The Painted Messiah

by Craig Smith

  'I thought Kate was going to join us.'

  Ethan looked up and saw Sean standing in the open doorway. He had not heard his friend come up the stairs. At least he had not registered the sound of his footsteps. For that matter he was not even sure how long he had been leaning against his desk trying to come to terms with his own decision. 'I think we just broke up.'

  Sean smiled as if he thought Ethan was joking. 'You're kidding me?'

  Ethan shook his head. He wasn't kidding.

  'Another guy?'

  That was exactly what it was, he realized with sudden clarity. Only the other guy had been dead for almost a decade. 'Nothing like that,' he muttered. 'Just... '

  'You two are perfect together. If it's not another guy, what is it?'

  'You want to buy this place?'

  'This place? Sure, but I can't afford it. You know what kind of money I make.'

  'Do you want it or not?'

  'Sure, I want it.'

  'I'll make you a partner for a thousand francs. You run the business, pay me rent on the building.'

  'That's crazy. What about the inventory? You have a fortune tied up in books!'

  'You figure it out and pay me back what you can afford, whenever you can afford it.'

  'You're giving me your business - just like that? What's wrong with you anyway?'

  'I think it's time to start a new life.'

  Lake Brienz, Switzerland October 8, 2006.

  Early Sunday morning Malloy walked down to the train station and caught the first intercity out of town. Four hours and six transfers later, certain he had lost any possible surveillance team, if one even existed, Malloy arrived in the town of Brienz in time to catch the post bus on its run to Ax Alp. At the third stop up the mountain, he stepped off and started through the forest.

  When Malloy had first arrived in Zürich, he had set up a freelance business as an editor and translator. With the occasional teaching assignment in the commercial schools it had provided a small but steady income, sufficient at any rate to justify his bohemian lifestyle. Advertising routinely in the Zürich newspaper he had culled some legitimate queries. To allay suspicions he generally took the work offered him. It was important to have a day job, a justification for his income and his movements. Editing was perfect. It let him work odd hours and allowed the occasional procrastination when his real work came under pressure. It also put him in touch with a wide circle of Zürich intellectuals and professionals.

  One morning, about a year after he had settled into his routine and had begun establishing himself with people working in the Zürich banks, he received a call from a woman who inquired about the possibility of his editing her manuscript. An independent scholar with enough wealth to indulge herself, the Contessa Claudia de Medici had seemed legitimate, and her story was credible. She had already published her book in Italian and was preparing the English manuscript. Before she approached an American publisher with it, she said she wanted a native speaker with editorial experience to spend some time going through it. Malloy answered that he had no training in history or religion, but the moment he tried to suggest some people who might help her, she stopped him. Money was not an issue, and she didn't want just anyone working with her manuscript. She wanted him.

  So the dance had started. Malloy had asked how she knew his work. A friend had recommended him. Did her friend have a name? Of course, but the contessa did not think it appropriate to mention it. At that point Malloy felt there was a good chance that Claudia de Medici was something other than what she pretended to be, but the woman intrigued him. He took her manuscript and dutifully began editing it at his usual rates.

  Malloy had never really flirted with religion even as a young man. He knew virtually nothing about the origins of Christianity, nor had he much cared. All that began to change after he began working on the manuscript. Call it a sense of authority, expertise, passion. Whatever it was exactly, the contessa's writing left him spellbound. She talked about old Jerusalem as if she had walked its dusty streets. She spoke about what it was to be a Jew under the Roman occupation, then with equal authority what a Roman soldier must have experienced, stationed far from his home and culture, usually without wife and family.

  There was no danger of a conversion to religion. Malloy was a committed skeptic in all things, miracles especially, but he could safely admit that the book had sparked a great deal of personal interest in the history of the Middle East and for that matter history in general. Finished with the job he mailed the manuscript back to her, as she had requested, along with his bill.

