Michelangelo_s Notebook fr-1

by Paul Christopher

  And that fair woven net of gold refined

  Rests on her cheek and throat in happiness.”

  Finn stepped back, blushing, realizing that she’d been standing much too close to Valentine while they read. “It’s one of his sonnets to his mistress, Clarissa Saffi. She was a courtesan, actually.”

  “The first one he wrote about her, if I remember correctly,” agreed Valentine. “You’re very good.”

  “You’re not bad yourself,” she said, taking another step away, grabbing her hair nervously and holding it against her neck. “Most people don’t even known he wrote poetry.”

  “Everyone wrote poetry back then,” said Valentine, smiling and showing off his large square teeth.

  He turned back to the screen. “I think poetry took the place of game shows.” He played with the keyboard again. “Now let’s see if we can get them to match up.” Slowly he used the mouse to drag the writing from the drawing across and atop the other one. He fiddled with the mouse, clicking it from time to time, then entered a series of instructions. The screen cleared again, split down the middle with five individual letters on each side:

  Valentine then used the mouse to drag one set of letters so that they covered the first:

  A

  E

  I

  O

  U

  “Looks like a match to me,” said Finn.

  “Me too,” said Valentine. “I’d say your drawing was definitely a Michelangelo.” He stared at the screen. “Certainly the handwriting is the same.” He paused. “Did Delaney tell you how Crawley was killed?”

  “He said he was strangled but somebody stuck some kind of ritual dagger in his mouth.” Finn made a face. “I didn’t like Mr. Crawley, but it still sounds gross.”

  “This ritual dagger, what kind was it-do you remember?”

  “He called it a koummya or something.”

  “Spanish. Andalusian. Sometimes from southern Morocco.”

  “You know everything?”

  “A little bit about a lot,” he said. “That’s what makes me dangerous.”

  “You’re dangerous?”

  “I can be.”

  Finn went back to her chair and sat down again. “So now what do we do?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly,” he murmured, still staring at the screen. “This is interesting but…”

  “It’s not the kind of evidence we can take to the police.”

  “It’s all electronic, for one thing. There’s no actual drawing. Did Delaney mention anything about finding it in Crawley’s office?”

  “No. He kept on asking me where I saw it last, I kept on telling him Crawley had it in his hand.” She frowned. “I think he figures I stole it.”

  “There must be surveillance cameras.”

  “There are. I don’t know if I’m on them. If I am then that’ll prove I didn’t take it.”

  “But it would also prove you photographed them,” said Valentine, “which might be enough reason to come after you at your apartment.”

  “I thought of that, but it still doesn’t make any sense. It’s as though the very existence of the drawing, phony or not, is evidence of something… something worth killing for.”

  “It’s like I said about going around in circles.” Valentine smiled. “Eventually you get to the little dot of truth at the middle of the vortex. Which I think perhaps you just did.”

  “What truth?”

  “The existence of the drawing is worth killing for.”

  “What kind of truth is that?”

  “A dangerous one.”

  16

  The man in the priest’s collar got off the Delta flight from Rome at three fifteen, ran his small black fiber suitcase through the machines and then showed his Vatican passport to a hard-eyed uniformed INS man. The passport identified him as Father Ricardo Gentile and his occupation as priest, which seemed fairly self-evident. In fact none of the information on the passport was true, and the passport itself, although genuine, did not exist on any records at the Vatican passport office in Rome. The INS man handed him back the passport after a brief glance then gave him an “I am the first line of defense in the war against terrorism” nod and allowed him into the United States.

  Father Gentile followed the crowds out into the afternoon sunlight, picked up a cab and told the Nigerian driver to take him to the JFK Holiday Inn. He avoided speaking to the driver in his native Anaang although he spoke it fluently; the last thing he wanted to do was make an impression on anyone at this point. As usual the dog collar was bad enough.

