Did Sarip buy the story that Chante, Delia, DeKuyper and I all told? Nah. It rested on too many unlikely elements. But law enforcement officers can only enforce the law – it’s right there in the job title – and the law needs evidence. Four witnesses, including a Dutch police woman and an American FBI agent all told the same tale, and four witnesses beat the hell out of mere gut instinct.
They questioned us separately. After a few minutes of me recounting the same story, a policeman came in and whispered dramatically in Sarip’s ear. The lieutenant grinned wolfishly and with admirable dramatic flair left the room, only to return two minutes later with the news that Chante had flipped and told them the whole story. If I was hoping for any leniency, now was the time for me to confess.
It was all credibly performed but I had not just ridden into town on the back of a tulip truck. I didn’t laugh at him; the poor guy had had enough trouble lately. I just repeated my story, the same story Chante and DeKuyper would tell. I worried a bit that Delia might be overcome by some sense of duty, but the thing was that she was under orders not to tell the Dutch anything.
Sarip let me stew for a while and presumably eyeballed me via the CCTV in the corner of the room. When he returned he had a little surprise for me. He opened an iPad and cued up some video.
‘This is from the security cameras at the Rijksmuseum,’ he announced. What he played was an edited supercut of the robbery.
‘Some old fart stole the painting?’ I asked in wonderfully convincing surprise.
I don’t know what he expected. But he nodded to himself, heaved up a sigh and sat back in his chair. It was over and we both knew it. He’d keep investigating, but he’d never get it all. He didn’t even have enough to hold me: I was the victim of a series of shocking crimes, after all: lynched, beaten, roofied and stabbed, shot at and nearly drowned before barely surviving a confrontation with a Nazi burglar. Thank goodness Sergeant DeKuyper had been there to save me!
‘You’ve had a very interesting time in Amsterdam,’ Sarip said with a nasty sneer. ‘It’s good that your last visit to this city will be memorable.’
I did not miss hearing that ‘last’. Interesting, I thought, that in the end I’d found Willy Pete more gracious in defeat than this cop.
I glanced at the clock on the wall and smiled. Six forty-one a.m. The final broadcast had ended. All that was left now was to find a peaceful, secret moment to check the accounts.
Well, that and send the final message to the Rijksmuseum.
‘I imagine I’ll be leaving Amsterdam soon,’ I said with genuine regret.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘You will.’
And I did. Chante and I packed up our things and I called a taxi to Schiphol. There, in the anonymity of the first-class lounge, I opened my latest phone, downloaded the necessary apps and signed in.
‘Jesus!’ I nearly spilled the free lounge Scotch.
Chante, seated across from me, looked up from her magazine.
‘Nothing. I was just checking the stock market.’
That was related to the truth, in that money was involved. Credit cards, PayPal and sweet, sweet cryptocurrency had swelled my accounts. The largest deposit had come just minutes before the deadline. Five million. But there was more because people are suckers. Or, if you wanted a more charitable take, they were good, decent people who didn’t want to see a priceless work of art destroyed. Those good, decent people together had ponied up just under two million. A bunch of that would be clawed back by the credit-card agencies, but not all. I’d be left with something on the order of six million dollars.
We flew from Schiphol to Nice, and grabbed a limo to the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. Monte Carlo, a very expensive place for rich people to spend their money. A tiny country with a royal family and no pesky intelligence service. Don’t get me wrong, if you steal something in Monte Carlo, the bastards will get you and they won’t waste time doing it. But law enforcement from other countries? Not really made welcome in a country where probably half the money spent came from an offshore account.
I was poolside enjoying something tall and cool which, frustratingly, was not as good as the cocktail Chante had mixed up, when Delia Delacorte came striding purposefully on her long legs. She took the chaise longue next to mine. We were both dressed, it wasn’t as warm as all that.
‘You couldn’t find anyplace nicer for a rendezvous?’ she asked without preliminary. ‘What’s a room go for in this place?’
‘Your monthly salary,’ I said. ‘Unless you want a suite.’
She looked at me. I looked at her. I flagged down a waiter and said, ‘Would you bring us a bottle of the Pol Roger? The Churchill, if you would.’
‘OK,’ Delia said. ‘I’m here as instructed.’
‘Far from prying eyes and listening microphones,’ I said.
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So, any news from Amsterdam?’
She nodded. ‘Why yes, David, there is. It seems that sometime this morning someone using a voice synthesizer called up the Koninklijke Marechaussee and told them the Vermeer was still in the museum. In room 2.8 as it happens. Sitting all by itself in a gray zipper bag, lying flat on the top ledge of a security door.’
‘Really? Huh. Interesting.’
‘Yes,’ she said dryly. ‘Interesting. It seems Jewess at the Loom never left the building.’
‘Just like I told Willy. Well, I’ll be.’
‘Yeah, you’ll be something,’ she said, trying for threatening but not getting there because, well, much as she’d have denied it, the woman liked me. Women do. God help the poor creatures, but deep in the heart of even the most upright of women there is a kernel of affection for bad boys.
‘So the Vermeer is safe?’ I asked. ‘I don’t mean to sound off-brand, but I’d hate to see it harmed. It’s a good painting.’
