Chapter Twenty-Two
New York, 1994
“Ladies, thank you for being so prompt. I am Marilyn Carstairs, Provenance.” The speaker stops to take a drink of water, spilling a little as she sets the glass down. She blots the tiny puddle with a tissue from her pocket and clears her throat.
“You don’t have to be nervous,” Helen tells her kindly.
Marilyn darts her gaze around the table at the foursome assembled for the meeting. “I’ve never met anyone in Exhibitions before. Actually, this is the first time I’ve done a briefing in person. Usually we just send the dossiers by courier,” she admits. She doesn’t want to say that she is nervous in a room with four killers, but she doesn’t need to. Like all predators, they can smell fear.
“We don’t bite,” Natalie says. “Unless it’s called for.” She grins, baring her teeth at the hapless woman from Provenance.
“Knock it off, Nat,” Billie says, but there’s no heat to it. “Marilyn? Why don’t you just tell us why we’re here.” She tries to be encouraging, but there’s an edge to her voice, an edge that says she’d rather be somewhere else. In-person briefings are rare for the Museum, reserved for extremely high-profile or complicated hits. And it’s been years since she worked with the others. They’ve been given assignments around the world, usually solo, sometimes in a group, but not all together, and Billie has been surprised to arrive at the meeting and find the others already in attendance.
There had been no inkling of a reunion, just a postcard of the Empire State Building. A coded message scribbled in pencil gave the exact address and time, but no further information. Her plane ticket had been waiting at the airport counter, a car had collected her at the other end. The Acquisitions agent behind the wheel had driven her straight to the rendezvous on 70th, a block away from the Explorers Club. The brownstone is unremarkable except for the security system which is as discreet as it is comprehensive. The door opens before she can knock, and another Acquisitions agent shows her to the meeting room. Billie sees several closed doors on the way, and behind them all is the hushed murmur of contained power. The air smells like wax and wood fires and burnt coffee.
She is shown in, the last of the four to arrive, and after a round of greetings, they are seated at a table stacked with folders. The files are dark blue, each marked with a seal in gold, falling stars surrounded by an elegantly lettered phrase. Fiat justitia ruat caelum, the motto of the Museum. Let justice be done though the heavens fall. Sitting on the far side of the table is a woman in beige. It’s not just her clothes. Her skin, her hair, her very aura is beige. The pin in her lapel is a ladybug, the only sign of personality in her appearance. But when she spills the water during her introduction, Billie understands she is afraid of the killers in the room. Provenance agents are information people, gathering facts from resources all over the world, harvesting data and stockpiling it, carefully sorting and arranging until the patterns emerge. From those patterns, targets are identified for either recruitment or assassination. Marilyn Carstairs doesn’t know it, but they find her just as alarming as she finds them.
She clears her throat again and starts over, her voice a little firmer.
“I am here to brief you on your next assignment. I have prepared a set of files for each of you,” she adds, nodding towards the pile of folders in front of them. They reach for the top one on each stack. Inside is a photograph of a man in his forties, good-looking but not ostentatiously so. He is almost smiling at the camera, one side of his mouth quirked up into a lopsided attempt at a grin. He is dressed in khaki and holding a small Egyptian figurine. It is made of alabaster and wearing a solemn expression that the man seems to be gently mocking.
As they study their files, Marilyn pulls down a white screen and turns on a slide projector. She fumbles with a remote until an image beams onto the screen, the same photograph of the man in khaki.
“This is Fermín Bosque,” Marilyn tells them.
The name means nothing to them. Bosque is not famous or even infamous. He is simply the latest link in a chain that stretches back fifty years—a link which must be broken.
Natalie focuses on the artifact in his hands. “Is that a funerary figure?”
Traditionally, royal Egyptian tombs are crammed with the little statues. They represent those who would serve their masters in the afterlife, ensuring all comforts would be present, all needs met. Originals in good condition are rare and costly; cheap reproductions flood the tourist market. They make for handy souvenirs—tiny, wide-eyed figures that will go on to collect dust on suburban bookshelves for decades to come.
“Ushabti, actually,” Marilyn says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Late Twenty-First Dynasty. And authentic, although the gentleman in question went to great lengths to pretend otherwise.”
“Wait,” Mary Alice says, holding up a hand. “This guy wanted people to think an original artifact was fake? Isn’t it usually the other way around?”
“Not in this case,” Marilyn says. “Egypt has strict laws about exporting authentic items. So this gentleman disguises real artifacts as cheap reproductions in order to get them past Customs. The paperwork that establishes the provenance always travels separately so as not to tip off the authorities that he’s illegally shipping artifacts out of the country.”
