Holliday and Lazarus settled into the old leather chairs while the old man brewed them three cups of dark espresso spiked with an exotic plum brandy.
“I know you wouldn’t come to visit an old man simply out of friendship. So you must have a question.”
“We both have questions,” said Lazarus.
“You go first,” Peck said.
“What can you tell me about this?” Lazarus said, reaching into his jacket pocket and handing a small image Nardi had given them on their trip to Tuscany.
Saxon Peck stared at the postcard-sized photograph and smiled. “I can tell you just about everything there is to know about it,” said Peck. “The title is Three Men Talking in Front of a House, by David Teniers the Younger. The painting is Flemish. It was originally owned by H. L. Larsen, and in 1943 it was auctioned by Van Marle and Bignell to E. Gopel, Den Haag, who were dealers. That same year it mysteriously was gifted to Herr A. Hitler and turned up in the Führermuseum in Linz. Later, it was taken out of Germany by an SS colonel named Rheinhard Huff. It eventually wound up in the Vatican and was last seen on the wall of the cardinal secretary of state’s office. The man’s name is Ruffino, I believe.”
“What do you mean, ‘last seen’?” Holliday asked.
“On a visit by the present bishop of Linz to Ruffino’s office, the prelate commented that he’d last seen the painting in the Führermuseum during the war. Knowing the powers of such rumors, Ruffino immediately had the painting taken down, and within two or three weeks had replaced it with a second-rate copy. The bishop of Linz took the responsibility of not being able to know the difference between the real thing and a cheap copy.”
“Nardi made it sound as though the train had been a big secret,” said Lazarus.
“For the most part, it was,” said the white-haired old man. “It wasn’t until the fall of Rome that our intelligence people got wind of the story. Even then we didn’t know the details.” Lord Peck paused. “All we do know is that a number of paintings and other artworks were used by members of ODESSA to finance their escape through the Vatican ratlines.”
“So nobody really knows how much of the art is still there?” Lazarus asked.
“No,” Peck answered, shaking his head. He fished around his waistcoat pocket and brought out a darkened, gnarled briar pipe and a kitchen match. He lit the match and held it over the bowl of the pipe, sucking until it began producing clouds of aromatic smoke. He turned to Holliday. “Now, you said you had a question?”
“What can you tell me about a Templar Knight named Sir Martin Fitzwilliam?” Holliday asked.
“Sir Martin Fitzwilliam. Fitzwilliam was a monk of the Abbey of Saint Andrew. All we know of him is that he vanished sometime shortly after the taking of Jerusalem in 1199. He is notable for refusing to take part in the massacre that followed the siege and was last seen heading into the desert alone. According to Roland de Vaux, Fitzwilliam’s family sigil—a single lion rampant below a Templar Cross—was found scratched onto a staircase in the ruins of the scriptorium at Khirbet Qumran.”
“Who is Roland de Vaux?” Lazarus asked.
“You mean, who was he,” said Holliday. “From the early twenties onward he was head of the Jerusalem Archaeology Institute. He was also the first man to dig for the Dead Sea Scrolls.”
“He had a theory, I believe,” said Peck.
“Yes,” said Holliday. “De Vaux surmised that, instead of heading east, Fitzwilliam returned to France and gave a scroll to Bernard of Clairvaux, who was a student of languages and knew the scroll for what it was. He gifted the scroll to the Vatican and Pope Innocent III, and it hasn’t been seen since.”
“What was in the scroll?” Lazarus asked.
“Supposedly it was the Gospel according to Christ himself and described his travels in the East. Apparently the ‘East’ included India, Tibet and China.”
“Such a document would be heresy. It would belie the whole story of the Resurrection. It would destroy the very foundation of Christianity,” Peck said, tamping his pipe with a nicotine-stained thumb.
“I don’t see what this Fitzwilliam fellow and a train load of looted Nazi art have to do with each other,” said Lazarus.
“I’ll tell you,” said Peck. “The actual Vatican Bank wasn’t organized until 1942 by Pope Pius XII. Prior to that, all Vatican real wealth—bullion, art, gemstones and monetary offerings of all kinds—were held by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, which managed the funds remaining at the disposal of the Pope. In other words, the private funds used to run the Vatican itself. All of this was kept in the Vatican Administration Building, which is where the trucks from Huff’s train were unloaded.”
“Nardi said the trucks off-loaded through the side entrance of the administration building’s southern wing. Why would they have unloaded there?” Holliday asked.
“Come with me and I’ll show you,” said Peck.
The old man led them up the circular staircase to the second floor, where instead of bookshelves lining the walls there were old-fashioned wooden print drawers. Peck went to one drawer, withdrew several drawings and took them to the large metal-and-glass light table that dominated the center of the room. He chose two from the sheaf of drawings and laid them out flat. It showed a profile view of the Vatican Administration Building. The center section was five stories tall and topped by a small dome. The south and north wings were four stories tall and plain. There was a park in front of the building and an ornate circular driveway, while at the rear of the building was Saint Anne’s Chapel. Peck withdrew the first drawing and put down the second. This showed a main floor plan for the south end of the building. There was a short hall leading to a rectangular freight elevator.
