Chasing the Wind

by C. C. Humphreys

  She still couldn’t stand. She leaned against him like a cartoon drunk outside a speakeasy, as a car pulled up. Jocco opened the back door and slid her in. “You’re safe now, Roxy.”

  “Ain’t that the truth,” she said, and passed out.

  TWELVE

  PLANS

  THE TALKING RAT FINALLY TOOK HIS LEAVE AFTER TWELVE hours. Chirped a last Auf Wiedersehen and sealed the hole behind him. Roxy was going to miss him. He was way more polite than the porcine Nazis who brandished syringes and demanded answers. Since they and their monster friends only appeared when she closed her eyes, she’d contrived to keep them open despite Jocco’s urgings that she sleep. She was drowsy as hell. But sleep was a long, cold nightmare.

  Other symptoms of the drug lingered longer. Her mouth absorbed water like waves on sand. She couldn’t drink enough to curb it, and the hotel water was over-sulphured, tasted foul. She’d insisted that it was flavoured with whisky—the only drug that she’d accept, though he kept offering different ones—aspirin for the headache, sleeping pills. When she’d realized that she was bloating too much and peeing too little, she settled for boiled candies. Lemon drops were the best, needed less spit to get ’em going. What concerned her most was that she didn’t want tobacco. Helluva way to kick the habit, she thought.

  What mostly settled her down was watching Ferency paint.

  Jocco had insisted she not be left alone. But he had to be out, organizing the heist. So the Hungarian had grumpily agreed to babysit her in the cellar they’d rented for him. There was no chance they could have stayed on at the Hotel Superior. Her description would have been circulated fast. Jocco had gone back to snatch some of their things and just made it out the back door as the Gestapo came in the front.

  Ferency had insisted she didn’t talk while he worked. But talking was what she needed to do to keep things moving, sanity-wise. She’d discovered, however, that his prohibition didn’t extend to questions that spoke to his genius. She learned quickly how underappreciated he’d been as an artist in his own right. Which made his career in forgery almost a crusade.

  “The establishment,” he’d sniffed, “thinks only they can decide what is worthy art. I have been ignored, debased, shunned. I take my revenge…so!” He’d jabbed a paintbrush hard onto the wood. “Fooling them. Exposing their pretensions.”

  Roxy popped another lemon drop into her mouth, took a sip of Scotch-and-water. If she closed her eyes, the mix almost made her imagine she was drinking a Whisky Sour at the 21 Club back in Manhattan. Yet if she closed her eyes as she imagined it, she’d remember who she’d seen crushed under a streetcar outside the speakeasy. Opening them wide now, she said, “So how’s it going?”

  “You ask this every twenty minutes.”

  “I do?” She frowned. “So how’s it going?”

  He grunted and she thought that might be that. But he straightened, stretched. The two panels leaned against a wall, resting on a table shoved against it; they’d not found easels strong enough to hold such heavy wood, and the angle was a little low for his back. He peered at his work. “It goes well.”

  “It certainly goes fast.” She’d been amazed at how swiftly the pictures had emerged. “How come you’re so quick? I thought you’d need to be methodical.”

  “I am. But one must be methodical with speed. Bruegel’s brushstrokes were swift. All artists have a rhythm. An expert could tell instantly if I painted more slowly.”

  “Yes, but—why are you painting it twice?”

  He looked pained. “Again with this question, Miss Roxy?”

  “Really? Bad memory. Indulge me.”

  He sighed, spoke in the manner of a schoolmaster teaching an especially dull student. “I practise on the one panel. When I am certain I have it, I reproduce on the other.”

  The room was small; she wasn’t far away. But her eyesight was still blurry, so she got up and, using the copper knob of the bedpost to support herself, stepped closer, bent, peered. “They both look exactly the same to me.”

  “Zo. I am good, yes?”

  “You are.” She hadn’t spent a long time studying the original, not in the cellar in Madrid, nor in Göring’s office. But both these copies looked pretty damn accurate. Though…“Isn’t the paint a little, I don’t know, fresh?”

