Ryder

by Nick Pengelley

  She made up her mind. “You’ve heard of the Maltese Falcon?”

  “Of course.” Joram’s eyebrows curved upward. Whatever he’d expected her to say, the odds were it wasn’t this. “I’ve seen the movie. Read the book, too. I very much doubt that we have either in the library, though, if that’s what you’re looking for.” He added, “You might want to wash.”

  Ayesha lifted her hands. She grimaced. They were covered in Zilinsky’s blood. She washed them off in the sink, waiting for Joram’s inevitable questions. He said nothing. Which surprised her. Intrigued her, too.

  She dried her hands on a paper towel. Then she brushed past Joram and entered the library reading room. She perched on the edge of the nearest leather-topped reading table. Immediately she felt the warm embrace of the great Victorian reading room. Something about its book-lined walls, Adam fireplace, and mural-decorated ceiling high overhead imparted the feeling that she’d entered her own personal haven, although likely enough it would soon be under siege.

  Glassware clinked in the kitchen. Joram placed a bottle of brandy and two glasses on the table.

  He handed her a glass. “Cheers,” he said, raising his own.

  “Cheers.” She swallowed a mouthful of the spirit, relishing its warmth, feeling it calm her. Not that she was nervous. The contrary. The old darkness had stirred inside her when she realized Zilinsky had been murdered. Once again she’d felt the familiar excitement that—for her—came from danger and the threat of deadly violence. Instilled in her as a teenager, when she had joined the Palestinian fedayeen, it had been buried for years, but never eliminated. It had resurfaced eighteen months before, when she’d been forced to confront the man who had tortured and raped her, and who had murdered Evelyn Montagu, the only man she’d ever loved. She’d enjoyed her revenge, reveled in the death of the monster. The feelings, and memories, awakened in her would not die, however. She felt as if she were constantly walking on the edge of an active volcano.

  Joram sipped his brandy. Waited.

  She contemplated the librarian. He was a handsome man. Actually, he was very handsome. A feeling, long suppressed, stirred deep within her. She pushed it away; thought where to start, aware they didn’t have much time. At least they wouldn’t be trapped. Not with her knowledge of the secret way out of the library—a secret known to none but her. “Do you remember the basic plot of The Maltese Falcon? How the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem—the Hospitallers—were given the island of Malta by Charles V of Spain, rent-free? Except that they were to pay an annual tribute of a falcon? And how, to thank the emperor, the knights decided, in the first year, to honor him with a gift of a magnificently jeweled falcon?”

  “Yes. But that was just a story made up by Dashiell Hammett.” Joram’s eyes narrowed. “Wasn’t it?”

  “That’s what people assume.” Ayesha crossed one leg over the other. Joram’s eyes follow the movement. She smiled to herself. So he is human. “Actually the entire story is true. Or the historical part, anyway. The knights did hold Malta from Spain, and they did pay annual tribute of a falcon to the emperor. They also did have made a golden falcon, magnificently jeweled, just as described by Hammett, as a special tribute. Its subsequent history is also very much as described by Hammett’s character Gutman, or the Fat Man, in both the book and the movie.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “Hammett has Gutman recount the tale of how the Falcon was intercepted by pirates when it was being transported to the emperor; how, at some point, it was taken by an English adventurer, Sir Francis Verney.” She cocked her head, listening. She waited several heartbeats. The librarian raised an eyebrow.

  “I’ve read Lady Frances Verney’s Memoirs,” Ayesha continued. “She was Sir Francis’s niece. In the novel Gutman says Lady Frances doesn’t mention the Maltese Falcon. In fact she does talk about it. She describes it as the most wonderful object ever seen. Solid gold and encrusted with an emperor’s ransom in jewels. The work of a master craftsman.”

  “Fascinating. So the Falcon was stolen by pirates. Then by Verney. What then?”

