Prelude to Terror

by Helen Macinnes

  She rose and laid the folder down on the chair. “I haven’t much to offer in the way of supper. Just sandwiches. I didn’t want a waiter barging in.”

  “And connecting you with me, or me with you?”

  She had reached a service-cart, lifted the silver lid that covered a napkin-wrapped mound. He was the most annoying man, she thought: unsettling. Did he see everything as a joke?

  “No thank you,” he told her. “I’ve had supper. You go ahead.” He hoped that would stop her being the perfect hostess. In a way, it was touching: a woman putting a guest at ease with food and drink. The normal impulse, of course. Or did she want him to be so much at ease that he wouldn’t have one critical faculty left? “I think we’d better start talking, don’t you?”

  She replaced the lid on the salver of sandwiches, leaving them untouched. She was still thinking about his apartment, for she said, a touch defensively, “Your doorman might very well talk, if a certain reporter just stopped for a few moments to chat with him.”

  “What reporter?” Now that was carrying things too far.

  “A very investigative type. He’s writing a book on the way the ten richest men in America use—or misuse—their spending money. Victor Basset is one of the specimens under his microscope. Somehow he was tipped off that I was in town. That roused his natural curiosity, I suppose. Perhaps every lead must be followed.”

  “I sit corrected.” Grant smiled and took his first drink.

  She returned to her chair, lifting the folder with distaste. What was in it? he wondered for the third time. “It looks as if Basset’s present project is already blown,” he suggested.

  “I don’t think so. Or else there would have been some mention of it in the newspapers. No journalist can resist a scoop if he has the facts. At the moment, this one is merely wondering why I should be in New York as ‘Jane Smith.’ However, she’ll be leaving early tomorrow for Los Angeles. There she’ll disappear, thank heavens. I’ll return by stages to Arizona.”

  “Did Basset think all this up?” The trouble they’ve taken... Grant’s interest was really aroused now. He even forgot to ask himself if this was what she had been aiming for.

  “Mr. Basset wanted you for this assignment. That’s all. The arrangements were left to us.” Her mind flickered briefly to Gene Marck. “As usual,” she added with a smile.

  Us?... Grant let that drop meanwhile. “What is the assignment?”

  She studied him quietly. Gene had been wrong about this man: he wouldn’t take the job unless he heard the details—not even for a free trip to Vienna and five thousand dollars. She plunged in. “There is a picture up for auction in Vienna, early in August. Mr. Basset wants it. He has wanted it for forty years, but it wasn’t for sale. Now suddenly it’s available. It would add considerably to his collection of Dutch seventeenth-century paintings: the ‘Golden Age’ period.”

  “Who is the artist?”

  “Ruysdael. It’s one of his river scenes. Diagonal composition. Lots of green. Date—possibly 1642.”

  He looked at her with some surprise. She knew something of what she was talking about. Never underestimate a pretty face, he told himself. Nor a millionaire’s taste in art; nor his talent for dissimulation. He could see Basset now, although it was three years since they had met: friendly but impassive, quick to listen, slow to speak. And he recalled his suggestion when they were discussing Basset’s recent acquisition of a Vermeer. Interesting, Grant had said, to have an exhibition of Vermeer and other interior painters in juxtaposition with the exterior painters of that same period. Basset had merely inclined his head, smiled faintly, made no comment. “Is he thinking of a seventeenth-century Dutch room for his Basset Hill Museum? Exteriors and interiors?”

  She nodded. “That’s why this particular Ruysdael is so important to him. He owns some of Ruysdael’s earlier winter scenes; also those painted in the later period—trees, and richer detail; and two of the frozen rivers with ice-skaters. But none of the horizontals—they’ve mostly been snapped up by museums, or are buried deep in some collector’s private hoard. As this Ruysdael was for years.”

  “So now it’s available. You’re certain of that?”

  “Certain.”

  “Basset wants me to buy it for him? Not in his name, I take it. That would intensify the bidding and jack up its price.”

  “Considerably. But it isn’t the price that worries Mr. Basset. It’s one of his competitors. Antagonist is a better word. If he thinks Mr. Basset wants something, he’ll do his best to get it for himself. The art world has its own quota of dirty tricks.”

  “Surely Basset has an agent in Vienna who could have handled this discreetly?”

