Stolen Heritage: Gripping Crime Thriller (Private Detective Heinrich Muller Crime Thriller Book 3)

by Robert Brown

  CHAPTER FOUR

  By the end of the day Heinrich had a vocabulary of two hundred words and had learned how to construct sentences using the present, present progressive, simple past, and future tenses. He had also earned Thalia’s respect. They’d had lunch at a little Greek restaurant, wandered around the Classical section of the Met, and sat in Central Park. By the time dinner came around and they’d gone to another Greek restaurant, Heinrich was ordering moussaka and youvetsi with confidence.

  In addition to teaching him some Greek, Thalia filled him in on the gang.

  “They’ve been operating for a couple of years now. Of course, there’s always been looting, but it’s gotten more organized. Montaine says that the core of the group is a gang of thieves and kidnappers who did some time in prison a few years ago. They decided that antiquities was a safer racket than abusing and grabbing people. They absorbed a couple of the smaller antiquities gangs, scared off the others, and now run most of the operations in Greece.”

  “So there’s big money in this?” Heinrich asked. They were wandering through the Met, admiring the artifacts.

  “Oh yes. See this terracotta figurine?” Thalia asked, pointing to a little statue of a woman in a robe that stood about five inches all. “These are quite common. Any small-town museum in Greece has dozens of them. It would sell on the open market for a thousand dollars.”

  “And what about something fancier, like one of these?” Heinrich moved to a case containing several black vases adorned with red figures of clashing warriors and nymphs dancing with satyrs. At the last moment, he realized that he was pointing at one showing a satyr with an immense erection. If Thalia noticed, she didn’t let on.

  “Low five figures. Some even higher.”

  Heinrich let out a low whistle. “Damn. No wonder these thugs will kill to protect their business. But if you guys have so much of this stuff lying around, why not sell a bunch of it and get rid of your national debt?”

  Thalia gave him an appalled look.

  “No?” Heinrich ventured.

  “Of course not! No Greek would ever agree to that. Besides, the government got us into so many billions of euros of debt that even selling the Parthenon wouldn’t pay it off.”

  “Typical politicians,” Heinrich grunted. “So, are you Greek? You sound American.”

  “New York City born and raised,” Thalia said with pride. “But I’ve been back to the old county plenty of times. I’ve run a few excavations there.”

  “Who buys this stuff?” Heinrich asked, admiring a statue of Aphrodite. She wasn’t standing on a globe, so he figured she was the regular, down-to-earth, sexy Aphrodite.

  Thalia shrugged. “All sorts of people. Nouveau riche millionaires in places like Russia and the United States who see it as an investment, and even some wealthy individuals who claim to have a true interest in ancient art. The lower priced items go to regular collectors like you. I’m sure you’ve spent thousands on your record collection, yes?”

  “Sure, but that’s all legal.”

  “Some antiquities are too. Well, sort of. They were excavated a century or more ago and have been changing hands ever since. Back then, it was popular for rich young men to take a Grand Tour of Italy and Greece to see the world and complete their education. Antiquities were legally sold in those times and they each came home with a collection. Some of the artifacts ended up in museums, while others are still in circulation. A lot more antiquities were excavated illegally. It’s a dirty secret of the antiquities trade that the dealers don’t want to talk about.”

  “I’ve heard there are lots of fakes too.”

  “There are. I spotted many fakes in the collector’s fair. We also spotted several items that had been stolen. The Greek government keeps a registry of stolen items. That’s what Professor Christodolou and I were doing at the fair. We had memorized some of the key items and were on the lookout for them. We found a couple. In fact, when Professor Christodolou was killed, he had just spotted an Archaic period statuette that had been taken from a museum near Sparti just six months ago. The dealers who had been selling these things have had their stock confiscated, of course, and Interpol is questioning them. Montaine is handling all that and will tell us if he gets any good leads.”

