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  “A manual, of course,” he joked, taking off his glasses. “We thieves must keep honing our skills. Luckily, textbooks like this have made it all much easier. And what do you do?”

  She laughed. “You’re not going to believe this, but my work involves looking for stolen works of art.”

  “So as I only steal jewelry, maybe I’m all right?”

  “Only if it’s not antique jewelry.”

  He dog-eared a page of his novel and put the book away.

  “Is that really your job?”

  “Yes. But it only sounds romantic—I’m just a civil servant really, working at a ministry.”

  “A ministry? Not the police?”

  “No, in Poland it’s a bit more complicated. Of course the police look for stolen works of art, but my work involves the ones that disappeared during the war.”

  The stranger looked interested, and she felt herself turn on the charm. Why did she care so much about making a good impression on this guy? Was she trying to beat Karol at his own game?

  “But I guess there isn’t much of it? I saw a documentary about a special unit of Americans who found all those paintings and gave them back.”

  “Yes, the Monuments Men.”

  “That’s it.”

  “It’s true, the Allies found mines where works of art were hidden, miles and miles of corridors filled with chests, pictures, sculptures, and gold—the greatest treasures from all the occupied countries. Sometimes I think the Germans devoted more time to stealing and buying works of art than to the war.”

  “Buying? I thought they just stole it all.”

  She was flattered by his interest.

  “The Germans divided nations into better and worse. So for example in Poland, a land of subhumans and slaves, they took everything as their own. That is, they didn’t so much take as ‘secure’ things to protect the heritage of European culture from the savage Slavs. But it was different in Holland and France. To start with, they ‘secured’ the Jewish collections, but then they held back, because in the West they wanted to pass as enlightened gentlemen, not butchers. Then off they went to the antique stores, where they spent billions of marks on their favorite painters. For the dealers in Paris and Amsterdam it was the best period in the history of art. When the Americans drove out the Germans, the dealers all cried bitter tears.”

  “You’re joking.”

  “Not at all. That was when the famous fake Vermeers appeared, so good that today they’re regarded as works of art. Marshal Goering had such an obsession with Vermeer that the dealers knew he’d buy every canvas at any price. The top Nazis did their buying through middlemen, and the lower ranks did it to give bribes to the higher—business was never as good as then. The Germans even turned a blind eye to dealers of Jewish origin as long as they had good merchandise.”

  “OK, but in Poland the art was stolen and taken off to Germany, then the Americans gave them back to you, right?”

  “In a nutshell. But there are still sixty thousand items missing. Worth roughly twenty billion dollars.”

  “Wow, really? But how the heck? Where could they all be?”

  “Everywhere. The Germans must have managed to hide some of them. Some were destroyed on purpose or by accident during military operations. The Allies took a few, the Soviets took a lot, some were stolen by the local population in various parts of Europe taking advantage of the confusion. Plenty of items still surface at auctions and in antique stores, but the more valuable things are probably traded on the black market.”

  “How amazing. So you run the department that deals with that, or do you just work there?”

  “Both.”

  “How so?”

  “It’s a one-person unit within the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”

  The stranger shook his head in disbelief. “Maybe while you’re at it you can find all those lost continents the Nazis were looking for. You know, Shambhala, Hyperborea, Thule.”

  She made a face. “I look for antiques, not topics for thrillers.”

  “I thought the Nazis looked for lost civilizations in Tibet.”

  “They did have an organization called the Ahnenerbe, which means ‘ancestral heritage,’ run by Himmler, to track down evidence of ancient Germanic power all over the world, including Tibet. Even Hitler laughed at him.”

  “Why?”

  “Because from a certain viewpoint it was comical. Himmler and his Ahnenerbe would get excited about finding a stone ax somewhere, hailing it as proof of the supremacy of the peoples of the North. Except that anyone of average education knows that while the North was making stone axes, splendid, highly developed civilizations were flourishing around the Mediterranean. Literature, philosophy, law, art—they’d come a long way from axes. So in this respect Himmler did little to serve the Nazi cause. But he had other merits.”

  “Such as?”

  “He was a very thorough and effective mass murderer.”

  “A madman?”

  “The worst of all. The others did it for power and money, they wanted to be masters of the new world. He truly believed that the Aryan race had once reigned over the entire earth, and that the Jews stood in their way to regaining their global kingdom. Hitler by comparison was a normal person—a dictator like many others, who built too many tanks and had a few screws loose. Himmler was evil personified. If I were a believer, I’d say he was the anti-Christ, Lucifer in the flesh.”

  “Strong words.”

  “Maybe I know history too well; sometimes too much knowledge is a curse. Put it like this: If I had a time machine and could stand by Hitler’s cradle, I’d say to his parents, ‘Find him a good art teacher, otherwise he’ll be unhappy and nasty.’ But if I could stand by Himmler’s cradle, I’d wait for his parents to leave the room and strangle the baby without batting an eye.”

  The stranger put on such a comically horrified face that Zofia snorted with laughter. She found him very handsome. In the classic, masculine, rugged way.

  In the same way as Karol.

  “So whom have you robbed lately?” she asked, changing the subject. “If it’s not a secret.”

