The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  ‘Tell the leader if the camp’s not gone in two weeks I’ll send out social services and they’ll lose their children. That should get them going.’

  He climbed back into the warmth of the patrol car. The question was, if Matthias had never been there, where had he been and where was he now?

  ‘Monsieur Tarek, I would like to start the bidding at thirty million US dollars.’ Destin leaned against the glass wall of the telephone kiosk, staring across at the Baur au Lac, where he knew Tarek Awlad Srour, the representative of Gaddafi’s regime, was now sitting in room twenty-three, a telephone – one a direct line to Tripoli – to each ear. The Frenchman listened for a moment to the smooth inflections of the Arab’s voice then, reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the cloth doll he’d found in the letterbox of his home. Amused, he placed it on top of the telephone, where it seemed to stare at him with an almost supercilious expression. Destin smiled back at it then turned to look in the other direction, towards the reflective glass windows of the offices of Zellweger Industries. It pleased him immensely to have both clients clearly in view, with neither having any idea where he was. The perversity of conducting such a deal from a telephone kiosk appealed, but Destin also knew this was the only way he was untraceable – an essential card if he was to play his hand well. Finally he interrupted Tarek.

  ‘Twenty? Please, I am a serious man and you want to make jokes? We both know what the Argentinians paid for the Exocet missiles. This is the key to unimaginable power, the formula to superconductivity at standard room temperature – a generation of weaponry that will be unsurpassed by anything seen before, and you want to bargain? So I’m afraid the price just went up – thirty million.’ He waited while Tarek consulted with Tripoli, casually watching a woman walk a large poodle in a tartan coat across the road. Finally he heard Tarek’s voice at the other end of the line.

  ‘So you are agreed at thirty million? That’s wonderful. I’ll call you back in five with a confirmation.’ Before the Arab had a chance to protest, Destin had put the receiver down and dialled again.

  ‘Zellweger? I have the goods, the going price is forty-five million US… No, this is a strict one-to-one proposal; there are no other parties involved… thirty-two? Sorry, it’s thirty-five or no deal… you are agreed? Excellent. I’ll call you back in three with a confirmation.’ Again he put the phone down then rang Tarek again. ‘Sorry, I’m afraid there has been a sudden development, another interested party and the going price is now forty-seven.’ He held the receiver away from his ear as several loud expletives in Arabic boomed out of the telephone. ‘I’m assuming that’s a pass? Pity, you know how I like to support the colonel.’ He put the receiver down and called Zellweger back.

  ‘Zellweger? Unforeseeably the price just went up to forty million or I go to the Americans – and you and I know what DARPA would pay. We have a deal? Fantastique, I will be at your office at three with the goods.’ He put the receiver back down. ‘So maybe you’re not such bad luck after all,’ he told the doll, before slipping it back into his pocket, stepping out to the street and nodding a greeting to the woman with the poodle.

  The crate sat in the middle of the office, having been carried up by the security officer and a cleaner. As Javob Rechtschild traced his hand over the rough wooden slats, the first digit of the number tattooed on his skin showed between the expensive shirt cuff and his wristwatch.

  He picked up a steel ruler and used it to lever open a couple of the slats. The objects inside were wrapped in newspaper and he reached in, feeling the shape of the first object. His fingers immediately recognised the eight branches of a menorah and he pulled it out and unwrapped it, setting it on the desk. It was made of pure gold. The next object was a small painting wrapped in brown paper – tentatively he tore a corner and immediately recognised the distinctive brushstrokes of a Magritte. He placed it back in the crate and opened Matthias’s letter. After reading it, he reached for the telephone and dialled Interpol.

  The hum of the plane reached into Matthias’s dreams and curled round them in the form of swarming bees that became the background cascade of a nearby waterfall, then the subterranean rumble of an avalanche. There was a jolt of turbulence and he woke with a jerk. He sat frozen, completely disoriented, everything that had defined his life receding like a distant horizon. The memory of the airport, the tension as they waited to pass through security, the moment when he presented his passport, the scrutiny of the immigration officer before they stepped onto the plane, swept up from the pit of his stomach. Had he made the right decision by leaving? It was too late to have any regrets. Latcos would have returned the other valuables, and Herr Javob Rechtschild would have contacted the authorities. It will only be a matter of time before they arrest Thomas and the others. Or will they? The deaths of Jannick Lund and Johanna, his housekeeper, kept turning over in his mind, the horror of their murders also embedded in his conscience. He couldn’t help thinking about the terror they must have experienced. Destin had to be caught, but how? Matthias didn’t trust that Engels would arrest the right man. Matthias needed hard evidence. He closed his eyes again for a second, trying to switch thought streams, compartmentalising to keep focused. What is important is the immediate future, Rajasthan, finding the crater site – I’ll deal with Destin Viscon later, he told himself. If I can find the source of the ore everything will change: I will have achieved the near-impossible. As he shifted in his seat he felt a lump in his pocket. He reached in; it was a seashell, an amulet that must have been slipped in.

  Smiling, he turned to Helen; she was staring out of the window. He watched her for a while unobserved, marvelling at the courage of this woman he felt so comfortable with and yet knew so little about, then took her hand.

