Hunting Ground (11 page)

‘We are the select,
la crème de la crème
, Madame de St-Germain. A pool of very wealthy, influential families are behind us. Need I say more,
hmm
? We cover colleagues who have taken positions on objects of great value and when we get burned, we employ men like Tom Carrington to apply the salve. He’s in East Anglia at the moment, commiserating with the Count Alexis Nikolai Ivanovich Lutoslawski.’

‘A Polish count?’

‘That is correct. A refugee.’

‘Who’s been robbed?’

The man behind the antique desk nodded. ‘Robberies like this seldom get into the press. One doesn’t want the world to know,
hmm
? They were very good, very select. German or Russian agents must have tipped them off. Paintings, Old Masters, tapestries, a quantity of Russian silver, small pieces of sculpture—very early things those. A matched pair of duelling pistols …’

‘A tiara.’

‘Yes, a fake unfortunately, as you’ve admitted to our Tom. The questions we must ask ourselves, my dear woman, are how on earth did your husband come by it, and where, please, is the real one?’

I sat there in that office, cold tea before me in a fine china cup. The muted sounds of London’s traffic filtered through the oak-panelled walls and the leaded windows across which great
x
’s of tape had been pasted.

Charles Edward Gordon was the son of one of the original founders. He had a high, domed forehead, a thin tonsure of brown hair, the stooped shoulders of a big, tall man whose frame had long ago resigned itself to overwork, overweight, and the years.

The face was fleshy, the jowls drooping like those of an old bulldog.

The eyes … I can still remember how he looked at me with suspicion, curiosity—amusement, too, because he obviously must have known something about Tommy and me—and what else? A sense of wanting to go deeper, a gamble, too, perhaps? Ah, it was hard to define.

He reached for his pipe and began to pack it, the motions a ritual he had no need to concern himself with. ‘At least one hundred thousand pounds, Madame de St-Germain, probably a good deal more. The tiara of the Empress Eugénie, sold at auction with the rest of her jewels after the flight to England in September 1870 and the collapse of the Second Empire.’

‘France would love to have the real one back, I suppose.’

‘The Royalists at any rate,’ he said, as if sucking it from his pipe. ‘Your husband, madame, is he a member of the Action française?’

Those were not quite Royalists but close enough. ‘Jules? Ah, no. Jules wouldn’t wish for the end of the Third Republic and a return to the days of the royalty.’

Or would he have? The Action française were notoriously Fascist and very far to the right, the Vuittons too, no doubt. But Nini … Nini was to the left of centre and would have warned me. She wouldn’t have put up with him for a moment.

Intently, Gordon watched me, but all I saw of him behind that cloud of tobacco smoke was the smile he momentarily gave as he asked, ‘Think about it, will you? Let Carrington know. Our Tom’s a good chap, very thorough. Been with us for … now let me see.’ He fished about for a notebook he’d no need of. ‘Five years. Has it really been five? Seems like forever. War heating up in France, is it?’

The British were already calling it the Bore War; the French,
La Drôle de Guerre
, the Phony War. ‘This business seems so far from it,’ I said weakly.

‘Oh, my goodness, no. We reinsured the policies on the Lutoslawski collections back in ’38. They were shipped here from his estates in eastern Poland last summer, as per the conditions of our agreement. Out in the nick of time only to be stolen, madame. Stolen. A good bit of them at any rate.’

‘How much of a bit since that tiara was a fake?’

I think then that he suddenly realized I might not be so easy. ‘Four-and-a-half million pounds. Priceless objects of
virtù.
A terrible shame, what with this war and all. Still in their crates and only just off-loaded. Whisked away, shipped back to the continent, no doubt, and quickly sold off to be quietly hidden. God only knows. Need I say, the war has put us in a very difficult position? The firm has always backed its colleagues. There are no risks in this business, only bad rates. Still, it’s not going to be easy. It certainly isn’t. Carrington is one of our fast-dwindling links with the Continent. Most of our chaps have already been called up. Tom has an American passport, the eye and mind of a hunter. Go and see Lutoslawski for yourself. Let me ring Tom and tell him you’re coming. Yes, I think that would be best under the circumstances. We’d like to have you on our side.’

