Allison glared at the SUV. “I’ll walk.”
“Come on, babe.”
She hiccuped another sob, and her face crumpled.
“What am I going to do, Tom?”
“We’re going to find a café with a fireplace and get
some hot chocolate or something. I need to call Manny
Suarez anyway. He said he’d be close by.” Tom took off
his jacket and put it over her shoulders.
She looked at him through a glimmer of tears.
“Aren’t you the practical one?”
“Yeah, well, something I’ve learned is, there’s nothing you can do, except go on.” Tom pressed his cheek to
hers. “If it makes you feel better, we’ll let Nigel stay in
the truck and freeze his ass till Suarez gets here.” She used the last scrap of tattered napkin to wipe her cold-reddened nose. She let out a breath. “I’m okay now.
Let’s go.”
He held on to her. In the village he had noticed the
clock tower rising above the buildings around the piazza.
Ten minutes past two. “Allison, I need to take the map to
Leo Zurin.”
“Screw the map. I wish it had gone over the side with
that bitch.”
“Suarez expects me to. He still thinks I’m going to
plant the microphones.” Allison was staring at him. “I
have to talk to Zurin.”
“No, you don’t. Surely not. After what happened with
Nigel and Rhonda, how can Suarez demand anything
from you?”
Tom shook his head. “I need your help, babe.” Slowly, she replied, “Help with what?”
“Going home. Getting myself out of the pit I’ve been
in for most of my life. And getting Eddie out, too, if I
can.”
Chapter 35
Tom had taken Nigel Barlowe’s cell phone away before securing him in the back of the SUV. He looked up the number for Leo Zurin as he walked
under the sheltering colonnade of the market. With Allison standing beside him biting her lips, Tom dialed the number, then handed her the phone.
She spoke in Italian, and Tom knew enough of it to guess she was saying what he’d instructed her to say: I’m Stuart Barlowe’s daughter. He couldn’t come himself to give you the map, but the map restorer is with me, and he wants to deliver it. His name is Tom Fairchild. We’re on our way to Champorcher. Could you give me directions?
She scribbled in Tom’s notebook.
“Grazie mille.”
When she disconnected, her hands were shaking. “He
said it would be a pleasure to meet us.”
“Us? You’re not going anywhere.” Tom dug his own
cell phone from his pocket and scrolled through the numbers.
“Who are you calling?” “Our pal Manny Suarez.”
Zurin lived at the end of a private road halfway up one of the mountains overlooking the valley. Set in a copse of towering fir trees, the house was constructed of rock and heavy timbers. Icicles hung from the eaves of the sharply pitched roof. There were a couple of outbuildings, a garage, and an eight-foot-high stone wall. Driving closer, Tom could see that the back of the house extended over a steep incline. The front faced the side of the mountain, a smooth blanket of white broken by rocky ledges and clusters of fir trees. The peak was lost to the clouds.
Tom drove through the open gate and parked in the yard. A stone patio led to an entry door painted bright red. A long glass panel revealed the figure of a man standing there, looking out.
As Tom got out of the truck, two men in heavy jackets and knit caps walked over to check him out. One had an automatic weapon on a strap over his chest, and the other held the leash of a German shepherd. The dog gave a low growl, showing its teeth.
Tom didn’t move.
The guards closed in. “Cosa vuoi? Chi sei?’’ “Sorry. Non parlo italiano.” Tom lifted a hand toward
the house and called loudly, “Mr. Zurin, hello! I’m Tom Fairchild.” The vapor from his breath drifted out ahead of him.
The dog began to bark wildly, and Tom stepped back. The front door opened. A man in a fur hat and a black turtleneck sweater walked onto the patio. He clapped his hands once. “Bruno!” The dog went silent and sat in the snow with its tongue lolling out. Zurin’s voice carried to the yard. “Perquisitelo.”
The guard with the weapon motioned for Tom to hold his arms out. He patted him down thoroughly, under his jacket and down his legs. “È pulito.” He pushed Tom toward the porch. “Vai.”