  Somewhat to his surprise the Contessa de Medici made no payment. As a hungry businessman he was forced to send an overdue notice. This was answered with a note of apology, though still without payment. If he would care to drive to Interlaken, she would be glad to treat him to lunch at the Hotel Jungfrau by way of a formal apology for any inconvenience she had caused and, yes, pay her bill in full.

  Malloy had not been able to find any photographs of the contessa and he was curious. Lunch sounded like a good idea, a chance to put a face to his mystery woman. Meeting her the first time, he was not sure what to think. She was decidedly older than he was, somewhere between thirty-five and forty, and yet it seemed to him he had never encountered a woman whose cool reserve and self-possession excited him so much.

  Over lunch she mentioned entertaining anecdotes from the court of Tiberius as if it were gossip, not history, embellishing freely on the emperor's character. She even corrected what she called the misperceptions of Tacitus and Suetonius. She spoke with an authority that was both enchanting and convincing.

  He waited for the inevitable questions about his personal life, the gentle probing about relationships. To his chagrin they never occurred. When their lunch was finished, the contessa passed an envelope across the table and thanked him for his excellent work. She excused herself, walked to the front of the hotel and had her man, Rene, drive her home. When he had composed himself, Malloy was vaguely affronted by the encounter. He even considered the possibility that she might be exactly what she pretended: a serious scholar, still rather young as those sorts go, who had forgotten to pay her bill in a timely fashion and wanted to make amends.

  A few months later he received an invitation to a party at the contessa's villa on Lake Brienz.

  Nearly a decade after that first party Malloy would consider the possibility that Claudia de Medici had arranged that first evening for his benefit. At the time he simply imagined himself lucky - an intelligence officer rubbing shoulders quite unexpectedly with people who had access to what he needed. The party was an extravagant affair which drew the country's elite, including bankers, industrialists, and politicians. It was an operative's dream. From that first party he established the contacts that eventually got critical information about the bank accounts of two Colombian drug lords and one ex-president of the Philippines. The following year he received another invitation, and every year after that another. At these parties the contessa would usually manage a greeting and perhaps an introduction to yet another luminary of Swiss finance, but she spent hardly any time at all talking to him. So it went for several years. She invited him to her party. He sent a thank you note afterwards. That was the extent of it.

  Then one night the contessa telephoned him. It was past midnight, but she made no apology for the hour.

  She said she needed help and could not wait until morning. He arrived at her villa at nearly three o'clock and met a young man who claimed to be a night watchman for one of the major Swiss depositories in Bern. He was wearing a private security uniform and possessed a photo ID, but it could have been forged. Malloy had no way of checking it on short notice.

  That evening as he had made his usual rounds, the night watchman said, he had discovered the bank records of the holocaust victims set out before one of the furnaces with orders attached to the crates instructing bank personnel to incinerate the material. That would occur, he said, the following morning. To substantiate hi
s story, the young man had stolen several of the documents and presented them to Malloy.

  'Can you call someone, Thomas?' the contessa asked.

  Given more time, Malloy could have worked up a respectable cover for himself, but there was no time. Over the past several months a multi-billion dollar lawsuit had been pending against the major banks in Switzerland, claiming they had purposely concealed evidence relating to the holocaust accounts. The Swiss banking community had given repeated assurances that the records had been destroyed decades ago. They admitted that it was possible for certain individuals to have deposited money in the 1930s and subsequently for their heirs to have failed to make a proper claim to recover their assets. One needed a death certificate to close an account and the Nazi death camps hadn't been very good about that sort of thing. It was unfortunate, they said, but claims were at this point impossible to verify.

  That they were lying was clear to everyone who knew the Swiss fondness for keeping records, but to prove it was another matter. Suddenly Malloy had it within his power to catch them in their collective lie. Tempting as that prospect was he had also known that he could be stepping into a trap, blowing his cover and getting nothing for his troubles besides expulsion from the country. In fact with anyone other than the contessa he might have hesitated. His training had certainly suggested she was a suspicious contact, but he had made no attempt to investigate her background because she had neither wanted nor offered information - or anything else. For all he knew, she could have been working for the Swiss banks instead of against them.

