The Black Sun (34 page)

the black sun 291

Kristenko’s eyes narrowed with confusion as she said his name, trying to place her face.

“You don’t know who I am, do you?” she asked. He shook his head dumbly. “They call me Viktor.”

At the name, Kristenko’s face fell and he glanced desperately around, giving the barman a pleading look. Viktor snapped her fingers and jerked her head toward the door. The barman, who had been slicing lemons, laid down his knife and silently backed out of the room. Kristenko, all color drained from his face, looked as if he was going to be sick.

“Two weeks,” he whispered. “You said I had two more weeks.”

“And you still do,” she said. “Although you and I both know it will make no difference.”

“It will,” he insisted. “I have an uncle in America. He will send me the money.”

“An uncle you haven’t spoken to in ten years? I doubt it.”

“How do you know . . . ?” Kristenko’s mouth flapped open in surprise.

“Because it’s my job to know,” she said coldly. “You can’t pay now, and you won’t be able to pay in two weeks’ time.”

“I’ll win it back. I will, I will.” He began to sob, his shoulders jerking uncontrollably.

“Your mother, though—she has savings.”

“No!” he half screamed. “Please, no. There must be another way. I’ll do anything—

anything you want. But don’t tell her.”

Viktor nodded at Tom and then stepped aside.

“We’re looking for this . . .” Tom slid the photo of the Bellak portrait across the bar to Kristenko, who wiped his eyes on his sleeve and picked it up. “It was last seen in 1945, in Berlin. We think that it was seized by the Russian Trophy Squad, and that they stored it in the Hermitage. It’s by an artist named Karel Bellak.”

“I don’t understand . . . ?”

“Can you find it?”

“It could be anywhere,” Kristenko began uncertainly.

“I’ll pay you,” Tom offered. “Twenty thousand dollars if you find it. Fifty thousand if you

bring

it

to

me.”

292 james twining

“Fifty thousand?” Kristenko held the photo with both hands and gazed at it. “Fifty thousand dollars,” he repeated, almost whispering it this time.

“Can you find it?” Viktor demanded.

“I’ll try,” said Kristenko.

“You’ll do better than that,” Viktor said menacingly.

“Here”—Tom handed him five thousand dollars in cash— “to show I’m serious.”

Kristenko’s hand curled around the thick wad of notes as he stared at them in disbelief, then his head jerked up and he looked questioningly at Viktor.

“Keep it,” she said. “Pay me out of the fifty thousand when you get it.”

He slipped the money gratefully into his jacket. “How can I find you?” he asked her.

“You don’t. From now on, you deal with him.” She nodded at Tom.

“Take these,” said Tom, handing Kristenko his digital camera and a mobile phone loaned to him by Viktor. “I’ll need proof—photos of the painting—before we line up the cash. When you have it, call me. There’s only one number in the memory.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

VASILIEVSKY ISLAND, ST. PETERSBURG

January 10—7:45 p.m.

Click. Click. Click. One by one the shiny brass bullets slipped into the fifteen-round magazine of Renwick’s Glock 19. When it was full, he banged it twice on the table, once on its base to ensure that the bullets had settled properly against the spring, then on its side so that they would be flush to the front edge and feed properly. Renwick picked it up, savoring its weight in his hand, then examined the scratched and worn surface for the telltale outward bulge that comes with extended use. Whereas a new magazine drops freely from the well when released, this one would need to be removed by hand—not an easy task for a one-handed man. But Renwick was untroubled. If he couldn’t shoot his way out of trouble with fifteen rounds, it was unlikely he would survive long enough to need any more bullets. He slid it into the frame with a firm slap. Renwick liked this gun. The short barrel made it easy to conceal, yet the reduced size in no way compromised its performance. The care and ingenuity that had gone into its design appealed to his love of craftsmanship. Hammerless and striker-fired, the Glock’s trigger

and

firing-pin

mecha

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nisms, for example, were almost unique. Equally innovative was the hammer-forged hexagonal rifling of the Glock’s barrels, which provided a far superior gas seal. Most important, he liked the way this gun made him feel. In control. Adjusting his prosthetic hand so that it was more comfortable, he looked up to see Hecht and his men readying themselves and their weapons for the night ahead. He smiled. He was so close now, he could almost reach out and touch it. Tonight,

he’d

know.

