'It's beautiful. And Conrad, 'hey' is fine.'
'Yes, sir. Are you going to the shooting? It's fantastic.'
'I think so. Conrad, has Harry Gucci tried to reach me there? I've been trying to get him since yesterday.'
'Uh-uh. He's supposed to be back here tomorrow, but.'
'Good. Will you ask him to give me a call? No, tomorrow's Christmas; you won't be in the office, will you?'
'Gee, I'd be glad to,' he said sadly, 'but I won't be here. It's Christmas.'
'Oh, is it? Well, merry Christmas, Conrad.'
'Thanks. Uh, sir…? Remember when you asked me, where was Colonel Robey the day before the meeting, and I said Heidelberg?'
My ears pricked up like a dog's. 'What about it?'
'Well, was it important?'
'Kind of, yes.'
'Well-it wasn't exactly true. He was in Frankfurt; that is, Sachsenhausen, right across the river.'
'Oh,' I said without expression, 'how do you happen to know that?'
'I guess you're wondering how I come to know that.'
'Now that you mention it, yes.'
'Well, I got his airline tickets for him. I know this guy at Lufthansa and I can get a good deal, so I usually get him his tickets whenever he goes.'
'Whenever he goes? To Frankfurt?'
'Yes, sir, uh…'
'Conrad, it really is important. If you know some more about this, I need to know.'
'It's kind of personal,' he said uneasily. 'I don't feel right about-'.
'Let's hear it, Conrad!' Jessick was the only person in Berlin on whom the Norgren command presence had any effect.
'Yes, sir. He's got a girlfriend in Sachsenhausen.'
'A girlfriend?'
'Well, a lady friend. He goes to see her whenever he gets a chance.' He seemed to interpret my silence as disapproval. 'It's not as if he's got a wife somewhere, sir. He got divorced, like, five years ago.'
'Why so secret, then?'
'Well, she's not exactiy divorced yet herself, and I guess he doesn't like-'
'OK, Conrad, thanks for telling me. Don't worry, this won't make any problem for Mark, and I won't tell him you told me. And Conrad? Call over to Harry's office right now, will you? Leave a message for him to call me whenever he gets in.'
If nothing else, at least I knew where Robey's mind was all the time.
A late dinner with Anne in the hotel dining room, and then coffee and vintage port (at fifty cents a glass) in the grand bar, where big, relaxed Americans, still in their ski outfits, sprawled in comfortable chairs at the foot of imposing columns made of Hitler's favorite pink Utersberg marble.
Anne poured more coffee for both of us from a ceramic pitcher and leaned back to sip. 'So where do you go from here?'
'As far as the forgery goes, you mean?' I shook my head dejectedly. 'I don't know. We may have to run all of them through a lab yet, but the show'll be over before that ever gets done.'
'But you've already said you're sure the pictures are all the right age. How can a laboratory tell you any more than that? If you can't tell if something is really by Vermeer, how can an X-ray machine?'
'It can, as a matter of fact-if the operator knows what he's looking for. For example, Vermeer worked without drawing in the outlines first. Nobody knew that until we looked at one with an X-ray machine. That means that any old Vermeers with a drawing under the paint aren't really Vermeers.' I took a long swallow of the velvety wine and licked the sweet stickiness from my lips. 'Titian also worked without outlining, which was no secret from his contemporaries-but why would anyone faking a Titian a hundred or two hundred years ago bother doing it the hard way? There was no such thing as an X-ray. No one else could possibly know what was or wasn't under the surface.'
She nodded. 'I see. An X ray actually shows you the way an artist worked.'
'And not only X rays. A good lab will put a painting through a mass spectrometric analysis-'
'Yoicks! What?'
'Don't ask me to explain it; I wasn't even sure I could say it. But it isolates chemicals, which can tell you interesting things.' There was a long pause while I tried to think of an interesting thing. 'Well, Durer, for instance. For a while he was using copper blue under the impression that it was ultramarine. Even careful forgers didn't know that- and still don't-so their failure to make the same mistake proves the forgery. Clever, what?'
'Very. You think that might be the case with our Durer?'
'No, I'm sure it's real. I'm down to the Vermeer, the Titian, and the Rubens now. And if they check out…'
'Don't look so glum. If Peter said there's a forgery, there is. And you'll find it, my good man. I have complete confidence.'
'Good, I'm glad one of us does.'
She stood up and held out her hand for my glass. 'I think you can stand one more round of cheer before we face the shooting. And I'll buy.'
'You will? I'm already more cheerful.'
Chapter 16
Midnight on the Obersalzberg.
There is a painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Return of the Hunters, in which three muffled men breast a snowy hill. Before them stretches a great plain rising to grotesque, jagged peaks in the far distance. Below are everyday people engaged in everyday activities on the plain, and snug houses with smoke coming from the chimneys, and yet the effect is-and this was certainly Brueghel's intention-of man dwarfed and trivialized by an awesome and indifferent Nature.
That was very much the feeling on the mountain. No moon, but starlight reflected from the snow made it bright enough to see across the valley to the mountains of Austria: ghostly blue-white snowfields; black, dense clumps of forest; monumental crests and ridges-everything windless, silent, sweeping, immense. For a while it was enough to subdue the crowds that had gathered in shivering little clumps, but after a time the Class VI vodka, gurgling steadily from flasks and bottles, had created a hum of conversation and laughter among the American military spectators.
There were German spectators too, and they and the milling shooters had been at their schnapps, so the mood was pretty lively all around. Most people had brought flashlights, the beams of which bounced playfully from group to group.
By the time the shooting began, things were starting to get rowdy. The way it was supposed to work was that the senior marksman would give the order, and the others would then fire in rapid sequence, sounding like a string of Chinese firecrackers. They would then load up again, ceremoniously knocking their powder into the pistol barrels with little wooden hammers, and await the next signal to fire.
And that, more or less, was the way the first series went, but each succeeding one got a little sloppier, until there were flashes going off out of sequence in all directions, generally followed by giggling screams from the women and laughter from the men. Good thing, I thought grouchily, that the weapons weren't really loaded. Which was more than you could say for the people.
'Kind of boisterous, isn't it?' Anne said. 'I've never seen it so wild.'
'Dangerous too,' I said, shielding my eyes against the jabbing flashlight beams. 'Even without bullets, those flashes must be able to burn you. Or can't they?'