  He trusted her, however. He could not say why. Instinct, he would tell himself later. When he was honest about the matter, he would admit he had been half-in-love with her since the afternoon of their lunch in Interlaken. It wasn't such a strange notion. Young men sometimes fall under the spell of truly self-assured older women, and the truth was she was not that much older. She had simply seemed beyond his reach at the time. Prompted by love or instinct, he still could not say which, Malloy took a dangerous leap of faith and called the American Consulate in Paris. A cover blown in Switzerland amounted to a one-way ticket home, but he would have risked his life that night. That was how much faith the contessa inspired.

  By the following morning the American and Israeli consulates were actively involved. The night watchman was in good hands, and the contessa and Malloy quietly removed themselves from the inevitable media frenzy. No one ever knew they were behind it. Later, Malloy asked the contessa how she knew to call him. With her contacts in Bern, why not someone at the American Consulate? How did she know he could do anything for her?

  'It was the right thing to do, Thomas. Let's leave it at that, shall we?'

  And so they had.

  Malloy had been inclined to lay the whole thing out to Jane Harrison in the aftermath, but that would have required changing his original story as well as betraying the contessa's trust. Moreover, the truth might have exposed him to the charge of acting as an unwitting agent for a foreign intelligence agency - he was still of the opinion she might be working for the Israelis. Stupidity was not a crime, but it was sufficient for reassignment even if things happened to work out. Silence, on the other hand, left one's mistakes and questionable decisions buried and forgotten.

  During the remainder of his time in Zürich Malloy had continued to attend the contessa's annual party, but they had never again met in private. With a free day on his hands and having not seen the woman for several years, Malloy thought it might be pleasant to drop in. It was more than a casual visit of course. He had been reading about twelfth century portraits of Christ for the past several days and could not quite comprehend J. W. Richland's passion for Byzantine icons. Assuming he could work the subject into a casual conversation, Malloy was hoping the contessa could give him some insight.

  The contessa's villa sat on the side of Ax Alp overlooking Lake Brienz. The building itself was a nineteenth century hotel that had fallen into disrepair by the time the contessa had bought it. After restoring it and taking up her year-round residence, she rarely left the property. Her sole extravagance was her annual party. If she visited friends or attended exclusive parties, Malloy hadn't heard about it, and the people at her parties were terrible gossips. She was a writer and a scholar. What she needed she sent for, everything from books to groceries. If she had wanted society she would not have bought such an isolated property. The solitude of the place was impressive, too. The building sat on a small plot of level ground close to a thundering cascade. It was surrounded on all sides by a dense forest that went on for miles. From the contessa's veranda, it was possible to see Interlaken at one end of the lake and the town of Brienz at the other. That was as close as she let herself get to civilization.

  Her 'man', as she call him in English, Rene, stood at one of the doors to the house watching him as Malloy came down the mountain on a rather steep and sometimes treacherous trail next to the cascade. Another individual might have treated Malloy with a friendly wave of his hand, but Rene simply stared. Like the contessa, Rene's age was indeterminate. He could have been fifty or seventy. He kept his oddly battered head shaved and even though he was dark-skinned, there were no lines to offer any hint of his generation. He possessed hulking shoulders and a cinderblock torso.

  Despite his age and size, Rene moved with the ease of an athlete still in his prime. Unlike his employer, Rene possessed no talent for language. His native tongue

  Malloy had never been able to determine. The language he spoke with the contessa was a kind of pidgin Italian, though he freely mixed German, French, and English words into it, the accent inevitably misplaced. Rene's grammar, Malloy had decided long ago, was capricious.

