Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars

by Christopher, Paul

  “She makes her own paint, uses canvas or wood from the correct era—definitely a professional. If you look around at the far end of the studio, you’ll probably find a chemistry set fully outfitted with all sorts of chemicals and witches’ brews used to make a painting authentic, or at least look that way.”

  Somewhere there was the sound of a door opening and closing and then footsteps approaching the studio.

  “Shit!” said Lazarus.

  A moment later Hannah Kruger came through the open doorway. Her face took on an expression of horror as she saw the two men standing there.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “You don’t know what you’ve done. You’ve killed them.”

  “Killed who?” said Holliday.

  “My mother and my father and me. That’s who.”

  “You haven’t even asked us who we are,” said Lazarus, “or what we are doing here.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Cop, crook, whatever. We’re all dead.”

  “Maybe you might want to explain that,” said Holliday. “Just to get things clear before we’re all killed. And by the way, his name is Lazarus and he’s an Interpol art cop and my name is Holliday and I’m just along for the ride.”

  “Fine,” said Hannah. “Now I’ll know who signed my parents’ death warrant as well as mine and yours. Under other circumstances, maybe I’d offer to make you a cup of tea, but right now somebody is coming and he’s carrying a gun.”

  “You’re under surveillance?” Holliday asked urgently.

  “Of course I’m under surveillance,” said Hannah. “All of us are.”

  “All of us?” Lazarus asked.

  “You obviously know what I’m doing here and the kind of people I’m connected to. You must know that I’m not the only one doing this. I deal with the eighteenth-century paintings back through the Renaissance and specializing in Dutch masters, Italians and the Baroque school. There are other people for other periods. As far as I know they are located all over the world. We even have three or four hidden Web sites where we exchange information and find materials we need.”

  “You’re talking about a very big organization,” said Lazarus. “Do you know anything about the people who run it?”

  “In my case, it’s a bastard named Pytor Novestev from the FSB. We don’t have time for any more of this—” She shook her head angrily. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now.”

  “She’s right,” Holliday said to Lazarus. He turned back to Hannah. “Do you have any kind of weapon?”

  “Yes, give me a minute.” The woman ran out of the room. She was back a few moments later with a small black automatic pistol in one hand and a box of 9-millimeter ammunition in the other. She also had a bulging backpack slung over one shoulder.

  Holliday looked at the gun. “A Beretta M1934. Seven rounds in the magazine and one in the breech make eight. Not much, but it’ll have to do.”

  “Why should I give it to you?” said Hannah belligerently.

  “Do you know how to use it?” Holliday asked.

  “Not really,” Hannah answered. “The man at the gun show where I bought it said it was just point and shoot.”

  “It’s a little more complicated than that,” said Holliday.

  “Believe me, Ms. Kruger,” said Lazarus. “He was a colonel in the U.S. Army. If somebody needs shooting, he’s your man.”

  Hannah tentatively handed over the gun and the box of ammunition. Holliday opened the box and the entire contents into his left-hand jacket pocket.

  “What’s with the backpack?” Lazarus asked.

  “I knew this day would come and I wanted to be ready for it. I call it my ‘go bag.’”

  “Do you have a car?” Holliday asked.

  “No. The town is no bigger than a postage stamp. You can walk anywhere.”

  “Have you seen the surveillance?” Holliday asked.

  “I’ve spotted the same car parked at the end of the block several times,” she answered.

  “Is there a back way out of here?”

  “There’s a side door at the end of the studio that leads into the garden.”

  “Who’s your neighbor at the back?”

  “I have no idea”

  “Fence?”

  “Just a picket one.”

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  There was a crash as the front door of the house was kicked in.

  “Too late!” Lazarus said.

  “The two of you get going,” said Holliday. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  As Hannah and Lazarus turned and ran, a man appeared in the shadows of the hallway. The intruder was tall and heavy-set, like a bouncer. He was carrying a small boxlike MP5 submachine gun with the long tube of a silencer screwed onto the muzzle.

