In 1981 Maslov was in Bolivia to negotiate a large arms deal with General Luis García Meza, the brutal new Bolivian president. A bizarre alliance of characters had swept Meza to power in 1980, including the Roberto Suarez drug cartel and a group of Nazis and young neofascists led by Klaus Barbie, a member of the Gestapo known as the Butcher of Lyon.
Maslov disliked dealing with drug-financed clients because they attracted the attention of the American DEA, which Maslov feared more than the drug lords. They at least operated ethically, but the agency had used vile means to bring down more than one of his competitors. He was glad of their misfortune but had no desire to join their numbers.
Maslov was in the Palacio Quemado in La Paz on the final day of a difficult negotiation, in the course of which he had sized up Meza as an untrustworthy fool who would hold power no more than six months. Meza had placed a sizable order but wanted more weaponry than he could afford, particularly semiautomatic weapons and grenade launchers. He was still $8 million short of Maslov’s price. Meza had little hard currency and offered drugs instead, seeming genuinely surprised when Maslov laughed out loud at the notion, then compounding the humor by suggesting that Maslov extend credit. Exasperated, Maslov had excused himself to let Meza confer with his advisers.
That was when, almost absently, he noticed the Caravaggio.
He nearly strode right by it, a dark painting in a dark corner, propped casually with a half dozen others against a wall dominated by the gilded-gaudy portraits of Bolivian dictators and generals, which in turn were dwarfed by a twenty-foot painting of Simón Bolívar astride his horse, victorious on the battlefield.
The painting was unsigned, but Maslov knew the artist almost as surely as he knew his own face in the mirror. All of the paintings propped against the wall were valuable, but only one truly mattered to him.
Maslov returned to his meeting. “As you might know, Excellency, I am something of an art enthusiast. I see four or five pieces there that might interest me. Perhaps we could make an arrangement that would solve your cash-flow difficulties?”
“We can do nothing with those, at least not yet. They belong to a new supporter. A friend of Barbie’s, a Colonel Beck. We are at a stalemate. His estimation of their value is, I’m afraid, quite inflated.”
“If I am not overstepping, what does Colonel Beck want?”
“What they all want,” Meza said contemptuously. “A diplomatic passport and money. He claims the paintings are worth eight million. Our expert placed their value at no more than four.”
Maslov knew their expert, the director of the national museum, a man who’d spent a lifetime acquiring portraits of generals and their horses. He had to be a fool of considerable accomplishment to have missed this, but he had.
“Your expert is wrong,” Maslov said.
“Perhaps, but no matter. We have summoned a specialist from Paris to settle the difference.”
Maslov shrugged. “Suit yourself, but I’ll give you Beck’s eight. However, I leave tonight. The offer is good only if we conclude the arrangement now, at this moment. If so you’ll have your weapons—the entire order—before the week is out.”
Meza could barely conceal his surprise, but he saw the opportunity to up the ante. “Unfortunately, my friend, it is not so easily done. The offer is very generous, but the paintings are not an outright gift. Colonel Beck wants cash out of the deal.”
“How much?”
Beck had asked for $2 million. “Three million,” Meza said.
“Why don’t you throw him in prison and keep it yourself?”
“His German friends continue to provide us support. We cannot alienate them. Besides, these are not the last of his assets. We may need him again.”
“Very well,” said Maslov. “I’ll pay the colonel myself.”
“But …” Meza fumbled for words, outmaneuvered.
“I insist,” said Maslov, rising to leave. “Do we have a deal?”
That night Caravaggio, Velázquez, Picasso, Braque, and a few others accompanied Victor Maslov to Los Angeles. From the aircraft he made a call to General Torrelio, the minister of the interior who was seeking to overthrow the young Meza dictatorship. Maslov did not often betray a client, but he knew not to back a loser. General Torrelio was delighted to receive details of the impending shipment and promptly wired $2 million to Maslov as the discounted price for the weapons. Maslov knew the money came from the DEA, which sweetened the deal. A week later, the promised arms shipment arrived at a remote airstrip near La Paz. Torrelio’s men ambushed Meza’s troops and took possession of the cargo Maslov had sold to Meza. It was the beginning of the end of the young Meza dictatorship.
A Bolivian colonel delivered a message to Walter Beck, arranging a meeting at which he would be paid for the paintings and given his new passport. Beck appeared punctually, secure in the knowledge that the Bolivian generals did not betray their benefactors.
Eighteen hours later, an unconscious Walter Beck was carried off a plane in Tel Aviv and bundled into the back of a battered van. His captors did not care to repeat the spectacle of an Eichmann trial. Beck awakened naked in the Negev desert, in a tiny dark cell with a dirt floor and a slit for a window. He bloodied his hands pounding on the walls, calling for help from men who did not hear him. It was hellish hot. “Water!” he screamed. “Animals!”
In Bolivia, word leaked that the Israelis had abducted Beck. The Israelis denied it. Of course, everyone assumed they were lying.
Max closed the folder on Walter Beck and Victor Maslov. “That’s just about it,” he said.
“Just about,” Joe Cooley said. “But there’s the obvious question—how did a man like Victor Maslov part with a painting like this? How did it get to you?”
“A petty thief, a man named Lonnie. One of the most interesting clients I’ve worked with in thirty years. He sent me a letter.” Max found yet another magazine clipping, this one featuring his own picture.
“Remember this?”
It was Max’s gift that he was able to read people. He had been wrong on occasion, but not often, and the trepidation he’d felt about Lonnie Mack contacting him out of the blue being a disguise for some sting or fraud had dissipated the instant they met. By the end of the meeting he was as certain as he’d ever been of anything that Lonnie Mack was the genuine article. Sometimes it was that way in the art world: a Rembrandt discovered at a rummage sale, a Braque in Aunt Sally’s attic. And then a man like Lonnie, a petty thief who accidentally stumbled into the mother lode.
Lonnie was skinny, nervous, and polite, worried whether he could trust Max, at first saying that it was a friend who had actually stolen the painting but quickly giving up that pretense.
“So I can trust you, I mean, even if it was stolen? I mean, not that I did, or anything. I just know someone.”
Max waved his hands. “Please, Mr. Mack, tell me. If I can’t help you, I’ll tell you that, too. There are many possibilities with something like this—including returning it to the owner, or their insurance company, for a reward. That can be done anonymously.”
“Really?” Lonnie’s eyes lit at that. “OK then. See, I’m a termite man, you know?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Termites, you know. Bugs.”
“Ah.” Max raised his eyebrows. He did not understand.
“My brother Frank has a company. We kill drywood termites. They do a lot of damage, you know? They’d go through this place of yours in about a week. The only way you can get them is gas.”
“Gas?”