If they were real. Elata and the others had said they were, but he had to see himself.
“Get as close as you can and I’ll jump. Hover over the boat landing.”
When he was younger, Morgan had been a good enough athlete to play first-string soccer through college. He still worked out every day and, largely because of his stomach problems, was not horribly overweight. But the wash from the helicopter blades and the craft’s jittery approach nearly unnerved him as it hovered near the wall. The Sikorsky’s stowed landing gear made it impossible for him to climb down, and while the pilot was able to get closer than he’d thought to the wall, there was still a considerable distance between Morgan’s legs and the stones as he lowered himself out the doorway.
But he remembered the face of the child. Holding his breath, he let go.
Morgan landed on the smooth stone ramp, a good two feet from the edge of the water. He tottered forward, but easily regained his balance. There was more room here than it seemed from the air, he decided. Ignoring the pain in his ankle, he walked up the ramp into the empty castle.
The paintings were in the small courtyard, ahead on the left. His heart began pounding heavily, his feet slipped, his head buzzed.
Smaller than he imagined, though he had pored over every detail beforehand, the paintings stood on cheap wooden easels in staggered rows at the middle of the twenty-by-ten-foot atrium. His glimpse of the first left him disappointed; the perpendicular outline of the lantern outline in the teeth of the horse played poorly against the boldness of the flaming background.
But his next step took him in view of the child. Morgan felt the mother’s hand clawing with despair, grasping for the last breath draining the infant’s lungs. The baby’s eyes — top closed, bottom fixed upward — took hold of his skull. Morgan took another step and felt his senses implode.
Who could have faked such work? No one, not even Elata.
He walked to each canvas as if in a dream. He touched each in succession, running his fingers around the edges of the canvas, tracing the edge of the stretcher at the back.
My God, he thought — war provoked this. Violence begat such awesome beauty.
The helicopter revved outside. Morgan remained fixed, lost in a trance. Finally, after he had seen each painting again, after he had absorbed each one’s beauty and ugliness — yes, of course they contained ugliness, they had to, as man possessed good and evil — he took each with great care and placed them in the vinyl cases the Italian had left. Then he made seven stacks, and carried two out toward the helicopter.
The pilot had put out his landing wheels and managed to perch at the edge of the ramp. The rotor continued to turn, albeit slowly.
“Help me!” Morgan yelled as he struggled with the door.
“I’ve got to hold the aircraft,” shouted the pilot. “We’ll slide into the water if I don’t.”
Morgan carefully slid the paintings into the rear of the craft.
“There are twelve more,” said Morgan.
“Wait!” the pilot yelled as he started to go back. “You have a message — a radio message.”
“What?”
“Here.” The pilot handed him the headset and then fiddled with the radio control. Morgan, leaning into the helicopter, put it on.
“What?” demanded Morgan.
“The Swiss have arrested Constance Burns,” said Peter. He must still be aboard the boat — Morgan could hear the motor’s drone in the background. Of course — they would be running south for Italy, having panicked and initiated the backup plan.
So be it. They were small insects who could be dealt with at a more convenient time.
“Interpol was involved,” said Peter, flustered by his employer’s nonchalance. “The Kommando der Flieger has been alerted.”
“Turn off the rotors,” he told the pilot when he reached the helicopter.
“We’ll slide into the water.”
“I’ll take the chance,” he told him.
“We may not be able to take off.”
“Turn them off,” said Morgan in a voice so strong it could have killed the engine on its own.
The heavy drone of the Aerospatiale Alouette III’s Turbomeca made it nearly impossible for Nessa to hear the transmission, so even if she had spoken German and could have deciphered the heavy Swiss accent, she would have had trouble understanding what was being said.
The ever-helpful Captain Theiber, sitting in the rear compartment behind her, had no difficulty, however. In his calm baritone voice, he supplied a concise interpretation when the transmission was complete.
“Two jets from Fleigerstaffel 8 have taken off from Meriringen,” he said. “That’s north of us. A pair of trainers from Magadino are airborne as well. They are propeller-driven, but they should match a helicopter. And a liaison is contacting NATO. Herr Morgan will not escape.”
“I’m confident,” said Nessa, though she felt anything but. Having rallied such vast resources, she had better end up with something in her net besides the gorgeous scenery.
And a case of airsickness, which had started to creep up her esophagus.
“The lake,” said the pilot.
The edge of a blue-green bowl opened in the white and gray ahead. A town, two towns, lay to the right. The pilot had the throttle full bore — they whipped forward at just over two hundred kilometers an hour.
“Ten minutes,” predicted Theiber. “Less.”
“The PC-7’s will approach from the west,” said the pilot, pointing in the distance. “Castello Dinelli will be straight ahead.”
Nessa leaned straight ahead, willing it to appear.
Morgan’s ankle had started to swell and his knees were deeply bruised from his falls by the time he slid the last painting into the helicopter. He had to shove his chest to the side awkwardly to get into the craft, which was listing and had its left forward wheel underwater. The pilot’s frown did not lift as the rotors whipped into action; he wrestled with the controls as the aircraft began bucking violently.
“Go!” commanded Morgan.
“I’m trying,” growled the pilot.
Morgan buckled his seat belt and leaned against the seat as the helicopter pitched upward. Falling on the rocks had temporarily fatigued him, but as he thought of the paintings he now possessed, his characteristic bonhomie returned. “Now, now,” he told the pilot. “Come — you’ll be richly rewarded. Let us fly back to Zurich now.”
The helicopter trembled for a few moments more, but began gradually to lift steadily. The pilot’s frown faded.
Then a dark cross appeared a bare meter from the windshield and the Sikorsky lurched sideways to duck it.
“Shit! Don’t ram them!” shouted Nessa. “Tell them not to ram him!”
The two Pilatus PC-7’s buzzed in front of the Sikorsky so close, it seemed as if one of the wings would clip the rotor.
“It’s under control, I’m sure,” said Captain Theiber. He leaned forward and put his hand on her shoulder.
A few minutes before, Nessa would have reached up and touched his hand with her fingers. But the captain’s tone suddenly felt patronizing.
