Authors: Roberta Latow
“What brings you here, you old hound dog?” asked Grant. His smile showed him really pleased to see his old friend.
“I’m here for the poached turbot. What are you doing here?”
“I’m here for the turbot, too.”
“Like hell you are. My information has it you’re in Paris to have lunch at the Elysee Palace. So, what happened? If you spill the beans, I’ll pay for the turbot. Deal?”
Grant accepted the invitation and was introduced to Irving’s guests. The Israeli cabinet minister Grant had met before. The fellow American was CIA. Grant sat down, tapped the side of his nose, and began teasing Irving. “Still in the same business, I see, Irving.”
“Still in the same business, Grant.”
Sam White arrived at the Hotel Crillon Bar. Knowing all the men at the table, he stopped briefly to shake hands, say hello, and then sat down at his regular table. It had come to be more like a desk, and the Crillon a second office for him. The Crillon was one of Grant’s favorite haunts in Paris. Lunchtime there drew all his old journalist cronies. He could take instantaneously the Paris pulse and the news of the moment. It was true he was to have had lunch at the Elysee Palace. But that had been canceled at the last minute. The date was now for the following day.
Lunch turned out to be a heated but amusing affair. Grant could not resist baiting the Israeli minister. It was doubly enjoyable because, for the first time, Grant met a CIA agent with a wicked sense of humor. The man, Ben Johnson, dissolved them all into laughter with his up-to-the-minute political one-liners. His timing was perfect. It must have ended well because, after their boozy lunch, they all shook hands, and before they dispersed, they agreed to meet sometime around eleven that evening at Harry’s Bar on the rue Dannou.
Over the years, Grant and Irving had stayed in touch by telephone, telegram, and letter, but it came as a great surprise to both of them to realize that it had been more than ten years since they had last met in Cairo. Grant had an unexpected free afternoon. He had decided to stroll from the Crillon across the Seine and spend the afternoon wandering around Saint Germain des Pres. The two men walked together as far as Irving’s offices on the rue de Rivoli, where Irving insisted Grant go up to see them.
Irving Kirshner was now the number-one art detective in the world. Madigan was a respected writer on geopolitical wars, a political journalist, and a TV interviewer of international men
of the moment. Both men had success and reputation to spare.
Over the years Irving had bombarded Grant’s New York office with brown-envelope packets of photographs. They showed missing paintings. Irving always had the hope that one day Grant or someone else in the office might recognize the lost works of art, which might give Irving a lead. More than ten years of packets, and never a word about them. Not that Grant had not given them his attention. He had simply never recognized anything in the photographs that could help Irving.
They were discussing this as they climbed the stairs to the first-floor offices overlooking the Tuilleries gardens. Introductions were made among the staff. Irving decided to join Grant for the afternoon. The office could be put off until the following day.
While Grant waited for Irving to make two phone calls, he lit a cigar and studied the wall of photographs opposite Irving’s desk. The mélange of photos was in both black and white and in color: all sizes, any shape, all attached to the cork wall by glass drawing pins. Written diagonally along the upper left-hand corner of each were different notations: Cracow 1939, Paris 1941, Warsaw 1940, Prague 1941, Budapest 1939 and 1941. They were camera shots of paintings, sculptures, rare manuscripts and books, the odd photograph of a man, a woman.
Slowly Grant paced beside the wall puffing on his cigar and examining the photographs. Irving put his hand over the telephone and called across the room to Grant, “My failures. These are my mysteries, yet to be solved. My magnificent obsession continues.”
“No wall of successes?” called back Grant over his shoulder.
“Naw. Successes we file away. But keeping my failures up front sharpens my wits. I hate having failures. It makes me feel guilty.”
Grant turned around to face Irving and smiled. “That’s very Jewish, Irving.”
“What can I tell you, I am Jewish.”
Grant turned back to the wall saying, “Never mind, Irving, I know how you feel about failures. They don’t sit too well with me either. But I’m more blessed about them than you are. I forget them, just like that.” He snapped his fingers and was
about to add, And they don’t come back to haunt me either, when, amazingly, he did recognize one of the black-and-white blowups. Written in wide, red felt-tip on an angle, it read, “Who is this woman?” Grant pulled the glass drawing pin from the photograph and plucked it from the celluloid montage. He placed it on the desk in front of Irving. Irving looked at it and then at Grant. He immediately announced to the man on the other end of the telephone, “Got to go, Sam. Something’s just come up. Call you tomorrow. Yeah, Sam, yeah, I promise, tomorrow.” He hung up.
