Priceless

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by Zygmunt Miloszewski


  “But . . .”

  Before she could protest, the operator answered. Zofia repeated the formula in a muffled voice, adding “Oh my God, they’re coming in here,” and hung up.

  “It’s a trap. We can’t get out because they’re sure to be waiting for us. It might work if we cause some confusion. No sudden moves now.”

  23

  “It’s not possible,” whispered Lisa into the microphone, unaware of what was happening in the building across the street.

  In front of her, to the left of the door, hung a Renoir. One of a series of portraits painted in the 1880s in Monet’s garden at Argenteuil. The Impressionists used to meet there for open-air painting sessions, where they drank and painted landscapes, sober-looking women with children, or less sober-looking ones getting undressed to bathe. They painted other people, themselves, and each other. In this picture a naked model was preparing to bathe in the Seine against the background of a sun-drenched summer landscape filled with patches of succulent greenery. The girl was testing the water with a foot, while leaning back to avoid falling in the river, and casting an amused, flirtatious glance in the painter’s direction.

  A fabulous summer scene, undoubtedly by Renoir—she’d have recognized the style even if it had no signature. The picture was unusual because of its dynamism, because of the photographic way in which it captured the moment. It symbolized the best moments of summer that we’d love to keep forever in our hearts.

  It was undoubtedly one of Renoir’s best paintings.

  The only catch was that Auguste Renoir had never painted anything of the kind.

  24

  Terrified, Zofia had no chance to appreciate the poetic scene being played out in Richmond’s castle. She couldn’t see the naked, fifty-year-old Lisa, all wet, with drops of sweat sliding off her nose and nipples, as she stood in the darkness, staring at the canvas hanging on the wall, barely extracted from the gloom by the LED flashlight. A canvas in which a naked girl stepped into a river, while gazing at her companion on the other side of reality with a look that seemed to be saying Hey, why are you sweating in the dark? Come and bathe.

  Zofia could only see the painting from the slightly steamed-up camera by Lisa’s ear. In other words, an unfamiliar Impressionist portrait. She even felt a mild stab of shame—she should have recognized it, because it seemed to be quite good; despite the poor quality of the transmission, the shades of green were unusual. And it was this thought that prompted the scattered jigsaw in her head to arrange itself into a single whole.

  “Lisa, are you alive?” asked Anatol. “Is the Young Man in there?”

  The image moved, and Zofia and Anatol leaned over the monitor, watching everything according to Lisa’s movements. Soon the model entering the water was replaced by the entrance into the hallway, then two more paintings and yet another wall, where hanging next to each other were a huge television set, the Raphael, and a signed photograph of some baseball star of yesteryear.

  But at this moment it made no impression on Zofia, because she already knew with absolute certainty that the painting on the wall was not the Raphael they were looking for.

  “Get out of there!” she screamed, before Anatol had time to stop her. “It’s a fake! It’s a trap!”

  Her cry merged with Karol’s hysterical whisper to do exactly the same thing.

  25

  From the moment he’d seen Chavez and his pal setting off on their next round at a weary pace, Karol had not stopped feeling anxious. If those two, like the rest of the night shift, hadn’t been discharged from service, then what had their replacements come for?

  He didn’t have to wait long for the answer—after a few minutes three men emerged from the guard’s hut. They looked like crack commandos, mercenaries, assassins. Dressed in black from head to toe and protected by bulletproof vests, each of them had a machine gun with a silencer and wore a helmet fitted with night-vision binoculars. They were moving quickly and silently with the same practiced movements. The commander gave two hand signals, and they fanned out in line formation. Then at a swift, alert trot, seeking out the shadowy spots, they moved down Hamilton Avenue toward Richmond’s house.

  Karol froze, hidden in his bush, convinced his final hour had come. It was only after the men had passed that he dared a whisper, to tell everyone to get the hell out of there.

  Then he got up and set off the opposite way, to find the getaway car and escape. For a split second he hesitated and thought about going back—like a knight in shining armor—in case Zofia needed help. But he realized she’d be safe with Anatol.

