P.S. You boys are both so much fun.
“Tell me,” Darger said after a long silence. “Did Tawny sleep with you?”
Surplus looked startled. Then he placed paw upon chest and forthrightly, though without quite looking Darger in the eye, said, “Upon my word, she did not. You don’t mean that she –?”
“No. No, of course not.”
There was another awkward silence.
“Well, then,” Darger said. “Much as I predicted, we are left with nothing for all our labors.”
“You forget the silver ingots,” Surplus said.
“It is hardly worth bothering to …”
But Surplus was already on his knees, groping in the shadows beneath Tawny’s bed. He pulled out three leather cases and from them extracted three ingots.
“Those are obviously …”
Whipping out his pocketknife, Surplus scratched each ingot, one after the other. The first was merely plated lead. The other two were solid silver. Darger explosively let out his breath in relief.
“A toast!” Surplus cried, rising to his feet. “To women, God bless ’em. Constant, faithful, and unfailingly honest! Paragons, sir, of virtue in every respect.”
In the distance could be heard the sound of a window breaking. “I’ll drink to that,” Darger replied. “But just a sip and then we really must flee. We have, I suspect, a conflagration to avoid.”
David W. Ball
They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but the desire to possess beauty, particularly when it’s worth a great deal of cash, can bring you up against some very unsavory characters indeed …
A former pilot, sarcophagus maker, and businessman, David W. Ball has traveled to more than sixty countries on six continents, crossed the Sahara Desert four times in the course of researching his novel Empires of Sand, and explored the Andes in a Volkswagen bus. Other research trips have taken him to China, Istanbul, Algeria, and Malta. He’s driven a taxi in New York City, installed telecommunications equipment in Cameroon, renovated old Victorian houses in Denver, and pumped gasoline in the Grand Tetons. His bestselling novels include the extensively researched historical epics Ironfire and the aforementioned Empires of Sand, and the contemporary thriller China Run. He lives with his family on a small farm in Colorado, where, after a writing hiatus of nearly a decade, he is back at work, growing tall tales.
PROVENANCE
David W. Ball
The letter arrived at the Wolff Gallery in New York with the usual catalogs and gallery announcements. It was marked “Personal,” so Max’s secretary left it on his desk, unopened.
Max slit the envelope with his good hand and removed a note, handwritten but neat. “Dear Mr. Max Wolff,” it said. “I hear you know a lot about fancy paintings and can sell them sometimes. I have one that I’m not sure is worth much, but thought you ought to take a look and if you are ok with it we could maybe do some business. On the quiet, of course. If you are interested, please send a note at the post office box below. Sincerely, L.M.”
Then Max saw the photograph. He blinked, disbelieving. He felt a fullness in his chest, a surge of pleasure and shock and sadness. He swept aside the clutter of papers on his desk and set the photo on the blotter. He opened a drawer and felt for the magnifying glass, then bent close to the desk.
The photograph had been taken in poor light by an amateur, but that didn’t make any difference. Max knew this painting, as any student of art history would know it. It was a beautiful and cursed creation, the work of a madman.
And it had been missing since the Second World War.
He straightened up, eyes watering. He felt light-headed and fumbled in his vest for one of his pills.
Max did not hear his secretary say good night, did not realize that dusk had turned to dark, as his mind churned through the sweep of its history, of Nazis and the Stasis, of arms dealers and Roman Catholic cardinals. So much violence and corruption in its past. He knew clearly then what must be the next stop in its long and troubled journey.
His good hand trembling, Max Wolff picked up the phone.
On a Sunday morning two weeks later Max waited for a client in a private study just off the sanctuary of the Risen Savior Church in Colorado Springs.
He sat in an overstuffed chair that nearly swallowed his small frame. Despite the sound-deadened walls he could hear the thunder and feel the building shake as four thousand impassioned souls in the sanctuary next door stomped and clapped and laughed and cried and sang, as the service rose to a crescendo.
