Beloved Enemy (40 page)

He kept his grip, bringing her to her knees, and then, all at once, she toppled over, her heels spasming weakly, before she grew still. Jack scooped up her S&W, stashed it in his waistband.

*   *   *

The elevator descended through the three floors and the basement. When it reached the subbasement and the doors opened, the first thing Annika saw was Giles.

“Come out,” he said in a conciliatory tone. “We know why we’re all here.”

“Is that why your men tried to kill us up on the roof?” Namazi said, stepping out, Annika just behind him.

“Galina hired those guards, not me. She doesn’t take kindly to her house being invaded.”

“And you can’t control that bitch?” Namazi said.

“You know the answer to that. No one ever could—not even Gourdjiev.”

Namazi shook his head. “You’re a pathetic excuse of a man.”

“You really could use an attitude adjustment.”

The Syrian whirled on him, glaring. “I should kill you right here.”

“But you can’t,” Giles said, nevertheless stepping cautiously back. “We all need one another. That’s how Gourdjiev planned it.”

“I curse that bastard’s black, shriveled heart to the lowest circle of hell,” Namazi said.

“You don’t believe in hell,” Giles pointed out.

“Neither did he,” Annika said.

“We should at least call a truce,” Giles said, addressing the Syrian. “Our enmity only makes matters worse.”

“There can be no peace among us,” Annika said. “Only a need—an imperative—that’s greater than any one of us.”

Namazi shouldered past Giles. “The four of us are what matter. Where the hell is McClure? We can’t complete the vault sequence without him.”

“Four? What are you talking about?” Giles said. “Three blocks will open the vault. We each possess one-third of the number sequence.”

Namazi turned to Annika, his face livid. “You said your grandfather had given McClure one of the number blocks.”

“I lied,” Annika said.

*   *   *

Slowly but surely the drug Namazi had administered to Rolan had worn off. Now Rolan unbuckled himself and walked to the helo’s door.

The pilot turned in his seat. “Where d’you think you’re going?”

Rolan turned, stalked back to him, held out a hand. “Gun.”

The pilot looked up at him. “Are you crazy?”

Rolan struck him so hard in the face the pilot’s body rocketed back and forth. Bending over, Rolan took the Mauser from the dazed man. Then he went out the door, jumped down onto the chalet’s roof.

*   *   *

Like Annika, Radomil had been to the chalet before. His mother had taken him and his twin brother when they were boys. The chalet had been under reconstruction then, so Radomil had been witness to the workmen putting in the central elevator shaft, as well as a far smaller shaft that ran just within the northern wall. At that time, he’d had no idea what that secondary shaft was for, but now, inside the chalet, avoiding the armed mercenaries Galina had obviously hired to keep her and Legere safe, he encountered it again and realized it housed a second, smaller, secret elevator.

He’d seen Namazi’s helo landing on the roof and knew that’s where he wanted to be. That’s where Namazi would be making his escape.

He pressed the button to summon the small elevator. He watched as it rose from the lowest level, the subbasement, then opened the narrow door and stepped into what looked like a vertical coffin, lined with plush red velvet, a little circular light in the center of the ceiling. He pushed the button for the roof. Before stepping out, he sent it back down so his use of it would remain unnoticed.

*   *   *

As Jack stood up, letting go of the curtain cord, he heard sounds coming from just outside the door. Then there was a sharp knock and a voice raised in concern.

“Ms. Yemchevya! Are you in there? Are you all right?”

Stepping over the corpse, Jack flattened himself behind the door an instant before it swung open. A guard, holding a Glock 9mm at the ready, entered the room, saw Galina lying on the floor. As he swung around, Jack landed a blow with the butt of the Airweight to the base of his skull. The guard went down and stayed down.

Jack stepped over him, peered cautiously into the corridor. It was deserted, at least for the moment. He stood in the doorway, the window through which he had climbed at his back. Closing his eyes, he oriented himself, as if he were looking at the chalet from his vantage point outside. He had noticed the solid walls where, in other chalets, there would have been windows. That area was to his right.

