Lie in the Dark vp-1

by Dan Fesperman

  “Yes, but actually getting it out of here is a different matter. It’s not like you can just crate up a picture and drive it over the mountain in a truck, unless you have a U.N. escort. Even then you might lose it on the way at a checkpoint. The only sure way is by air, and that’s strictly U.N.”

  “And you think that’s an obstacle?”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Ah, the U.N.”

  Glavas cackled, wheezing again, then broke into a splitting cough. By now Vlado was expecting to see his insides begin bubbling out of his mouth in a red-and-gray froth. Glavas lifted a crusted, yellowed handkerchief to his mouth and hawked into it. As he pulled it away a rubbery green thread stretched from his nostrils like a strand of melted cheese from a slice of pizza. Glavas wiped it away with the sleeve of his other arm as he heaved gently with laughter.

  “Pardon me, Mr. Petric. One thing that I must say pleases me about wartime. No more resting on the need for convention and good manners. It’s all too tiring, so I’m free to just be a grotesque old man, and I can blame it all on the Chetniks.”

  He laughed again, and for a moment Vlado thought he was about to descend into another gorge of hacking. But the wheeze subsided, and Glavas slumped back in his chair, spent.

  “Yes, the U.N.,” he began again, in a softer voice, his face tilted toward the ceiling. “Our protector against evil. Do you realize, Mr. Petric, that if you want to ship in something other than beans and rice and flour that the U.N. won’t let you? Not fair, they say. That would be taking sides in the war. Not even medicine. The Serbs would object, they say. Maybe some salt and pepper then? Or perhaps a load of vegetables or two? No, not possible. Against the rules. Yet I firmly believe that if you want badly enough to send something out of the city on those empty departing planes, something small and portable and easily loaded into an air cargo bay, then that is entirely possible provided you have the right sums of money. Do I know this officially? Or for certain? No, Mr. Petric, I don’t. But I feel intuitively from the whisperings I heard around the gallery early in the war, talk of private collectors protecting their choicest pieces by sweet-talking UNESCO underlings and blue-helmeted shipping officers. A few Deutschemarks here and there. It is all a private matter, a few favors for friends, and then it need never be spoken of again. So, yes, I believe the U.N. is not so great an obstacle.”

  “But once you’ve shipped it, then what? What’s the international market for stolen art? Won’t someone ask questions about where it’s from?”

  “Do you have any idea how much stolen art is ever recovered, Mr. Petric? Any idea at all?”

  “A third? Maybe a quarter?”

  “Less than one percent. And when no one even has a piece of paper to alert the international auction markets, then you’re going to shave that figure even closer. All you need is a broker willing to ask as few questions as possible. London, Zurich, New York, any of those three places would probably do. And if there are still worries, there’s always some discreet oilman in Texas who’ll take it for his basement. Or some rich old German in South America who has half the local constabulary in the hip pocket of his lederhosen. Selling it and keeping it a secret aren’t the hard parts unless it’s something so notoriously famous that everyone will spot it right away. And nothing from here fits that description. Which isn’t to say you can’t make a lot of money from it.”

  “So how many items are we talking about? You said the transfer files were up past a thousand, but obviously not everything was in Sarajevo.”

  “No. But more of it than you’d think. Belgrade and Zagreb never seemed quite as interested as local folks and officials. This always has been a city that prided itself on its tastes, on its private collections. About three hundred or so were here.”

  “Then how much money are we talking about? On average.”

  “Art isn’t something that lends itself to averaging. At least that’s what I used to tell people to show off my purity. But I’ve grown vulgar in my old age, and I’ll tell you right now that the worth of the three hundred or so transfer items in the city probably averaged out to about a hundred sixty thousand dollars apiece. Hardly something to get the art people at Scotland Yard excited about. But get your hands on a third of the supply and you’ve got sixteen million. Not bad for a hard cash economy And if you’re willing to be a little more discriminating you can easily up your average, maybe four hundred thousand apiece for the top one-third. Now you’re looking at forty million, or at least twenty million even after you’ve accounted for the discounting you sometimes have to do when you’re selling items of questionable provenance. I can see someone getting killed over that, Mr. Petric, can’t you?”

  So much for meat and cigarettes, Vlado thought. So much for the sad, tawdry underbelly of the city’s organized crime. Now death on a small scale began to have a certain logic.

  “I’d like you to do a favor for me,” he said to Glavas. “I can’t provide you with either a clean, warm room or good food, and I don’t have any Marlboros. But I can leave you a full pack of Drinas if you can start trying to put together what you remember of the local items that were in the transfer files.”

  “Under the circumstances, I’d consider that a generous offer.”

  “Take the next two days and write down as much as you can remember about the most valuable pieces. Who had them. At what location. Particularly in the city center. Never mind the Grbavica and Ilidza locations. Never mind your piece up on the wall, either. I want to start looking for some of those ‘empty spaces’ you were talking about, the more recently empty the better, and the only way I’ll know where to look is with the help of your memory.”

  “Consider it done,” Glavas said, flashing some of the old nobility and grace he must have employed during his years in the universe of artists and museums. “It will be a privilege to feel useful again. I’ll begin as soon as you’ve left.”