The Reverend Joe Cooley Barber was in the business of saving souls, and business was brisk. With charisma, looks, and a voice born for a microphone, he had created an empire that spanned forty-seven countries on six continents. His Sunday Believers program, a folksy mix of parable and gospel, was simulcast in sixty-eight languages. He had seventeen books in print, all perennial best sellers. His media division sold CDs, videos, and T-shirts, every product carrying a Risen Savior hologram to thwart counterfeits.
He employed nearly a thousand people and had almost as many accountants and MBAs working for him as there were members of his choir: precisely 229, a number chosen from a revelation he’d had at a low point in his life when—drunk, destitute, and desperate—he dropped his Bible and it fell open to page 229 of the New Testament. On that page he read the second verse of the third epistle of John: “Prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” Joe Cooley chose to give the word “prosper” its modern meaning, and from this passage sprang his signature refrain: “God wants us wealthy.”
He was not the first of the prosperity preachers, but he was the best (“a bit more satin than Satan,” he liked to say), and he lived what he preached: he owned a Gulfstream Jet, a small fleet of cars including an Aston Martin and a Bentley, and what he liked to describe as “a modest little horse farm in Kentucky” where he raised Thoroughbreds. “I am not an end-of-times preacher,” he said. “I am a best-of-times preacher.”
With such success came controversy. For every dollar he took in from ministry, Joe Cooley Barber earned five from offshore corporations, all cloaked behind an impenetrable web of ownership. Amid allegations that a mere thirty cents of every dollar went toward missionary work, half a dozen investigations had been launched by the IRS, the Justice Department, and various congressional committees. A defiant Joe Cooley Barber was fond of pointing out that not one shred of evidence of wrongdoing had ever been proven against him. “I am just a simple God-fearing humanitarian,” he said. He had fed tens of thousands of hungry souls throughout Asia and Africa. Millions of Risen Savior malaria pills saved babies in Bangladesh and Botswana. Annual missions taught modern agricultural techniques to farmers in Malawi and Tanzania, providing tractors and seed to help the multitudes help themselves. He built churches in Zambia and opened new schools in Zaire.
“A plague of pissants,” was the way he privately described the prosecutors and politicians who hounded him. Yet he relished their attention and prospered from it. The more they complained, the more the money poured in. “Your dollars pave the road to your salvation,” Joe Cooley preached to the television cameras. “Your dollars are God’s judgment on our ministry.”
“Max, my friend!” Joe Cooley said, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he fairly burst into the room half an hour later. “I’m sorry to keep you.”
“Not at all,” Max said. “Quite a production. I’ve never seen you work before.”
Joe Cooley gave a broad smile. “You Jewish?”
“No.”
“Then why aren’t you here every week?”
“It would be a long commute. Perhaps if you sent your jet.”
“No need!” Joe Cooley went into the private bathroom to freshen up. “I’m as close as your television dial.” He emerged, wiping his hands. “But now, to business. I could hardly believe your call.” He lowered his voice a little. “Can it be? A Caravaggio?”
Max nodded. “There are perhaps ninety of his paintings in
the world. I thought of you the moment it came into my hands.”
“I take it this one is off the radar?”
“Definitely one for your private collection,” Max said. “If you want it, that is.”
“Let’s go to the studio,” the preacher said, extending a hand to help Max up. The art dealer picked up his cane. His right hand was gnarled, the fingers crabbed and crippled. He slung the briefcase strap over his shoulder and picked up a large leather portfolio.
Joe Cooley’s eyes widened. “Tell me you don’t have it right there in that case,” he said. “What balls!”
“Hardly,” Max said. “It is well packed, and your men have been with me the whole way. Besides, I don’t look much like a mark. I once carried $5 million across Manhattan in this briefcase. All anyone tried to do was help me cross the street.”
