Restitution

by Lee Vance

  Vladimir pats my back with one hand.

  “Is better,” he repeats. “You are not a man to be killing.”

  47

  “I DON’T UNDERSTAND,” I say weakly.

  I’m back in my chair on the sunporch, my stomach still roiling. Mrs. Zhilina rocks ever so slightly beside me as she gazes out at the ocean.

  “There’s a cup of tea for you,” she says, nodding to a small table between us.

  I pick the cup up and slurp from it, trying to wash the taste of bile from my mouth.

  “Vladimir killed him.”

  “Yes,” she says calmly. “We sent Zeitz a videotape of Lyman’s confession yesterday morning and gave them twenty-four hours either to sign over the TB drug or suffer the consequences. They came back with one condition: that Lyman and his accomplice be silenced. Vladimir wanted to dispose of Lyman earlier, but I saved him for you.”

  Her words make me even queasier. She kept Lyman for me the way she might have kept dinner for Katya or Andrei when they arrived home late as children.

  “You said Zeitz wanted Lyman back alive.”

  “I asked what you would do if that were their condition. Was that why you didn’t kill him?”

  “No,” I say, the conversation too surreal for me to feel indignant.

  “You surprised me by not acting. In your place, I wouldn’t have hesitated.”

  My father would have done it, I realize. In a heartbeat.

  “I don’t know,” I say, confused as to how I feel. “Maybe there are some things I won’t do.”

  She turns her head to fix me with a hard stare.

  “Lyman and his accomplice were small, vicious men. They’ve paid for their crimes. Now it’s time to take revenge on Zeitz. L’Etoile is holding all of William’s stock free and clear, plus two hundred million in cash and the rights to Zeitz’s TB drug. The stock and cash together give you well more than a billion dollars to see the drug into production.”

  “Me?”

  “Of course you,” she says insistently. “Who else is there? I’m too old, Andrei’s near death, neither Emily nor Vladimir are business people, and Katya will be busy with Turndale. That leaves you.”

  “No,” I say. Who does she think she is?

  “Why?” she demands.

  I take another sip from my cup, trying to marshal my thoughts. The tea tastes bitter.

  “Two reasons. First, I don’t know where the money came from, and I don’t trust you to tell me the truth. L’Etoile just spent a billion dollars to buy back the securities Andrei forged, so how can you still have more than a billion of value? And second, because I don’t want to be involved with you, or Vladimir, or anyone else who might be working with you. I don’t like you, and I don’t like the things you’ve done.”

  “Because I had Vladimir shoot the man who murdered your wife? A man you were insistent on killing?”

  “It’s more than that. You mentioned Lyman’s accomplice. His name was Franco, and he was killed by a former cop named Rommy. Someone grabbed Rommy and beat him to death.”

  “Lyman gave us Franco’s name,” she says coolly. “Vladimir was watching the house when Mr. Rommy arrived, and he heard gunshots. If Vladimir hadn’t acted as he did, you’d likely be in a jail cell right now. The gracious thing would be to say thank you.”

  She sounds as if she were discussing the weather. I remember the look on Tilling’s face as she described the damage done to Rommy. The cup and saucer slide from my lap as I stand, smashing on the floor.

  “Let me make it simple,” I say. “I don’t want anything to do with you or your foundation.”

  “You feel competent to judge me,” she says acidly. “Despite your wanting to kill Lyman half an hour ago, the consequences to the rest of the world be damned.”

  “I was wrong. I made a mistake. I don’t want to make another.”

  I walk toward the door.

  “I was innocent,” Mrs. Zhilina says as my hand touches the knob.

  “Of what?” I ask, knowing that I should leave now and never look back.

  “Of everything. I was only nineteen when I first met William Turndale.”

  I turn my head. Mrs. Zhilina’s face is bright in the moonlight. Nothing can change my opinion of her now, but I’d like to know what happened between her and William for Katya’s benefit, if for no other reason.

