Rembrandt's Ghost (11 page)

“I smell pancakes,” said Billy.

“Sausages,” said Finn.

“Both,” said Billy.

They went inside.

It was knickknack heaven. Things hung from the dark beams of the low ceilings, objects were hung on the walls, mugs, paintings, photographs, half models of boats, ships in bottles, shelves full of preserves, children’s drawings, examples of needle-point behind glass, a set of ceramic thimbles… it was endless.

The tables were crammed neatly together, each one with its own taffeta tablecloth, each tablecloth set with place mats and bright red folded linen napkins. Sun shone brightly through the windows on a dozen different patterns of wallpaper, all of it busy and ornate. An old mural of fishing boats took up half the far wall.

A couple of locals were sitting at a long, empty table reading newspapers they’d taken from a large basket between them, but other than that the dining room was empty. A plump, apple-cheeked woman in a printed apron introduced herself as Velden in perfectly good English, offered them menus, and then took their orders. She informed them that the
Oude Taveerne
had stood there since 1760 and had originally been called the
Prins te Paard
, which, she explained, meant the Prince on Horseback.

A few minutes later, she returned with the food arranged on a huge platter, which she balanced easily on one beefy arm. Something called
uitsmijter
for Finn, which turned out to be fried ham and eggs with mustard cheese, and
gevulde pannekoek
for Billy, which turned out to be two huge pancakes put together like cake layers with fried sausage as a filling. The calories and cholesterol in each meal would have given any self-respecting cardiologist a heart attack. In other words, both meals were just what the doctor ordered.

“Good Lord,” said Billy, sitting back in his chair with a sigh. “Bless me, for I have sinned.” He grinned. “Take me two years on a treadmill to work that off.”

“Better than the alternative,” said Finn. She took a sip of the excellent coffee Velden had provided. “We’re lucky to be alive at this point.”

“I’d almost forgotten,” said Billy, his expression darkening.

Finn nodded. “Me too. That’s when you get careless.”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Billy. “Those people we ran into aren’t just going to go away.” He shook his head. “I know we talked this whole subject to death during the crossing, but I still don’t know what they expected to accomplish.”

“Murder springs to mind,” Finn answered. “Somebody wants us out of the way.”

“Why?”

“Unless there’s something in your past you haven’t told me about it must have to do with the painting.”

Billy snorted. “I admit it. I’ve led a double life all these years. Secretly I’m an Estonian spy operating undercover as an impecunious English lord with a silly pedigree that dates back to Boadecia, queen of the bloody Iceni.”

“Then it’s the painting.”

“But we didn’t even have it with us.” Billy shrugged.

“I can’t think of anything else.”

“What about this… situation with Pieter Boegart, my dear departed cousin, and your… um, dad?”

Finn spoke stiffly. “He’s not my dad and I’m not sure that the ‘situation,’ as you call it, has any relevance.”

“Maybe they were after you, not the painting.”

“If they wanted to kill me, they didn’t have to do it in front of the Courtauld Institute. Knocking me off in Crouch End would have been a little more discreet, don’t you think?”

“And they could have done the same to me on dear old
Flush
any time they wanted,” agreed Billy.

Finn nodded. “Which brings me back to the beginning. The painting. The last time a small Rembrandt was auctioned it went for nineteen million pounds. Thirty-six million U.S. That’s enough to kill for.”

“A thought occurs to me,” said Billy, leaning forward and pushing his plate out of the way. He lined up the saltshaker, the pepper grinder, and the sugar bowl. “Pieter Boegart’s instructions to Sir James. The letter had two objectives—to bring us together and to give us three items: the painting, the house, and the
Batavia Queen
. They’re all tied together.”

“Clues?”

“No, more like a game of hare and hounds. Do you have that in America?”

“A paper chase,” said Finn.

“Exactly.”

“So Pieter Boegart is the hare and we’re the hounds, is that it?”

“The painting is a lure, and so is the house.”

“To what end?”

