The Big Book of Espionage

by The Big Book of Espionage (retail) (epub)

  Once one was careful to maintain the fiction of Argentine neutrality, one seemed to pick up information and knowledge by osmosis, through the pores of the skin. Someone might say casually, “I understand that…” and the vague rumor understood would be closer to the truth than the news printed in the controlled press.

  Mr. Swinney’s sane, precise mathematical mind explored and sifted rumor and personalities in an attempt to reduce them to simple denominators such as two and two, which could then be added up to four—the gray, icily proper Dr. Calderriega conversing with the British commercial attaché fat De Paraná, his small nostrils twitching, his dark eyes gleaming sensually above the gray pouches that underlined them, fingering a small, priceless Cellini group and discussing it with a famous French sculptor now resident in Buenos Aires; the tawny, monocled, correct Baron von Schleuder of the German Embassy staff holding a thin-stemmed, gold-speckled Venetian champagne glass between his stubby fingers and exchanging polite small talk with the wife of an Argentine cattle king….

  Dammit, it was all so official and correct.

  Mathematics and the consequences of the addition of simple sums were driven from the mind of Mr. Swinney when he again caught sight of the magnificent woman with the upswept Titian-bronze hair and cat-eyes. She was standing in the inner salon not far from the buffet table conversing with the paunchy little fuss-budget of a man with the rimless eyeglasses, the gay-nineties stiff collar, and the obvious toupee.

  God, she’s good-looking, Mr. Swinney said to himself. I wonder who she is. He had seen her twice before, once during the noon corso on the Avenida Florida, and again in the American Bar of the Hotel Continental at cocktail time. Mr. Swinney was a bachelor by choice, but this did not prevent him from becoming profoundly stirred by certain types of women. Women with cat-eyes and the mysterious, introspective feline expression of countenance that went with them he found irresistible.

  He edged through the throng and, entering the second salon, moved closer. He busied himself at the buffet table and watched her out of the corner of his eye. No doubt that her clothes had originally come from Paris. Only the French knew how to reveal a classic figure in daytime dress. The daring of the purple hat perched atop the thick, bronze-colored hair fascinated him. By Jove, she had the skin to carry it. The set of her head on her neck was a challenge to every man in the room. Mr. Swinney noticed other eyes upon her. He determined to meet the challenge in his own way.

  She and Fuss-budget appeared to know each other well. If he could become acquainted with the fat little man with the toupee—

  De Paraná suddenly appeared and joined the two, claiming the girl. Swinney hoped that he would name Fuss-budget, but he didn’t. He said, “Forgive me for robbing you, my dear friend. It is only for an instant. I swear I will return the Countess to you in a few moments.”

  Fuss-budget’s head waggled archly at the top of his stiff collar and he bowed and turned to the buffet table, loaded with the delicacies of five continents. Mr. Swinney contrived to be next to him.

  Mr. Swinney was surprised to note that Fuss-budget did not smell of mothballs as he had expected. For he was a small, self-sufficient leftover from another era, the professional gentleman of the old school, and obviously an epicure.

  He tasted the gray Malossol caviar and nibbled at Hungarian pâté, savoring texture and flavor. But the full expression of his ecstasy he reserved for the paper-thin, near-transparent slices of smoked, fuchsia-colored ham. He tasted. He chewed. He swallowed. He closed his eyes with reminiscent delight. When he opened them it was to find a tall, spare gentleman with a craggy, hawklike face, long, strong nose, and dark hair, sprinkled with gray at the side, eating of the same ham and smiling at him sympathetically.

  “By Jove!” said Fuss-budget. “Genuine Westphalian ham. Perfectly cured.”

  “Delicious,” said Mr. Swinney.

  The little man polished his glasses with a scented silk handkerchief, replaced them, examined the old, dark-red ham from which the slices came, and helped himself to another portion. “Haven’t tasted a real one for years. Don’t know why they can get it here and we can’t up in New York.”

  Mr. Swinney could have told him. It was one of the things that one knew—by osmosis again—when one lived in Buenos Aires. It was small in bulk like so many other of the German products that one could always find in Buenos Aires stores—the Leica cameras, the fine lenses and optical goods, the rare drugs and medicines labeled “I. G. Farben, Berlin.”

