“Stay away; those are national treasures.”
“For a nation of storerooms, perhaps. Don’t mess around, just check on this address.”
4
He was hurrying back. Ever since he’d gotten into the suburban and taken off, he’d been dogged by the idea that as soon as he entered the empty house with bags reeking of soy sauce, she’d emerge from the bathroom, hair smelling of shampoo and body dripping wet. Did he have the hots for her? He wasn’t sure.
But just in case, he stopped at the Red Ruby on North Avenue. It was situated in a sleazy pavilion that it shared with a sandwich bar. Inside, an Arab man was smoking a hookah, while a second stood behind the counter, yelling into a phone over the wailing music, which sounded like Middle Eastern disco.
The man behind the counter stopped shouting for a moment and gave Karol a questioning look.
“Two dishes without meat,” said Karol. “As fast as you can make them.”
Five minutes later Karol walked out with two containers of Chinese food that smelled of rancid oil and frozen cocktail shrimp. He must have been very hungry, because he found the aroma appetizing.
Just in case, he stopped at a pharmacy and bought a pack of condoms. As he parked outside the dark residence, he wondered if she’d been through menopause. Maybe he didn’t even need condoms anyway.
Lisa was sitting cross-legged at the computer, wrapped in a sheet. Her hair was wet, and the sheet clung to her shoulders. It was basically the scene he’d imagined.
“Are we going to have sex?” she asked.
“Sorry?”
Lisa got up, one hand casually holding up the sheet, the other resting on her hip. She had a masculine body, stocky, with small breasts but sharply delineated arm muscles. Her face, like that of a mature Queen Arwen, contrasted with her figure.
The smell of shrimp fried in rancid oil floated through the house.
“I asked if we’re going to have sex. Because if not, I have to get dressed. And if so, then I’d rather do it now before the food gets cold.”
He gulped.
“I don’t expect sweet nothings whispered in my ear. It’s just that I’ve spent the past eight months in a Polish slammer, and before that, regular sex played an important role in my life, so . . .” She stared at him with contempt; the look on his face must have been really weird. “All right, I won’t ask.”
Soon after, they were sitting side by side, scarfing down noodles with shrimp. On the computer screen columns of figures were flying past at great speed.
“Let me guess,” she said, wiping her nose with the palm of her hand—the food was spicy as hell. “It’s not that you didn’t feel like it, so it must have to do with someone else, huh?”
He shrugged.
“Evidently it’ll take several more generations before you people catch up with the West. Consumerism will cure you of romanticism. When I was in Rio a few years back, during the Carnival . . .”
The numbers abruptly stopped, and Lisa leaned forward.
“Let’s finish up later. We’re there.”
Her fingers raced across the keyboard, and a black-and-white image appeared on the monitor, showing a space that looked like a bourgeois living room. He immediately recognized the large windows, crowned with pointed Gothic arches.
“How did you do that?”
“I took advantage of another one of Richmond’s mistakes. It’s incredible—if he’s made a few more of them, we’ll be able to go in and fetch the Young Man just like that. But it’ll be a while. Funny how every rich man wants to have a smart home these days. You know what that is?”
“You can set everything through the internet.”
“That’s right, and this system”—she clicked several times—“is extremely swanky. You can remotely control the water and room temperature, the lighting, and the alarm systems; the cameras allow you to monitor the rooms in color or, like right now, night vision. As far as I can tell, you can also set your favorite channel on the TV so it’s on, ready and waiting for you when you get home. And you can light the fire. Very convenient, and very dumb, if you’ve got anything in there besides a TV and an espresso machine.”
“So we only have to distract the security guards, remotely switch off the alarm systems, and we’re done?”
Lisa tugged at her short black hair, still wet and shiny. That Snow Queen face of hers was so unusual—there was something perfect about it, the proportions and features seemed too good to belong to a real person.
“Someone extremely good should paint your portrait,” Karol blurted.
“Five minutes ago you had your chance,” said Lisa, without looking up. “Dammit, it’s not going to be that easy.”
“Well?”
“We can remotely switch off the alarm system on the doors and windows. But these detectors”—she pointed at some small, barely visible boxes in the corners of the rooms—“are motion sensors and thermal sensors. They’ll set off the alarm if anything moves within their range or if an object appears of a different temperature to the surroundings. Unfortunately, I haven’t got them in the system. In other words this time Richmond didn’t make a mistake. I imagine they have their own energy supply, and they communicate with the security directly by radio—the private security, of course.”
“Mr. Chavez and his pals.”
“Are the pictures on the walls worth anything?” she asked.
He glanced at her in surprise. Until now he’d assumed that as a thief she was also an expert on art.
“Just for decoration,” he replied. “So blatant that it seems like a trick. They hang up realistic still lifes like those in small towns in Poland—looking at them makes me wonder where he’s put Our Lady of Częstochowa.”
“Who?”
“The Black Madonna, the patron saint of Poland, the sacred national icon.”
Lisa burst out laughing.
“Not only is your sacred Madonna a Russian icon, but she’s black too? Next you’ll be telling me she’s a Jew. Do the Polish nationalists know that?”
