“Any time, Ruth.” Sir Mortimer ushered Ruth to the door, a fatherly hand under her arm. “I’m glad you stopped in.” He paused and smiled at her, a wise look in his eye. “I gather you’d rather not talk about the Schliemann treasure? Or what the Metropolitan plans to do about this auction?”
Ruth nodded humorously. “You’re quite right. I’d rather not—anymore, I assume, than you would regarding the plans of the British Museum?”
Edgerton laughed. “I suppose we’ll all be glad when this beastly auction is over and done with, and we can all go back to being friends again. Or at least until the possibility of a new major acquisition comes along, I suppose.” He opened the door for her. “Good-bye, Ruth. It was nice seeing you.”
He closed the door behind her, leaving her with two secretaries busily typing. Ruth sighed as she walked through the corridor and into the upper main corridor of the museum. Another nice man, Sir Mortimer, but also another rival for the Schliemann collection. And speaking of the collection, she’d better get on with trying to trace it from that Bad-something place. She knew she was being romantic. She was well aware that it was not only improbable but most likely impossible for her to discover anything new, especially after all the intervening years. But it would be good therapy, and that was what she needed.
She climbed the steps to the landing where the map room was located, and rang the bell. An elderly uniformed guard answered, studied the card she presented with a suspicious eye as not being the standard form, but finally seemed to concede that it might possibly be genuine, and allowed her to enter. He handed back the card.
“Do you know how to use the map room?” he asked, as if anyone with less than a standard reader’s card would most probably not.
“Yes, I had a card here years ago.” She tucked the precious card into her purse and walked into the file room. She located and withdrew the notebook containing listings for maps beginning with the letters GER and began leafing through it. There were maps for every section of Germany from the time, ages back, when the country was merely a loose federation of states and cities, up to the present, including several that had been issued that same year. Ruth located one that was cross-referenced to SCAN, and read the description. It was for northern Germany and southern Scandinavia, and was dated 1945. Precisely what she wanted! A good omen, she thought, and filled out the necessary slip to have the map brought from the files. This done she replaced the notebook and went to the desk, handing her slip to the girl there. The girl started to leave the room and then returned, leafing in a basket on the desk. She nodded as she located a slip there, and looked up.
“I thought that number was familiar,” she said. “I’m afraid you’ll have to wait. That map is in use by that gentleman in the corner.”
Ruth looked across the room and felt a shock, a tingling that seemed to start at her toes and run up her entire body. Gregor Kovpak was at a table in the far corner of the large room, leaning over a large map spread before him, studying it intently, oblivious to anything other than the map. Ruth walked across the room and stood behind him.
“Hello.”
He swung about, his eyes widening in surprise, and then hurriedly came to his feet, smiling, his pleasure at seeing her evident in every facet of his expression. Why, he seems to be as happy to see me as I am to see him, Ruth thought. What an idiot I was this morning!
“I said, hello.”
“I’m sorry. It was such a surprise.” And I’m acting like a dolt, he thought. “What are you doing here? What about your conference?”
“You haven’t heard?” Ruth made a small grimace. “The conference is over. A monumental failure.”
Gregor shook his head and then ran a hand through his unruly hair. “I was afraid it was doomed to be. But”—the act of her presence was still not understood, even though he was very pleased that she was there and not someplace else—“what are you doing here?”
Ruth smiled happily. With Gregor before her, as attractive as she had remembered him, everything was all right with the world. He had not left the city without saying good-bye; he had not avoided the conference that morning for any such stupid reasons she had worked herself up with so needlessly. He was here and that was all that mattered.
“I’m here for the same reason you are,” she said cheerfully. If Gregor thought the treasure could be traced, then maybe there might really be a possibility. “To see where the treasure could have gone to, from that Bad-whatever—wherever that is.”
