man spoke in English. 'Sir Julian is unavailable. If you have anything to say, he has authorized me to act on his behalf. However, we will not agree to extortion, nor will we engage in any illegality.'

  'You ought to see the fire I've built,' Malloy answered.

  'We're trying to cooperate!'

  'As far as I'm concerned if Corbeau doesn't want to talk, he doesn't want his painting.'

  Another voice spoke now. 'What is it you want, Mr Malloy?' Corbeau.

  'First I want information.'

  'About?' 'Dr North.'

  'I can give you Dr North in reasonably good health, assuming you can give me something in return.'

  Malloy looked at Kate Kenyon. He didn't like acting on faith but he had no choice. 'Tomorrow morning between six and six-fifteen have your helicopter and Dr North ready to move. I'll give you fifteen minutes to get to me after I call you. When you show up, you get your painting and I get Dr North. You want to play games or renegotiate ... I burn the painting and start shooting.'

  'You burn the painting and Dr North dies.'

  'It either happens tomorrow morning or we're finished talking.'

  'Fifteen minutes isn't a great deal of time.'

  'It's all the time you need. I want no more than four people on the helicopter, including the pilot and Dr North. You show up where I tell you and everyone goes home happy.'

  'How do I know I can trust you?' Corbeau asked.

  'You're the man holding the high ground. You don't like what you see below, fly off and do what you have to do.'

  'And how do you know you can trust me?'

  'I'm gambling that you want your painting more than you want to kill me.'

  'I need to think about this, Mr Malloy.'

  'Think all you want, but come six o'clock tomorrow morning you're going to have to make a decision.'

  'We need to get out of town now,' Kate told him. She wiped the prints and set the phone on the park bench. 'Come on.'

  They started walking across the park toward one of the side streets. A dark nondescript van turned out to be their destination. 'You can have the back.'

  Malloy kept his finger on the trigger of the MAC-10 as they approached the vehicle. He saw only one man inside.

  'Is that Ethan?'

  'I lied about the gun. I thought you'd trust me if you thought I was afraid of you.'

  'You aren't afraid?'

  'I have it on good authority Julian Corbeau wants to kill you almost as much as he wants to kill us. That makes us . . . like new best friends.'

  Ethan Brand sat at the steering wheel. 'Sorry about the way I acted last night,' he said when Malloy had climbed in. 'You kind of caught me in the middle of something.'

  'You were breaking Kate out?'

  Ethan started the van and pulled away from the kerb. 'Getting ready to.'

  Kate turned in her seat. 'You told Ethan last night that my father had been killed. According to the news this morning, the police didn't find him until last night. I'm curious how you knew so quickly.'

  'I was the one who found him.'

  She blinked, not entirely successful at holding her tears in check. She was a woman who had not had time to come to terms with her grief. 'Corbeau told me he was the one who put a bullet in his head.'

  'Someone did.' After a long, painful silence, Malloy said, 'Maybe you two better tell me what you're arranging for tomorrow morning. I'm not real comfortable working in the dark.' 'I need you to make a call tomorrow morning. Beyond that, your involvement is optional, though we could use a hand.'

  'What kind of involvement?'

  'Let me tell you something about Julian Corbeau. If you negotiate an exchange - even if you had the painting - he'll come after you later. So the only chance for any of us is to disappear permanently or finish this tomorrow.'

  'You're going to kill him?'

  'Actually, we thought we'd kidnap him.'

  Malloy sat back in surprise. 'It can't be done.'

  'Of course it can. All we have to do is get him over the border. After that the US can extradite him. The man is worth a million dollars if we can do it.'

  'You can't get him off his property, let alone out of Switzerland. You have any idea the number of people he has around him right now?'

  Ethan was driving, listening, but at this he answered drolly with a fairly pronounced southern accent. 'The only thing we know for sure is he had quite a few more yesterday.'

  'You did that .
. . alone? He was claiming the CIA tried to kidnap him.'

  'I walked in alone. Coming out, I had Kate.'

  'So how many people does he have left?'

  'We think over a dozen,' Kate answered. 'Maybe as many as twenty, but they won't all be at his villa. He's keeping his guards in town and shuttling them out to his place in shifts. The hired guns are in and out, or at least they were yesterday.'

  'How many of us are going in?'

  'Three of us, if you want to help.'