  She turned, surprised. ‘You awake?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘Have you seen outside?’

  He leaned over and stared out at the moonlight catching the crests of the vast ocean beneath them. There was something ancient and primordial about the sight, as if it had remained unchanged since the beginning of time. A huge rush of excitement swept through him; it felt like hope.

  ‘I told you I would deliver, and here it is – access to the greatest technological advance in energy today,’ Destin announced, placing the covered statuette onto the granite-topped desk. Janus stood watching, his face a rigid mask, behind which it was impossible to read his emotions. Olek stood beside him, grey dead eyes, as quiet and watchful as a cat. Amateur intimidation, some jumped-up Russian mafia, maybe ex-Stasi, Destin decided silently, then glanced at the man’s knuckles and bared forearms. One of Destin’s old comrades was ex-Vory and he recognised the tattooed ring crosses on the Slav’s knuckles as symbols for convictions and prison terms, but it was the tattoo of a cross of a Russian Orthodox grave with three crossbars on the forearm that unsettled the Frenchman – the mark of a murderer. Maybe not so amateur, he concluded, deciding that, for now, he would stay respectful; after all, he was yet to be paid.

  ‘What is it?’ Janus Zellweger asked in French, his heavy arms folded over the bulk of his torso squeezed into a Savile Row suit. ‘A formula, a weapon?’

  ‘An object. An ancient object made from an extraordinary ore, extra-terrestrial, probably sourced from a meteorite,’ Destin explained, his hand paused over the covering. Janus snorted in derision and Destin, ignoring his cynicism, pulled the covering off and the statuette was revealed, its glittering surface catching the fluorescence of the office lights above. The deity herself, the four arms stretched out, her head tilted back, smiling mouth open in an unheard shout of ecstasy, seemed to dance in defiance of the oppressive, hard-edged décor, mocking the grim-faced men surrounding her.

  Janus looked up, astonished. Destin, misunderstanding the arms manufacturer’s perplexed expression, said, ‘The object itself is made of an unknown new silicate – previously undiscovered. As I said, I believe it is sourced from a meteorite from a crater in Rajasthan. The exact site is in Ramgarh,’ he explained smoothly,
then, again misinterpreting the growing incredulity on Janus’s face, continued his explanation. ‘I know it seems far-fetched, but many ancient holy objects were made from meteorite metal. This one was rumoured to have mystical powers and it turned out it did – superconductivity at room temperature.’

  The mask had once again slipped back over Janus’s features; now Destin found it impossible to gauge his emotional reaction at all – but then again, this impenetrability was what the billionaire was famous for.

  ‘Indeed, I have heard of such things,’ he said softly. ‘And how do you think Matthias von Holindt got the object?’

  ‘I believe he stole it,’ Destin answered confidently. There was a pause, during which a very strange flicker of emotion rippled across the arms manufacturer’s face, and for the first time since he had stepped into the offices of Zellweger Industries Destin felt some apprehension – there was something here he didn’t know, some concealed information. Now he regretted the surrender of his gun to the Russian – a prerequisite to the meeting. Luckily he still had a stick-knife concealed in a pen in his breast pocket; its presence provided some reassurance.

  Janus stood and walked around the statuette, and with one thick finger he caressed the surface of the figurine as lightly and tenderly as if it were a real woman. It was like watching a shark circling its prey – and curiously obscene. Even Destin found himself begrudgingly admiring the utterly sinister presence of this man.

  ‘I’m sure he did,’ Janus said finally.

  ‘You’ll be happy to know I only eliminated a couple of minor characters in the process of procuring it, and it’s going to be impossible to prove that it originally belonged to the physicist.’

  ‘Let me guess. Was one of those minor characters the physicist’s housekeeper, the other his lab assistant?’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘It is so entertaining how life presents these terrible ironies.’ Janus continued to examine the statuette.

  ‘Of course, if you’re not interested there are other buyers,’ Destin ventured, wondering if he would be able to push the price up further.

  ‘You really are an amusing man.’ Janus was standing back behind his desk. He pushed a suitcase towards Destin, who flicked the catch open and began counting the bundles of hundred-dollar notes. As the Frenchman leaned down, Janus gave Olek the slightest of nods. After five minutes Destin snapped shut the suitcase.

  ‘The rest will be deposited into your account. Olek will see you out.’ Janus’s tone left no opening for further discussion. Destin picked up the suitcase and began heading towards the door.

  ‘Not that way, I have a private lift that will take you out the back.’

  The two men stood silently as the small steel lift descended. At the third floor it shuddered to a halt. Destin didn’t like the way the Russian was standing slightly behind him and he didn’t like that the size of the elevator meant the two men were uncomfortably close. Close enough for Destin to smell the Slav’s sweat. Olek shrugged. ‘It always does this at the third floor. Just hit the button again.’