Gregor nodded, trying to keep the profound admiration he felt for her from becoming apparent. He certainly didn’t want to look gauche, not before this woman. It would be very nice if she was as happy to see him as he was in seeing her, but of course, why should she? To her he was simply a fellow scientist with whom she had had dinner once. And she was a beautiful woman, while he—well, he was a good archaeologist, if he said so himself, but that was about as far as it went. And an old, or at least ageing, archaeologist at that. He suddenly remembered his manners and pulled out a chair.
“Here, sit down.” He sat down beside her. Obviously he couldn’t tell her she was wasting her time, that the treasure was in Langley, Virginia; or at least it had been all these years. Now that she was in front of him, he no longer felt the need to investigate how the treasure had gotten there. Still he didn’t want to waste the opportunity of spending the day with her. “So you’re another detective, eh?” He decided to take a chance, prepared for failure. “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll tell you where Bad Freienwalde is, and I’ll even share my map with you, if you’ll have lunch with me.”
I thought you’d never ask, Ruth thought, although if you hadn’t I should have managed it somehow. “It’s a deal,” she said.
“Good.” Gregor leaned over the map, pointing, hiding his pleasure at her acceptance. “Here—that is Bad Freienwalde.”
“Oh.” Ruth sounded disappointed. Gregor looked at her questioningly. “I mean,” she said, explaining, “it’s almost due east of Berlin, a bit to the northeast. If they were planning on taking the treasure to Denmark or Sweden, which seems to me the logical place to go, especially since one of them was Swedish, why would they have arranged for the treasure to be put on a train that let them off in Bad—well, Bad whatever. It’s certainly not the most direct way to the Baltic ports.”
“The treasure ostensibly was on its way to Russia, and the trains that went to Russia did not go by way of the Baltic ports,” Gregor said dryly. “That may have been the reason.”
Ruth looked a bit sheepish. “Chalk one up against the lady detective,” she said with an attempt at lightness, and bent over the map, irritated with herself for being so stupid in front of Gregor, especially when attempting to impress him. “So where do you think they went from Bad-whatever?”
“Bad Freienwalde. Bad is a watering place; actually, a bath, or a place to bathe. Frei-en means to woo, or to court. Walde is a woodland, or forest. So you might call it the Watering Place in the Courting Forest.”
“The courting forest? But I thought frei means free. Why not the Watering Place in the Free Forest?”
“Whichever you prefer.” Gregor laughed. “Possibly the forest in which you are free to court.”
“While bathing.” Ruth also laughed and then found herself flushing at the thoughts that had come to her mind. You’re due for cold showers, girl, she told herself, if you don’t snap out of it.
“I’ll accept that,” Gregor said lightly, and returned to the map. “Now, we have to make some basic assumptions. Let us assume, as you said, that the two men either went to Denmark or Sweden as the first step on going—wherever they eventually ended up.”
Ruth looked up from the map. “You don’t think they stayed there?”
Gregor was scarcely in a position to reveal Ulanov’s theory that the treasure had ended up in Langley, Virginia.
“Look at it this way,” he said in a reasonable tone of voice. “The police in those countries searched for them hard and long
, and without success. Remember that while Denmark was in the war, she didn’t suffer the disruption of the countries most actively involved, like Germany or France or Poland or Russia. And Sweden was neutral during the war and suffered nothing. So the police in both those countries, Denmark and Sweden, had a much easier time looking for people than they might have had in Europe proper at that time. And the police came up with no sign of the two. Or of the treasure. Therefore”—he raised his shoulders—“it seems likely they moved on.”
Ruth considered the logic of this a moment, and then nodded.
“I’ll admit it’s a possibility,” she said, “but they still had to get to either Sweden or Denmark before they could move on. And if we’re going to trace them, we have to follow them at least to one or the other of those two countries—”
Gregor’s eyebrows quirked humorously. “We?”
Ruth reddened a bit. “I meant, me. I forgot that you probably have to get back to your baby dinosaur and the Hermitage, but I have my vacation coming, and I think it might be fun trying to trace just exactly where the treasure did end up.”