“Catching the hare.”

“In other words, finding Pieter Boegart,” said Finn.

Billy nodded. “Or whatever he was looking for.”

They made two telephone calls from the
Oude Taveerne
: one to the lawyer in Amsterdam who Tulkinghorn had told them was handling the house, and the other to Dr. Shneegarten at the Courtauld. The strange old man from Somerset House was apparently off doing research at the Reading Room of the British Museum, but the lawyer, a man named Guido Derlagen, was in his office and could see them immediately.

Derlagen’s office turned out be in a modern block on the Rokin, a wide, boulevarded avenue just off the Dam, Amsterdam’s town square, about ten minutes from the main train station and the docks. The addresses on the Rokin that weren’t shops and cafés were banks, stockbrokers, and lawyers. This was Amsterdam’s Wall Street. The sidewalks were crammed with tourists and both sides of the boulevard thick with traffic when they arrived. The whole city gave off a sense of healthy bustle.

Middle-aged and well-dressed, Derlagen had a somewhat lumpy but perfectly shaved head. He spoke excellent English. He was, it seemed, one of a score of lawyers who worked for the Boegart shipping business in the Netherlands. Derlagen was one of the team of
advocaats
who handled an assortment of personal trusts held by individual Boegart family members, in this case Pieter Boegart. Derlagen had a moderate-sized office with a window that looked down into the busy street. Finn could see a yellow tram-train squeaking down the tracks embedded in the old brick. Through the fluttering leaves of the trees that ran down the boulevard she could see the garish yellow and red sign of a Chinese restaurant.

The furniture in Derlagen’s office was sparse and modern. His desk was a heavy slab of tempered glass on chrome legs. The desk had a flat-screen computer angled to one side on it and nothing else. There was a striped rug, a row of filing cabinets, and a pair of chairs across from the desk. The chairs were black leather. The walls were blank and art gallery white with no decoration at all.

Finn and Billy sat down.

“You’re here about the house on the
Herengracht
,” said the lawyer. His accent in English sounded heavily South African, which wasn’t surprisingsince the first Boer settlers were from Holland. He tapped some keys and glanced at his computer screen. “We here at the firm were surprised when we heard of this transaction, yes? Because, you see, the house has been owned by members of the Van Boegart family since it was built in 1685.”

“I’m a member of the family,” said Billy. “Pieter Boegart is my cousin or something.”

“Yes, or something, that is correct, Lord Pilgrim.”

“Just Billy if you don’t mind, or Mr. Pilgrim if you like.”

“Certainly, Lord Pilgrim.” The man turned to Finn. “Your relationship to
Meneer
Boegart, however, is less clear.”

“Yes, it is.” She didn’t like the man’s officious and slightly condescending manner of speech. “But from what we understood from Sir James everything is in order, isn’t it?”

“Yes, it appears to be,” the man murmured, checking his screen again.

“So if that’s the case,” continued Finn, “why don’t we just get on with it unless you’ve got some objection… Guido?” She pronounced his name with a heavy Italian accent.

The man reddened. “It is not pronounced that way. It is more the way you would pronounce ‘van Gogh,’ the artist.”

“Van Hhok,”
Finn said with the proper guttural effect. It made it sound as though you were getting ready to spit on the sidewalk.

“Yes,” the lawyer said primly.

“Which would make your name
Hogweedo
, yes?” Billy added, overdoing it with an innocent smile.

Derlagen reddened even more as he realized they were teasing him. “The pronouncing of my name is of no importance,” he said a little angrily.

“That’s right. It’s not important at all, any more than my relationship to Pieter Boegart, so why don’t you just go and fetch whatever papers we have to sign and we’ll get out of your hair, okay?” Finn said.

“Quite so,” said Derlagen. He got up from behind the desk and left the office.

“Pinched,” said Billy. “I used to have professors at Oxford like that. Always with that pinched look one gets when one’s bowels aren’t moving as they should.”