“How does he disguise them?” Billie asks.
Marilyn explains, speaking more quickly, with more animation in her voice as she grows comfortable with her audience. “A variety of ways, depending upon the items. They might be painted over, dipped in plastic, covered in plaster of paris. Once he has them safely back in his workshop in England, he removes the disguises and restores them to their original condition.”
“That’s a hell of a risk,” Natalie says. “Egyptian antiquities aren’t exactly sturdy stuff. He could easily ruin a valuable piece.”
“That is a risk he’s apparently willing to take,” Marilyn replies. “After restoration, the pieces are sold to collectors, complete with the authentic Egyptian provenance. And if, for whatever reason, he cannot supply an authentic provenance, he isn’t above faking one.” She runs through the next few slides. There are more photographs, a few of a cluttered workshop, one of a happy collector posing with a newly acquired mummy mask.
After they’ve studied the picture for a moment, Marilyn switches to a fresh slide, this one with biographical data including the target’s name.
“You said his workshop is in England. Fermín Bosque doesn’t sound English,” Billie remarks.
“German by way of Argentina,” Marilyn explains.
Mary Alice looks up with a grin. “I smell a Nazi.”
“Your instincts are correct, Miss Tuttle. Fermín Bosque is the grandson of Albrecht Danner.” The next slide is black-and-white, taken at some sort of party function. Hanging in the background are wide banners marked with swastikas. In front of the banners is a small group, and in the center of that group is a familiar figure with a narrow toothbrush mustache and untidy hair. “Danner is standing to Hitler’s right,” she explains, pointing out the taller, slimmer man with a matching mustache. On the other side of the Führer is the unmistakable bulk of Hermann Goring. At the edge of the photograph are easels, each set with a painting in a heavy gilded frame.
“What do we know about Albrecht Danner?” Mary Alice asks.
“He was a wealthy industrialist from Mainz. He made his money in dog food. But Danner was keen to downplay his origins and promote his role as an art collector and amateur archaeologist. He donated several pieces to Hitler for the Führermuseum.”
Marilyn clicks on another slide, this one showing a model of a massive, sprawling complex, building after building rendered in ghostly white. “The Führermuseum was Hitler’s pet project, a plan to establish a sort of German national museum in Linz. It was expected to hold the greatest artworks from all of western Europe—paintings, sculpture, weapons, jewelry.”
She flicks back to the group shot of the previous slide and points towards the robust figure standing next to Hitler. “To that end, he tasked this man, Hermann Goring, with acquiring the art to fill it. Goring assembled the art from a variety of sources. Some was taken from other museums, national collections seized by the Germans when they invaded. Some was looted as Germans passed through towns which held particular items of interest. That’s how they got the Ghent Altarpiece,” she adds with a frown. “And some was taken from Jewish families who were forced to abandon their possessions when they fled or were forced into camps.”
She changes to a slide showing an enormous warehouse stacked with paintings, clothes, beds, even shoes. They are all silent at this, but Natalie’s silence is heavier than the others’. She stares at the piles of household goods, each representing hundreds, thousands of people displaced. Destroyed.
“Let’s move on,” Helen tells Marilyn gently.
Marilyn is momentarily confused until she remembers what she has learned about these killers from each of their files, facts clicking into place like tumblers in a lock. Natalie’s grandmother. Dutch Resistance. Missing in the war.
“I’m sorry, Miss Schuyler,” she stammers.
Natalie doesn’t respond, and Helen repeats herself. “Let’s move on.” Her voice is a little firmer this time, and Marilyn presses the button on the remote.
It is a studio portrait of Albrecht Danner. The photographer who took the picture has captured the image of a prosperous man who looks pleased with himself. “Because of their mutual interest in art and Danner’s generosity in donating paintings to the planned museum, he and Hitler became friendly. Besides collecting paintings, Danner had traveled extensively in Egypt and funded numerous archaeological expeditions, most of them complete failures. When Hitler needed a discreet envoy to send to Egypt in 1941, Danner was the obvious choice.”
“Why did Hitler need an envoy to Egypt?” Billie asks.
“He wanted secret talks opened with King Farouk. At the time, Egypt was under British control, but Hitler believed the British would eventually be driven out. When that happened, he wanted Germany to step in to form an alliance with Egypt. The goal was to eventually control the Suez Canal.”
“How did things go with Farouk?” Mary Alice asks.
“Slowly,” Marilyn replies. “The negotiations were top secret, of course. Farouk couldn’t afford to alienate the British since they were still in charge, and he made no official promises. In the end, he was forced to declare war on Germany, but only at the very last minutes of the war—1945 to be exact.”