Shorter than Tom by several inches, Zurin had a sharp triangle of a nose, deep folds to the corners of his mouth, and thin lips. Under heavy black brows, dark eyes examined the visitor with open curiosity. The fur hat was the pelt of a wolf.
“I am Leo Zurin.” Hands on hips, he stood just beyond reach of a handshake. “I admit I couldn’t understand completely Miss Barlowe’s phone call, but it appears that my friends have decided not to come.” He had a slight accent that Tom guessed was Russian.
“That’s . . . about it. It’s a little more complicated, but I have the Universalis Cosmographia. They asked me to deliver it.” The cold was numbing Tom’s lips.
Zurin looked past him to the truck, but he said nothing. “Stuart Barlowe hired me to restore it. I had to clean it and fix a few things. Some age spots. I have it, but not with me.”
The eyes snapped back to Tom.
“The map is in Champorcher. I’d like to work out a trade. Not money. I don’t want anything like that. The map is yours. I just need a favor.” He started to reach into his pocket. “I want to show you something on my cell phone. A picture. May I get it?”
“Please. This is so fascinating.”
With frozen fingers, Tom managed to hit the camera function on his phone. He pressed another button and turned the screen toward Zurin. “Can you see it?”
Zurin squinted. “I see...a young woman. She’s holding... what is that?”
“It’s your map. That’s Allison Barlowe. She has a cigarette lighter in her hand. It’s under a corner of the map.”
“Ehi!” Zurin breathed. His eyes widened.
“You see the clock tower in Champorcher. This was taken at three fifteen. If I’m not back there in an hour, she’ll light the map.”
A strange laugh gurgled from his throat. Zurin said, “If the map is not here in half an hour I will instruct my men to each grab one of your legs, make a wish, and pull. Bruno can have the remains. Why should I not do that?”
“Because you want the map. It belonged to your great-grandfather. It was stolen out of a museum in Latvia, and you have all the other maps in the atlas except this one. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect.” The cell phone was shaking. “Look at it.”
Zurin stared down at the small screen.
“If anything happens to me, she’ll burn it.”
Gradually Zurin’s lips curved, and his eyes lifted to Tom’s. “And what is it you want, Mr. Fairchild?”
“I want my freedom. You’re the only one who can give it to me.”
On his way down the mountain an hour later, Tom called Allison to reassure her he was still alive. In Champorcher, he found her where he had left her, at a table near the fire in a small osteria just off the plaza. Suarez and Ricker were seated nearby, pretending to be tourists. The other guy, Ianucci, was keeping Nigel Barlowe out of sight for the time being in a hotel around the corner.
Suarez went to the window and looked out. Walking past him, Tom said, “They didn’t follow me.”
“Did you get inside?”
“Back off, will you?” Tom sat down and put a hand
over Allison’s. “You doing okay?”
She puffed out some air. “Are you?”
“So far, so good. Where’s the map?”
“I’m going with you.”
“No freaking way. Where’s the map?”
�
�Manny Suarez thinks it would be less suspicious if I
went along, too.”
“Oh, he does, does he?”
Tom swiveled around. Suarez sent a shrug his way.
When he turned back, he saw that Allison was sliding her arms into a black wool overcoat. Suarez’s coat. It came nearly to her ankles. “I’m going with you, Tom.”
As Tom turned through the gate at Zurin’s place, the guards and the dog were nowhere in sight, but a small gray car was parked near the front steps.
“Who’s that?” he wondered aloud. “The car. It wasn’t there before.”
“The license place is from Firenze,” Allison noticed.
The door of the chalet opened before they reached it, and Leo Zurin took them inside. His eyes went quickly to the map tube before he turned to Allison. “The lady of the flame,” he murmured.
She pushed back the cuff of the coat and offered her hand to Zurin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. My father is sorry he couldn’t be here. There was a personal matter to attend to, so he sent me instead.”
“This is in no way a disappointment.” Zurin brought her hand to his lips. “Springtime has come to these icy slopes.”
Without looking around he motioned to his houseboy, the same guy who had brought Tom some hot tea an hour ago to help him thaw out. He was about five feet tall, with straight black hair and a collarless green shirt that buttoned at the neck. When he offered to take the map tube, Tom pulled it away.