  “Yes. But however careful the agent might be, he is still known to be connected with Mr. Basset. If there was some likely bidding at the auction, and Mr. Basset’s agent kept pressing on, that would rouse a lot of speculation. Too much. You see, the man who has put that Ruysdael up for sale wants as much anonymity as Mr. Basset. For a different reason. His freedom is at stake: perhaps his life.”

  Drama suited her. Her cheeks were pink-tinged again, her eyes wide with excitement and indignation. “Pretty high stakes,” he said gently, and watched her with increasing interest. Definitely not an act, he decided: she wasn’t even aware of the effect she had produced. “Who is the man?”

  “A Hungarian. Once a well-known collector. He lives near Budapest.” She stopped, regained her detachment. “This has nothing to do with your part of the assignment. I talked too much.”

  “I must know as much as possible about the picture’s history. Its owner lives in Hungary, and he wants to leave? He needs a nice little bank account all established, somewhere abroad?”

  “That’s it exactly. He has sent out his Ruysdael ahead of him.”

  “Just a moment, there. The Hungarian government took over all the private collections. They are the property of the state.”

  “Except,” she said, smiling, “for those paintings that were hidden—two or three of the smaller pictures that could easily be squirreled away.”

  “Hungarian foresight, you might say.” So far, it made sense.

  “His Ruysdael isn’t a large canvas, you know. You could bring it back to New York quite easily. Carry it on the plane with you, in fact. No customs duty: it’s a seventeenth-century work of art. Genuine antique.”

  “Hold on. I have to bring it to New York?”

  “Why not? It’s done every day.”

  “Scarcely,” he said dryly.

  “Well—it is done. Isn’t it?”

  He said nothing. It was done; if not every day, certainly every month: the safest way for the big galleries and dealers to transport a valuable painting firmly under the eye and hand of one of their representatives.

  “Our Hungarian will be in Vienna by the time you return to New York. There’s no problem, then, about Mr. Basset meeting you quite openly and taking delivery. We have to play it his way: complete secrecy until the man is safely out of Hungary. You see, Mr. Basset is known to be a long-time friend of our Hungarian. In fact, they were in touch just a month ago. How else do you think Mr. Basset learned about the Ruysdael?”

  “And there’s the weak spot,” Grant said. “The Communists are no fools. Any whisper of that meeting between Basset—”

  “I didn’t say they met!” she said indignantly. “I said they were in touch. Secretly.”

  “Or what about any whisper of a Ruysdael, whose owner had fooled the Hungarian government for the last twenty years or so? They’d damn soon find out who he was. There are collectors’ old catalogues, and long-ago records of sales—”

  “But not before Mr. Basset’s friend is safely out of their reach.”

  “Will he ever be?”

  “He will change his name, get a completely new identity.” She paused, added, “This was all his idea in the first place. He’s willing to take the risks involved. He doesn’t intend to be a penniless refugee.”

  “Just a far-sig
hted one.” Grant went back to his own problem. “I don’t know if I like the idea of bringing the picture—”

  “No trouble at all. We’ll attend to any Austrian licence that is necessary for export: no bother there, the picture never belonged to them. You’ll have papers to prove it is legally your property. So don’t—”

  “My property?” he broke in. He grinned, adding, “What if I just walk off with it?”

  “Not your style, Mr. Grant.” She lifted the file on her lap and opened it, let her eyes fall on the list of facts about the life of Colin Grant. “We know it.”

  “Is that a file on me?” He was outraged. “Basset’s idea?”

  “No. We just had to be sure you were the man he thinks you are.” Had she lost him? “Don’t you see, we had to know—”

  “Who’s ‘we’?” he demanded.

  “Myself, and Mr. Basset’s financial adviser on his art collection—very important for this Vienna venture. Also for Mr. Basset’s latest enterprise: the Basset Hill Museum. So, of course, we had to know something about you, Mr. Grant. You are one of four now being considered—”

  “That’s unnecessary,” Grant said roughly.

  She branched off at once, away from the Basset Hill Museum and its potential director. “I hate the dossier idea, frankly. But yours is quite innocuous.”

  “You make me sound dull.”

  “Hardly that. Now, let’s see—” She began skipping down the page in front of her.

