Closing her eyes, Maddy rested her head on her knees. “You’re making this up—”
“Hear me out. Hodel lived in Pasadena, which at the time was the headquarters of the Theosophical movement, the home of the sole remaining lodge of the Ordo Templi Orientis, and the center of the Arensberg Circle. If the Soviets wanted to strike at the heart of the Rosicrucian establishment, it had to be there.”
“But why would the Black Dahlia murder cast suspicion on the Rosicrucians?”
Ethan rifled through a stack of crime scene photographs. “Look at the style of the killing. Elizabeth Short’s body is posed after the fashion of the Vehmgericht, who cut their victims in half. It evokes the faceless woman in the grass that Duchamp had painted thirty years before. And it worked. The police focused on a possible occult connection from the earliest stages of the investigation. Within a year, the lodges were closed, and the circle of artists was dissolved.”
In the darkened study, Maddy could not see Ethan’s face. “So what happened to the Rosicrucians?”
Ethan inverted the bottle over his glass, draining the last few drops. “They’ve spread across the globe, mostly as a criminal enterprise, but maybe, in some strange way, they’re trying to finish the revolution that their predecessors began. And that’s why they went after Archvadze. He’s an interloper, like Arensberg, except richer and better organized. He wanted to start a revolution in Georgia, so he decided to explore the roots of the one revolution that had already succeeded in that part of the world. And his best source was Duchamp, who had put the group’s secrets in his art, including one message so important that it could only be revealed after his death.”
“But why would this be useful to Archvadze? What could the study have to tell him?”
“Maybe it’s the key to solving Étant Donnés. In his notes, Duchamp implies that the installation is a sort of chess problem, and that the viewer’s task is to find the solution. Perhaps it’s only fully visible in Philadelphia, when you’re standing before the installation itself. And if Archvadze was close to an answer, it explains why the study was stolen. These men protect their secrets.”
As she listened, her hands growing cold, Maddy found herself thinking of her failed gallery in Chelsea. She had always sensed that there was an order to the art world that she would never be allowed to understand, a door that would remain closed forever, and as she thought now of the thief at the mansion, she knew for the first time why his face had haunted her. It was the face of a man who had seen into that secret world. And now Ethan had the same look in his eyes.
But the image of her dead gallery refused to go away. She reminded herself that she had been wrong about these things before, and that to make the same mistake here would mean humiliation or worse. She took a breath. “Before we go further, we need to be sure. I can ask Lermontov—”
Even before she finished, Ethan was already shaking his head. “No. That’s something else we need to talk about.” He dug through his notes, emerging with a computer printout. “When you told me that Lermontov was trading in Rosicrucian art, I went through the database to look at transactions in which he had been involved, hoping to get a sense of which artists were relevant. I didn’t find anything useful. But I noticed something strange.”
He handed her the printout, which turned out to be a list of art deals. “There’s a pattern in these transactions. For many of these works, the listed seller doesn’t appear in any other transaction except the ones involving Lermontov. Often they’re dead businessmen with no record of having invested elsewhere in art, or collectors for whom no independent evidence exists at all. You understand? The names are fake. He’s covering up the real source of these paintings.”
Maddy’s forehead continued to pound. “But we’ve always said that provenance data is notoriously unreliable. The database isn’t perfect.”
“I know. And I might have dismissed this if it only applied to one or two transactions, but there are scores of them. The odds against this being a coincidence are astronomical. No. He’s getting pieces from somewhere outside the traditional art market. I think it’s a secret network of collectors, like Archvadze, who want to trade art with hidden meanings without there being a record of it. His involvement isn’t just theoretical. He knows the names of these collectors.”
Maddy shook her head. She was about to repeat her objections when, looking down, she saw a piece of paper that had been uncovered when Ethan removed the list of transactions.
She recognized it at once. It was a page from her notes. And in the margin was drawn a hand clutching a rose.
Maddy stared at the page. “Where did you get this? I told you it was missing.”
Ethan looked away, his lips stained red by the wine. “I’m sorry. I took the spare key from your office. I didn’t mean to worry you—”
Maddy rose slowly to her feet. “You’re the one who broke into my house? But why?”
“I wanted to see if you were working for Lermontov. I wasn’t sure if you were telling me the whole truth, so I looked at your notes to see if you were hiding something. I must have taken that page by accident.” His voice was flat. “But I never meant for you to find out.”
They looked at each other across the darkened room. A wordless anger was gathering in her body, mingled with something even worse, which was disappointment. She opened her mouth to speak, then stopped herself. In a flash, she understood that anything she said would only bind them closer together.
Turning aside, she went onto the landing, her footsteps loud on the stairs. She kept an ear tuned to the study, wondering what she would do if he called for her, but heard nothing. Sensing that it was too late to stop, she went into the entryway. A second later, she was on the street, walking away, if only to prove to herself that she still could. Her hands were shaking with rage.
Maddy went blindly up the sidewalk. For a moment, she expected to see the man who had been following her standing outside, but there was no one. There was only the street, one that she knew all too well, the street of missed opportunity, when the evening’s fantasies had collapsed into the reality of a solitary walk home. No one was watching. She was alone.