  “I’m thinking those dealers didn’t know the stuff was stolen. Chances are your gang knows how to forge whatever papers they need.”

  Thalia made a face and nodded. “Mr. Montaine said not to get our hopes up.”

  “Those guys ran a serious risk killing your colleague with so many witnesses like that.”

  “They play rough. I’m sure I’m on their hit list too.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll protect you.”

  Thalia turned and studied him. “Who’s going to protect you? That guy almost split open your head, and his friend tried to run you over.”

  “I’ll be more prepared next time.”

  “I hope so.” Thalia sighed.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We have some leads in Greece. A local collector in Athens has agreed to help us. He’s one of the more honest kind, or at least he likes to think of himself as one. He buys only pieces with a good provenance. He says he’s appalled that archaeological sites are being ripped apart. He’s going to pose as a buyer and try to get some of these thugs to come out of the woodwork. That’s when we’ll pounce.”

  Heinrich studied the woman. She didn’t look like much, just a petite scholarly type, but he saw steel in her. She stood erect and had a hard glint in her eye. Her voice didn’t waver when she talked about stalking the gang of dangerous criminals who had killed her colleague.

  “You’re taking an awful risk just to save a bunch of old bits and pieces,” he said.

  “They’re more than that,” she replied with some heat. “They’re the heritage of my parents’ country, the heritage of the entire Western world! Every artifact is a clue to piecing together the past. When something is taken from a museum, no one can study it anymore. And even worse, the thieves are digging up archaeological sites. That way they don’t have to worry about what they sell being on the stolen artifacts register. Archaeology is an exact science. It’s not just digging up old pots and statues. We can reconstruct how buildings were laid out, or whether a certain type of statue came before another one just by the layers of soil in which they lie. Careful excavation is vital to understanding our past. When thieves rip apart a site looking for treasure, they ruin the record of the past forever.”

  Heinrich was taken aback by the strength of her conviction. Being a college dropout, he’d never had much time for academics. He didn’t think they were educated idiots like a lot of people did. On the contrary, he felt they were wasting their intelligence on pointless research. But to listen to how Thalia Georgiades talked, she was embarked on a noble quest to preserve the history of mankind, and there weren’t too many things more important than that. In his own way, Heinrich was obsessed with the past too. He imagined how he would feel if some gang members was going around smashing all the turn-of-the-century music they could find. It would make him pretty pissed off. This woman was a crusader.

  And a pretty hot one too.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” Thalia demanded.

  “I’m just thinking you’re an admirable woman.”

  Thalia’s eyes narrowed. “I have a boyfriend.”

  Of course you do.

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean, like, if someone was going around destroying every Edison cylinder recording, I’d want to beat their face in.”

  “Cylinder recording?”

  “The first music was recorded by the Edison company on cylinders in the 1880s. It was the most popular medium until about 1910 or so.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Most people don’t. I have an original player from the turn of the century and a small collection of cylinders. You can come over and listen to some if you want.”

  Thalia rolled her eyes. “Come o
ver to my place and listen to my cylinders? That’s a new one.”

  “I don’t mean anything by it. Your boyfriend can come too.”

  She shook her head and grumbled, “Let’s just stick to the job, all right?”

  Heinrich sighed and they continued their tour of the Met. It looked like this was going to be a long case.

  Early the next morning, before he left to meet Thalia at JFK so they could catch their flight to Athens, he Skyped Jan.

  Heinrich had met the kid a year ago in the weirdest place possible—a neo-Nazi rally in Poland. He’d infiltrated the group to help a client solve the murder of her husband, who had possession of documents that supposedly pointed to the location of a fabled Nazi gold train hidden during the war’s last days. The march had been attacked by Communists, whom Heinrich hated only slightly less than Nazis, and he’d had to haul a teenaged Nazi skinhead from the fight.

