by Thomas Swan
The second patrol boat rushed in to pick up the crew. Now, Tony faced the hydrofoil that had come out of hiding. It was as fast as the white speedboat but not as maneuverable. Above was the helicopter, turning and twisting as if signaling.
One at a time, Tony thought, his eyes flashing from the helicopter to the hydrofoil. He ran as close to the shore as he dared; the hydrofoil followed. He cut the engines and was almost instantly becalmed. The hydrofoil flew past, but the helicopter recovered and remained above, lurking in the air like a giant buzzard.
He turned to full power and set after the hydrofoil. It was making a wide sweep, apparently circling to come up behind Tony. He cut the circle in half. As the hydrofoil seemed to be bearing down on him, he made a crisscrossing pattern directly toward it. His eyes never left the port pontoon, a slim section of metal on which the craft relied for half its ability to raise its hull above the water. He took dead aim on the strut holding the pontoon. The pilot tried to swerve off, but was too late.
The bow of the speedboat sheared the pontoon; the hydrofoil sped on a short distance then fell on its side like a wounded goose.
Tony stared up at the helicopter. “Fucker.”
Deats looked down at the white boat streaking away from the disabled hydrofoil. “He’s got a bellyful of confidence.” He motioned to the pilot to stay behind the boat. The pilot nodded and took the craft down to fifty feet over the water.
Deats put a map in his lap and estimated their position. Within minutes they would pass Bellagio, an unpromising goal for Waters. Beyond Bellagio, it was likely that he would choose a landing well north. Deats put his finger on Colico. From that small town one could take the military roads to the Julier Pass and the safety of St. Moritz.
“Tell Brassi he’s headed north. To either Colico or Gravedona on the western shore.” The pilot spoke into his microphone. Deats set aside the binoculars and put a rifle across his lap. It was beautifully crafted, and so new the oil on the stock smelled with a rare freshness. Deats aimed at the white boat ahead. Through the telescopic sight he clearly saw the body lying behind the man he had pursued so long. The stiffness in his hand was still an annoyance, but the finger on the trigger moved easily.
The speedboat continued north past Bellagio. The helicopter kept a discreet distance behind. Then the boat slowed and Tony left the controls, went to Stiehl, and bent over him. The radio in the helicopter buzzed. It was Brassi, speaking in Italian. The pilot acknowledged the message. “The comandante is coming. They are approaching Bellagio.”
Deats was concentrating on the activity in the boat below. “My God! Look what the bastard’s up to.”
Waters had picked up Stiehl’s limp body and draped it over the railing. Tony climbed back behind the wheel and accelerated. The helicopter followed.
Once again the boat slowed. Tony stood, looked up to the helicopter, then pushed Stiehl into the water.
“He’s forcing us to go down for the poor blighter!” Deats shouted.
They were directly over Stiehl. Tony had throttled to full speed and was making his desperate run for one of the northern towns.
“We can’t stop for a dead body,” the pilot called out.
“He’s not dead.” The wash from the rotors created ripples in a wide circle around the body that was feebly flailing its arms in an attempt to stay afloat.
The pilot radioed his comandante’s boat. “Presto! Presto!”
Stiehl sank out of sight, then bobbed to the surface. Deats yelled to the pilot. “Down!” The craft dropped to a few feet over the water. Deats crawled onto a pontoon and reached an arm to Stiehl. “Grab hold!” he shouted. Stiehl managed to get a hand out of the water. Deats took hold of his wrist but lost his grip. They tried again. This time he grasped tightly. There was a horn blast. The launch had caught up. Two men dove from the boat and swam to Stiehl’s side. Deats climbed back into the helicopter.
“Go. And fast!” was his simple command.
The helicopter banked and rose. They flew up the center of the lake and at three hundred feet had the harbor of Menaggio to the west and the small town of Varenna to the east. The warm sun had brought out a fleet of pleasure boats and a hundred white triangles played in the breezes. It was a dismaying sight to Deats. Tony could duck in among the boats and be lost. They hovered over the armada of sailboats while Deats studied the map.