  The drive took only a few minutes and by three forty-five Father Gentile was checked into the office building slab of the hotel at the junction of the Van Wyck Expressway and the Belt Parkway. The room was narrow, simply furnished and small. The color scheme was predominantly a grape-tinted purple. His window looked out over some sort of Japanese garden. He couldn’t have cared less. He swished the blinds closed and switched on the desk light. There was no overhead; it was something he’d been noticing recently on his travels, the lack of overhead lighting. He went to the closet, found the hard-shell suitcase that had been left for him earlier that afternoon and unlocked it with the key that had been Fed-Exed to him the day before in Rome. He removed the contents, which included two suits, several Arrow shirts in different colors, still in their wrapping, a pair of black James Taylor and Son elevator shoes that added two inches to his height and a Glock 21 10mm automatic pistol with a fifteen-round law enforcement magazine and a Patrick Johnakin muzzle-up spring-loaded shoulder rig to go with it. He stripped off his priest’s clothes, redressed-complete with the Glock and holster-then neatly placed everything into the hard-shell suitcase and locked it again.

  He reached inside the pocket of the suit jacket and withdrew two wallets, one large and European, the other an ordinary American-style bill-fold. The large wallet identified him as Peter Ruffino, an Italian agent of the Art Recovery Tactical Squad (ARTS), which was itself a division of Allied International Intelligence, or Alintel, a worldwide concern representing everybody from Lloyds to the British Museum, including several royal families, dozens of major corporations and even a few governments.

  The other wallet was filled with the Homeland Security credentials of one Laurence Gaynor MacLean. Both sets of documents were authentic and subjectible to deep background checks. As Father Gentile was well aware, despite endless denials of its existence, the Vatican secretary of state had the single-longest-running intelligence department in the world, an organization that in one form or another had existed since St. Peter came to Rome and underground Christians had chalked the sign of the fish on catacomb walls. Documents and the “legends” to go with them were never a problem. Gentile decided on the Homeland Security persona of good old Larry MacLean, working for a minute in front of the bathroom mirror to spin away his Italian accent and replace it with something vaguely Midwestern, then left the room.

  He went down to the lobby, asked for a taxi to take him into the city and half an hour later he was in Manhattan, checking into the Gramercy Park Hotel and telling the desk clerk that Delta had lost his luggage once again. He registered as Laurence G. MacLean and paid with a Bank of America Visa check card that was hooked into what was effectively a bottomless well. He spent ten more minutes in front of the bathroom mirror of his suite practicing a flat Kansas drawl, then left the hotel and began to work.

  17

  The store was called simply “Maroc” and occupied a tiny space on Lafayette Street about three blocks away, at the corner of Grand. A tinkling bell announced Finn and Valentine as they entered. It was like some kind of doorway that took them halfway across the world-the air was suddenly full of the scent of cumin, caraway and cinnamon, the walls hung with rugs of every size and color, tables piled on tables, stacks of everything from baskets to ancient muskets-all of it overseen by a fat man at the back smoking an oval cigarette and wearing a fez, dressed in a pure white linen suit that made him look as though he’d just ste
pped out of Casablanca. Finn expected Humphrey Bogart to appear at any minute with Ingrid Bergman right behind him. Valentine gave the man a small Islamic salutation and the man replied in kind. He looked at Finn curiously and Valentine introduced them.

  “Finn Ryan, this is my friend Hassan Lasri.”

  “Salaam,” said Finn, doing her best. Lasri smiled.

  “Actually it is Shalom, since I am a Juif Maroc as they say in that other language of my nation, but it was a good effort.” He smiled again. “I am like a well-trained dog-I answer to any number of calls, especially from such a pretty checroun as yourself.”

  “Checroun?”

  “Redhead. They are said to be particularly lucky, among other things, and since my own name brings me nothing but bad luck…” He shrugged.

  “Lasri means left-handed in Arabic,” Valentine explained.

  “The worst kind of luck for an African like myself I’m afraid, but maybe you’ll bring me better.” He gestured toward a pair of ornately carved chairs and they sat down. He snapped his fingers incredibly loudly and a young man appeared in a long white robe and a small white embroidered cap. He gave Finn one wide-eyed appreciative look, then turned to Lasri, who spoke in rapid-fire Arabic for a few moments. The young man nodded, gave Finn another look and then disappeared.

  “That is my nephew, Majoub. Clearly he is madly in love with you.”

