Midnight Angels (4 page)

“I blame Michelangelo for that,” Marco said with a smile. “He has turned you into a Florentine. And how could he not? You’ve spent so much time reading about him, studying his works. Already you know him in ways most scholars don’t. I hear it in the way you speak about him in class. And if you know Michelangelo, then you know Florence.”

“He’s real to me, that’s all,” Kate said. “I never think of him as an historical figure, but as a man who lived life doing what he loved. All the books talk about how accomplished he was, how revered, but you never get a sense of him as a man living a day-to-day life. I guess those missing parts are what I’ve always looked for.”

“Your parents wrote about those missing parts,” Marco said. “I suppose that’s one of the reasons their book has always been popular with art history students. You don’t need a dozen
espressi
just to get through the assigned chapters.”

Kate kept her eyes on the dark brown waters of the Arno and remained silent, her hands hanging over the edge of the wall, fingers interlocked as if in prayer.

Marco leaned his back against the brick wall and stared out at the passing traffic. “I hope you don’t mind me mentioning your parents,” he said. “I didn’t know them, of course, but I do know their work. They had a big influence on me.”

“I really didn’t know them, either,” Kate said, her voice muted. “I was so young when they died that the work they left behind has been my only way to connect to them, same as you.”

“Which then brings us back to Michelangelo,” Marco said.

“And since the people chasing us seem to have gone on their break, now might be a good time to pay him a visit,” she said.

“I’ll go only because I know it will bring a smile to your face,” he said. “I have my bike parked on the other side of the bridge and we could be at Santa Croce in ten minutes.”

“If you don’t mind, I’d rather walk,” Kate said. “Such a pretty night.”

“Every time I offer you a ride on my bicycle, you turn it down,” Marco said. “I don’t mind, really. I’m just curious why you hate it so.”

“What’s there to hate?” she asked, moving away from the wall and walking back down the street, Marco by her side. “Other than that there isn’t a place for me to sit, the tires could use a little air, the chains squeak like a church bell, and there’s so much rust on it you have to guess the color of the bike.”

“Now you sound like an American,” Marco said.

“What does that mean?”

“To an American, if something is old—and I mean months, not years—it gets tossed aside,” Marco said. “I’ve read where cars are traded
in every two years, televisions in your homes are thrown out as soon as a bigger screen is available, clothes given away by the season. Here, if something belongs to us or, more importantly, is given to us, then we do all we can to keep it forever. It becomes a part of who we are.”

“Do you think Michelangelo would have gone with you for a ride on your bike?” Kate asked, nudging him with her shoulder.

“He would have more likely ignored it,” Marco said. “He was, you know, indifferent to anything he himself did not design or construct. His eye would always be on
the next thing
. If it already existed and he had no part in making it, it bored him.”

“With an attitude like that,” she said with a smile, “he could have passed for an American.”

They walked past the Ponte Vecchio, the jewelry stores on both sides of the street still doing a brisk business as the work day neared an end, and onto Via Girolami toward Santa Croce and the final resting place of Michelangelo.

CHAPTER
4

T
HE BALD MAN WITH THE FOUR-INCH SCAR RUNNING DOWN THE
right side of his face opened an aluminum-lined briefcase and took two steps back. He looked over his shoulder at the man behind him and smiled. “On time and as promised,” he said.

“It’s what you were paid to do,” the thin man said, brushing past him to gaze down at the contents of the briefcase. “Little reason to gloat.”

“It was riskier than either of us anticipated,” the bald man said.

“That might be due to the fact that the police were tipped off within minutes of the lift,” his client said. “And that tip came from the people you brought in to help with the operation. That end of the job was not well handled.”

The bald man pulled out a crumpled white handkerchief and wiped at his neck and forehead. He was breathing through an open mouth, and his long-sleeve blue T-shirt was marred by circles of sweat. He had been an art thief and a forger going on fifteen years, mostly small-time lifts amounting to nothing more than a few thousand euros, the majority involving apartment break-ins of old-line Florentine families known to have paintings and sculptures that could easily be moved out of the city and country. “We were gone by the time they arrived,” he said, his voice still steady, his upper lip twitching slightly. “And we left nothing behind that could be traced back to us.”

