Pawn (10 page)

Moirae only hoped that it was as good an arrangement for Ananke as it was for her. She knew she would say yes if asked, but she was a timid sort herself. Even if it wasn’t she wouldn’t say no.

“Sit Ananke, and tell me what you see of Rufus. Again. His every action and inaction. What will drive him to greatness and what will send him fleeing from it.” And Rufus was the key. So vital, so dangerous, so powerful and so weak, and above all else so broken. Using him was taking a chance, but it was also the only chance she had.

Sometimes life simply wasn’t fair. Some times all the power of the gods simply wasn’t enough and everything had to fall on the shoulders of a single mortal, and a damaged one at that. And when that happened, all she could do was hope, and though it would seem odd to those who knew what she was, pray.

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Chapter Ten.

“Inspector?” Barns looked up from his papers, surprised to hear a strange voice at his doorway. People seldom visited him. He visited them. That was the way of a humble copper. He was even more surprised to see that his visitor was a young woman, neatly dressed in a dark suit with her long dark hair tightly cropped back. She was also obviously very athletic, the suit couldn’t hide that, nor the polite but serious cast of her face. Something about her screamed official at him. That went well with the ID on a string that she was wearing around her neck. It was very American television and not at all what he was used to but then she didn’t work in the local station and he had no right to judge how others should carry their identification.

The ID he couldn’t help but notice, said Interpol in large black letters and he quickly gathered her visit had nothing to do with light entertainment. It also wasn’t normal. In more than three decades on the job he had spoken with maybe a handful of Interpol agents, and most of the time it was no more than a request for a piece of information over the phone. To have an agent actually show up at his door was a first.

“Miss?” That was as much of an invite as she needed apparently, and the young woman pushed the door the rest of the way open and walked straight in, surprising him. He hadn’t asked her to enter. But who was he to complain? She was Interpol.

“Dikē. Agent Dikē of Interpol.” She even reached across his desk to offer her hand instead of the other way around, and like a deer caught in the headlights, he took it. Just who was in charge here? He felt somewhat stupid shaking her hand, and from the heads he could see popping up from behind their computers out in the main room, and the secret smiles shared among them, he guessed he looked it too. The junior detectives might well need some heavy duties given to them in the very near future.

“How can I help you Agent Dikē?” It was a formality of course, she would tell him and he would be expected to comply with whatever demands she made. Such was politics in the modern police force.

“I’m not completely sure really. But you’ve begun making some enquiries into a person of interest on our side of the channel, and I’d quite like to know why.” As politely as she said it, he knew it wasn’t going to be a choice for him. But he wasn’t sure he wanted it to be.

“Rufus Hennassy?”

“Ah, no.” She looked confused. “Carl Venner. Investment banker, swindler, criminal financier, and all around bad guy. Who’s Rufus Hennassy?”

“It doesn’t really matter.” Barns swiftly turned the conversation back to Venner, badly wanting to find something on him. All his people had been working flat out on him for days and found nothing. “You have some interest in Mr. Venner?” He was more than surprised when all their enquiries had come back showing nothing more criminal than the odd speeding ticket. Of course that just meant he was clever, and finally, maybe, he had some evidence staring him in the face that his investment banker was the world class scumbag he appeared to be.

“Interest? That’s one way of putting it. We’ve tracked his activities for years. He’s thought to be running one of the most complicated money laundering schemes ever devised through his bank. Taking bent money from drug dealers, gunrunners, crime families and black listed countries, and converting it all into good clean investments. He is the banker behind some of the most evil gangs of murderers and thugs known. And the money behind several very nasty regimes as well. And your interest is?” She was being polite again, but he didn’t care. Finally he had something. Something that could crack the case wide open. Maybe. He would have given her his own bank account details if it would have helped.

Barns told her everything he knew, everything he had on Venner, and everything he suspected, and it didn’t seem to come as a surprise to her as she leafed through the files he handed her. Except for one thing.

“Art! I should have known.” She seemed hard on herself, and he wasn’t completely sure why. How should she have known? “It’s a brilliant way to launder money. We knew he’d bought that decrepit old church for a reason. Never realised it was the painting. A Rembrandt you say?” Barns nodded.

“Bastard!” She seemed genuinely angry as she spat it out. “He bullied the church out of their property for a song by buying up the land around them and cutting off their access, effectively making it worthless, and we couldn’t figure out what his game was. Now he stands to make tens of millions or more out of it. Always an angle with him.”

“You didn’t know about the painting?”

“No.” And she didn’t seem happy about it. “We knew he had something in the works. We heard through our sources that he was selling something big. But we didn’t think it was an artwork. Or that it would be stolen. I mean who would be stupid enough to steal from Venner? With his contacts, their life expectancy would be extremely limited.”