“They do, but they treat her better than the women in their own families. Can we see other rooms?”
Lisa showed him a spacious hall with an immense crystal mirror, a study with a library, a staircase to the second floor, a tidy bedroom, and a hallway on the second floor with a balustrade on one side and a row of dark doors on the other.
“Stop!” Karol whispered, as if afraid someone were eavesdropping.
Until now he’d treated the whole thing like a game and didn’t entirely believe in the Raphael, in the robbery, or in the mysterious American collector. It felt more like an unreal adventure and an excuse to spend some time with Zofia, whom he couldn’t get out of his mind. Only now, when he saw the picture looming in the room at the end of the hallway, did he finally understand that this was real. Here he was in a foreign country, with armed security guards wandering around, near a weird neighborhood where Arabs sold Chinese food and where negotiating with the aid of a gun was probably just as common as venting frustrations in Poland.
Someone hammered on the door downstairs; the thunderous echo bounced off the walls.
“I’ll go,” said Lisa, as she took off her sweater. “You lose your accent when you’re wound up.”
Naked again, Lisa wrapped herself in the sheet and ruffled her hair.
“If I say ‘England,’ jump out the window and run for it. OK?”
The hammering again. Lisa shouted that she was coming and ran down the stairs. Karol crouched by the door frame to watch covertly.
“Yes?” Lisa’s voice sounded so sexy and sleepy that Karol regretted not sleeping with her.
“I’m real sorry, lady, but we noticed the car’s still in the driveway, but as far as we know the house hasn’t been sold.” Karol recognized Chavez’s voice. “We just wanted to check in and see that everything’s OK, lady.”
“I’m sorry, but are you a police officer?” asked Lisa, still sounding tired.
“I’m patrol com
mander for Raven Security in the Rochelle Heights district of the city of New Rochelle in the state of New York,” replied Chavez.
“In that case, Mr. Patrol Commander”—now Lisa’s voice sounded fully awake—“please leave the premises before I call the real police. My husband and I have just rented this house. I must admit, I’m stunned. Bridget Corbett told us about the wonderful neighborhood and superb security, and you made a great impression on me when we spoke this afternoon. And then you come and bang on my door in the middle of the night, wreck my sleep, and speak to me in that tone. And if you don’t this very second”—she said in beautiful New York English—“take your hand off that peashooter, I won’t be responsible for my actions!”
Chavez stepped back.
“Forgive me, lady,” he said. “We try our best to ensure the safety of our residents. The realty agencies are supposed to inform us of any changes, but they don’t always do that.”
Lisa sighed and adjusted the sheet, revealing her cleavage.
“I’m sorry too. I’m not myself when I’m woken up in the middle of the night. And maybe it’s a little our fault too, for moving in so suddenly. But we wanted to try out the house. You know what I’m saying, Domingo? May I call you that?”
The sheet slipped another few inches, revealing the curve of her breasts.
“Ding,” said Chavez. “Everyone calls me Ding. And I do know, lady, sure.”
“In that case, Ding, let’s just consider this a misunderstanding and maybe the start of a beautiful friendship.”
“Sure thing! And sorry again about disturbing your sleep. Good night.”
Lisa closed the door, listened to the disappearing footsteps, and bounded upstairs. She dropped the sheet without hesitation and put on her sweater; evidently, since Karol’s refusal she had ceased to think of him in sexual terms. Or perhaps because of her Swedish nature she didn’t regard the body as a sacred object full of guilt and shame, as Catholic societies often do.
“Quick,” she snapped. “We’ve got a few minutes before he cools off and tells his pals what happened. In a second I’ll switch on the light in the hallway at Richmond’s place and record the image, so we can be sure we’re seeing what we’re seeing without the night vision.”
At the end of the hallway on the second floor of Richmond’s house, behind an open door, there was a room. Either it had no windows, or if it did, the curtains were drawn. And in this room opposite the hallway hung a picture about five feet high and thirty inches wide, the figurative image of some American flags, wistfully hanging side by side on a rainy day in a New York street—the typical leitmotif of Frederick Childe Hassam, the great American Impressionist. This oil painting was worth one and a half million dollars, maybe more, depending on how patriotic the buyer was feeling. And it was good. Comparing it with the decorative pictures on the ground floor was like comparing the Sagrada Família with a prefab concrete block.
“Maybe it’s a copy?” Karol said.
“No,” replied Lisa. “Hassam really did paint a few of those flags, but they’re all different from each other. The most famous and perhaps most beautiful hangs in the Oval Office. It’s been in the White House since Kennedy, but only Obama chose to put it up in his office. I think Obama’s whim inadvertently made that painting the most tightly guarded Impressionist in the world. And that’s a shame, because it’s a beautiful thing. Apart from that, Hassam’s flags are in Dallas, in the Metropolitan Museum, the National Gallery, and the Historical Society. And my favorite is in the Amon Carter Museum. One day I should give it some special attention.”
“Where’s that?”
“Fort Worth, Texas. And this particular Hassam was sold at auction a few years ago at Sotheby’s in New York for one point two million. I was sure a museum would buy it, but they were all outbid by an anonymous collector. Our patriot from the timber trade.”