“Go into the harbor,” he instructed the pilot. “If we don’t see him, we’ll go north.” He glanced at his watch, then again after they had flown over and beyond the harbor. They had consumed a valuable three minutes going down for Stiehl, and there was no guarantee they had not overflown the white boat. Deats pointed away from Mennagio. “Presto! Presto!”
The pilot swung the ship into a speed attitude and headed to the center of the lake. The helicopter was an old workhorse, probably retired from the army and rehabilitated for a more sedentary assignment than chasing after a powerful speedboat. It vibrated and the engine’s shriek was too loud to permit voice communication.
Deats signaled with his hands that he wanted to move closer to the easterly edges of the lake. He chanced that if Tony was still on the water, he was headed for Colico. It was a gamble. The lake was three and a half miles wide and they could not fly over both shorelines.
He scanned the water beneath and ahead with field glasses that were difficult to focus in the shaking aircraft. By Deats’s calculations, they were a minute and a half from Colico. Then the pilot tapped his arm.
He pointed directly ahead to the telltale rooster’s tail pluming up from the deep blue water. “Faster! Presto!” Deats urged.
As they were coming up over him, Tony turned his boat around and sped directly under the approaching helicopter. He had locked the wheel, and as he passed, he fired at the plane’s belly. Bullets crashed through the thin skin; one tore into the cockpit, narrowly missing the pilot. Tony ejected the clip and inserted another. The pilot turned sharply and flew back in a rocking motion. Again they passed and Deats fired at the boat’s controls, but his shots were wild. Tony triggered a stream of bullets, again striking the underbelly, this time sending a shard of metal into the pilot’s leg. He yelled out and grabbed where it felt like he’d been stuck with a knife. Deats crawled behind him and bound a piece of cloth over the calf where the blood soaked through the pants.
“Stop weaving,” Deats shouted. “I can’t take aim.” The pilot acknowledged and indicated with his hand that he would fly low then swoop up and over the boat.
The helicopter banked, then dropped to ten feet over the water. The rotors whipped up a fury of spray, nearly enveloping the helicopter. Tony turned at a right angle to the helicopter’s line of approach. As he did so, the aircraft rose up directly over the boat and hovered.
Deats took careful aim, the crosshairs centered on the shoulder. “I don’t want to kill you,” he said calmly. “That might be too good for you.” His good intentions vanished as Tony brought the rifle up and took aim on the superintendent.
The crosshairs moved to the chest. Deats fired. He fired twice more. He saw red circles on the white shirt. He raised the sight and saw the face contort in anger, then dissolve into bewilderment.
Tony fell back against the wheel. The white torpedo, its fierceness spent, turned in a lazy circle through the wavelets as gently as a rising autumn breeze that wafted across the quiet lake.
Chapter 33
“Put this in front of the little man with the long nose.” Caramazza handed a bottle of Cinque Terre to a young waiter. “He dares say our white wines are inferior to the French. Let him learn how wrong he is.”
The waiter presented the bottle to Jack Oxby, uncorked it, and poured the wine into a stemmed glass. Oxby sniffed the slightly fruity wine, then sipped it. He smiled appreciatively and Caramazza put his thumb and forefinger together at the corner of his mouth and made a clicking noise with his tongue. It was a gesture meaning great taste and approval.
“Our host is determined to prove there are good
Italian whites,” Oxby announced to his dinner companions. He faced Bruno Brassi. “I had not meant to offend him, nor you.”
“I am no expert,” Brassi replied. “All Italian wines are saporito.”
“You criticized his wine, Jack. For God’s sake, compliment his food,” Deats chimed in.
“I’ll have no trouble doing that. He rates a Michelin star.”
Caramazza said good night to the last of his guests and came to the table. “Did you enjoy the wine, Signore Oxby?”
“Very much. A solid flavor, much like Montlouis, or a Vouvray. C’est bon.”