  He sighed again. “This is why I do not like someone watching me. Always impatient with the questions.” He shrugged. “The painting is almost the easiest part. When you have studied the master as long as I have. When you have painted and repainted him in emulation so that you feel like you are almost—what do you say—with his spirits? Possessing you?”

  “Channelling?”

  “Channelling. Pieter Bruegel the Elder is here with me. Smiling. But the years since he painted, not. We must make the painting look old.”

  She thought back to some of the older portraits in her dad’s collection. “Yeah, when you look close at a painting, you can see these lines…”

  “That is called craquelure. Older canvases have them because they stretch with age and the paint cracks. But wood does not crack. Here we have different problems.”

  He picked up a stubby length of bent wire and pushed it into the wood, twisting and turning it slightly each time. “You see these marks in the photographs?” He pointed to the large blow-ups of the shots he’d taken in the office, mounted on the wall. “I could see the original had not been always well taken care of. I suspect it had been left in a cellar in an old house, and sometime worms had eaten away little parts. That’s what these holes are.”

  He tapped the photo, and she could see little pits, like acne scars on a face.

  “Wood worm. I make new ones. Not many. Where they are most clear.”

  “That looks like hard work. Why not use a drill?”

  Ferency smirked. “Some forgers do—and are detected immediately. Do you think worms bore straight?” He bent, punched an irregular pattern in the plain red sail of the ship.

  “None for Daedalus?” Roxy pointed to the flying figure, top left. His face was a mask of anguish as he watched his son plummet to his death in the sea.

  “No.” Ferency smiled, showing his irregular teeth. “Remember, this figure is not on the canvas one in Brussels. This is the figure that will get the most attention. Him, I will perfect. Not worm eaten, no?” He raised a hand to halt her next question. “But like the rest, he will be dirtier, yes? The dirt of years. He will have been in a room lit by oil lamp for centuries. Where men sat by a wood fire and smoked and looked at him with pleasure. So, once I have put a special varnish on, while it is still wet, we will smoke, yes?”

  He raised his Meerschaum pipe. There were figures cut in the large yellow bowl. An elk raised its antlered head; a hunter stalked. Roxy looked away. “Maybe later. Can you manage without me?”

  “Of course. The tobacco is a small part.” He gestured to an old-fashioned oil lamp beside him. “This will burn all night. The oil is bad quality. And I have prepared a special kind of soot to blow over it with this.” He lifted a straw. “By tomorrow morning you will not be able to tell which are the fakes, which the real.”

  “I might not. But wouldn’t an expert like that guy Schlaben? He talked in Madrid about the further tests he could do in his laboratory.”

  “Which he will already have done. He will not study it again.”

  It was a new voice, and both she and Ferency jumped. For a big guy, Jochen Zomack moved pretty quietly. He stood in the cellar’s doorway, making it look kind of cramped.

  “You are up,” he cried, moving across to her, putting the briefcase he held down.

  She sank into him. “Jesus, you startled me. Yeah, yeah, feeling a little better.”

  “Good.” Jocco looked at the paintings. “Two?”

  “I have explained. I practise, then I—”

  “Never mind. You are the forger, not me.” He bent to stare. “I heard you say you will age them overnight. Does that mean they will be ready Wednesday?”

  “T
omorrow?” The Hungarian sucked at a lip. “I thought you said I had till Thursday?”

  “I did. But things have changed.” Jocco gently released Roxy, went to the whisky, poured himself a tot, shot it. “In my journeys today I discovered that they have brought the art opening forward to Thursday. Hitler’s schedule requires this.” He poured himself another. “So we must have the painting in the gallery tomorrow—Wednesday night.”

  Roxy sank onto the bed. Moving quickly seemed a hard thing. “Why can’t we wait till after the opening? Let Hitler see the real painting, hit the gallery when the ruckus has died down, substitute the fake?”

  “Because I also found out that Göring plans to move the painting that same night back to the Air Ministry.” He raised an eyebrow. “And we do not want to go back there.”

  She shuddered. “I sure as hell don’t.”

  “Also, you say you think you told Glück that you were going to steal the painting?”

  “I may have. I—”

  “No matter. This only means we need a bigger distraction. And I do not think there is a bigger one than the arrival anywhere of Adolf Hitler.”