The thin man turned away from the briefcase and glared at the thief. “There is no ‘us,’” he said. “And as long as we conduct business together, I suggest you remember that.”

“Listen, I didn’t mean to imply we were partners,” the bald man said. “Hell, I don’t even know your name, which makes it impossible for me to tell anyone anything. I just meant I was doing this job for you.”

“Roberto Mangini,” the thin man said, leaning against the side of the wooden table on which the briefcase rested. “Is that your real name or the one you want me to believe is real?”

“The first name is real,” the bald man said, “and that still puts you one up on me.”

“How much would you say the art in the briefcase is worth?” the thin man asked.

“Depending on the buyer and how eager you are to move it, I’d say two hundred, maybe even 300,000 euros,” Roberto said. “Minus any cuts that have to be paid out along the way.”

They were standing in the center of the large kitchen of a shuttered restaurant on a small side street near the Pitti Palace. An overhead bulb shrouded by a thin shade swung above them. It was past midnight now, and the occasional footsteps of a late diner or a couple heading home after an evening walk could be heard.

“And how much of your time would that amount buy me?” the thin man asked.

“Depends on the job you want done,” Roberto said. “If it’s another break-in that turned out to be as easy as this one, then it would hold me for a week, maybe a few days more. Something more complicated always gets to be more expensive. But until I know what you have in mind, I can’t say.”

“Then I’ll answer for you,” the thin man said. “I give you this painting, allow you to sell it to the highest bidder and pocket all the proceeds. I’ll even pay any commissions or cuts that are required along the way. Fair enough so far?”

Roberto nodded. “I like what I hear,” he said.

“You can bank that money, invest it wisely or gamble it away all in one night,” the thin man said. “It’s of no concern to me. But in return for taking it, you will work for me on one other assignment.”

“For how long?”

“It could be a day,” the thin man said with a shrug, “or it might last as long as a year. The only point that matters to me is that you agree to do it.”

“And if I choose to walk away instead?” Roberto asked. “Where will that leave us?”

The thin man stepped closer to Roberto, brown eyes still as stones, his angular face a blank slate, a hint of menace buried beneath. “How much do you know about me?”

“I know enough,” Roberto said.

The thin man smiled. “I learned long ago that is an answer given by people who don’t really know anything at all.”

THE THIN MAN
had been born in 1965 in a nondescript suburb of Detroit, in the middle of a late January blizzard. His father worked on the line in a string of auto factories, his hard-drinking ways always keeping him on the cusp of unemployment. His mother held down a part-time job at a diner a half mile from the three-bedroom house she had inherited from an uncle. The boy was their only child, and he was raised in a house that was free of books and empty of warmth. He attended the local public school and did well enough in English and art classes to catch the eye of a teacher who saw promise in a boy whose shabby clothes and silent demeanor hid an insatiable curiosity and sturdy intellect.

The teacher convinced his indifferent parents to allow their son to take a series of advanced courses at a nearby private school. Those classes propelled the boy to achieve academic credentials strong enough to earn him scholarships to both an elite prep school and Michigan State. He had escaped.

By all accounts, the boy—named David by his parents but called an assortment of cruel nicknames by his fellow students because of his reticence and his studious habits—was a quick study. He felt a personal connection to the works of the masters, specifically those who thrived during the Renaissance, and devoted his time to researching them. The hard work paid off, earning him a number of fellowships overseas, where he attacked his lessons with an even greater passion.

David’s commitment to the study of art was extreme, and he allowed himself little time for many of the other activities enjoyed by students his age. He attended few parties, belonged to no one social group, and the few attempts he made at dating led to little more than awkward silences
and quick endings. But David believed that the love of his work would help him overcome anything.

It was during those years that his name was brought to the attention of Andrea Westcott.