Moving out into the hallway, he made his way toward the windowless area, but before he could get there, he was stopped by a blank wall that, unlike the sidewalls, was papered in a busy cabbage rose, trellis, and vine pattern. He had reached the end of the hallway, but from his recon he knew more of the chalet existed on the other side.

Pressing his ear to the wall, he rapped with his knuckles, but could discern no hollow sound. Returning to the room, he rummaged through Galina’s pockets, found a pack of cigarettes and a lighter. He had smelled the smoke coming off her hair and clothes.

Returning to the end of the hallway, he lit a cigarette and took several puffs, letting the smoke out slowly. It drifted up to the ceiling. He stepped along the wall. Suddenly, the smoke he released swirled toward the wall instead of the ceiling.

By viewing that section of the wall from different angles, lit by the flame from the lighter, he could discern a seam, cleverly hidden along the line of a trellis. Using his fingernails, he traced the seam into which the smoke was vanishing. He moved closer, felt the draft of air being sucked into the space on the other side of the wall.

He pushed on areas around the seam until a section of the wall, wide as a door, swung open, and he stepped into the hidden area beyond.

*   *   *

“I should kill you.” Namazi shot Annika a menacing look.

“What a disappointing response.” She shrugged. “But it’s only what I expected.”

Giles stepped between them. “We need to keep our personal animosities on hold or we’ll never get this done.” He looked from one to the other.

“This way,” he said, after a moment’s silence.

He led them to the room with Jean Dufy’s prancing horses amid the leafy greenery of the park. Giles unlocked the door and flipped a switch. A spotlight illuminated the Dufy. Stepping over to it, he swung it aside, revealing a formidable-looking wall safe.

Iraj stood very near her. “This isn’t over,” he said under his breath.

“You’re terrifying me,” Annika said. “Input your fucking numbers.”

“If you recall,” Giles interjected, clearly uneasy with their display of hostility, “we were informed there was a certain order. I was to go first, then Namazi, and Annika last.”

“Do it then,” Namazi said without taking his eyes off Annika.

Stepping up to the vault, Giles typed in a set of numbers, then moved back so Namazi could input his. After he was done, Annika typed in hers.

The click of the tumblers opening sounded as loud as a rifle shot.

Iraj’s eyes glittered.

Giles licked his lips.

Annika turned the lever and opened the safe’s door.

Leaning forward, they all peered inside. At nothing.

The vault was empty.

T
WENTY-FIVE

“W
HAT THE
fuck?!” Iraj said.

Giles scrabbled in the depths of the safe, unable to believe the evidence of his eyes.

Annika began to laugh. She laughed so hard tears sprang into her eyes and she began to wheeze. When she had regained her breath, she said with a biting savagery, “You fools! You’re both fools to take my grandfather at his word. He despised both of you.”

“You bitch,” Namazi said, baring his teeth. “Don’t you understand, he’s made a fool of you, as well.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want any part of his legacy.”

The Syrian frowned. “Another of your lies. You’ve been bent on doing what Gourdjiev told you just so you could come to this moment.”

“That was then,” Annika said with an equanimity that clearly disturbed him.

“God in heaven, Galina was right.” Giles began to pull at his hair. “I allowed Gourdjiev to lead me around by the nose. I did his bidding without question, no matter how abhorrent his orders seemed—beginning with you, Namazi. I curse the day Gourdjiev introduced us.”

The Syrian turned to him. “Shut up, Giles!”

Giles shook his head, lost in his own thoughts. “All these years, I chased after a phantom—a dream he created for me.”

“I said shut the fuck up!” Namazi drew a gun from beneath his jacket.

“No!” Annika screamed.

But it was too late. The bullet plowed into Giles Legere’s chest, slamming him against the wall, like a pitched ball. He gave out a little sound as he slid down the wall to sit, splay-legged like a child.

“It’s beyond me why you’d want to save that sorry sack of shit.” Namazi grabbed Annika’s hand, dragged her out of the room and into the vertical coffin. They rose up toward the roof and their waiting helo.

*   *   *

Jack flicked the lighter and the flame rose up, sending his shadow streaming across the wall. The odors of must and decay, mold and an unending damp that even the freezing temperature couldn’t allay burned his eyes and the inside of his nose.