“In other words, he’s got a pickle up his ass,” said Finn.

“Exactly,” said Billy.

Derlagen returned with a file folder full of documents and a small leather-covered box. They signed the documents, which made them the only two stockholders of an already formed Dutch royalty conduit nonresident corporation called
Vleigende Draeack
LLC—the Flying Dragon Company. The only assets of Flying Dragon were the painting, which they had already received; the Amsterdam house on the
Herengracht
; a very elderly freighter due to be scrapped; and a tract of utterly unapproachable snake-infested jungle somewhere in the middle of an unnamed island in the Sulu Sea at approximately 7 degrees north by 118 degrees south. By signing the documents, Finn and Billy were legally agreeing to physically take possession of these assets within a limited period of time. Failure to do so would result in the forfeiture of all the assets, including those already taken into their possession.

“So we have to actually go to this so-called snake-infested unapproachable tract of land on the unnamed island or we lose everything. Is that what you’re saying?” Finn asked.

“Precisely,” said Derlagen, smiling for the first time. It was not a friendly smile.

“Well,” said Billy airily, “I’m not doing anything else at the moment, Miss Ryan, how about you?”

“I’m game if you are, Billy.”

The lawyer’s lips pursed as though he’d just sucked a lemon. “As you wish,” he said.

They signed. Derlagen went away again to get copies of the signed agreements and their stock certificates.

“Can’t be very high up the food chain,” Finn commented. “He doesn’t even have a secretary.”

“I’m feeling very much the CEO. Perhaps I’ll buy lunch,” said Billy.

“We just had breakfast, and how come you’re the CEO?”

“All right, you be the CEO, and I’ll be the stuffy old chairman of the board hired on merely for my escutcheon on the creamy linen letterhead and my portrait in the boardroom.”

“You,” said Finn, “are a very silly man.”

Derlagen came back with the papers. He placed them in a manila envelope, which he handed to Billy, who in turn handed it on to Finn. “She’s the CEO,” he explained blandly. “I’m just chairman of the board.”

Derlagen looked a little perplexed. He frowned and opened up the box. Inside was a key, something that looked like a fat guitar pick, and a delicate, half-inch-high figure of a man mounted on a horse. It was obviously very old. Just as obviously, it was made of solid gold.

“It is from Mali,” explained Derlagen. “Experts at the Rijksmuseum say it is from the reign of Mansa Musa, who was apparently the king of Timbuktu.”

“It’s beautiful,” said Finn, turning it over in her hand. “But what does this have to do with us?”

“
Meneer
Boegart left it in our vault for safekeeping. It was purchased from an antiquities dealer named Osterman in Labuan, just off the coast from the sultanate of Brunei, which was the last place
Meneer
Boegart was seen. According to this man Osterman the gold figure was to be given to you in the event that he… disappeared. The figurine is for you specifically,
Vrouwe
Ryan. The other two items are the key to the front door of the house and the device used to disarm the security system. The panel is on the right as you enter. Simply place the narrow end of the device in the appropriate spot and squeeze. The light should turn green. Everything else is automatic. There is a cleaning service we have hired, which comes every Wednesday morning for three hours. If there is anything else you need to know, I am, of course, at your service, day or night.” It didn’t sound like much of an invitation. Derlagen went on, voice droning and uninflected. “As the documents describe you are not allowed to sell either the house or any of its contents for at least twelve months, and if you do the Boegart Family Trust has the right of first refusal, that is to say—”

“We know what it means,” said Billy.

“Then if that is all… ?” answered Derlagen. He pushed away from his chair. They were being dismissed. Finn carefully put the little gold figure back into the box. She put the box into her bag.

“How do we find the house?” Finn asked.

“Nothing could be simpler,” said Derlagen. “Walk back up to the
Dam
, turn left on the
Raadhuistraat
, cross one bridge, and turn right onto the
Herengracht
. It is the first block, before
Driekonigenstraat
, number 188. It cannot be missed. It is dark stone with a green door.”