“Do you have any idea how much stolen art is ever recovered, Mr. Petric? Any idea at all?”
“A third? Maybe a quarter?”
“Less than one percent. And when no one even has a piece of paper to alert the international auction markets, then you’re going to shave that figure even closer. All you need is a broker willing to ask as few questions as possible. London, Zurich, New York, any of those three places would probably do. And if there are still worries, there’s always some discreet oilman in Texas who’ll take it for his basement. Or some rich old German in South America who has half the local constabulary in the hip pocket of his lederhosen. Selling it and keeping it a secret aren’t the hard parts unless it’s something so notoriously famous that everyone will spot it right away. And nothing from here fits that description. Which isn’t to say you can’t make a lot of money from it.”
“So how many items are we talking about? You said the transfer files were up past a thousand, but obviously not everything was in Sarajevo.”
“No. But more of it than you’d think. Belgrade and Zagreb never seemed quite as interested as local folks and officials. This always has been a city that prided itself on its tastes, on its private collections. About three hundred or so were here.”
“Then how much money are we talking about? On average.”
“Art isn’t something that lends itself to averaging. At least that’s what I used to tell people to show off my purity. But I’ve grown vulgar in my old age, and I’ll tell you right now that the worth of the three hundred or so transfer items in the city probably averaged out to about a hundred sixty thousand dollars apiece. Hardly something to get the art people at Scotland Yard excited about. But get your hands on a third of the supply and you’ve got sixteen million. Not bad for a hard cash economy And if you’re willing to be a little more discriminating you can easily up your average, maybe four hundred thousand apiece for the top one-third. Now you’re looking at forty million, or at least twenty million even after you’ve accounted for the discounting you sometimes have to do when you’re selling items of questionable provenance. I can see someone getting killed over that, Mr. Petric, can’t you?”
So much for meat and cigarettes, Vlado thought. So much for the sad, tawdry underbelly of the city’s organized crime. Now death on a small scale began to have a certain logic.
“I’d like you to do a favor for me,” he said to Glavas. “I can’t provide you with either a clean, warm room or good food, and I don’t have any Marlboros. But I can leave you a full pack of Drinas if you can start trying to put together what you remember of the local items that were in the transfer files.”
“Under the circumstances, I’d consider that a generous offer.”
“Take the next two days and write down as much as you can remember about the most valuable pieces. Who had them. At what location. Particularly in the city center. Never mind the Grbavica and Ilidza locations. Never mind your piece up on the wall, either. I want to start looking for some of those ‘empty spaces’ you were talking about, the more recently empty the better, and the only way I’ll know where to look is with the help of your memory.”
“Consider it done,” Glavas said, flashing some of the old nobility and grace he must have employed during his years in the universe of artists and museums. “It will be a privilege to feel useful again. I’ll begin as soon as you’ve left.”
Vlado shut his notebook, hunching forward as if ready to stand, then asked, “Did Vitas say anything about where he was going next. About who else he might be seeing?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid. As I said, he was quite careful about those things. And if someone as careful as he can be killed so easily, then I would think you might want to watch yourself, Mr. Petric.”
“The thought has occurred to me. And if you should get any more visitors interested in this subject, Mr. Glavas, please let me know.”
“And how am I to do that? How, for that matter, am I to get this list to you once I’m done. The phones here work about once a month. And something tells me you don’t want me sending messages out through the police or the U.N.”
“I’ll come pick it up. Same time in two days. Though don’t be alarmed if I’m late, even if by a day or two.”
“Either way. I won’t be going anywhere.”
Vlado stood, stepping toward the door.
“In the meantime, I suppose I should pay a visit to your friend, Mr. Murovic. Do you know where to find him?”
“In his new office at the National Bank of Bosnia, down next to the main vault, like Tutankhamen in his tomb. Our Boy King of art, and every bit as naive and easily led. But if you’re truly interested in looking for those ‘empty spaces’ right away, Mr. Petric, I think I may have a starting place for you.”
Vlado paused with his hand on the doorknob.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “I’d appreciate that.”
“Try starting with Murovic’s head,” Glavas said. “It’s the emptiest space in all of Sarajevo.”
And with that he tumbled into another great outburst of wheezing laughter, which continued as he waved Vlado out the door.
As Vlado started down the steps, the wheezes hardened into a sharp cough, and it was still crashing onward as Vlado emerged from the exit downstairs, where the sound was finally drowned out by the urgent shouts of children and the rattle of gunfire.
CHAPTER 11
The drive back from Dobrinja was blessedly uneventful, and by the time Vlado dropped off the car the sun was shining, pouring onto the sugary hillsides where snow fell earliest and deepest. From down in the city the distant clusters of rooftops and balsams resembled miniature Christmas villages, posed for a photograph. One needed a pair of binoculars to see where the scene needed retouching-the holes in the roofs, the burn marks and broken windows. And it would have taken a particularly powerful model, as well as some patience, to pick out the gun barrels here and there, poking from camouflaged burrows.
The Bank of Bosnia, formerly YugoBanka, had been forced into wartime hibernation by a lack of cash and the government’s need for its deep sturdy vaults. They’d been built into the hillside forty years earlier, and it would take a nuclear blast to pry them loose, much less break them apart. So, that’s where the government stored its most valuable treasures, everything from the rarest museum pieces to records for property and finance. And it was here, according to Milan Glavas, that Vlado would find Enver Murovic, the young new director of the National Museum.
Vlado walked through the entrance into an armed camp. Five men slung heavily with machine guns immediately rose to greet him, like a legion of bored shop clerks eager to sell him a suit. The place smelled of a year’s worth of sweat and cigarettes, and a thick layer of dust coated the empty counters and teller cages.
“Enver Murovic,” Vlado asked uncertainly, and when no one answered he added, “I’m Inspector Petric … representing the Interior Ministry police.”
Still no one answered, but one of the men disappeared out a rear door, while three of the others slowly settled back to their roosts. The fifth strode past Vlado without a further look out the front door, taking up a post outside, where he probably should have been all along.
Murovic’s voice preceded him into the room, a fluttery burst of aggrieved authority, uttered with absolute disdain. Vlado picked it up in midsentence.
“… simply can’t have these sorts of interruptions in the future without either better identification or a confirmed appointment.”
He emerged from around the corner into the gloom, a tall man, reed thin, dressed all in black except for his glasses, thick frames in bright magenta. His hair was cut neatly, close to the scalp. That, plus his brisk, officious manner, made him strike Vlado as a refined version of Garovic. His style and image were those of an aesthete, yet somehow he still betrayed the careful, grasping soul of a career bureaucrat on the make. Vlado could very easily imagine this fellow shoving old baggage like Glavas out the door. Or down a long flight of stairs.