This time the commission was easy, especially compared to the previous operation in Poland. It had no professional drawbacks. He just had to make sure some people were compromised. Framing innocent people for a crime was easy. So framing people for a crime when they were already planning a heist—simple. All he had to do was tip off a local beat cop, tell him to swing by the relevant address, and that was that.
Apart from that, there was one person who needed to be liquidated. A civil servant with no military training and no criminal history. Shooting her would be a waste of resources. But the cherry on top was that one of the targets happened to be the “hero” who’d foiled his plans in the Tatras. He wasn’t supposed to kill him, just make sure he landed in jail for a really long time. Others would see to his re-education once incarcerated.
7
For the next few days they only met in the evenings at the loft on Mercer Street; apart from that, each of them did his or her part to prepare. Lisa made only brief appearances in the evenings and hardly spoke, but the others understood that she merely showed her face as a courtesy so they wouldn’t start suspecting she’d cut and run. No one asked or gave her a hard time, and even Anatol let it go. They all knew that at the key moment the whole thing would depend on her alone.
Anatol focused on what would happen after the theft. Lisa had often stressed that anyone can steal. You just go in and grab. But to steal, get away with the goods, and not get caught—that was the real art. Anatol bored the others with details and maps, showed them where the getaway cars would be, and made them practice driving those cars so they would be entirely familiar. He also planned several distractions for the security guards.
Karol rented the house from the delighted Bridget, paying for six months up front and doubling the commission. Karol also discreetly used his contacts to find out about Darren Richmond and his collection. They confirmed that Richmond had indeed bought the Hassam at Sotheby’s and was also suspected of having acquired Winslow Homer’s Farmer with a Pitchfork, sold at Rockefeller Plaza for a fantastic two and a half million dollars, and two smaller paintings by Whistler. It looked as if Richmond the book lover had suddenly become a connoisseur of American Impressionists.
Zofia and Karol got on with simulating the move to New Rochelle. To this end, Zofia bought the entire contents of a house at an auction in New Jersey and had it all sent to the residence in several deliveries so the move looked legitimate.
Zofia also exchanged coded communication with top state officials, trying to have a Polish government plane sent over that she and her team could use to get themselves and the Raphael home if anything went wrong. Zofia wasn’t thrilled about the notion of an emergency getaway, because it would mean she could never legally return to the United States, and she still wanted to see the Grand Canyon and Yosemite one day. But ultimately she figured it was a small price to pay for recovering Poland’s most valuable lost work of art. Eventually it was decided that her boss, the minister for foreign affairs, would come over on the government plane and land in Washington. The date of his visit also determined the date of the robbery—they had three days left.
8
Finally the day of the operation came.
At ten a.m. they met at Mercer Street and spent three hours going over the plan, considering every possible scenario.
Then they spent the next hour scrubbing down their loft—they could leave no trace.
At three p.m. they left their luggage at the grimy storage facility on Thirty-Fourth Street.
At four p.m. Karol and Lisa “went home,” warmly greeting Domingo Chavez, who happened to be on duty.
At five p.m. a cab stopped outside the Colonial residence on The Serpentine and out stepped Zofia, holding a bottle of wine.
At six p.m. it was already dark enough for the streetlights to come on.
At 6:45 Anatol finished parking the cars at various preestablished locations.
At 7:15 another cab stopped outside the residence, and Anatol got out with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a bag of Chinese food. He’d randomly stopped at the same fast-food place as Karol had a few days earlier. There must have been something about its particular squalor that attracted Eastern European visitors.
At 7:18 Anatol poured most of the bourbon down the drain. Just in case.
At eight they switched on the TV and the lights downstairs to simulate a party, while they actually sat in the dark bedroom upstairs and waited.
At 8:24 Lisa said, “There’s no time for foreplay. It’s wham, bam, thank you ma’am. Hard entry, hard exit. As short and fast as possible.”
At 10:15 Karol said that if this were a gangster movie, they’d be killing time discussing what they’d do with the hundred million they got for the Raphael. They devoted the next fifteen minutes to doing just that.
Lisa said she’d finally buy something honestly at an auction. She wasn’t convinced that this way of obtaining a work of art would be very satisfying, but it was worth a shot. Then she added that she could buy another Monet as a gift for Poland—it would be easier for them to come to terms with the loss if it disappeared again.
Zofia told them that with her twenty-five million, she’d set up a fund to find and recover Poland’s national heritage. At which Karol rolled his eyes; Zofia said it had always been her dream, and that maybe, if Karol were ever to regard art not as a means for profiteering but as an expression of the inner beauty that each person carries, or to see the kids in museums to whom this beauty showed new paths, maybe he’d change his mind. And then she amused them all with the clincher—she’d want a brass plaque on every recovered work of art noting it was there due to the efforts of the Zofia Lorentz Foundation.
Anatol wasn’t very forthcoming. At first he stalled, saying he didn’t know, then finally that he’d donate his share to medical research and asked them not to question him because it was a personal matter. He apologized for being so dull.
