Then Max saw the photograph. He blinked, disbelieving. He felt a fullness in his chest, a surge of pleasure and shock and sadness. He swept aside the clutter of papers on his desk and set the photo on the blotter. He opened a drawer and felt for the magnifying glass, then bent close to the desk.
The photograph had been taken in poor light by an amateur, but that didn’t make any difference. Max knew this painting, as any student of art history would know it. It was a beautiful and cursed creation, the work of a madman.
And it had been missing since the Second World War.
He straightened up, eyes watering. He felt light-headed and fumbled in his vest for one of his pills.
Max did not hear his secretary say good night, did not realize that dusk had turned to dark, as his mind churned through the sweep of its history, of Nazis and the Stasis, of arms dealers and Roman Catholic cardinals. So much violence and corruption in its past. He knew clearly then what must be the next stop in its long and troubled journey.
His good hand trembling, Max Wolff picked up the phone.
* * *
On a Sunday morning two weeks later Max waited for a client in a private study just off the sanctuary of the Risen Savior Church in Colorado Springs.
He sat in an overstuffed chair that nearly swallowed his small frame. Despite the sound-deadened walls he could hear the thunder and feel the building shake as four thousand impassioned souls in the sanctuary next door stomped and clapped and laughed and cried and sang, as the service rose to a crescendo.
The Reverend Joe Cooley Barber was in the business of saving souls, and business was brisk. With charisma, looks, and a voice born for a microphone, he had created an empire that spanned forty-seven countries on six continents. His Sunday Believers program, a folksy mix of parable and gospel, was simulcast in sixty-eight languages. He had seventeen books in print, all perennial best sellers. His media division sold CDs, videos, and T-shirts, every product carrying a Risen Savior hologram to thwart counterfeits.
He employed nearly a thousand people and had almost as many accountants and MBAs working for him as there were members of his choir: precisely 229, a number chosen from a revelation he’d had at a low point in his life when—drunk, destitute, and desperate—he dropped his Bible and it fell open to page 229 of the New Testament. On that page he read the second verse of the third epistle of John: “Prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” Joe Cooley chose to give the word “prosper” its modern meaning, and from this passage sprang his signature refrain: “God wants us wealthy.”
He was not the first of the prosperity preachers, but he was the best (“a bit more satin than Satan,” he liked to say), and he lived what he preached: he owned a Gulfstream jet, a small fleet of cars including an Aston Martin and a Bentley, and what he liked to describe as “a modest little horse farm in Kentucky” where he raised Thoroughbreds. “I am not an end-of-times preacher,” he said. “I am a best-of-times preacher.”
With such success came controversy. For every dollar he took in from ministry, Joe Cooley Barber earned five from offshore corporations, all cloaked behind an impenetrable web of ownership. Amid allegations that a mere thirty cents of every dollar went toward missionary work, half a dozen investigations had been launched by the IRS, the Justice Department, and various congressional committees. A defiant Joe Cooley Barber was fond of pointing out that not one shred of evidence of wrongdoing had ever been proven against him. “I am just a simple God-fearing humanitarian,” he said. He had fed tens of thousands of hungry souls throughout Asia and Africa. Millions of Risen Savior malaria pills saved babies in Bangladesh and Botswana. Annual missions taught modern agricultural techniques to farmers in Malawi and Tanzania, providing tractors and seed to help the multitudes help themselves. He built churches in Zambia and opened new schools in Zaire.
“A plague of pissants,” was the way he privately described the prosecutors and politicians who hounded him. Yet he relished their attention and prospered from it. The more they complained, the more the money poured in. “Your dollars pave the road to your salvation,” Joe Cooley preached to the television cameras. “Your dollars are God’s judgment on our ministry.”
“Max, my friend!” Joe Cooley said, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he fairly burst into the room half an hour later. “I’m sorry to keep you.”
“Not at all,” Max said. “Quite a production. I’ve never seen you work before.”
Joe Cooley gave a broad smile. “You Jewish?”
“No.”
“Then why aren’t you here every week?”
“It would be a long commute. Perhaps if you sent your jet.”
“No need!” Joe Cooley went into the private bathroom to freshen up. “I’m as close as your television dial.” He emerged, wiping his hands. “But now, to business. I could hardly believe your call.” He lowered his voice a little. “Can it be? A Caravaggio?”
Max nodded. “There are perhaps ninety of his paintings in the world. I thought of you the moment it came into my hands.”
“I take it this one is off the radar?”
“Definitely one for your private collection,” Max said. “If you want it, that is.”
“Let’s go to the studio,” the preacher said, extending a hand to help Max up. The art dealer picked up his cane. His right hand was gnarled, the fingers crabbed and crippled. He slung the briefcase strap over his shoulder and picked up a large leather portfolio.
Joe Cooley’s eyes widened. “Tell me you don’t have it right there in that case,” he said. “What balls!”
“Hardly,” Max said. “It is well packed, and your men have been with me the whole way. Besides, I don’t look much like a mark. I once carried $5 million across Manhattan in this briefcase. All anyone tried to do was help me cross the street.”
“I’m not so trusting,” Joe Cooley said, “but I see your point.” Max was in his early seventies, standing just over five feet tall. He always wore a gray fedora. Years spent in study, sifting through historical records and peering at art, had made his eyes so bad that the thick lenses of his glasses distorted his features. He looked like a kindly old bookkeeper. Despite all that, Joe Cooley knew he was a tough negotiator with shrewd business sense. Max ran a highly respected art gallery and was a regular at Christie’s and Sotheby’s. His most lucrative business, however, was done in the netherworlds of commerce, a world in which men who shunned publicity bought and sold art, or used it in lieu of cash to leverage large purchases of drugs or arms. Max could find the paintings and arrange the deals.
They climbed in a golf cart for the ride across the complex. Risen Savior occupied a seventy-acre campus near the Garden of the Gods. Along with the church there were foundation offices, the broadcasting studio, a Christian college, and a museum. As the cart whisked them through statuary gardens and past contemplation pools, Joe Cooley returned the waves and the shouted greetings of parishioners who were enjoying the sunny day.
The museum was Joe Cooley Barber’s pride and joy. He loved beautiful things, things that shouted out the glory of God. He believed there was no greater homage to the Almighty than to collect images that glorified Him and His holy word. Its galleries brimmed with religious art from every age: stained glass, Greek icons, illustrated manuscripts and early Christian scrolls, a Giotto, several Rembrandts, a Rubens, and an El Greco. Then there were Joe Cooley’s own oil paintings, mostly depictions of biblical prosperity tales, of Job and Solomon. To Max they stood out like pustules on the gallery walls, but they were among the most popular exhibits.
They entered Joe Cooley’s hideaway, a combination studio and study, with picture windows overlooking the grounds. Besides a large conference table there were workbenches, easels, and bookshelves filled with rare Bibles and rich leather volumes.