  He was scrambling through the bushes toward the center of New Rochelle when several police cars passed him, sirens blaring. He had no idea what was going on, but there was no doubt the whole thing had gone wrong.

  Five minutes later he was driving a used Nissan Sentra toward Eastchester. There he was to leave the Nissan at a parking lot outside the Vernon Hills shopping mall, get into a blue Ford Focus where there were documents and a phone in the glove compartment, then find his way to a motel in White Plains.

  26

  Lisa had a split second to decide what to do before making a dash for the bedroom window on the other side of the hallway in an attempt to save her skin. She left the Raphael behind—orders or not, she didn’t care about that old painting. But the Renoir was a completely different matter. The only thing she could do was check if it was genuine.

  She had no time to take a proper sample, so she stretched out a bright-red fingernail to scratch off a sliver of green paint. Then hesitated. She knew that at the slightest touch the picture would disappear inside the walls. But what else? Perhaps the steel gate would come down and lock her inside the safe. Shouldn’t she just clear out as fast as possible?

  Fuck that, she thought. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  She tossed her backpack on the floor, took two steps back, and ran toward the door, ready to make a dive if it started to close. At the last second, as she passed the Renoir, she scraped the canvas with the nail of her left index finger, scratching off a tiny flake of paint.

  The system was superb. The picture vanished in a flash along with the others—the Israeli mechanism was based on hydraulic motors and a system of weights, as electrical engines would have been too slow. She heard a soft whistle in the walls and the pictures were gone.

  Unfortunately, just as the paintings vanished, the steel barrier in the doorway began to fall toward the floor. Lisa threw herself in a feet-first slide toward the door.

  She only made it through because of all the sweat. If not, the steel door would have crushed her like a grape. At the last moment she closed her eyes, and the barrier fell with a bang only fractions of an inch from her head. Then Lisa came to an abrupt, unexpected, and painful stop—the door had trapped her hair and immobilized her.

  She gasped in hysterical gulps as she stared into the darkness of Richmond’s residence. She felt a monstrous pain in her head, and for a moment she was sure that only the adrenaline was keeping her alive.

  Once she got a grip, she realized she hadn’t been hurt at all.

  There was no time for regrets. She made a decision and freed herself from Richmond’s strong-room door with a hard tug. Her wild roar almost drowned out the nasty, shrill sound of hair being yanked from its roots. Sick to her stomach, she got up, ignoring the white spots spinning before her eyes and the warm blood trickling down her back. She quickly ran into the bedroom, opened the window, lowered herself onto the ledge, and jumped ten feet to the ground. The moment she touched the cold ground, one of the soldiers crashed through the front door.

  Lisa ran into the darkness toward Brookdale Avenue, where her car was waiting.

  27

  When he saw the soldiers running into the residence, he felt relief, convinced that everything had gone smoothly and that the thief was trapped in her cage, waiting, along with her accomplices, to become scapegoats. They’d be sacrificed for a secret cause of crucial importance to his contracto
r. He did wonder why so many special resources were being spent on something so trivial, but he hadn’t inquired—they wouldn’t have told him anyway. He could always find out through his own channels. The list of people who owed him a favor was longer than the guest list for Prince William’s wedding.

  Just as a soldier entered the residence, on the other side Ronia jumped out of a window.

  He cursed as he saw her land and vanish among the trees, running off toward the parks and gardens where it would be hard to catch her. Hard to believe she’ll soon be fifty, he thought with admiration.

  Then he grabbed his gun and jumped out of the car. But he didn’t run after Lisa. He had a clearly specified target—Zofia Lorentz.

  There’s no chance of her getting away, thought Hermod, and suddenly from both sides of Hamilton Avenue four police cars drove up, flashing their blue-and-red lights. They were heading in his direction.

  He dashed behind the Porsche Cayenne and slipped into a dark, deserted yard before the cops noticed him.

