The Painted Messiah (6 page)

'Yes, sir.'

Richland was not about to have his story interrupted, whether Malloy knew or not. 'I fired them! I took the medicine they were prescribing and poured it down the drain! Then I dropped to my knees and talked to the only One who has any say in the matter!'

Malloy smiled pleasantly, trying to decide how high to jack his fee.

'Nikki, come over here and meet another man who has cheated death!'

The woman stood and walked toward them. She had dressed for business in a dark blue pants suit and white blouse with a string of lustrous grey pearls, but she crossed one foot before the other - as if trained to walk for the pleasure of men. She reminded Malloy of a poisoned liqueur in a crystal decanter. He wondered if their affair had begun shortly before Richland's cancer or if like the angel of death she had shown up after the medical death sentence.

'Dr Nicole North,' Richland offered, 'Mr Thomas Killion Malloy.'

'Pleased,' she said without sincerity. Her voice had just a whisper of Texas in it, but Malloy, who possessed a discerning ear for language and accents, was quite certain it reached back three or four generations.

Richland waved his hand toward the couch and chair in the middle of the room. 'Have a seat!' he said. 'May I get you something? A croissant, coffee, juice? We've already had our breakfast, but I can call for something, if you'd like.'

Malloy had had a late night, and coffee sounded good, but he did not care to put off the meeting while they waited for refreshments. 'I'm fine,' he answered.

'Then let's get down to business, what do you say?'

'You need a painting brought into the States without attending to the usual formalities.'

Richland didn't care for the way he had put this, and for the first time since Malloy had walked into the room the preacher lost his smile. 'It's a bit more complicated than that.'

'Why don't you tell me about it?'

J. W. Richland glanced at Nicole North as if he wanted reassurance before he spoke. That wasn't especially interesting. He was dealing with an experienced intelligence officer, and he knew it. He could reasonably assume Malloy could read a lie almost as easily as he could tell one. What Malloy wanted to know, and what he could not find out by observing the preacher's body language, was whether or not he was serving the same stew to everyone.

'I acquired the painting a number of years ago, when there was not as much concern about. . .'

He looked at Nicole North for help. 'Cultural heritage.'

Richland nodded and repeated the phrase thoughtfully. 'A good thing in theory,' he said, 'but in practice if we went around returning everything we've dug up in the past one hundred years . . . well, you might as well close every museum in the Western world!'

'You think someone might have a legitimate claim to your painting?'

'Legitimacy isn't the issue, Mr Malloy. Any claim, any interference at all, and I won't see my property again.'

Malloy nodded as if he accepted this.

Dr North picked up Malloy's apparent skepticism. 'The painting was discovered at an archaeological site several years ago by my uncle - Jonas Starr.' She waited for a response at the mention of this name, but Malloy didn't react. He had never heard of the man. 'It's a twelfth century painting of Christ.'

'When I saw it,' Richland explained, 'I told Jonas that was exactly the way I had always pictured Christ. Do you know what he did? He handed it to me and said it was mine, just like that!'

'Where was the archaeological site?'

Nicole North considered the question without answering. Malloy couldn't decide whether she was dreaming something up or calculating how much truth she needed to give him. 'In southern Turkey,' she said finally. 'Not far from the city of Altinbasak.'

'And you think the Turkish government might try to reclaim it?'

'We're fairly confident they would if they found out about it. We also think they would have a lot of support if they took us into a court outside the United States.'

'Once it's back here,' Richland added, with a smile that confirmed his friendship with a sitting President, 'I don't expect we'll have any problems.'

'The thing is we're not sure we can trust the people we're dealing with,' North told him. 'It's quite possible that after we make the exchange someone might decide to tip off Swiss customs. The Swiss are well aware of Dr Richland's strong support for the President, and they would just love to create an incident to embarrass him.'

'The Swiss?' Malloy asked in surprise. The Swiss, he knew, had never aspired to create an international incident with anyone.

