“I want to talk to…”
His hand moved toward the firearm hanging from his thick black leather belt.
“Go.”
And the woman did, pursing her lips, and disappearing silently into the corridor.
The armed figure stared at Carol for a time, then said, more quietly:
“You should sleep.”
“All right.”
Upon hearing these words, he disappeared.
Carol took off her clothes, turned off the overhead light in the room, got into bed, and thought.
She knew that she would never sleep.
She was wrong though.
She must have been exhausted by all of the events of the previous two days, for sleep she did––a sound, noiseless, dreamless sleep that lasted for two hours.
She awoke shortly before midnight, although she did not know precisely why.
She looked out the window. The snowfall had stopped, and the estate glowed silver in the cold light of a full moon.
There was a small, golden, jewel-encased clock, ticking and glowing eerily on the bed stand beside her.
Eleven fifty-five.
There was a knock on the door.
She got out of bed carefully, and made her way across the room. The tile floor felt cold to her feet.
She made her way to the door and opened it.
A hatchet-faced man dressed in fatigues, with a forty five automatic strapped at his side, confronted her.
“You must come.”
“What is it?”
He simply shook his head and repeated, in a thick indeterminate accent:
“They are waiting for you downstairs.”
So saying, he turned and left.
She returned to her room.
There, on a small writing desk beside the bed, was a candelabrum.
She hefted the metallic and porcelain thing before her, taking note of shepherds and minor goddesses waving playfully around and beneath the wicks, set it down again, and lit the three white candles that it held in trident shape, like Neptune’s scepter quivering with smoky light.
Thus armed, she re-entered the corridor.
She found herself accompanied along it by the ghost of herself, huge, furtive, simultaneously jerking and floating on the wall to the left of her as her right hand quivered with the weight of the candle.
She turned to the left, remaining in the center of her small sphere of light, felt her slippers sliding noiselessly on the alternate marble squares of black and tan beneath her.
There, some steps farther on, the corridor turned sharply to the right.
Then she took two, three, four steps forward…
….placed her palm over the wall-corner…
…and leaned forward.
Spread out below her was a vast library. It was doubly partitioned, books below, windows above.
Innumerable books. Books which, she could tell by flashes that now came every five seconds or so, were earthy in color and massive in form, books transcribed and not published, illuminated and not printed, copied one at a time on parchment, and destined to dissolve if read.
Even from this distance, the titles smelled of Latin.
And surrounding this library, were men identical to the one who’d knocked on her door.
They stood at five-foot intervals.
Between them, huddled, holding their hands before their eyes were the guests of Lorca Reklaw.
Beckmeier’s mules.
The people whom Red Claw had captured, and to whom he was now preparing…
What punishment?
One of guards looked up, saw her standing there, and gestured for her to come down.
Whatever was going to happen, it was about to begin.
Yellow lights showed themselves through the trees. Barns and stables appeared, dark and deserted.
The truck carrying them, the one that had met their boat at the lakeshore, turned sharply and Nina saw the main building of the castle itself, sitting back beneath a canopy of trees, folding its arms and waiting for them, smiling in the way that only a true seat of royalty can smile.
It was, of course, ‘Schonbrunn Gelb,’ that kind of off-yellow that must have been invented to harmonize perfectly with the deep blue or the deep red of cavalry officers’ uniforms, as they danced within its salons, their horses feeding quietly in stables scattered about the grounds, the sound of canon fire rolling over the mountains in the distance.
And there were peacocks strolling in front of them.
She’d imagined peacocks—if she thought of them at all—as day creatures. But these, their huge fans of tail feathers wafting gently back and forth, might as well have been parading and courting at noon, so white-bright and radiant had the moon become in its niche between the central garret of the building and two chimney tops that seemed to have been sculpted just to hold it.
“Well,” whispered Michael, “now you get your chance to meet the Red Claw.”
“So do you.”
The vehicle came to a stop.
The entire front of Eggenburg Palace was glowing, huge floodlights bathing everything within a mile’s perimeter.
There were at least a dozen trucks, troop carriers more accurately, all black, with no insignia, all ringed around the driveway where carriages once would have disgorged Dukes and Duchesses.
They got out, took a few steps toward the entrance, and stopped in their tracks.
For there before them, came a line of people out of the front door, guards with machine guns and pistols, and between these guards, some of the people Nina recognized as customers who’d bought her paintings.
Her visceral, translucent paintings.
Her vivid, scintillating, paintings.
They were art smugglers.
And now they’d been caught.
They were, as she watched, being loaded like cattle into the backs of the troop carriers.
And there, at the very end of the line, came Carol.
Nina involuntarily took a step forward.