  Seeing the armed men, the police stopped outside Richmond’s residence. The mercenaries raised their hands; after all, they were posing as ordinary security guards suspecting a break-in.

  28

  As soon as Zofia had told Lisa to get out of Richmond’s house, Anatol had ripped out the computer cables and raced toward the stairs.

  They ran into the yard together. Zofia was so scared she could hardly stay upright. She’d been prepared for possible failure and that they might be caught. But she wasn’t ready to run away from people whom Karol had described as thugs with guns. She was sure it meant a change of plans, and that Major Anatol Gmitruk, performing the role of their commander in the field, would now defend her.

  Anatol pressed her firmly to the floor and didn’t let her move until he heard sirens. He was vigilantly scouting out the terrain to make sure nobody would spring from the ground or emerge from behind a tree. He figured the police must have partly foiled their plans.

  “Now,” he said, and started running down a slope toward his getaway car.

  “Anatol!” she screamed.

  He turned around.

  “They might have guns!”

  “They do have guns. They won’t use them unless they find you. Run!”

  Then he vanished among the trees.

  She felt like throwing herself to the ground and bursting into tears. One single thought was saving her from hysteria: she must carry out the plan. Guided by this, she ran, just as Anatol had planned, down the slope of the embankment toward the highway.

  She had to stick to the plan. She ran among the trees, keeping to the well-tended lawn of the neighboring residence. Then she had to run right by the next property, and through a yard with a big wooden playground. As she jumped over the slide, a motion-sensitive halogen light came on, and a dog began to bark. She was startled and fell over, painfully hitting the edge of a colorful sandpit, but she quickly got up and continued.

  She ran to The Boulevard, a wide, tree-lined avenue that formed the main axis of the luxury neighborhood. She should have crossed it as fast as possible, but instead she crouched by a tree, looking around.

  Soon she dashed forward again and ran into The Boulevard, right in front of Anatol in his getaway car. He signaled to her to hurry. So she raced ahead, through a park thickly planted with trees. There were two properties between her and her own getaway car.

  From behind she heard the crash of breaking glass and the boom of gunfire. She cringed. She’d never suspected pistol shots could be so loud.

  29

  Hermod was hiding behind a tree when Anatol started shooting from the car; he didn’t waste time rolling down the window. Hermod wasn’t afraid of being hit—the Pole was shooting blind, and would need incredible luck to hit an invisible figure among the trees. He was more concerned that Lorentz would escape. A car chase was out of the question, because the Cayenne he’d left in the driveway was now being carefully examined by the police. Of course they wouldn’t find anything, of course they had nothing on him, but showing up there now would mean having to explain himself, and he didn’t have time for that.

  Which meant he couldn’t let her get away.

  30

  Head down, she ran faster, afraid of being shot. “It doesn’t look like a neat little hole,” she’d once heard from a friend who lived in the mountains and hunted deer. “When a bullet goes through the flesh, it spins, rips, and tears.”

  She tripped and fell into a shallow ditch. She was in such a nervous state that instead of just getting up, she began to struggle hysterically, becoming tangled in the bushes; it took a while to break free, ripping her clothes and scratching her skin.

  Crying and staggering, she finally emerged onto Manhattan Avenue, a few feet from the Chevrolet Malibu getaway car. She was elated and ran to the driver’s side, which should be open, with the keys waiting in the ignition.

  Just as she gripped the door handle, she heard a voice call out in English: “Ms. Lorentz!”

  She turned around, convinced she’d see a security guard in black and the barrel of a gun pointing at her heart.

  Instead she saw the handsome man with green eyes whose business card she’d held in her hand several times during the past week, wondering whether or not to meet him for coffee. He was an interesting person, and it had been nice talking to him. But she’d dropped the idea as soon as she’d realized she’d only be doing it to spite Karol.

  “Mr. Leong? What are you doing here?” she asked in amazement.

  “I’m very sorry,” he said, and aimed a pistol at her.

