Priceless Page 5

  “Now!” screamed Anatol.

  30

  The conductor heard Anatol’s scream over the radio before the engineer repeated the command. He quickly pressed the button that clamped the brake bands on both cables. They were still about five yards away from the support—not a great distance.

  “Hold on!” shouted the conductor, and closed his eyes.

  For a split second the passengers thought they were swinging, then they felt as if they were descending in an elevator, and finally they realized they were falling. They screamed hysterically, waiting for the impact and certain death.

  31

  Anatol watched as the car began to drop, and clenched his fists. He thought after all he’d been through today, it would be a sheer injustice if this story failed to have a happy ending.

  The car went on falling, gaining speed, but unlike the other it didn’t hit the ground, because it was too close to the support. Pinned by its brakes to the two cables, which on one side were lying on the scree, and on the other were still fixed to special winches at the station, it only fell a few yards before the cables tensed and the car became an enormous pendulum.

  The structure wasn’t prepared for this sort of stress. As the car swung to and fro, the sound of buckling metal parts could be heard for miles around. The support bent like modeling clay, and the cables came away from their rollers and runners. Gradually the pendulum swing grew shorter, until finally, amid fading noises of suffering metal, the cabin stopped moving.

  32

  For a while no one dared to breathe.

  Antoni was still lying on the floor. Joanna was frozen to the spot, with her sons clinging to her on either side.

  The rest of the people were stuck in poses proving that while we do die alone, we rarely die on our own. Lovers and friends were merged into one, parents were hugging their children, strangers were holding hands. The only person alone was the conductor, which may have been why he was the first to react.

  He turned the key on the control panel, went over to the doors, and pushed them wide open. He sat on the edge and jumped down onto a gentle slope covered in dwarf pine two yards below. He looked around, turned, and held out his arms to help the passengers get out.

  Only then did they start to cheer.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Warsaw

  1

  There’s a certain type of woman whom men will never try to hit on in bars. Even if the girls are in stilettoes and little low-cut black numbers, and the guys have had so much liquid courage that in the presence of any other woman they’d feel handsome, witty, virile, and eloquent, they still won’t approach them. Just as a boy in high school would never coolly lean against his teacher’s desk and casually ask, “How was it for you last night, Princess?” Some things just aren’t done.

  Dr. Zofia Lorentz was one of those women. Nobody ever called her by a nickname, like “Zośka” or “Zosia,” because “Dr. Lorentz” seemed the best fit. From a distance there was nothing special about her; a petite blonde with an average figure, round face, and honey-colored hair cut in a bob. Her dark eyes were a surprise—the pupils and irises merged into two black points, making it impossible to tell whether they expressed sympathy, reproach, or a rebuke. Any short encounter would soon prove that Dr. Lorentz was a confrontational person, tenacious, gifted with wicked intelligence, and had no capacity for compromise. All in all, it made people careful not to make grammatical errors in her presence, to steer clear of sexist jokes, and not to imagine her as the sort of woman who smiles blissfully as she fries eggs on a Sunday morning and bustles about a sun-drenched kitchen in a skimpy robe.

  At the age of thirty-four, Zofia Lorentz was a single, childless, and moderately happy woman who had learned to invest her energy only in activities she regarded as profitable. Foreign languages, academic work, horse riding, skiing, and middle-distance running—she had run marathons but stopped, worrying she might lose some of her feminine curves. Ten years ago, as a very young graduate of international law and art history, she had joined the Team for the Restitution of Works of Art at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Now she was the head of this small unit—these days reduced to just one person—the aim of which was to track down and reclaim the cultural heritage that the Polish Republic had lost at various points in its history.

  Poland’s ambassadors spoke of her with admiration and respect, museum heads held her in high regard, collectors sucked up to her, and, eternally teetering on the edge of dealing in stolen goods, Europe’s famous antique dealers would gladly have ganged up with the auction house owners to do away with her.

  She belonged to the irremovable middle rank of civil servants and was perfectly aware that she could go on this way as long as she wished while the ministers and deputy ministers came and went. They knew they couldn’t touch the person responsible for priceless works of art returning to Polish museums, and they never got in her way; in return, once in a while she gave them the chance to be photographed delivering a recovered treasure to the thrilled head of the relevant museum.

  In a matching black skirt and jacket, the heels of her knee-high boots rapping against the floor, she strode down a ministry corridor alongside her boss, the current foreign minister.

  “I want to know what this is about. I end up wasting time if I’m unprepared.”

  “Dr. Lorentz, the prime minister called and asked for us to show up at her office. You don’t argue with that sort of request.”

  She cast him a glance without slowing down. He couldn’t tell if it was a look of understanding, sympathy, or pity—nothing could be read in those devilishly dark eyes.

  “It’s the prime minister,” he said, “so she must have something important and specific to say.”

  “I’m honored.”

  The minister never knew if Zofia was joking or not, and he couldn’t make up his mind which would compromise him more: silence, which might suggest he hadn’t understood the joke, or laughter, which might prove that he didn’t appreciate the seriousness of the remark. To be on the safe side, he always opted for silence.