Carol’s head turned to the left, her mouth opened wide…
…and then they were running across the storm-soaked lawn of the palace, their shoes drenched, their voices yelling uselessly, all sounds covered over by the drone of motors and the movement of huge cans of some kind of liquid.
Finally, just a few steps from the reflecting pool, they ran together, embraced, sobbed, continued to embrace, attempted to talk, succeeded only in stuttering, sobbed a bit more, and finally contented themselves by wiping tears out of each other’s eyes.
They were, Nina ultimately realized, surrounded by a ring of guards.
She could hear Michael shouting behind her:
“Red Claw! I want to speak directly to Red Claw!”
His words had absolutely no effect on the guards, who continued to gaze dispassionately at the two women standing before them.
One of these women, Carol, looked at the guard closest to her, and said:
“You must let us talk. Please.”
No change in expression.
Another guard arrived, this one the hatchet-faced man, who said:
“It is time. The trucks are leaving.”
Carol merely shook her head:
“We must talk.”
“Yes, but…”
“This is my mother.”
Silence.
Then the ring of guards opened, and the three of them were led to a small stone bench, which faced two metal chairs.
They sat, now some distance from the parade of prisoners being loaded before them.
“What are you doing here, Nina? Michael? How did you get here?”
Nina found that she could not speak, and so Michael was the one who held forth.
“You have to know, Carol. Nina came here because she wanted to.”
“But how…”
“I found out what was going on. I still have a few contacts. One of them told me that you’d been taken out of Bay St. Lucy. I went to Nina’s plac
e and explained everything we’d done. The way the paintings had been smuggled. Everything.”
“But…”
“I told Nina I had a plan for getting you out of here.”
“What plan?”
“I still have several paintings hidden away. I want to talk to Lorca Reklaw. If he’ll let you go, I’ll tell him where the paintings are.”
“But don’t you think he’ll kill you after he gets them?”
“It doesn’t really matter. I don’t want to live my life in hiding.”
“But…but Nina, what are you doing here?”
“Nina refused to stay in Bay St. Lucy, knowing that you were being held here.”
“Oh, Nina. Nina, my second mother…”
“We’ll get you out of this, Carol. We’ll talk to this man Red Claw. We’ll get you out, I promise.”
“Nina, what makes you think he’s going to let you leave Eggenburg?”
“He has to.”
“Why? Why does he have to?”
“Because if he doesn’t, he’ll have Moon Rivard to deal with.”
“Oh, Nina! Nina, I’m so sorry I got you into this!”
“It’s all right.”
“No. No, I’m an idiot! I thought it would all be all right. That I could do everything I planned to do
Carol was crying now.
Nina was crying, too.
No one could speak.
And as they watched, Beckmeier was led from the building.
He wore all white, as though he were on safari.
His hair was unkempt and wild, as were his eyes.
“Let me go, you swine! I’ll have you shot!”
He was able, of course, to have no one shot, being a prisoner himself, in the center of a group of armed men, each of whom seemed a foot taller than he himself was.
“You thieves! You all should have been killed in the war! We should have burned all of you!”
And then, as she watched the scene unfold in front of her, Nina finally realized what the things that had appeared like oil drums being rolled into the building really were.
They were gasoline drums.
Beckmeier would be forced to look on, as his palace, Eggenburg, was burned to the ground.
And farther on, beyond the line of ‘operatives,’ or smugglers, this line of people who would have become instantly wealthy for doing no more than take part, comfortably, in a private and illegal re-distribution of the world’s art treasures, continued to be herded into the dark, featureless trucks that were to transport them.
But transport them where?
Carol looked at the same scene and whispered, as much to herself as to Nina and Michael:
“That’s what it must have been like.”
Nina found that she could, in fact, speak, though hardly above a raspy whisper:
“What, Carol? What must have been like?”
Carol’s gaze seemed to contain no fear at all, but only visualization of something that was not really there, that had happened half a century ago:
“The razing of the ghettos. Poland. France. Everywhere. All the buildings burned. Probably at midnight, just like now. The people who’d lived there, who’d been happy there, forced to look on. Then the flames. Women screaming while their possessions, their treasures, burned up in front of their eyes.”
“Carol…”
“And then the thing that had to follow, of course. Follow as the night the day. The ultimate solution. All of the people, uncertain what was going to happen to them—herded into great trucks, like cattle, to be gassed to death. Gassed to death by the millions. By the tens of millions.”
Then she was silent.
All of them continued to watch.
The last of the people had now disappeared into the last of the trucks.
“Nina. Michael.”
“Oh, Carol, maybe you could…maybe if we could…”
And Carol smiled:
“You’re the bravest two people in the world. The very bravest. I’ll never forget you. Whatever happens, throughout all of time, all of eternity…I’ll never forget you. Either of you.”