  Joram’s eyes, Ayesha saw, were alight with interest. Was it just for the story? Or was some of it for her? “It had all sorts of adventures. Where things diverge from Hammett’s story is at the end of his historical narrative. Hammett wrote that the Falcon ended up with a Russian general, a czarist exile named Kemidov living in Constantinople. At that point it was still disguised under a coat of black enamel, as in the book and movie, and apparently Kemidov had no idea of its real value; it was simply a curiosity to him. Anyway, in Hammett’s story the Fat Man’s agents steal the falcon from Kemidov. This was 1929. Then someone else steals it from them. At that point Hammett’s fiction takes over with the story we know.”

  “All right. So what really happened next? Who got it?”

  “In Hammett’s story, his villain was a character known as G, or Casper Gutman, or the Fat Man. He was played by Sydney Greenstreet in the movie. In fact he was based on a real person. Eric von Gleischman.”

  “G.”

  “Yes, although he was not a fat man like Gutman in the book. Or as portrayed by Greenstreet in the movie. Von Gleischman was a member of an old Prussian family. He was also a thief, but no ordinary one. He was a master thief. And he was never caught. It was his agents who stole the Maltese Falcon from General Kemidov. And it was from his agents that it was in turn stolen.”

  “You have my full attention. Eric von Gleischman swiped the Maltese Falcon. Then someone swiped it from him. What happened next? Who grabbed it?”

  “Hermann Göring.”

  Joram’s jaw dropped, to Ayesha’s immense satisfaction. “Göring?”

  “Yes. Hermann Göring, Hitler’s chief lieutenant. I’m sure you know of his proclivity for collecting artworks and antiquities.”

  “Nineteen twenty-nine, though? Was Göring powerful that early?”

  “Yes, he was already one of the top people in the Nazi Party, close friend of Hitler. He had been elected to the Reichstag, the German parliament, the year before. Within another three years he would be its president. He’d started employing agents to acquire works of art. His fascination, which he shared with Heinrich Himmler, with the ancient orders of knighthood, drew him like a magnet to the legend of the Maltese Falcon.”

  “Like so many works of art stolen by the Nazis, I assume it vanished at the end of the war?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “It was stolen from Göring before the war. Von Gleischman’s agents recovered it. In 1937. It was taken to the United States. What happened to it after that, no one knows. It was thought to have been destroyed.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Von Gleischman’s agent, the man who was bringing the Maltese Falcon to him, chose a somewhat unconventional mode of travel. He arrived in the United States on Thursday, May sixth, 1937.”

  “May 1937?” Understanding dawned in Tate’s eyes. “Not the—”

  “Hindenburg. Yes, the courier was on board. He got away with his life, but the Maltese Falcon was never seen again.”

  “Amazing! As you say, it sounds like the bird was destroyed in the fire. I assume, though, from the fact that you’re telling me all this, there’s a chance it still exists?”

  Ayesha held up a hand. Once more she listened. “It took a bit of time,” she said, not yet ready to answer Joram’s question, “but I checked all of the information provided by Hammett in The Maltese Falcon. He was not just spinning a yarn; he based his story on concrete facts.

  “The sources given by the Fat Man, Gutman, when Hammett has him recount the origins of the Maltese Falcon to Sam Spade—the writings of Delaville le Roulx and Paoli—are real, not just made up by the author. They confirm the legend. The rest of the chronology also checks out. With one exception. To start with, the pirate, Barbarossa, did intercept the Falcon when it was on its way to Emperor Charles, and it did subsequently spend a long time in Algiers, until it was taken, stolen rather, by Sir Fran
cis Verney, somewhere around 1600.

  “There are accounts of it, just as Hammett has the Fat Man tell Sam Spade, turning up in the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and later in Spain. Later, it showed up in Paris, at which time we have the first accounts of it having been covered in black enamel. Where it was after that time, I haven’t been able to establish. Hammett says that it kicked around Paris for many years, being owned by various people who had no idea of its true value, until a dealer named Charilaos Konstantinides recognized it for what it was.”

  “And that’s true as well?”