“And you think you could do it? With the trail, as detective story writers put it, thirty-five years old?”
“Well,” Ruth said defensively, “you thought so, or you wouldn’t be here.” Gregor continued to be silent, not feeling that an explanation for his presence would be helpful. “Besides,” Ruth added, “someone else did it, or there wouldn’t be an auction being held in a few months.”
“It’s true that someone has the treasure,” Gregor admitted, “but he or they undoubtedly had a great stroke of luck to come across it.” He smiled. “I doubt they started their search here in the map room of the British Museum, then went straight off to Bad Freienwalde—not to take a bath or to court anyone, but to discover the next step in the puzzle, and go from there to either Denmark or Sweden, following clues thirty-five years old. Then from whichever Scandinavian country he stopped in temporarily—but where he found a further clue that led him, or them, to wherever the treasure is now, say in Canada or China or Czechoslovakia or—even in the United States.”
Ruth felt herself getting red as he went on.
“You can make all the fun of it you want,” she said tightly, “but I don’t believe that people just stumble on treasures. They search for them, using whatever clues they can get.”
“I didn’t say anyone stumbled on it,” Gregor said calmly. “The way I see it, whoever has the treasure and is offering it for auction, has known where it is for a good many years. And when the opportunity came along for him to get his hands on it—and get away with it—he simply took it.”
Ruth shook her head stubbornly. “You mean, he’s known where it was for thirty-five years, and suddenly some strange opportunity presents itself—I suppose someone forgot to lock the screen door, or left a cellar window open—and he just walked in and picked it up, saying, “Well, well! I think I’ll just auction this off.’ And the ones who were holding it all these years simply shrugged their shoulders and said, ‘Well, that’s how it goes. You win some and you lose some.’ And let it go at that?” Ruth sniffed. “And you think my theory has holes in it!”
“That’s not exactly what I said—”
“It’s close enough. I think,” Ruth said argumentatively, “that he was just smarter than your Russian so-called investigators, and that he did a better job. And as a result he found the treasure. And if he could, then so can we! I mean, so can I!”
“We,” Gregor corrected gently. He must have been mad trying to talk Ruth out of going on her wild-goose chase, when he had a chance to go with her! His first thought had been that it would mean her leaving London earlier than he had hoped, but if they could travel together, even for the short time it took her to realize she was wasting her time, it would be even better. No one else around to take her attention. “I can spare a few days, even a week. And,” he added disingenuously, “you may be right.”
“Except you don’t think so. I wonder what made you change your mind,” Ruth said, but her mind was not on her words but on the fact that they would be traveling together. The thought brought all sorts of possibilities to mind, but she put them away as being too dangerous. All she knew was that she was happier at that moment than she had been for a long, long time. “You really don’t think so,” she repeated vaguely.
“I keep an open mind on important questions like that,” Gregor said lightly and returned his attention to the map. The quest would be a charade, of course, but at least he had to go through the motions as if he were serious. But she hadn’t rejected his offer to accompany her, although all that meant was that she thought she could use his help, not that she was particularly interested in his being along. It was probably that she would feel safer with a man along, and a man as safe as one his age. He sighed and pointed to the map. “Let’s consider the ports they might have left from. Barth or Sassnitz, I would judge. Most likely Sassnitz; it’s the closest point from Trelleborg, in Sweden. Wismar, or Rostock, or Stralsund, the other major possibilities, are larger cities, and at the time of the theft from the bunker, they would have been crowded with sailors and troops, and their docks under closer military observation than a small place like Sassnitz.”
“There’s also that place there, Warnemünde,” Ruth added, pointing. “After all, that’s the closest point to Denmark.”
“It’s a possibility,” Gregor admitted, “but it’s also pretty close to Rostock. They’d be taking quite a chance going there in the hope they might get a boat of some sort.”
Ruth looked at him almost pityingly. He was an attractive man, and affected her like the devil, and there was no doubt he was an eminent scientist, but the dear man could also be rather dense at times.