The old man pointed down at the elevator marked on the diagram. “This is the only way those crates and boxes could be taken to the basement.”
“Where did you find all this stuff?” asked Holliday.
“There was a major renovation done on the building in the late thirties. Years later, the chief contractor of the job asked if I wanted to buy them, so I did.” The old man lit his pipe again and spoke. “I’ve always had an interest in documents of one kind or another about the Vatican. There seems to be a great number of people in the public who have the same inclination. The Catholic Church and the Vatican have had more exotic theories, countertheories, conspiracies and outright criminal behavior attached to them than any other organization in the world. I have documents here going back to the Borgias. Some of it is of quite a secret nature, but I have had a very hard time finding out whatever happened to Huff’s contribution to the papal treasury.”
“How easy would it be to get into the building?” Holliday asked.
“If you simply wished to enter the building, it would probably be quite easy to go in through the front door. Getting in through the side entrance and onto that freight elevator would be a different kettle of fish altogether.”
“But it is possible?” Holliday said.
“As long as you were willing to take an enormous risk,” said Peck.
Peck looked at the other two men in the room. “You’re not planning on robbing the Vatican, are you?”
“We thought we’d give it a try.” Lazarus smiled.
8
The Vatican Administration Building looked like a cross between an old Hilton Hotel, Versailles and a wedding cake. The two priests, each carrying a plain attaché case, climbed a set of wide steps to a broad patio. They crossed the patio until they reached a narrower set of stairs between a pair of columns leading to the ornately decorated front door.
They pulled open one of the large doors and stepped inside the building. It was laid out in a long, wide cross, one passage leading in all four directions of the compass. The place was swarming with people, most of them dressed like the two priests, others in ordinary business suits, and some nuns scuttling abo
ut. The two priests with briefcases turned left and moved down the hallway. Reaching the end, they came to a door that read “VIETATO L’INGRESSO”—No Admittance.
Ignoring the instruction, the two priests pushed through and found themselves at the far end of the building’s south wing. There was a large door, a narrow set of stairs and a freight elevator. They pressed the down button for the elevator, which soon arrived, its large door sliding open. The two men stepped inside, at which point one of them turned and pressed the stop button to keep the elevator from going anywhere.
“We’ve got about thirty seconds,” said Holliday, stripping off his vestments and leaning down to open the briefcase. He pulled out a brown workman’s boiler suit with a papal patch on the chest. He climbed into it, pushed the vestments into the now empty briefcase and closed it up again. When he stood and turned, he discovered that Lazarus had done the same thing.
“The shoes are wrong, but we can live with that,” said Lazarus.
“We’ll have to ditch the briefcases as soon as we can. I don’t want to go through all of this in reverse on our way out,” Holliday said.
Holliday hit the stop button again and then the down button. The freight elevator lumbered downward and came to a jarring halt. The doors grumbled back and the two men stepped out. They faced a broad corridor between heavy pipes, boilers, generators and all the other machinery necessary for running a large building.
Interestingly, there were two narrow-gauge rails set into the concrete of the floor, like the railroads used in old coal and tin mines. They ran off into the distance without a break. Holliday and Lazarus found a dark space at the foot of one of the boilers and shoved their briefcases out of sight.
“I guess we should follow the yellow brick road,” said Lazarus, nodding down at the rails on the floor.
“Well, we sure as shit aren’t in Kansas anymore.” Holliday laughed.
Freed of their priestly burden, the two men walked down the main passageway surrounded by the sounds of machinery.
Both the priests’ vestments and the papal boiler suits had been easy enough to come by. They had all been purchased at Barbiconi, a religious department store only a few blocks from the Vatican.
The two men walked past half a dozen or so similarly dressed workers, who ignored them completely. Holliday saw a clipboard resting on a set of valves and scooped it up; there was nothing like a clipboard to make you look official. They finally reached the end of the broad alleyway and came to a stop in front of yet another door marked “No Admittance.” They ignored the warning once again and stepped through the door.
This time they could quickly see that they were out of place. A small room on the left with windows on three sides contained several banks of closed-circuit TV monitors. At the far end of the passageway was an area guarded by what looked like steel bars. The railway tracks went under the steel bars and ran farther on. A security guard sat in a folding chair eating a Quarter Pounder with bacon and cheese and a supersized bag of fries. A giant paper cup stood at his feet. He had neatly made a bib out of a paper napkin and that had only marginally succeeded. There was food in a Niagara of special sauce, ketchup and bacon bits spilling over his large belly.
“Ventilatore,” said Holliday, waving the clipboard vaguely in the direction of the area behind the bars and stretching his Italian vocabulary to the absolute maximum. The guard grunted something with his mouth full toward the television monitor room. There was a clanging noise and the gates popped open. Holliday and Lazarus stepped through the barred gate into what appeared to be the outer chamber of a bank vault. Walls of safety-deposit boxes rose to the ceiling on either wall and directly in front of them were two massive doors, each fitted with a large combination lock. Holliday waved his clipboard at the single large vent in the ceiling and Lazarus nodded in agreement. In fact, both men were focused on the two massive doors and their large locks. The doors had the scrolling escutcheon of Chubb & Sons. Each of the doors had its own turning wheel and combination dial. It looked as though it had been made sometime in the 1920s.
