A Cruise to Die For (An Alix London Mystery) (26 page)

Among the thousands of crawling, ten-legged
Steiracrangon orientalis
was a single, two-legged representative of the phylum
Chordata
, subphylum
Vertebrata
, class
Mammalia
, order
Primates
, family
Hominidae
, genus
Homo
.

In a word, Donny, much the worse for wear after spending a few hours among the hungry crustaceans.

There was little doubt as to his identity. He had personal identification in his wallet, he was wearing a shirt with the logo
Artemis
woven into it—and in a plastic bag inside a travel pouch attached to his belt was a thick wad of euros, as yet uncounted.

Final confirmation came as Yiorgos finished his explanation. His cell phone buzzed gently, and when he opened it he took a long look. “They took a photograph,” he said. “It is him for sure.”

Alix put out her hand. “May I see?”

Yiorgos shook his head. “Not good to look at. The shrimp, the crabs…” He ended with a grimace.

“Do they know what happened to him? I mean, he just drowned? There wasn’t any…?”

“That is what we must find out. The Agia Pelagia police—it was they who called—they find no signs of foul play, no injuries but the… the nibbling of his flesh. They believe he drowns while trying to swim to Heraklion in the night, and the current takes him in that direction. The current here, it flows from east to west, so it may be so. We will see.”

“You think it might not be?”

He shrugged. “Dionysodaurus, for him it was easy to make enemies. And these local policemen, they are not trained to look into such things. Already I have notified the Hellenic Police, the national police, to take charge. They will be here in an hour. Until then, I will take charge myself.”

“But I thought you weren’t with them anymore.”

“No, I am a lieutenant colonel. Only for a month I take leave to help because my wife, she asks to make a family favor. You see, she is the cousin of the husband of Panos’s Aunt Eleni’s nephew’s wife’s brother Kostas. Panos, you see, he fires his old security chief, his own cousin, for various…
well, it makes no difference. I am here for one month, no more. If he picks a new chief before one month, I am through. The sooner the better,” he muttered as an afterthought. “There, that is Agia Pelagia.”

They were approaching a terraced village rising from a small, blue-green bay. There was a sandy beach onto which four midsize fishing vessels had been pulled up. Around one of them a crowd milled, a couple of uniformed policemen among them.

“The
Philomena
, I think,” Yiorgos said, turning the
Hermes
toward it.

“What do you want me to do?” Alix asked. “Can I help?”

“No,” he said bluntly. “A police car will drive you back to the marina in Heraklion. The launch from the yacht will come for you. It has been arranged.”

She very nearly objected, much preferring to be there for whatever was going to happen. On the other hand, whatever was going to happen was going to happen in Greek, so she wouldn’t have gotten much out of it anyway. “Thank you,” she said submissively.

T
ed had spent the early part of the morning exploring the yacht and had come upon Lorenzo Bolzano, Emil Varga, and Mirko Koslecki, the Man Without a Country, relaxing in a grouping of armchairs in the
Al Fresco
lounge, an informal, open-air room on the forward part of the main deck, which was overhung by the half-length bridge deck and thus shielded from the sun. He wasn’t surprised to find them there. All three were pallid men who looked as if they hadn’t been caught out in the sun in years. The mysterious Mirko in particular gave off distinctly Dracula-like emanations.

They were being served coffee. Ted ordered some for himself and joined them without being invited, and a few minutes later along came Panos and Edward Reed, and they sat down too. Ted was pleased. The more of them he had to talk with, the better.

“Panos,” he said at a break in the meandering small talk, “Aunt Saskia asked me to tell you how pleased she was with the returns on that Turner you sold recently, and the Pollock before that.”

“Thank you, my friend Rollie.” Panos smiled, Buddha-like, his hands folded on his belly, and turned to the others. “We got a good price on the Pollock, didn’t we? Didn’t I said we would?”