“Better late to the party than never get to dance, I suppose,” Mary Alice remarks.
“It was nothing more than a way of saving official face, but it meant that Danner couldn’t easily return to Egypt. In fact, he was forced to flee Germany ahead of the Allied invasion. He landed in Argentina where he took the name Bosque.”
“I suppose he thought that was clever,” Billie puts in.
“Why?” Helen asks.
“Danner and Bosque are both words related to trees,” Billie explains. She turns back to Marilyn. “So why would this little Nazi even want to go back to Egypt?”
“Because he left something behind.” Marilyn puts the remote down and gestures towards the files in front of them. “Each of these folders is full of photographs and notes regarding the cache of art Albrecht Danner stashed in Egypt in 1941. He may have been on a diplomatic mission for Hitler, but he also used that trip to purchase an enormous load of Egyptian antiquities—all of them incredibly cheap because, after all, there was a war on. Papyri, jewels, statues, grave goods, sarcophagi. He bought them all and left them in Egypt to be collected when the war was over. He anticipated a German victory and presumed it would be safe to retrieve them.”
“Only Germany doesn’t win and he’s left with a load of Egyptian antiquities he can’t retrieve,” Billie adds. “But after a few years, the heat would have died down. He could have slipped back into the country. Why didn’t he?”
“By 1950, Albrecht Danner was dead. Stomach cancer.”
“Oh no. So sad,” Mary Alice says in a deadpan voice.
“He left a family behind,” Marilyn carries on. “A son, Maximilian, who was seven when they left Germany and whose name was changed to Maximiliano. According to our research, this son had no interest in Egypt at all. He never left Argentina. He lived quietly and did not appear to share his father’s political leanings. He taught mathematics at a university in Buenos Aires and died two years ago. That brings us to his son, Albrecht Danner’s grandson and your mark—Fermín Bosque.”
She returns to the slide of the smiling man with the ushabti. “Fermín appears to have inherited his grandfather’s interest in antiquities and has made many trips to Egypt. He runs a small business dealing in the sale of artifacts. To all appearances, he is legitimate. But we know that he has been selling authentic pieces after smuggling them out of Egypt and occasionally faking provenances when necessary.”
“Since when does the Museum care about a little smuggling?” Billie asks.
“Since we discovered what else his grandfather stashed in Egypt.” Marilyn gestures towards the folders. “More artwork, but these pieces are not Egyptian. They are European—paintings looted from Jewish families in Austria and Germany at the start of the war.”
She skims through the next slides, each featuring a dozen images. They flick past like a carousel of extraordinary works, every piece more exquisite than the last.
“Danner was tasked with assessing the various collections seized from prominent Jewish collectors. The most famous paintings—those on Goring’s personal shopping list—were immediately pulled and sent to Goring to hang in his country house at Carinhall. Others were crated up and delivered to various storage facilities in Germany and Austria. In the course of our research, we have discovered that Danner kept two sets of books. One was a meticulous record of the transactions I’ve just described—art procured for members of the Third Reich.”
“And the other?” Mary Alice asks.
“An inventory of the pieces Danner kept for himself—pieces he brought with him to Egypt in 1941.”
“He smuggled pieces in ?” Helen stares at the images on the slides that are still changing. “But how?”
“He labeled them furniture and household goods. And nobody has ever been much concerned with what gets into Egypt, only what goes out,” Marilyn tells her. “Once the shipments arrived, they were taken to a storage facility in Cairo. From there, the trail went cold, and every piece was presumed lost. Until now.”
She returns the slides to the image of Fermín Bosque. “Fermín was a small-time player, dealing in the grey margins of Egyptological artifacts.” She glances at Billie. “As you pointed out, Miss Webster, these are not the sort of activities which would have ordinarily drawn our attention. But a few months ago, this painting”—she pauses and brings up a black-and-white slide featuring a painting with a heavily carved frame—“was put up for auction at a small house in Sweden. It had been purchased privately only last year from Fermín Bosque. Our research has confirmed it was one of the paintings his grandfather looted from a family in Stuttgart. It is The Rape of Atalanta by Rubens, depicting the attempted abduction of the heroine Atalanta by the centaur Hylaeus.”
“And you’re sure it’s authentic?” Mary Alice asks, her tone frankly skeptical.
“As sure as we can be. Everything was tested with the most up-to-date methods—canvas, wooden stretchers, pigments—and it all checks out.”
“How did we get our hands on samples?” Billie asks.
