Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) (31 page)

Or for that matter, from Vienna. Or Paris.

The guest for the evening would be led here, offered champagne, and given the opportunity to dress for the evening meal. With the understanding, of course, that whatever gown was chosen, and whatever jewelry, was to be accepted as a gift.

A gift for services rendered.

Or to be rendered, sometime after the meal was finished.

A dessert, so to speak.

“It would have been better if they’d simply shot us!”

“No,” she found herself whispering into the hem of a Vera Wang. “No, it wouldn’t have.”

She found herself becoming very sick of this woman, whoever she was.

“What we did was not that wrong! We carried paintings from one place to another!”

“For a lot of money.”

“All right, so maybe we deserve to go to jail. But not to…to…”

“Die?”

“Don’t say that!”

“All right. I won’t.”

“And where is this man, this Claw?”

“Lorca Reklaw.”

“Yes, whatever the name is! Is he too ashamed even to show himself to us?”

“I doubt that.”

“Then where is he? Where?”

“Probably,” she said, “closer than we think.”

“Then why does he not…and look! Look at that!”

The woman pointed to a corner of the room.

There on a small stool, undoubtedly designed for it, sat a magnum of champagne, its neck protruding from glistening ice crystals, two glasses sitting rim-down around it, as though they were champagne planets caught in mid orbit around the bottle that, being their sun, was to fill and replenish them.

“He expects us to drink champagne?”

“It would probably,” said Carol, “not make things any worse.”

Had Lorca Reklaw left this champagne?
she wondered.

Or had Beckmeier left it earlier in the day, before his grounds were invaded by armed troops, many of whom he’d thought were in his own employ?

Was there to have been another special guest for the night?

Probably Carol would never know.

Certainly it did not matter.

She walked to the corner, grasped the bottle, took it into the small alcove that was the bathroom, and poured it out.

The woman behind her was continuing to rant:

“If they would only allow us to…”

But they were not going to, whatever it was that she was about to demand.

For the door opened behind her at that moment and a uniformed guard—or soldier, or Ranger, or paramilitary operative or whatever Red Claw had chosen to call his men—took a step into the room.

He gestured curtly at the woman and barked:

“Out!”

“But I only want to…”

“You do not need to be here! Go back to your own room! One thief, one room!”

“I want to talk to…”

His hand moved toward the firearm hanging from his thick black leather belt.

“Go.”

And the woman did, pursing her lips, and disappearing silently into the corridor.

The armed figure stared at Carol for a time, then said, more quietly:

“You should sleep.”

“All right.”

Upon hearing these words, he disappeared.

Carol took off her clothes, turned off the overhead light in the room, got into bed, and thought.

She knew that she would never sleep.

She was wrong though.

She must have been exhausted by all of the events of the previous two days, for sleep she did––a sound, noiseless, dreamless sleep that lasted for two hours.

She awoke shortly before midnight, although she did not know precisely why.

She looked out the window. The snowfall had stopped, and the estate glowed silver in the cold light of a full moon.
                 

There was a small, golden, jewel-encased clock, ticking and glowing eerily on the bed stand beside her.

Eleven fifty-five.

There was a knock on the door.

She got out of bed carefully, and made her way across the room. The tile floor felt cold to her feet.

She made her way to the door and opened it.

A hatchet-faced man dressed in fatigues, with a forty five automatic strapped at his side, confronted her.

“You must come.”

“What is it?”

He simply shook his head and repeated, in a thick indeterminate accent:

“They are waiting for you downstairs.”

So saying, he turned and left.

She returned to her room.

There, on a small writing desk beside the bed, was a candelabrum.

She hefted the metallic and porcelain thing before her, taking note of shepherds and minor goddesses waving playfully around and beneath the wicks, set it down again, and lit the three white candles that it held in trident shape, like Neptune’s scepter quivering with smoky light.

Thus armed, she re-entered the corridor.