  They passed the porter’s lodge, put on their coats, and went outside. Winter had come early; it wasn’t December yet, but it had been snowing in Warsaw all week. It was the same all over Europe, and the scientists on TV were doubling their efforts to prove it was due to global warming.

  Five minutes later they passed through the gateway into the prime minister’s chancellery, and ten minutes later Zofia was sitting in an office, signing a declaration that she was aware that the ensuing conversation was confidential and covered by the “top secret” clause; disclosing anything carried a maximum sentence of eight years’ imprisonment.

  “The prime minister is expecting you in the cube,” the secretary said after collecting the documents.

  Zofia had heard about the cube—the special antisurveillance room for confidential discussions. Accompanied by an officer from the Government Protection Bureau, they rode up a floor, and midway down a corridor they stopped at an inconspicuous door. A sign read “Conference Room 4.15.” Behind the door, instead of a conference room there was a small chamber, in which Zofia had to go through a metal detector, submit to a body search, and leave everything except her clothing—her purse, cell phone, keys, money, and jewelry—in a small luggage locker. Unfortunately they also told her to take off her boots, which made her feel small, naked, and annoyed.

  “Is the prime minister sitting here in her panty hose too?” she asked the young security officer.

  He just shrugged and pressed a button to open another door. They went into the next room. It was a large area, about two thousand square feet, completely empty. The walls, floor, and ceiling were coated in snow-white linoleum, with each plane flowing smoothly into the next, leaving no sharp corners or angles, and there were lots of fluorescent bulbs sunk into the ceiling.

  You couldn’t hide a pin in here.

  In the middle of the room was the famous cube—a transparent space made of thick artifi
cial material, about fifteen feet square, in which the prime minister and a man in a suit, whom Zofia didn’t recognize, were sitting. Only the prime minister was wearing shoes.

  Zofia nodded and took a seat.

  The prime minister waited for a small light at the center of the conference table to change from red to green—a sign that all the antisurveillance devices had been activated—and immediately turned to Zofia.

  “Dr. Lorentz, allow me to introduce General Marek Gagatek, head of the Intelligence Agency. General, I believe you know the foreign minister. Dr. Lorentz runs our team for recovering works of art at the Foreign Ministry.”

  Out of respect, Zofia refrained from commenting that it had only been a team under other governments and was now a one-person unit, and acknowledged the general with a nod. He didn’t look like a general or a military man at all; a well-groomed fifty-year-old, he carried the aura of the private sector, the gym, squash, and a very expensive car.

  “Zofia . . . ,” General Gagatek began with a smile.

  “Dr. Lorentz,” she corrected him.

  “Dr. Lorentz,” he went on. “What, in your view, is our most important lost work of art?”

  She shrugged. “In Poland we’ve really only ever had two paintings. Looking at it from the perspective of world art, of course—I’m not talking about sentimental value from the national point of view, all those clashing weapons and panting horses. Those two paintings were always next to each other in Kraków. Leonardo da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine is still hanging there, but all that’s left of Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man is an empty frame. It’s not only the most important work of art to have been stolen from Poland during the war. It’s the most important and most valuable painting to have ever been lost—the male equivalent of the Mona Lisa.”

  “How much is it worth?”

  “It’s priceless and impossible to sell outside the black market, but judging by other transactions, you could estimate its value at a hundred million dollars and up. I’d like to know why you summoned me to this glass coffin.”

  Gagatek handed her a file. She opened it and found about a dozen eight-by-ten photographs inside. She looked through them, spreading them out on the table. They were all of Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man—she knew it extremely well from reproductions. A young man with fine, feminine features looks straight at the viewer in the same way the Mona Lisa gazes at us from the walls of the Louvre. His head is turned three-quarters, and he has the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. It must have been a cold day, because he has thrown a brown fur over his white shirt and wears a cap over his unruly dark locks, which tumble to his collarbones.

  Zofia stared into the black eyes of the Renaissance youth and battled her emotions. She knew all the prewar photographs of this painting, including the rare few that were in color. She knew every detail, from the subtly drawn fingernails to the towers of the small town that could be seen through the window, hidden behind some rolling hills way off in the distance. She knew that brazen smirk that seemed to say You’ll never find me and that—though she had never admitted it to anyone—this was a challenge for which she had sacrificed all other career opportunities. She could have become an expert at a Western auction house, worked as a dealer, advised the richest people in the world on purchases and investments, or she could be sunning herself right now on her own yacht moored near Genoa. But whenever she had doubts, she just looked at that cheeky smile and thought, I’m going to find you, you sonofa . . .

  The photographs she was looking at now were undoubtedly contemporary. Firstly, she knew all the archived pictures. Secondly, even though the photos were a little blurry, as if snapped from under someone’s coat, their quality proved they’d been taken recently. Thirdly, in one image, the Young Man was hanging on a wall next to a large LCD TV.

  “Any questions?” asked the prime minister, who seemed unable to bear her silence; they’d clearly been expecting an emotional reaction.

