“That is correct,” nodded Ebert.
“Seems a little odd.”
“Perhaps to you.” Ebert shrugged. “I care nothing for the politics of things, I care only that the works under my care be safeguarded.”
“Works belonging to the German government.”
“No. Works belonging to various German museums, works belonging to the German people as a whole.”
“Six trucks.”
“Yes.”
“Heading for the Swiss border.”
“Yes.”
“With Vatican seals.”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t I believe you?” said Cornwall.
“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” said Ebert crossly. “It is the truth.”
“Why did you have an SS escort?” McPhail asked, speaking for the first time. McPhail was a graduate of Bowdoin and had been a junior curator at the Fogg Museum in Boston before joining the OSS and the art unit. You could tell he thought he was hot shit and rated higher than Cornwall. Personally the sergeant thought he was a weak little twerp and probably a fairy to boot. The guy smoked a pipe and whistled Broadway tunes for cryin’ out loud! Nothing magnanimous about him-that was for sure. McPhail sniffed. “I was under the impression that the SS would have more important things to do than guard Volkskultur.” He drew the word out into a sneering drawl.
Kress, the heavyset man, spoke, his sneer just as obvious. “Perhaps you are not aware that the Einzatstab Rosenberg is by definition a part of the SS, and therefore that it is entirely logical that we should have just such an escort.”
“With Feldgendarmerie pennants?” said the sergeant.
“I didn’t think you were part of this interrogation, Sergeant,” McPhail said, ice in his tone.
“Just ask him the damn question… Lieutenant.”
McPhail gave him a stony look.
“Well?” Cornwall asked, speaking to Kress. The man was silent.
“What are you trying to say?” McPhail asked.
“I’m trying to say that none of it makes sense. These aren’t SS types. The soldiers outside are wearing SS uniforms, but I checked a couple of the bodies and they don’t have blood group tattoos on their armpits. The SS doesn’t have anything to do with the military police, the Feldgendarmerie. The trucks are wrong too-where the hell did they get gasoline? The Krauts haven’t had any gasoline since the Bulge-they’ve only got diesel and not much of that. I don’t know beans about art but I know about Krauts. They’re wrong.”
“Give your weapon to Lieutenant McPhail, Sergeant,” said Cornwall suddenly, standing up. “Then come outside with me for a smoke.”
“Sure.” The sergeant gave McPhail the machine pistol then followed Cornwall out into the early morning sunlight. The lieutenant squinted behind his glasses and pulled a package of German Jasmatsis out of the pocket of his blouse and offered them to the sergeant. The sergeant shook off the offer and lit one of his own Luckies instead.
“What’s happening here, Sergeant?”
“Don’t have a clue, sir.”
“Sure you do.”
“They’re wrong.”
“What does that mean?”
“Like I said, it doesn’t add up.”
“So how does it add up?”
“You’re asking my opinion?”
“Yes.”
“They’re crooks.”
“Crooks?”
“Sure. The trucks are full of stuff that was already looted. These guys knew it was stolen, no records, no nothing. So they stole it again. I mean, who’s going to report them?”
“Interesting.”
“The trucks are a hide. Not for us, but for their own people. How do you get through German roadblocks? Military police and the SS put the fear of God into most Krauts, even now. Not people to screw with, you know?”
“What about the kid?”
“They’re lying about him-that’s for sure.”
“Why?”
“Maybe he’s somebody important.”
“The Vatican seals?”
“Forged maybe. Or someone in Rome’s got a piece of the action. Wouldn’t be the first mackerel-snapper to have his hand caught in the cookie jar.”
“Do you dislike everyone, Sergeant?”
“It’s not a matter of liking or disliking, sir. It’s a matter of knowing what I know. We’ve got a lot of stolen art in those trucks across the yard, and the Krauts don’t know anything and your people don’t know anything and my people wouldn’t give a damn even if they did know.”
“What are you saying, Sergeant?”
“I’m saying what you’re already thinking.”
“You’re a mind reader?”
“It’s been a long war. You get to see things, after a while, you learn how to read people.”
“And what do you read here, Sergeant?”
“The chance of a fucking lifetime… sir.”
42
When it came, the answer came quickly. Barrie Kornitzer used the edge of his thumb to wipe away the foamy mustache above his upper lip, gazing at the computer screen in front of him.
“Interesting stuff,” he said, blinking.
“Don’t keep us in suspense,” said Valentine.
“Where would you like to start?”
“The beginning would be good.”
“That would make it the so-called Carduss Club at Greyfriars Academy.”
“Okay.”
“It originated in 1895, the year the school was founded. That was back in the days when clubs and secret societies were actually encouraged in schools. The name comes from the thistles on the school crest, which in turn relates to the school’s Scots-Calvinist origins.” He grinned at Valentine. “Sort of like the school you and I went to, Michael, remember?”
“Vividly.”
“Carduss means thistle, as in Scotland,” said Finn.
“That’s it. At any rate, the Carduss members based their club on the English Order of the Garter, which has the thistle as its emblem. Twelve knights as in the twelve disciples. Twelve members in their club.”
“But it grew into something else.”
“Yes. By the early nineteen hundreds with the first graduating class, it turned into a benevolent society, like Skull and Bones at Yale. If you were a banker, you lent money to a fellow member in real estate. If you were in government, you passed laws that would help a member expand his business.”
“An early form of good-old-boys networking,” said Finn.
“Something like that.” Kornitzer paused. “In the end it was the twelve members of the original club who bought the school out of bankruptcy during the Depression. For some reason they decided to go underground just after World War Two-that’s your Delaware corporation. They used the firm of their lawyers to buy up a shell company that also owned an entity called the McSkimming Art Trust in Chicago. They changed the name to the Grange Foundation, which has offices here in New York. St. Luke’s Place in Greenwich Village.”
“What do they do?”
“Nothing, apparently. They have no legal mandate: It’s a private trust. It doesn’t have to make any kind of report except to the IRS. According to their tax records they’re a nonprofit organization that facilitates museum and gallery research into particular works of art and artists. What they really are is an art agency. As far as MAGIC can tell they have several major clients, in particular the archdiocese of New York and the Parker-Hale Museum of Art. From what MAGIC tells me, nearly every transaction has been handled commercially by the Hoffman Gallery, which has its head office in Berne, Switzerland.”
“We’re getting closer.”
“Closer still. Your James Cornwall was a member in good standing of Carduss before the war. So was Gatty, so was a man named McPhail. Cornwall and McPhail were officers in G5, which in turn was a division of the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services. They were part of a group of art specialists attached to the Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives unit in Germany at the end of the war.”
“And Gatty was the OSS liaison in Switzerland, working for Dulles.”
“It gets better. According to MAGIC there’s a clear line of documentation in OSS records that shows that Gatty organized the movement of Cornwall and his men through the so-called Vatican ‘ratline.’ He also got them transportation out of Italy through the port of Sestri Ponente just outside of Genoa. The Bacinin Padre, which was renamed the USS Swivel. You can trace them all the way to an address on Hudson Street and a company called American Mercantile.”