  “Please,” Mrs. Zhilina says, touching the chair I just vacated with her hand. “If you’re going to judge me, you should know the whole truth.”

  48

  “I HADN’T EXPECTED to hear Professor von Stern’s name from you earlier,” she says. “How did you learn it?”

  I settle back into the rocking chair beside her, not surprised she’s started with von Stern. Whatever happened between her and William began in Berlin, forty-some years ago, when she was von Stern’s student.

  “The bank records I found on Andrei’s computer showed a deposit from a Swiss auction house. A friend of mine was able to tie the deposit back to the sale of the Brueghel that von Stern had lent to Hitler’s collection.”

  “How very enterprising,” she says. “And what did you learn about the Professor, other than his name?”

  “Nothing really. That he was an expert in art conservation, and that his students called him Bon Papa.”

  “The professor was a great Francophile,” she says, not troubling herself to apologize for having feigned ignorance of the nickname yesterday. “The war pained him greatly. He loathed the Nazis.”

  “Which is why he was doing favors for Hitler.”

  “Your generation knows nothing of life under a totalitarian government,” she says dismissively. “Everyone makes the accommodations they have to make.”

  “You’re suggesting he was a good German?”

  “I’m suggesting that he cared about art,” she snaps. “The Nazis formed a committee to purge their museums of entartete kunst, degenerate art. They were burning canvases. Professor von Stern did his best to save what he could.”

  I can’t help wondering if she learned more than just technique from von Stern—maybe she picked up her ethics from him, as well. Perhaps his higher purpose justified his actions, just as she believes her higher purpose justifies hers.

  “So how did von Stern end up with the Linz paintings?” I ask, steering clear of an argument with her.

  “The paintings had been transported from all over Europe. A number were handled quite roughly. In late 1944, the entire collection was moved from Neuschwanstein Castle to a special workroom at the Old National Gallery in Berlin, so the professor could clean and restore them.”

  “There must have been records. Why didn’t anyone ever figure it out?”

  “A cosmic joke,” she says dryly. “Everyone assumes that the Nazis were infallible when it came to paperwork. But the clerk at Neuschwanstein who prepared the movement order was careless. He filled it out backward, writing the origin as the destination and vice versa. It never occurred to the Americans or the Soviets that German paperwork could be wrong, and that the paintings had actually been taken from Neuschwanstein to Berlin rather than the reverse. The Americans spent years drilling holes in the masonry of the castle, confident the paintings were hidden behind a wall or beneath a floor. William Turndale was the only one clever enough to consider the possibility of an error in the records. And, more clever yet, he was the only one to guess why the paintings might have been sent to Berlin in the first place.”

  The loathing in her voice when she speaks William’s name is unmistakable. I’m increasingly curious as to the truth of what happened between them.

  “William knew that Professor von Stern was the preeminent conservator in Germany,” I say. “He sought von Stern out.”

  “He did. The professor had been captured by the Soviets when Berlin fell. The Russians gave him the choice of working for them or being sent to a labor camp. The art was still his priority. He spent the postwar years conserving and cataloging paintings that the Russians had seize
d from the Nazis. By the time William turned up, in the spring of 1960, Professor von Stern was back in his former post at Humboldt University in East Berlin. It was still possible to move between the eastern and western sectors of the city at the time. William began visiting the professor covertly. He flattered him with questions and admiration. Eventually, he mentioned the Linz paintings. He told the professor that he was an American intelligence officer, and he proposed a deal on behalf of the American government. If the professor were to help the Americans gain control of the missing paintings, the Americans would resettle him in the United States. William swore that the American government would make every effort to restore the paintings to their rightful owners, and only keep those canvases that proved unreturnable.”

  “Was there actually a deal with the American government?”

  “Of course not,” she says, looking over at me incredulously. “William wanted the paintings for himself. But he was smart to approach the professor as he did. The professor had withheld his information from the Soviets because he wanted to see the paintings returned to their owners.”

