paintings, it overloads the lab, and it makes everybody nervous. It's also wildly expensive.
Second, even good laboratories often produce ambiguous results. Psychiatrists and art experts aren't the only ones who sometimes disagree; chemists looking at the same computerized pigment analysis will reach different conclusions more often than they'd like laymen to know. Besides that, legitimate underpainting, overpainting, and a lot of technicalities too boring to go into confuse things enough to give any competent and resourceful forger a decent chance of getting by.
And third, I wanted the satisfaction of finding it myself, or at least the excitement of looking for it. Matching wits against a really fine forger, even if he's been dead a few hundred years, is pure pleasure, an engrossing detective game, and it promised more fun than I'd had in months.
Which gives you a pretty good idea of the state of my life.
But another hour produced nothing, not even much in the way of fun, and I decided to quit for the day. Tomorrow, fresher and stronger after another good night's sleep, I'd start again.
On my way through the lobby I saw a message in my box at the reception desk: Pls call Capt. Greene, 4141.
I used the desk telephone. 'Anne? This is Chris Norgren.'
'Oh, thank you for calling, Dr. Norgren.' The formality was not lost on me. 'Can I talk to you about something? Colonel Robey would have discussed it with you, but he's had to go to Heidelberg. He specifically asked me to see to it instead.'
Why the meticulous explanation? Did she think I might suspect her intentions? Would that I had reason. 'Fine,' I said.
'Good. Can we meet in the lobby in twenty minutes?' 'I was just going down to the bar for a drink. How about there?'
A fractional pause. 'All right. Twenty minutes.'
The Keller-Bar of Columbia House is, as the name suggests, in the basement, not far from the infamous storage room, though entered by its own flight of steps. To me it made a colorful and exotic scene: crowded and noisy, mostly with fliers, self-consciously casual in their flight suits and satiny flight jackets, their captain's bars prominent on their shoulders. Small men, most of them. Handsome and extremely young, lithe and fit-looking; like a gathering of jockeys or lightweight boxers. There were a few senior officers, too portly and convivial, with individual audiences of respectfully attentive juniors. It might almost have been a scene from the Battle of Britain-many of the fliers were wearing white scarfs tucked into the throats of their jackets.
There were eight or ten scattered tables, and along one wall a row of slot machines, all of them engaged and, from the steady clanking and jingling, all paying off handsomely. Not, of course, that you could tell from the players, who pumped the handles with de-rigueur expressions of joyless drudgery.
Tonight's Special, read a hand-lettered sign propped on the bar; Beefeater Martinis, 75 cents. A long way from San Francisco prices and too good to pass up. The barman poured my drink and nodded his thanks when I dropped a quarter into one of the champagne glasses placed every few feet along the bar. 'Snacks over there,' he said, recognizing me for a newcomer. 'Help yourself.'
'Over there' was a table around which pilots were congregated elbow to elbow, chattering and munching. Instantiy hungry at the mention of food, I steered my way through, hoping at least for chips or nuts. They were there, all right, but so were a platter of halved, thick-sliced ham-and-cheese sandwiches; a heaped tray of cold cuts; half a wheel of cheddar cheese; hot German sausages and rolls; and more-the free lunch of yore, alive and thriving in the officers-club bar in Berlin. This much-maligned military life, I was learning, had more going for it than was generally supposed.
I snaked out a plateful of the heartier items and found a table at the back. I meant to wait for Anne before gobbling up the food, but I'd had only one meal in the last two days, and in fifteen minutes I'd wolfed down most of the plateful, along with half the martini. I was so absorbed in the process that I didn't see her come up.
'Hi,' she said.
'Hi.'
She sat down. 'It's so horrible about Peter. I haven't been able to think about anything else.'
'Is that what you want to talk about?'
'Indirectly, yes. Colonel Robey's counting on you now to carry Peter's share of the load, you know.'
'Of course. Would you like something to drink?'
She shook her head gloomily.
'Well, you can tell Mark I'll do my best. Peter's already done all the hard work, so I think I can cope.'
I was bothered by our formality and distance, and not just for personal reasons. The dynamics of art shows lend themselves to personality problems (something I figured out for myself without Louis's help), and one of my jobs was to defuse them, not create them.
I set down my martini. 'Look, Anne-I apologize for cutting you off like that in the meeting.'
'Cutting me off?'
'I was acting like a creep.'
'No, you weren't.' But her lips tipped upward and those clear violet eyes warmed slightly. 'You sure were.'
'All right. Now that we agree on something, how about calling me Chris?'
'All right, Chris,' she said, and smiled a little less tentatively.
Pleased with this small victory, I sipped my martini and smiled back. Anne, however, quickly drifted unflatteringly off into her private thoughts and sat there looking unhappy and remote.
'What did you want to talk about, exactly?' I asked.
'Oh… sorry-I keep thinking about Peter. Look, maybe I will have a drink after all. Could I have a glass of white wine, please?'
When I returned with it, she took one gulp and was all business. 'Colonel Robey's had a call from Florence. Apparently, signor Bolzano went to pieces when he heard about what happened in the storage room.'
'Hardly surprising.'
'No, but he's having another one of his episodes. He's threatening to pull out again. It's the sort of thing Peter would ordinarily deal with, but now, what with, with…'
I said gently, 'Mark would like me to go to Florence and talk to him.'
'Yes. He says you may really have to put on the pressure.' She smiled slightly. 'He said to tell you it's arm- twisting time.'
'Oh,' I said, finishing the martini and putting the glass down.
'Is something wrong?'
'No, it's just that… the thing is…'
The thing was that whatever my forte is, it isn't twisting arms. No doubt it was among my 'other duties as required,' and certainly it is something art curators must do from time to time. But back home, Tony Whitehead, resigned to my deficiencies, usually assigned it to others more temperamentally suited. Of whom there were many.
Someone turned on the television set above the bar. 'Urghah!' it said. 'Bdao! Ooghah!' A martial-arts movie.
'What I'm wondering about,' I went on dishonestly, 'is just what it is that's worrying Bolzano so much. His paintings are OK, after all, and he must know that the chance of another theft attempt is infinitesimal.'
'There's also that little matter of the ruined Michelangelo reproduction, which I understand was a valuable drawing on its own.'
'Yes, but he was making things difficult before that happened, wasn't he?'
'From the beginning. The consensus-Earl, Egad, Colonel Robey, even Peter-is that he's just a difficult, contrary kind of person who likes making waves to flaunt his power.'
'But you don't think that.'
'No, I think…' She rotated her wineglass slowly on the table, studying the dregs like a fortune-teller reading tea leaves. 'Well, they say he's a sick old man now, and he's getting feeble, and I believe he's just… fearful, apprehensive, you know? Afraid that something will happen to his things, afraid that maybe he won't live to see them back in his villa now that they've turned up again after so long- the ones from the cache, I mean. It doesn't seem so hard to understand. I think he went along with the show in a burst of gratitude, but now he's having