'They haven't forgotten the pressure America brought to bear on them over the matter of the bank accounts of the holocaust victims.'

As it happened, Malloy knew more about the bank accounts of the holocaust victims than he could admit. He was also, in select circles, an acknowledged expert on Swiss-American relations. Dr North's pretensions of authority on this issue indicated she didn't know that. 'When exactly did you lose your painting, Reverend?'

'Last winter,' Richland answered, levelling his gaze on Malloy. It was the kind of look an amateur gives for the Big Lie, which was strange because it was a simple, rather unimportant detail. More curious than anything, Malloy locked an accusing gaze on Nicole North. Unlike the preacher, she did not especially fear his powers of discernment. At that point Malloy decided they were handing out the same story to everyone. It probably wasn't in the President's interest to doubt an old friend, but he felt reasonably sure Jane and Charlie would not be taken in so easily.

'Last winter?' He managed to sound suspicious, as if paintings were rarely stolen in winter.

'February, wasn't it, Nicole?' Richland wiggled in his seat like a recalcitrant Sunday schooler.

'I think so. Yes.' Nicole North lied better than the preacher. She actually seemed embarrassed by Richland's discomfort.

'You went to the police, I take it?'

Richland looked confused and shook his head as he blushed. 'No. We . . .' His hesitation looked staged, but Malloy thought it was at least well-practiced.

'Dr Richland has to be extremely careful with the information he provides the public,' Nicole North explained. 'We felt at the time if he filed a complaint, he would just be exposing himself and his ministry to possible criticism.'

They both seemed pleased with this answer and were therefore surprised when Malloy responded incredulously. 'You mean to say you didn't even file a claim with your insurance company?'

They seemed not to have thought about insurance, only the police, and Nicole North's eyes widened ever so slightly as Richland stepped into uncharted territory. 'No. The painting was a gift, you see. We didn't even know what value to put on it. Besides, the claim probably would have become public knowledge. You know how those things go.'

'We made considerable effort at recovering the painting, Mr Malloy,' Nicole North said finally. There was a bit of chastisement in this. They were hiring him after all, not the other way around. 'Both my security people and Dr Richland's made inquiries. Unfortunately nothing came of our efforts.'

'I really didn't think I'd ever get it back,' Richland explained. He looked like a stage actor who has stumbled back into the script. 'Then we got a call. A Mr Roland Wheeler of Zürich.' Richland gave Malloy a smile he no doubt reserved for annihilating enemies of the faith. 'He wanted to know if we would be interested in acquiring a twelfth century portrait of Christ.' Richland's expression suggested the transparency of such a ruse.

'Wheeler insists he is representing the owner,' North added. 'Naturally he refuses to acknowledge Dr Richland's claim of prior ownership. He's keeping it at a private bank in Zürich called Goetz and Ritter. From what we can tell, they don't run banks over there the way we do here.'

Malloy resisted a smile at this, and changed the subject. 'You're comfortable with the painting's authenticity?'

'I will be before I release the funds. I'm going over Sunday and will examine it Monday morning. If everything is in order and you agree to help, you'll join me Tuesday at the bank for the exchange. Once I've completed the transfer of funds, you'll take responsibility for getting the painting to New York.'

Richland squirmed uncomfortably. 'If something happened after you took possession, Mr Malloy, say for instance the police in Zürich stopped you, just how would you handle the matter?'

'If I take the job, I'll arrange matters so that nobody stops me, Reverend.'

'You didn't exactly answer my question.'

'Let me make something clear to you. How I work is my business. This much I can tell you: I'll either bring the painting to you or I'll be dead, and someone in my employ will deliver it.'

The Rev. J. W. Richland sat back and considered this for a moment. Malloy was a quiet, dark-haired man fast approaching fifty. He had never been the muscular commando-type. He had built his career on his insight into human nature, the art of persuasion, and by inspiring loyalty in those people he recruited to work for him. When he made a promise, he kept it. When he worked a job, he got it done - one way or the other. After a quarter of a century of handling whatever came at him, he didn't especially care to explain himself to amateurs. 'That's quite a statement,' Richland said finally.