As Tom had done before, Allison wandered over to the fireplace, but it was the view that grabbed her attention. A leather chair was positioned to look out over the valley. At the same time she and Tom noticed the man standing next to it with a glass of wine. He had neatly combed gray hair, a short beard, and glasses. He smiled at them expectantly.
Leo Zurin extended an arm. “Miss Barlowe, Mr. Fairchild, you must meet a friend of mine from Firenze who has just arrived.”
Allison exchanged a glance with Tom, who sucked in a quick breath through his teeth. Then she was crossing the room, offering her hand. “Why, it’s Dottor Grenni. We’ve already met, haven’t we, Tom?”
“Ah, yes!” Guido Grenni set down his wine. “I know them, Leo. We meet at the Biblioteca Nazionale. Buon giorno, signorina.”
“Please call me Allison. This is Tom Fairchild, the curator of my father’s map collection.”
“How do you do?” Tom shook Grenni’s hand.
Nodding, smiling, Grenni said, “I am so happy to see this map that you bring from America. Gaetano Corelli’s atlas is rare, very rare. He made only one, you know, and to find the map of the world, the... centerpiece, no? Very exciting. But Leo wants me to give an opinion. Is this the map from the atlas? Without the papers for the provenance, we have to be sure. It is customary in America also to have an opinion, is it not?”
“Absolutely,” Tom said.
Zurin’s eyes wandered again to the map tube.
Grenni said, “If the map is what we think it is, we will make a new atlas. One of the best artisans in Firenze will make the binding from the best leather.”
“I would love to see it someday,” Allison said.
“Yes, why not?”
Zurin’s hands were clasped as if he couldn’t trust them not to rip the top off the tube. “My cook has prepared some regional specialities for us, and we’ll open a bottle of wine, but first . . . the map. Mr. Fairchild?”
They followed Zurin to the other side of the room, where a hanging lamp made of deer’s antlers illuminated a polished plank table. The chairs had been moved, and a white cloth lay across one end of it.
“Mi faccia vedere.” Grenni smiled at Tom. “May I see it, please?”
Tom removed the cap and tugged on the plastic sheet inside. He unrolled it on the white cloth and slid the map out.
Zurin and Grenni stepped closer.
The paper was the color of old ivory, and the lines were crisp and black, except where age had worn them away. The missing corner, Tom explained, couldn’t be replaced, but he had done the best he could with the stains, and he had repaired the tear in the fold so that it was hardly noticeable—
Grenni pulled a magnifying glass from his pocket and leaned over the map. “La carta è certamente molto antica... quattrocento o cinquecento anni.”
Allison whispered, “He says the paper is obviously very old, four or five hundred years....”
“La mappa è del tipo di quelle del sedicesimo secolo.”
“And the map appears to be from the sixteenth century.”
“Appears to be?”
“Shhh.”
At last Grenni straightened and said to Zurin, “Sì, si tratta di una Corelli.”
“What?” Tom said.
“It’s a Corelli.” Allison’s fingers tightened on his.
“Ne è sicuro?”
“Zurin is asking him if he’s sure.”
“Certamente! Non ho alcun dubbio.” Grenni put down the magnifying glass and turned to Tom and Allison. “I have no doubt. It is the map from Gaetano Corelli’s atlas.”
Zurin put his hands to his face and whispered, “Slava boghu!” He glanced at the others. “Forgive me. Such emotion!”
Tom had to sit down on the nearest chair. Turning her back to the table, Allison widened her eyes at Tom and mouthed, Oh, my God.
Through a fog, he heard Dottor Grenni asking Allison if she agreed with him that Zurin should not fold the map again but frame it. Then Zurin wondered what to put in the atlas if the original were in a frame, and Grenni suggested that he have a copy made. Zurin asked if he knew someone who could do this.
Allison leaned close to Tom and whispered, “Don’t even think about it.”
“I wasn’t,” he said. “Trust me, I wasn’t.”
