Michelangelo_s Notebook

41

The sergeant stood in the huge summer kitchen of the farmhouse, a fire blazing in the massive stone fireplace to take off the chill. There had been seventeen survivors of the attack, nine of them clearly civilians, two of them women, one a small child. Most of the Americans were outside guarding the few remaining German soldiers, or checking through the outbuildings, securing the perimeter. The sergeant, Cornwall, Taggart and McPhail were the only ones in the farmhouse. The only one armed was the sergeant, keeping the peace with a machine pistol he’d taken off one of the dead Krauts they’d found in the ruins of the abbey tower.

Cornwall was making a list.

“State your names and positions.”

“Franz Ebert, director of the Linz Museum.” A small man with glasses wearing a dark coat and army boots.

“Wolfgang Kress, Einzatstab Rosenberg, Paris division.” A heavyset, florid-faced man in his early thirties. A bureaucrat.

“Kurt Behr, also of the ERR.”

“Anna Tomford, from the Linz Museum also, please.” Dark-haired, young, frightened.

“Hans Wirth, ERR in Amsterdam.”

“Dr. Martin Zeiss, Dresden Museum.” A portly man with a beard. Sixty or so, looking sick and pale, his face mottled like old cheese. A walking heart attack, thought the sergeant.

“Who is the child?” Cornwall asked. The boy was about seven or eight. So far he hadn’t said a word. He was tall for his age, hair very dark, almost black, his eyes large and slightly almond-shaped, his skin olive, his nose large and patrician, more Italian-looking than German. The woman with him started to speak but the Linz Museum director, Ebert, interrupted her.

“He is an orphan, of no account. Fraulein Kurovsky cares for him.”

“Kurovsky. Polish?” Cornwall asked.

The woman shook her head. “Nein. Sudetenland, Bohemia, close to Poland. My family is German.”

“Where is the child from?”

“We found him north of Munich,” put in Ebert. “We decided to take him along with us.”

“Magnanimous,” said Cornwall.

“I do not understand,” Ebert responded.

“Edelmutig… hochherzig,” said the sergeant.

“Ah.” Ebert nodded.

Cornwall glanced at the sergeant. “I’m impressed.”

The sergeant shrugged. “My grandmother was German-we spoke it in the house.”

“I’m impressed that you knew the word in English,” said Cornwall dryly.

“You might be surprised,” said the sergeant.

“I’m sure,” said Cornwall.

“It was not so… magnanimous as you say,” said Ebert. “It was simply something that had to be done. He would have starved otherwise, yes?” He looked across at the woman and the child.

“He speaks no English, I suppose.”

“He doesn’t speak at all,” said the woman.

Cornwall looked down at the packet of documents spread out on the pale beechwood table in front of him. “These documents all have Vatican stamps on them. Laissez-passers from the papal secretary of state’s office in Berlin.”

“That is correct,” nodded Ebert.

“Seems a little odd.”

“Perhaps to you.” Ebert shrugged. “I care nothing for the politics of things, I care only that the works under my care be safeguarded.”

“Works belonging to the German government.”

“No. Works belonging to various German museums, works belonging to the German people as a whole.”

“Six trucks.”

“Yes.”

“Heading for the Swiss border.”

“Yes.”

“With Vatican seals.”

“Yes.”

“Why don’t I believe you?” said Cornwall.

“I don’t care if you believe me or not,” said Ebert crossly. “It is the truth.”

“Why did you have an SS escort?” McPhail asked, speaking for the first time. McPhail was a graduate of Bowdoin and had been a junior curator at the Fogg Museum in Boston before joining the OSS and the art unit. You could tell he thought he was hot shit and rated higher than Cornwall. Personally the sergeant thought he was a weak little twerp and probably a fairy to boot. The guy smoked a pipe and whistled Broadway tunes for cryin’ out loud! Nothing magnanimous about him-that was for sure. McPhail sniffed. “I was under the impression that the SS would have more important things to do than guard Volkskultur.” He drew the word out into a sneering drawl.

Kress, the heavyset man, spoke, his sneer just as obvious. “Perhaps you are not aware that the Einzatstab Rosenberg is by definition a part of the SS, and therefore that it is entirely logical that we should have just such an escort.”

“With Feldgendarmerie pennants?” said the sergeant.

“I didn’t think you were part of this interrogation, Sergeant,” McPhail said, ice in his tone.

“Just ask him the damn question… Lieutenant.”

McPhail gave him a stony look.

“Well?” Cornwall asked, speaking to Kress. The man was silent.

“What are you trying to say?” McPhail asked.

“I’m trying to say that none of it makes sense. These aren’t SS types. The soldiers outside are wearing SS uniforms, but I checked a couple of the bodies and they don’t have blood group tattoos on their armpits. The SS doesn’t have anything to do with the military police, the Feldgendarmerie. The trucks are wrong too-where the hell did they get gasoline? The Krauts haven’t had any gasoline since the Bulge-they’ve only got diesel and not much of that. I don’t know beans about art but I know about Krauts. They’re wrong.”

“Give your weapon to Lieutenant McPhail, Sergeant,” said Cornwall suddenly, standing up. “Then come outside with me for a smoke.”

“Sure.” The sergeant gave McPhail the machine pistol then followed Cornwall out into the early morning sunlight. The lieutenant squinted behind his glasses and pulled a package of German Jasmatsis out of the pocket of his blouse and offered them to the sergeant. The sergeant shook off the offer and lit one of his own Luckies instead.

“What’s happening here, Sergeant?”

“Don’t have a clue, sir.”

“Sure you do.”

“They’re wrong.”

“What does that mean?”

“Like I said, it doesn’t add up.”

“So how does it add up?”

“You’re asking my opinion?”

“Yes.”

“They’re crooks.”

“Crooks?”

“Sure. The trucks are full of stuff that was already looted. These guys knew it was stolen, no records, no nothing. So they stole it again. I mean, who’s going to report them?”

“Interesting.”

“The trucks are a hide. Not for us, but for their own people. How do you get through German roadblocks? Military police and the SS put the fear of God into most Krauts, even now. Not people to screw with, you know?”

“What about the kid?”

“They’re lying about him-that’s for sure.”

“Why?”

“Maybe he’s somebody important.”

“The Vatican seals?”

“Forged maybe. Or someone in Rome’s got a piece of the action. Wouldn’t be the first mackerel-snapper to have his hand caught in the cookie jar.”

“Do you dislike everyone, Sergeant?”

“It’s not a matter of liking or disliking, sir. It’s a matter of knowing what I know. We’ve got a lot of stolen art in those trucks across the yard, and the Krauts don’t know anything and your people don’t know anything and my people wouldn’t give a damn even if they did know.”

“What are you saying, Sergeant?”

“I’m saying what you’re already thinking.”

“You’re a mind reader?”

“It’s been a long war. You get to see things, after a while, you learn how to read people.”

“And what do you read here, Sergeant?”

“The chance of a fucking lifetime… sir.”