“I’m not so trusting,” Joe Cooley said, “but I see your point.” Max was in his early seventies, standing just over five feet tall. He always wore a grey fedora. Years spent in study, sifting through historical records and peering at art, had made his eyes so bad that the thick lenses of his glasses distorted his features. He looked like a kindly old bookkeeper. Despite all that, Joe Cooley knew he was a tough negotiator with shrewd business sense. Max ran a highly respected art gallery and was a regular at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. His most lucrative business, however, was done in the netherworlds of commerce, a world in which men who shunned publicity bought and sold art, or used it in lieu of cash to leverage large purchases of drugs or arms. Max could find the paintings and arrange the deals.
They climbed in a golf cart for the ride across the complex. Risen Savior occupied a seventy-acre campus near the Garden of the Gods. Along with the church there were foundation offices, the broadcasting studio, a Christian college, and a museum. As the cart whisked them through statuary gardens and past contemplation pools, Joe Cooley returned the waves and the shouted greetings of parishioners who were enjoying the sunny day.
The museum was Joe Cooley Barber’s pride and joy. He loved beautiful things, things that shouted out the glory of God. He believed there was no greater homage to the Almighty than to collect images that glorified Him and His holy word. Its galleries brimmed with religious art from every age: stained glass, Greek icons, illustrated manuscripts and early Christian scrolls, a Giotto, several Rembrandts, a Rubens, and an El Greco. Then there were Joe Cooley’s own oil paintings, mostly depictions of biblical prosperity tales, of Job and Solomon. To Max they stood out like pustules on the gallery walls, but they were among the most popular exhibits.
They entered Joe Cooley’s hideaway, a combination studio and study, with picture windows overlooking the grounds. Besides a large conference table there were workbenches, easels, and bookshelves filled with rare Bibles and rich leather volumes.
Max set the portfolio on the table, undid the snaps, and removed the inner case. The painting rested snugly in a bed of soft white cotton. Max laid back the cloth, gently lifted the painting, and set it on the easel. He stepped to the wall and flipped a switch, bathing the work in soft light.
The young shepherd David, sword in one hand, was lifting the bloody head of Goliath, the Philistine warrior. Goliath’s face was frozen in death, eyes and mouth open, forehead gashed, blood dripping from his severed neck. Joe Cooley Barber stared in silent awe, transfixed. “It’s smaller than I imagined,” he said quietly. “And darker.”
Max removed several thick binders from his briefcase. “I’ve brought documentation on the provenance, of course,” he said, setting them out on the table, then extracting folders which appeared to contain clippings, books, and handwritten notes.
Joe Cooley knew Max didn’t need the notes; those were for him. “My friend the professor begins,” he said. “Better have a drink. Whisky? Wine?”
“Just water.” The preacher poured whisky for himself and water for Max, and pulled up a chair.
“His work could be quite gruesome—beheadings, like this one. Assassinations, betrayals, martyrdoms, all caught at the instant of perfect revelation. It was his gift, capturing that moment. He painted this scene at least four times over the course of his career, each representing a progression in his maturity, expressed in the two faces,” Max said. “This was probably the second version, in which there is pride in David’s expression, but also deep humility—the triumph of the kingdom of heaven over the forces of Satan.”
Max ran his crippled hand just above the canvas, lovingly following Caravaggio’s lines, picturing the artist at work. “So sure of himself he rarely used sketches, like other artists. He painted directly from life. He left pentimenti, sharp creases in the paint—you can see traces here, and here. Such genius, do you see?—and all of it done so quickly that some said his work flowed as if from the hand of God. And the light! Look how the flesh runs to shadow, blood red runs to black, light runs to darkness and to death. Such mastery of light—or of the darkness, depending upon your point of view.”
“Light, of course,” said Joe Cooley Barber. “I’ve never seen you quite this worked up over a painting.”
Max smiled sheepishly. “There are not many paintings like this one, or many painters. His work was new and brilliant, but so raw that it often shocked his patrons in the Church, who complained of his vulgarity and sacrilege. He used whores for his models and dressed the Virgin Mary in a low-cut gown. He put warts on saints and gave them dirty fingernails. The Church establishment found him intolerable. They preferred perfection in their saints.”
“So does the U.S. Senate,” Joe Cooley muttered, sipping his whisky.