By the early 1980s, Andrea Westcott was working to expand the membership of the Vittoria Society. She especially sought talented students from the art history community, to reach out to them months before they entered the cloistered environment of academic life.

“We need to reach our recruits while they’re still pure,” she told her husband Frank one evening, over a meal at Sostanza, their favorite Florentine steak house. “Get hold of them before some of those professors strip them of their sense of adventure.”

“I am
nothing
if not adventurous,” Frank said. “I mean, if you were paying attention, you must have noticed I was the one who ordered the wild berries.”

“How Indiana Jones of you,” she said.

“What can I say?” Frank said. “I live for the thrill.”

“Do you think what we’re doing is worth the trouble?” she asked. “Worth the risk?”

Frank glanced at her, reached for her hand and held it gently. “Yes,” he said.

“It seems impossible sometimes,” she said. “Especially knowing we could both live to be a hundred and still not even come close to finding it all. I mean, with Michelangelo alone, at least a third of his work is still missing.”

“I don’t think either one of us has to worry about living to a hundred,” Frank said. “And, frankly, I’m not sure I would want to, even if I had the option.”

“I think you’d be a very sexy old man,” she said. “And it would be great fun to see you spend three hours every morning trying to find your slippers.”

Frank laughed and waited as a young waiter in a crisp white shirt rested a plate of biscotti in front of them. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” he said. “It’s the right thing, what we’re doing. Our success can’t be judged on the number of artistic works we find. Our success is simply in making the attempt.”

…

DAVID WAS AMONG
the first of Andrea Westcott’s student recruits.

He first met her at a lunch she arranged at a small restaurant two miles from his college campus. He would never forget that initial encounter: Enthralled by her knowledge of the art world, enraptured by her beauty, he had pledged his allegiance to the goals of the Vittoria Society by the time the waiter rolled the dessert cart toward their table. They kept in touch from that day forward, either by mail or in person. It was during those heady months, with the arrival of each new letter or the start of a fresh conversation over warm cups of coffee, that David fell in love for the first and only time.

One semester after he landed his first teaching position at a small college in the Pacific Northwest, he was on a plane bound for the Scottish Highlands, sitting in a first-class seat directly behind Frank and Andrea, about to begin his maiden mission for the Society, a trackdown of a stolen Modigliani painting.

David had learned about artists in schools, in books and walking the halls of many museums. But he learned about art from Andrea. She taught him to look beyond the books and venture past the lectures to see the work for what it was. Over time, though, what she saw and what he saw veered in opposite directions. Andrea loved a work for its combination of raw skill and inherent beauty, while David loved it for its financial worth. But that should not have come as a surprise. Andrea never had a need or a hunger for money, whereas David craved wealth and found himself at a loss whenever the Society donated a retrieved work when it could have been pocketing millions. But it went even further. David had pledged his love to Andrea, and learned quickly and painfully that such devotion would never be returned.

He broke free of the Vittoria Society in the spring of 1983 and spent the next two years traveling through Europe, taking the initial steps toward laying down the foundation for a new network. He wanted to emerge with a group that would rival the Society in intellectual power, financial backing, and museum and gallery connections, but whose purpose was radically different. His end goal was the accumulation of wealth, and there would be no boundaries to his cohorts’ methods of operation,
including the recruitment of professional assassins and experienced mercenaries.

David had absorbed a great deal of knowledge in his time with the Society, but no lesson had greater impact on him than the need to operate in secrecy. He felt it crucial that his group function in darkness, utilizing code names and third-person intermediaries, with no one knowing the true identities of their accomplices. Both the money and the art would be funneled down back channels, cleaned and washed by hired hands with no apparent connection, and then processed through a series of secured banks in Europe and the Middle East. He would travel alone and undercover, emerge long enough to lock in the transaction or locate the missing art, then fade back into the mist. He would require an identity cloaked in mystery and tinged with danger, but one that would still give him an identifiable signature in both the artistic and criminal communities.