Michelangelo's Notebook Part 16

Finn interrupted. "It's great to have you two old fogies reminiscing. Next you'll be talking about Woodstock, but we've got these murders to look into, so . . ."

"Why don't you both go for a walk around the campus?" said Kornitzer. "There's a Starbucks at One fourteenth and Broadway. Buy me a cappuccino, double shot, low-fat, artificial sweetener. I should have something for you in half an hour or so. It'll take me that long to input the material."

"All right." Valentine nodded and stood up. "Cappuccino, low-fat, artificial sweetener, half an hour."

"Double shot."

"Double shot."

"Got to be exact in this business." Kornitzer smiled at his friend then turned his attention to the flat screen and the keyboard.

41.The sergeant stood in the huge summer kitchen of the farmhouse, a fire blazing in the ma.s.sive stone fireplace to take off the chill. There had been seventeen survivors of the attack, nine of them clearly civilians, two of them women, one a small child. Most of the Americans were outside guarding the few remaining German soldiers, or checking through the outbuildings, securing the perimeter. The sergeant, Cornwall, Taggart and McPhail were the only ones in the farmhouse. The only one armed was the sergeant, keeping the peace with a machine pistol he'd taken off one of the dead Krauts they'd found in the ruins of the abbey tower.

Cornwall was making a list.

"State your names and positions."

"Franz Ebert, director of the Linz Museum." A small man with gla.s.ses wearing a dark coat and army boots.

"Wolfgang Kress, Einzatstab Rosenberg, Paris division." A heavyset, florid-faced man in his early thirties. A bureaucrat.

"Kurt Behr, also of the ERR."

"Anna Tomford, from the Linz Museum also, please." Dark-haired, young, frightened.

"Hans Wirth, ERR in Amsterdam."

"Dr. Martin Zeiss, Dresden Museum." A portly man with a beard. Sixty or so, looking sick and pale, his face mottled like old cheese. A walking heart attack, thought the sergeant.

"Who is the child?" Cornwall asked. The boy was about seven or eight. So far he hadn't said a word. He was tall for his age, hair very dark, almost black, his eyes large and slightly almond-shaped, his skin olive, his nose large and patrician, more Italian-looking than German. The woman with him started to speak but the Linz Museum director, Ebert, interrupted her.

"He is an orphan, of no account. Fraulein Kurovsky cares for him."

"Kurovsky. Polish?" Cornwall asked.

The woman shook her head. "Nein. Sudetenland, Bohemia, close to Poland. My family is German."

"Where is the child from?"

"We found him north of Munich," put in Ebert. "We decided to take him along with us."

"Magnanimous," said Cornwall.

"I do not understand," Ebert responded.

"Edelmutig . . . hochherzig," said the sergeant.

"Ah." Ebert nodded.

Cornwall glanced at the sergeant. "I'm impressed."

The sergeant shrugged. "My grandmother was German-we spoke it in the house."

"I'm impressed that you knew the word in English," said Cornwall dryly.

"You might be surprised," said the sergeant.

"I'm sure," said Cornwall.

"It was not so . . . magnanimous as you say," said Ebert. "It was simply something that had to be done. He would have starved otherwise, yes?" He looked across at the woman and the child.

"He speaks no English, I suppose."

"He doesn't speak at all," said the woman.

Cornwall looked down at the packet of doc.u.ments spread out on the pale beechwood table in front of him. "These doc.u.ments all have Vatican stamps on them. Laissez-pa.s.sers from the papal secretary of state's office in Berlin."

"That is correct," nodded Ebert.

"Seems a little odd."

"Perhaps to you." Ebert shrugged. "I care nothing for the politics of things, I care only that the works under my care be safeguarded."

"Works belonging to the German government."

"No. Works belonging to various German museums, works belonging to the German people as a whole."

"Six trucks."

"Yes."

"Heading for the Swiss border."

"Yes."

"With Vatican seals."

"Yes."

"Why don't I believe you?" said Cornwall.

"I don't care if you believe me or not," said Ebert crossly. "It is the truth."

"Why did you have an SS escort?" McPhail asked, speaking for the first time. McPhail was a graduate of Bowdoin and had been a junior curator at the Fogg Museum in Boston before joining the OSS and the art unit. You could tell he thought he was hot s.h.i.t and rated higher than Cornwall. Personally the sergeant thought he was a weak little twerp and probably a fairy to boot. The guy smoked a pipe and whistled Broadway tunes for cryin' out loud! Nothing magnanimous about him-that was for sure. McPhail sniffed. "I was under the impression that the SS would have more important things to do than guard Volkskultur." He drew the word out into a sneering drawl.

