'Oh, it wasn't too hard.' I took a breath and plowed ahead before I could change my mind. 'Are you free tonight? How about that dinner we talked about?'
'Tonight…? Well, actually, I-'
'It's just that I wanted to talk about a few things related to the show,' I said quickly. God forbid that she should think I might be attracted to her.
'I'd like to, Chris, but I've got a MAC flight to catch at six-thirty.'
'Oh. Well, it's nothing that-'
'How about now? I haven't been off base all day, and I'd love a good long walk. Are you doing anything this afternoon?'
Too direct, I suppose. I almost retreated instinctively with a song and dance about having just gotten in, needing to do several things, etc., etc. What I said before about not being fainthearted still holds, but I never said I was terrifically secure, you know. Fortunately, I held firm for once.
'No, I'm not,' I said. 'Do you like the zoo?'
'I love it.'
'Not too cold for you?'
'Cold? It's beautiful for December. You've lived in the Banana Belt too long. Meet you in the lobby in ten minutes.'
She was dressed in civilian clothes this time; a trendy waist-length winter jacket and slacks, and pleasingly unsensible shoes. She was slighter than I'd realized, narrowly built in the shoulders and upper body, small-breasted and narrow-waisted, but with robust, rounded hips and curvy, athletic legs; something along the lines of a Venus of Lucas Cranach the Elder, but with longer legs. Cranach's Venuses and Lucretias, hot little numbers in their time, had never seemed very alluring to me, but quite suddenly I realized I'd been looking at things all wrong. In fact, I couldn't imagine a more attractive way for a female to be formed. Old Cranach rose considerably in my estimation.
We walked to the U-Bahn station at the other side of the plaza and caught one of the subway trains headed downtown. 'First of all,' I said as we sat down, 'I owe you an apology. You were right and I was wrong about what happened to Peter. I went to look at the Hotel Paradies in Frankfurt. He never walked into that place voluntarily.'
'Of course he didn't. Do you think there's some connection to the show, then?'
'Yes. So does Harry, by the way.'
'Ah, that explains it. I spent an hour over a cup of coffee with him yesterday. He was being very charming and ingenuous, but I was being grilled, all right. About Peter's work, about his habits, his schedule… He really enjoys being a detective, doesn't he?'
I laughed. 'He loves it.'
'And how's your own detective work going? Have you gotten anywhere on the forgery?'
'No, except that my best guess now is that it's one of the three from the cache. And it may not be a forgery at all, in the narrow sense. It might be one of Bolzano's copies masquerading as an original, or maybe a genuine old painting that's been restored or reworked-or re-signed-so that it's not what everybody thinks it is.'
'Mmm, interesting. But it still leaves a lot of possibilities, doesn't it?'
'Oh, and one more possibility: If it isn't from the cache- if it came out of Bolzano's own Florence collection- then I'm pretty sure it was substituted after and not before it became part of the show. At least,' I said, struck with something that hadn't occurred to me before, 'I'm sure about it if what the Bolzanos told me is true.'
'What did they tell you?'
'That Peter himself was there for the packing.'
'That is true. He and Earl spent two days down there getting the pictures ready for shipping.'
'What about Egad? Did he go too?'
'I think so, yes. Later, for a day or two. Some sort of paperwork.'
We got out at the zoo station and climbed the stairs up into the cold. 'You know,' she said thoughtfully, zipping up her jacket, 'if the forgery did get into the collection after it left Florence, I don't see how it could have happened without one of our own people knowing about it.' She frowned, thinking it over. 'Isn't that so? Colonel Robey, Egad, or Earl. Or me, I guess, if you want to include eveyone. Or even Peter.'
'I don't know about you and Peter, but otherwise I agree with you. It's hard to imagine anyone else having the access or the knowledge to do it. Of course, there's Jessick, or maybe one of the workmen, or some visitor-'
She shook her head. 'The guards had specific orders. Only senior staff-and that doesn't include Conrad Jessick-was allowed near the paintings. Anyone else had to have a senior staff member with him. Of course, a guard might have been careless, or even bribed… Chris, is this starting to sound as bizarre to you as it is to me? I feel like I'm in a movie or something.'
'Me too. Let's forget it for a while.' We were at the entrance to the zoo. 'Still feel like going in?'
'Sure. I missed lunch, though. Can we stop for a snack?'
I was hungry, too, and we followed the signposts to the Zoo Restaurant, past indifferent antelope, gnus, and zebras. We joined a few hardy Berliners and ate outside in the pale sunshine, on the Sud-Terrasse: orange-checked tablecloths and rattan chairs overlooking a wintry but mostly ice-free pond with quacking ducks. Huddled in our coats, we had bratwurst and rolls, hot potato salad, and the invariably good German coffee.
'No,' Anne said, dabbing mustard from her lips with a paper napkin, 'it just doesn't make sense. How could any of those people be a forger?'
'We're not talking about a forger. Whatever the counterfeit is, it's not a copy that was dashed off in the last few months-or in the last ten or twenty years. It may have been doctored a little to match one of Bolzano's paintings, but that's all. We're talking about a crook-a big-time crook-but not a forger.'
'If that was supposed to make me feel better, somehow it doesn't.'
'Well, maybe this will. Remember, the most likely possibility is that the forgery is one of the ones from the Hallstatt cache. And if that's true, the crook we're dealing with is probably some sneaky Oberleutnant who's been dead for twenty years.'
'Maybe.' She looked up from a crumb she was holding out on her palm to a nervy but irresolute sparrow at the edge of the table. 'But Peter wasn't killed by a sneaky Oberleutnant who's been dead for twenty years.'
'No, not likely. You know, except for Earl, I don't know anything about the others on the staff. Who is Egad, anyway? Where did he come from?'
'Attaboy,' she said to the sparrow, which had finally made its move and flown off with its prize. 'Is Egad suspect number one?'
'Have to start someplace.'
'All right, Egad is Edgar Franklin Gadney, a DOD civilian-'
'Department of Defense?'
'Uh-huh. He's on special assignment to this project- like me. Ordinarily he works for EDPSC as-'
'Would it be too much trouble to speak in words, please?'
'Sorry, the European Defense Personnel Support Center. He's deputy director for subsistence contracting.'
I laughed. 'Maybe you ought to go back to initials. I don't understand the words either.'
She smiled at me. 'That's the first time I've seen you laugh.'
'It is?' Was it really?
'Yes, you're a very serious person.' Very Serious Person is the way she said it. 'Terribly formidable and intimidating.
'I am?' She was only half-joking, and I was genuinely surprised.
'Uh-huh, but you look almost human when you smile. It warms up your eyes. You look much better than you did a few days ago, by the way.'
'I think you're absolutely fantastic-looking,' I blurted out to my own surprise, and God help me, I think I blushed. I had been away from the wars too long; my courtship technique was a little rough.
'Thank you,' Anne said, and pleased me by seeming to be pleased herself, but then unnerved me by continuing to regard me and my reddening cheeks with those lovely, solemn, violet eyes.
'Would you like another wurst?' I asked romantically.
