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Authors: Neil Russell

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But what Zhuk and Tretiakov did not know was that, at that very moment, a unit of battle-hardened Waffen-SS troops were preparing to move on those same targets. Under the command of Colonel Heinz Schellenberg, this Nazi treasure-hunting team had its own list—one prepared by Hitler’s architect, Albert Speer—of art and artifacts to be secured for transport to Berlin, where many would adorn the Hall of Victory in the newly constructed Reichstag
.
In the early going, Tretiakov had remarkable success. The German battle plan did not call for occupying cities but to keep moving eastward. So, as the enemy camped in the countryside, Captain Tretiakov entered the deserted towns relatively unmolested
.
But when he laid eyes on what he had been sent to destroy, the former art student could not bring himself to burn such treasures. Instead, he removed from the vaults the most valuable pieces, wrapped them as best he could, divided them into lots and secreted them throughout the area
.
Some went into remote tentacles of the cities’ sewer systems, some were buried beneath stalls, and others were slipped between the walls of abandoned libraries, stores and private homes. And as he worked, Captain Tretiakov drew detailed maps—twenty-two in all—in the notebook Zhuk had given him, carefully noting the locations of the hundreds of hidden works
.
It was inevitable that Captain Tretiakov, moving south, and Colonel Schellenberg, advancing north, would eventually collide. It happened in the town of Kharkov in the eastern Ukraine, and in the bitter fighting that followed, ten of Tretiakov’s men were killed, and the captain himself was severely wounded
.
By the time Tretiakov and the two surviving members of his team made their way back to Moscow, it was December, and the city had been encircled by German troops. Stealthily, they picked their way through the enemy and once again gained entrance to the Kremlin
.
General Zhuk had long since given Tretiakov up for dead, but now, as the young captain told his story and presented his twenty-two maps showing the locations of the secreted art, the general immediately grasped his very enviable position and moved quickly to secure it
.
After medical attention and a night’s sleep, Tretiakov was brought again before Zhuk. In a makeshift ceremony, the general presented the captain with the Order of the Red Banner, one of the Soviet Union’s highest military awards. As Zhuk placed the medal around the soldier’s neck, he kissed him on both cheeks
.
It was the last thing Nikolai Tretiakov would ever feel. Immediately, one of the honor guard stepped forward and shot the young captain in the back of the head. Tretiakov’s remaining men were already dead, their gasoline-soaked bodies set afire in the Kremlin dump
.
General Zhuk now reached deep into the immense gulag of the Soviet Union. There, he culled from the population twenty-two of the most radical dissident artists. Brought one by one to a temporary studio in Lefortovo Prison, each was handed proper materials and told to paint anything he wished
.
But the canvases they were given were not blank. Tretiakov’s maps had been carefully reproduced on them by army draftsmen, and the artists would now cover them with oils
.
Most of the artists sensed that this would be their last painting and brought to life images designed to evoke the hatred of Soviet rulers for a thousand years: pornographic depictions of Lenin, Stalin as a male prostitute, Molotov as a beggar. Yet others reached deep inside themselves and painted scenes of such breathtaking beauty and poignancy that their guards wept
.
Eventually, all of the maps were covered, and each artist was in an unmarked grave in the prison cemetery, along with the draftsmen. General Zhuk was finally alone with his secret
.
But the enemy was at the gates. And as they pressed into the western suburbs of Moscow, and German occupation seemed only days away, the foreign embassies were being hurriedly relocated east to Kuybyshev
.
General Zhuk approached the American military attaché, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Crawford, and pressed him to take his paintings to safety, planning to retrieve them after the war. It is unknown if Crawford’s boss, Ambassador Steinhardt, was apprised of the additional crates that were loaded onto the fourteen-truck American convoy that fled Moscow east to Kuybyshev on New Year’s Eve, 1941. If he was, he made no record of it
.
But unforeseen events can overtake even generals. A month later, Stalin began a new round of purges, and Zhuk’s number came up. Dispatched to join Captain Tretiakov and the artists, Zhuk became one more casualty of what would eventually grow to be twenty million Soviet victims of that terrible war
.
And the paintings disappeared. For fifty-six years
.
In 1997, retired Air Force Major Truman York was working as special courier for the Pentagon. Special couriers hold various security clearances, and Major York’s was one of the highest
.
Summoned by a general whose name I will reveal later in this article, Major York was given the assignment of escorting twenty-two paintings to Russia—those that have come to be known as the Tretiakov Collection
.
For security reasons, special couriers do not usually know what they are transporting. But Major York was told what his cargo was and that the job would require one trip a month for twenty-two consecutive months
.
I will leave it to someone else to tell the story of the paintings’ journey from the Soviet Union to the United States so many years ago. What follows is Major York’s story
.
It is one devoid of glamour. Rather it is filled with treachery and death. I dislike even knowing it, let alone telling it. But it is of vital importance to the art world I love so much…and to me personally
.
Major York, you see, was my father
.
Dr. Kimberly York
Santa Monica, CA