* * *

Lowestoft is on the Suffolk coast. Tommy stood at the far end of that platform in the greying light of a grey day in that third week of November 1939. I remember that his overcoat was of a flecked beige tweed, that the collar was up, the fedora pulled well down against the wind, and that his hands were in the pockets. I think then that he thought he had lost me. I knew I feared I’d lost him.

‘Lily, it’s good of you to have come. Did the kids mind it very much? They’re okay, by the way. I’ve only just spoken on the phone to Arthur Martin and his housekeeper.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d taken that box? Oh, for sure, I can understand why you took that tiara, Tommy, but Jules … Did you not ask yourself what he would do to me when he found out, even though he must have stupidly bought it on the sly?’

‘I’ll take it back to him. We’ll let him keep it because it’s not the one we want.’

He took the shopping bag from me—I’d managed to buy a few things in London. Still distant from each other, we walked into town. Lowestoft was a seaside town, though not so popular as Blackpool or Brighton, but the war was everywhere in signs, warnings, places one could no longer go, shore batteries, too, the Royal Navy. We finally found a small restaurant. Over chowder, bread, and tea, I still couldn’t face him.

‘Lily, please. If I could have told you, I would have.’

‘When did you first know I might be connected to that thing?’

The breath went out of him. ‘At that shop on the rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. There was a ring from the Lutoslawski collection in that grab bag of stuff Langlois had placed in the window.’

The things in that silver tazza. Breaking bread into my soup, I nodded curtly. ‘So you used me, is that it?’

‘I didn’t know you then, or even if we’d ever meet again. It was business, Lily. What else was I to have done?’

Business … How many times is that excuse given? ‘Then after having said we must always be straight with each other, you admit you lied to me?’

He set his spoon down. ‘Can you ever forgive me?’

‘Arthur mentioned a secret compartment in that car of yours, a smuggler’s hideaway. I’ve not yet had a chance to ask my son where it is.’

Tommy caught up with me. I had even left my purse behind. ‘The compartment’s under the rubber mat in the trunk. You have to take the mat out first. There’s a spring release at the side of one of the rear lights. The left one. You push it in and the lid pops open. It’s an old rum runner’s trick, but lots of custom’s clerks search like crazy, so I always have a wad of cash handy.’

‘And the available space?’ I asked angrily.

‘Enough to hold several paintings in their frames. Lily, they didn’t just steal the tiara. The firm stands to go into bankruptcy unless we can recover the goods.’

‘Use a thief to catch a thief, eh, is that it? And what am I supposed to do if Jules tells the Sûreté I ran off with his fake and all those other bits and pieces of his father’s mistress?’

‘He won’t for that very reason. Come and meet Nicki. He’s not just anybody. He wants to tell you his side of it. At least do that before you make up your mind.’

It was sad to see a proud man in defeat, too old to fight a modern war, too young to die without caring. Even at the age of sixty-two, Alexis Nikolai Ivanovich was still extremely handsome. One automatically thought of kings at court and of men in uniform. My first sight of him, however, was through the mizzle down a forest lane that was flanked by fir trees. There were two greyhounds with him, and these had lifted their heads to stand sculpted at our approach.

Caught in that moment, Nicki was totally unaware that he was no longer alone. He wore the high black boots of a cavalry officer, the tucked-in, rough brown corduroy trousers, coarse linen shirt, and open leather jerkin of a peasant. No hat, no cape—I don’t think he ever cared much about the weather, certainly not in the years I was to know him.

His fist closed about a branch. He broke off a bit, crushed the needles, and brought them up to his nose, a man remembering. A pea cast out of its jar to roll uneasily on the floor of England.

The fens, the bogs, and the forests of Suffolk did little to ease the isolation but only served to give poignant reminders of home, of a place I’d never heard of—lands halfway between Biala Podlaska and Pinsk, to the east of the Bug. A place of forests and marshes, of mud, horses, and few if any roads. One of sleighs and sleigh bells in the frozen night of a river’s meandering.

Of wolf hunts that were terrifying.

Nicki had the warm grey eyes of a man who had lived and suffered much. They were widely spaced beneath a strong, wide brow and dark, wide eyebrows. The curly black hair was touched with iron grey and beaded by the rain. The beard and moustache had been carefully trimmed.