  “I was able to verify that there was an antiques dealer of that name, who was murdered in Paris in 1911. But that’s all. After that it was with General Kemidov in Istanbul in the late 1920s. Then there is a highly trustworthy account of it being in Hermann Göring’s collection at Carinhall in 1936, from a retired servant who said it was the treasured centerpiece of his master’s collection. That bit wasn’t in Hammett’s book.”

  “It was no longer covered in black enamel by then, I’m guessing.”

  “No. The servant describes the Falcon as a magnificent object. Golden, with a bejeweled head and neck, including two enormous green emeralds for eyes.”

  Joram pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “Think what it would be worth. Not just intrinsically, but with a verifiable provenance tracing its history back five hundred years.” He stared into space. “Not to mention its popular associations because of the book and the movie. Priceless. Beyond price.” He rose and walked to the fireplace. “You’ve confirmed the Falcon was in Göring’s possession in 1936. You said it was stolen from him by Eric von Gleischman’s agents in 1937 and taken to America on the Hindenburg. Were you able to verify that part of the tale?”

  “I’m afraid not. Eric von Gleischman existed, all right. From what I was able to find, it appears he might have been behind some of the biggest art thefts of the first half of the twentieth century. Nothing was ever proved, though. It’s all just speculation. Von Gleischman was never caught.”

  “What happened to him?”

  “Unknown. He vanished during the war years and never resurfaced.”

  “Dead end then. But it sounds as if you’ve got around it.”

  “Yes.” Ayesha was eager to continue her story; she only hoped there’d be time. She’d told bits to Susannah Armstrong, but no one else knew the whole tale. “I said the facts as provided by Hammett in The Maltese Falcon checked out. Except for one thing. In the book, the Fat Man tells Sam Spade that he consulted Lady Frances Verney’s Memoirs; that these said nothing about her ancestor’s acquisition of the Falcon. I wondered why, as the rest of Hammett’s chronology checked out, that would not also.”

  Joram looked at the portrait of Sir Francis Walsingham that hung over the fireplace. The institute’s founder. Private secretary to Queen Elizabeth I, and much more besides. Ayesha knew what the librarian was thinking. Secrets were nothing new to those who worked in the institute that bore the name of the most famous spymaster in history.

  “Lady Verney’s Memoirs,” she continued, “tell how her uncle, Sir Francis Verney, who was a soldier of fortune and something of a pirate, relieved the bey of Algiers of the Maltese Falcon. It didn’t do him much good. He was only thirty-one when he died in abject poverty in Messina, having converted to Islam. Before he died, he wrote to his brother, Sir Edmund Verney. In that letter, which Lady Frances saw, he said something very strange about the Falcon….” She hesitated, listening. Still nothing. “Hold on. I’ve got a copy in my office.”

  With long strides, she crossed the reading room, passed through an annex lined with bookcases, and entered a small, cluttered office. The available wall space was dominated by an antique map of the eastern Mediteranean littoral. The map showed the Holy Land in the twelfth century. It had been gifted to her by Judah Ben David, co-president of the Holy Land, the new state that had combined Israel and Palestine. Ayesha had played a key role in its birth. Next to it hung a framed original of the famous World War I recruiting poster depicting Field Marshal Lord Kitchener’s mustachioed visage.

  Ayesha picked up a slim blue folder from a pile on the top of her desk. She bit her lip. Was she doing the right thing, spilling everything to Joram Tate? She knew nothing about him, except that he’d been the institute’s librarian for more than a decade. He was erudite and charming, and had a reputation for being able to find anything. He also, she admitted to herself, had the sort of looks and manner that turned her on. She’d googled him once and found nothing—which was very odd. Except that his name was the same as one of those given by Ambrose Bierce in his Devil’s Dictionary as the fictitious author of one of his amusing “definitions.” She hadn’t probed. It was none of her business, and besides, with her past she was the last one to make an issue of anybody else’s. There was something about Joram, too, that made her want to trust him.