Leo Zurin gazed at the map awhile longer, caressing its borders. He laughed out loud, then went around the corner and yelled, “Alexei! Il vino! Open the wine!”
Chapter 36
With all the red tape, it was the middle of July before Eddie Ferraro could get safely back into the United States. The first weekend Tom
could round everybody up, he took them out on his sailboat. It was typical summer weather, low nineties, with humidity you could eat with a spoon. Rose and Allison, slathered with sunscreen, stretched out on the bow. The twins in their life vests sat in the cockpit, leaning over the side throwing potato chips into the water to watch them float backward. Eddie had just gone below to find them something to drink.
The boat was heading south in Biscayne Bay, doing about four knots in a steady east wind. Astern, the shimmering buildings of downtown Miami seemed to float on glittering turquoise.
When the boat got about even with Stiltsville, Tom’s plan was to tack northeast toward Key Biscayne, then northwest under the Rickenbacker Bridge, then west. He would furl the sails and motor up the river. Martha Framm was letting him use her marina for nothing, and if he needed any boat repairs, they were on her, too. She was that happy about The Metropolis biting the dust. When Barlowe’s group went under, other major investors pulled out, and the entire project folded.
Allison had decided not to hide the truth, and the story about Nigel Barlowe had been international news for weeks. She had turned down dozens of requests for interviews and about as many proposals of marriage.
It would take a while to untangle the legal issues involved in her real father’s death, but it looked like Allison would be getting everything Nigel Barlowe owned. Nigel would be prosecuted in Italy for kidnapping and assault, the best they could do given the fact there was no proof he’d been involved in any of the other crimes. Allison wasn’t happy about having to see Nigel again when she testified at his trial, but it had to be done.
In the spring, she had gone up to Toronto to visit her father’s grave and see about changing the headstone. The grief she’d been too young to feel at age three was hitting her almost thirty years later.
The mystery of Larry Gerard’s disappearance had been solved. When the Peru
vian police seized the shipment of illegal weapons destined for Oscar Contreras, they found Larry’s body in the container. He’d been shot with three bullets, a match for the ones that had killed Royce Herron. There was no chance Marek Vuksinic would ever be arrested, but it didn’t matter. Manny Suarez had turned Vuksinic over to some Bosnian warcrimes survivors who had been looking for him.
Suarez had asked Tom why Leo Zurin had been so willing to turn on Oscar Contreras, giving up not only the shipping information but the evidence that the Peruvian government needed to arrest Contreras and his associ
400 Barbara Parker ates. Tom didn’t know the answer to that, but Suarez was grateful as hell. Allison had suggested that as long as Suarez was so grateful, he could arrange to have George Weems transferred to do counseling at a maximum security prison. Tom had been content just to have the Weasel off his back. He had sent him a photo of himself in Florence with the Ponte Vecchio in the background, but he hadn’t received a reply.
Eddie came back topside with a couple of cans of apple juice, and he sat next to Megan and Jill to open them. He and Rose were getting reacquainted, and it looked like a wedding might be in their future. Eddie hadn’t asked her yet, but Rose said he probably would, and she would probably say yes. He would be going back to Manarola soon, this being high tourist season. He could make decent money selling his watercolors. Rose was thinking of going back over with him for a week or two, if Tom could watch the girls. They would work it out somehow.
Tom stood up at the wheel and gave Eddie the winch handle for the jib. He cupped his hand at his mouth and shouted toward the bow, “Ladies! Coming about! Turning to starboard, watch your heads!”
Allison and Rose ducked as the jib let go, fluttered over the foredeck, and snapped tight on the other side. The boat swung around. Holding on to the stainless tubing that supported the Bimini top, Allison made her way to the cockpit, where she traded places with Eddie, who went to join Rose on the bow.
Allison’s legs had picked up a nice honey-gold tan. She bumped Tom’s hip, and he scooted over and let her take the wheel. Her brown hair, in a long ponytail, stuck out the back of her ball cap. He gave it a little tug. She smiled at him. “Where am I supposed to be steering this thing?”
The Perfect Fake Page 33