  But he was not of the mind to alarm or astonish the little man, but rather to make friends with him.

  “The secret lies in the process of smoking. But have you ever tried one of our old Argentine hams? We have our own process of aging and curing. The hams are first soaked in wine for weeks.”

  The little man’s ears cocked like a terrier’s and his nostrils flared.

  “Really? You mean better than—?”

  “Tenderer. The flavor is unique. They are never exported.”

  Fuss-budget licked his lips, then glanced at Mr. Swinney. “But, ah—you are an American, are you not?”

  “I am with Swift & Company. I should be delighted some time if you would care to sample—”

  The man sighed regretfully. “Unfortunately, I am flying back in the morning.” Then he added importantly, “I flew down only yesterday at the invitation of Dr. Calderriega. Hm—it would really be a new taste experience. Of course, there is no question as to the superiority of Argentine beef….”

  Mr. Swinney was thinking to himself, Now, who the devil could you be? Flew down from New York at the invitation of the Argentine Sub-Minister of Culture. I suppose I ought to know you, but I don’t.

  De Paraná returned with the cat-eyed girl on his arm and returned her to Fuss-budget. “Voilà, mon ami! As I promised.” The little man bowed in the manner of one careful not to disturb the set of a toupee. For an instant they made a little group of which Swinney was the outsider. Fuss-budget hastened to perform the politeness. He said to Mr. Swinney, “Ah, I did not catch your name, sir.”

  “Swinney. Augustus Swinney.”

  “Of course—Countess Amalie, may I present Mr. Augustus Swinney? The Countess Amalie Czernok. You know De Paraná of course.”

  The Countess Amalie gave Mr. Swinney her wide cat-smile and accepted him with her eyes. He was startled to find them violet-colored, the shade of her hat.

  Later, when they were alone, he said, “I schemed to meet you. Are you angry?”

  She spoke with an accent that might have been French. “Not at all. I saw you scheming. That is why I came back. It is always flattering to a woman when she sees an attractive man make up his mind to meet her.”

  Mr. Swinney made a mental note: Aha, then she was watching. I wonder whether she noticed me in the Continental. He said, “I intruded myself shamelessly upon the little man. By the way, who is he?”

  “That is Mr. Buskirk, the art critic. Surely you know Mr. Chester Allen Buskirk. I met him many years ago in Paris. He is so sweet and old-fashioned.”

  Buskirk…Buskirk, the art critic, greatest living expert on the old masters. Flown down from New York to Buenos Aires at the invitation of Dr. José Calderriega. Now, what did that add up to if one was still convinced that in spite of the superimpeccability of congealed diplomatic face, two and two made four?

  “You are French, Countess?”

  “Part French, part Polish.”

  “A combination that inevitably results in a beautiful woman.”

  “You look like an American, but you do not talk like one. You have been to Paris too?”

  Before he could reply, there was a sudden stir in the room, a kind of mass awareness of a change in the routine and the beginning of a movement through the second salon toward the massive carved-oak doors leading to the library.

  The doors which previously had been shut were now swung back
. The Countess Amalie drew in her breath and sighed, “Ah, the picture. Now we are permitted to see the picture. Are you not excited?”

  “You mean Rembrandt’s Old Woman of Haarlem?”

  “Then you heard too?”

  “One hears a great many things. I don’t believe it.”

  “You do not believe it?” In the light from the crystal chandelier overhead, her eyes were wide and luminous. “But why should it not be possible?”

  “Because,” said Mr. Swinney, flatly, “they wouldn’t dare.”

  But he found out when he came into the library and saw what hung on the wall of Brazilian teak-wood paneling that they did dare, after all, that two and two still added up to four, and four made a very ugly number.

  * * *

  —

  In Munich, Kunstverwaltungsrat Bressar was burning the lights late in his office in the Pinakothek, poring over lists marked: Final shipment following liquidation Cracow Museum, Cracow, occupied Poland, and occasionally earmarking items for the Argentine.