  In the split second he had to make a decision, Holliday threw away every instinct and rule the army had ever taught him and aimed for the head rather than the easier target of the man’s chest and center mass. The first shot had to be a kill shot. As he raised the little Beretta, Holliday’s thumb flipped up the safety and he fired. His finger squeezed the trigger again and again until the magazine was empty. The man’s face disappeared in a spray of gore and the machine gun dropped out of his nerveless fingers. He stood for a moment, the last spasms of life rushing through the rest of his body, and then fell backward like a toppled tree. A voice yelled out from the far end of the hall.

  “Max? You okay?”

  Max was definitely not okay. Holliday scooped up the MP5 and rummaged through the man’s pockets, finding three more of the long, sticklike magazines. Then he ran like hell.

  He met with the other two on the next street over.

  “What now?” Lazarus asked.

  Holliday looked up and down the quiet street. So far the gunfire inside Kruger’s house hadn’t attracted any attention. Directly in front of Holliday, parked in the neighbor’s driveway, was a late-model Mercedes minivan with the driver’s-side window wide-open.

  “Go ring the doorbell,” Holliday told Hannah. Meanwhile, he popped open the door and slid behind the driver’s seat. He checked under the visor, but there was nothing. He leaned down and felt under the seat. Nothing there either. He got out of the car and felt inside the front wheel well. He was rewarded with a small metal box: a magnetic Hide-A-Key. Hannah came down the steps of the house.

  “Nobody home,” she said.

  “Good,” Holliday replied. He squeezed the key fob and the doors popped open.

  “Climb in.” Holliday backed out of the driveway and drove slowly down the tree-lined street, the mayhem of a few seconds earlier vanishing behind them.

  They found the interstate and drove south toward Madison.

  “You must have a contact,” said Holliday, pulling into the middle lane, his foot on the gas keeping their speed at a resolute fifty-five miles per hour. “Somebody other than this Novestev character.”

  Hannah Kruger was riding in the front passenger seat. She turned to Holliday. The shock of the last few minutes was still clear in her expression.

  “I only had dealings with one person. A man named Rupert Sheridan. He’s a curator or something in the fine art division at Blackthorn and Cole.”

  11

  According to the research Lazarus had done while they were making their way to New York, Blackthorn and Cole, although not the largest auction house in England or the United States, was definitely the richest and by far the most discreet. The original two partners, George Blackthorn and Isaac Cole, had shared a seat at Lloyd’s. Both had been furniture manufacturers and had a fondness for antiquities. They decided to consolidate their interests and leave the dreary ledgers and tolling bells of the insurance business to establish the firm of auctioneers that still bore their name.

  Since the establishment of Blackthorn and Cole coincided with the huge speculative losses
in the American land bubble and the resulting crisis in the British monetary system, the two men had no difficulty finding antiquities. Blackthorn coined what was to become the firm’s dark and unwritten motto: “We prosper on the desperate tears and broken dreams of others.”

  Apparently, while they prospered on other people’s desperate situations, they developed a long-standing reputation for discretion. If anyone employed by the firm was ever caught whispering about the sudden sale of a duke’s gold-plated candelabras, for instance, he was immediately terminated. Rumor and gossip had no place at Blackthorn and Cole.

  With the rise of Hitler and the blossoming of the Third Reich, their respective grandsons saw the handwriting on the wall and an opportunity to prosper even more. David Blackthorn arrived in New York in late 1934 and immediately purchased a large plain brownstone office building on Madison Avenue. From 1934 to 1941 Blackthorn’s representatives began purchasing from a variety of auctions and sales in Switzerland, France and Germany. Most of what they purchased either had been from Jewish dealers fleeing and trying to liquidate their inventory or had been outright plundered by Hitler’s Rosenberg brigades. Tens of millions of dollars exchanged hands. Buying almost up to America’s entrance into the war in December 1942, the New York division shipped out the last purchases within a few days of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

  When the shipments arrived, they had nothing more than coded labels on the crates containing the paintings, sculptures and other precious objects. They disappeared into the basement storage rooms of the building on Madison Avenue and did not appear on any inventory lists. The artworks simply ceased to exist.

