The Painted Messiah (27 page)
Across the Limmat under the Gross Munster lies a bohemian Zürich. The buildings here are often three or four hundred years old. Gargoyles are standard fare. The alleys are paved with cobblestone and twist about in medieval whimsy. This is the part of town where one
finds rare books, old paintings, antique glass and porcelain. Here, perfectly polished tables are frequently as old as the French Revolution and shopkeepers look more like Oxford dons than merchants in a hurry to move their property.
There is a degree of prosperity in this second Zürich that is astonishing, especially as the quarter makes an open display of strip clubs, blue movies, and an active population of prostitutes and addicts. It is an interesting place by day, hardly dangerous and not really so racy that you would notice the decadence if you kept your gaze straight ahead. But as the sun begins to set it becomes a different world.
Max dropped Malloy off in the heart of this district with instructions for where he was to go and what he should say. Malloy walked only a few blocks before he slipped into a small, ugly little tavern with no name. His jacket had the flavor of a working-class east European, so he should have fit in, but his suitcase and computer gave him away. The moment he stepped through the door everyone in the room stopped talking and stared at him.
'I hope you're in the right place,' a prostitute murmured in High German.
Malloy pushed through the crowd without answering and ordered a bottle of beer from a sullen bartender. Dropping twenty francs on the bar when his beer arrived, he said in Swiss German, 'Alexa working this afternoon?'
The bartender's eyes focused on Malloy briefly and then shifted toward the stairway at the back of the room. 'Alexa' was in.
The doors to three of the four rooms at the top of the stairs were closed. Hasan Barzani waited inside the fourth room. An AK-47 lay across the bed. Barzani was a tall man with a large square head and deep-set black eyes. He dressed like a workman in ill-fitting jeans, scarred boots, and a cheap leather jacket, even though he was worth over eighty million dollars. His method for earning his fortune was time-honoured and ugly: he sold the bodies of women, he stole the property of the middle-class and he murdered anyone foolish enough to stand in his way. Like every wealthy man Malloy had ever known, Barzani made no apologies for the way he had earned his money. Given the chance he would even indulge himself in justifications. He took care of people. He paid salaries to the families whose husbands and sons had once been free men and now sat quietly in prison. He had wealth, yes, but he had responsibilities as well!
All of which was true. What Barzani did not have was risk. Not for many years now. He was insulated from the crime he committed. He ran managers who ran networks. He owned corporations. He consulted lawyers. He even saw his own personal banker once a week. Barzani had started life the hard way, but he was not a criminal anymore. No, straight-faced he would tell you he was a businessman. And when people died, as people sometimes did, well, it was a tough business.
But he was nothing if not loyal and, for Malloy, Hasan Barzani came back to the streets. Malloy after all had not only financed him when he was nothing more than a petty crook with dubious connections to the major criminal organizations behind the Iron Curtain, he had also taught the giant how to avoid what had become an embarrassingly long and intimate involvement with the police of Zürich. In return for this, in the beginning at least, Barzani really hadn't very much to give. Most of what he heard was outdated or simply incorrect. Malloy hadn't complained. He took what Barzani gave him and spent lavishly for it.
In time his patience had paid off. Barzani became an important man in Zürich with connections that reached all the way to Moscow. Weeks before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Barzani reported that things were changing, travel restrictions being lifted. The ubiquitous stream of East Germans trying to break out through the Austrian border had turned into an exodus. When he talked about Russia, he described the growing decadence, crumbling social institutions, and the kind of political awareness and concern that in any other country would have spelled revolution. Some of what he told Malloy Langley had flatly rejected as bad intelligence, either wishful thinking or an agent passing along what he thought his handler wanted to hear. For a time, even Malloy had begun to wonder, but once the wall broke, it became clear that Barzani was extremely well connected. In the early nineties while other field operatives were sending disturbing reports about what was becoming known as the Russian mafia, Malloy was providing names and job descriptions.
'Thomas!' Barzani shouted, as his face broke into a brutal smile. They hugged one another, both laughing spontaneously. 'What is this I hear from Marcus about you working again? I thought you were living the good life these days!'
The President asked me to run an errand for him - as a personal favour.'
Barzani had the look of a man who has just learned that he is the heir to an enormous and quite unexpected inheritance. 'Well, we can't disappoint the President, can we?'
Kate Kenyon came up slowly to a sitting position. She could see nothing, but felt cinders beneath her. For a moment, she could almost imagine she was outdoors but the air was too stale. What—? She had not even fashioned the question when she remembered the sting of the dart, the enveloping effect of the drug.
Julian Corbeau had her.
But where exactly? Carefully, Kate stretched her arms to either side. Finding nothing, she reached overhead. When that too gave her nothing, she tried to stand. Again reaching out, she concentrated on keeping her balance. It was difficult in perfect darkness, all the more so when she realized she could be anywhere - even at the edge of a cliff.
'You're awake.' The voice Kate heard belonged to a woman. Somewhere close to her, she thought, but for some reason she could not determine the direction. She was not even sure if the woman was standing or sitting.
'You
are
awake?'
A frightened woman, not the woman who had taken her out. Not Kate's jailer either. 'I'm awake. Who are you?'
'Nicole North.'
'How long have you been here?' Kate asked.
'I don't know. What time is it?'
Kate gave a dry laugh. 'I didn't bring my watch.' She knew from the tightness of her muscles and the general feeling of exhaustion that she had not been out for too many hours, but some time had passed. Three, four hours? It was maybe sunset, maybe nine or ten o'clock. Maybe midnight. In the dark it didn't really matter, did it? 'How did they get you?'
