Dirty Fire (30 page)

“So who do
you
think the paintings belong to?” asked Marita Travers, her voice icy. “I assume there’s some question, since you say they have not been turned over to the Russians yet.”

I looked out the window, marveling at the view that was being wasted on the majority of us locked inside an FBI conference room.

Outside, it was a beautiful April afternoon, and I could see a slice of Lake Michigan framed by the skyscrapers. A sailboat, made tiny by the distance, wove through the sparkling waters on the gulled-out wings of its sails; in aspect, it appeared like a bird sculling through a field afire.

I had gained a new appreciation for art and for the passions it engendered.

Beside Marita sat Peter Comstock, his head swathed in a thick gauze turban that covered the grove across his forehead. The bullet had skimmed along the bone of his skull, nicking the temporal artery; an eighth of an inch difference in trajectory would have left the world one abstractionist poorer.

“That is, in a legal sense, an interesting question of international law.”

The speaker was one of a well-dressed trio, all men, who sat together on the long side of the table. They were, of course, lawyers—one each representing the Justice Department, the Treasury Department and the State Department.

Justice continued. “The paintings in question were stolen by the Nazis, then by the Russians, then by this Mr. Levinstein, and finally, Ms. Travers, by your husband and his police chief. I assume there are heirs of the original owners somewhere. And of course, the Russian government also wants them back.”

He shook his head in what I was certain was not sincere sorrow; for any lawyer, such a tangled web of potential litigation was tantamount to lifetime job security. “I suspect there will be no shortage of claims for the courts to decide on the legal issues involved.”

“With all due respect, all this is now much bigger than any questions of legality.”

The speaker was a middle-aged woman who sat between Comstock and Marita Travers. She was past fashionably thin, dressed in a tailored Gucci suit of pearl gray; her eyes burned, twin embers behind tortoiseshell frames.

“Monica Troutman,” she said, rising to her full five feet of height. “Ms. Travers has retained my firm to deal with the…ah, communications-related aspects of this issue.”

Santori groaned, softly. “Public relations,” he said to nobody in particular.

Troutman shrugged good-naturedly.

“In the larger sense, who
really
owns these works?” she asked, theatrically. “Because of what Mr. Comstock has done, at this moment that is a much more complicated question. As rare and unique as they previously were, they have now become something much different. They have changed, forever.”

“Not necessarily,” Treasury noted drily. “There are restoration experts who can remove Mr. Comstock’s work without damaging the oils on the good side.”

Marita Travers looked horrified, then exasperated. “The
good
side? You still don’t understand, you baboon. There are—”

“Allow me, Marita.”

Monica Troutman spoke calmly, patently clear.

“This morning, gentlemen, I received a call from the Museum of Modern Art in New York. They assured me that they were prepared to do whatever is necessary—court orders, legal action,
anything
—to preserve what their staff of curators is terming ‘a uniquely modern, authentic artistic vision!’ Their legal counsel is already preparing the papers to block any attempt to remove or otherwise damage what they are calling ‘
the
definitive Peter Comstock.’”

She smiled, innocent as a hired assassin.

“Not five minutes later, I received a similar call from the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago. They also swear their unyielding support—particularly since, according to the newspapers, the Art Institute here appears to be on the other side of the fence. The two institutions are notorious archrivals, it seems.”

Behind his large hand, Herndon stifled a very unprofessional grin.

“Since that hour, more than a dozen major museums—here and overseas—have publicly registered either fervent support or furious outrage. Mr. Comstock is being seen as either a vandal or as the most enlightened artistic talent to emerge in decades. The legitimacy of his…uh, most
recent
works is being debated in every corner of the art world!”

Peter Comstock winked at the lawyers, a serene smile on his face.

“Good God!” State exclaimed. He turned to Herndon. “You’re the art expert here. Is what this man did ‘art?’”

Herndon sobered, fixed him with a withering stare. “
You
try to define art. Damned if I can.”

“What Mr. Comstock has done is to invent a whole new artistic concept,” Troutman insisted. “He has created a work of genius—an expression that incorporates as part of its wholeness, even as part of its very being…
another
masterpiece! This unique work of his cannot exist without the underlying work; at the same time, it is a masterwork that is independent of the older vision! My God—remove his work? You might as well suggest they sandblast the Sistine Chapel!”

Treasury rolled his eyes and looked at his companions. “This is beyond belief!”

The publicity agent grinned hugely and began pacing again. “What any of us might believe is irrelevant, sir. The whole art world is taking up sides on the issue—and they’re all talking about Peter Comstock!”

The government lawyers looked at each other, then at Ron Santori.