  Finn could feel herself blushing.

  “Have no cause for embarrassment. You are very beautiful, it is true, and a wonderful example of a checroun, with sprinklings of freckles like stars and skin like milk, but I’m afraid Majoub would fall in love with a female chimpanzee if one came in the door. He is at that age. Harmless, believe me.” A few minutes later the young man was back with an enameled tray loaded down with three small cups, a Moroccan coffeepot and a plate of something brown, sticky and very fattening. Majoub cast a final glance at Finn, sighed and then disappeared for good. Hassan poured the coffee, spooning a tooth-aching amount of sugar into each cup and then passed around the plate of sticky brown things. “I have no idea what Majoub calls these but they are made from toffee and pecans and cashew nuts and are supposedly good for one’s prostate. You do not have to worry about such things, Finn, but we men must look to our health.” He grinned, popped two of them into his mouth one after the other and then washed them down with a swallow of coffee. Finn took a small bite out of the corner of one of the little bars and felt twenty years of careful dentistry in serious jeopardy. They were delicious.

  “Now then,” said Hassan, “what is it that I can help you with today?”

  “A man was killed yesterday. A ritual dagger was used. A koummya.”

  “Oh yes,” said Hassan, nodding. “The director of the museum.”

  “You’ve heard about this already?” asked Finn, startled.

  “Americans are Americans, Arabs are Arabs-even Jewish Arabs like me. You think the world runs one way. We know it runs another. When a koummya is used to still someone’s tongue that is Moroccan business, Moroccan news, therefore we hear about it quickly.” He smiled with a twinge of sadness. “These days it is better for people with large noses and dark skin to have their story straight before the men from Homeland Security show up at your door with your ticket to the Guantanamo Hilton.”

  “Tell us about the koummya,” said Valentine.

  “The koummya, or sometimes called the khanjar, comes from the northern part of the country. It is usually thought of as a right of passage, a sign of a boy’s admission into manhood, you know?”

  Valentine nodded. Finn waited. She thought about having another one of the little gooey pecan-cashew-toffee things and then decided against it. Just as Hassan Lasri produced a little silver box and lit another one of his oval cigarettes Finn found herself wishing she smoked. No smoking, no drinking, no pecan-cashew-toffee things and no sex-she might as well be a nun.

  Lasri took a long drag on his cigarette, blew the smoke out of his wide hairy nostrils and popped another square into his mouth. He chewed and looked thoughtfully at Finn. “Of course,” he continued, his mouth still half full, “the koummya had another purpose.”

  “What was that?” asked Finn.

  “Other than being used for circumcisions-Arabs and Jews alike circumcise their children, you know-it is only the Christian and Asian infidels who do not-other than that, the dagger was used to cut out the tongues of traitors. Traditionally, that is; I haven’t heard of it being done recently. ‘To still the tongues of traitors’ is the official terminology.”

  “Could that have applied to Crawley?” asked Finn.

  “How should I know, my dear? I never met the man. I do, however, know where that particular koummya came from.”

  “How?”

  “A policeman showed me a picture of it this morning. A man named Delaney. He was apparently aware that I was head of the local Moroccan Friendship Alliance. At any rate, I told him what the dagger was, its background and uses.”

  “And whom it belonged to?” asked Valentine.

  “He didn’t ask me.”

  “But you know.”

  “Of course. Except for the cheap tourist-quality knives they sell in the souks in Marrakech and Fez and Casablanca and the like, a properly made koummya-especially a Moorish one of great antiquity-is as personal as a fingerprint.” He grinned broadly and popped yet another square into his mouth. Finn drank more coffee. “Not to mention the fact that the owner’s name is usually embossed in silver on the hilt or the scabbard.” He smiled. “Mr. Delaney, of course, does not read Arabic.”

  Finn’s brain was beginning to cloud over from the wreaths of smoke wafting around the store from the man’s cigarettes. He swallowed, drank the last of his coffee, tonguing up a mouthful of the fine-grained grounds at the bottom of the cup and smiled again. “The grounds are very good for the colon, you know,” he said. “Moroccan men have a very low incidence of colon cancer.” He opened his silver box, took out another cigarette and lit up. Here was a classic example of what they called an oral-compulsive back in psych 101. “On the other hand,” he continued, “they have a horribly high incidence of lung cancer.” Lasri coughed harshly as though making his point.