Marilyn hesitates. “We don’t care to divulge specifics of how we work in Provenance, but I can tell you that the purchaser of the piece at auction wished to authenticate it for insurance purposes. He used a firm with whom we have a…relationship.”
Billie smiles. “A relationship? Or do you mean it’s just an arm of the Provenance department masquerading as a legitimate firm?”
Marilyn stiffens noticeably, and when she answers it is with a mouth that is tightly pursed. “It is in the Museum’s best interests to keep a finger on the pulse of whatever is happening in the art world. It has been a long time since we managed to secure a cache of art looted by Nazis.”
“Thirteen years, to be exact,” Billie shoots back. “I know because I was there. We all were.”
“Of course,” Marilyn replies, her mouth relaxing. “The Zanzibar job. That was an extremely important get for us. That’s why you’ve been chosen for this one.”
She returns to her slides, putting up a new one, a landscape so desolate it looks lunar. “The Valley of the Kings. Albrecht Danner’s favorite playground and where we believe he stashed the art he smuggled into Egypt after it left Cairo. Chosen, we assume, for its remoteness as well as its suitability for storing art. The low humidity and darkness mimic the salt mines in Europe where the bulk of the Nazi loot was stored.”
“Why do you think the art was stored in the Valley of the Kings?” Nat asks.
“The condition of Atalanta . We would have expected a piece squirreled away in a storeroom somewhere for five decades would show traces of where it has been. And there was some wear and tear, but the painting was in remarkably good shape, all things considered. That suggested it had been stored in conditions of low humidity. Coupled with what we knew of Danner’s activities and travels, we formed the hypothesis that the painting had been taken to Egypt and left there for some time. With that in mind, we went looking for anything that might confirm or discount our working theory. It was a tiny blade of grass that proved it,” she adds with a smile, the first she’s offered them. “We found it caught in a bit of the outer wrappings, barely thicker than a thread—a variety of sedge that grows only on the banks of the Nile. In the times of the pharaohs, it was dried to make papyri. For us, it proved that this particular painting had been in Egypt.”
“Damn, Carstairs, you’re a regular Agatha Christie,” Nat says.
Marilyn pinks again and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Well, I don’t know about that, but it was a very satisfactory conclusion to the case.”
“Why did he wait so long to retrieve his grandfather’s stash?” Mary Alice asks.
“We think he only found out about it when his father died two years ago. Fermín inherited his grandfather’s papers and a short while later made a few trips to Paris and Koblenz to do archival research. Following that he made two trips to Cairo with detours to the Valley of the Kings. We think he has thus far only brought back a limited number of artifacts and paintings, using them to test the waters, so to speak, for retrieving the entire cache. If we are correct—and there is no reason to think we aren’t— Atalanta was his first major sale. He has been very, very careful.”
“The Valley of the Kings isn’t exactly off the beaten path,” Helen says thoughtfully. “It might have been remote in Danner’s time, but it’s a tourist attraction now. It must be tricky for him to bring things out.”
“More so after recent terror attacks on the popular tourist sites,” Marilyn agrees. “Egyptian authorities have increased security enormously in order to protect the tourism business they depend on. Eluding the security forces would be just as difficult for Fermín Bosque as evading the terrorists themselves. And even more dangerous for him if he were apprehended.”
Billie flicks through the catalog Provenance has compiled, an entry for each work believed to be in Bosque’s cache. Besides the pages of Egyptological artifacts, there are dozens of European paintings, most of them traditional Old Masters, things chosen not just for their beauty but for their ability to hold their value. Most are small, their dimensions making it simpler to remove them from Germany as well as stash them in Egypt. She thumbs through reproductions of sketches from Leonardo and Dürer, a delicate Van Eyck, a Botticelli engraving.
The others are doing the same, each pausing on a different page.
“My god. What he stole would fill an entire museum,” Helen says, gesturing towards the remaining files. Two dozen folders lie on the table in front of her, each crammed with photographs and notes.
“Not this guy,” Mary Alice reminds her. “His grandfather.”
“His grandfather may have stolen it, but Bosque kept it,” Helen replies. “That makes him just as much of a thief.”
“And he’s the one planning to sell it,” Billie says. She is about to say more when she turns the next page and the words stick in her throat. She is looking at an image she has never seen before, but one she feels she has always known. The setting is a garden, lush with olive trees and a pomegranate in the foreground, bursting with ripe fruit that spill their scarlet seeds to the grass. Beside the pomegranate tree is a woman whose face is familiar, and it takes Billie a minute to place her. She has the smooth dark hair of Ingres’s La Grande Odalisque , the same luminous skin and cool stare. But there is something more in her gaze, a challenge to the viewer, a sense that the flush rising in her cheeks is due to something that is both shameful and irresistible. At the woman’s side is a swan, an enormous beast with snowy wings outstretched to embrace her, one feather trailing along the bared silken thigh. At their feet is a nest with a clutch of four eggs, the result of their strange coupling.