  31

  Everyone had always laughed at Domingo Chavez behind his back—earlier on, when he was in the army, and now at PMC Raven, a job he’d taken to secure a decent life for his family. They’d recruited him when he was still in Afghanistan, asking him whether he wanted to die in vain for the country or if it was finally time to do something for himself. He realized it was time to do something for himself.

  He was aware of being mocked. They also made fun of him for his obsession with rape and abused women; it didn’t take much for Chavez to start bitching about rapists, demanding the toughest penalties for them. They made fun of him, but nobody ever questioned him about it. They knew Chavez had Mexican roots and had grown up in the poorest suburbs of Albuquerque, where it had always been easy to get a cheap gun, cheap drugs, and cheap whores. Nobody wanted to ask directly for fear of hearing a dreadful story about his mother or his little sister as a rape victim.

  And Chavez was in no hurry to provide an explanation. Because neither his mother (though the way his father treated her might have qualified as abuse in many states) nor any of his four sisters had been the victim of rape. It was he and two pals who had left a bar one Saturday night and accosted Lucia; she was no innocent, just a week ago she’d slept with one of them, then changed her mind. And before that she’d sucked plenty of dicks.

  She was drunk, hardly able to stay upright. And she really had teased and mocked them, calling them faggots.

  It was the worst act of his life.

  Then they had gone; she had stayed, sitting on a board by the fence around a trailer park, crying. He had stayed too, but he’d been ashamed to approach her. He’d sat on the other side of the fence to keep watch, just in case she fell asleep, lost consciousness, or someone else accosted her. He would follow her at a distance if she decided to go home.

  But she didn’t go home, or fall asleep, or lose consciousness. She sat and cried nonstop for five hours. In those five hours, Ding Chavez stopped being a boy and became a man who had learned a lot about the world and about women. He was shaped by his monstrous deed for the rest of his life. He got married and they bought a house in New Jersey, but still, even at the finest moments in his life, he could still hear that monotonous sobbing in the back of his mind. And he was always waiting for the moment when he’d be able to atone for his terrible sin.

  And so when he saw the terrified blonde running through the
bushes, he forgot about his marching orders. They’d been told to sit quietly and not intervene, no matter what.

  So he ran from his partner, who tried to restrain him, released the safety catch on his MK23, and raced after the woman.

  32

  They say that at such moments your whole life passes before your eyes.

  The only thought that crossed Zofia’s mind was that it was a pity she hadn’t seen her parents before leaving. No one should outlive their children, even children like her, who hadn’t found the time to visit in four years. She felt sorrier for them than herself.

  She was sure that would be her final thought.

  Hermod held the gun steady.

  “Stop!” shouted a voice.

  Ten feet away stood Domingo Chavez with his weapon drawn. She felt saved.

  Hermod quickly shot the guard without hesitation. Two shots to the skull. Chavez’s body hadn’t even hit the ground before Hermod was aiming at her again.

  Zofia closed her eyes, preparing herself for pain, cold, and death.

  A shot rang out.

  But nothing happened. Then she heard the man from the plane scream. Cautiously she opened her eyes. Jasper Leong was cowering in pain, his pistol on the ground. His hand was torn to ribbons with a copious stream of blood pouring from it, forming a dark, shining puddle on the ground.

  She glanced over. Anatol was sitting behind the wheel of his Chevrolet, his pistol steady. He fired twice more, as the attacker dashed off down the embankment and out of sight.

  Zofia leaped into the car and two minutes later they were driving down I-95 toward New Haven.

  PART THREE

  THE COLLECTION

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Archipelago

  1

  He glanced at his bandaged hand, now with only three fingers, and thought it might be time to retire. Gmitruk’s bullet had hit the spot between the joints of his index and middle fingers where they joined the metacarpals. It had hit the delicate spot, where bones, cartilage and ligaments connect, at a speed of around six hundred miles per hour, ripping off two fingers. He had seen many deaths, and had been wounded a few times, but the sight of his gun hand—the second most important tool of his trade after his brain—in such a state caused Hermod to feel nausea rising in his throat.

 

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