Kress, the heavyset man, spoke, his sneer just as obvious. "Perhaps you are not aware that the Einzatstab Rosenberg is by definition a part of the SS, and therefore that it is entirely logical that we should have just such an escort."

"With Feldgendarmerie pennants?" said the sergeant.

"I didn't think you were part of this interrogation, Sergeant," McPhail said, ice in his tone.

"Just ask him the d.a.m.n question . . . Lieutenant."

McPhail gave him a stony look.

"Well?" Cornwall asked, speaking to Kress. The man was silent.

"What are you trying to say?" McPhail asked.

"I'm trying to say that none of it makes sense. These aren't SS types. The soldiers outside are wearing SS uniforms, but I checked a couple of the bodies and they don't have blood group tattoos on their armpits. The SS doesn't have anything to do with the military police, the Feldgendarmerie. The trucks are wrong too-where the h.e.l.l did they get gasoline? The Krauts haven't had any gasoline since the Bulge-they've only got diesel and not much of that. I don't know beans about art but I know about Krauts. They're wrong."

"Give your weapon to Lieutenant McPhail, Sergeant," said Cornwall suddenly, standing up. "Then come outside with me for a smoke."

"Sure." The sergeant gave McPhail the machine pistol then followed Cornwall out into the early morning sunlight. The lieutenant squinted behind his gla.s.ses and pulled a package of German Jasmatsis out of the pocket of his blouse and offered them to the sergeant. The sergeant shook off the offer and lit one of his own Luckies instead.

"What's happening here, Sergeant?"

"Don't have a clue, sir."

"Sure you do."

"They're wrong."

"What does that mean?"

"Like I said, it doesn't add up."

"So how does it add up?"

"You're asking my opinion?"

"Yes."

"They're crooks."

"Crooks?"

"Sure. The trucks are full of stuff that was already looted. These guys knew it was stolen, no records, no nothing. So they stole it again. I mean, who's going to report them?"

"Interesting."

"The trucks are a hide. Not for us, but for their own people. How do you get through German roadblocks? Military police and the SS put the fear of G.o.d into most Krauts, even now. Not people to screw with, you know?"

"What about the kid?"

"They're lying about him-that's for sure."

"Why?"

"Maybe he's somebody important."

"The Vatican seals?"

"Forged maybe. Or someone in Rome's got a piece of the action. Wouldn't be the first mackerel-snapper to have his hand caught in the cookie jar."

"Do you dislike everyone, Sergeant?"

"It's not a matter of liking or disliking, sir. It's a matter of knowing what I know. We've got a lot of stolen art in those trucks across the yard, and the Krauts don't know anything and your people don't know anything and my people wouldn't give a d.a.m.n even if they did know."

"What are you saying, Sergeant?"

"I'm saying what you're already thinking."

"You're a mind reader?"

"It's been a long war. You get to see things, after a while, you learn how to read people."

"And what do you read here, Sergeant?"

"The chance of a f.u.c.king lifetime . . . sir."

42.When it came, the answer came quickly. Barrie Kornitzer used the edge of his thumb to wipe away the foamy mustache above his upper lip, gazing at the computer screen in front of him.

"Interesting stuff," he said, blinking.

"Don't keep us in suspense," said Valentine.

"Where would you like to start?"

"The beginning would be good."

"That would make it the so-called Carduss Club at Greyfriars Academy."

"Okay."

"It originated in 1895, the year the school was founded. That was back in the days when clubs and secret societies were actually encouraged in schools. The name comes from the thistles on the school crest, which in turn relates to the school's Scots-Calvinist origins." He grinned at Valentine. "Sort of like the school you and I went to, Michael, remember?"

"Vividly."

"Carduss means thistle, as in Scotland," said Finn.

"That's it. At any rate, the Carduss members based their club on the English Order of the Garter, which has the thistle as its emblem. Twelve knights as in the twelve disciples. Twelve members in their club."

"But it grew into something else."

"Yes. By the early nineteen hundreds with the first graduating cla.s.s, it turned into a benevolent society, like Skull and Bones at Yale. If you were a banker, you lent money to a fellow member in real estate. If you were in government, you pa.s.sed laws that would help a member expand his business."

"An early form of good-old-boys networking," said Finn.