“Very nice,” said Lorenzo. Mirko mumbled his agreement, but Emil shook his head ruefully. “I
knew
the Pollock would do well, but you, you old scoundrel, you wouldn’t sell me a single share, would you?”

“Don’t blame me, Emil. Too late, you waited for. Already, it was one hundred percent subscribed.” He spread his hands in mocking apology. “I can’t sell more than a hundred percent of something, can I?”

The hell you can’t,
Ted thought. “Panos, my aunt was wondering if you expect to have any other pieces available for similar investment in the near future.”

The others showed interest as well, but for whatever reason, Panos wasn’t biting. He clucked his disapproval. “Gentlemen, gentlemen, such talk. Fractional investments,” he said contemptuously. “Why we are here? We are here for to relax among our own kind and to live with the great art that is on the walls for a few days. Let us hear no more about ‘investments.’ Pah.”

“Not until the auction, at any rate,” a smiling Edward amended.

That brought a great gust of laughter from Panos, who clapped Edward good-humoredly on the forearm. “Yes, for that we make an exception.” He hauled himself to his feet. “Gentlemen, things to do,” he said and went on his way toward the stern. “Enjoy yourselves. Anything you want, ask.”

Ted got up and followed. “Panos, there’s something else I want to talk to you about: the Manet.”

Panos stopped and turned with a scowl of sharpened interest. “You know something?”

“No, what would I know? I haven’t even seen it. But I’d like to.”

Panos sagged a little. “It’s wrecked. I put it away. I can’t stand anymore to look at the damn thing.” He began walking again.

Ted stayed where he was. “I was thinking I might make you an offer on it.”

Panos had gone only a few steps. He stopped in his tracks and came back. Ted expected to be asked why he would want to buy a ruinously damaged painting, and he had a studiously prepared rationale ready and waiting, but he didn’t need it; Panos got right down to brass tacks.

“How much?”

“Well, I don’t know; I haven’t seen it.”

“The estimate was, it would go for ten million. At least ten million. A good chance for fifteen.”

Ted smiled. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t going to go for that now, is it? I was thinking maybe, oh, five million, if I like the looks of it. It’d save you a lot of worry and expense and time before you could even think of putting it up for sale. And you know what they say: a bird in the hand…”

Panos responded with a hoarse laugh. “Five million euros? Forget it.”

“Five million
dollars
.”

“You’re insulting me.”

“Maybe as much as seven or so. It depends. Let’s have a look.”

“You want it for Countess Saskia?”

“No, for myself. My aunt has nothing to do with this.”

Panos peered at him. “What for do you want it? You ain’t a collector.”

“No, but I am a dealer… of sorts.” He glanced around, as if to make sure nobody could overhear them, then leaned closer. “Panos, let me be frank. I have certain… clients… in Asia and the Middle East, who would love to own a Manet.”

“A Manet with a big rip down the middle?”

“No, of course not. I’d have it repaired before offering it. I have a first-rate restorer, the best in the world, in my opinion, with whom I work from time to time.”

“You do, huh? Who’s that?”

Ted smiled. “Sorry. Confidential.”

Panos made a sour face. “All right, so this client of yours—”

“Clients. I have several possibilities in mind.”

“You do, huh?” Panos thought for a moment. “Okay, all right, come with me.”

They took the forward stairwell up to the bridge deck, the top level, and to the Captain’s Bar, a cozy little room that was startlingly different from most of the ship’s Grecian or Classical décor. This place looked like an interior decorator’s vision of an officers’ club in colonial India, with porcelain tigers sitting at either end of a curving bar, the surface of which was softly glowing, back-lit agate. There were just four stools, their seats
covered with what Ted suspected was elephant hide. Intricately carved, three-foot-long tusks stood in the corners. Behind the bar, in back of the shelf that held the bottles, where a mirror or a portrait of Queen Victoria might have been expected, was a wall of glass that looked directly into the pilot house, an airy, spick-and-span space with six big monitors lined up on the wide walnut console at the front. There was a keyboard and a mouse in front of each, but if there was a wheel or a control lever of any kind, Ted couldn’t see it. There were three crewmen in the room, none of them doing anything much, and a gray-haired, neatly bearded man—the captain, judging from his aloof, military carriage and the gold stripes on the cuffs of his black uniform—who was standing in front of one of the screens, his hands clasped, statesmanlike, behind his back.