  “Two. Have you done tests?”

  “At two forensic labs, independently,” confirmed Gagatek. “The experts agreed that these are pictures of the same painting photographed before the war. There’s no chance it’s a copy. It’s the same painting.”

  Zofia drummed her fingernails on the cheap laminate table.

  “And your second question?” The prime minister couldn’t restrain herself.

  “What sort of . . . deadbeat hangs a Raphael next to a TV?”

  The prime minister sighed and leaned back in her chair.

  “And here we come to the crux of our meeting. So, we have succeeded in gaining information that the Raphael wasn’t destroyed during the war. As you can see, we’ve managed to confirm that it’s the actual painting. In other words, we know it’s intact, and we know where it is. We also know there’s no chance of getting it back through legal means. And that if we make the slightest move in that direction, the painting will vanish, this time for good.”

  “All right. But who’s got it? Where are they keeping it?”

  The prime minister leaned forward.

  “My dear Dr. Lorentz, please listen to me very carefully, because I’m going to make you an offer you cannot refuse. I know your family history. And I know exactly why, with talents like yours, you’re stuck in that little office on the next block. And I’m sure you know what it would mean for us to be photographed alongside a recovered treasure at the National Museum before the next election. And of course there’s the national interest, so dear to our hearts, all those smiling Polish children on an outing to the museum, and so on.”

  Zofia raised an eyebrow. Curious.

  “As I said, there’s no chance of us getting it back legally. But the Polish state is willing to give you as much help as you need to recover the piece.”

  “Illegally?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You want me to steal it?”

  “Why jump to using words like that? We too are sometimes obliged to regain or obtain something by reaching into the taxpayer’s pocket for a justified cause. But nobody would call it stealing.”

  Zofia held the prime minister’s gaze, trying to keep from laughing.

  “You’ll be an honorable restitutor, restitutress . . .” The prime minister looked around helplessly. “What’s the right word?”

  “I have no idea,” said Gagatek, shrugging.

  “In any case, you’ll be recovering something that rightfully belongs to this country. Think of it as freeing the very last prisoner of the Second World War and bringing him home.”

  Zofia paused.

  “And what if I don’t succeed?” she finally asked.

  “The Raphael is important to us, and you’re extremely important to us, although matters of state are the most important thing.”

  “In other words, the success will be everyone’s, the failure mine alone.”

  The prime minister frowned. “You could put it like that, if you like crude simplifications.”

  Zofia sat still, rubbing one foot nervously against the other.

  “Where is it?”

  “Yes or no? I need a clear answer.”

  The three of them stared at her. They knew she was the only one who could recover the Raphael. And they must have been wondering if the patriot and passionate art lover in her were now battling with the good little girl who never broke the law. Meanwhile she wasn’t wavering at all. The place for good little girls was in boarding school novels, and the place for Raphael was in Kraków, not next to some TV. Besides, she had to look him in the eye. Let him know who had found him and brought him back home.

  “Yes. Where is it?”

  “In an allied country,” said the prime minister. “General Gagatek will give you all the details and introduce you to the team you’ll be working with.”

  “I have to give some thought to the team.”

  “No, you don’t,” Gagatek said. “They’ve already been chosen; we were just waiting on your decision. There’s no room here for random individuals. B
ut from here on all the decisions are yours. We understand that total responsibility must mean total freedom. We’ve started to take action because we don’t have time for months of preparation—it’ll only take the smallest breach for the painting to disappear.”

  Zofia glared at Gagatek, then shifted her gaze to the prime minister, who wasn’t good with silence—only a moment was enough for her to start fidgeting and drumming her fingers on the table.

  Meanwhile, Zofia needed some time.

  A few seconds to remember a scene from her childhood. She liked to think it was her earliest memory, but we never know if we really remember something or if we’ve just heard a family story so many times that we regard it as our own. In this one, a four-year-old black-eyed girl with pigtails is holding her dad’s hand while looking at an empty frame hanging in a museum. Her dad asks if she knows why there’s no painting in the frame, and she says, “Because anyone can paint, you just gotta have the crayons.”

  And then, year after year at family dinners, everyone told the anecdote over and over about how little Zofia wanted to paint a Raphael using crayons.

  And here she was, and her childhood dream had come true—the prime minister was pressing the crayons into her hand and saying, “Here you go, kid, get painting.” But Zofia wondered, what was the catch if she failed? Resignation? Prison? Death?

  “Total freedom?” she asked the prime minister.

  “And responsibility. That’s right. And lightning speed too. I’d like to have my photo taken with the Raphael at Christmas.”

  There were only a few weeks left.

  “So who’s on my team?” Zofia asked.

  Gagatek mentioned three names, and with each one her black eyes grew bigger.

  “This is starting to sound like a bad joke,” she finally said.

  2

  Behind him, someone honked the horn. Subtly, the German way, as if to say Excuse me, dear sir, but you maybe didn’t notice the lights have changed. Not the Polish way: Move it, asshole, or I’ll slam into you. He moved, waving apologetically.