"That's what I told the rabbi," Tom said, "that the Nazis are said to have burnt them all. I just couldn't remember why."
Archie took a long drag before answering.
"Bellak was a journeyman artist. Competent but, as you can see, no great talent. A portrait here, a landscape there, basically whatever paid that month's bar bill. Then in 1937 an ambitious SS officer commissioned him to paint Him-mler's daughter Gudrun as a gift for his master."
"But wasn't Bellak Jewish?"
"As it turned out, yes. But by then a grateful Himmler had hung the portrait in his office on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin and even commissioned a second painting. When he discovered the truth, he had the SS officer shot and Bellak arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Then he ordered that every last one of Bellak's works was to be tracked down and disposed of."
"Clearly, some survived," Tom said. "This one was stolen a few days ago."
"Why bother pinching that? The frame they had it in was probably worth more than the painting."
"I don't know. Maybe because he was Jewish," Tom said.
"What do you mean?"
"You should have seen the place." Tom was surprised at the instinctive anger in his voice. "Someone had done a real number on it. Swastikas and graffiti sprayed all over the walls. Children's drawings from a local death camp torn to shreds, as if they were trying to make confetti."
"Bastards," Archie muttered, flicking his cigarette butt into the gutter. "And the painting?"
"Sliced out of its frame and taken with them."
"But what would they want with it?"
"That's what I've been wondering."
"Unless…"
"Unless what?"
Overhead, a train crashed its way toward London Bridge, and Archie waited until the raucous clanking had subsided before answering.
"Unless the painting was what this was all about. Unless they were trying to be clever by disguising an old-fashioned robbery as some sort of anti-Semitic attack."
"Exactly," Tom said, reassured that Archie had come to the same conclusion as him. "So I made some calls. And from what I can work out, it seems that over the last year or so there have been six thefts of alleged Bellak paintings from various private homes and collections across Europe."
"Six? I'd no idea that many had survived."
"Well, they're not exactly the sort of thing anyone would bother cataloging, are they? Even now, no one's managed to join the dots. The cases have just stuck with the local police in each area. The insurance companies haven't got involved because the pictures aren't worth anything. I only found out because I knew who to ask."
"Someone's going to a hell of a lot of trouble to steal a bunch of supposedly worthless paintings." A pause. "Tom? You listening?" Archie looked up at him questioningly.
"Don't turn round," Tom said in a low voice, "but I think we're being followed."
CHAPTER SEVEN
What's the latest from inside the compound?" Special Agent Paul Viggiano spoke over the background noise of technicians and ringing telephones, a trim, muscular figure in his blue windbreaker, FBI stamped in large yellow letters across the back.
Bailey, sitting at the kitchen table of the cabin they had commandeered the previous evening as their operational HQ, was the first to speak.
"No movement, nothing. Not a single phone call. Even the generator shut down this morning. I figure it ran out of gas. No one's come out to fix it."
"What about the dogs?" Silvio Vasquez this time, the leader of the fourteen-man FBI Hostage Rescue Team that had been assigned to the investigation, sitting to Bailey's right.
"What?" Viggiano frowned. "What the hell's that got to do with anything?"
"Didn't someone say they had dogs? Have you seen them?"
"No." Bailey shook his head. "Nothing."
"So that's weird, right?" Vasquez concluded. "A dog's gotta take a leak."
"When did it last snow?" Viggiano asked. Bailey noticed that he had found some loose matches and was arranging them into neat parallel lines as he spoke.
"Two days ago," Vasquez answered.
"And there are no footprints? You're seriously saying no one has stepped outside that farmhouse for two days?" Peering over, Bailey could see that he had rearranged the matches into a square.
"Not unless they can fly," Bailey confirmed. "And that includes the dogs."
"I still say you boys have screwed up big-time."
It was the local sheriff 's turn to speak. A tubby man with ginger hair and a closely trimmed mustache, Sheriff Hen-nessy seemed to be in a permanent sweat, the perspiration beading on his pink forehead and cheeks like condensation on glass.
"I know these people," he continued, the top of his clip-on tie losing itself in the fleshy folds of his neck. "They're law-abiding, God-fearing folk. Patriots."
"So you say," Bailey began, a small knot of resentment forming in his chest. "But they also happen to be on a federal blacklist for suspected links to the Aryan Nations and the Klan."
Bailey saw Viggiano give a slight shake of the head, warning him to back off. "Now, Sheriff, it's true we don't know for sure that these people have done anything wrong," Vig-giano resumed in a conciliatory tone, "but we do know that three days ago an exhibit was stolen from the National Cryp-tologic Museum in Maryland. We know that whoever took it left no physical evidence that we've been able to find."
"Apart from the security guard they strung up like a hunk of meat in cold storage," Bailey couldn't help himself from adding.
"We also know," Viggiano continued as if he hadn't heard him, "that our Salt Lake office got a call yesterday suggesting these law-abiding patriots of yours were involved."
"I know all that," Hennessy said, dabbing his brow with a paper napkin taken from the dispenser at the side of the table. "But any crackhead could have made that call. It don't prove nothing."
"It proves that the caller knew about the theft. With the press blackout the NSA have imposed, the only people outside of law enforcement agencies who could know about that are the people who did it. So this is a lead, Sheriff, that we're going to follow up whether you agree with it or not."
Hennessy slumped back into his chair, muttering under his breath. Bailey smiled, feeling somewhat the better for his capitulation.
"So what's the plan?" he asked.
"Well, I'm not sitting on my ass till these jokers run out of water and crackers," Viggiano declared. "We're going in. Today."
There was a murmur of approval from around the table, Hennessy excepted. "But I want to keep this simple," Vig-giano continued. "We've got no reason to assume things will get ugly, so we keep the Humvees under cover and the choppers on the ground. Hopefully we won't need them. Vasquez?"
Vasquez got to his feet and leaned over the table. His face was dark and pockmarked, his lank black hair tucked under an FBI baseball cap, which he wore back to front, his dark eyes glowing with excitement.
"The sheriff 's men have put roadblocks here and here" — he indicated two roads on the map spread out in front of them—"blocking all routes in and out of the compound. I want SWAT teams here, here, and here, in the trees on the high ground to cover the windows. First sign of any hostile activity once my guys are inside the compound, they put down covering fire while we fall back to the rv point here."
"You got it," said Viggiano.
"The two HRT teams will come in from the front and the rear. Based on the blueprints, we estimate we'll have the main building secured in about three minutes. Then it's over to you."
"Good," said Viggiano as Vasquez sat down. "Now remember, when this thing goes down, I want it done by the numbers. No exceptions. There are families in there — women, kids." He pointed at the pile of manila folders containing photos and profiles of all the people the FBI had identified as living in the building. "So we knock on the door nice and easy. We ask to come inside. Any sign that this is more than a plain vanilla secure-and-search operation, we pull back. The last thing I — the bureau can afford right now is another high-profile hostage situation. Besides, if it gets hot, the DC brass will want to handle it themselves. They always do."