“Talk to me,” McKendrick said.
“Well, I spent some time poking around the museum,” Andrew began. “Sure are a hell of a lot of paintings down there. The rest of the world thinks about half of them are in Russian museums,” he added suspiciously.
“No shit?” McKendrick snorted, intrigued.
“Yeah. Gauguin’s ‘Are You Jealous?’ was the tip-off,” he said. “It’s a beaut. Strong patterns, bright colors, two Tahitian girls, naked of course. Your kind of stuff. I saw it at the Pushkin when I was in Moscow with my father. A few hours of research in our library is all it took to confirm the rest were from there or the Hermitage. Any idea how he got hold of them?”
McKendrick lifted his good shoulder in a shrug. “Hell, he’s been doing business over there for years,” he replied. “Who knows?”
“After everything that’s happened,” Andrew said, “it’s the kind of business I’m wondering about.”
“Where’re you headed?”
“Well — Churchco’s into all kinds of high tech stuff. Stuff that’s illegal to export. And—”
“Stuff the Russians are working twenty-four-hours-a-day to get their hands on,” McKendrick interjected, warming to the idea. “Interesting theory.”
Andrew shrugged, feeling disloyal to his father for suggesting it. “It just occurred to me that the paintings could induce that kind of cooperation,” he replied defensively. “I mean, art’s always been my father’s passion. Money would be the last thing that would tempt him,” he explained, adding, “Just an idea.”
“You’ve got a wicked mind, son. I like it.”
“Hey, you’re the one who said something weird was going on,” Andrew retorted. “My father said, ‘send that package to Boulton, to the CIA if I croak mysteriously.’ The coroner said, ‘rapid ascent from a great depth, possibly a submarine.’ ” He shrugged and shifted gears, feeling the need to supply a more positive explanation. “Maybe he was working on something with Boulton. They were in the OSS together during the war. I don’t know. What’s it matter, anyway?” he asked, suddenly aware of the futility.
“What’re you going to do next?” McKendrick asked.
“Go to Rome — sell Arabians, I guess,” Andrew replied, unenthused and somewhat evasively.
“You guess?” McKendrick prodded.
“Nothing I can do here. You said it yourself, he’s gone. Besides, nothing would frost my father more than knowing I was moping around doing nothing.”
McKendrick nodded in agreement. “Going to Moscow and Tersk, too,” he asked slyly.
Andrew nodded resolutely.
“Horse-trading, huh?”
Andrew’s lips tightened in a thin smile. “Mostly.”
McKendrick grinned. “You’re okay, kid. But watch your ass,” he said sharply. “Those two pansies I beat the shit out of last week—?” His inflection rose, and he paused.
Andrew chuckled and nodded, deciding he actually liked the crude fellow.
McKendrick smiled cryptically. “They were Russians — professionals.”
Andrew looked at him squarely and said, “Figured that.”
BOOK TWO
ROME
“As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of… perceptions, ’tis to be consider’d, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we should never have any notion of… that chain of causes and effects which constitute our self or person.”
Chapter Twenty
The sun shone with golden brilliance on Comiso, Sicily, an agrarian community sprinkled across a lush southern plateau. A nightingale flew low over the grassy fields, and landed on a vine laden with wild berries. All morning, the bird had been siphoning the sweet nectar and ferrying it to her young, nearby. Now, she heard a distant clanking and stiffened.
About a half mile away, a convoy of earth movers, led by a huge bulldozer, lumbered over the crest of a hill, like an invading army. Indeed, the olive drab equipment displayed military markings, and soldiers from the Italian Corps of Engineers sat in the cabs.
The racket grew louder.
The frightened bird flew off.
A short time earlier, more than a hundred protestors had assembled in the flower-dotted fields. Now they placed themselves between the advancing convoy and the grove where the bird was foraging.
The bulldozer charged down the hill toward them.
For centuries, Comiso’s richly vegetated plateaus have been a haven for wildlife and a nesting ground for birds migrating south for the winter from across the continent — an ideal sanctuary due to the area’s extreme isolation, predictably mild climate, and strategic location in the center of the Mediterranean.
For these same reasons, experts at NATO, in consultation with the Pentagon, had selected Comiso for deployment of one hundred and twelve American cruise missiles. This site “maximized the potential” for the intermediate-range low-flying weapons to be launched without interference from man or nature, and to strike preselected targets with their nuclear warheads.
A year before, when the Italian government sanctioned deployment, hordes of placard-waving peace demonstrators from across Western Europe descended on Comiso. The diverse group had been assembled by a resourceful young woman named Dominica Maresca.
The daughter of a wealthy Venetian industrialist, Dominica grew up in an opulent palazzo on the city’s Grand Canal, and was schooled in local convents. A willowy beauty with the almond-shaped face and long, sharply cut nose of her forebears, she could have been the model for Modigliani’s “La Belle Romaine.” But behind the serene mask throbbed a recalcitrant vein, and at eighteen, she broke with her family and strict religious upbringing to attend the University of Bologna, where she joined the Italian Communist party, and worked as an organizer in elections. The latter brought her to Rome, where her antinuclear stance came to the attention of Ilya Zeitzev, the KGB rezident.
Zeitzev was a ruddy, obese man in his fifties with a lumbering gait, and tiny, tightly gathered features that gave his large face a rather pinched expression. He worked out of the Soviet Embassy — a stone building hidden behind sheets of steel which are welded to the wrought iron fence that rings the grounds — where he was listed as deputy cultural attaché, a cover that gave him diplomatic immunity. This meant he couldn’t be prosecuted should his espionage activities be exposed. Indeed, he could commit murder in front of witnesses, and at worst be expelled. More practically, Zeitzev could park anywhere without his car being cited or towed azway. And in a city of almost two million vehicles, the DPL license plates were the real payoff.
Diplomatic status also gave Zeitzev an entree to events where government, business, and cultural leaders mingled. At such an event, a fundraiser for World Peace sponsored by the Italian Communist party, Zeitzev first approached Dominica Maresca.
The benefit was part of the International Horse Show at Piazza dei Siena in the Borghese Gardens. The amphitheater encircled the forecourt of a fourteenth-century castle which housed the exclusive, elegantly furnished indoor boxes — each connected to a private stable beneath — of the leading Italian breeders. Each box opened onto a sweeping balcony that overlooked the arena and flanked the castle’s entrance, a massive stone door displaying the crest of the original owner. At the trumpeted call to colors, an ingenious mechanism swung the slab upward into a horizontal position behind the castle’s facade, creating a dramatic entrance for the horses. Brightly colored banners ringed the arena, adding to the air of pageantry. That of famiglia Borsa, long prominent in international equestrian circles and philanthropies, fluttered from the center pole.