“You mean?”

“Oh yes. Absolutely. He doesn’t do the dirty work himself. He never goes near anything that looks like it could soil him in the slightest. But with his wealth, both what we know about and what we don’t, he has no shortage of people he can hire.” Suddenly she stared straight at him.

“Inside job?” She had good instincts.

“I’d put good money on it. The only thing I can’t figure is the angle. He has no motive.”

“Oh that slimy little bastard has a motive alright. He always has a motive. It’s just finding it that’s the hard part. And sadly in this case, from what you’ve said, very hard. Fifty, a hundred million or more pounds worth of painting in his greedy little hands. If he was willing to part with that, even for a second, whatever his motive is it has to be big.” That much Barns could agree with, though he was a little worried by her valuation of the painting. That was five to ten times what he’d imagined, and if she was simply guessing, maybe it was more again. But then again it might not be.

“Maybe it’s not genuine.” Barns floated the idea as he had several times before. It explained little, but maybe not enough. Maybe the thought of being the publicly renowned owner of a fake was an assault to his ego that was simply too much to take. Maybe a robbery was the easiest way out of his humiliation.

“We can check that.” Agent Dikē stared thoughtfully at the wall behind him. “If he’s had it appraised as he says, then those appraisers will still be around somewhere, and someone will know who they are, even if they were contractually bound to secrecy. The art world is a surprisingly small one, and the gossip fairly flies. An undiscovered Rembrandt, fake or genuine, will have sent shockwaves through it.” She was right of course, and her people had the means to check it where he didn’t. From Venner they’d been given the names and contact details of several appraisers who’d worked on the painting, all of them international. None of them had returned the calls. But all of them he would have guessed, had spoken to Venner.

“Could there be more of them waiting for him to discover?” That was the other idea that had been crossing his mind of late. Find one miraculous undiscovered Rembrandt, have it stolen after being verified as real, and then maybe you had the providence to suddenly find more of them, all potentially hanging on that church’s wall, and all worth tens or maybe hundreds of millions. It could be a gigantic swindle.

“Grief! Can you imagine it! Another billion or two for that little toad in undiscovered artworks. Life couldn’t be that cruel. But we can check that too. We can nail the appraisers down one by one and see if they crack. All it takes is one and we can ruin Venner’s whole week.” She smiled and Barns suddenly decided he liked this agent. He liked the way she thought.

“Thank you inspector. I’ve got to get back to my room and start making some calls. But at least I’ve got some calls to make.” With no more than that she turned and marched out of his office, leaving him shocked all over again. A ten minute meeting with Interpol? Surely that wasn’t normal. Nor was the way half a dozen supposedly professional officers all stared at her as she left with the files under her arm. If they were dogs their tongues would have been hanging out.

And yet none of that mattered. Not when they now not only had a suspect, they had top level back up to help them nail him. While his junior officers ogled the poor woman, Barns let a smile of his own find his face.

It had been a good morning.

**********************

Chapter Eleven.

Rufus was actually enjoying his night out. Something he would never have thought possible. He didn’t go out for dinner. He didn’t go out on dates. He went to the supermarket and ate at home. That was his way. That was the safe thing to do. But lately, nothing had been safe any more. And he didn’t even have a home. All he had was his life, a car, and a date with a woman who every time he saw her, made him forget everything else. It was madness of course, but for maybe the first time in his life, he liked the madness. He wanted to throw himself headlong into its embrace.

How could she do that to him? How could she so easily persuade him to do stupid things? He’d asked himself that each and every time after Di had left. After he’d done whatever stupid thing she’d asked of him. And the only answer he had found was that he missed her when she was gone. He missed her a lot. The world without her was a much sadder place. Empty somehow, and darker. So when she returned he simply did whatever she wanted, and instead of being afraid that something terrible would happen, that a man with a cord would try to kill him, he only worried that he might upset her and never see her again.

So when she’d smiled a week or so before and suggested they go for a walk out on the beach, they’d gone for a walk on the beach, regardless of the fact that his face was still being plastered all over the nightly news. And it had been wonderful, as had the fact that they’d held hands while a gentle wind blew in their faces and the waves crashed against the shore. For the same reason they’d enjoyed a picnic in a nearby park while the children and their parents played nearby in the sunshine. They had spent a morning shopping in the local bric-a-brac stores along the town’s single high street, and he didn’t even like bric-a-brac, or shopping. And this very evening they’d decided to go out for dinner at a charming Greek restaurant she knew.

Still he was safe enough with her, he hoped. He put on some sunglasses and a hat whenever they went out, and no one was staring at him anyway. All eyes were on Di, and if they even noticed him, it was only to wonder how such an ordinary looking man as him could be with her.