“I’ve worked mine out in detail,” said Karol, leaning toward them. “I’d split my twenty-five million into twenty-five separate shares and give it away. I’d choose twenty-five individuals, or families, or couples. Friends, acquaintances, relatives—everyone needs money for something. I won’t give it in person, but anonymously, via a trust—I wouldn’t want anyone to resent me for it or feel uncomfortable about a gift that can’t be repaid. I’d just have one condition: anyone who accepted their million must sign a promise to write a brief account ten years down the road to say what they did with the money and how it changed their life.”
“Why would you do that?” asked Zofia, genuinely amazed by the idea. Twenty-five million at his disposal, and the one thing he’d come up with was a fanciful way to give it all away. Karol Boznański—art dealer, cynic, and bloodsucker with a heart of gold.
“Ten years later, I’d have twenty-five truly incredible letters, real-life, personal stories. I’d compile them in a book and publish it worldwide. It’d be an international bestseller, and I’d earn twenty-five million a year in royalties alone. Not a bad idea, is it?”
“You clown,” said Zofia.
“You know what, I’ll tell you something,” Karol replied. “You sit in your office, staring at coffin portraits, sugar bowls, and cottages in the Tatras all day long, and you think you’re saving the national heritage—that’s all bullshit. Do you really think your national heritage is a five-hundred-year-old canvas painted on by some guy who had no idea where Poland was? Our real national heritage is far more ordinary than that. It’s a walk in the park with your kids, a lazy Saturday, and a family lunch on Sunday. Heritage means raising your children to be good, smart, and honest.”
Although Karol seemed to be kidding, Zofia felt a flood of feelings that were hard to handle. All those months they’d spent together, the emotions, the discussions, the quarrels, and the final reason for their breakup. It was too much to bear right now, at this tense moment so close to the operation. She apologized to the others, went into the bathroom, and sat there for a while, tr
ying to calm down. She tried not to think about how his words resonated with the anxiety that she’d held for some time. Were they really going to risk their lives and freedom for a painting?
At 11:30 the neighborhood went to bed, and the group focused on Richmond’s dark, deserted residence. The infrared imaging had much more to show. The thermostats had been activated, and the system was making sure the temperature didn’t fall below the programmed sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit. As they spread from room to room, the colored patches of heat resembled an animated film for a sophisticated audience.
At 11:45 they went into action.
Lisa broke into the system controlling Richmond’s residence. She checked the images on all the cameras to make sure there was nobody in the house, that none of the businessman’s seven children from three different marriages was sleeping in any of the bedrooms. The house was empty. She accessed the control panel for the heating and set the temperature in the upstairs bedrooms to ninety-five degrees.
“I didn’t think that was possible,” said Zofia.
“The system has a maximum of one hundred degrees,” replied Lisa. “This is America. The oldsters come home from Florida and want it hot. Now we wait.”
At midnight, though Richmond’s house was dark as ever, on the infrared imaging it looked like a Christmas tree. The upstairs windows glowed red and orange, the heating system white, as warmth poured into the downstairs rooms at an even seventy-four degrees. The rooms upstairs ranged from eighty-four to eighty-six degrees, depending on their size.
At twenty past midnight, Domingo Chavez and company took their last walk by the house. This final patrol would go down The Serpentine, return via Hamilton Avenue to their post, and there, at half past midnight, would rotate with the next shift.
“This isn’t a high-security prison,” Anatol had told them earlier. “They’re not going to change shifts with an overlap so every bit of wall is under surveillance nonstop. The final patrol will always be in a hurry to get home to a late dinner, a cold beer, his wife under the blankets. Just a couple dirty jokes and some chitchat with the oncoming shift. We have half an hour to relax.”
At twenty-five past midnight Karol went out for a late walk.
At half past the street was dark and deserted. A few hundred yards away, the security guards were probably discussing how the Giants had just thrashed the Tigers in the final game of the World Series. The temperature upstairs in Richmond’s house had reached the programmed ninety-five degrees. Lisa switched off everything she could from this level of the system, in other words the most basic burglar alarms on the doors and windows. Then she set the inside cameras to recorded images on a loop, just in case Richmond decided to come home.
And then she stripped naked.
9
Captain Patridge was sitting in the Red Ruby bar in New Rochelle, eating rice with some kind of meat he couldn’t identify, in a sauce made of such highly processed ingredients that all he could recognize was onion.
Where does betrayal actually begin? He kept wondering. The fact that he was even sitting here could have been seen as a sign of insubordination. But why? He might have been a soldier, but he was also a free American citizen who happened to have a few days off and had gone out for Chinese in the suburbs of New York.
And even if he was sitting here because he was on the trail of Anatol Gmitruk, so what? He hadn’t done it illegally—he’d just made use of resources that he was officially entitled to. Yes, they could fault him for doing it outside the scope of an official operation. But that didn’t even merit a reprimand, at most they might admonish him. He’d just wanted to find a friend, big deal. So what?
And even if he was sitting here because he suspected his friend was likely to fall victim to the conspiratorial activities of senior US officials and the people they’d hired for their dirty work, so? Officially he knew nothing about those activities, and he had after all been ordered not to interfere.