“How the hell are we expected to get into that?” whispered Lazarus.
“I don’t have the slightest idea. I guess we should ask your friend Saxon Peck.”
Holliday and Lazarus made their way back down the basement hallway, got into the elevator and made their way out, walking past a tall gray-haired man in what appeared to be an extremely expensive suit. Accompanying him were two tall, burly priests who looked more like bodyguards than clerics. Lazarus frowned as they passed.
“Something wrong?” Holliday asked.
“Yes, but I can’t quite put my finger on it,” Lazarus said.
They eventually made their way to Saint Peter’s Square and crossed it, heading back to the antiquarian bookstore.
“Shit!” Lazarus said. “Now I know what was bugging me.”
“What was it? Something to do with those two bully boys we passed in the corridor back there?”
“Yes, and the man they were guarding—Eric Bingham. He owns the biggest auction gallery in Palm Beach and he’s run more than one scam in the art world. What the hell is he doing here?”
“What kind of scams?” Holliday asked.
“A painting would be sold in a New York auction to a telephone bidder. The telephone bidder would then put the painting on permanent loan to a fictitious municipal gallery in the Midwest. Meanwhile, the painting would be sold under a different name to a different Midwestern gallery. And then it would be sent to the Miami branch of the Bingham Gallery, where it would actually be sold. A large and prominent art expert in New York would give bona fides to all the versions of the paintings. That way the two ‘owners’ of the painting got substantial tax write-offs. All the paperwork was handled by the Bingham Gallery in Palm Beach. He escaped prosecution by going to the FBI and providing evidence for the criminal prosecution of several major smugglers of art, ancient artifacts and stolen jewelry. He has been a good boy ever since, but seeing him here doesn’t make me trust that he’s a good boy now.”
“Can you see any way the Vatican could be involved with a man like this?” Holliday asked.
“The paintings and other fine art brought to the Vatican on Huff’s train and the fact that the Vatican Bank has been involved in several serious scandals lately might have something to do with it, but I can’t see what exactly.”
“Let’s get back to Peck’s as quickly as possible and see if we can think this out.”
* * *
Holliday, Lazarus and Peck sat around the round table at the rear of the old man’s store. The table was littered with espresso cups, whiskey tumblers and a three-quarters-empty bottle of Glenlivet. After an hour of discussion, they had decided several things. Number one, the big old Chubb safe would be impossible to open by two amateurs under so much security. Number two, hiring a proper cracksman was too dangerous from a secrecy point of view. The only possible way to discover what was going on was by keeping track of what Bingham was up to—following him was going to be a lot safer than breaking into the safes.
“Well, I can tell you one thing about Bingham: he never goes second-class. And that means we’ll find him in the most expensive hotel in Rome.”
“That would be the Hotel de Russie on Via del Babuino,” said Peck. “These days it’s considered to be the place where the Hollywood A-list goes.”
It took two phone calls to confirm that Bingham was in residence there.
“Now what do we do?” Holliday asked.
“Pay him a visit, I suppose,” replied Lazarus.
* * *
Rusty Smart sat in the Fort Myer Drive safe house control room, a satellite phone to his ear.
“Were our suspicions correct?” he asked.
“He went to the Vatican and came out empty-handed,” said Tom Harris, the leader of the group, who had been sent to keep track of Holliday and Lazarus’s m
ovements.
“Where is Bingham now?” Smart asked.
“He’s in the Hotel de Russie but he’s scheduled to be on a train to Paris by ten o’clock tomorrow morning. He’ll arrive at eleven thirty the following day and will take the morning Chunnel train to London.”
“I want you to get somone to fly to Paris and another person to fly to London to meet both trains. Harris, you’ll follow him directly from Rome.”
“Okay, boss, but what do we do about Holliday?”
“Somehow I have a suspicion that Holliday isn’t going to be too far away from any of this, so keep your eyes open.”
Smart turned off the encrypted satellite phone and idly watched the screens in the control room. Something was wrong. He could smell it from a mile away. If he wasn’t absolutely careful, the whole damn project would come crashing down and more than likely take the entire CIA with it.
* * *
Holliday and Lazarus stood in the plain but luxurious lobby of the Hotel de Russie. Holliday stood by one of the house phones while Lazarus stood at the reservation desk talking to the man behind the counter. Holliday checked his watch, then dialed the number of the hotel. He could see the man picking up the phone behind the reception desk as Lazarus removed a rather cumbersome cell phone from his jacket pocket and flipped it open below the eye level of the receptionist. Simultaneously the man at reception connected with Holliday.
“Hotel de Russie,” said the receptionist politely.
“I’d like to speak with Mr. Bingham. Is he in?” Holliday asked.
“I’ll ring,” replied the receptionist. The call went through with the strange triple ring of most Italian telephones and by the fifth ring it was clear that nobody was going to answer.
“I’m afraid he doesn’t seem to be in,” said the receptionist.
“Perhaps I’ll call him again later,” said Holliday.
Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars Page 6