“Yes. That was the original idea, but we decided to move up the time frame.”
“Keeping me on my toes, huh?”
“Something like that.”
Frank Shaw, her employer, was a tycoon of the new order in global money. He had business upon business, some legal, some not even close. He was ruthless, as ruthless as any billionaire to ever walk the earth. For some reason, though, he had a soft spot for Allyson. He’d taken her under his wing when she was just a common thief on the streets of London. Maybe he felt like it was his penance for a life of screwing people over. Or maybe she was just another easy person to exploit. Either way, he’d been good enough to her over the years so she chose to stick around. Now, though, he was testing her patience.
“I don’t have time for stupid games, Frank. Where am I going next?”
“That, my dear, is something you will have to figure out on your own. I don’t even know where to tell you to go. I only have a name.”
“A name?”
“Yes, well, a few names. First of all, the painting you are to find is called The Annunciation by Peter Paul Rubens. It was lost at the beginning of World War II. The last person to have any contact with it was a man by the name of Paul Graupe.”
“Fair enough. How do you propose I find him?”
Frank laughed through the earpiece. “Find him? My dear, he’s been dead for more than fifty years. You won’t find him. But the last person who saw the painting was Graupe. You will have to figure out what it was he knew and track down the painting from there. Perhaps he left notes, ledgers, or a diary of some kind.”
“Ledgers?” she asked.
“Yes. From what we’ve gathered, Graupe was an auctioneer in Germany. He was of Jewish descent, but the Nazis made an exception for him due to his ability to acquire rare pieces. Graupe must have known that things were going to get bad for the Jews, so he left Germany and went into exile. Before he did, however, it is believed that he was forced to sell the Rubens painting to someone.”
“Who?”
“That, my dear, is what you will have to discover for yourself. We’ve searched through the archives and found nothing. Much work has been done to uncover this painting, but as yet, it has been a fruitless endeavor.”
Paul Graupe. It wasn’t a name she’d heard before. Then again, history wasn’t really her thing. Selling pieces of history, on the other hand, was her thing. Allyson made a good living doing it. From the sounds of this particular mission, she wasn’t going to be able to go about it the way she usually did.
Frank read her mind. “This won’t be one of your typical smash-and-grab jobs, Allyson. You’ll have to do your research. You may even have to learn something along the way.”
She took offense to the comment. “Begging your pardon, but maybe you’re forgetting some of the other stuff I’ve pulled. Breaking into the world’s most difficult safe to crack was hardly a smash-and-grab job. It took finesse, skill, and a ton of patience.” She wasn’t wrong. Frank had requested she steal a rare eighteenth-century pistol from a wealthy aristocrat on London’s West End. It was a job that had taken weeks of planning as well as equipment that cost more than most people made in a year. Not to mention the fact that only an expert understood how to use the high-tech gadgetry she’d purchased. Only a few thieves in the world even knew what the things were.
“I’m terribly sorry, my dear. You are, of course, correct. And I’m fully aware of your exploits. If I simply thought of you as the common pickpocket you were when I found you, I’d have cut you off long ago.”
Good to know it’s not because you care about me.
Frank finished his thought. “I was referring to your recent… escapades. From what I understand, you took the painting and set off the alarm in doing so. That resulted in your failure.”
She hated that word. Failure. It indicated that she’d made a mistake, which she almost never admitted. In this case, though, Frank wasn’t wrong. “They were busy with the other woman. And if Espinoza wasn’t so slow in taking care of business, she’d be dead right now, and we’d have the Bellini.”
“Don’t forget the fact that you were careless. Had you been more careful, you wouldn’t have triggered the device attached to the back of the canvas.”
Whatever. She sighed and blew a shot of air upward, knocking back a loose curl of hair. “Look, I get it. I’ll be my usual, cautious self with this next one. Promise.”
“I’m sure you will. You’re my girl. I trust you’ll do what you need to. I wish you good luck and happy hunting. Have the painting in my study by Friday at midnight. I look forward to seeing it.”
“I’ll do my—”
The call ended before she could finish her sentence.
“Best,” she said to no one.
Allyson tossed the phone onto the couch and plopped down next to it. She was still wearing a pair of gray pajama pants and a red T-shirt from the night before. Her energy had returned even though the aches and pains still nagged the senses.
The same annoying strand of hair shook loose and dangled near her left eye. She brushed it back and put her arms out wide across the back of the sofa. “So, Paul Graupe,” she said to herself. “What secrets were you hiding?”
She eyed the phone next to her, picked it up, and began typing. It took a few minutes before she was able to get the spelling correct, but she eventually found the name. Reading wasn’t something Allyson enjoyed doing, especially when it related to work. The biography she found on Graupe wasn’t very helpful. It contained very few details about the man’s life and eventual death in a small German town she’d never heard of. “Baden-Baden,” she whispered. “That’s a little redundant.” She scanned through a few more passages and then hit the arrow on the screen to return her to the search results.
Most of the links looked the same as the first one she’d clicked. The eighth one, however, was a little different. It was a link to a paper written by a researcher in a Berlin university called Humboldt. She’d never heard of the school but decided to click the link anyway. As it turned out, Humboldt was the largest university in Berlin, renowned across the world for many of its studies. The professor who wrote the article on Graupe was a man by the name of Helmut Koenig. A quick pass through the bio told Allyson that Koenig was a foremost expert in the field of art history in spite of the fact that he taught philosophy. More importantly, his primary area of study had been Peter Paul Rubens and the philosophic undertones of the great artist’s work.
Allyson’s eyes darted back and forth as a plan formulated in her head. She looked over at the clock. It was just after six in the morning. She could be in Berlin by the end of the morning if she hurried. Then it would just be a matter of tracking down this Koenig and finding out what he knew about Graupe.
She sprang up out of the sofa and shuffled across the floor to the bedroom. After a quick shower and change of clothes, she’d be on her way to Germany. And this time, Allyson wasn’t going to let anyone get in her way.
3
After her conversation with Emily, Adriana set to work on finding out as much as she could about Paul Graupe. She pored through several Internet pages and uncovered a single point of interest she believed could be useful. It only took a few minutes for her to learn that a man by the name of Helmut Koenig, a professor in Berlin’s Humboldt University, was the world’s foremost expert on Peter Paul Rubens as well as on Graupe. If anyone could help her find information about the late auctioneer and his exploits, it was Koenig.