'You're hiring me to do a job you don't think your own people can handle. It goes without saying you want someone who is ready for every contingency. When I tell you the police aren't going to stop me, believe it.'

'Well then,' Richland answered, 'I suppose the only thing left is to persuade you to take the job!' The preacher's expression suggested that he was a man accustomed to getting his own way but was not at all reluctant to engage in the hard give-and-take of negotiations. 'I propose an advance of ten thousand dollars to cover your expenses and another one hundred thousand dollars cash the moment you hand me the painting.' Richland seemed proud of his offer, as if he assumed Malloy would not have dreamed of asking for such a figure.

'I'm financing two security teams, one in Switzerland and one here. These people don't come cheaply, Reverend, and neither do I.'

Richland seemed surprised, but managed to ask politely, 'What exactly do you need?'

'One hundred thousand advance. Four hundred thousand cash when I hand you the painting.'

'That's ridiculous!' Richland tried to laugh, but he wasn't doing a very good job.

Malloy stood up and started for the door. 'I'm sorry I wasted your time. I thought you understood what you are asking me to do.'

'Now just a minute!'

At the door Malloy turned back and smiled cordially, ignoring Richland's protest. 'It was a pleasure to meet you both.'

'You're talking about a great deal of money!' Richland shouted.

'I'm sure you'll find someone in your price range,' Malloy answered with a condescending smile.

Nicole North spoke. 'You have a deal, Mr Malloy.'

Malloy looked at the preacher for confirmation, but J. W. Richland looked suddenly more like the woman's lapdog than a dealmaker.

Malloy and his fiancée lived in a converted warehouse that faced Ninth Avenue. Empty lots lay to either side and behind it. Two years ago a contact in Europe, using a series of dummy corporations to cover his tracks, had arranged to buy the building and asked Malloy to oversee its restoration and eventually to manage the property. The bottom three floors were still shells, but the platform elevator, original to the building, had finally passed inspection, and Malloy had converted the top floor into a small apartment with a large art studio for Gwen.

Gwen was a painter, one of the few who actually sold her works for a decent price on occasion. During the lean times, and there had been plenty of them over the past two decades, Gwen had covered expenses waiting tables. As it happened that was how Malloy had met her. A week later, a long dry spell broke for her, and Gwen sold a painting for close to forty thousand dollars. Her stock in the art world had been on the rise ever since.

Gwen was a short, slender, athletic woman with a boundless reserve of quiet determination and energy. She had an irreverent sense of humour and that rarest of all qualities, at least in modern times, common sense. She had dark intelligent eyes, short black hair, and pale creamy skin. As a Jewish kid growing up in Queens, Gwen said she had been a girl nobody noticed. That didn't seem possible to look at her now. She had been a radical most of her life. Disenfranchised from the power structure and suspicious of everyone who encouraged her toward moderation and responsibility and conformity, especially conformity, Gwen had spent, by her own account, the first decade of her adult life without so much as a passing nod toward discretion. In her thirties Gwen had understood the advantage of the single life, especially for an artist, and settled into a series of comfortable though distant relationships that would last a year or two and then dissolve amicably. Passion came at intervals. At forty Gwen still cherished a bit of the Revolution, but mostly she had come to terms with herself and her talent. She was one of the few people Malloy had ever met who had no regrets.

Whenever he was foolish enough to try to take inventory of the reasons he had fallen in love with her, the list, no matter how long, somehow failed to capture her essence. She had talent of course and wisdom and a wickedly quick wit. She had beauty, humour, fire, and an amazing gentleness. She was honest, charitable, and still curious about all things new. She had abiding friendships, a point he thought which argued for her integrity, and she could make friends easily, a virtual impossibility for most people at forty. Gwen could be silent for hours at a time, something Malloy loved about her because almost nobody except the occasional agoraphobic had that skill. She was moody when things went well, optimistic when others despaired.