“You recognize her?”
“Yes. Why is she on your wall?”
Irving turned the photograph over. He found some numbers written on the back of the picture and called for the file through his intercom, then switching it off, he leaned forward and asked Grant, “What do you know about her?”
“You tell me what you know about her first, Irving.”
Grant sat down in the chair opposite his friend. While Irving spoke, he pulled out the bottom drawer of his desk and took out two squat glasses and a bottle of Calvados. He poured two fingers worth in each glass and handed one to Grant.
“Not much. Pretty lady, as you obviously know. She turns up in some fairly odd places around the world we have under surveillance. She surfaces in two interesting files, Mossad’s and the CIA’s.”
“Two secret intelligence files. I don’t believe this! Israel and the U.S. interested in her activities? That’s rich.”
“Then you do know her?”
“Yes, I know her.”
“Okay, at last we’re getting some place with this lost babe. I’ll tell you all we’ve got. Several photographs of her coming and going at the houses of some top Nazi criminals still on the loose that the Israelis are trying to snatch to justice. We’re talking the last of the real big guys, Grant. We’re not talking little
pishers
here. The front-rank war criminals left. A few second rankers. She has some pretty dicey friends. The closest we have been able to get is what you see. This photo, and these.”
Irving removed several other glossy snaps of Cheyney and
handed them to him. Pictures of her with several different men. Nothing at all compromising.
“We know she’s American, wealthy, and interested in the arts. We’ve been trying to locate her for years. Every time we come near, we lose her again. Wait a minute. There’s two people you know now connected with these bums.”
“What are you talking about, Irving?”
“It’s coming back to me now. Remember when I asked you to help me the last time we met in Egypt? That guy, we had a picture of you with that guy.” Irving took a long swig of his drink, he banged his hand on the desk, “Got it goddammit, I got it. Austrian, handsome, suave type. Walbrook, that’s the dude’s name, Kurt Walbrook. He was there again at the Albert Semanan birthday bash you went to with your friend the prince, and Helmut Furtwangler. It’s all coming back to me, it was the night Kennedy was shot. You remember. Nobody forgets where he was that day.”
Irving was now padding around his office, a bloodhound about to locate its prey. He might have been foaming at the mouth with excitement. He found a photograph of Kurt Walbrook in a file marked Grant Madigan. Grant didn’t care for being in a file all his own in Irving’s office; he knew what that meant. Irving laid the picture of Kurt next to Cheyney’s on the desk in front of Grant. He had checked the writing on the back. He sank into his chair and tilted it against the wall and took another swallow of the Calvados.
“Okay. Now here we’ve got two people, one who you’ve been seen with at one of those big Nazi dos, the man, Kurt Walbrook. Now you know this woman, who has been seen with people of a similar persuasion. We know she deals in art. We know Walbrook is a famous collector and so was his family, going way back. I’ve tried to get something going on him. Not a thing, he’s squeaky clean. But I keep thinking he shouldn’t be. He’s either a sympathizer or is laundering dirty paintings instead of dirty money for those bastards. None of which we can prove. The guy is thick with those miserable lowlifes, but clean as a whistle himself. So was his father. I don’t know how they did it. Even the mother, the baroness, the worst thing we can get on her is that Hitler worshiped the ground she trod on. That’s if you believe Hitler worshiped anything other than
his own gory visions. She received them all, Himmler, Speer, Eichmann, Hess, Göring, Bormann, Mengele — all the ghouls from Death Row — and we were never able to pin a thing on her. I know, as sure as I’m sitting here with you, the Walbrook art treasures include plenty of stolen works. Can I prove it? Not on your life. I need a break, maybe the lady is it. Who is she?”
Grant finished his drink and placed the glass on the desk. “Jesus, Irving, you’re some detective agency. Her name is Cheyney Fox.”
“Cheyney Fox — great name.”
“Yeah, and a terrific lady.”
“You know her!”
“Yes, I guess you could say that. And she’s married — wait for it, Irving — to Kurt Walbrook. And I can tell you one thing for sure: that lady could not possibly have anything to do with stolen works of art. Not knowingly, anyway. And especially if it was Nazi loot from the war. If she’s dancing at their parties, you can be sure she’s not dancing there by choice. That might be the break you’re looking for.”
“How the fuck do you know all this, and we couldn’t get to first base finding information on her? How did we miss it? It’s goddamn obvious there might have been a connection between the two.” He threw the switch on the intercom and barked into the receiver, “George, Ruth, get the fuck in here.”