  Colin Grant, born ninth of July 1938.—Father killed Omaha Beach, 1944.—Mother becomes interior decorator, supports children (one son, two daughters).—Grant attends Yale, 1956.—Liberal Arts, 1960.—Question-mark at 1961.—Army, 1962. Stationed Frankfurt, 1963–64.—Fine Arts, Columbia University, 1965.—Guide at Museum of Modern Art, 1966.—Temporary work at Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1966.—Published Explorations in Art, 1967.—Washington, in search of a job, 1967.—Advisory Assistant to Director of Cultural Affairs, Division of Art, department of State, 1968.—Married Jennifer Stone, 1971.—Visits to museums abroad, 1972–74.—Visit to Arizona, 1974.—Wife murdered, Washington, September 1976.—Question-mark at resignation, December 1976.—Moved to New York, January 1977. Present address, occupation, etc., etc...

  She said softly, “We were very sorry—about your wife, I mean.” She skipped the question-mark that followed—of course, he couldn’t bear it any more. What other reason for resigning? She looked up, caught his eyes watching her.

  She really feels for me, he thought, and kept silent.

  “There’s one question I must ask,” she said. “About that blank year: 1961.”

  “It was a very blank year.”

  “Could you fill it in for me?”

  He tried to make light of it. “I thought I was a painter—shook off the family and went to live in Greenwich Village with three other hopeful artists. One large attic. A lot of talk. Great expectations; but not one of us could do more than dab and dribble. I quit when I realised I wasn’t a painter—never would be—not in the way I wanted. It takes more than ambition and self-confidence to make a man something he’d like to be. It takes talent, too. Sorry, that’s all the explanation I can give.”

  “So you joined the army.”

  “I needed a job and steady pay. It got my head together. I started looking at museums when I was in Europe. My escape, I suppose, from drill and regulations.”

  “Also, you learned German. Yes, that will be useful.”

  “Do you have to sound like a schoolma’am?”

  “I’m sorry.” She looked it, too.

  “A very attractive schoolma’am,” he said more softly. “Oh well, that takes care of 1961. Doesn’t it?”

  She nodded. He had been honest with her, and it must have been painful. She could fill in the gaps: “Shook off the family”—a bid for independence? No more assistance needed from Mother Grant? Pride wouldn’t let him take it when he had failed. Instead, he enlisted. “Drill and regulations.” So he was just an ordinary private. No connection with Intelligence.

  Something amused him. “How do I pay for the Ruysdael? Just sign a cheque on my Citibank account?” All four hundred and thirty-two dollars of it.

  “Oh, that’s arranged. Mr. Basset’s firm, Allied Electronics, has an office in Vienna, and—” The telephone rang. She rose to answer it very quickly. With relief, he thought. It was someone whom she knew well. She was saying, “I have an old friend of yours visiting me. Do drop in. He’d be delighted to see you, I’m sure.”

  “Delighted to see whom?” he asked as she returned to her chair.

  “Gene Marck. You met him with Mr. Basset in Arizona. He’s the adviser on our art purchases and insurance and increasing values. That sort of thing.”

  All I remember about him. Grant thought, was that he didn’t talk much, even less than Basset did. A watch-and-listen type. “Wasn’t he a new member of the staff?”

  “Yes. He had only been with us a few months.” She was rushing her words now. “He was an accountant with one of the big art dealers in Houston, did some business with Mr. Basset, and impressed him. Gene knows a great deal about the art field—the money side of it, that is.”

  Grant made no comment.

  “He will tell you how the Ruysdael payment can be made.”

  Yes, thought Grant, like everything else, that would be very nicely arranged.

  * * *

  Eugene Marck made his appearance, refused a drink, stayed for fifteen minutes, excused himself politely (he had just spent the day in Virginia, at Basset Hill, needed some sleep before tomorrow’s busy morning), and left for the Pierre, where he was staying. In the short visit, all very friendly, all very welcome to-the-team-my-boy, he cleared up the remaining points of business.

  First: Grant should leave for Vienna on the twenty-sixth of July. This wouldn’t pinpoint his arrival with the auction itself. It would take place in the earlier half of August, in one of the smaller Viennese auction rooms. Date, time, and location would be given him later.