Ted and Panos’s entrance caught his attention. He saluted and gave an order to one of the crewmen, who started for the opening in the glass wall that led to the bar, apparently to serve them. Panos waved him back and got behind the bar himself as Ted took a seat on a stool.

Panos banged both hands on the bar. “Let’s have a drink, or is it too early for you?”

It was a little after nine a.m., a good eight hours too early for Ted—but of course it was never too early for Rollie de Beauvais, and over the years he had found that a little shared alcohol made negotiations like this easier and more productive. An extremely moderate drinker himself, he was in little danger of overdoing it. “I’ll have a Scotch, neat.”

Panos poured them each a couple of fingers of Macallan 21 Year Old Scotch—about three hundred dollars a bottle, if Ted remembered right. “
Skol
,” Panos said and chugged it down.

Ted took a sip of what was without a doubt the best Scotch he’d ever tasted—peaty and smooth, almost syrupy, with just the smallest hint of smokiness—but he managed to look as if it was what he drank every day, just another Scotch. He waited for Panos to pick up the conversation.

“Tell me this, Mr. Rollie de Beauvais. Why I should sell it to you for you to sell it to someone else? Why not I just sell it myself? Cut out the
middleman.” He poured himself a little more Scotch and tossed it down his throat.

“Go ahead,” Ted said, “suit yourself.”

“If I wanted to, I could—”

Ted started to stand up, putting a little exasperation into the movement. “Enough already, Panos. Let’s have a look at the damn thing, and then
maybe
we’ll have something to talk about. If you’re not interested, just say so.”

“Hey, hey, hold your horses, what’s the rush?” He put an ingratiating hand on Ted’s shoulder, pushing him gently back down, then used a telephone on the bar to issue some quick instructions in Greek. “One minute, it’ll be here.” He began to top off Ted’s glass, but Ted put his hand over it. Panos set the bottle back down without pouring any more for himself. “So,” he said, “these
clients
of yours, of course you are planning to tell them about the damage?”

“I am not. I
am
planning to tell them it comes with a reliable provenance going right back to the year it was painted, with several authoritative letters of authentication, which you will give me, and with a clean bill of health from the
Laboratoire Forensique Pour l’Art,
of which I will also want a copy. All of that is true. However, I feel no obligation to inform them of every little scuff and scratch it may have suffered over the centuries.”

“Scuff and scratch,” Panos said, laughing. “That’s some scratch. So tell me this. How much you expect to get for it?”

“That’s the wrong question for you to be thinking about, Panos. The right question is, what would
you
get for it?”

“Yeah, but what makes you think—ah, look, here it is.”

Édouard Manet’s
Déjeuner au Bord du Lac
—or rather an expert copy of Édouard Manet’s
Déjeuner au Bord du Lac
, according to Alix—now made its appearance atop a steel kitchen cart being wheeled in by one of the stewards.

Ted got up to look at it. He propped it at an angle against the cart’s handle so that he could take it in more directly. He folded his arms. “Mm.”

Panos muttered a single word to the steward, who turned and left.

“It’s worse than I expected, Panos,” Ted said, shaking his head.

“Oh, not so bad as that,” Panos said, seeing a sale slipping away, “now that I see it again.”

“Not so bad? That slash is a foot-and-a-half long, and it’s jagged, more like it’s been ripped than cut. That’s harder to fix. This is not good, Panos. I don’t know; I have to think about this.” He stepped a few feet back from it, took out his phone, and held it up to the painting.