  “I am glad you are so confident.” Ferency chewed his lip again. “I would have liked the extra day. More smoke. More aging.”

  “Smoke harder. Roxy will help—she’s good at that.” Jocco smiled briefly and waved at the paintings. “However it is, now will have to be enough. No one who values his life is going to shout ‘It’s a fake’ before Göring and Hitler.”

  As Jocco filled his glass again, Roxy said, “Better pour me one too. And roll me a cigarette. If Bruegel and I are going to be ready for tomorrow—”

  “No, Roxy. You are not recovered. Also, they know your face too well now. I have made the plans to do this without you. You will only be waiting to fly the painting out…”

  “You know me. Once I make up my mind…” She crossed to him as he shrugged and poured three shots. She raised hers, and she was pleased to see that her hand was steady. Well, steadier. “To the plan.” They all three shot, and she continued, “Whatever the hell it is. So tell me.”

  For a moment, he looked like he was going to argue further. Then he sighed and reached into his briefcase, pulled out a map. He glanced about. Every surface was crammed with the materials of forgery. “Bed?” he said.

  “Gladly,” said Roxy, sinking down.

  Jocco unfolded the map onto the coverlet. It was a city plan: Berlin Central. Within it, a red-crayoned circle marked out an oval, bounded in blue. “This is Museumsinsel. The Museum Island. It is the heart of art in the Reich.” He tapped. “Five buildings, each one dedicated to a different form. This is the famous Pergamon Museum. It is for antiquities—the reconstructed Pergamon Altar. The Market Gate of Miletus.” He moved his finger. “This is the Bode, mainly for sculptures and Byzantine art. And this—” he pressed down “—is the Alte Nationalgalerie. Where our painting will be unveiled at the ceremony—”

  Ferency interrupted. “But the Alte Nationalgalerie is for nineteenth-century art. The Fall of Icarus is sixteenth century.”

  “Yes. But this is also Herr Hitler’s favourite building. It is neoclassical, similar to the Acropolis in Athens—which, did you hear, Hitler and his archaeologists now say was built by an Aryan tribe? The arrogance!” He laid a fingertip on the middle of the building. “Here there is a cupola, a dome with light streaming in from all sides. Some of Hitler’s favourite painters are on display here: Schinkel, Friedrich, Von Menzel. Here in the very middle, on Thursday at noon, Icarus will be unveiled.”

  “What’s the river called?”

  “Der Spree.”

  “An island, eh?” Roxy peered down. “So these lines are bridges, right?” Jocco nodded. “Kind of tricky to get things across them, especially with the security you say will be in place. Especially something as big as this painting. Got a plan for that?”

  “I do.” Jocco smiled. “We do not cross the bridges. We arrive and leave—” he ran his finger around the island “—by water.”

  “Explain.”

  “You are right. The bridges, every entrance to the museum, all are already heavily guarded—Berlin police, SA, even SS. They will be even more so on the day itself. But here—” he laid his finger down “—at the back of the museum is a wall that circles the riverside. There used to be a gate, but it was torn down and the gap blocked when they remodelled in 1926. They didn’t demolish the water staircase that leads up to the gate. The steps are old and crumbly, but still there. And the highest one is just six feet beneath the top of the wall.”

  “How tall are you again?”

  “One hundred ninety centimetres. Or six-foot-three.”

  “So you will dock, climb over the wall, the fake gets passed up to you…”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay.” Roxy squinted down. “So two problems I see here. Who steers the boat? And how the hell d’you get into the museum?”

  “Only two?” Jocco grinned. “You still haven’t asked about security on the river.”

  “I was getting to it.”

  “There is a police patrol boat. It circles the island once an hour. The rest of the time it rests here, on the east bank.”

  “Right opposite your watery staircase?”

  “Correct. But when it goes on patrol, it goes around the island and does not appear for two minutes fifteen seconds.”

  “Precise.”

  “Give or take a few seconds.”

  “You can do it in that time?”

  “Yes. I have found a good boat…person.”

  There was something in the way he said it. “Person? You mean, a boatman?”

  “In this case I mean a boat woman.”

  “Oh yeah? And who is she?”

