Trojan Gold (5 page)

The rest of the week was uneventful except for snow and sleet and Schmidt's incompetent imitation of Super-Spy. Like the dim-witted heroine picking wildflowers along the railroad track, I was blissfully unaware of approaching danger. Actually, that isn't a very good analogy. Trouble came at me, not along a single track, but from all directions at once, and by the time I realized what was happening, it was too late to jump out of the way.

 

Gerda and I had a date to go and see the Christmas crèches at the Bayrisches Museum. We were friends again; we fight at least once a month, when she says or does something that bugs me and I yell at her, and then she cries and I apologize. It's a tradition. Visiting the crèches was also a tradition, by Gerda's definition. I think we had done it twice before. I agreed to go because she cried, and because it seemed like a fitting part of my campaign to work up some Christmas spirit.

The crèches really are sensational. Some are small settings of the traditional manger scene, like the modern versions people put under the tree, but the best ones are vast panoramas that would fill an entire living room—miniature reproductions of vil
lage scenes, with shops and stalls and houses, and all the inhabitants pausing in their daily chores to watch the Magi riding toward the stable. The most elaborate of them come from Italy, and they feature painted terra-cotta figures dressed in real velvets and brocades in the case of the Magi and their entourage, and detailed reproductions of contemporary peasant costumes in the case of the villagers.

Some of the scenes are so complex that you can see them over and over again and still find charming details you missed before. If I were a snob and a hypocrite, I would claim that Gerda's naïve enjoyment enhanced my own more sophisticated expert's appreciation, but in fact I got as big a kick out of it as she did.

“
Ach
, Vicky, see the little boy stealing apples from the fruit stand!”

“He's the spitting image of my nephew Jim!”

“Do you think they had apples in December in the Holy Land?”

“Who cares? Look at the woman nursing the baby and gossiping with her neighbor on the next balcony.”

The corridors along which we moved with snail-like deliberation were dimly lighted in order to display the
Krippen
in their lighted cases to best advantage. The place was crowded, but the church-like atmosphere kept voices low and manners gentle. Except for the children. The little ones squealed with delight, the older ones with frustration as they tried to squirm through the barricade of adult bodies between them and the exhibits.

I hoisted one little imp up onto my shoulder, winning a thank-you from his
Mutti
, who had a
baby in one arm and a bag of baby paraphernalia in the other. Gerda wrinkled her nose and moved away; like many self-professed sentimentalists, she really hates children. The imp and I discussed the scene; he was far less interested in the Christ Child and “
die süssen Engelkinder
” than in how the Kings stayed on the camels.

I put him down and joined Gerda at the next exhibit. She was showing signs of restlessness, for which I couldn't entirely blame her. Even the miraculous birth pales after a dozen repetitions. “Look,” she muttered, poking me. “That man—he has been following me.”

So had a lot of other men, women, and children. I glanced in the direction she indicated and decided she was engaging in some wishful thinking; the light was poor and her follower moved on as I turned, but I caught a fleeting glimpse of a clean-cut profile, spare and handsome as a hawk's, before darkness obscured it.

“He looks familiar,” I said thoughtfully.

“I suppose you think he is following you,” Gerda said.

“I don't think he is following either of us. Gerda, you're getting testy. Hunger, I expect. Let's have a little snack; we've improved our minds long enough.”

After she had been stuffed with whipped-cream cakes and coffee, Gerda's temper improved. We returned to work arm in arm, figuratively speaking.

 

I never lock my office door. I don't keep anything valuable there, and the guard on duty in the Armor Room is supposed to prevent unauthorized persons from going up the stairs. I was only mildly surprised to discover that the lights were burning. Usually I turn them off when I leave, but I had been distraught, distracted, and bewildered when I left. I thought nothing of it until I approached the desk and looked at the untidy pages of my manuscript.

I'm always impressed by characters in books who can tell at a glance that their belongings have been searched. They must be compulsively neat people. Normally, I wouldn't notice anything unusual unless my papers had been swept onto the floor and trampled underfoot. But I distinctly remembered struggling over a description of a Holbein miniature just before Tony's call put an end to my labors. The page now on top of the pile began, “quivered as her slender aristocratic hands strove in vain to veil their rounded charms from the Duke's lascivious eyes.”