  “The dagger,” murmured Valentine.

  “It came from the collection of a young men’s private school in Connecticut,” said the man.

  “The name of the school?” asked Valentine.

  “Greyfriars,” said Lasri, eyeing the last gooey square on the plate. “The Greyfriars Academy.”

  18

  He entered the room and went through his ritual with the uniform. Naked, he crossed the room to his chair and sat down. He examined the leather cover of the book as he always did when he came here and then opened it carefully, turning the pages filled with minute but perfectly clear script, pausing every now and again to whisper the words like hateful prayers: “Genus humanum quod constat stirpibus tantopere inter se diferentibus non est origine unum descendus a protoparentibus numero iisdem.”

  For it was true: all men were different, their origins different, some base, some blessed, some damned from birth. Some were born as demons, others as saints. Since the words were immutable and divine they could not be argued with and so, by their very nature, following those words would be the act of a divine. It was all so simple when the order of it all could be seen.

  He turned the page and the farm stood before him as it had been, the photographs fading now, the faces gray, but full of life in memory. He knew each one like a brother. Patterson in his glasses like that Beatle who was shot wore, Dorm, the guy they called Dormouse, Winetka, Bosnic, Teitelbaum and Reid. Pixie Mortimer, Hayes, Terhune, Dickie Biearsto. He could see them all, cold in the late winter chill, slipping up through the forest, ten guys from the forty-four playing baby-sitter to a bunch of art freaks from back home. But in the end they all smartened up, didn’t they? They were spies first and art types second and they’d all been in the fucking war long enough to know that war was for what you
could get out of it once you got by the survival part. War was a game of bullies and bastards, not heroes.

  There it was, right in front of him, the Altenburg farm and beyond it the little tumbledown Benedictine abbey called the Althof, long abandoned for want of monks or nuns in a part of the world that had forgotten that God had ever existed. Rain was coming down, cold and thin, the way his blood felt and he dropped his neck a little farther down into the collar of his jacket, not that it did much good. He was soaked through, his nose was running and he couldn’t keep a cigarette lit for more than a few seconds before it fizzled out on him.

  They’d come down out of the mountains at last, moving through the trees down whatever goat paths they could find. There had been no way to stick together, and eventually the squad had come apart like a crumbling piece of old stone. There were ten noncoms, all with Garands and.45s; Pixie, the skinny fruit from Jersey City carrying a thirty-cal. across his back like he was Christ, and Dick Hayes, the wild-hair bald guy carrying the mortar and talking about what he’d really like to do-and I mean really like to do would be to slllide it into that Greer Garson babe-and he’d felt that way ever since he saw her in Mrs. Miniver. When Pixie told him she’d married the guy who played her son in the movie he almost shit and told Pixie that before the war was over he’d find an excuse to cut his fuckin’ good-for-nothing nuts off. Ten right guys and the three spooks from the ALIU, the Art Looting Investigation Unit, which everybody knew was part of the OSS and all they really wanted to do was catch Nazis with their hands in the cookie jar. McPhail, Taggart and Cornwall. McPhail thought he was some kind of big shit with his Boston accent and that funny Skull and Bones signet ring he wore; Taggart talked to himself, and Cornwall didn’t talk to anyone, he just had that notebook of his out all the time, writing. Altogether a weird crew.

  Dick Hayes, the bald guy with the mortar took the first hit. It was one of those Russian SVT-40s the Germans liked so much; it had that flat, slap-in-the-face sound that hardly left an echo, even in that kind of countryside. Hayes was just ahead of him and to the right and the sergeant saw his whole right arm blown off at the shoulder leaving nothing but some blood and bone and some white twisted things he figured were tendons. Then that sound like someone dropping the lid on a child’s desk in grade school and then Hayes just dropped and the way he was lying you could look into his rib cage and see his lung and his heart swimming around in a lot of blood and purple stuff. One shot and he was gone and that was it for him and any chance with Greer Garson.