“They would have planned for the boat at the time they planned the theft, of course,” she said almost patronizingly. “You don’t suppose they planned to steal a boat, do you?”
“Why not?” Gregor said innocently. He was enjoying himself. “They stole the treasure, didn’t they?”
“But they stole the treasure with a good deal of care, didn’t they? They didn’t just walk in with a gun and hold up the bunker. They planned it, down to forging documents and even passes. But you can hardly plan on stealing a boat, especially some time ahead; they don’t stay in one place. And they have crews and they weigh more than a small treasure,” she added dryly. “No, they either bought a boat or rented one. Probably bought it, since I’m sure they didn’t plan on returning it. In any event, in that case they could have left from almost any port, including Warnemünde. And that’s the closest to Denmark.”
“Or Sassnitz. That’s the closest to Sweden.”
“But the farthest from Bad Freienwalde,” Ruth pointed out. “And I don’t imagine they wanted to be driving any farther than they had to. Besides, Denmark is a far better place from which to go farther, if you’re right that they merely stopped over there. From Sweden where could they go? Norway? It’s easier to get to from Denmark. Finland? It’s far too small. They’d never feel safe there. Plus it was under Russian domination. Russia, itself? Obviously they didn’t steal it from the Russians just to go to Russia.”
She was probably right in her involuted reasoning, Gregor thought with amused admiration. The CIA man would have taken Petterssen to the States by way of Denmark, then England, and then Langley, Virginia. And Warnemünde would be the logical place for them to be met with a high-speed cutter from one of the Allied intelligence forces, maybe even from Denmark, itself. Still, he had to make it look as if there was a choice. He wanted his travels with Ruth to last as long as possible before she became discouraged, because he knew—sadly—that at the end of that time he would still be going back to Leningrad, while Ruth would be going back to New York. And without her even knowing how he felt about her, which was undoubtedly just as well. Elderly scientists, he told himself, do not take kindly to being laughed at by beautiful women, even if it were done with kindness, as he was sure it would
have been.
He smiled wryly at the thought and returned to the map. “Of course, I suppose a good deal of their decision as to which port to leave from would depend on the state of the roads at the time. I imagine most of them were in pretty bad shape—”
Ruth looked at him, her eyes shining. “Of course! Why didn’t we think of that before? That means that the man who was with Petterssen had to be either a German or a Russian!”
Gregor shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. “What? A German or a Russian? Why?”
“Because,” Ruth said, her tone triumphant, proclaiming that the lady detective had scored one over her more weak-minded opponent, “who else would know the state of the roads at that time? Only the Germans who had retreated down them a short time before, or the Russians who had advanced over them! Can you picture a Dane, or another Swede, knowing which roads they might use to get anywhere? Or even an American or a Frenchman? Or any of the other troops who were wandering around Berlin at that time? They had no idea how things were in eastern Germany at that time. They could have found themselves stuck somewhere, very easily. And this was planned, every bit of it. Including the roads they had to travel. And,” she added dryly, pleased with her analysis, “they certainly couldn’t call the Automobile Club and ask them where the detours were.”
It was a good point, Gregor had to concede, and one that Ulanov hadn’t considered, or at least hadn’t mentioned. There was one other solution, however. “But they were picked up at Bad Freienwalde,” Gregor pointed out mildly. “The driver might have been German, but the one with Petterssen—”
“Oh, no!” Ruth said, scotching that argument at once. “The entire thing was planned, the theft, the car, and the boat. Who had access to boats in the Baltic along the German coast at that time? Fishermen, that’s who—German fishermen. And who had access to cars in eastern Germany at that time? Germans, of course—although they would have to steal one. Or Russians.” She paused, her mind racing. “Of course! It was night, you said, and the car looked official. It was the German chauffeur of some Russian official, who was probably asleep at the time, and the chauffeur took the chance of getting away with using the car without being found out, because the man who was paying him, the man with Petterssen, was a former officer of his, and they were both from ODESSA—”
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