  Shortly after the arrival of the last shipment, Michael Cole left England on a Swissair diplomatic flight to Lisbon. He then took a Pan American flying boat to New York, stopping once to refuel in Bermuda. Cole and Blackthorn greeted each other at the LaGuardia Marine Air Terminal. They shook hands warmly, but the sadness in their expressions told the true story: they had plundered the past and defiled a people to mortgage their own future. Both men felt like grave robbers, which was exactly what they turned out to be.

  * * *

  Holliday, Lazarus and Kruger traveled south to Madison, where they dropped the minivan in one of the university parking lots and took an Amtrak bus to Chicago. From there they took the Lake Shore Limited into New York and got a room at the Fifty-seventh Street Holiday Inn. With the stolen minivan and a dead body behind them, traveling by bus and train offered the smallest security risk. At the hotel, Doc Holliday used one of his inexhaustible credit cards and paid for all three rooms.

  Late the next morning they stood at the hot dog stand in front of the Whitney Museum.

  “How do we approach this?” Holliday asked.

  “I called after breakfast and asked for Rupert Sheridan. It turns out he’s one of their top appraisers,” Lazarus said. “I told him I had a Rubens I wanted to sell and asked if he’d give me some help. He said that as long as we sold it through Blackthorn and Cole he’d have no problem. We have a meeting in five minutes.”

  “What do we do while you’re having your meeting?” Holliday asked. “I thought there might be some shock value in confronting him with Hannah.”

  “I’m the copier, remember?” Lazarus said. “We keep Hannah in reserve. Bring her in now and they’ll just shut down everything. This way, we may get them to panic a little.”

  Lazarus walked down the street to the corner, crossed and walked back up to the facade of Blackthorn and Cole. He went up a short flight of steps and through the front door. The interior was an only slightly updated version of the original building. A broad set of granite stairs leading up to the mezzanine’s main auction rooms flanked a wrought-iron cage of an old-fashioned elevator. At the reception desk was an attractive woman in a maroon blazer whose name tag read “Julia Anderson.” There was a modern multiline telephone to her right. Lazarus approached her.

  “My name is Peter Lazarus. I have an appointment with Rupert Sheridan.”

  Ms. Anderson picked up the telephone receiver, punched a few buttons and waited.

  “Mr. Sheridan? I have a Mr. Peter Lazarus in reception for you.” There was a moment’s pause and she hung up. She looked up at Lazarus. “Mr. Sheridan will see you now.” She smiled. “He’s on the fifth floor. Just turn right as you get off the elevator.”

  Lazarus pushed back the scissored door to the old elevator and climbed in. He closed the door and hit the ivory button marked “Five,” then rode up with an almost majestic and equally tedious slowness. When he eventually he reached the fifth floor, he turned right down a broad modern corridor. At the far end on the left there was a small waiting room with a reproduction of Miró’s The Farm on one wall. Another receptionist sat behind a small desk; she too wore a maroon blazer.

  “May I help you?”

  “My name’s Lazarus.”

  “You can go right in.”

  Lazarus gave the maroon blazer a nod and went through the doorway leading to the inner office. The room was large, the floor covered with a variety of Persian and Afghan carpets. The desk was some kind of sixties Swedish thing. The man standing behind the desk was a tall, blond, narrow-faced figure with cheeks that were perfectly shaved. He wore bright blue bifocal half frames and an Armani suit. He held out a hand. There was a Harvard “Veritas” ring on his pinky finger. Lazarus shook the extended hand. Mr. Sheridan’s grip was just a little too soft for Lazarus’s taste and he held for just a little too long. Sheridan motioned toward an Eames-style chair in front of his desk. Lazarus sat.

  “I’m very pleased to meet you,” said the appraiser. “Might I ask which Rubens you wish to sell?”