“Carol…”
“And Michael, it’s all forgiven. Just one thing. Just one thing, I can never forgive you for.”
Michael stepped toward her; she embraced him.
He asked:
“What?”
“What you said about my breasts.”
Insanely, they were laughing then. He asked:
“What breasts?”
And they continued to laugh.
The hatched-faced man stepped close to them and said:
“All right. But now is time.”
Carol nodded:
“Good. Just, just one more thing: listen, the two of you. They will put you both in the same car, I know.”
“But,” said Nina, “can’t you…”
Carol shook her head:
“No. That’s not possible. I know that. It’s not possible. We part now. But know this: it will be all right. You will be all right. Just remember, Nina, what I told you a long time ago. At least it seems a long time ago now, looking back. Just remember, it’s the same thing in life as it is in paintings. Always look below what you see on the surface. Look at the painting underneath, at the real painting. Don’t believe, ever, what seems to be true. Look at what is really true. Now good bye, and know how much I will always love both of you!”
And with that, she was gone.
Somehow, she simply disappeared into the crowd of soldiers.
Nina and Michael allowed themselves to be led toward the last of the trucks.
They walked carefully up a wooden ramp that led into the back of it, where two other of Nina’s ‘customers’ were holding hands and sobbing.
Nina looked around.
She could see flames starting to pour out of the upper windows of the palace.
Then a tarp was thrown over the back of the transport, and the truck pulled away.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO: DREAMING IN THE ERZHERZOG JOHANN
She was aware of several things simultaneously as she and Michael huddled together in the back corner of the truck. There was the warmth of his small hand in hers, and the somehow supportive sound of his breathing, which seemed to mask the sobs of the three groups of people also riding with them.
But there was also a memory of Carol’s face, and the sound of her voice:
“Know this: it will be all right. You will be all right.”
And:
“Always remember: look beneath the surface of the painting.”
What was she talking about?
All right. She, Nina Bannister, had been made a complete fool of. Had been vain enough to believe that her own silly paintings could be worth money, and had been for weeks on end unaware that those same paintings had masked invaluable art treasures: Rembrandts, Van Goghs, Monets…
But there was something else.
There was another painting that was deceiving her.
Think, Nina.
Think.
What is the painting you’re looking at, have been looking at, have been for all this time misperceiving…
…and what is the real painting underneath?
For had not Carol been trying to tell her only minutes ago what Jane Austen had been telling her for a lifetime?
‘A mind lively and at ease can do with seeing nothing, and can see nothing that does not answer.’
Her mind had been lively for these past months.
But it had also been at ease.
It had been quite satisfied to see nothing at all.
And it had seen nothing that did not conform to her preconceived notions.
Where was the real painting, Nina?
And how could it be uncovered?
Thinking these things, listening to gentle sobbing, feeling the warmth of Michael’s hand, being aware of a popping in her ears as the truck rolled upward into mountainous terrain, and feeling absolutely confident that Carol had been right, and t
hat there was nothing to fear…
she drifted off to sleep.
She awoke some hours later.
All of the people in the back of the truck were asleep.
Sunlight was filtering through the cracks between the tarp and the truck’s frame.
She looked at the watch: seven fifty-five.
They’d all slept through the night.
And, as she became aware of these things, the tarp was pulled back.
Light came flooding in, and they all awakened at the same time.
“What…”
Michael stirred, rubbed his eyes, leaned forward, and peered over her.
There were eight other people doing the same thing: rubbing eyes, stretching…
Two men were standing outside the truck, peering in at them, and smiling.
They were workmen, dressed in the dark blue uniform of city sanitation people.
“Heraus! Heraus mit euch!”
“Michael?”
He shook his head:
“They’re telling us to get out of the truck.”
“But…”
“It’s ok. They’re not soldiers. They’ve got brooms, not guns.”
Nina rose, feeling as though her joints had rusted. She followed Michael over the floor of the truck, waited for the other people to disembark, and somehow got down onto the pavement, which was moist with patches of now-melting snow.
She looked around.
They were back in Graz.
The truck was parked squarely on what she remembered to be Hauptplatz.
The main square.
She looked at Michael.
He was peering around the same as she was.
Some of the other people who’d ridden with them—and who clearly had not been harmed and so were hugging each other and laughing—were asking questions of the workers, and were getting only shrugs and grins.
“These workers,” Michael said, quietly, “don’t know anything. They say they found the truck parked here. It was here at sunup, they think. They have no idea where it came from.”
“So we…”
“Let’s go into the hotel. We go to my room. Perhaps there, we make some sense of this whole thing.”
They crossed the square.
The hotel looked just as it had yesterday, when the limousine which met her plane at The Graz Airport dropped her off there.
She looked at the city waking up around her, sparkling in the sun.
Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) Page 22