  “So von Stern agreed.”

  “With a single condition. Bon Papa was seventy at the time. The war years had taken a toll on him physically, and he lacked the stamina necessary for the fine work demanded by his craft. I’d been sent to him from the Academy of Arts in Leningrad two years previously, when I was seventeen. Increasingly, it was my hands that he relied on to touch the canvases for him. We’d become very close, like a father and daughter. Bon Papa told William that any deal had to include me, and he took the precaution of insisting that he wouldn’t reveal the location of the paintings until we’d both traveled safely out of East Germany.”

  She’s stopped rocking, her face a mask of pain as she stares through the glass window into the past.

  “William moved quickly. He provided us with identity papers and flew us to Lisbon, where we checked into a hotel. He came to Bon Papa’s room the evening that we arrived. He had tickets to New York for us, on a boat that was leaving the next morning. William had fulfilled his end of the bargain, so Bon Papa told him where the paintings were hidden. William flew into a rage.”

  “Why?”

  “He’d assumed the paintings were concealed in Berlin. In the final days of the war, though, when the city was threatened by Soviet artillery, the professor had secretly transported the collection to Potsdam, where he hid it in the basement of his family’s former hunting lodge. Potsdam isn’t far from Berlin, but it was securely within East German territory in 1960. The American government might have been able to unearth eighty paintings from a basement in East Germany and smuggle them across the border undetected, but William alone hadn’t a chance. He’d failed.”

  Mrs. Zhilina pauses, and I have a terrible premonition about what she’s going to tell me next. I know enough about William to imagine how he would have reacted to failure.

  “William slapped the professor. Bon Papa fell backward and hit his head on a bedpost. He was bleeding. I tried to go to him, but William caught me by the arm and threw me on the bed. He pushed my face down into the bedclothes, smothering me, and began tearing at my dress.…”

  Tears trickle down Mrs. Zhilina’s cheeks. She blots her face with a handkerchief drawn from her sleeve. There’s nothing for me to say.

  “Bon Papa’s skin was cool by the time William left, and the blood beneath his head had begun to congeal. I didn’t know what to do. I was all alone, in a strange country. I managed to get myself on the boat to New York the next morning. I tried to overcome my grief, and to persuade myself that things would somehow be better in America. Within a few weeks of arriving, though, I realized I was pregnant.”

  She takes a deep breath to steady herself.

  “I had no money. I looked for work in a museum or a gallery, but I was unemployable because of my accent and where I’d been trained. Americans weren’t interested in students with Eastern European credentials, and Bon Papa’s name had been stained by his affiliation with the Nazis and the Soviets. It would be years before Germans of his generation were rehabilitated by the art community. A priest at the Orthodox church that had been sheltering me found me a job as a cleaning woman, and helped me locate a place to live. Andrei and Katya were born. I scraped on for four years, working at night while they slept at a neighbor’s. It was too much. I fell asleep one day while they were playing, and Katya burned her arm badly on the stove. I was at my wit’s end. I knew I couldn’t keep on alone.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, torn as much by the image of Katya and Andrei vulnerable as children as by her story.

  “I’d kept up with the art press,” she continues, as if she hadn’t heard me. “I knew that William had returned from Europe and been appointed to the board of the Metropolitan Museum. I went to see him. I told him about Katya and Andrei, and said that if he didn’t help us, I’d go to the newspapers. He replied that the authorities would deport me, that my documents were forgeries. I said I didn’t care. I had nothing more to lose. We reached an understanding.”

  “He supported you.”

  “No,” she says vehemently. “He got me my job at the Met, a job I was more than qualified for. And he gave me enough money to establish a proper household. I insisted it be a loan. My job at the Met didn’t pay much, but once I had access to proper materials, I began making lubok to earn extra money.”

  “Lubok?”

  “Painted prints. Traditional Russian folk art. I distressed my work so the dealers could represent it as prerevolutionary. Older lubok sold for a premium. As my skill progressed, I moved on to icons.”