“Okay,” Santori said, “what do you want? If we can all agree to keep this out of the public eye—”

I spoke for the first time. “That might be a little difficult. You should turn on the television.”

He frowned at me for a long moment. Then Ron Santori fumbled with the unfamiliar remote control until he found the correct button.

The large screen flared into life, the volume painfully loud.

“—millions in art stolen from Jews, sir,” an amplified female voice blasted from the hidden speakers. “What is the response of the Russian government to accusations that—”

Santori found the mute button.

On the screen of the suddenly silent television, Analoli Tarinkoff’s lips still moved. His face appeared serious, earnest, and completely without guile. The shot widened to include an attractive young woman, pointing a microphone under the cultural attaché’s lips as if it was a weapon. Her face bore the kind of studious impartiality that every television viewer knows is meant to signal extreme skepticism.

As we watched, the image on the screen abruptly jumped to an outside crowd scene with many of the participants angrily waving placards. Prominent among the crowd was the figure of Rabbi Bernard Jerome, who was windmilling his arms as he led the crowd’s chant.

Then the picture cut to a close-up of one of the signs. In large bright red hand-lettering it read:
RUSSIA: RETURN OUR STOLEN ART HERITAGE.

Santori pressed something on the remote, and the screen went blank.

“Why, Davey?” Santori asked, not looking at me. “I know you turned the Cézanne over to this Jerome person—the rabbi from Levinstein’s synagogue. I guess you got Trombetta to smuggle it out of the Travers’s house before the cavalry arrived. But to go public? Do you know the extent of things you’ve fucked up?”

“What do you care, Ronnie?” I countered. “Operation Centurion is a success. The artwork issue makes your case easy. There’s no need to fuzzy up the motives behind all the murders; it’s a straight line from Evans and Nederlander to the Levinstein killings, the Hunt murder, and everything else.”

Santori looked at Herndon, who sat massive near the head of the conference table, then back at the ceiling.

“What could any of you possibly gain from creating an international incident?” He pursed his lips in a thin, bitter smile. “Aside from the petty personal satisfaction of making me look like an idiot, I mean.”

“You sell yourself short, Ron,” I said. “That kind of satisfaction isn’t petty. Not to me.”

“You’ve opened up Pandora’s box, full of…of shitstorm,” the lawyer from State breathed, appalled. “The Russians, the Secretary of State—my God, even the President.
Everybody
is going to be furious. Do you know what we could have squeezed out of the Russians? Trade agreements, or in arms control?”

“And the artwork would still be locked up in a Russian monastery,” I said, “probably forever.”

Santori pursed his lips in scorn. “Don’t try to tell me you give a damn about that. You wanted to nail Nederlander. You wanted to let everybody know you were Officer Davey, the world’s most honest cop.”

He slumped, his chin in his hand. “Well, I guess you finally made up for your old man’s reputation. Congratulations. I hope it was worth what happens now.”

I looked out the window again.

“It is,” I said.

But not even I could tell if I was speaking the truth.

• • •

“So in the end, I guess Levinstein got what he wanted,” Herndon said, and I could swear he sounded pleased. “About the Holocaust art, that is. If anything is going to break the Russians loose, this is it. The newspapers will be screaming about the artwork the Russians are hiding, and the entire world will call for them to return it to the rightful owners. The United Nations, the IMF—probably even the Pope.”

“The Pope? Small potatoes,” Troutman interjected, and there was no mistaking the pleasure in her voice, at least. “I took a meeting with a TV producer this morning.
Oprah
’s doing a show on us, and she’s got ten
times
more clout than the Pope.” She went on tiptoes and pecked my cheek. “Thanks for putting me on to this. Gotta get over to the
Trib
. They’re waiting for the rest of the story.” She joined the sidewalk’s hurrying throng, heading north.

At the curb, I watched Comstock and Marita flag a taxi, off to celebrate in a manner befitting the triumph of art over tyranny, or at least over expediency.

And then we were alone, Herndon and I, standing in the plaza outside the Federal Building; the garish orange girders of
Flamingo
arched above our heads.

“Ronnie can carry a grudge,” Herndon warned. “Don’t count on him keeping his promises.”

I reached into my pocket and produced the compact tape recorder that Herndon had found under Santori’s car seat and returned to me the night before. I had replaced the cassette it contained with a fresh one before the meeting upstairs had begun.

Now I pressed
PLAY
, and Ron Santori’s recorded voice spoke: “—old man’s reputation. Congratulations. I hope it was worth what happens now.”

I clicked it off and looked into Herndon’s suddenly grinning face.