This time though, he hadn’t bothered with the sunglasses and hat. Di had told him not to, and for some reason he’d simply done as she said. The power she had over him was immense.

So Di had suggested dinner at a restaurant she knew and he had driven her there through the city streets in an open top sports car in which everyone could see his face, completely unconcealed. Madness. As was the fact that he had gotten completely lost while driving here, and now he didn’t even know where he was. And how could that be? He knew the town well, it wasn’t exactly large after all, but take a few wrong turns in the car, and suddenly he not only was nowhere near the streets he knew, he wasn’t at all sure he was even near town. It felt more like the country, especially with the huge gardens and hedge groves they’d had to walk through to reach the actual restaurant. But Di knew which way to go, and it was a glorious madness.

Fun was something he didn’t really do. Or he hadn’t until she had knocked on his door. It was something he hadn’t really missed either. He’d thought his life was fine, safe, and that was what mattered. But when Di was with him he knew that fine and safe simply weren’t enough anymore. He wanted fun.

Going to a strange restaurant where people didn’t speak English and he had little idea of what would be served, that was fun.

It was a good meal too. A nice, somewhat rustic restaurant, if it was a restaurant, unusual but enjoyable food, and even some reasonable music. Rufus didn’t normally favour Greek folk music with its unusual stringed instruments, flutes and hand drums. He much preferred the perfection of a symphonic concert playing one of the masters. But this was happy music, the strings and the flute somehow combining to make him think of sunny days and parties, while the hand drummer was keeping a beat that could make even his soulless feet tap. He wasn’t alone in thinking that. Everyone was having a good time. A lot of the diners were laughing and singing along with the band, others were clapping and keeping time, while the rest looked on smiling and obviously enjoying the evening, and possibly thinking about dancing.

Rufus didn’t know these people. They were strangers to him, and they were loud and boisterous, not the sort of people he would normally associate with. He felt more comfortable among quiet, serious people. People he could hold an intelligent conversation with. Safe people. But then he didn’t normally associate with people that much. Yet he quite liked them. Their easygoing good humour was infectious. He even laughed at their jokes when he didn’t understand a single word that was said.

He quite liked the theme of the place too. White plastered walls decorated with primitive weapons, hand knotting wall hangings, and a few paintings of exotic locations. And the vaulted ceiling was impressive with its huge wooden beams supported by columns that looked like they’d been taken straight from the Acropolis. And then there were the doors, massive oak structures with brass door handles that would have been at home in any castle. Someone had gone to great lengths to make this place look and feel like some sort of ancient Greek hall.

Rufus wasn’t completely sure that it was a restaurant however. It did have the requisite tables and chairs, solid slab like pieces of furniture, crudely carved in keeping with the primitive theme of the place, and set out with coarse linen tablecloths and napkins. And there was a menu, of sorts. It was a blackboard by the door on which someone had scrawled the dishes of the day, in Greek. Di had had to do the ordering for him. There were even people who came and took their orders and brought them their meals, kids mostly, wearing strange toga like outfits. But try as he might he couldn’t spot the cash register or even a price list. And when they’d arrived they hadn’t had to introduce themselves to the person at the front desk. There was no front desk. Di had simply walked straight over to a waiting table and he’d followed her. No one had objected. No one had asked for his credit card either.

Stranger still, as they’d walked over to the table, she’d smiled and waved to just about everyone there. Since when could you wander into a restaurant and know all the guests? Unless of course, it had been booked in advance by a group. But when he’d asked, Di had simply told him not to ask questions and just enjoy the evening. Maybe she had a point.

Rufus, despite his questions, was actually finding the evening quite convivial. The people, though they mostly spoke in Greek, a language he didn’t understand a single word of, were friendly enough, and the atmosphere there was one more of family and friends than customers. That might have helped to explain the strange dress sense of many of them, some choosing to wear casual jeans and T-shirts, others shirts and good pants, and some full robes. The sort of thing these people might wear at home instead of out on the town. It wouldn’t have explained the facial hair though, and it was simply shocking how many of the men had full, curly beards. It also wouldn’t have explained the lack of elderly. These people were all robust and full of life. Very full of life.

As the evening had worn on he’d noticed some unusual practices among the other diners. Things that seemed out of place to him, at least in a restaurant. Many of the other diners didn’t bother with utensils. They picked up their food with their hands and gnawed at it, letting the juices from the meats run down their faces and get trapped in their beards. Maybe that was a Greek thing. Maybe that also explained the massive plates piled high with food, not to mention the food itself.