Lisa must have caught his astonished glance, because she winked impishly.
“Let’s say it’s the historical period that interests me most.”
The cogs in Karol’s brain were turning ever faster.
“All those thefts of Impressionists in recent years . . . You said you were in Rio during the Carnival . . . My God, that’s hundreds of millions of dollars . . .”
“Not now, pussycat,” Lisa said. “You had your chance to learn my secrets before you turned me down. Pity. What else can you see besides Hassam?”
“The color of the walls,” said Karol.
Lisa nodded. Exactly the same as in the photographs of the Raphael. Dark orange, brick red, indeed rather vulgar compared with the rest of the interior, and definitely inappropriate for displaying such masterpieces as the Raphael and the Hassam. Not to mention the huge television. Maybe the paintings were only here temporarily? Maybe Richmond was building a safe room for them in a villa in the mountains? Maybe, by some incredible stroke of luck, they’d hit upon a brief moment that made the theft more possible?
“Can you look in there?” he asked Lisa.
“No. There are no more cameras—our knowledge of the security and alarm systems ends with that hallway.”
“And?”
“And if there are no surprises inside, things won’t be so bad. Difficult, but not impossible. There’s just one thing bothering me.” She tapped on the Hassam on the screen.
“What?”
“I was pleased the Young Man didn’t have this in the earlier photographs, but that hope may have been premature. Because if the Hassam has it, they may have installed it for all the paintings since those photos were taken.”
“But what is it? Some sort of security for the canvas?”
“Yes, and a pretty good one, not the shoddy crap they put up in museums, where they usually have suspension or optical sensors that activate an alarm the moment the picture is removed or cut from its frame. That’s far too late. There are more advanced systems—the Israeli firm Visonic makes one that activates the alarm at the slightest touch—just moved one twenty-fifth of an inch. And I think an armored version of it has been installed here. Unfortunately, that’s the most effective kind if you want to protect an illegal collection and you don’t want the police in your house after a break-in.”
“Meaning?”
“It’s completely dark in the room because the windows have been walled in. The pictures are hanging on an extra inside wall, with a five-foot-wide space between it and the outside wall. As soon as the painting is moved that one twenty-fifth of an inch, a special mechanism hides it between the walls, protecting it not only from theft but also damage. The Israelis devised this system to protect their most valuable works of art without having to resort to bulletproof glass. In museums it makes sense, but no collector is going to pay tens of millions for, I don’t know, a painting by Mark Rothko, only to have to look at it through a super-thick pane of glass. This system is ideal. The paintings aren’t inside the frames, just slightly behind them, on special runners. One movement and, whoosh, the painting vanishes.”
“Great. Is there a way to get around it?”
“There’s always a way. But I have to think. Let’s get to bed.”
“You mean . . .”
“I mean to sleep. It’s our last chance to relax—from tomorrow on we’ll be working nonstop.”
5
The word integrity can refer to the cohesion and reliability of a system and also to the honesty and upright character of a person. So in the moral sense integrity is an extremely powerful concept, describing the achievement of perfection through virtue and truthfulness. It’s a very fine word, and it’s also key to the creed of the United States Military Intelligence Corps, which includes the line “And above all: Integrity—for in truth lies victory.”
Captain Clifton Patridge was thinking about his corps’s creed, and whether it wouldn’t be more honest—showing greater integrity—to tell all the soldiers that from now on they’d be serving falsehood and manipulation, instead of having them tearfully recite solemn oaths in which there wasn�
��t an ounce of truth.
In the past he used to tell himself it had to be like that, that ideology mattered, and that the ends justified the means. What a joke! And what ends, for God’s sake? The aim of any army or combatant should be to protect the weak from any aggressor. Meanwhile, in its entire history the mighty US Army had never had to defend its citizens against a foreign enemy on US soil. American citizens had never trembled in their homes, waiting for news from the American front, had never needed the protection of brave warriors against evil armies who had come to take their land, property, and lives.
But as the army existed, it had to be given something to do. So instead of serving its citizens, the US military served the special interests of the authorities and their more-or-less reasonable policies; they were sent to various parts of the world, to die there not for the people but for money, power, and political maneuvering.
Even officially the US military didn’t serve the truth, only a smoke screen. Unofficially, as he knew better than anyone, the US military performed acts for which civilians would be sent behind bars, and in some states straight to the electric chair. And yet there were tasks so dirty that this paracriminal organization, with a budget of something like five hundred billion dollars, was not enough—on top of that, they had to commission various private military organizations: in other words, mercenaries.
That’s what Captain Patridge was thinking about as he browsed the copies of NATO documents he’d obtained through personal contacts and from which he learned that Major Anatol Gmitruk, the only genuine warrior he had ever met, was currently on US soil.
6
Hermod wasn’t concerned about theoretical digressions of a moral nature. First, he didn’t give a damn, second, he was too busy, and third, he had long since told himself that the laws of the market are without mercy—if someone has a commission and the cash to pay for it, then someone else is sure to carry it out. So why should he choose to live in poverty when it made no difference to the victim? In the hope that he’d be rewarded for his kindness in the next life? You must be joking!
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