  In New York, Jan van Schouven, the little Dutchman with the tired-child expression and the desperate eyes, stood in the dingy hall outside the dingy furnished room and listened to the doctor say: “Madam van Schouven is a little better tonight. However, if it were at all possible I would say it was almost imperative that she be moved to a warmer climate, at least for a time.”

  And in a tiny cove just outside Avellaneda, some twenty-five miles south of Buenos Aires on the Río de la Plata, an impatient U-boat captain sat in the steel cell of his quarters reading over a three-weeks-old copy of the Völkische Beobachter, digesting for the tenth time the accounts of the Wehrmacht’s glorious advances to the rear in Russia and wondering how long it would be before the orders came through from the Embassy in Buenos Aires to unload his cargo, pick up the return load of tungsten, molybdenum, platinum, and quinine, and put to sea. He was tired, anyway, of being a damned freighter. There was no light’s Cross with oak leaves for that kind of work.

  * * *

  —

  Mr. Augustus Swinney looked up at Rembrandt’s magnificent and touching masterpiece, the Old Woman of Haarlem, beautifully hung on the paneled wall of De Paraná’s fabulous library near the fifteen-century Spanish fireplace, softly and glowingly lit to bring out all the deep warmth of the tones of gold and brown. He thought of the first time that he had gazed on its breath-taking perfection.

  It had been in Amsterdam, he remembered in 1938. He had dined at the home of a business acquaintance, Mynheer Jan van Schouven, a wealthy tobacco merchant with plantations in Sumatra. They had been discussing the possibility of the use of refrigeration for the preservation of tobacco in transit over long distances.

  Van Schouven lived in a timber house in Amsterdam that was four hundred years old. After the evening repast Vrouw van Schouven and her young son and daughter excused themselves and retired. The tobacco-grower had led Mr. Swinney to the library to drink Javanese coffee, smoke the strong black cigars of twisted Sumatran tobacco, and inhale the fragrance of a brandy that was laid down the year Wellington cornered Napoleon at Waterloo, not far to the south.

  The ceiling timbers of the room were of blackened oak, the deep chairs of oak and leather. Candlelight shone on soft pewter and the glistening leather backs of old books. Many candles illuminated the glowing, lifelike portrait of a wrinkled old woman in a heavy carved gold frame that hung casually on the wall opposite the beamed fireplace where its surface would catch the reflection from the curling colored tongues of driftwood flame.

  Mr. Swinney had not been able to take his eyes from it. Not only the portrait fascinated him, but the concept of its hanging. It was displayed not as an art treasure, but as a part of the warm, richly somber decoration of the old room, as an object, Mr. Swinney felt, that had occupied its place for a long, long time.

  To Van Schouven he said finally, indicating the portrait, “How that lives, how warm and kindly it makes this room!”

  Van Schouven nodded, drawing on his black cigar until the end glowed. “It iss called se Old Woman uff Haarlem. My ancestor Piet van Schouven received it from Rembrandt in payment of a debt. Piet made for Rembrandt a pair of Leiden boots of Spanish leather. It iss so rechistered in his account book.” Van Schouven smiled his placid Dutch smile. “Se story iss told that my ancestor considered himself ill used in se exchange. Se leather cost him eleven florins….”

  That evening had always remained in Mr. Swinney’s memory as a kind of island of deep peace and the ancient culture of living, standing out brightly in the turbulent streams of his travels.

  The Germans had brought fire and flame and their new order to Amsterdam. Now the Old Woman of Haarlem gazed down at him with her wise, aged eyes peering out from beneath the white wimple from the paneled wall of another library, in Buenos Aires. The heavy, two-foot-square gold frame was a different one, but there was no mistaking the picture. To have seen it once was to know and recognize it forever.

  The spell of Swinney’s memories was broken when the Countess Amalie spoke softly at his side. Curiously she used almost the same words that had come to Swinney at his first sight of the masterpiece: “How it lives!” and then she added, “What would one not give to possess such beauty!”

  A kind of bitter wave shook Mr. Swinney at the sound of the word “possess”…“possess.” To possess, the Germans had charred, blackened, and defiled the neighbor nations of Europe.