She found herself accompanied along it by the ghost of herself, huge, furtive, simultaneously jerking and floating on the wall to the left of her as her right hand quivered with the weight of the candle.

She turned to the left, remaining in the center of her small sphere of light, felt her slippers sliding noiselessly on the alternate marble squares of black and tan beneath her.

There, some steps farther on, the corridor turned sharply to the right.

Then she took two, three, four steps forward…

….placed her palm over the wall-corner…

…and leaned forward.

Spread out below her was a vast library. It was doubly partitioned, books below, windows above.
 

Innumerable books. Books which, she could tell by flashes that now came every five seconds or so, were earthy in color and massive in form, books transcribed and not published, illuminated and not printed, copied one at a time on parchment, and destined to dissolve if read.

Even from this distance, the titles smelled of Latin.

And surrounding this library, were men identical to the one who’d knocked on her door.

They stood at five-foot intervals.

Between them, huddled, holding their hands before their eyes were the guests of Lorca Reklaw.

Beckmeier’s mules.

The people whom Red Claw had captured, and to whom he was now preparing…

What punishment?

One of guards looked up, saw her standing there, and gestured for her to come down.

Whatever was going to happen, it was about to begin.

Yellow lights showed themselves through the trees. Barns and stables appeared, dark and deserted.

The truck carrying them, the one that had met their boat at the lakeshore, turned sharply and Nina saw the main building of the castle itself, sitting back beneath a canopy of trees, folding its arms and waiting for them, smiling in the way that only a true seat of royalty can smile.

It was, of course, ‘Schonbrunn Gelb,’ that kind of off-yellow that must have been invented to harmonize perfectly with the deep blue or the deep red of cavalry officers’ uniforms, as they danced within its salons, their horses feeding quietly in stables scattered about the grounds, the sound of canon fire rolling over the mountains in the distance.

And there were peacocks strolling in front of them.

She’d imagined peacocks—if she thought of them at all—as day creatures. But these, their huge fans of tail feathers wafting gently back and forth, might as well have been parading and courting at noon, so white-bright and radiant had the moon become in its niche between the central garret of the building and two chimney tops that seemed to have been sculpted just to hold it.

“Well,” whispered Michael, “now you get your chance to meet the Red Claw.”

“So do you.”

The vehicle came to a stop.

The entire front of Eggenburg Palace was glowing, huge floodlights bathing everything within a mile’s perimeter.

There were at least a dozen trucks, troop carriers more accurately, all black, with no insignia, all ringed around the driveway where carriages once would have disgorged Dukes and Duchesses.

They got out, took a few steps toward the entrance, and stopped in their tracks.

For there before them, came a line of people out of the front door, guards with machine guns and pistols, and between these guards, some of the people Nina recognized as customers who’d bought her paintings.

Her visceral, translucent paintings.

Her vivid, scintillating, paintings.

They were art smugglers.

And now they’d been caught.

They were, as she watched, being loaded like cattle into the backs of the troop carriers.

And there, at the very end of the line, came Carol.

Nina involuntarily took a step forward.

Carol’s head turned to the left, her mouth opened wide…

…and then they were running across the storm-soaked lawn of the palace, their shoes drenched, their voices yelling uselessly, all sounds covered over by the drone of motors and the movement of huge cans of some kind of liquid.

Finally, just a few steps from the reflecting pool, they ran together, embraced, sobbed, continued to embrace, attempted to talk, succeeded only in stuttering, sobbed a bit more, and finally contented themselves by wiping tears out of each other’s eyes.

They were, Nina ultimately realized, surrounded by a ring of guards.

She could hear Michael shouting behind her:

“Red Claw! I want to speak directly to Red Claw!”

His words had absolutely no effect on the guards, who continued to gaze dispassionately at the two women standing before them.

One of these women, Carol, looked at the guard closest to her, and said:

“You must let us talk. Please.”

No change in expression.

Another guard arrived, this one the hatchet-faced man, who said:

“It is time. The trucks are leaving.”

Carol merely shook her head:

“We must talk.”