  Second: Grant could talk about his forthcoming visit to Vienna; it might cause comment if he didn’t. Or if he didn’t have a good excuse for it, such as two or three articles to be written about the seventeen Brueghels in the State Museum. (Just a suggestion, Marck had added tactfully.)

  Third: Grant would receive plane tickets and hotel reservation within the next few days. Also a letter from Victor Basset authorising him to select a picture and bid for it at auction. Also a cheque for five thousand dollars. In Vienna, he was to keep a list of his expenses: he would be reimbursed on his return to New York.

  Fourth: Marck would be in Vienna too, but he would remain well in the background until the auction was over. Immediately on the acquisition of the Ruysdael, he would meet Grant in the private office of the auctioneer, along with the treasurer of Allied Electronics—who was authorised to write the two necessary cheques, one to the auctioneer (for his fee) and the other to the listed seller of the picture (using the seller’s new identity, of course). Grant, as the purchaser, would receive all the necessary documents, along with Marck’s telephone number in case of some unexpected difficulty. Emergency use only.

  Fifth: Basset wanted the Ruysdael. At any cost. Grant was to remember that, and bid accordingly.

  “That’s everything, I think,” Marck said, rising from his chair. “Quite clear?”

  Grant had listened in total silence, making sure he missed nothing in the quick flow of words. His memory was good, better still when he used it visually. He’d make a resumé of Marck’s instructions as soon as he got home, while they were still fresh in his memory. Once written down and read, he would remember them. But I’ll destroy my notes, he promised silently, studying Marck’s alert face. One thing was certain: Marck had added considerable volubility to his watch-and-listen attitude of three years ago. “Why two cheques?” Grant asked. “I thought art galleries took charge of the entire payment, deducted their commission, and sent the rest of the money to the seller of the
painting.”

  “In New York, yes. In Vienna?”

  That silences me, thought Grant. I don’t know the regular routine in payments abroad. All I know is what usually happens here.

  “Mr. Basset prefers to pay the auctioneer’s fee when the seller is a friend who needs every dollar his picture can bring him. Hence the two cheques.”

  “Very thoughtful of Basset.”

  “He can afford to be. Anything else?”

  “Yes,” Grant said. “I’d like to examine the Ruysdael before the auction.”

  “It is being kept out of sight—you can understand the need for that.”

  “I do. But I’d like to make sure it isn’t a fake. If I have any doubts, I’ll call in an expert. I know him well. He can be trusted. Discretion is part of his job.” He had startled them both, no doubt about it. “We could use that private office you mentioned—keep the whole thing under wraps.”

  Marck said coldly, “We have already had expert advice on the painting. It is no fake.” His quick smile appeared, warm and engaging. “Your suggestion was good, but we really do think of all the possibilities.”

  You certainly do, thought Grant. They shook hands. “So,” Marck was saying now, “you have friends in Vienna? That’s nice.”

  “One or two—if they are still there. It has been a few years since my last visit.”

  Marck nodded, and made his way to the door. “Good night, Lois,” he said, almost as an afterthought.

  “I have to leave, too,” said Grant, rising to his feet. “Good night, Miss Westerbrook. And why don’t you come to Vienna?” She was indeed looking as though she had been left out in the cold.

  “Stay for another drink.” She sounded almost urgent.

  “Sorry. Some other time, I hope.” He shook hands and was out of the opened door. Marck was drawing ahead of him, walking fast. I get it, thought Grant: all these security-minded boys with their fixations. Who’s to see us in this empty corridor?

  He marked time by lighting a cigarette, and let Marck take the first elevator down. The second one came almost immediately and descended without another stop, so that when he reached the ground floor he could see Marck heading for the double glass doors on to Park Avenue. He made his way slowly past a collection of baggage and cardboard boxes cluttering an otherwise elegant lobby, and pushed both doors open for himself—the doorman was too engrossed in conversation with the chauffeurs of three black Cadillacs strung along the kerb. The rank was empty of taxis. Grant had to step out into the street to hail a cab. And up there, crossing Park Avenue at 64th Street, was Gene Marck. He looked like a man who knew where he was going. But with his direction, first north, then east, he was certainly not bound for the Pierre on Fifth Avenue. Marck’s stride was brisk. His exhaustion from his hard day of travel must have vanished, along with his urgent need of sleep.