27

Babushkas and Black Granite

I opened Kim’s laptop again as Jake Praxis’s G5 began its takeoff roll. Her written introduction had been riveting, but I was still no closer to unraveling why she’d been killed. The subsequent slideshow contained twenty-eight items, beginning with the four photographs Marta had witnessed Kim’s taking at the Biltmore.

In the first two, Gaetano Bruzzi was clearly recognizable, as was his nephew, Dante. The third showed the man he was there to meet, but he was no one I had seen before. However, the Asians in his security detail didn’t look Japanese, Korean or ethnic Chinese. They were large-framed, with thick necks and light hair, characteristics I had seen more often in Siberia and Mongolia than farther east or south. Quite possibly, the unknown man was Russian.

The fourth photograph was the man in the jeans and leather jacket Marta had described getting off the elevator. She had been correct. He was an American. But his clothes and attitude were irrelevant. I knew him. Not well, but well enough. I said nothing, and Archer gave no indication of recognition. Marta, however, had missed something, or perhaps
simply neglected to mention it. The American was carrying an attaché case.

I went back to the first three photographs and looked at them closely. In the background of the one showing Dante, I found what I was looking for—a pair of tan leather suitcases held by two of the Asian security men. It seemed a safe assumption it wasn’t laundry. So at a minimum, the Biltmore meeting was an exchange. It didn’t take much of a leap to guess what was in the suitcases, and since the contents of the attaché had contributed to four deaths that I knew of, it probably wasn’t laundry either.

Continuing, the next two photographs were of a man in an artist’s studio at work on a large canvas. He was painting with his left hand while he held his palette in his right, and what was visible of his work looked like a battle scene from the era of the Light Brigade. In the first, the man’s back was to the camera, but in the second, he had turned in profile, as if someone had called to him.

His clothes were old and paint-spattered, and he had a prominent and quite crooked nose. But it was his smile that was out of place. It wasn’t one of mirth. Rather it seemed fatuous, almost silly. I thought for a moment that he might be putting it on, but when I studied his eyes, I didn’t think so.

Photographs 7-27 were of ornate buildings, and under each, Kim had typed what looked like a title followed by an artist’s name. None were familiar, so it was likely that the buildings were museums or archives, and the typed information noted the Tretiakov painting residing inside. Since most repositories of fine art do not permit photographs to be taken of their collections, that would account for only showing the building.

Suddenly, Archer said, “Go back a few slides.”

I did, and shortly she stopped me. “I’ve been there,” she said, pointing. “That’s the museum at Klenova in the Czech Republic. Just across the German border. I did a shoot for
French Vogue
at an old castle there. We took a train from Nuremberg, and it was like stepping into Hansel and Gretel.
Mountains, forests and gingerbread houses. And that title.
Scourge out of the East
. It’s a painting. I saw it.”

“Tell me about it.”

She closed her eyes, remembering. “There was a skeleton riding a white stallion and waving a sword over his head, like this.” She whirled her arm, like she was handling a lariat. “The rider had on a red cape that billowed out behind him, and the horse’s nostrils flared into big, black holes.”