They were openly affectionate too. Hugging each other, long and often, openly kissing on the cheek and sometimes elsewhere, letting hands wander in strange places on those they held. Not that any of that was wrong, in private. But in a restaurant? Where everyone could watch? Not that the others minded. They seemed to take it all in their stride, scarcely noticing at all, unless of course it was to cheer and clap a little and maybe even raise a pottery goblet of wine to the happy couple.

As for the way the diners treated the servers, that was completely unexpected. As they brought them their meals and exhorted them with the requisite ‘
kali oreksi’ which he gathered meant ‘enjoy’, many were being slapped heartily on the back, and he saw more than a few simply picked up and hugged to the applause and cheers of their fellow diners. Were they waiters or family? As the night wore on, it was beginning to seem less and less like a night out at a restaurant and more like some sort of family gathering.

Still he didn’t mind that. Actually he quite liked it, and he was tempted to clap and cheer as well when he saw each new waiter or waitress picked up and hugged, or more diners greeted with friendly catcalls and applause when they walked in. After the nightmare of the last few weeks, and of course his own sorry childhood, this however strange, was wonderful. And though he didn’t understand it, he felt safe among these people.

They were a strange people, but pleasant and prone to laughing and bursting into song at the drop of a hat. Naturally there was a lot of back slapping, clapping and cheering as well, usually for reasons he didn’t catch, and at first that had made him nervous. It just wasn’t the normal staid behaviour he expected at a restaurant. But unexpectedly as the evening had worn on he’d found that he quite liked them, even if he didn’t yet quite understand them, or what their relationship to Di was. All he really knew was that they were important to her and she was important to him. That was enough.

The food was strange. He’d ordered the roast lamb, a dish called klephts, thinking it would be a safe choice. He’d reckoned without the garlic and lemon, or the piles of dates and figs that came with it. A strange mixture of tastes and textures, and one that his boring European palate wasn’t used to, but one that was quite pleasant with a few drinks. And as for the drinks, the serving girl had brought them a jug of something called kykeon, a fermented barley concoction mixed with herbs and honey. That was going to take some getting used to. Although he noticed that Di didn’t touch it. Maybe she didn’t like it either. Not a lot of the women seemed to. The women weren’t stupid.

It was turning out to be a fun evening. Then the musicians had started up and he discovered a new fear.

“We’re not going to have to dance are we?” The empty plate from his lamb meal pushed aside, it had been a battle getting through it, Rufus suddenly started to worry a little about that. He knew little of Greek culture, but he’d seen enough movies to know that there was often clapping, plate smashing and people being dragged up from the tables to dance in huge circles. The one thing he was sure of though, was that he couldn’t dance.

“We’ll see.” Di smiled at him and suddenly he didn’t care that he couldn’t dance, and that he’d probably make an absolute fool of himself. It was amazing how powerful her smile could be. And how limited his resistance was to it. But his tiny little mind was running on half a cylinder these days, the result of far too many shocks he supposed, and when she smiled there simply wasn’t any spare capacity left over for him to think with. He just did whatever she wanted, and that seemed fine to him. In fact he was almost looking forwards to dancing with her. Almost.

Then, even as he was wondering about how big a fool he could make of himself, the evening’s warmth suddenly chilled.

“Ahh no!” Di sighed quietly as she apparently saw something he didn’t. But he did as soon as he turned around to see where she was looking. Then he just wondered if he was the only one who was going mad of late.

A man had entered the restaurant. A short, somewhat portly man, dressed up like a buffoon. Surely that hadn’t been his intention though. He must have started out dressing in his expensive three piece suit thinking it would look smart. And maybe it would have too, on its own. Even the glossy black leather shoes would have seemed in character, at an opera. But then he’d apparently decided his white shirt should be ruffled, and the folds and flaps of the white cotton sticking out from the end of his sleeves and around his neck, made him look like a dandy from the theatre. And the fedora sitting slightly askew on the top of his head just added to the impression. Then there was the cape. A cape? Who wore a cape these days? Wannabe vampires? Ringmasters? Rufus had no clue.

But what he did know was that the man marching pompously towards them, looked like something out of a movie. A very bad B movie.

“Plutos.” She greeted the stranger somewhat coolly when he reached them, and Rufus wondered about that. Di was always warm with people. So who was this guy that she couldn’t even be bothered being friendly?

“Di. Slumming it in this dump?” He wasn’t a very nice man was Rufus’s first thought as he listened to the overdressed jackass sneer at her, his second that he needed a damned good thrashing. He was almost ready to do it too, despite the fact that he never got into fights. He never made trouble. But he held himself back. He didn’t want to make a scene. But still this monkey in a suit was being rude to Di, and that could not be borne.