Authors: Roberta Latow
“I
rving, you are something else.” Grant Madigan waved a cablegram at the short, dark man, who beamed a wily smile at him. Both pairs of eyes were simultaneously cruising the bar of the Gezira Sporting Club sizing up the most attractive women.
Grant Madigan stood up, towering over his friend, and the two men shook hands and walked together to a table where they could watch the women lusciously adorning the edge of the pool. “The most beautiful women in the Middle East. And classy,” stated Irving. He sighed.
Grant Madigan read from the cablegram. “ ‘Meet me favorite bar soonest. Irving.’ How did you know I would be in Cairo this afternoon? I didn’t even know myself until I was halfway here from Damascus on my host’s jet.”
Irving Kirshner tapped his index finger against the side of his nose. “Never forget, this is an Israeli nose you’re looking at, old buddy.”
“And how did you know where I was staying?”
Irving tapped the side of his nose again. Grant Madigan shook his head in admiration of that percipient nose and called a waiter. He ordered a second malt whiskey for himself and a vodka on the rocks for Kirshner.
“The last time I saw you …”
Irving chipped in, “New York, four years ago, FAO Schwarz, stuffed-toy department. After a boozy lunch in the Oak Room at the Plaza, you bought a hippo and I snapped up a giraffe for Sidney Taylor’s newborn son. You left me to
deliver them. I watched you walk through those swing doors into a God-Almighty rain storm and crash some good-looking chick to her knees. I thought: a bar in Singapore, a whorehouse in Paris, a three-day binge in Bombay, an orgy anywhere would have been more our style. Insult to injury, I bet you even scored with that chick in the rain.”
“I had her in the taxi, but not the way you think. I had a plane to catch, and her vulnerability stopped me — you know how I shy away from vulnerable women. Too much trouble. But … more than once I’ve thought about her. She’d have been worth missing that plane for.”
The two men raised their glasses and drank. “Well, this may not be Bombay or Singapore or Paris, but it is Cairo and I haven’t changed my style yet, Irving.”
Irving raised his eyebrows. “You mean a network, prime-time mover like you hasn’t been spoiled by fame and success? You telling me you’re still the same hard-drinking, roving tomcat? The not-so-quiet reprobate who loves and leaves the ladies without a qualm? That no quiver has as yet pierced that steel shield you wear over your heart? The years haven’t changed you? Come on!”
Grant Madigan gave his old friend a wry smile. As he was coolly checking out the women with an admiring eye, he evoked reciprocal glances at his own rugged American good looks, his adventurer’s sensual, hungry eyes. Grant Madigan’s discreet romantic liaisons were well-known to women in the diplomatic circles of Cairo. He had both notoriety
and
influence. He conjured for them the perfect image of a Western romantic figure. An international celebrity, intellectual without being pompous, courageously sexy, but most of all the unattainable male lover-loner. It set women’s hearts racing, their feet chasing. Irving looked with admiration at his old colleague and playmate in the love stakes. He could not recall a single woman who had won his heart.
“Naw, I haven’t changed either, Grant. Still the same sucker falling in love with any woman he fucks. Same old pattern: I home in on my choice, enter the chase, bed them, romance them, and believe I’m going to marry every last one of them. Even years after I’ve left them. I really get off on those loves that chew me up. I’m still looking for
the
one who can last the
course. I’m the same Irving Kirshner, that oh-so-nice, handsome, sexy, Jewish guy — a little on the short side, maybe; a bit crippled on the emotional side, too, from always tripping over his feelings and landing on his heart.”
That brought a smile to the face of each and Grant Madigan motioned to the waiter for refills. “I love that warped image you have of yourself. You always play the nebbishlike King Lear, Irving. Now, if only I had been born Jewish … my Hamlet, my Falstaff. I’d have dissolved you with my Macbeth.”
“Forget it, Grant. You can’t be me, and you certainly can’t be Jewish. Not a goy like you, who
feels
just enough, and no more. I should be more like you — you never allow that sponge of a brain of yours that knows everything to overcome your heart.”
“It’s reassuring to know that a three- or four-year gap between drinks doesn’t affect a long friendship. Jesus, it’s good to see you, Irving. Where the hell have you been?