'They kidnapped me at the airport this morning. They got me inside a car, and I remember feeling something on the back of my neck, and that's the last thing I recall before waking up here.'
Here
, Kate decided, was probably Corbeau's
donjon.
Before breaking into his villa in August, Kate had studied the building permits Corbeau's father and grandfather had applied for over the years. This part of the tower, according to the original blueprints, had a single entrance through the basement. The area was designated as a wine cellar. She had dismissed the area as a possible hiding place for the painting because of the quality of the air. It had not occurred to her that Corbeau might actually use his tower as a prison cell.
'What happened to your uncle?' Kate asked.
'Nothing. They couldn't find him. How do you know about my uncle?'
'I'm the person who sold you a painting this morning.'
For a long terrible moment Nicole North said nothing. Then sobbing quietly, she whispered, 'He's going to kill us, isn't he?'
'By the time it comes to that, we'll beg him to do it.'
Zürich
Malloy was sleeping when his phone rang.
'Yes?'
Jane Harrison spoke. 'They got Nicole North.'
'Who
got her?'
'We don't know yet. What we know is this: Richland called his contact in the Administration; the director just told Charlie to take care of it.'
'Take care of what?'
'You're to turn the product over to Jonas Starr. Once he has it, Starr will arrange Dr North's release.'
'Let's pretend I believe that for a moment.'
'Dr Starr doesn't want any help on this, T. K.'
'If I turn the painting over to Jonas Starr—'
'Not
if,
when. That's an order, not a point for debate.' Malloy was silent, seething with anger. 'You'll get your payday. Starr has assured us that you will be paid in full. Look, he's got a team of mercenaries with him. They know what they're doing.'
'What's he doing with a team of mercenaries?'
'He brought them in.'
'More likely he was trying to track me and didn't get the job done.'
'Pass the product to him, T. K., and come home. You've done your part, and I guarantee you your money will be waiting for you.'
'You know the age of this product?'
'I know what they told me. Beyond that, I don't care, and neither should you.'
'Starr isn't going to trade it for his niece, Jane. It's not in his nature.'
'Call the man and do what he tells you, T. K.'
'And let North die?'
'Write this number down.'
'You call him. I don't want the man to have my number. Tell him I'll meet him at seven-thirty tomorrow at the
Rote Fabrik
in Zürich.'
'He wants the painting tonight.'
'I'm busy tonight.'
Ethan Brand took a high point of land that was inaccessible to anyone who had not trained to climb rock. From this promontory he had a narrow view into Julian Corbeau's estate. He could see the front door of the guardhouse and some of the grounds. He and Kate had spent a number of hours hidden in the undergrowth at the top of this rock watching the routines of Corbeau's security detail.
The first thing he realized was that everything had changed. Formerly, Corbeau's security had been primarily focused on protecting his person from kidnap. He never left his compound without a five man detail, usually via his helicopter. The villa was secured by two guards in his absence. In addition to a ten-foot wall and a motion activated light and alarm system, there were two dogs. Against these obstacles, Kate had designed a plan to bait the guards and neutralize the dogs. From the start the problem had not been getting in safely. The problem had been getting out. For one thing the road around the lake was the sole link between the city of Lucerne and the village of Meggen.
The police could shut that down in a matter of minutes. The lake was no better. Assuming they could get to a boat, they faced a massive police response.
Kate's solution had been ingenious. They would wait until the summer fireworks. Then, amid hundreds of pleasure boats sitting at the centre of the lake, they would swim out to an inflatable, access the far end of the lake and return to the centre of the lake, sink the inflatable and climb back into their boat before the completion of the fireworks. With fifty boats on the lake, the police might have resorted to the tedious process of searching each vessel, but the summer fireworks had brought out closer to five hundred. Short of a threat to national security, the Swiss police would not inconvenience that many citizens - no matter how rich Corbeau was.
They had spent several months preparing for the incursion, not even sure the painting existed. They had risked their lives on the chance, and they had won. Or so they had thought. At some point Corbeau had learned their identities, and all the money in the world could not save Kate from him now. If she was even there, somewhere inside his villa, she was not coming out without a fight. And this time Ethan was not looking at a two-man security detail backed up by a couple of Doberman pinschers.
Watching Corbeau's villa for only a couple of hours convinced Ethan that he was looking at an armed camp. He had seen a dozen individuals walking from the main house to the guardhouse, but there were possibly twice that number. Certainly there were others in the field. There was always someone coming or
going. There was no way to fight his way into the compound. But say he could get in with Lutz's badge and security pass. Say it was possible. He still needed to find Kate and get over the wall. Even then the fight would not be over. After using the police to close off the road, Corbeau would give chase, trapping them in the forest between the road and the lake.
The only sensible way to handle Kate's kidnapping was to call the police and tell them what had happened. And if he did the sensible thing? The police would need to take a statement. Once Ethan presented himself to the police, Kate would disappear, and Corbeau would make sure Ethan did as well. He could try to convince himself that the police would be neutral about the whole thing, but he had lived in Switzerland too long to believe it. Corruption as the rest of the world knew it was non-existent in the police force but, at the highest levels, people of wealth enjoyed unparalleled protection. It was unthinkable that they should be paraded before the media like common criminals. Entertaining as that was for the masses, it was bad business for a country that provided safe haven for billionaires.