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

THE HERMITAGE, ST. PETERSBURG

January 10—8:01 p.m.

On the Hermitage’s top floor, lost within the dark labyrinth that makes up the museum’s attic storerooms, a dimly lit corridor ends in a rusty door. Very few people are allowed access to this hidden corner of the museum. Even fewer know it exists. Those that do have learned not to ask what lies inside.

Even Kristenko, whose position allowed him to roam freely across most of the Hermitage complex, had rapidly needed to forge a note from the museum director to gain access. Fortunately, the armed escort detailed to accompany him had been happy enough to wait outside, lighting up with typical Russian disregard for the No Smoking signs. Kristenko decided not to press the point—denied this simple pleasure, they might decide to pay heed to the rule that required them to accompany him inside. The door was stiff from lack of use, and as soon as he was inside he tugged it shut behind him, metal striking metal with a dull, booming crash that echoed off the peeling walls.

Six somber doors led off a corridor lost in shadows, each one opening onto a different
spetskhran
,

or

special

storage

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area. According to the rough plan he held in his trembling hand, it was
spetskhran
3

of this, the so-called Trophy Squad Annex, that held the bulk of the paintings seized from Berlin at the end of the war. The other
spetskhran
were similarly arranged into broad categories: sculptures in one, rare books and manuscripts in another, furniture in another, and so on. Beyond that broad classification, records were at best incomplete, at worst utterly unreliable.

Opening the door, his throat dry with anticipation, Kristenko felt for the switch just inside the room. The low-level lighting flickered on. He felt his breathing quicken and, in his excitement, briefly had the sense that the mottled walls and stiflingly low ceiling were closing in on him.

It wasn’t just the prospect of finding the Bellak painting and claiming a fifty-thousanddollar reward that was affecting him. Only once, when he had first been promoted to deputy curator, had he been allowed into this room before. The visit had been supervised, of course, with strict instructions that he wasn’t to touch anything. Now, finally, he was free to see and touch these treasures unhindered. The prospect was almost more than he could bear.

The paintings had been loaded on three wooden racks, each two stories high and twenty feet long. Kristenko doubted that they’d been moved since the day they’d been put there. Like the rest of the Hermitage, the room lacked modern temperature monitoring and climate-control equipment, hardly forming an ideal storage environment. But despite that, it was dry and, most important, stable, the museum’s thick walls preventing sudden changes in temperature.

Not knowing where to start, Kristenko attacked the rack nearest to him, pulling on a pair of white cotton gloves to protect the paintings from the acids and oils produced by his skin. An added benefit, he recognized, was that he would leave no fingerprints. The canvases were heavy and it wasn’t long before he had broken into a sweat, the dust clinging to his face and adding a gray tint to his already pale skin. But his tiredness evaporated when, among the second column of paintings, he discovered a large, badly damaged work.

Still

bearing

the

creases

where

it

had

been

folded

by

some

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careless previous owner, its surface was cracked and scarred. Most people would not have given the painting a second glance, but Kristenko immediately recognized it as a Rubens. Not just any Rubens, either, but
Tarquin and Lucretia
, regarded by many as one of his greatest early works. It had once been the property of Frederick the Great, who hung it in the gallery of Sanssouci, his palace outside Potsdam, until the Nazis had moved it to a castle in Rheinsberg in 1942. Then nothing—it had simply vanished. The label on the reverse told the story of those missing years. It had been sequestered by Joseph Goebbels, who had hung it in a bedroom used by one of his lovers—appropriate, perhaps, given that the painting’s subject is the rape of Lucretia, a chaste Roman wife. In 1945, when Goebbels’s estate in Bogensee was overrun, an officer of the Soviet 61st Army smuggled the painting back to Russia, folded underneath his tunic. It then fell into the hands of the authorities, who had placed it down here along with everything else. Kristenko couldn’t stop himself from smiling, as if seeing the painting had somehow initiated him into a secret club.