“Word has it that you’ve been working for the CIA, the French Intelligence Service, Israel’s Mossad. The FBI has you listed on its books as a ‘friendly associate.’ And when I interviewed Golda Meir, she was full of the part you were playing in bringing ex-Nazis to trial. A London friend of ours — name of MI5 — reckons if you hadn’t been Jewish, you’d have won the spy award of the decade. Now what the fuck does all that mean, Irving?”
“Not a lot.” Irving reached across the small table to the inside pocket of Grant’s jacket to liberate a Havana cigar. Grant took another for himself and handed over his cigar cutter.
“What are you doing these days? What’s new since you gave up journalism? When I heard you had, I was mighty angry with you. You were one of the best. Who are you working for?”
“Israel, of course. But not exactly.”
“If that isn’t a typical Kirshner answer!” Madigan looked at his watch then at his friend. He tapped the crystal and said, “I need the short version, Irving.”
“I know. You’re being picked up in twenty minutes. Okay. You’re why I am here in Cairo. I need a favor. Don’t worry,
nothing that will compromise you, or your work. Paintings, works of art, are what it’s all about.”
“I’m still not getting the drift of all this, Irving.”
“Bottom line: I’m after art treasures stolen by the Nazis as they went through Europe during the war. Works of art that seem to have vanished for more than twenty years. But, of course, they haven’t. They’re stashed away in fancy private collections. Property of thieves, war criminals, and their sidekicks and buddies. Most of them are the second-division Nazis who got away and are now respected, wealthy, and powerful members of the establishment.”
“That’s some job, Irving. Who funds you? Where do you base yourself?” Grant Madigan was at once fascinated by Irving Kirshner’s news. He knew Irving’s quick wits and penetrating mind fitted him for the job. And he guessed Irving’s discoveries could blow the lid off some very volatile secrets.
“I work privately, but am funded by various countries, institutions, as well as individuals. I have offices in Paris, New York, Tel Aviv.”
“How successful are you?”
“Not bad. Better than anyone before me. Supposedly the best there is. And, besides prying beautiful things out of the hands of retired murderers, there is being involved with art. It’s become a passion. I get off on art. It raises my spirit. And, anyway, there are dividends. It’s lucrative. I meet a lotta interesting guys mixed up in art, freaks and scum, rogues and villains. Even a few good guys. And things I’ve leaked have put a few more Nazi war criminals inside.”
Irving saw he’d caught Grant’s interest: “It started innocently enough. A good story. A feature article for
Time
: ‘Lost And Found: One Nazi War Criminal.’ Only it turned out to be not such an interesting story, stuff we’ve all heard about before. Your run-of-the-mill fifth-rate Nazi war criminal. Just another sadistic camp commandant who escaped the net for twenty years. I dropped the story, but got hooked on the idea of this vast mob of the world’s most despicable criminals reverting, in most cases, to cosy, well-heeled, bourgeois lives.”
Irving tapped the side of his nose again with his forefinger. Then he continued: “It was all there, Grant. I was sniffing something out, but I had no idea what it was. It had something
to do with the mediocrity of the lives these minor war criminals were living. Middle-class, boring, shit lives.
Minor
— what am I saying,
minor
? There are no minor Nazi war criminals as far as we Israelis are concerned. There was a smallness about these guys the Nazi hunters were ferreting out, the men they were able to pick up and bring to trial. They were small fry, nothing, compared to the fish that were out there living it up. This nose of mine kept telling me: Irving, the biggest criminals leave a golden trail; catch them by their greed.”
Grant and Irving were momentarily distracted by a brunette beauty who passed their table. Hadn’t she been a former romantic springtime fancy of Grant’s some years before? After a brief exchange of pleasantries, they continued.
“You know as well as I do that in intelligence work it’s mind, not muscle, that’s the key to success. These hunters were using both, but they were missing something. They were chasing around for facts, for evidence, and always missing something solid, concrete, to sink the bastards. To find a Mengele, a Martin Bormann, and the other fifty or more who quit Nazi Germany with enough cash, gold ingots, and pictures to make fat cats of them for the rest of eternity, just follow the trail of their greed. That never changes. I had the key to it, the greed, the avarice.
“Then, one day, some months later, I was having a drink with Moshe Schratsky. You remember Moshe?”
