Abruptly turning Vlado’s way, Murovic gave him a slow once-over, his gaze sweeping from top to bottom, then back to the face, a look of appraisal that said, No, this won’t do, but we’ll be as courteous as protocol requires.”
“Yes. I’m Mr. Murovic,” he said with a note of impatience.
“Inspector Petric,” Vlado said. “I’m conducting an investigation on behalf of the Interior Ministry.”
“Identification?”
Vlado showed him his battered police warrant card, explaining, “I’ve been temporarily detailed to the Ministry’s special police unit. You can telephone Acting Chief Kasic if you’ve any doubts.”
“No doubts,” he said airily, with the tone of one who’d only been testing, playing a game.
“This way, then. To my office,” he said. He strolled away, glancing over his shoulder to add, “Before we get down to business perhaps you’d like a short tour. It’s quite an impressive little domain, really, and not one that just anybody is privy to. You might as well take advantage of the access while you’re here.”
The invitation, plus the appearance of Murovic’s office-neat, dusted, wastebasket empty, every thin pile of papers stacked just so-made Vlado smile at the initial show of hurry and impatience. This seemed to be a man with little to do but sit and fidget, waiting to impress whatever visitors might drop by, as long as they weren’t “just anybody”
They descended a dank stairway, Murovic flicking on lights, then pushing a few buttons on a small key pad to disarm the alarm system. He unlocked the door onto a cellar of caged rooms leading to the main vault.
He unlocked the first caged entrance and waltzed into a chamber crammed with filing cabinets and stacks of huge cloth-bound books. “Old deeds and property records going back past Tito’s day,” Murovic explained. “Someday they’ll sort it all out, but it will be a hell of a mess. I hadn’t even known these kinds of things survived the last war, much less the last half century.”
He unlocked a second caged door into a larger chamber. Here, leaning against each other, were frames of all sizes, arranged with a cloth between each.
Murovic sighed.
“These are some of the most valuable items from the museum,” he said. “Not with the temperature and humidity controls we’d like, of course, and I’d prefer they weren’t leaning up against each other like this. But space is limited as you can see. I’m afraid it’s the best we can do for now.”
The next room was the main vault, its giant lock shining like the captain’s wheel of a ship. Murovic rapped lightly on the door, producing only a muted click against the thick metal.
“And in here,” he said, “are our most valuable pieces of all. Small treasures that are centuries old. Royal jewelry, the rarest of paintings, an illuminated Jewish Haggadah from the fifteenth century. That alone is worth a few million, and everybody and his brother in the international art community would love to get his hands on it, to protect it until the end of the war, they say But not a chance. If we let it go now that’s the last we’ll see of it.
“No one but me and three others are allowed down here most of the time, so consider this your lucky day. You see, there’s also a small roll-away bed. And that is where our president sleeps when things get especially bad.”
He offered this with an arch smile, as if their leader had perhaps furnished a love nest in there. He seemed quite thrilled by his proximity to this small whiff of power. Vlado could have laughed. He had grown used to seeing the newly powerful in action as they tried to run this country by the seat of their pants. They were pressed together in this city along with everyone else, their world growing more compact by the day, and under those circumstances the nearness of power only made him feel claustrophobic, as did this vault, this tomb with its treasures.
Glavas had been right. Murovic was a bit of a Tutankhamen down here. All that was missing was the golden headdress and the small, thrusting goatee. If an explosion were to somehow seal him in, perhaps he, too, wouldn’t be unearthed for another twenty centuries, left to mummify with his treasures and the bed of his president.
He led Vlado back through the first two rooms, noisily shutting the caged doors behind him, then climbed back upstairs. He then gestured toward an office chair by his desk.
Vlado pulled in a deep breath, feeling a need for fresh, clean air, but receiving only the staleness of a quiet office.
“So,” Murovic said. “An investigation. What sort?”
“One that may have to do with your transfer files, which I understand have gone missing.”
“I’d hardly put it like that. They’re not missing, they’re quite gone. Destroyed in a fire.”
“A tank shell, I believe it was?”
“Tank. Grenade. Mortar. What difference does it make. It came in through the window and everything in the room was gone.”
“Through the window?”
“Yes, a freak shot really. I saw the damage for myself the next morning. The guards even showed me some of the shell fragments they’d found. There’d been a big attack the night before. I’d remembered listening to it in bed.”
“And all of the transfer file was gone? Down to the last card? Even in the worst sort of fires you can usually salvage something.”
“Oh, no. All gone. Practically vaporized. I checked personally. There were only three or four drawers to begin with. Nothing but ashes. That was bad enough, but the drawers with the insurance records were destroyed, too. It’s a tragedy really. It’s the only part of the city’s collection that we don’t have a handle on yet, so we feel vulnerable for the moment.”
“And you say there were guards?”
“Yes. An entire detail.”
“Army? Police?” Although Vlado already knew the answer.
“Some of Zarko’s men, actually” He said this with his gaze boring straight into Vlado, as if daring him to raise an eyebrow.
“You’d probably call them thugs,” he continued. “And that’s what they are, I suppose. But I’d call them saviors first. Cigarette? They’re French. None of those rancid Drinas for me.”
“Because they saved your museum, you mean. Thank you.”
“The museum and everything inside it. We’d spent the three days before the fire moving the best items over here. We’d started with the records as well, the inventories and the insurance appraisals. The transfer files were due to come out the next morning. Another twelve hours and they’d be sitting right downstairs, inside the vault.”
“A freak turn of fortune then.”
“Oh, I realize the odds. And I know what you must be thinking, being a policeman. But these men were quite solicitous, quite willing to take orders from a museum director, vigilant as well. Besides, a handful of men can hardly stop a shell.”
“You weren’t at all suspicious? However vigilant, these men were hardly saints.”
“So everyone says, but as far as I’m concerned their behavior was exemplary. If they’d wanted to take advantage of us they could have looted or walked off with any item they chose, on any given night. But they kept themselves clean. Clean as a whistle.”
“But you said yourself that the files alone were valuable, that the transfer items are quite vulnerable as long as the files are missing.”
Murovic practically sneered. “These men, while courageous, were, how shall I put it, elemental? If they’d been inclined to theft, they would have taken the things that caught their fancy. They never struck me as the type who’d work through some complicated scheme, who might realize the files were a key to something valuable, especially when all those treasures were sitting there right in front of them. It’s the mentality of pirates. Why worry about the tricks of bookkeeping when there’s a chest of gold to be taken?”
“I was thinking more of their boss. I’m sure Zarko was aware of the value of the right information as much as anyone in this town.”