  One thing Malloy did not doubt was Rene's loyalty to the woman he served. In her presence, his eyes stayed on the contessa with the zeal and ferocity of a trained Rottweiler. When he had approached within fifteen feet, Malloy stopped and said to the man, 'Is the contessa at home, Rene?'

  As this question was no doubt absurd, Rene did not bother answering him. He simply flexed his enormous fists and walked away. Malloy went to the veranda, intending to knock at the front door, but Claudia de Medici was already waiting.

  'Thomas! This is a pleasant surprise! Have you moved back to Zürich ?'

  'I'm here on business for a couple of days. I found myself with a free afternoon, and I thought I'd drop by. I hope I'm not interrupting something.'

  'Nothing that can't wait. Come in.' Malloy stepped into the elegantly furnished entryway. The contessa led him to the drawing room and began fixing them both a glass of Scotch.

  'Are you working on a new book?'

  'I have written my book. If I write another, it won't be for some time.' Her smile was almost bashful, her beauty as stunning as ever. In fact, it seemed to Malloy that she had not changed in the years since he had first met her. She was still a woman seemingly not quite forty, making her, he realized with a sudden sense of despair, over a decade younger than he was! 'And you,' she asked with a smile that suggested she had read his thoughts, 'are you still a freelance editor?' There was a bit of playfulness in this, something of an old joke between them, and Malloy smiled.

  'Retired, I'm afraid.'

  'Not entirely, I hope. You are far too young for something as dreadful as retirement.'

  'I keep busy.'

  'You are living in New York, I hear.'

  'You must have good sources.'

  'One of the advantages of having interesting friends.' Malloy resisted asking about her sources. The contessa was quite effective at gaining confidences, obstinate about keeping them. 'You are happy. I can see that much in your eyes.'

  'I'm getting married this spring.'

  'And you decide to step back into the life - in order to save yourself from your happiness?'

  Malloy laughed at the jab. He had not thought about it like that, but he supposed one could see it that way. He certainly would not have been the first man to sabotage a perfect relationship. Still, he was
reluctant to admit as much, even jokingly. Besides, he had never really left his profession - only fieldwork. 'If I wait any longer to get back into things, it will be too late,' he confessed.

  'Perhaps it is not your destiny.'

  'I believe we make our own destiny, Contessa.'

  'It's my opinion that people are not thrust into hell because of their passions, Thomas. I think they jump in for the sake of them, but I'm not going to change your mind. I can see that. Why don't you tell me what brings you here? It has something to do with business, I think.'

  The contessa worked as successful mind readers do. She read body language. She made grand assessments and waited for reactions. That she was sweet about it and seemed to enjoy him at some level made it less disconcerting, but the truth was her insights into his character had always left him wondering if she might really be clairvoyant.

  'I thought you might be able to explain something for me.' The contessa tipped her head slightly, her expression curious. 'What do you know about twelfth century icons of Christ?'

  'I know I enjoy them very much, though I would imagine I'm in the minority. What would you like to know?'

  'A twelfth century Byzantine portrait of Christ - what would something like that be worth, say in mint condition?'

  The contessa smiled as if dealing with a precocious child. 'That is difficult to say. Assuming it to be in excellent condition, you would have to know if it had been restored. Then there is the provenance. That would affect the price significantly. People interested in paintings of that sort value the history at least as much as, if not more than, the artistic merit. Many icons come with a portable altar. There might be a unique box or travelling case. Many of these are works of art themselves. Some are encrusted with precious jewels, which would add value beyond the particular artistic merit. A famous person might have owned it. A great deal of information about the royal family in Constantinople is available from that era. The princess Anna Comnena, who met the first Crusaders, for instance, even wrote a book detailing her impressions of the army's leaders, including the relatively unknown Baldwin of Boulogne - the man the barons would ultimately elect as the first king of Christian Jerusalem. If it were her personal icon and you could prove it with documents, such a piece would be extremely attractive to some buyers - myself included, though I am not a collector - but without a great deal more information I couldn't begin to make a guess.'