“Grant, how do you know all this? Are you still in touch with her?”
“No. Haven’t seen or heard from her in years. A lot of years. How do I know it? Because, as a patron of the arts, his name occasionally crops up, hers too, in the New York art scene, or in some esoteric article on contemporary art.”
“What about our news-clipping service, how did they miss her? We haven’t been able to get a name on her.”
“Simple, it’s so simple you’re going to hate yourself, Irving. Though she’s married to Walbrook, she never uses his name. She has retained the name Cheyney Fox. She’s rarely photographed. In fact, this is the first photograph I’ve ever seen of her. She slips in and out of art circles and is rarely in the public eye. I would say, if you’re looking for a break — I know this woman’s character; if you’re more than usually sensitive with
her and you really tread softly, she might be it. But, whatever you do, you leave my name out of it. I want your word on that. No questions asked.”
“Ah, it was personal.”
“Yes, very personal.”
“Okay, you’ve got my word on that. But I gotta tell you, old buddy, I’m really grateful to you for this. It may be a terrific lead. I owe you one.”
“Just remember, Irving, I’m out of it. I don’t want to know. I have no interest in the lady or anything she does.”
B
itter chill. Cold rain sheeting down. Gusts of it, driven by a fierce wind coming off the Seine, whipped around Cheyney’s ankles and beat against her legs. Finally, three doors from her destination, the restaurant where she was going to meet Roberto, it snatched the umbrella from her hand. She watched it soar toward the gray sky in a series of upward tumbles as it flapped away above the wet tarmac.
Just inside the restaurant Cheyney found an anxious Roberto. He apologized profusely. It was dreadful to have dragged her here. He and the maître d’ helped her out of her wet things. She went dripping to the ladies’ room to dry herself off as best she could with the help of the maid. She returned to a warmed whiskey and Roberto.
It was always a joy to see Roberto. That special kind of goodness of his was always warming. His Giacometti-type figure — so gaunt and slender, so proud and princely — was
never less than impressive, no matter how long you knew him and all his human flaws.
“Much as I love you, Roberto — thrilled as I am to have this clandestine lunch here with you — what is this all about?” she teased.
There had been a phone call from Roberto three days before. He had seemed nervous, but came right to the point. Could Cheyney meet him in Paris for a day, without Kurt knowing? Above all, Lala was not to know either. They had fixed the date, the place, and the time. If she could not make it, she was not to call him back. Just a message at the restaurant. Irresistibly mysterious.
Cheyney took a chance on her getaway. She simply announced to Kurt and Taggart that evening that she wanted to go dress shopping in Paris. It was a calculated risk — either of her two men might want to join her. Taggart loved to hunt down tin soldiers for his collection. He and Kurt had assembled a roomful of battlefields, all authentic period pieces. They were currently recreating Napoleon’s march through Egypt. Taggart knew every corner of Paris where he might acquire more metal recruits for the campaign. As for Kurt, he liked nothing better than to take Cheyney on a shopping spree through the haute couture salons. But she also knew they had other passions.
“Oh no, Pa, not shopping in Paris. Couldn’t we go skiing instead?”
They were both top-class, off-piste skiers, which Cheyney was not. A gleam in their eyes, and she knew she was safely booked in for her secret rendezvous with Roberto.
“Come on, Roberto. Relax, old friend, I’m here. Now tell me all about it.”
“There’s someone who wants to meet you. And someone I would like you to meet and help. If you can — without compromising yourself. I don’t know really how to put this properly, Cheyney. You know that I am devoted to both of you. It’s thanks to having worked with you and Kurt that Lala and I will be able, if we are careful, to live comfortably for the rest of our lives. And we are friends, after all. This contact of mine, he is a good man. He’s doing good work, I think it best for him to tell you what all this is about.”
“Well, where is he, Roberto? I’m starved.”
Roberto looked relieved. She was nicely relaxed about it all. They were shown to a small seventeenth-century paneled room overlooking the river, a private dining room. It was here that Cheyney got to meet Irving Kirshner.
The next four hours in that room with Roberto and Irving Kirshner blew a whole cluster of self-made cobwebs from Cheyney’s mind. Self-interest and loyalty to her husband and child could not simply be sloughed off. When she was assured by Irving Kirshner that even a zealot could not pin on Kurt Walbrook a Nazi past, she felt all sorts of relief. His only crime, so far as they could prove, was that his magnificent obsession for art and beauty had made him a lot of rotten friends.