“Dramatic.”

“No, awful…and sad. The skeleton’s mouth was open—screaming—and there was this ominous, deep purple and crimson sky hanging over a landscape littered with bodies torn to pieces. And in the foreground was a group of terrified men and women clutching each other, like they were waiting their turn.”

“What about the artist? Petr Stech. Remember anything about him?”

She shook her head. “There was a plaque, but all it said was what’s on the slide with the word ‘Communism’ at the top. I guess that’s what it’s supposed to represent. It was hanging by itself in a little room off the main gallery, and it had a three-sided brass railing around it so nobody could get too close.” Suddenly, she laughed.

“What?” I asked.

“There was a guard. He didn’t speak English, but he pointed to the painting and whispered, ‘
Dissidentski
.’ I whispered back, ‘No shitski,’ but he didn’t get it.”

The twenty-eighth and final slide—what would have been the twenty-second painting—wasn’t a photograph. It was just a blank screen labeled:

OFFERING OF THE BABUSHKAS
Illya Andreyevich Orlov, 1942

Archer made the observation on her own. “That would be the painting Truman was carrying when…” I nodded, and we rode in silence for a while.

Finally, she said, “I have a question. I don’t know where those other buildings are, but I do know the Klenova one. Kim’s article says General Zhuk got his artists from the Soviet Gulag, but Czechoslovakia wasn’t part of the Soviet Union until after the war. So why would there be a Czech artist in the Tretiakov Collection?”

“I think I can give you an answer. After the 1917 revolution, Lenin threw open the doors to his new ‘Workers Paradise.’ It was an orgasmic moment for sympathizers around the world, and a lot of them packed up and headed east. Merchants, tradesmen, doctors, even thousands of Jews lured by the marquee of social equality. Not to mention artists of all stripes. Musicians, painters, writers. Remember John Reed?”

“My mother was completely cracked over Warren Beatty. She had every movie he ever made, and some weekends, she’d stock up on popcorn and beer and marathon it. Bess wouldn’t have known a Trotskyite from Kryptonite, she just thought Warren had a great ass. But give me a fucking break with that self-indulgent piece of shit,
Reds
—and I’m a goddamn liberal.”

“Yeah, but what do you think about Warren’s ass?”

“
Splendor in the Grass
—hot.
Bugsy
—old and flat. Go on with your story. We were skipping toward Moscow with smiles on our faces.”

“Well, like all big lies, one day, everybody woke up. But the exits had been nailed shut. If you were in, you were staying. And if you were complaining, you were staying too, just minus a pulse. For a lot of the true believers, it was one mother of a jolt, and by the time World War Two rolled around, some of their children were old enough to start becoming radicalized in the opposite direction.”

Archer was quiet for a while. “What’s going on, Rail? And who is that man painting in a studio? He’s not one of the others.”

“I don’t know…” I let my voice drift off.

Archer finished it for me. “But Kim did, and it got her killed.”

“Yes.”

Just after midnight, the Gulfstream put down at Carl Spaatz Field in Reading, Pennsylvania. Reading, like a lot of the old coal and steel belt, is a down-on-its-luck town, and the airport reflects it. Nobody goes there who doesn’t have to.

Somewhere over Nevada, I’d told Archer about my meeting with Dante Bruzzi. She’d taken everything in and asked only a couple of questions. Then both of us had gone to sleep for the rest of the trip.

We deplaned in a light fog with the engines still running. Rubbing the sleep out of her eyes, Archer looked around and said. “Jesus,
Clockwork Orange
.” I gave a thumbs-up to the pilot, and he retracted the stairs and taxied back onto the runway. He was headed to New York to pick up one of Jake’s music clients, who was escaping to Vegas to cool off after a throwdown with his former Playmate wife. Made perfect sense. Where else?

We found an ancient cabdriver at a run-down lunch counter in the terminal. He was drinking coffee with a couple of UPS guys. “How much to take us to D.C.?” I asked.

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