A light switch brought several bare bulbs to life. Jack found himself in a warren of rooms—no more than cubicles. What windows had once been there had long ago been removed, the rectangles walled up and papered over.

Cobwebs and dust balls were the only furniture. That was not to say they were empty. In one, he found a metal box filled with vintage diamond jewelry, in the second, another box, this one covered in velvet the color of oxblood. Inside were piled handfuls of gold fillings, some still embedded in human teeth.

Farther back, he approached an object covered in a canvas drop cloth. Peeling it away, he discovered a painting of heart-stopping beauty. His dyslexic mind sorted through images he had seen at lightning speed. He looked closer and then was certain. He was looking at the
Portrait of a Lady
, by Caravaggio, believed to have been destroyed in Berlin’s Friedrichshain Flakturm, in 1945.

Continuing on, he found statuary by Donatello, a painting by Raphael, one of the Virgin by Giotto. All thought lost or destroyed, each one in a small, square, windowless room, as if on display in an eerie, forgotten museum.

He stood back, heart pounding. Giles Legere’s chalet was a storehouse of treasure looted by the Nazis during the war.

*   *   *

Giles was colder than he had ever been in his life. But, somehow, he didn’t mind. He thought he’d sit here a while and enjoy Dufy’s prancing horses, so noble and proud. He imagined them in another season, pulling a sleigh of laughing, red-cheeked people, warmed by drafts of hot buttered rum and red-and-white-striped candies.

With perfect clarity, he recalled a day snuggled between Christmas and New Year’s. The Swiss Alps wrapped their mighty arms around him. He was bundled beneath a quilted blanket, sitting between his parents in an old-fashioned, horse-pulled sleigh. His mother was a month away from death. He was eight years old.

“Sugar,”
his mother had said,
“are you happy?”

He remembered the Alps, the snow, the red noses, the high curved back of the sleigh, the horses, snorting and prancing through the drifts.

“Yes, Mama, I’m happy.”

It was the last time he had been happy.

Until this moment of utter peace, watching Jean Dufy’s horses, the riders, the park, remembering the snow falling, his breath steaming, his mother close beside him, asking the crucial question amid the utter, silent grandeur of the Alps. His mind traveling back in time, that winter moment and this one, conflated forever in a perfect fusing of future, present, and past.

*   *   *

The chalet seemed eerily quiet. It was time. Jack needed to find a way to reach the roof. Soon enough, he found it. This secret section of the chalet had its own staircase—a narrow spiral with worn stone treads rising up through a cramped, conical space.

The window he had entered was on the second story, so he had only two flights to reach the roof. He launched himself up the stairs. It seemed criminal to leave the hoard behind—both historians and art critics should have access to it—but that was hardly his concern now. Annika and the Syrian were uppermost in his mind.

He passed a door to what must be the third floor and hurried on, mindful that the stone walls surrounding him were starting to converge. Some way up above his head, the space was reduced so drastically it appeared a preteen would be hard-pressed to squeeze through it. From the picture in his mind’s eye, he guessed the top of the conical space turned into one of the chalet’s great curving iron talons he’d observed from the road far below.

The spiral stairs gave out just below the severely narrowed space, though the central column continued to climb all the way to the top. Jack stopped, stymied. There was no egress to the roof from where he was perched. He could go back down to the third floor and, perhaps, find another way up. But he could just as well find himself trapped in this secret, windowless section of the chalet.

The only way was to continue up.

Grasping the metal pole, he wrapped his legs around it and began to shimmy his way upward. The conical space continued to press in around him, until he could feel the freezing stone against both shoulders. He drew them in, compressing the width of his body as escape artists do when wriggling out of a straitjacket.

He continued upward until the space was simply too narrow for him to continue. But now he felt gusts of icy air flow over him and, like the cigarette smoke that had led him here, he followed it until he saw light ahead of him and knew that he was crawling through one of the massive talons at the corners of the chalet.

The brightness of the sky crept toward him, then, all at once, he was at the outlet, emerging into dazzling light after his long dark climb, all of Switzerland’s Alps, it seemed, ringing the clear, cerulean sky.