All Irving wanted from Cheyney was to identify photographs of works of art. Tell him where she might have seen them. She could leave the rest to them. Here was an opportunity to leak information to government agencies — if she got a whiff of criminal deals in war loot being set up by her husband’s contacts. She could off-load guilt at having turned a blind eye — as Kurt had done all his life — to what she knew was wrong.
“If you should want to help us, you had better know that this is no lark. Even though all I will ask you to do is meet occasionally myself or a colleague to identify photographs, and tell us, if you can, where you have seen them. No more than that. I will never contact you directly, always through Roberto. Otherwise you will call me, on a certain date each month. Or at any time you need me. We’ll have to keep it sneaky like that for your own safety. You know some pretty ruthless killers. I can more or less guarantee you and your family will be safe, so long as you are discreet. But if you want to walk away now and forget we ever met — well, it’ll be a disappointment to me, but I can live with it. My work will go on anyway.”
Cheyney agreed to think about it. She would meet Irving Kirshner the next evening for dinner in her suite of rooms at the Plaza Athène. Some quick-fire soul-searching ensued. Cheyney made her decision. If Kurt chose to remain indifferent to everything he knew about these people and their treasures, that was his privilege. She had her own conscience to think about. She chose to halt her slide into corruption, at least in the art world. What she did, she did for herself and her son
and Kurt. He would benefit because she would have resolved her problem about his “friends,” that bone of contention in their relationship.
For a time she had glimpses into a furtive and dangerous world of espionage. A world where Israeli, Italian, or French agents — and which of them was she to trust? which of them was not using the past to gain some present goal remote from righting the wrongs done in the last war — vied with each other for the scant information she might supply.
Irving Kirshner and Cheyney Fox met five times in various parts of the world. Their clandestine meetings were eventually to result in the return to the French government of a valuable Delacroix, one of the pictures that disappeared from sight during the occupation of France. A Caravaggio to the estate of a Count Piotrowski of Kraców, who had died valiantly trying with his brigade to halt the march of Germany into Poland. Two Renoirs and three Rubens to a Walter Rothstein, formerly of Berlin, residing since his release from Auschwitz concentration camp in London.
But it was their fifth and last meeting that was to put an end to her little game of “I-spy For Art.” Irving and the American and Israeli agents she became embroiled with that day pledged that when she quit, her role would be officially forgotten. A one-off involvement for her. No repeats.
It had to be that way. With secrecy assured, Cheyney was about to enable Irving to trap Albert Semanan and net his entire collection.
Why had she ever set out to do this? For years she had tolerated Albert because Kurt was devoted to him. But what was behind Kurt’s devotion? Then it was spelled out for her by Albert himself. It happened, as is the way, by chance. A word let slip, and then too many more added. Once that happened, Cheyney had to rid herself and her family of Albert Semanan forever. And Irving Kirshner alone could make that happen.
The three Walbrooks were on a visit to Semanan’s kingdom in the desert. These visits strained Cheyney and Kurt’s relationship. The place and Semanan’s cronies brought out the dark side of Kurt’s nature.
It was just before dawn, and there was no sleep in Cheyney.
He had made love to her, particularly tender and sweet sex, had spoiled her with it, wanting all through the night to pleasure her, until she begged him to stop. That was not unusual, except when they were staying with Semanan. At those times he might make sexual demands of her that were outrageous, akin to sadistic.
She watched Kurt sleeping. So many years, and still he was an enigma to her. Yet, he possessed her, and she loved him. She kissed his cheek, ever so lightly, sad that, love her husband as she might, she still yearned for a kind of love from him he could never give. Where was it to be found in him? She slid out of bed and covered her nakedness with a sheer-silk silver colored dressing gown. Barefoot she slipped noiselessly through the French doors. A bright white half moon led her through the garden toward the Nile. Fortunately she heard Helmut and Semanan talking long before she saw them, which gave her a chance to slip behind a hibiscus bush. Her intention was not to listen but to hide. But she stayed hidden and listened after she heard Helmut say, “He will never do it, Semanan. He might if his mother were still alive. But I know him. With her dead, he no longer believes as he once did in our cause.”
“It is quite simple, Helmut. He will do as I want him to or he and his family will be disposed of. I intend to sink a billion dollars into Germany. I mean to re-create the kind of political machine that will put the old guard — with some new faces — back in power. We need his money and his reputation to help do it. I have no intention of withering away here in the desert with my art collection. In five years I expect to be home in Germany. Our dream will be fulfilled. I want five hundred million dollars from Kurt as his personal contribution. I can assure you he will give me his word on that before we return from our cruise up the Nile.”