  As Destin reached out to hit the button again, he felt a slight rustle of air behind the back of his head. A split second later his blood barely splattered the wall. The lift started to move again and Olek removed the silencer from his gun and leaned over the Frenchman’s body to press the button for the basement and the incinerator. It was then that he noticed a small cloth doll poking out of the man’s pocket. He pulled it out. Two eyes – one green, one blue – the same colour as the dead man’s had been crudely drawn on the bunched cloth that made up the puppet’s head and a large pin was stuck into the back in the same trajectory the Russian’s bullet had made through the body. Olek had seen such things made by Satanists in prison. Shivering with disgust, he dropped the doll back onto the corpse.

  Janus picked up the silver letter-opener his granddaughter had given him for his sixtieth birthday and scratched at the surface of the figurine. Immediately the layer of sparkling metal wore away, revealing a dull lead colour underneath. He stared at the figurine for a good five minutes then picked up the telephone to order a car to the airfield where his private plane was kept.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Ramgarh, Rajasthan

  The Hillman Minx bounced over a pothole, causing Matthias to hit his head against the padded roof of the old car for what felt like the hundredth time, while Helen clutched at the door handle trying to steady herself. Their driver and guide, a loquacious man in his early thirties wearing an ancient Harris tweed jacket over his bare chest and a white dhoti, cursed in Hindi, then apologised.

  ‘Good sir and madam, we are almost there, almost there. As I promised, this car she is solid as a ship! My grandfather brought her over from Sheffield, Great Britain, in 1958 and she has served my family ever since. Without one complaint. That is the result of the most fantastic British engineering. But you are not British?’

  He peered at Matthias through the cracked rear-view mirror, from which hung the most extraordinary collection of good-luck charms; from a plastic Minnie Mouse to Buddha to Ganesh, all twisting and dancing with each jolt of the car.

  Helen looked up from under the brim of her sunhat. ‘I am American, my friend is —’

  ‘German?’ the driver asked suspiciously for the tenth time that morning.

  ‘That’s right, German,’ Matthias insisted, having decided it would be better to confuse any possible leads to his true identity.

  They had arrived in Jaipur at four a.m. local time so had spent a couple of uncomfortable hours in the arrivals hall. Matthias had been worried that Viscon would be following, and had been extremely anxious to start out for the crater site. Finally they’d been directed to a driver, who was originally from Ramgarh, by a supposed tour operator who approached them at the taxi stand and offered to get them there by nightfall. They’d driven straight through Tonk, stopping only to fill the petrol tank with an old can of kerosene the driver kept in the boot, then he had bought lunch in Indergarh and insisted they drive on to Mangrol. There, to Matthias’s extreme annoyance, he’d taken a short detour to pick up packages, the packages consisting of some kind of dried meat (the scent of which seeped into the car from the boot), an old fridge tied up with string, sari material and a variety of ancient first-aid equipment. They’d lost about an hour, according to Matthias’s calculations, and he’d lost his temper. Nevertheless, his outrage had propelled the driver into suddenly driving at breakneck speed and the dusty outline of Ramgarh village was now on the horizon.

  ‘Finally we have arrived at our illustrious destination!’ the driver yelled over the racket of the engine. ‘There is the gem of all Rajasthan, Ramgarh village.’ He pointed to a couple of dusty sienna-coloured mud huts looming at the side of the road. Through the cloud of red dust kicked up by the wheels, Matthias could see a row of small raised hills that seemed to stretch on either side of the village, forming a ring.

  ‘And over there?’ he asked the driver, pointing.

  ‘Shiva temples, very old, very holy, built into the hillside by the great Raja Malay Varman. Many gods and goddesses are there and some naughtiness,’ he finished, with a leer at Helen as he pulled the car up beside a drinks stand – four wooden poles covered by a grass woven mat with a rickety wooden table set up beneath, an ancient woman in a red sari sitting beside it, her face stretched into a toothless grin. A row of bruised mangos sat before her as she switched a palm leaf backwards and forwards in a futile attempt to keep a swarm of flies from settling. An old 1960s sign advertising Pepsi Cola was leaned up against an abandoned oil drum. Tethered to a pole, a stick-thin goat with red, raw udders turned mournfully towards the car as Matthias and Helen climbed out, followed by the driver, who, after collecting the packages from the boot, joined them at the side of the road. Already a swarm of raggedy children had started to appear as they emerged shyly from the doorways of the huts, several running in from a nearby field – little more than a dusty, dried patch of red earth.

  ‘But
I can’t take you there, so sorry. It is against my religion, but I will find someone who will. Come. We walk to the town hall.’

  It was a dome-roofed white building, with the distinct features of British colonial architecture, next to a small police station. A row of ancient bicycles were parked outside it, and a skeletal mule stood under a tree, its ears twitching away the flies. Three middle-aged men, one in a police uniform, sprawled on chairs in the shade of the town hall, watching a game of chess being played with languid indifference by one very young man in a white turban and an old man in a dark red turban. A cockerel with a flaming purple and red cockscomb strutted on skinny legs behind the table, and squatting in the dusty gutter was a man with an orange and yellow turban, the red and white spot of the holy man painted between his brows, rocking in some private meditation.

  As they approached, followed by their giggling and chattering escort of trailing children, the three men stood, staring at the visitors warily, while the chess players, oblivious to their arrival, continued their game. The driver approached one of the men and, placing his hands together in a prayer gesture, he bowed his head in respect.