“ Leda and the Swan ,” Billie murmurs as she skims the notes.
“What are you looking at?” Mary Alice asks idly.
“Miss Webster has identified the most important item in Bosque’s collection,” Marilyn says, pulling up the corresponding slide. “Raphael’s Leda and the Swan .”
“Oh my,” Nat breathes, reaching for the page to compare it to the slide. “That’s where she’s been.”
“What’s the big deal about it?” Mary Alice asks, squinting at the image. “Everybody and their cat has painted a version of this.”
“And the most significant ones are missing,” Billie tells her. “Raphael was one of the big three of the Renaissance along with Leonardo and Michelangelo. Those two both did versions of Leda , but theirs are long gone. Raphael’s was the only one that survived—until it didn’t.”
“Until now,” Marilyn corrects smoothly. She seems a little miffed to have her narrative interrupted by Billie and she hurries to fill in the blanks. “Raphael worked at the Vatican at the same time as Michaelangelo. Both were engaged to paint the papal chambers, but they were also given other commissions to carry out on behalf of the pope. This Leda was commissioned by His Holiness as a gift for King Francis I of France. She hung at his palace at Fontainebleau during the king’s lifetime. After his death, the painting was sold out of the royal family’s collection to a private owner and eventually changed hands several more times. She went up at auction through the major houses in England—Sotheby’s, Christie’s. Even Tollemache’s. Every time she sold, she at least doubled or tripled the price she’d gotten the time before. Her last sale was to a Jewish collector in Salzburg. Then she disappeared.”
“So Danner snaffled her up before Goring could get his hands on her,” Billie says.
“He did,” Marilyn affirms. “We have the records he kept noting where and when he acquired the painting and he was very careful not to leave any trace of her for Goring.”
“So he went to all that trouble to get his hands on her and then brought her to Egypt to sit in a cave for fifty years,” Mary Alice says.
“He couldn’t have known that,” Helen points out reasonably. “After all, he believed the Third Reich would be victorious. He expected Germany would take control of Egypt and then he’d have been free to do as he liked with his collection.”
“And if they failed, he had the means to finance his getaway,” Marilyn adds. “Only he never made it back to Egypt and the collection languished there for decades.”
“Do you think Maximiliano knew his father had been sitting on a gold mine?” Billie asks.
Marilyn thinks a moment, then shakes her head. “No. He was careful to conceal any mention of his family’s history. No one in Argentina knew where the Bosques had come from. We suspect Maximiliano never even looked at his father’s papers, and if he did, he might have assumed—quite logically—that the collection had been seized after the war.”
“And then Fermín inherits his grandfather’s papers and sets off on a wild-goose chase,” Billie says.
“Only to find an actual wild goose at the end of it,” Nat says with a nod towards the painted swan. She cocks her head as she studies the painting. “How much is it worth?”
“More than all the rest combined,” Marilyn answers coolly. “There is another missing Raphael. His Portrait of a Young Man , seized from a Polish noble family at the beginning of the war . Despite their best efforts, the Monuments Men were never able to recover it during their cleanup afterwards. Its current whereabouts are still unknown although there are suspicions it never left Poland.” Nat gives her a narrow look and Marilyn sighs. “Its estimated value is in excess of a hundred million dollars U.S. The value of Leda would probably be more. Raphael painted several portraits, but only two others with a Greek mythological theme. That makes it exceedingly rare. I would suggest one hundred and twenty million would not be unreasonable. Perhaps even higher.”
“One. Hundred. And. Twenty. Million. Dollars,” Nat says flatly.
“U.S.,” Marilyn says.
“Do you suppose Bosque knows that?” Mary Alice asks.
“If he does, he’s going to move her fast,” Billie says. “He will have used other works to test his ways of moving art out of the country. Since they were successful, he’d move the Raphael sooner. No way he leaves her for last.” She looks around the group. “How fast can we figure out a way to kill Bosque?”
Dinner reservations have been made for them at Lutèce, but they miss their table and eat take-out sandwiches instead. They do not leave the meeting room until dawn is breaking the next morning. There are details to work out, but the broad strokes are complete. It is an audacious plan, relying on timing, nerve, and only a little luck.
It is the 6th of May, 1994. Fermín Bosque has three days left to live.