41
“Gentlemen, we have a warrant,” Barlow said. As Powell entered the briefing room, he found it packed with members of the tactical unit. Taking a handout from the stack by the door, he looked for a few square feet of space in which to stand, and finally squeezed into the corner next to Wolfe.
Barlow stood before a slideshow presentation, stripped down to a tie and shirtsleeves. “As most of you know, we’ve been building this case for weeks. Normally, we’d wait for the buyer to take delivery, but because one sorry fuck forgot how to sew a battery pack into his coat pocket, we’re moving up the timeline.”
There was mild laughter, most of it directed at Kandinsky, who sat in the far corner, his face red. “Until now, the details could not be revealed, except to a few of you,” Barlow continued. “Now that you’re being asked to execute this warrant, it’s only fair that you hear the full story.”
Touching a key on his laptop, he advanced the slideshow to the mug shot of an Armenian male. “This is Arshak Gasparyan, an aspiring gangster from Sheepshead Bay,” Barlow said. “He was on the verge of a weapons deal with Sharkovsky when he vanished, along with three of his cronies. A few days later, they were found at a construction site in Gowanus, minus their faces and fingerprints. Which left our man with a shipment of guns and no buyer.”
Barlow went to the next slide. “This is Garegin Solomonyan, a more experienced gun runner from Gravesend. In recent weeks, we’ve intercepted and recorded a series of conversations between him and Sharkovsky. The conversations are usually in code, so it’s taken us a while to put together a picture of the deal. At this point, though, it looks like our vor is storing a crate of rocket launchers and something like a thousand grenades on the club’s ground floor.”
There was an appreciative murmur as Barlow advanced to a plan of the Club Marat
. “The club stands in a line of restaurants on the boardwalk, with a row of housing projects to the rear. There are two floors and three entrances, one on the street, one on the alley, one on the boards. Teams of five men will cover each door. Sharkovsky will have watchers posted, so we’ll keep well back until the signal is given. Powell and Wolfe will be our eyes on the inside.”
Powell felt the room briefly scrutinize his face as Barlow brought up a list of names. “Once we’re in, we grab Sharkovsky, secure the merchandise, and turn up the lights. It’s the weekend, so the club will be packed. We lock down the doors, run every name, and scoop up the guys we need. You each have the list, so you know we’re looking at twelve to fourteen extractions. Disarm them, cuff them, get them in the van. We’re also looking for computers, paper files, and cameras.”
Barlow paused like a preacher surveying his congregation at a particularly dramatic moment. “If we get our man, he’s looking at a life sentence for arms trafficking conspiracy, interstate firearms trafficking, and illegal transfer and possession. I can’t speak for all of you, but that’s good enough for me. Direct any questions to your unit commander. We move in twenty.”
The meeting broke up. Powell waited until the conference room was clear before approaching Barlow, who gave him a wolfish grin. “Good work on the dead girl. Your report just crossed my desk.”
“Not that it mattered,” Powell said. “We were moving against Sharkovsky anyway.”
“Never tell anyone that your work is unnecessary. If you don’t watch out, they’ll start to believe you.” Barlow headed for the door. “Either we have accessory after the fact for a death that isn’t even in our jurisdiction, or we have a thousand grenades and a life sentence. Which would you prefer?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.” They went outside, with Wolfe following them down the hallway. “I know you want to move tonight, but I think we should push back the timeline.”
Barlow headed for his office. “Don’t waste my time with this shit. Those guns won’t be there forever—”
“This is about more than weapons. You overheard the conversation at the courthouse. Russian intelligence is working with these groups. Sharkovsky will never talk about this, but the Scythian will. It’s only a matter of time before he shows up. If we move too soon, we’ll scare him off.”
“So what are we looking at here?” Barlow asked. “Fraud? Money laundering?”
“Art smuggling,” Wolfe said. “I just got off the phone with the Budapest police. A year ago, they found a courier’s body in a hotel, shot once through the heart. There was paint and gold leaf embedded in the wound. He was bringing art from Russia, but someone else got to him first. Whoever killed him must have overlooked one painting. The Scythian came here to get it back.”
Barlow halted at his office door. “What does that have to do with state intelligence?”
“I don’t know,” Powell said. “But it can’t be a coincidence that the buyer was an oligarch who has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for years. The heist was an intelligence operation. That’s why one of the thieves ended up dead. It’s standard operating procedure for the Chekists. Ilya is the only missing piece. If we wait long enough, he’ll come after Sharkovsky. If you look at the big picture—”
“The big picture? Let me paint you a picture of my own.” Barlow put a hand on Powell’s shoulder. Powell braced himself for a viselike grip, but to his surprise, the big man’s touch was almost reassuring. “Ilya has no passport. No resources. He’ll turn up soon. When he does, he’s yours.”
Powell was unsettled by this show of reasonableness. “I’ve got your word on this?”
“No, but you don’t have a choice. This is shaping up to be a major case. If we get Sharkovsky, this division will see increased funding for years to come. If we blow it, we get nothing. That isn’t in your interest. And it certainly isn’t in mine. Get your piece. We’re leaving soon.”