  That was Jan—a belching, shoplifting, glue-sniffing mess of a kid who had, oddly enough, helped him crack the case. It turned out the gold train didn’t have any gold, so Heinrich didn’t end up a multimillionaire. Instead, he ended up being a pseudo-stepdad to a Polish problem child.

  Not a bad deal overall. Thanks to equally fucked-up parents, Heinrich had been a lot like Jan at his age. He wished he’d had someone come along and show him the right way to live, and to be admitted into a halfway house for unwanted kids where he could get a second chance at childhood. That would have saved Heinrich some pretty grim years.

  Of course, Jan didn’t have his own computer with access to Skype. The halfway house strictly monitored the Internet; otherwise the little bastards would be looking at porn twenty-four hours a day. There was only one house computer they could use. Heinrich had set up certain times when he would call, and Jan would be there to answer. Therefore, he was surprised when the camera turned on and he saw one of the monitors instead.

  “Oh crap,” Heinrich said in Polish. “What happened?”

  “Nothing worse than usual, Mr. Muller. He’s been acting out in class and not doing his homework.”

  “Damn it,” Heinrich muttered under his breath. Out loud he asked, “Where is he now? Is he in detention or something?”

  The monitor looked uncomfortable. “No. He said he didn’t want to speak with you.”

  “What? Why not?”

  The monitor shrugged. “I don’t know. He isn’t speaking much. He’s been in a serious depression since you left. It’s all highs and lows with that kid.”

  Heinrich sighed. “Could you try to get him to come on?”

  “I’ll try, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

  The monitor stood up and moved out of view. For a couple of tense minutes, Heinrich was left staring at the wall of a room in Poland. Another one of the teen boys walked by, peered into the camera, and flipped him off. A barked command from one of the monitors sent him scurrying away.

  At last Jan appeared. He slumped in the chair and didn’t look at the camera.

  “Hey buddy,” Heinrich said, putting on a cheerful voice.

  “Hey,” Jan replied without enthusiasm.

  “How you been?”

  Shrug.

  “Keeping out of trouble? The monitor says you haven’t gotten in any fights for a while. That’s great.”

  Another shrug.

  “Hey, check this out.” Heinrich held up the Airfix model. “I’ll ship this to you tomorrow. Got it at one of those boring collectors’ fairs like the one I dragged you to in Warsaw.”

  That got a flicker of interest.

  “Cool. Thanks.”

  “Oh, and I got some even better news. I have another case, this time in Greece. It pays really well. Once I’m done I’ll come visit you.”

  Another flicker of interest. It quickly died.

  “Cool,” Jan said without enthusiasm.

  Heinrich didn’t say anything for a moment, unsure how to proceed.

  “So what would you like to do?”

  Another shrug. Jan was looking at something off-screen.

  “We could go to the zoo again. Or how about another castle? You like those. The weather must be getting warmer there. We could go swimming. No peeing in the pool, though. Promise?”

  “Whatever.”

  Heinrich paused again, hurt. Before he could control himself, he snapped out, “What? Don’t you want me to come?”

  Jan finally looked at the camera. He glared at Heinrich, the only adult in his life outside the halfway house who’d showed any interest in him.

  “What difference does it make? You’ll just leave. You come here on vacation and act like you’re being all generous with me, and then you go back to your friends in New York!”

  Jan stormed off. Heinrich sat in his chair, deflated.

  So that was it. Heinrich thought he was doing some good for the kid but all he had done was raise Jan’s hopes and then knock them down again. Jan had never had any consistency in his life, and Heinrich was following that same old pattern.

  The monitor sat in front of the camera again.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Muller, but he’s gone to his room. He’s been like this every time you’ve left after one of your visits. Just before you come he’s happy and attentive and his discipline problems go down. As soon as you leave, he falls into a slump.”

  “What do you suggest I do?”