“That’s enough wine talk, Jack. You’ll be lucky to have water if you keep it up,” Deats scolded.
“Sì, enough of wine. I wish to hear more about today,” Caramazza interjected. “I knew something was happening when I saw the helicopters fly back and forth over Il Diodario. Any injuries, comandante?”
“One of our men took a bullet in his left shoulder.” Brassi put a hand above his heart. “Lower and he would be dead. He was on the patrol boat that was blown up.”
“And the American?” Caramazza asked.
“He is in the Ospedale San Anna. He was shot at close range. The bullet entered here.” Brassi rubbed an area below his rib cage. “Such bleeding: I feared he would be dead before reaching Como. He had been taken from the operating room when I visited him. He is a lucky man, but still in danger.”
Caramazza turned to Deats. “There was a young woman.”
Brassi answered. “She is with him.” He shrugged and smiled. “She is very pretty, and would not leave his side.”
“But the one that drove the white speedboat. You could not capture him?”
“I wanted him alive but he was prepared to die if he couldn’t get away.” Deats opened and closed his right hand, rubbing it where he had seen the scar on the back of Waters’s hand. He was silent for several moments, then continued, “We caught up with him near Colico. That’s where we had it out.”
“We don’t have to worry about extradition now.” Brassi smiled weakly at Deats. “He is going back to London in his own box.”
“Not what we had in mind,” Oxby offered.
“Not at all. We wanted him tried for Sarah’s murder,” Deats said. “And when he was found guilty, and I know that would have happened, I wanted to wring a confession from him that he killed Giorgio Burri.”
Oxby lifted his glass. “You did something that was very difficult very well. I salute you.”
Deats brightened. “We flew back to Il Diodario and that’s when I saw you for the first time. Remind me to get the name of your tailor so I can be sure to avoid him.”
“You didn’t like my outfit?” Oxby laughed. “It’s not easy putting together a wardrobe where absolutely nothing matches. Surprising how it works, though. All the attention on what I was wearing, and not on me.”
Deats continued. “I was worried about Miss Shepard. She looked like bloody hell, her face cut and her clothes torn. But she recognized me.” Deats relished telling the others how he had disabled Eleanor’s car, then played the gallant Samaritan. “She was spitting mad that Stiehl had been shot. There was no quieting her until we took her to the hospital.”
“You understate her anger,” Oxby said. “She cried at Kalem, and called him every obscenity she’d ever heard. But he wasn’t listening. His grand scheme had crumbled and he was in total shock.”
“When did you put all the pieces together?” Deats asked.
Oxby ate the last of his dessert, then pushed his chair back from the table.
“It’s fair to say that luck plays a role in a case like this. My first encounter with Kalem was in Paris, where he gave a talk on the lost Leonardos. There aren’t many people running about predicting the imminent discovery of great art or, in particular, the recovery of an entire Leonardo manuscript. He seemed too confident and I thought it a good idea to know what he was up to. I have a network of friends located in all sorts of odd places, some in galleries or consulates. I had photographs and sent them to my contacts in the major airports. Keeping an eye peeled for someone with Jonas Kalem’s proportions isn’t difficult.
“In mid-September he was seen in Heathrow and I guessed he was in London. I assumed his taste would run to one of the luxury hotels and it was an easy matter to trace him to the Dukes Hotel. He had a suite with the other American.”
“Curtis Stiehl,” Deats interjected.
“Quite. I searched out the charwoman, an accommodating Mrs. Palmer, who looked after the rooms. I dressed as an employee and accompanied Mrs. Palmer into the suite. I discovered an elaborate accumulation of artist’s supplies, photographic equipment, and a hundred sketches and photographs of two skulls. Not ordinary skulls, but from Leonardo’s anatomical drawings in the Royal Collection.”
“From the Windsor Library?” Deats asked.
“I didn’t make a connection at the time,” Oxby replied. “But eventually I saw a definite link between Anthony Waters, the library, Sarah Evans, and Leonardo’s drawing of two skulls.”