Reluctantly, he returned the Rubens to the pile and continued his search. But no sooner had his heartbeat returned to its normal rhythm than he found a Raphael. The label identified it as
Portrait of a Young Man
, formerly the property of the Czartoryski Museum in Krakow. Then, ten minutes later he stumbled upon a van Gogh. The label named it as
Flowers in an Earthenware Jug
and recorded that it had been confiscated by the Nazis from a château in the Dordogne in 1944.

By now Kristenko was flying, but his smile collapsed into an angry frown as he was struck by the injustice of such works of genius being consigned to this forgotten place rather than displayed for all to enjoy. For the next hour, as he continued his search, he fumed over the cavalier treatment of these great treasures, despairing at his powerlessness to do anything about it.

It was hardly surprising, therefore, given his mood, that the Bellak portrait almost passed him by. In fact, he had flipped three or four paintings beyond it before the 298 james twining

similarity to the photograph registered and he turned back to find it. Not the most prepossessing of subjects, he thought. A plain, sad-looking girl in a rather severe green dress sat next to an open window with sky and fields beyond. He couldn’t imagine why the Englishman should be prepared to pay fifty thousand dollars for this. There was none of van Gogh’s inspired use of color or Raphael’s mastery of perspective, and the brushwork was clumsy and heavy-handed compared to the genius that had touched Rubens’s work. True, most artists would suffer in comparison to those yardsticks, but this was mediocre at best.

On the other hand, if a lost Rubens or a Raphael were suddenly to surface it would create waves in the art world. The museum director or one of the other curators might even remember having seen it in the storeroom. Questions would be asked. Records checked.

This, however, would never be missed.

Kristenko lifted it clear of the rack. Then, holding it carefully in front of him, he flipped off the light, closed the door behind him, and retraced his steps to where he’d left the guards.

“Found what you were looking for, Boris Ivanovich?” one of them asked goodnaturedly, stubbing out his cigarette on the metal-tipped heel of his black boot.

“Yes, thank you,” said Kristenko. “You can lock up now.”

He cautiously navigated his way down the stairs to the Restoration Department on the second floor. The main atelier was dark and empty, as he had known it would be. Here and there, pieces in different stages of repair nestled under protective white sheets. The more valuable items had been locked away for the night in the large walk-in vault at the end of the room.

Kristenko pulled the mobile phone from his pocket and dialed the number stored in the memory. It was answered on the third ring.

“Yes?”

Kristenko

recognized

the

Englishman’s

voice.

“I’ve

found

it.”

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“Excellent.” A flicker of surprise in the man’s voice suggested that he’d been quicker than they expected.

“What now?” he asked uncertainly. “How do I get my money?”

“You take some photos, as agreed. When we’re sure you’ve got the right painting, you bring it to us and then we make the exchange.”

A pause as Kristenko considered this. “How do I know you’ve got the money?”

“Don’t you trust us, Boris?” the voice asked mockingly.

“As much as you trust me.”

“Very well.” Slight impatience in the man’s voice now. “When we come to check the photos, we’ll bring the money along so you can see it. We’ve got it ready. As soon as you give us the painting, the money’s yours.”

“Good. Let’s say ten o’clock in Decembrist’s Square. Near the Bronze Horseman.”

Kristenko ended the call and placed the phone on the desk in front of him, unable, almost, to let it go. When he finally snatched his hand away, he realized that he was sweating, his palms slick, his mouth dry.