Michelangelo's Notebook (25 page)

“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.

The sergeant stood in the huge summer kitchen of the farmhouse, a fire blazing in the massive 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 glasses 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 documents spread out on the pale beechwood table in front of him. “These documents all have Vatican stamps on them. Laissez-passers 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 shit 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 damn 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 hell 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 glasses 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 God 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 damn 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 fucking lifetime… sir.”

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 class, 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 passed laws that would help a member expand his business.”

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

“Something like that.” Kornitzer paused. “In the end it was the twelve members of the original club who bought the school out of bankruptcy during the Depression. For some reason they decided to go underground just after World War Two—that’s your Delaware corporation. They used the firm of their lawyers to buy up a shell company that also owned an entity called the McSkimming Art Trust in Chicago. They changed the name to the Grange Foundation, which has offices here in New York. St. Luke’s Place in Greenwich Village.”

“What do they do?”

“Nothing, apparently. They have no legal mandate: It’s a private trust. It doesn’t have to make any kind of report except to the IRS. According to their tax records they’re a nonprofit organization that facilitates museum and gallery research into particular works of art and artists. What they really are is an art agency. As far as MAGIC can tell they have several major clients, in particular the archdiocese of New York and the Parker-Hale Museum of Art. From what MAGIC tells me, nearly every transaction has been handled commercially by the Hoffman Gallery, which has its head office in Berne, Switzerland.”

“We’re getting closer.”

“Closer still. Your James Cornwall was a member in good standing of Carduss before the war. So was Gatty, so was a man named McPhail. Cornwall and McPhail were officers in G5, which in turn was a division of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. They were part of a group of art specialists attached to the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives unit in Germany at the end of the war.”

“And Gatty was the OSS liaison in Switzerland, working for Dulles.”

“It gets better. According to MAGIC there’s a clear line of documentation in OSS records that shows that Gatty organized the movement of Cornwall and his men through the so-called Vatican ‘ratline.’ He also got them transportation out of Italy through the port of Sestri Ponente just outside of Genoa. The
Bacinin Padre,
which was renamed the USS
Swivel
. You can trace them all the way to an address on Hudson Street and a company called American Mercantile.”

“This is getting very strange,” said Finn.

“American Mercantile went belly-up in 1934. They made work clothes. The building was empty from then on. The real estate company leased it out as warehouse space.” He grinned. “Ask me the address on Hudson Street.”

“I’ll bite. What was the address?”

“Four twenty-one. It’s a condo building now, but it’s right across the street from James J. Walker Park. Eight-story Italianate. Fancy for a commercial building. Built in the 1800s.”

“I don’t get it,” said Finn. “Why is that important?”

“Because the street that looks into the park from the south side is St. Luke’s Place—home of the Grange Foundation. It can’t be a coincidence,” said Valentine.

“It’s not,” said Kornitzer. He punched a key and stared at the computer screen. “The United States Quartermaster Department Archives show that the shipment underwritten by Gatty turned up at 421 Hudson and was stored on the main floor of the building, sealed and under guard for eighteen days from July 27 to August 15, 1945. On August 16, 1945 the guards were removed. There’s no record of the shipment after that.” He paused again. “Whatever Gatty had shipped for Cornwall just vanished.”

“How big was the shipment?”

“Two hundred twenty-seven tons. Assorted crates and boxes.”

“Two hundred twenty-seven tons of what?” asked Finn.

“It doesn’t say.” The pudgy hacker shrugged. “The records of the group passing through the Vatican ratlines mentions six sealed trucks traveling through Switzerland into Italy, then down the coast to Genoa, that’s all.”

“It’s the Gold Train,” Valentine murmured.

“What’s that?” Finn asked.

“It’s one of those World War Two stories nobody quite believes,” he explained. “A book came out about it a couple of years ago. According to the book a shipment of looted treasure was put onto a train out of Budapest right at the end of the war by a man named Arpad Toldi, the SS Commissioner of Jewish Affairs in Hungary. He made sure there was no inventory made of the material on the train—three or four billion dollars’ worth of gold—and sent the train off to Germany. It never got there. It fell into the hands of the U.S. Army.”

“Then what happened?” Finn asked.

“It disappeared,” said Valentine. “Just like Cornwall’s six truckloads. It’s all part of that World War Two Nazi-treasure mythology. Nothing’s ever been proven.”

“There’s more,” said Kornitzer.

“Tell me.”

“You remember the name Licio Gelli?”

“The man who was involved in the Vatican Bank scandal. Some kind of backroom boy.”