“Insurance,” I said. “Should give Len Washburn’s book a nice ending, don’t you think?”

“Not to mention Ron Santori’s career,” Charlie Herndon said.

• • •

I swung by the church, expecting to talk to Father Frank. But the church was empty, and no one answered when I knocked at the rectory door.

I spent the rest of the day at Wrigley Field, where the home team pulled off one of its rare, improbable victories in a game where the smart money had said the underdogs had not had a prayer.

Like the strangers who sat around me, I cheered for the Cubs loudly. It was still early in the season, but who knew? The kids might just have a chance.

It was dark when I returned to my apartment: the same darkness that, not long before, had been so soothing to me. It had buffered me then, provided an insulation against the ill fortune and hostile forces that attacked from all sides. It had been my friend, in the same numbing and destructive way that whiskey is a friend to the alcoholic.

Now it was just darkness, with no particular meaning or significance. Something inside me had moved on, or away, from the bloodless solace it had offered. The need for it, or whatever it had represented to me, was over.

In a perverse corner of my mind, I missed it.

In the end, all of us look to fill the void inside. We seek meaning in the lives we live, some kind of rational understanding. We look to rewrite our past, or, like Stanley Levinstein, at least to redress old injustices. A few people, the exceptionally fortunate, even succeed. But the majority of us settle, day-by-day, for whatever redemption we happen to stumble across.

Sometimes, however, we are simply blessed beyond all luck or reason. Or cursed, though the result is often the same.

As I put my key into the lock, I heard movement in the dark hallway behind me.

A shape, petite and unmistakably feminine, stood there. The faint glow from the street shined on hair that fell in a fine ashen halo. It gave an impossibly celestial backlight to the sculpted line of Ellen’s face.

“Hello, Davey,” Ellen said, and despite everything I knew, everything I was and would ever be, I felt my heart soar.

Beck Casey Thrillers:
Final Epidemic
Fire of the Prophet

Selitova Island, Siberia
January 10

Another blast of frigid air swirled across the tundra, chilling their flesh even through the layers of insulated garments they wore under their heavy Arctic parkas. Occasionally, it was strong enough to rock anything merely human that stood in its path, particularly when weariness had brought on the mind-dulling blankness so common to cold-weather exertion. In this environment, a diet carefully planned to provide a minimum of nine thousand calories daily scarcely provided sufficient energy to fuel both the arduous work of excavation and the equally important task of maintaining a core temperature capable of sustaining life.

Anji Suzuki shivered involuntarily. He was born on Kyushu, one of the Home Islands far to the south. Before the eleven days he had been here, on this god-forsaken outcropping of frozen tundra and rock a few degrees above the Arctic Circle, he had never imagined anywhere so cold and desolate.

I will be glad to be gone from this terrible place,
he thought, pressing his body weight hard against the pneumatic drill. He much preferred operating the ground-penetrating radar equipment. With the air drill, the vibrations shook him so harshly that his vision blurred each time the auger bit into the permafrost. After a few seconds, he released his grip on the trigger lever and leaned against the heavy tool.

On the barren tundra, near the mogul-like dome tents and stretched tarpaulins that served as housing and equipment shelters, almost two dozen parka-clad figures labored. A few worked with surveying transits, others strained against the weight of equipment-laden sledges; but most were engaged in the back-breaking work of driving hollow steel core sampling rods into the ever-frozen earth along a geometric grid marked by a yellow plastic cord. The heavy hammers rose and fell, but not even that tumult reached Anji’s ears. The only sound not drowned out by the banshee howl of the bone-numbing gale was his own labored breathing.

He was middle-aged, and the years he had spent in biogenetic research laboratories were proper preparation for neither the manual labor nor the environment. Nor was the more recent confinement he had endured, even if it had been in a facility the medical staff had insisted on calling a “rest haven.” There had been no rest there, not even during the sessions when he had been sedated.

In dreams, he could still recall the worst of it: the smooth, slick feel of unyielding nylon restraints; the cold electrodes taped to his temples; the taste of the rubber block they would force between his teeth; the acid sting of the sedative injection. Then the voltage would hit him, a vibrating fire that alternately paralyzed and convulsed his body. The sedative modulated the seizure, of course. Externally, it appeared little more than a ripple across his face. But inside, a terrifying electrical demon raged, slashing and ripping and throwing Anji against the walls of his very skull.

Anji’s skin still prickled with the remembered horror, even if it had been the price of his Enlightenment.

“
Hai
!” a deep voice boomed, not far from his ears. As Anji turned, a heavy hand clapped him on the shoulder.