  She grips the handkerchief tightly in one fist, sounding more assured.

  “That’s how I came to know Vladimir’s father. He was a diplomatic courier who sold lubok and icons, genuine pieces that he smuggled out of Russia. We developed a partnership. He sold my reproductions to collectors in Zurich and London, representing them as originals. A number of my pieces ended up in museums, both here and in Europe. I made more than enough to pay William back, and to look after Katya and Andrei properly. Everything was going as well as I could have hoped. The children grew up. And then one day, Katya phoned me from university, telling me she’d been offered a job at Turndale, and that she’d accepted.”

  Her voice trembles with rage.

  “Why didn’t you tell Katya the truth?” I ask.

  “I was afraid that she might despise me, or worse, that she might form an attachment to William.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “You’ve never been raped,” she says angrily. “You’ve never raised a child so desperate to know her father that she withheld her love from you. Losing Katya to William was the worst thing I could imagine.”

  There’s too much pain in her voice for me to doubt her.

  “You called William?”

  “I did,” she says. “He mocked me, saying he’d take good care of her. I’d made sure Katya and Andrei wouldn’t know him, or how they’d come into the world. I didn’t want them to be burdened. And now he was using that against me. I swore that day to make him pay for everything he’d done. I had one weapon left—I still knew where the Linz art was. The East Germans were using von Stern’s former family lodge as a government dacha, making it impossible to try for the art. I bided my time. In the fall of 1989, the East German government collapsed. Vladimir was working with me by then, and he was able to take advantage of the confusion to recover the paintings before William could act. I waited for the right moment and then sold the Brueghel at auction, hoping to attract William’s attention. He bought the painting and then made inquiries after the seller, sniffing at my bait.”

  “You waited what, almost thirteen years before selling the Brueghel,” I say, confused by the time line. “Why then? Because Andrei was in financial trouble?”

  “Andrei’s clever,” she says reproachfully. “He took money from Turndale, but he never lost anything. The trading records you saw were falsifie
d for William’s benefit.”

  “Which is why the foundation still has more than a billion in assets,” I say, the truth suddenly obvious.

  “Exactly,” she says. “Andrei invested Turndale’s money. Contrary to what you and William believed, he did well. So much so that we were able to pay all the foundation’s expenses, repurchase the counterfeit shares, and still have several hundred million in cash left over.”

  I was a fool. I should have doubted Andrei’s trading records when I first saw them: He lost too much money too quickly. There’s an old trading desk saw that says a great trader’s right just more than half the time, and a terrible trader’s right just less than half. No one could have been as consistently wrong as Andrei’s records indicated he was. My accounting professor was right: All fraud is obvious once you admit the possibility.

  “We wanted William to think Turndale was going to fail,” she says. “He had to be desperate when he negotiated for the art.”

  “So you could get a better price?”

  “That was part of it. The foundation needed sufficient resources to carry out Andrei’s vision. And I had to wrest control of Turndale from William, so I could put Katya in charge. Those are my gifts to them. But more important than the price was that William agree to our conditions for the trade.”

  “What conditions?” I demand, frustrated again at not understanding her.

  “Fifteen years is a long time to wait,” she says. “But eighty paintings by almost as many different artists was a huge undertaking for me. I couldn’t allow William and his experts more than a single night to examine my forgeries.”

  49

  “YOU’VE RUINED WILLIAM,” I say, amazed at the cunning of her revenge.

  “Worse,” she says calmly, beginning to rock again. “I’ve humiliated him. He prided himself on his artistic and financial acumen. I’ve made him a fool.”

  “Where are the real paintings?”

  “They were delivered to the Metropolitan Museum this afternoon, along with all Professor von Stern’s original notes regarding their provenances. The majority should prove returnable. I only wish I could see William’s face when he reads about it in the press. I pray God grants him a long enough life for him to suffer properly with his shame, the way I’ve suffered with mine.”