Come on, man up and stop feeling sorry for yourself, he finally told himself, and knocked back a glass of Coke. If you meddle in this, at best you’ll get jail time, but more likely the chopping block because you know too much.
He set aside his half-eaten meal, left the bar, and stood by the rented Dodge Avenger.
When he and his wife had had problems and gone to couple’s counseling, the therapist had kept on repeating, “Not making a decision is also a decision.” That had sunk in, so now he couldn’t fool himself that he was just going to wait and see what happened, then make up his mind. If he waited, Gmitruk faced certain death or an equally sad end, as prepared for him by the four-star asshole and his hired men. If he took action, an equally bad or worse end might come his way too, besides the fact that he’d be breaking all the oaths and regulations.
He twisted the car keys around his finger, still trying to decide whether it was better to betray his homeland or himself.
10
Karol cast a final glance at the Colonial residence. If everything went according to plan, he’d never see it again, or this neighborhood. Nor would he see it if anything went wrong, unless he were brought here in handcuffs to revisit the crime scene. He had no documents on him, no passport, and no keys.
All he had was a small earpiece through which he could hear what was happening in the upstairs bedroom where Zofia and Anatol were sitting, and how Lisa was doing as she pushed her way through the bushes in the nude.
He was sorry he’d had to leave the house before she stripped down. Nothing had happened between them, but the fact that it could have kept stirring his imagination. And meant that he couldn’t regard Lisa as merely a fellow team member; the thought of whether the invitation was still valid smoldered in the back of his mind.
He walked down The Serpentine to Hamilton Avenue, then toward the center of New Rochelle. On his left there were luxury residences, similar to the one where he’d been living for the past few days, and on his right there were some slightly more modest but still historic houses, with characteristic porches the entire width of the facade. Two hundred yards farther on, he came to an entrance gate with two stone pillars, which was the way into the residential area. By the gate stood a small security booth; white fluorescent light poured out of it, tinged with the blue glow of industrial TV monitors. Inside there was movement, but Karol couldn’t see the figures, only shadows.
11
Zofia had no problem with the fact that Karol had had to leave too soon to see the Swedish woman taking off her clothes, even though she realized he must have gotten a pretty good look at her while sharing the house all week.
She liked the fact that Lisa was so relaxed about being naked—maybe it was the result of growing up in the land of the sauna. She stripped down to a pair of skimpy panties, put on a small backpack with nylon strings, and fixed something to her ear which looked like a wireless phone receiver but was actually an intercom with a camera transmitting images to their computer.
Now they could see her cautiously but rapidly covering the short distance between their house and Richmond’s castle. She took a roundabout way; a survey of the vicinity in infrared imaging and several walks combined with taking photos had allowed them to sketch a route where she could remain in the security dead zone as long as possible. Earlier on, Anatol had judged the camera installation to be fairly amateur. Ideally every patch of terrain should have double coverage. Here that was only the case at points naively regarded by the installer as of key importance, such as the front door and the glass wall of the garden-side lounge. Apart from that, plenty of locations were only covered by one camera, and there were also lots of dark spots, allowing Lisa to creep almost right up to the residence.
Almost.
12
It must have been about sixty-six degrees, and there was a light wind. Flitting naked between the trees and treading the icy, leaf-coated ground had something primeval about it. Now she really did look like Ronia, accustomed to hardships, moving nimbly through the woods. She stopped at the trunk of
a large beech tree, the last point at which she could feel safe. Four yards on, she climbed the two-story gray stone wall surrounding the residence. It was a side wall, on the opposite side of the building from Richmond’s temple of art. On this north-facing, less important side of the house, downstairs Lisa could see the window of a utility room, and upstairs a guest bedroom.
From Lisa’s point of view this was a virtue. Not only was this wall of the house the most poorly monitored and the most sheltered, the bedroom was also the smallest, which in this instance was key, because that meant it was the hottest.
“Karol?” she whispered.
“All’s well,” he replied in English. They’d recognized that at key moments they couldn’t take the risk of a misunderstanding in Polish. “They’re sitting in their box; it doesn’t look like they’re going anywhere.”
“Keep me updated.”
This was the first risky moment. Not so much for them as for the entire operation. A recess in the wall she wanted to climb to reach the bedroom window was monitored by one camera, fixed to a tree. Switching it off shouldn’t attract attention. For aesthetic reasons it was on the tree, rather than a specially installed post. From the backpack, whose strings were painfully cutting into her shoulders, she extracted a nylon cord with a small weight attached to one end.
She spun it around and threw it, aiming at a thin branch above the camera. She missed, and with a loud clank the weight bounced off the camera’s metal casing.
She swore in Polish. Swedish swear words were useless, especially at moments like this, whereas the Polish language, after all those centuries of trying to express a state of being permanently pissed, had some really interesting terminology.
“Karol?”
“All quiet.”
She concentrated, tried again, and this time got it right. The weight wound around the branch five feet from the trunk. It would be best to strike when the camera wasn’t showing an image in the control room, but there was no way of knowing. She tugged on the branch a few times, simulating the motion of the wind, and once she was sure it was obscuring the camera lens adequately, she fixed the other end of the line to the trunk with little metal teeth.
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