He wasn’t tall, nor short—of about my height. Yes, exactly it. Eye to eye, with slightly pinched cheeks, high cheekbones, a full, broad nose and half-hidden lips. A hand whose grasp, like the rest of him, betrayed an iron will.

I remember that he held my hand for what seemed an eternity. He had a lovely wife, not much younger than myself, and his third, I think. Six children, two sons who had been killed in the war, one who was in the RAF, two who were now at boarding school in England, and one who was still at home with them, a girl of five.

He didn’t speak English, only Russian, German, and French, in addition to his native Polish. Though I didn’t know it then, this was to be the first of several such meetings, but in the forest, in the rain as he gripped my hand, he looked right into me.

In silence, Tommy watched the two of us.

‘Now I know why he’s so taken with you, Madame de St-Germain. Please, a welcome to my humble estate. Was your journey tiring?’

I remember thinking then that his French was very good, very Parisian. Hands in the pockets of my overcoat, I shook my head. ‘Only strange. In France, there are so few signs of the war. In London, and in every little station I passed through, there were posters, regulations, arrows pointing to the air-raid shelters, men in helmets, people carrying their gas masks, antiaircraft guns in the parks.’

‘Yet in London, the restaurants and theatres have reopened, and some of the evacuees have begun to trickle back to their homes in the city. This is a war that has only just begun, madame. The worst is yet to come. You’re very lucky to be out of France. If I were you, I’d let Tom get you and the children to Montana. That would be by far the wisest choice. Distant from the madness that has yet to come.’

Even though Poland had been savaged.

We began to walk back towards the house, which was perhaps a half-mile from us. The dogs ran on ahead. Tommy moved so as to put me between him and Nicki and make me feel at one with them. This gesture he was to repeat so many times, yet each time I always felt as if I, too, was special, a bond between them.

It was then, I think, that I first realized that what must have begun as a business relationship had somehow changed. Oh, for sure, Nicki would insist that the insurance he had paid for should cover his losses. There would be no question of this, no matter what, yet for all their differences, the two of them had drawn a lot closer.

Tommy genuinely liked him, and he wanted me to like Nicki, too.

‘You mustn’t be angry with Thomas, madame. What he did may seem inexcusable. The tiara of the Empress Eugénie is only a small part of the tremendous traffic in great works of art this war has already caused. The Nazis are systematically plundering my country. Day by day, trainloads of priceless pieces come into the depot they’ve set up in Kraków. Some lie out in the rain, there are so many.’

Can a brave man stand and cry before a woman he has only just met? That one did, nor would he turn away. ‘Schiller,’ he said, as we started out again. ‘The Obersturmführer Johann Schiller of the SS, the Schutzstaffel. In 1938, the Nazis sent art experts to my country. We thought not to trust them, and we didn’t, but …’

Nicki paused to pluck a last wild aster that was half-hidden among the dense grasses at the side of the lane. Droplets of rain clung too it. ‘For you,’ he said, and shaking them off, fixed it through the buttonhole of my collar.

‘But I, like others, Lily, had to greet these strangers. Two art historians travelled with this Schiller, one a Polish higher-up in the government and supposedly working on a book. My family had many beautiful things. Perhaps I was vain, perhaps a little naive, but I showed them through our house and tried to learn from them what I could so as to warn the others.’

‘That’s when Nicki got in touch with his insurance agents, a London firm, so we came into it as we had in the past when backing that agency,’ said Tommy.

‘The Nazis have their spies, Lily. Here in England, as well as in France. Often they work through a fifth column. Poles who would do their bidding, though there weren’t so many of them; Frenchmen and Englishmen who are still too willing to sell out their countries. They tracked the treasures I had had shipped to London and had them stolen.’

‘Nicki’s certain this Schiller was behind it, Lily. Apparently, the Reichsmarschall Göring has an eye for Raphael, Rubens, Leonardo da Vinci, and a lot of others.’

‘Icons also, and of great value, madame. Those from the Byzantines of the early twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
The Holy Mother with Child
,
Our Lady of Light
. Icons by Theophanes the Greek, others by Rublyov, my paintings by Jan Polack, and other great Polish artists. The Hellenistic terra-cottas from the third century
B.C
., the Roman and Etruscan glasses. Schiller, madame.’