Caramazza placed a bottle of grappa on the table next to the Cinque Terre. Oxby frowned and declined a glass of the strong-tasting brandy.
“I am very fond of a Korean woman who came to London with her family a few years ago. She is a stunning person of great talent, and so I solicited her assistance and arranged for Kalem to meet her in the Berkeley Hotel. Jonas was convinced her name was Madame Sun, wife of an American lawyer, and the young man with her was her son James. Mostly true except for James. He’s a struggling actor I help when I can. Madame Sun is an astrologer and advocate of Ming Shu. She prepared Kalem’s astrological chart, to which I added a few embellishments. Kalem acknowledged he planned on taking a Leonardo to Collyer’s for authentication, and that presented a small problem. I know all the right people at Sotheby’s and Christie’s but not at Collyer’s.
“We were watching Heathrow much closer now. When he came in again, he was followed to Collyer’s, then out to the Cotswold, where he met with Madame Sun a second time. I had rather hoped he might slip the manuscripts by Collyer’s and the miracle is that he did. They will be embarrassed to learn the drawing is a fake. I’ve seen the manuscript page and can say it’s the most masterful work of forgery I’ve ever come upon.”
Deats interrupted. “How much of this was passed on to Elliot Heston?”
Oxby answered the question with equanimity. “Eighty percent? Or half? I’m not a compulsive reporter. My job was to catch Kalem with evidence. He had to commit himself to the forgery charge. I could have called his tune earlier, but he’d have gone on to some other trickery.”
“But Tony Waters. We might have nabbed him alive.”
“Yes, but more likely he would have disappeared again and found another role to play.” Oxby looked at his empty glass. “You pretty much know the rest.”
Oxby took the bottle of Cinque Terre and refilled all the glasses. “I would propose a toast if I thought this were a fit occasion. We’ve been through it before. The excitement is over and tomorrow will be another ordinary day. Perhaps that’s as it should be.” A smile covered his face.
“But damn it. I’ll miss the chase!”
NEW YORK ART DEALER
Trial Date Set
SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
LONDON, Oct. 22. Facing charges of complicity in the murder of a Scotland Yard agent, New York art dealer Jonas R. Kalem has been extradited to London for his trial, scheduled to begin November 27.
Special interest is being focused on the case as it has not yet been established through the courts that policewoman Sarah Evans was murdered. Suspected of causing the fatal car accident in September was Anthony Waters, who was killed recently in Italy while attempting to escape from local police. Scotland Yard has announced a special investigation to establish Mr. Waters’s guilt.
In addition, Mr. Kalem faces charges of fraud and conspiracy, for allegedly creating and selling manuscript pages ascribed to Leonardo da Vinci.
Also implicated is Eleanor Shepard, recently of Washington, D.C., and Curtis Stiehl of New Jersey.
Ms. Shepard and Mr. Stiehl are currently in Italy, where Mr. Stiehl is recuperating from a bullet wound suffered during Mr. Waters’s attempted escape. According to government authorities, the two Americans do not face extradition proceedings.
About the Author
Thomas Swan chose art crime and thievery as the backdrop for his three highly praised thrillers featuring Inspector Jack Oxby: The Da Vinci Deception, The Cézanne Chase, and The Final Fabergé. Swan was director of the national board of the Mystery Writers of America and past president of its New York chapter. His novels have all been Book of the Month Club selections and been translated into French, German, Greek, Japanese, Turkish, Russian, Polish, Spanish, and Portuguese.
Copyright
Copyright © 1990, 1998 by Thomas Swan
This book is published in the United States of America.
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole, or in part, in any form, without written permission. Inquiries should be emailed to [email protected]; or write to Permissions Department, Newmarket Press, 18 East 48th Street, New York, NY 10017; or fax (212)832-3629.
First Newmarket Paperback Edition
eISBN : 9781557049773
Version 10172012
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