  Vlado shut his notebook, hunching forward as if ready to stand, then asked, “Did Vitas say anything about where he was going next. About who else he might be seeing?”

  “Nothing, I’m afraid. As I said, he was quite careful about those things. And if someone as careful as he can be killed so easily, then I would think you might want to watch yourself, Mr. Petric.”

  “The thought has occurred to me. And if you should get any more visitors interested in this subject, Mr. Glavas, please let me know.”

  “And how am I to do that? How, for that matter, am I to get this list to you once I’m done. The phones here work about once a month. And something tells me you don’t want me sending messages out through the police or the U.N.”

  “I’ll come pick it up. Same time in two days. Though don’t be alarmed if I’m late, even if by a day or two.”

  “Either way. I won’t be going anywhere.”

  Vlado stood, stepping toward the door.

  “In the meantime, I suppose I should pay a visit to your friend, Mr. Murovic. Do you know where to find him?”

  “In his new office at the National Bank of Bosnia, down next to the main vault, like Tutankhamen in his tomb. Our Boy King of art, and every bit as naive and easily led. But if you’re truly interested in looking for those ‘empty spaces’ right away, Mr. Petric, I think I may have a starting place for you.”

  Vlado paused with his hand on the doorknob.

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “I’d appreciate that.”

  “Try starting with Murovic’s head,” Glavas said. “It’s the emptiest space in all of Sarajevo.”

  And with that he tumbled into another great outburst of wheezing laughter, which continued as he waved Vlado out the door.

  As Vlado started down the steps, the wheezes hardened into a sharp cough, and it was still crashing onward as Vlado emerged from the exit downstairs, where the sound was finally drowned out by the urgent shouts of children and the rattle of gunfire.

  CHAPTER 11

  The drive back from Dobrinja was blessedly uneventful, and by the time Vlado dropped o
ff the car the sun was shining, pouring onto the sugary hillsides where snow fell earliest and deepest. From down in the city the distant clusters of rooftops and balsams resembled miniature Christmas villages, posed for a photograph. One needed a pair of binoculars to see where the scene needed retouching-the holes in the roofs, the burn marks and broken windows. And it would have taken a particularly powerful model, as well as some patience, to pick out the gun barrels here and there, poking from camouflaged burrows.

  The Bank of Bosnia, formerly YugoBanka, had been forced into wartime hibernation by a lack of cash and the government’s need for its deep sturdy vaults. They’d been built into the hillside forty years earlier, and it would take a nuclear blast to pry them loose, much less break them apart. So, that’s where the government stored its most valuable treasures, everything from the rarest museum pieces to records for property and finance. And it was here, according to Milan Glavas, that Vlado would find Enver Murovic, the young new director of the National Museum.

  Vlado walked through the entrance into an armed camp. Five men slung heavily with machine guns immediately rose to greet him, like a legion of bored shop clerks eager to sell him a suit. The place smelled of a year’s worth of sweat and cigarettes, and a thick layer of dust coated the empty counters and teller cages.

  “Enver Murovic,” Vlado asked uncertainly, and when no one answered he added, “I’m Inspector Petric … representing the Interior Ministry police.”

  Still no one answered, but one of the men disappeared out a rear door, while three of the others slowly settled back to their roosts. The fifth strode past Vlado without a further look out the front door, taking up a post outside, where he probably should have been all along.

  Murovic’s voice preceded him into the room, a fluttery burst of aggrieved authority, uttered with absolute disdain. Vlado picked it up in midsentence.

  “… simply can’t have these sorts of interruptions in the future without either better identification or a confirmed appointment.”

  He emerged from around the corner into the gloom, a tall man, reed thin, dressed all in black except for his glasses, thick frames in bright magenta. His hair was cut neatly, close to the scalp. That, plus his brisk, officious manner, made him strike Vlado as a refined version of Garovic. His style and image were those of an aesthete, yet somehow he still betrayed the careful, grasping soul of a career bureaucrat on the make. Vlado could very easily imagine this fellow shoving old baggage like Glavas out the door. Or down a long flight of stairs.

  Abruptly turning Vlado’s way, Murovic gave him a slow once-over, his gaze sweeping from top to bottom, then back to the face, a look of appraisal that said, No, this won’t do, but we’ll be as courteous as protocol requires.”

  “Yes. I’m Mr. Murovic,” he said with a note of impatience.

  “Inspector Petric,” Vlado said. “I’m conducting an investigation on behalf of the Interior Ministry.”

  “Identification?”

  Vlado showed him his battered police warrant card, explaining, “I’ve been temporarily detailed to the Ministry’s special police unit. You can telephone Acting Chief Kasic if you’ve any doubts.”

  “No doubts,” he said airily, with the tone of one who’d only been testing, playing a game.

  “This way, then. To my office,” he said. He strolled away, glancing over his shoulder to add, “Before we get down to business perhaps you’d like a short tour. It’s quite an impressive little domain, really, and not one that just anybody is privy to. You might as well take advantage of the access while you’re here.”