Schmidt was the obvious suspect. He was always trying to find out what Rosanna would do next. But he wasn't desperate enough to climb all those stairs, and as I glanced around, I saw other signs of disturbance: the drawer of a filing cabinet gaping open, a pile of books spilled sideways.

My first reaction was not alarm or annoyance, but hopeful anticipation. I had been waiting for something to happen. Maybe this was it. It, not John; if he had searched the office, I wouldn't notice anything out of place.

Schmidt had finally gotten around to making a copy of the mysterious photograph. (I deduced that
from the fact that he had stopped swiping it.) I kept it in the top right-hand drawer of my desk.

As I reached impetuously for the drawer, it did occur to me to wonder how the intruder could have passed the guard down below. He had been on duty when I came in; he had nodded and mumbled a sleepy “
Grüss Gott
,” but he had not mentioned a visitor.

There was a blur of motion and a grating rattle, and something sprang out of the opening, striking my hand with a sharp prick of pain. Something serpentine, brightly colored. I jumped back with a scream, nursing my stung finger, where a bright drop of blood gleamed like a ruby. The snake fell to the floor.

It was a toy snake. My scream turned to a roar of rage. There was only one person who would play a childish joke like that.

Not Schmidt. He doesn't have a dram of meanness in his whole chubby body, and it takes malice to make a practical joker. No, it had to be Dieter. Dieter Spreng, assistant curator of preclassical art at the Antikenmuseum in Berlin, frustrated comic and would-be lecher. His credentials would have gotten him past the guard…. And he was probably still in the office. Practical jokes are no fun unless you can observe the hysteria of your victim. I pushed aside the screen concealing my domestic appliances, the only place in the room where anyone could hide.

He was doubled up and shaking with suppressed mirth, his arms hugging his midsection. Finding himself discovered, he let the laughter
burst out in a genial baritone shout that was so contagious I felt my wrath fading.

“All right, Dieter,” I said. “Come on out and fight like a man.”

He straightened up and brushed his thick brown hair back from his flushed, grinning face. “Caught you, didn't I?
Herr Gott
, what a scream! You could play Isolde—”

“Caught me is right.” I displayed my finger. Dieter's wide mouth drooped; he caught my hand and pressed it to his lips.

“I will kiss it and make it well.
Ach
, Vicky, I am so sorry; the spring must have broken—”

“Oh, yeah?” I retrieved my hand and retreated to my desk. In the act of sitting, I had second thoughts and sprang up as if I had been stung. Dieter's mouth still sagged in clownish chagrin, but his brown eyes sparkled with amusement as he watched me. “No, no,” he said soothingly. “There is nothing on the chair; I have given up the whoopee cushion. It was too crude.”

I lowered myself cautiously into the chair. Nothing burped, whooped, or grabbed my bottom, so I relaxed. Dieter picked up the little plastic snake and shoved it under my nose. “See, there is no needle or pin to sting. As I thought, the spring was too tight; the wire broke and scratched you. Let me kiss it again—”

“Never mind. I'll live.” Studying his arrangements behind the screen—a chair, a half-drunk cup of coffee—I added, “You made yourself comfy, I see.”

“But I could not smoke.” Dieter lit one of his awful Gauloises and puffed out a cloud of blue smoke.
“I thought you would smell it and be suspicious. Can I get you some coffee?”

“No, thanks, it might be loaded with saltpeter or laxatives. What are you doing here?”

He pulled up a chair and provided himself with an ashtray by dumping out the paperclips in a small ceramic bowl. He was dressed
pour le sport
, as he was fond of saying, in well-cut boots and ski pants and a cable-knit sweater in a heavenly heather blend that set off his rosy cheeks and bright brown hair. The antique silver ring on his right hand glowed in the lamplight as he knocked ashes off his cigarette.

“I am in Munich to consult with Frick at the Glyptothek,” he explained seriously.

“No, you're not.”