Fusaka Torji grinned at him, his stained and crooked teeth a pedigree of childhood privation. Under the heavy quilting of his cold-weather gear, Anji knew, Fusaka’s legs were short and bowed. But the man’s upper body was barrel-chested and thick with muscle. Among the group of Aum faithful who had come to labor at this dismal site, he alone seemed tireless and unaffected by the climate.

Which made sense,
Anji thought: the man was an Inuit, what the less enlightened still called an Eskimo—at least, his mother had been, and her genes had evidently dominated over those of his Yokahama-born father—and his earliest years had been spent on a cold and windswept island not wholly unlike the one where they now labored.

The two men leaned together so that the snorkel hoods of their parkas almost touched.

“Bring the drill,” Fusaka shouted above the wind. He gestured to a figure behind him that knelt beside a shallow excavation in the frozen ground. “One of the Initiates has found one, he believes.”

Together, the two men wrestled the drill to the new location, its cold-stiffened pressure line dragging sullenly behind them. The young man on the ground stood up, his face a beatific smile.

“Here,” he said, pointing his leather mitten to indicate the spot. “Quickly!”

This one is a True Believer.
Anji smiled to himself.
As are we all now, those of us who remain. I, most of all.

When the Sensi had chosen him for this assignment, Anji had bowed with the proper dignity—
as had they all
, Anji thought; even Fusaka had, for once, not committed some oafish breach of manners. But alone of all the Select, only Anji’s mask of impassive devotion had almost slipped. His face had glowed when, with a touch on his forehead, the
Sensi
had selected him. Since the expedition had arrived here, he had been the most driven of the team, constantly urging them to rise earlier, to skip rest periods, to work harder. Some of his comrades had grumbled aloud, though most had contented themselves by staring at Anji behind an impassive mask that itself spoke volumes.

Like me, they are also Aum Truthseekers,
Anji chided himself—he hoped, sincerely.
That makes each of these men forever my brother, my cohort in the Sensi’s consciousness. But, oh—I have given much to ensure that this hour will come to pass. I have sacrificed even the man I once was.

Together, Anji and Fusaka positioned the drill where the younger man indicated. For several minutes, they worked without speaking, the chatter of the tool and the wind rasping past their hooded heads competing in volume.

Suddenly, Fusaka grabbed Anji’s arm and shouted something unintelligible. Anji cut the air flow to the drill and dropped to his knees, pawing with mittened hands at the loosened chunks of permafrost. Fusaka knelt close beside as the bio-geneticist gradually exposed a mounded outline. Frozen hard to the ground was a rough-woven canvas form, bound with hemp ropes.

“I told you,” Fusaka said, poking Anji with an elbow. “This is where they placed the bodies. My mother’s mother would tell her how they were sewn into sailcloth, when there were no longer sufficient sealskin robes.” He looked around the flat tundra. “There will be several dozen more nearby. They were buried in a single trench. A meter or so below the surface, perhaps a little more.”

Anji only grunted, watching closely as Fusaka pulled off his leather mittens and opened a pocketknife. Carefully, he worked the blade against the stiff cloth, cutting a semicircle that he peeled back with difficulty.

Underneath was the face of a young woman. Her features were the mixture of Oriental and Indian that distinguishes the Komaji from other Inuit peoples. Hers was an unmarked visage, almost childlike, peaceful in a way that belied the manner of her death.

Anji looked at her, filled with a reverence that came from far more than a cultural respect for the dead. His awe was not for the individual woman before him—how could it be? She was insignificant, merely one of the tens of millions who had died with her. No, Anji’s awe was reserved for the instrument of her death, which the bio-geneticist fervently prayed still lived on inside her, waiting to be awakened from a slumber of almost a century.
Waiting
, he remembered the Sensi saying,
for a man of Anji’s unique skill set to help it do so
.

Now it begins,
Anji thought, as the other members of the party began to prepare this first corpse for the journey it would take. He stood for a moment longer, his eyes locked on the long-dead face swathed in its sailcloth cocoon. Unbidden, a phrase came to his mind.

I am Shiva, Destroyer of Worlds.

He shivered again, this time in a way that had nothing to do with the cold.

• • •

Six months after the team’s return from the expedition, Anji Suzuki left for the United States. He worked hard to keep his face stoic—as stoic as any of the other Japanese on the plane. It was difficult, because his entire being was aflame with the joy of having been selected
—by the Sensi himself!
Anji remembered in awe
—
for this final, divine mission.

Since the expedition to the frigid Arctic almost half a year before, Anji had made this trip several times to meet with the
ganjini
, the godless barbarian crazies that the
Sensi
had ordered the group to find and cultivate in America. They had performed this duty well, finally selecting two of the
ganjini
private armies—they called themselves “militias,” he reminded himself—one near the East Coast, and one in the American West. They had supplied these groups with the unique weaponry from the Aum arsenal and provided instruction in its use.