“You seem so sure, Semanan.”
“Oh, I am. With his wife and son under guard here, as an insurance policy, why not be sure? You worry too much, Helmut. I always get what I want.”
More was said, but Cheyney registered none of it. She was too traumatized by what she had already heard to listen. She had no idea how much time had passed while they continued their walk through the garden, before she felt strong enough
to make her way back to the house and her bedroom. Back in bed, she felt safe next to Kurt. But was she? Were they? It was all too fantastic. Had she misunderstood what they were saying? No, of course she hadn’t. Had she misinterpreted? She placed her hand on Kurt’s shoulder, about to shake him. It came to her suddenly that he would not believe her. He would assume she had been dreaming. She let her husband sleep on.
“I want to go home, Kurt. Today” was her morning greeting to her husband.
“Don’t be ridiculous, Cheyney. We have only just arrived, and Taggart is looking forward to our trek into the desert. Albert has just given him an Arab stallion. Aren’t you going to let him ride it?”
As if on cue, there was a knock on the door. Taggart looked princely in his riding clothes. He was obviously keen to get started. They were behaving as if nothing out of the normal could happen. She wanted to shout it all out to them, to sweep them up, to get away. She knew they would think her mad. Cheyney was more confused than ever. They kissed her, made a fuss over her, and the two men she loved were gone, promising to be home by dark.
She dressed hurriedly and dashed through the palace rooms. From the courtyard she waved them and their party of ten other riders good-bye. Cheyney walked with Semanan, who was overseeing their departure to the edge of the parkland. They watched the party disappear into the desert. When Cheyney and Semanan turned back toward the palace, he placed an arm around her shoulder and said, “And have you made plans for your day, Cheyney? Or will you allow
me
to amuse you?”
The innuendo was there, in his voice, in the way he raised her hand to kiss it, deliberately grazed the side of her breast with his arm. A habit he practiced whenever they were alone. It always annoyed her intensely. No coldness from her had ever curtailed the unwelcome gesture. This time she ignored it because she was distracted by the ice in his eyes. His words were all warmth. Hot and honeyed. They shocked her into action. Her mind kept telling her, Irving Kirshner. Find Irving. Get out of here. Find him and tell
him
what you heard. She replied with the first thing that came into her head:
“I wondered if you would lend me the seaplane for the day.
I’d like to go into Cairo for a few hours. The hairdresser. And the dealer Mahmud claims he has the most perfect pharaonic gold necklace for me.”
She saw greed sparkle in his eyes. Pharaoh’s gold. It was a good ruse to get away. He could not resist seeing the piece, and there would be no other way unless it was brought to him. Cairo was still too dangerous for him, a city that housed his potential avengers. He agreed at once, on condition that, if she rejected the necklace, she would bring it to him on approval. Then insisted, “At least have breakfast with me before you go?”
Any qualms Cheyney had about drawing Irving into this problem were dispelled when she entered the breakfast room and confronted Helmut and the man she had met in Paraguay. Helmut especially seemed embarrassed by her presence. That was sign enough for Cheyney. The ominous things she had heard were no figments of her imagination. Until she sat across the table from Helmut that morning, she had felt the least uncomfortable with him of all Kurt’s old-guard Nazi acquaintances.
Soon after her arrival, the men made excuses and left the table. Cheyney had no idea from where she was gathering her strength. But gather it she did. Breakfast was fresh mango juice and Roederer Cristal champagne, served to them both in seventeenth-century rock-crystal goblets; a soufflé flavored with truffles and slivers of Parma ham hardly thicker than a piece of darning thread; hot, crisp, slices of toasted brioche, and cups of steaming hot Fortnum’s Royal Blend Tea. Thus fortified, she took command.
Always keeping her eyes on the white silk organza tablecloth, its embroidered white flowers, the Haviland china — anything, so as not to make eye contact with Semanan — she composed herself. She was half-afraid he would catch in her eyes her loathing for him. She made conversation. Might he be inept enough to let slip more of his plans? Something that she might use to extricate herself, her son, and her husband from his clutches. No matter how Kurt had reassured her, she was now certain that Semanan the political fantasizer was capable of murder.
“I do believe that, in all the years I’ve known you, this is
the first time you and I have ever been alone over a meal together.”
“Your choice, more than mine, Cheyney. I am all the more honored and delighted.”