  The monitor shook his head. “I don’t know what you can do. You live in another country. The two months you managed to stay in Warsaw was the best we’ve ever seen Jan. You saw his progress yourself. Then he fell and fell hard. I suppose it’s because he got used to having you around and wasn’t prepared for the shock of your leaving. You have to remember, Mr. Muller, that while Jan has been through a lot, he’s still a child in many ways. He doesn’t understand why you can’t stay. He takes it as a rejection.”

  “He knows he’s important to me,” Heinrich objected.

  “On one level, yes, but on another level he sees you come and go and he knows you have other priorities in life. We understand, and we think you’re trying to do a noble thing, but Jan doesn’t understand.”

  “Trying to do” a noble thing. Oh, crap.

  “What do you suggest I do?” Heinrich said again.

  The monitor paused, looking uncomfortable. The moments stretched out.

  “Well, Mr. Muller, the staff have been discussing this. We don’t think these ups and downs are good for Jan’s progress. Now we know you mean well, but—”

  “Wait a minute!”

  “—but we feel it might be better for him if he had some more stability. Despite all your good intentions, you can’t give that to him. We think it would be better if you didn’t come anymore.”

  Heinrich stared at the monitor, stunned. When he didn’t say anything, the monitor continued.

  “We’re very sorry, Mr. Muller, but I think in the end it’s for the best. We know you want Jan to grow up well-adjusted and happy. Sadly, this will be the best way forward.”

  “What if I move to Warsaw?”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible, Mr. Muller.”

  Heinrich almost blurted out Montaine’s promise but held back. He didn’t want to tell them about that until it was a sure thing, which it wasn’t. If he solved this case, and if Montaine was good with his word, Heinrich might be able to move to Warsaw, but it would be unfair to get Jan’s hopes up.

  “Can I still text him and send him things?” Heinrich asked.

  The monitor shifted in his seat. “I suppose, but please don’t mention another visit. And the way he is now, I think it would be best if you kept a bit of distance for a while until he adjusts to the reality of not having you here.”

  Heinrich knew a dismissal when he heard one. The monitor wanted Heinrich to ease back, thinking that would be best for everyone involved. He figured Heinrich would eventually accept this, lose interest in Jan, and move on. Jan was already drifting apart from him. A few more emails, a few more gifts in the mail, and then what? If he didn’t
visit on a regular basis, Heinrich would stop being the role model and father figure the kid so desperately needed. He would become some abstraction over the sea, unneeded and unremembered.

  Heinrich couldn’t accept that.

  But he’d have to unless he somehow managed to move to Warsaw.

  He had to get this case done fast or he’d lose the only thing resembling a family he’d ever had.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Unlike some of his previous clients, the Greek government was cheap and they had to fly coach. At least that got him snuggled up against Thalia. Heinrich was beginning to suspect she didn’t have a boyfriend. When she’d made three calls from the terminal, one was to her mother, another was to some colleague who had offered to take over her classes, and the third was to Montaine. People going on dangerous overseas missions tended to reserve their last call for the person they cared about most.

  She kept up the facade, though, occasionally dropping mentions of “John,” who didn’t seem to have any distinguishing characteristics except for the fact that he supposedly existed. Heinrich decided not to challenge her. He’d wear her down soon enough.

  The language was helping. All the way across the Atlantic, he peppered her with questions. Like everyone else, she was amazed by his ability. Languages were as natural to him as breathing. If someone told him a vocabulary word, he would repeat it a few times until it was ingrained in his mind, never to be lost. His brain was simply wired that way. Heinrich considered himself a fairly intelligent guy, but not a genius by any stretch of the imagination. Only with languages did he rise above the herd. That and being a capable amateur boxer at an age when most men were working on their beer guts.

  Eventually, Thalia drifted off the sleep, keeping rigidly vertical at first. She’d been trying to avoid physical contact the whole flight – not an easy thing to do in coach. Heinrich watched with interest as her face relaxed. She looked much more attractive when she wasn’t stressed and nervous about the murder and their mission. He smiled as she tilted to the right and ended up with her head on his broad shoulder.