In the coming days, the Sensi
had said, it would be a useful diversion.

It will be as if angry wraiths, swarming from every crevice, seek to overwhelm them,
the Sensi had told Anji.
Then shall come the final darkness, from which there will be no escape
.

Anji savored the image with the zeal of a true believer.

They had prepared and waited. Among the Aum, some still held hope that the unbelievers—the subhumans who had mocked their Truths, the mindless beasts who had harried the Divine Aum Asahara mercilessly before finally removing him to their corrupt courtrooms—would somehow find their own Enlightenment. They had steadfastly held to that hope for several years—preparing for the worst, but betraying to the world nothing save a sense of their own harmlessness. So the
Sensi
had counseled them, with a wisdom that had sustained them since the Divine One had been seized.

All the while, the rituals of a sham justice painted their leader as a murderous madman rather than a Savior.

And then their judges had condemned Aum Asahara—condemned the Divine One to what they, in an unenlightened ignorance, considered the ultimate punishment. And in so doing, unwittingly condemned themselves as well.

They will now learn,
Anji pledged.
If the Truth of Aum is to pass from existence, so too will the unworthy who rejected it. And so too will we all.

Hidden in the erstwhile bio-geneticist’s waistband was an American passport that had once belonged to an Aum recruit; the photo likeness was close enough to pass scrutiny, as it had on the previous trips. Again, for safety Anji took the soft route, flying first under his own name to Mexico City. There he would change his plane and his identity for the flight to Denver, while the original flight continued on to Miami.

His mission was not dissimilar to those of his countrymen, now filing aboard this aircraft: sent by their corporate masters to do battle with the outside world, to best their competitors on their own turf.

They wage a war of economics,
Anji mused,
and carry as their weapons briefcases stuffed with contracts, business plans, proposals. So petty, so parochial in their limited aims
.

His own war was much more direct: the weapon he carried was not in his briefcase, but inside his body—even now, multiplying and girding for the final battle, the Great Apocalypse. He had, Anji knew, done his work well.

There were no symptoms to betray him, not yet; he had, in accordance with the incubation tables he had carefully calculated, waited until just before boarding to use the nasal inhaler. But soon, in a matter of days, he would become the first to take the path the Divine One had dictated for all the world to follow. By then, he would have cast the seed he carried so widely that none would be able to stay its destruction.

On the flight to Mexico, Anji had flown tourist class, assigned to the aisle seat.

Despite the close quarters, it was an uneventful trip. Anji slept most of the way, as did his seatmate. To any who might notice, the pair was a study in contrasts: one a middle-aged Japanese with thick dark hair and the studious appearance of a man who had become accustomed to careful, intricate work; the other, an eight-year-old American girl.

Her name was Emily Sawyer and she had been visiting her father, an Air Force E-6 stationed at a base in Japan. Emily shifted as she slept, for a while leaning against the snoring man in the seat beside her. Her blond hair moved slightly in the fitful breeze of his breath.

Under the watchful eye of the flight attendant—a scrutiny that, in the end, was unequal to a danger far too minute to be seen—Emily was returning to her mother’s home in Milton, a small town a few miles from Fort Walton Beach, Florida.

• • •

It was an easy landing at Denver International Airport, a smooth glide toward the geometric concrete ribbons and graceful white-tented canopies of the sprawling complex.

The connecting flight from Mexico City had been uneventful. Around the cabin, a babel of English and Spanish rose in volume as the plane descended. Through the plastic window, blurred by the crosshatching of the inevitable fine scratches, the purple-and-brown majesty of the Rockies jutted into a pale blue summer sky. In comparison, Denver itself—thirty-odd miles in the distance—appeared a jumble of children’s blocks, carelessly strewn.

Denver’s old Stapleton Airport is only a memory now, closed since the mountain metropolis greeted the new millennium with this five-billion-dollar, technology-laden facility. It is a much longer drive to the city now, and the traveler no longer gets a bird’s eye view of the city’s streets and buildings that Stapleton’s close-in location offered. But landing at Denver International Airport no longer requires visitors to the Mile-High City to endure sharp banking turns and steep descents on final approach, nor the often-jolting touchdowns that were the inevitable result.

Neither are they required, as before, to look down upon the industrial expanse of the old airport’s closest neighbor, the Rocky Mountain Arsenal; like Stapleton, the Arsenal too is now closed, though space-suited workmen still swarm over its otherwise idle grounds.