“Of course I am not.” Dieter grinned. “I could not get the museum to pay my travel expenses unless I consulted with Frick. I am on holiday, in fact; I hoped I could persuade you to join me for a few days of skiing.”

“No, thanks. When I go on holiday I want to relax, not be on guard for snakes in the bed and buckets of water on the top of the door.”

“I don't play jokes on the ladies who share my bed,” Dieter said, reaching for my hand.

“That's not what I hear. Elise—”

“Oh, Elise.” Dieter's fingers wriggled under the cuff of my sweater and squirmed up my arm. “One cannot resist teasing Elise; she is so funny when she is angry. You are different.”

“How?”

“You are much bigger than Elise,” Dieter explained. “You might strike me.”

“Good point.” Dieter's arm was now entirely inside the sleeve of my sweater, and his eyes were crossed in intense concentration as he tried to stretch his fingers a strategic inch farther. “What on earth do you think you're doing?” I inquired with genuine curiosity.

Dieter put his cigarette in the ashtray. “I am thinking perhaps it would be better to start from the other direction—”

I pushed him away and pulled my sleeve down. “You are weird, Dieter. If I ever did decide to play games with you, it wouldn't be in my office.”

“In a mountain chalet, then, with the snow falling and a fire on the hearth and a large furry bearskin in front of the fire—”

“I'm afraid not. I can't get away right now.”

“Next week, then?”

“Sorry, I'm busy.”

“You are always busy.” Dieter lit another cigarette. “Why is it you always say no to me?”

I wasn't sure myself. Dieter's round face and dimples made him look like a kid, but he was well past the age of consent and not unattractive. Stocky and compactly built, he was an inch or two shorter than I, a consideration that didn't seem to concern him any more than it did me. He was good company, when he wasn't pulling chairs out from under people, and very good at his job. In a few years, when Dr. Fessl retired, he would probably be head curator—no mean accomplishment for a man in his mid-thirties. I loved him like a brother, when I didn't hate him like a brother. But I had no desire to go to bed with him.

“Maybe some day,” I said soothingly.

For a moment I had feared he was really hurt by my excuses, but if so, he recovered quickly.

“Who is my rival?” he demanded in tragic accents. “Who is it I must kill to win your love?”

“It's none of your business, actually,” I said. “But if you mean whom am I seeing next week—it's Tony.”

“Tony. Ah, dear Tony.” Dieter chuckled and blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “He looked so funny, when the chair broke under him—those long, thin legs and arms entwined like pretzels. How is he?”

I coughed and brushed at the smoke. “He's fine, I guess. How is Elise?”

“I have not seen her for months. I hear her marriage is finally ended.”

I wondered how much Dieter had had to do with the breakup of that marriage. To judge from Elise's complaints, it had not been a very stable arrangement anyway; but if her husband had got wind of her fun and games with Dieter during the meetings the year before…

We gossiped about old acquaintances for a while—academicians are no more immune from that vice than other people—and then Dieter got up to go. “I don't suppose you will have dinner with me,” he said dispiritedly.

“Thanks, but I'd better not. I have to work late.”

“I will see if Gerda is busy, then.”

“You leave Gerda alone.”

“Why? She is a little plump, but I like ladies with something to hold on to. And she deserves a thrill, poor girl—” He ducked my half-joking swing at him and ambled toward the door. “Perhaps I will
telephone next week, if I am still in Munich. I would be so happy to see dear old Tony again.”

I said that would be fine, though I had a feeling Tony wouldn't be so happy to see dear old Dieter. He had too often been the butt of Dieter's jokes.

Dieter didn't quite close the door when he left. I slammed it shut and heard a grunt of surprise and a chuckle, and then the sound of footsteps descending the stairs. A cursory search of the room confirmed my suspicions. He had been a busy little lad. There was prune juice in the coffee pot and another wind-up toy in the filing cabinet—a tin bird that flapped its wings and cackled maniacally over a tin egg.

These offerings having been disposed of, I went back to work and actually finished the Holbein section of the article. Crazy Dieter had cheered me, not so much with his antique pranks as with…Well, why not admit it? A girl wants to be wanted, even by a man who likes women he can hold on to. It never rains but it pours, I thought complacently.