  “You really want to know?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “One of your telecom firms.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “I negotiated a deal for a client who makes cell phones. It wasn’t hard—in this part of Europe they’re all impatient and shortsighted, and the politicians and presidents take no interest in anything that falls outside their term of office. So you just have to show an enormous instant profit to succeed in negotiations. Where I come from they think differently, over a term of at least a decade, or several. Would you agree to buy shoes made by the same company for ten years and no others, regardless of quality or price, just because I’m going to give you a free pair now?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well then, as a citizen of Central and Eastern Europe, you’re in the minority. From my perspective, it looks as if you people have a tendency to get yourselves into all sorts of trouble just because you can’t see the possibly terrible consequences. You’re looking for something to prop up the table, so you take a brick out of the wall, and the whole house collapses.”

  The stranger spoke the last sentence so solemnly that it sounded like a threat.

  “Generalizations are always a lie, just like folk wisdom,” she said. “But where are you from? It sounds like English is your mother tongue, but I can’t quite place your accent. Forgive me if that seems rude.”

  “Not at all.” The handsome stranger reached into his shirt pocket and took out a stylish case, then offered her a business card: Jasper Leong. Negotiating Consultant, 1 Austin Road, West Kowloon, Hong Kong.

  CHAPTER THREE

  New Rochelle

  1

  Karol had done well. He’d found them an apartment to use as their base; it was in an old five-story house in lower Manhattan, on Mercer Street, just off Houston. The building had a redbrick facade disfigured by
fire escapes, huge windows, and the sort of cast-iron trim typical of nineteenth-century industrial architecture. A few decades ago, looms were roaring away in there. Now there was a fashion boutique and a hipster café downstairs.

  The apartment belonged to a fashionable artist and his wife who were temporarily away in Europe. Vast, with sixteen-foot-high ceilings, it must have been over four thousand square feet. There were no load-bearing walls, just a few narrow columns, allowing for great freedom in designing the interior. More than half the apartment was generous open space, doubling as an artist’s studio, main reception area, kitchen, and library—and there was still plenty of room to spare. A couple windows took up two of the walls, nearly stretching from floor to ceiling and giving the place natural light.

  Beyond this area were two bathrooms and four bedrooms, spread over two levels—two spartanly furnished bedrooms above and two below, with a short staircase leading up. Apparently the owners preferred to sleep in the main space, which they called the “artectory,” a combination of art and refectory.

  Two days in, Karol had gotten the hang of the espresso machine, a bizarre chrome relic from the 1950s, and now the four of them were sitting at the dining table, drinking coffee.

  “Before we start,” said Zofia in a solemn tone, “I’ll remind everyone one last time of what we’re getting ourselves into. From now on, every move we make will likely be regarded by the American authorities as criminal activity. If anything goes wrong, our people won’t do a thing to help us. So if anyone wants to pull out, this is your last chance.”

  “Not everyone can make a break for it,” said Lisa.

  “If anyone’s planning to pull a stunt that might affect the rest of us, I’d rather know about it now.” As Zofia said this, she looked at Lisa.

  “Is that aimed at me?” Lisa stood and stretched. “My choice is simple. I rip off what needs to be ripped off as fast as possible and stay here; I just have to give back my Polish passport. That’s the deal. If I screw up, it means an intra . . . intel . . . intral . . . shit, an international search warrant. And I’d be put away for a long time. So no stunts from me. I’m looking at you, Snake.” She glanced at Anatol, figuring he was there to keep an eye on her.

  She tossed him her ankle monitor, which had been following her movements nonstop. As Anatol caught the device and his face stiffened, Zofia saw a flash of the seasoned warrior, rather than the small, jug-eared man.

  “I’m not your keeper, thief,” he said. “Watch your mouth.”

  “My Polish—” she began.

  “Din polska är mycket bättre än vad du vill att vi ska tro,” said Anatol, interrupting her, while Karol and Zofia exchanged surprised glances. “Så jävlas inte med mig. Förstått?”

  The thief and the commando eyed each other for a while.

  “You can’t take that monitor off without a special tool,” Anatol finally said. “How did you manage that?”

  Lisa shrugged.

  Anatol shook his head, opened his case, and took out a bag of identical small cell phones.

  “From now on your personal phones stay in the hotel safes. Don’t bring them in here, and definitely don’t take them outside. You can call your families at night to chat, but nothing else. I’m going to give each of you a new phone. The numbers are already programmed in. Tomorrow night we’ll swap them for new ones, and so on, every day. During our conversations we won’t use words that could be recognized as having anything to do with our work, especially in English, and we won’t refer to the portrait as anything but the Young Man. Is that clear?”

  They all nodded.

  Zofia opened her computer, inserted a USB stick, and asked Anatol to insert his beside it. Only this combination guaranteed that, after giving the correct passwords, the encrypted data would be readable. Afterward, Zofia opened the relevant folder.

  She showed them a picture from a local newspaper of a man of about seventy. He was standing outside a library, smiling, amid a small group of people. Well built, with a pot belly, milk-white hair combed over a bald patch, and an American smile, he looked like a politician. The spitting image of John McCain, only heavier.