  The invitation, plus the appearance of Murovic’s office-neat, dusted, wastebasket empty, every thin pile of papers stacked just so-made Vlado smile at the initial show of hurry and impatience. This seemed to be a man with little to do but sit and fidget, waiting to impress whatever visitors might drop by, as long as they weren’t “just anybody”

  They descended a dank stairway, Murovic flicking on lights, then pushing a few buttons on a small key pad to disarm the alarm system. He unlocked the door onto a cellar of caged rooms leading to the main vault.

  He unlocked the first caged entrance and waltzed into a chamber crammed with filing cabinets and stacks of huge cloth-bound books. “Old deeds and property records going back past Tito’s day,” Murovic explained. “Someday they’ll sort it all out, but it will be a hell of a mess. I hadn’t even known these kinds of things survived the last war, much less the last half century.”

  He unlocked a second caged door into a larger chamber. Here, leaning against each other, were frames of all sizes, arranged with a cloth between each.

  Murovic sighed.

  “These are some of the most valuable items from the museum,” he said. “Not with the temperature and humidity controls we’d like, of course, and I’d prefer they weren’t leaning up against each other like this. But space is limited as you can see. I’m afraid it’s the best we can do for now.”

  The next room was the main vault, its giant lock shining like the captain’s wheel of a ship. Murovic rapped lightly on the door, producing only a muted click against the thick metal.

  “And in here,” he said, “are our most valuable pieces of all. Small treasures that are centuries old. Royal jewelry, the rarest of paintings, an illuminated Jewish Haggadah from the fifteenth century. That alone is worth a few million, and everybody and his brother in the international art community would love to get his hands on it, to protect it until the end of the war, they say But not a chance. If we let it go now that’s the last we’ll see of it.

  “No one but me and three others are allowed down here most of the time, so consider this your lucky day. You see, there’s also a small roll-away bed. And that is where our president sleeps when things get especially bad.”

  He offered this with an arch smile, as if their leader had perhaps furnished a love nest in there. He seemed quite thrilled by his proximity to this small whiff of power. Vlado could have laughed. He had grown used to seeing the newly powerful in action as they tried to run this country by the seat of their pants. They were pressed together in this city along with everyone else, their world growing more compact by the day, and under those circumstances the nearness of power only made him feel claustrophobic, as did this vault, this tomb with its treasures.

  Glavas had been right. Murovic was a bit of a Tutankhamen down here. All that was missing was the golden headdress and the small, thrusting goatee. If an explosion were to somehow seal him in, perhaps he, too, wouldn’t be unearthed for another twenty centuries, left to mummify with his treasures and the bed of his president.

  He led Vlado back through the first two rooms, noisily shutting the caged doors behind him, then climbed back upstairs. He then gestured toward an office chair by his desk.

  Vlado pulled in a deep breath, feeling a need for fresh, clean air, but receiving only the staleness of a quiet office.

  “So,” Murovic said. “An investigation. What sort?”

  “One that may have to do with your transfer files, which I understand have gone missing.”

  “I’d hardly put it like that. They’re not missing, they’re quite gone. Destroyed in a fire.”

  “A tank shell, I believe it was?”

  “Tank. Grenade. Mortar. What difference does it make. It came in through the window and everything in the room was gone.”

  “Through the window?”

  “Yes, a freak shot really. I saw the damage for myself the next morning. The guards even showed me some of the shell fragments they’d found. There’d been a big attack the night before. I’d remembered listening to it in bed.”

  “And all of the transfer file was gone? Down to the last card? Even in the worst sort of fires you can usually salvage something.”

  “Oh, no. All gone. Practically vaporized. I checked personally. There were only three or four drawers to begin with. Nothing but ashes. That was bad enough, but the drawers with the insurance records were destroyed, too. It’s a tragedy really
. It’s the only part of the city’s collection that we don’t have a handle on yet, so we feel vulnerable for the moment.”

  “And you say there were guards?”

  “Yes. An entire detail.”

  “Army? Police?” Although Vlado already knew the answer.

  “Some of Zarko’s men, actually” He said this with his gaze boring straight into Vlado, as if daring him to raise an eyebrow.

  “You’d probably call them thugs,” he continued. “And that’s what they are, I suppose. But I’d call them saviors first. Cigarette? They’re French. None of those rancid Drinas for me.”

  “Because they saved your museum, you mean. Thank you.”

  “The museum and everything inside it. We’d spent the three days before the fire moving the best items over here. We’d started with the records as well, the inventories and the insurance appraisals. The transfer files were due to come out the next morning. Another twelve hours and they’d be sitting right downstairs, inside the vault.”

  “A freak turn of fortune then.”

  “Oh, I realize the odds. And I know what you must be thinking, being a policeman. But these men were quite solicitous, quite willing to take orders from a museum director, vigilant as well. Besides, a handful of men can hardly stop a shell.”

  “You weren’t at all suspicious? However vigilant, these men were hardly saints.”

  “So everyone says, but as far as I’m concerned their behavior was exemplary. If they’d wanted to take advantage of us they could have looted or walked off with any item they chose, on any given night. But they kept themselves clean. Clean as a whistle.”