  When she reentered the reading room, the librarian was staring at a computer screen, one of several set up for the convenience of library patrons. “The prime minister’s been assassinated,” he told her, his tone emotionless.

  Ayesha froze in mid-stride. “No!” Not Susannah! Then she was at the computer, almost knocking Joram aside in her haste to learn the truth. There wasn’t much. Just a couple of lines. The story was still breaking.

  “Poisoned? So she’s not dead?” Poisons had antidotes.

  “No. It doesn’t sound as if there’s any hope, though. She’s been taken to St. Thomas’s.”

  Ayesha’s phone chirped. Dazed, struggling to comprehend that the friend she’d seen just hours before was either dead or dying, she glanced at the text message. Then she read it aloud, her voice hollow: “We know where you are. Give us the Falcon.”

  “No threats?”

  “You don’t think this is a threat?”

  “If it is—” The librarian swung toward the entrance. “That sounded like a window breaking.”

  The sound galvanized Ayesha, piercing the thick fog that had enveloped her brain with the news about Susannah. “They’ll have the back covered,” she warned Joram, “but there’s a way from the cellars—”

  “Into the Underground and through the Roman catacombs to St. Paul’s?”

  Ayesha gaped at the librarian. She’d never doubted the secret was known only to her. She’d discovered it a couple of years before, while exploring the accumulated treasures of centuries stored in the institute’s cellars. Every spare moment since, she’d spent underground, thrilling in the knowledge that what she’d found was hers alone. But it wasn’t, not anymore. Instead of disappointment, though, it was excitement she felt. Now she had someone to share the secret with.

  “I’ve been here nearly fifteen years.” Joram smiled. “There’s nothing I don’t know about the Walsingham Institute. I’d like to propose an alternative.” Not giving her time to object, he strode toward the nearer of the two spiral staircases that led to the library’s upper floor.

  Ayesha jammed the blue folder inside her jacket. Then she raced after the librarian. She’d trusted him this far; there was no reason not to continue to do so. She glanced at her watch. Less than an hour ago she’d thought her search for the Maltese Falcon was at an end. Now the man who’d been going to tell her where to find it was dead. Another thought hit her. If Susannah was also dead, then the man who’d asked her to find the Maltese Falcon, Noel Malcolm, was now acting prime minister.

  Chapter 6

  Noel Malcolm leaned back in the chair behind his office desk and contemplated the large painting over the fireplace. Harold with his army, after defeating the Danes at the Battle of Stamford Bridge, on September 26, 1066. Less than three weeks before the king’s own defeat and death at the hands of William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings. Harold, his golden hair falling about his shoulders, towered over his soldiers, his huge sword held aloft in victory.

  Unlike Arthur’s mythical Excalibur, Harold’s sword was real, although no one knew what had become of it after the Battle of Hasti
ngs. Malcolm wanted it. Needed it. For all that it symbolized—the expulsion of the barbarians from the realm and the restoration of the true English kingdom. With Harold’s sword he was crtain he could win the vote in the House on his bill. Despite Susannah Armstrong’s opposition. He scowled; their meeting had been a waste of time. He’d hoped Balfour’s presence might sway the prime minister, cause her to think again. Bitch. He should’ve known. There was nothing for it now; he’d rolled the dice. There was no going back. Not that he’d have considered it.

  The door to his office slammed open and the foreign secretary burst through the doorway.

  “Balfour! What—?”

  “She’s dead!”

  “Who—”

  “Armstrong. The PM.”

  “What?” Malcolm lurched to his feet. “What are you saying, man?”

  Philip Balfour stared into his eyes from just inches away. “The prime minister has been poisoned.”

  Elation surged through his system. With Susannah dead, Malcolm, as deputy prime minister, was now acting prime minister. His mind racing, he reviewed his plan. There was no need to change anything. He glanced at the painting over the fireplace. Harold’s sword, though. That would remove any doubt of victory on the vote on his bill. Why hadn’t Bebe Daniels been in touch? Time was running short.

  “They’re saying it’s polonium.”