“I sure do. He was a great help to me when I was in Jerusalem doing my interview with Golda Meir. What a bright guy.”
“I’ll say. We were talking about Israel’s intelligence network. It was Moshe who said, ‘Don’t underestimate any intelligence service. The analysis, the piecing together of disparate strands of information, may produce only tentative conclusions. But they have been known to dictate the survival of armies, the fate of nations. It’s always been that way. Probably always will be.’ He tried to recruit me for Mossad, claiming that I have the intellect and ability to analyze for their kind of work. He tried to convince me that that, plus my instinct for sizing up a situation, could make me the perfect spy or counterspy.”
“You a spy? Moshe must have been having an off day. Or
he was desperate. Anyone who has ever met you for five minutes knows that you can’t keep your mouth shut. And your womanizing alone would disqualify you.”
“That’s what I told him. Only, in a way, that did not make me the schmuck you just described. I declined, explaining that the infidelities and materialism, all the vanity and ambition that drive people to betray their country, would be more fascinating to me than catching a criminal or playing I-spy. And in telling Moshe that, I realized I had stumbled upon something that really interested me, man’s weaknesses and his failings. I could nail the bastards red-handed with their weaknesses, their vanities, and their immorality.
“You should have heard Moshe. He was quite funny. He said,” — and here Irving imitated Moshe’s accent and waved his arms around — “ ‘What, trace their bank accounts? The Bormanns and Eichmanns and Mengeles of this world don’t have bank accounts, Irving. Treasures, they live on their victims’ treasures. All that fancy loot, art lost to the world. Thanks, Irving, thanks a lot.’
“Their treasures. Jesus, Irving, I said to myself, that’s it. Go for the lost works of art. That’s the lock. Greed is the key. So I had the lock and the key. Trace them through the treasures they looted. I’ll uncover the beasts as they off-load art treasures plundered by the Third Reich, I’ll go after their beautiful stash. A terrific adventure, a great story. And anything I can turn up for the Nazi hunters, a bonus.
“It started as innocently as that. But, after six months, the Nazi art treasures became an obsession. A magnificent obsession.”
They were interrupted again by a
sufragi
, sent by the doorman of the club, to say that Prince Ben el Saud’s car had arrived for Mr. Madigan. Grant checked the time and told the servant to say he would be there shortly.
“Thank God for the local idea of punctuality,” remarked Grant. “We have time for one more at least.” And he raised his hand to order another round of drinks.
Irving checked his wristwatch and said, “We got twenty minutes before you gotta leave. The prince expects to be picked up from the German embassy exactly at seven, with you in the car waiting for him. You’ll be joined by the man you’re so
anxious to meet, Helmut Furtwangler. That guy’s private art collection is going to knock your eyeballs out,
if
you ever get to see it.”
“Uh-huh. So you suspect Furtwangler of being one of your Nazi looters for the Reich who then snuck off with the treasures. And the prince? You have to have been watching him and me pretty closely to be so well informed about our movements.”
“Very good, Grant. Two out of two for good guesses. Helmut is a definite yes. And someday I’m going to get his stolen works of art back to those of his victims still alive to appreciate them. It may take years, but it
will
happen. Right now, we’ve only a few puny leads to go on. But they do hang together. And they add up to a pretty big network of private art galleries that go in for stolen works of art. A worldwide network, in fact.
“The prince: sympathetic to former Nazis, no friend to Israel. But certainly no thief, no war criminal. He is unusual among the Saudi princes: he’s been collecting art since he was a young man. He got his schooling in England and France. They say he had a close relationship with the old Aga Khan and his family. Anyway he picked up their French tastes, their passion for horse racing. They gave him a lift into the arts. They made a collector of him.
“He knows a lot, Grant. He knows which stolen pieces are where. He’s run his eye over quite a few of those mysterious private collections. I have plenty of evidence of that. But I don’t know that he’s ever bought anything for himself that doesn’t carry a legitimate provenance. He’s pretty canny about what he buys. Word has it that he intends to build a museum in Mecca for his collection. The plans are already on the architect’s drawing tables.”
“All hot copy, Irving. But I don’t see where I fit in. And why choose right here and now to put me in the picture, as you so divertingly call it?”