  “I lied,” said Lazarus with a broad smile. “There is no Rubens.”

  Sheridan looked only slightly startled. “If there is no Rubens, then why are you here?”

  Lazarus reached into the inner pocket of his jacket. He took out his Interpol ID wallet and flipped it open on Rupert Sheridan’s desk. “What can you tell me about your involvement with Hannah Kruger?”

  “Who?” Sheridan asked.

  “You know,” said Lazarus. “The woman who forges Caravaggios and Da Vincis for you.”

  “We haven’t handled a Da Vinci or a Caravaggio at Blackthorn and Cole for a number of years. Real or otherwise.”

  “Your pupils just expanded, there’s sweat at your temples, the blood is going out of your lips and your cheeks look like you’re wearing rouge,” said Lazarus.

  “Perhaps that’s because I find myself confronted by some sort of schizophrenic. I know of no Hannah Kruger or for that matter anyone else who forges paintings for this firm. Please leave immediately.”

  Lazarus stood, scooped up his ID and gave Sheridan another smile. “I’ll be back.”

  He found Holliday and Hannah Kruger on the third floor of the Whitney contemplating Edward Hopper’s dreamlike Woman in the Sun.

  “Did you get it?” Holliday asked.

  “The cat’s among the pigeons,” said Lazarus, taking the phone-cloning device they’d used in Rome out of his jacket pocket.

  * * *

  Rupert Sheridan was on the phone before Lazarus reached the elevators. “I need to see Mr. Blackthorn immediately. We have a problem.”

  Michael Cole, grandson of founder Isaac Cole, had died unmarried and with no heir in 1962. Under the terms of the original partnership agreement, in such a situation the living partner left inherited his share. David Blackthorn had one child, Harrison. The elder Blackthorn and his wife, Sylvia, had died together in a plane crash from Charles de Gaulle to JFK, leaving Harrison as the sole owner of Blackthorn and Cole.

  Harrison Blackthorn kept the same small office on the third floor that his father had used, with the same elegant furnishings. There was a narrow window behind the Georgian desk and a beautiful old coal-burning fireplace on the far wall. The office had dark oak wainscoting and worn
silk wallpaper above. The wallpaper had most likely originally been a dark red, but time had faded it to a pale pinkish hue. To some people entering the office, it was like looking into another time.

  Harrison Blackthorn was a somewhat severe-looking man in his mid-fifties. His crisply cut short hair was graying at the temples. He had his father’s hawklike nose and deep creases on either side of his large mouth. He was broad shouldered and thickening with age but he had obviously been a strong and active man in his youth.

  When Rupert Sheridan burst into Harrison Blackthorn’s office, the older man immediately stood up and went to the small bar made from a converted writing desk. He poured the flustered appraiser two inches of vodka and handed it to him.

  “Sit down, drink this and pull yourself together.” Sheridan drained the glass in a single swallow.

  “You said we had a problem,” said Blackthorn. “What it’s all about?”

  Sheridan spent the next ten minutes explaining the Interpol agent’s sudden appearance and his use of Hannah Kruger’s name.

  “Did he say anything about anyone else?” Blackthorn asked.

  “No,” said Sheridan. “But if he knows about the Kruger woman, he must know everything.”

  “Not necessarily,” said Blackthorn. “But we’ll have to take a few precautions. We’ll have to talk to Bingham in Palm Beach and Scott in Miami. Call them now and tell them that I expect them in this office by ten tomorrow morning.”

  “What about the Leonardo committee?” Sheridan asked.

  “I’ll deal with them myself,” said Blackthorn. He stood up, went to the bar and poured himself a glass of Scotch, dropping two ice cubes into the glass. He lifted the vodka bottle, gesturing toward Sheridan. “A little more?”

  12

  At precisely nine thirty the next morning Rupert Sheridan, Eric Bingham and his partner William Scott, who operated the Miami branch of the Bingham Gallery, sat in Harrison Blackthorn’s office on Madison Avenue.