  'I can get us whatever guns and manpower we need. All I have to do is make a phone call.'

  'Assuming you're up for it, we have everyone we need. Any more people and we'd just risk showing our hand.'

  'Three against twenty?'

  'The numbers aren't that important,' Kate answered. 'What matters is we catch him looking the other way.'

  'The exchange?'

  'Do you have any idea what we stole from him?' Kate asked.

  'A two thousand-year-old portrait of Christ.'

  'There's more to it than that,' Ethan answered. 'Looks like we've got some time on our hands. Why don't you tell me about it?'

  'Well, to start with, it's not a portrait, it's the portrait. . .'

  Lake Lucerne

  Corbeau finished his phone conversation and asked Jeffrey Bremmer to send for Helena Chernoff and Xeno. Bremmer returned with them, and the three stood before the grandmaster. Two of Corbeau's bodyguards stood in the room as well, their backs to the wall. After describing the call from Malloy, he asked Helena, 'What is he thinking?'

  'He expects you to fly somewhere and make the exchange.'

  Corbeau glanced at Bremmer, who nodded in agreement.

  There were five mountains easily reached by helicopter inside fifteen minutes - perhaps a couple more farther out. Each provided alpine meadows, heavy boulders, extensive cover and no one around for miles. Each was large enough that it would not be possible to anticipate a particular point of exchange, and a proper surveillance of all five mountains would require a great many more people than Corbeau had presently engaged. As he ran through the possibilities, it seemed the logical option was to play it straight, as long as Malloy did.

  'What do we lose if we give him North?'

  Bremmer shook his head. 'Nothing but time.'

  'What if it's a trap?'

  'If the police are involved, we'll know in advance,' Bremmer said.

  'The danger,' Corbeau explained, 'is that he takes our hostage and we get nothing.'

  'As things stand we don't have very much with the hostage,' Bremmer said, with a shrug of his shoulders. 'We've approached Richland in New York and so far we have no response. It's as if he doesn't care.'

  'Malloy is handling it for him,' Corbeau answered after a moment of reflection. 'I expect he has instructed Richland not to respond.'

  'Malloy won't risk losing a hostage over a painting,' Helena Chernoff answered. 'He's a professional. As far as he's concerned the trade can happen, so it should happen. The risk is if we try anything. He'll have something ready, just in case.'

  'Back up?'

  'He has resources inside the country. He'll have people with him, but there is no point in risking the hostage's life if you go along with a trade.'

  Corbeau turned to Bremmer. 'I'm going to trust him. It's the best chance we have right now. Call my pilot and have him here and ready to fly before six tomorrow morning.'

  Interlaken

  'The Knights Templar?' Malloy asked skeptically. He had got the rough history of Pilate's Portrait of Christ: from Jerusalem to Edessa, its three centuries buried in the wall of that city, its accidental discovery by workers repairing the fortifications, and finally its acquisition, in 1098, by the crusader knight Baldwin of Boulogne.

  'Baldwin founded the Templars to guard the image. When they were brought down two hundred years later, the priests who found the painting didn't recognize it as Baphomet, the head the Templars allegedly worshipped, so they sent it along with everything else to the Vatican archives. Five hundred years later Napoleon took possession of the Vatican and moved the Templar artifacts to the Arsenal library.

  'According to what Oscar Wilde told a young painter in Paris about a month before he died, there were people in Paris who recognized the painting for what it was and began using it in ceremonies involving necromancy - raising the spirits of the dead. At some point, Corbeau's grandfather joined the circle. He revived the Order of the Knights Templar and proclaimed himself possessed of the risen spirit of Jacques de Molay - the last grandmaster of the Temple.'

  'How was Wilde involved?'

  'Corbeau was apparently recruiting members from the most prominent families in Europe . . . and men of talent. Wilde fit into the second category. His popularity and skill as a writer, along with his love of decadence, would have made him a very appealing candidate.'

  'But wouldn't he have sworn an oath of secrecy?'

  'According to his biographer, Wilde loved secrets. He just wasn't very good at keeping them. Besides, when he told Bill Landi about the painting and how it had inspired his Dorian Gray, he was a dying man. He had nothing to lose, and I'd like to think maybe he finally recognized Corbeau for what he was.'

  'A charlatan?'