  “This is Mr. Darren Richmond,” said Zofia, “present owner of the Young Man. He looks like a politician, but he’s just connected with politicians, as big businessmen always are. He’s a close friend of the current vice president; they’re both from Pennsylvania and they went to college together in Newark, where they spent their time playing sports and partying, rather than studying. But they’re from rich families, so they did all right.”

  “What’s his game?” asked Karol.

  “The timber trade. Sawmills in the US and Canada, one minor scandal to do with cutting down a few acres of protected forest, but he came out unscathed. He has a foundation that awards literary grants and funds libraries and programs to promote reading. He’s pretty well read himself, and apparently he collects first editions too.”

  “Antiquarian books?”

  “First editions. Though from the American point of view, a first edition of Tom Sawyer’s an antique.”

  “So why the Young Man?”

  “Officially he’s interested in books, and in Pennsylvania he even has a sort of museum of literature that he’s opened to visitors. But he knows the better investment. His name came up several times at auctions a decade ago, then disappeared; he may have been buying through middlemen. American Impressionists, lesser European painters of the nineteenth century. But no Old Masters. Maybe the Young Man was a gift, maybe he inherited it—his father was an officer who took part in Operation Market Garden in Europe. I haven’t found any proof that he was in Germany after that, or had a connection with the Monuments Men, but who knows. Maybe it was bought as an investment. It doesn’t really matter; we haven’t come here to figure out his motives, only . . .” She glanced at Anatol. “Only to safeguard our dear young friend.”

  “So where is he? Our young friend?” asked Lisa.

  “Richmond has houses and apartments in several places, including the family residence in Pennsylvania and an apartment in Washington, though he spends most of his time either at his sawmills or in the air, moving between them. But what interests us is his favorite place, let’s call it his retreat, which is a property in New Rochelle, about thirty miles from New York.”

  “Better than a bachelor pad or an old lady and five brats,” said Lisa.

  Anatol sighed.

  “What, am I wrong?” asked Lisa.

  “Of course not; it’s just how you put things. Anyway, Richmond’s property is in Rochelle Heights. It’s a unique place, one of the first American residential neighborhoods, designed at the turn of the nineteenth century. Park landscaping, large lots, spacious houses in Victorian or Colonial style. From the American perspective it’s an ancient monument, like a district full of Renaissance palaces in Europe. It looks like this.”

  She showed them some pictures of the neighborhood from above, and some photographs of the individual properties taken at street level. Indeed, Rochelle Heights consisted either of three-story redbrick houses with protruding chimneys, a little in the style of small English towns, or sprawling residences with verandas propped on columns, clad with stone and white wooden sidings. All surrounded by beautiful old trees.

  “Strange name, New Rochelle,” said Karol.

  “After La Rochelle in France—remember Dumas? When the Protestants there had to escape from the Catholics, they ran away to the New World. Hence the name.”

  “Gated community?” asked Lisa.

  “No. It has that feel, but it’s a conservation area, where the rules don’t allow the rich guys to hide behind stone walls or high fences. Of course that’s the good news. The bad news is that they have a large number of private security guards who regularly patrol the neighborhood. Look, this is the Young Man’s present abode.”

  It was a period house, not huge, but really beautiful. Zofia understood why Richmond preferred a place like this to a nouveau-riche mansion b
y the ocean with an indoor pool and a tennis court. She too would have preferred this modest but spacious house hidden among spreading maple trees. A home made entirely of gray stone, roofed with slate of a similar color that contrasted nicely with the green shutters and solid chimney, overgrown with Virginia creeper. Built on a square footing, the house had a simple shape, several windows, including three mansards, and a winter garden on the side. The style was known locally as Tudor Revival. She imagined there were dark parquet floors inside and a solid, winding staircase, which women in dresses with stand-up collars had once descended.

  “I don’t understand,” said Karol, hovering over her shoulder; his fake accidental proximity irritated her. “The guy’s a rich American, in theory he should have built himself a palace on his own island with a golf course and security patrolling the acres from a helicopter. But the man has taste, so he buys a Tudor-style house in New England. And then he paints the walls orange and hangs up one of the world’s two most famous Renaissance portraits next to a TV, of all things. He must be batshit crazy.”

  “Who cares?” said Lisa. “What’s the address?”

  “Number twelve, The Serpentine, New Rochelle.”

  “Does this Polish spy gizmo have the internet?” she asked, indicating her new phone.

  “This is the twenty-first century,” said Anatol with a stony expression.

  “I’ll look for a place to rent,” she said, tapping something into the phone.

  “You have an appointment tomorrow with an agent to view a property three houses down,” Zofia replied. “You loved the description of the house in the advertisement, and you and your husband are eager to see it. Your husband is British; you’ve been living in Europe for the past few years, but now you want to move here. That’s why this old place suits you, because it’ll feel just like living in England, only in the suburbs of New York. You’ll have the money for a car, some nice clothes, and essentials.”

  Lisa put away the phone and glanced at Zofia with respect for the first time.

  “Anatol’s your husband, so you need to scope the place out together.”