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘many people are of the opinion that Vermeer can produce a good painting. And yes, it is safe. Or as safe as it can be in a world full of people like …’
She stopped there. I think she intended to say ‘people like Willy’, but since I am (or was) people like Willy she went elliptical. But I wasn’t insulted. I know what I was, what I am, and occasionally I even think about what I might become. Work in progress, as the saying goes.
‘Tell you what it looks like to me, Delia. It looks to me like things worked out the way you wanted them to. Isaac wasn’t exposed and the painting stayed where it was. So, well done Agent D.’
That earned a long sigh.
The Champagne arrived. The waiter poured. I raised my glass. ‘To Amsterdam. I will miss it.’
‘Amsterdam.’
We sat quietly for a while in companionable silence, casting sidelong glances at a woman on the other side of the pool who might have been Jennifer Lawrence, but probably wasn’t.
‘The Bureau’s forensic accountants are tracking the money,’ Delia said.
‘That should be interesting,’ I opined. ‘Who knows what they might find?’
‘They think, based on very early estimates, that they’re looking for about nine million dollars.’
‘Nine? Nah. I’ll bet it’s less than that. In fact, I’ll bet most of the money will have been shuffled along from one account to another.’
‘You’ll bet that, huh?’
‘I will. Speaking purely from imagination, you understand, as a fiction writer I mean, I’d guess careful investigation will find that a lot of that money ended up in the political action committees of Congressweasels who have also, over the years, benefited from US Person One’s own campaign contributions.’
She had not expected that. Her shock was so profound that an entire eyebrow moved a millimeter. ‘That would be … interesting.’
‘Indeed! I mean, what if two million dollars – to grab a number out of the air – had made its way over the internet from offshore accounts to most of the defense-friendly and law-enforcement-loving folks in the government? Wouldn’t that just present a dilemma.’
‘Two million. Out of … I mean, if you were to speculate.’
I shrugged. ‘Hmm, this calls for some mighty speculation. But let’s say around seven mill. A lot of people will have ignored the whole “bitcoin-only” instruction and given money on their credit cards. The card companies will claw back most of that. Figure five, five and a half tops. Some of that would have been expenses.’
‘Receipts forthcoming no doubt,’ she muttered.
‘So I’ll have to do this in my head, but if you started with five and a half, spent a quarter mil on this and that …’ This and that being Madalena and Milan. ‘Then take away two million for political contributions and you’re down to three. Of that I’d speculate that a million might have been spent to compensate a family in Ireland.’
Sorry, Sam Spade, I know when you made that remark about partners and the requirement to do something you meant, revenge. But revenge is for amateurs, and I am not an amateur. A million to whatever family Ian had was fair trade for a scoundrel.
I told myself that and almost believed it.
‘A family in Ireland.’ She frowned. ‘The man stabbed in the alley?’
I didn’t answer directly. ‘That would leave just two million by my rough math,’ I said. ‘Isaac’s a bit poorer, some pols can buy a few more TV ads, neither the FBI nor the CIA have been publicly embarrassed …’
‘The Agency will figure out who you are,’ Delia said, and the thought worried her. Which was sweet. It made a little lump in my throat.
‘Oh, them,’ I said. I leaned down and fished my bag out from under the chaise. ‘I have something for you to give them, a quid pro quo.’
‘I don’t think they’ll want your money.’
‘Nah, they have all the cash they need. But do they have a hard drive full of names of tangential Nazis eager to commit assassinations?’ I handed her the hard drive. ‘If I was you I’d download a copy for the Bureau, then give it to the Agency.’
‘Hangwoman?’
‘It was supposed to be Uber for murder.’
‘And I assume that gold statuette came from the same source?’
‘Mmm, more or less.’ Madalena and Milan were still out there somewhere, opening their account to find they were quarter millionaires. I hadn’t given them more, just my first offer, but I suspected they’d not complain. I might well have use for them at some point in the future, and it wouldn’t do for them to have too much money to spend.
Chante appeared, shadowed as always by the dark cloud that follows her everywhere. Delia and I watched her weave her way through the lounges and tables.
‘Waiter? Another glass please.’ I don’t know why I was proposing to give her a glass of bubbly that’d probably cost fifty bucks all by itself. Just politeness. That plus, goddammit, she was a writer, part of my tribe now.
‘What do you think Sarip will do with der Führer?’
‘Evidence locker. There to gather dust.’
Chante arrived as did the glass, which the waiter – excellent service, by the way – filled.
I raised my glass. ‘I propose a toast. Death to Nazis, tangential or otherwise.’
‘Sic semper tyrannis,’ said my FBI pal, and we three clinked glasses.
‘This is wonderful,’ Chante said. ‘I shall order a bottle from room service.’
I spit out a good twenty dollars’ worth of Champagne and said, ‘You’ll what? Do you know what this stuff costs?’
‘I see,’ Chante said, crestfallen. ‘I don’t deserve to enjoy, to savor, to appreciate art. I am, after all, a servant. I can only thank you for this small taste of that to which I have no right.’
I am not weak, and I am not easily intimidated, so to her departing back, I defiantly yelled, ‘Wait … No, that’s not what I … I …’
‘You know she’s ordering herself a case, right?’ Delia said.
‘It’ll go well with the caviar,’ I said.
‘Well, David,’ Delia said, tapping her glass against mine, ‘you can afford it.’