  'A monster. The original Templars were deep into the occult. According to the official charges against the order, they were accused of sacrificing infants. I don't think that's quite what was going on, but it's close. You see, there are two ways for a spirit to take possession of someone. For a temporary possession, which is the most common, the ghost simply occupies the body of a living person and speaks through him. The more permanent possession occurs when the magician tricks his victim into believing he or she is dead. At that point the spirit leaves the body so another spirit can steal into the presumed corpse. When the magician revives the body, the ghost comes back to life in the flesh of the victim - and stays there. Meanwhile, the departed spirit wanders between death and life.'

  'You don't really believe in that nonsense?'

  'You can take away the soul of a child in any number of ways, Mr Malloy - you don't need magic to kill the very young. I think Corbeau's Knights Templar have simply ritualized the process. They take a child and raise him to believe he carries in his heart the spirit of a fallen Templar. In Corbeau's case he would have been taught secret rites of magic from his earliest childhood, seduced by shadows and strange sounds, taught the memory of being burned at the stake, given a taste for power and a longing to avenge his supposed enemies. Plus, he holds in his hand - or he did - the only true likeness of the face of Christ. Why shouldn't he believe he's Jacques de Molay?'

  'You're saying he was raised to be insane?'

  'Psychopaths make the best generals.'

  'Let's say I buy the Templar connection and some of what you're telling me about Corbeau. At least he believes it, even if I don't. I still have problems with this painting being a portrait of Christ. You say the man who was to become the first king of Christian Jerusalem shows up in Edessa and finds it?'

  'We have independent confirmation that such a painting existed in Edessa. It's not just a theory.'

  'But that doesn't mean the painting is authentic. It could be just a first century icon. Nothing connects a painting of Christ back to Pontius Pilate - except the legend.'

  'There are two sources that state a painting of Christ 'made by no human hand' - whatever that means - came out of Jerusalem and into the possession of a King Abgar of Edessa in the first century. Another reference, by Irenaeus, mentions a painting of Jesus made by Pilate when Christ walked among men.'

  'But this material is . . . what? A few centuries after the fact?'

  'Irenaeus writes about a century-and-a-half after the Crucifixion.'

  'Well, what's a couple hundred years between friends?'

  'Point made. A long time.'

  'Very long compared to a human life.'

  'Wilde referred to it as Pontius Pilate's Portrait of Christ. I don't know where he g
ot the idea, but the logical assumption is he got it from Corbeau's grandfather.'

  '. . . who got it second hand from the Knights Templar. Let me ask you something.'

  'Okay.'

  'Why would Pilate want to make a painting of Jesus?'

  'In some Eastern traditions both Pilate and his wife are saints - because they defended Jesus against the Jews.'

  'Pilate had a wife?'

  'Book of Matthew: Pilate's wife had a dream that Pilate was about to execute an innocent man, and she sent a message to her husband, begging him not to do it.'

  'Any idea why Pilate would care to have a painting made of a man he was about to execute?'

  'I can't help you there. All I know is the reference to the painting pre-dates any other legend of the True Image. That doesn't mean it exists, but it does mean a lot of people thought it did. The last step, believing Pilate is responsible for having it made, that's your leap of faith - if you care to make it.'

  As he said this Ethan pulled off the highway and drove toward a small private airport. The hanger was closed, the lights were out.

  'We're here,' Kate said. 'If you can get some sleep, now is probably a good time. Come four o'clock tomorrow morning things are going to hop.'

  'Sounds good,' Malloy answered.

  'There's a cot in the hanger.' She handed him a key. 'Make yourself at home.'

  'Where are you two going to be?'

  'We've got a tent set up about a mile back in the woods.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  Caesarea Summer

  AD 29.

  Wearing the toga of a common citizen, Senator Publius Vitellius sailed into Caesarea on a merchant ship. Pilate first knew he was in the city when he saw the wax impression of the senator's signet ring. The moment he recognized it, he cleared his morning schedule.

  In his youth Vitellius had been the friend of Prince Germanicus, later his most trusted general. Following the death of the Prince - which many believed Tiberius himself had ordered - the empire had been on the verge of civil war. Instead of exciting the crowd and rallying the legions around his own banner Vitellius had sought a peaceful resolution - one which spared Tiberius the humiliation of accusations and yet brought to justice the very man many believed Tiberius had sent to assassinate the Prince.