“His life was just as raw as his work. He was a tortured soul. Some think his madness came from lead poisoning, from his paints, others that he was simply tormented by his own genius. Whatever the cause, he lived hard, dueling and drinking. He whored and gambled and was hauled in and out of court. He assaulted a waiter for bad service and stabbed a lawyer in a fight over a prostitute. He murdered a police official, was tortured, and escaped. Another man would have languished in prison for any of that, but while Caravaggio had detractors in the Church, he had powerful protectors as well, this one among them.”
Max had marked a page in an art-history book, and opened it to a portrait of an ascetic-looking cleric. “This is Scipione Borghese, a nephew of Pope Paul V—the pope who ordered Galileo to abandon his heretical notions about our solar system. Paul elevated Borghese to the position of Cardinal Nephew, a position of immense power. He was brilliant, ruthless, and unprincipled. Besides being the de facto head of the Vatican government, he held multiple offices and titles that made him rich beyond measure. He bullied men and threatened their souls. He imposed taxes and acquired estates—whole villages—through extortion and papal edicts. He had an extensive collection of pornography, and his homosexuality scandalized the Church.”
Joe Cooley could not suppress a snicker of delight. “Somehow that Church has always known how to grow real scoundrels,” he said.
“Yes, but for all his faults, he was a great patron of the arts. He used his wealth to build a magnificent villa to display the works of Raphael, Titian, Bernini—and Caravaggio, for a time his favorite.”
“A man after my own heart, I guess,” Joe Cooley said. “Except for the boys, of course. All things for the glory of God.”
Max turned to another file. “As for our painting here, the Church owned it first,” he said. “Or, more precisely, was the first to steal it. Borghese had begun to collect art aggressively and was learning to use the tools of his power. Giuseppe Cesari was a prominent artist who had an important collection of more than a hundred paintings, including several by Caravaggio, who had worked in his studio as a young man. Borghese learned that Cesari also had a collection of arquebuses. Cesari was harmless, the guns just a hobby, but they were illegal. Borghese had Cesari arrested, his possessions confiscated. He was sentenced to death. That sentence was eventually lifted, but not until Cesari agreed to donate his paintings to the apostolic chamber. Several
months later, the pope gave the entire lot to the Cardinal Nephew.
“About this same time, Caravaggio killed a man he thought cheated him at tennis and fled Rome with a price on his head. He spent the rest of his life running, hoping Borghese could arrange a papal pardon. While he was a fugitive, he did some of his best work. In Malta he painted for the Knights of St. John, becoming a Knight himself, until the Order imprisoned him for fighting. He escaped, but in Naples he was attacked and badly wounded, likely by assassins in the pay of the Knights. He made his way back toward Rome. His pardon had been granted, but he died of fever before he heard.” Max shook his head. “He was only thirty-eight. Imagine what he could have done with another twenty years.”
Max slid a ledger across the table. “As for our painting, Borghese only parted with it because he owned another version, sent to him by Caravaggio from exile. He included this one as part of a bribe to a Polish count named Krasinski. There were three other paintings—an Annibale Carracci, a Reni, and a Lanfranco—and an exquisite jeweled reliquary. We have cross-checked the list with Count Krasinski’s household ledgers. On his death the count bequeathed the items to his brother, who had just been appointed by the king as bishop of Stawicki. As you can see here, the items are included in a church inventory from 1685.” Max fished a paper out of the stack. “This is in Polish, of course, but I’ve circled the items for you.
“The paintings and reliquary stayed safe and anonymous in that church for nearly three hundred years, surviving fires and insurrections. For most of that time Caravaggio was a forgotten man, all but lost to history until the twentieth century, when scholars began to appreciate what a giant he was.”
Joe Cooley stood. “Time for another drink. Sure you won’t have something stronger?”
“Just a bit more water. There is a great deal more to cover.”
Max opened a thick file of yellowed documents and newspaper clippings. On top was a black-and-white photograph of a German officer. Max slid it across the table.
Rogues Page 20