  The guests had been filing into the massive library. They formed into their careful patterns, the Germans grouped in the far corner beneath the fifteenth-century Flemish tapestry whose warm reds and blues set off the pasty white of their faces, which were beginning to show signs of strain. The correct, tawny Baron von Schleuder was pale too. He kept licking his lips, affixing and removing his monocle, and staring at the picture.

  The British shifted their island close to the massive carved Spanish table and whispered amongst themselves; the French and Italians gesticulated and made approving noises. The Argentines formed a group close to the picture itself, with the suave, gray, icily cold Dr. Calderriega, De Paraná flushed and excited, and Chester Allen Buskirk polishing his glasses briskly as a nucleus.

  Mr. Swinney felt the tension that lay beneath the exclamations and the high-pitched conversations in the room and understood it. His own mathematics were complete. The sum of two and two still made four. The trial balloon was about to go up.

  He said to himself, Clever Calderriega. He’ll help them get rid of their loot, but he doesn’t trust his dear Nazi friends any farther than he can see them.

  Mr. Chester Allen Buskirk, having wiped the last speck off the windows of his lenses, adjusted his pince-nez, cleared his throat, and stepped toward the painting, which hung just above eye-level. An uneasy hush broken only by whisperings fell over the room.

  Buskirk took full advantage of the center of the stage. He cocked his head gingerly, he stepped away, he stepped closer to examine the texture of the paint, he stepped away again….

  God, thought Swinney, you’ve got it in your hands, little man. Tell ’em it’s a fake and you’ll spike them. Surely you know who owns that picture.

  Buskirk cleared his throat again, removed his pince-nez, and turned to De Paraná and Calderriega. “Unquestionably authentic! Unquestionably Rembrandt’s Old Woman of Haarlem!”

  The German group stirred first, shifting and turning. Several of them used their handkerchiefs. Baron von Schleuder gazed sternly and fixedly at the picture and said, “Colossal!” French and Italian shoulders were lifted higher, the Argentines broke into a torrent of excited Spanish, and the cynical whisperings of the British increased; the Russians glowered. There were no other Americans in the room besides Mr. Swinney and Buskirk.

  The fussy, self-important little art expert was perfectly conscious of the figure he was cutting. He drifted over toward Mr. Swinney, attracted by the light from the
tower of the Countess Amalie’s bronze-colored hair.

  The Countess turned her wide-set huntress’s eyes on the little man and said, “What learning was embodied in that simple statement!”

  Buskirk preened himself. “Learning? No. It is an emotion. Learning may be prey to error; the emotions aroused by the perfect blending of intellect with light and color, never.”

  “Damn your emotion,” said Mr. Augustus A. Swinney, sharply.

  Buskirk started so that his pince-nez fell into his hand. “I beg your pardon, sir!”

  Mr. Swinney’s voice was cold and cutting. “There is also such a thing as ethics.”

  Buskirk was confused, but with the slyly feline eyes of the girl moving from him to Swinney and back again, he retreated behind an epigram:

  “Art is not concerned with ethics, but with truth.”

  “Bunk!” said Mr. Swinney, his voice made harsh by his rising anger. “You know to whom that picture belongs—and God knows where he is or what the Germans did to him. And yet, knowing it, you identified the picture for a pack of Nazi thieves in cutaway coats.”

  Buskirk became thoroughly flustered under the attack. Heat rising to his face fogged his glasses and he fell to polishing them furiously. “I am acquainted with Van Schouven. He is now in New York. He may have sold the picture.”

  “Did you inquire?”

  Buskirk felt that he was being interrogated like a little boy and was being humiliated before the stunning and dramatic-looking Countess, who was now watching only Mr. Swinney with a curious expression at the corners of her full mouth. He drew himself up and attempted extrication.

  “That is none of my concern, sir. There is an American branch of the International Art Salvage Commission to which Van Schouven can turn to press a claim. I do not deal with property rights, ha hum, but with the limitless horizons of eternal art.” He stole a quick look at the Countess Amalie and thought he detected a flicker of approval in her face and felt encouraged to continue.