Barlow went into his office and shut the door. Wolfe looked at Powell. “He’s right.”
“I know.” They headed for their cubicles. “But even if we interrogate Sharkovsky or Misha, they won’t talk to us. We don’t even know the right questions to ask. If we could track down Archvadze, and find out why this bloody painting is so important, we might stand a chance—”
“Well, I don’t know what to tell you. As long as he’s missing, it’s a dead end.”
As they reached their desks, Powell was struck by an idea, one that appeared so fully formed that it seemed as if it had only been biding its time, waiting to rise to the surface. “Maybe we can lure him out of hiding.”
“How?” Wolfe answered her own question at once. “Natalia? But we promised—”
“I know. But I’m out of ideas. Is there anybody you trust on the police blotter?”
“I can think of someone,” Wolfe said. He saw the wheels turning in her head. Leaking information about Natalia’s arrest was a calculated risk. If Archvadze saw it, he might come forward, but if not, they would have broken a pledge to a key witness and received nothing in exchange.
Wolfe seemed to come to a decision. “All right. I’ll make the flipping call.”
“Do it, then.” Powell watched as she headed for a far corner, dialing a number on her cell phone, as if she wanted to keep the call off the main switchboard. After a few seconds, as someone answered, she began to speak. Studying her face, he thought in passing of the body that had been buried under the boards, and of the two sisters standing together by the river Onega.
A minute later, Wolfe came back to the cubicle, her face unreadable. “It’s done.”
“Good,” Powell said, glad that it was out of his hands. He glanced at the clock on his computer. “Time to go.”
“One second.” Wolfe unlocked her desk drawer and removed her gun. Only a week ago, it had been in a safe in Barlow’s office, but now, for the first time, Wolfe had been entrusted with her own weapon. Following her lead, Powell got his jacket and pistol. Then they went downstairs to join the raid.
42
At the playground by the ocean, the sun was going down. A solitary figure stood near the basketball courts, hands in his pockets, looking across the parking lot at the wooden ramp in the distance. From the ramp, which sloped up toward the boardwalk, it was a hundred paces to the Club Marat.
As he waited for the sun to set, his eye was caught by a spherical object bouncing across the ground in his direction. It turned out to be a tennis ball, closely followed by a tiny child, no more than three or four, racing after it with arms extended. Reflexively, the man reached down and scooped up the ball. He was pleased to discover that his ankle was no longer bothering him.
“Daniel!” the boy’s mother shouted. At the sound of the name, Ilya’s head gave an involuntary jerk. He released the tennis ball, which bounced twice and rolled to a stop at the boy’s feet. The boy bent down awkwardly and retrieved the ball, clutching it in both hands, and ran away.
Watching the boy rejoin his mother, Ilya thought of the many transformations that he had undergone since he had last referred to himself by that name. He had only recently completed another metamorphosis. His hair was cropped short and tinted blond, his face rough with several days’ growth of beard.
Now he headed for the parking lot at the edge of the playground, not far from his most recent home. With his description broadcast over the airwaves, he had no longer felt safe in hotels. After some thought, he had decided on a place to sleep, one that required only a pair of bolt cutters and a mummy bag.
Lying on the sand, he had felt like a body buried in the desert. His connections to the world had been severed one by one, leaving only a single spark of consciousness tethered to the pain in his ankle, which he had wrapped in an elastic bandage and elevated above the level of his heart.
For much of that lonely time, as he waited for his ankle to heal, he had thought of the breaking of the vessels. When God created the world, the cabalists said, the vessels meant to hold his glor
y had shattered, spilling gross matter throughout the universe, along with fragments of the divine being. These fragments had to be regathered, one piece at a time, by the cumulative efforts of all men.
Ilya, his own life broken, had once seen this as his task as well. According to the cabalists, the vessels had shattered because of an original impurity, a network of evil that undermined the order that God had put in place. Ilya, in turn, had traced his exile back to another system, the forces of the state, and had dedicated his life to bringing this system to its knees.
His mistake, he saw now, was to believe that the world’s restoration required another system, the tzaddikim, which he had blindly identified with Vasylenko. The truth was that no system was required. It was the lonely work of each man, working in isolation, to restore the balance of the world.
The error did not lie in any particular system, but in the desire for a system itself.
As the last rays of sunlight disappeared, he crossed the parking lot. The time it had taken for his ankle to recover had also allowed him to consider what to do next. With the police watching Sharkovsky, he had to act soon. Aside from the roll of canvas strapped to his back, he had few resources. But he had enough.
When he reached the ramp that led to the boardwalk, he noticed a separate area for quarterly permit parking. In one of the spaces, a pickup truck was wedged, its wheelbase far too broad for the white lines. It had been cleaned and repainted since the night of the heist, its body red instead of green, but it was easy enough to recognize. He marked its location in his mind.
On the beach, the crowds had dwindled. When he was sure that no one was looking, Ilya ducked under the ramp, where a wire fence blocked off access to the area beneath the boards. Unlike most parts of the boardwalk, the gate allowed sand to blow through, so the space under the boards was clear.
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