  Maybe it was her tone. But he coloured when she asked it. So Roxy knew something was different here. “She is…her name is Fromer, Betsy Fromer. She is the widow of Karl Fromer. The three of us were members of the Young Communist League. Karl was killed in a street fight with SA storm troopers in ’32.”

  His colour had gotten deeper. For such a solid guy, Jocco was a bit of a blusher. And even though she didn’t want it to bother her, it did. “So you, uh, comforted the widow?”

  “Roxy!” He threw up his hands. “Why do you ask this? Why does it matter?”

  “If it doesn’t matter, then tell me.”

  He ran his hands through his thick blond hair. “Yes, Betsy was very sad. We were…briefly involved.”

  “How briefly?”

  “I had to flee Germany in 1934, so—”

  “So two years?”

  “Eighteen months.”

  “Still.” Roxy ran her tongue over her lips. “And why does this old flame have a boat?”

  “Karl was a boat mechanic. They lived on a boat. She still does.”

  “Had a nice reunion on the water when you went recruiting, did ya?”

  “Roxy!” Jocco blurted her name, then took a deep breath. “It was over many years ago.”

  “Not so many. Really you came from her bed to mine. With a few stops in between, no doubt.”

  “Oh. And you were so—”

  “Quiet!”

  It was Ferency who spoke, and it made her jump—for a few moments of fury she’d forgotten he was there.

  “None of that is important. Only this is.” He gestured at his work. “And this. This woman with the boat. Can she keep the boat close and pass you up this painting? No, I answer. Unless she is a shot putter in the Olympics, she cannot. The panel is too heavy.”

  Jocco was relieved to turn away from Roxy’s glare. “You are right. I am in the process of recruiting another old comrade. I looked for the man, but he is hard to find. I hope tomorrow—”

  “Another? So now there are us three, plus whoever waits in the museum—who you still have to tell us about. Plus this boat woman?” He shook his head vigorously. “Already this is too many people. No.” He drew himself up. “I will be in the boat.”

  “Yo
u?” Jocco frowned. “But you were very clear that you wanted only to do the forging.”

  “But I will not get paid all I am owed for that until the painting is gone. So I will help see it go. And protect myself also from too many mouths.”

  “I—”

  “No, it is settled. And now you tell me of this other mouth, who is inside the Alte Nationalgalerie?”

  Roxy was a little stunned. She’d never seen the weaselly Ferency so firm. Maybe Jocco was too. But he recovered first. “His name is Johann Müller. He is the gallery director of acquisitions. He is—” Jocco thrust out his lips “—a lecher with a wife, five children and a mistress in an expensive apartment on Kleiststrasse. So he supplements his salary by selling art by Van Gogh, Braque and Picasso. ‘Degenerate art’ or the ‘product of diseased minds,’ as it is called by Hitler and his minions. Such art is abundant in Berlin since it has been banned. He is offering to sell my father a small work by Georges Braque. I go to see it, bringing the money through the back door on Wednesday night. But what actually I bring is a cosh.” He nodded. “I knock him out, tie him up. Wait till Hitler arrives and all eyes are out front for him. I exchange the paintings. Betsy collects me…”

  He trailed off, the mention of the name making him look from Ferency to Roxy—who smiled.

  “Baby,” she said sweetly, “why use a cosh when you can use a stiletto? And I am not talking about the knife. Here’s what we’ll do.”

  She cleared her throat and briefly laid out her plan. Jocco objected, mainly at her being exposed to the danger. Finally, though, he had to admit, her plan was a lot less dangerous than his. “The banker’s draft from Madrid,” he said, reaching into his briefcase and pulling out a wedge of greenbacks. “I have cashed it. I will give you some.”

  “More,” Roxy said when he stopped too soon, flexing her hand. He frowned and she continued. “Listen, for my plan to work, I’ll have to sell myself straightaway as the real deal. So I am going to need a fancy new American dress.”

  “You have a new dress.”

  “That one? Pretty beat up during the escape. No time to fix it. Besides, it’s not the right style.” She shook her head. “Nope, I am going to need a new one and I am going to need it fast. Just so happens I know a guy who can make it.”