The Looters (21 page)

I was no longer scared. Fear had fled, along with my emotions.

A killer who knew no mercy had taken four lives, possibly five. I was on the list. It had come down to a simple equation in my mind: I had to hunt him down and turn him over to the police. Or kill him myself, if it came to that.

The thought of killing Viktor Milan wasn’t repulsive to me. I had never committed a violent act in my life. But then I had stared down into the face of a rocket launcher, and people of flesh and blood had been consumed in the explosion and fire.

I imagined ways a woman could kill a man: a knife… running him down with a car… pushing him off a ledge… poison.

The bastard could rot in hell for all I cared. Killing the mad dog didn’t bother my conscience either.

I leaned back and closed my eyes, trying to get my focus.

My destination was Zurich, the home of the mysterious Swiss. Viktor Milan. His name gave no real clue as to its national origin. “Viktor” sounded like a German or Eastern European spelling of “Victor.” Milan was a city in Italy. Switzerland, of course, had a mixture of people with German, French, and Italian heritages.

I planned on renting a car in Calais instead of continuing on to Paris by rail. Keeping track of me when I had the freedom of a car would be much harder.

I knew I wouldn’t find Milan in Zurich. He was somewhere with sun and sea. I now believed that Milan wasn’t the man with the rocket launcher. A man who dealt in $55 million art pieces would hire someone to do his dirty work. But Zurich would be a starting point. And that was where the provenance led.

Despite my murder fantasies, I wondered what I would do if I came face-to-face with him. Calling the police would be my first instinct.

But it was the last thing I wanted to do now. Lipton and the others had been killed with the police parked outside. Abdullah had been murdered in New York after talking to the FBI. The least that would happen to me if I went to the police was that I would be jailed… perhaps forever.

The other alternative was that I would be murdered.

Chapter 32

London

Nunes took a red-eye flight into Heathrow the evening following the attack on Lipton’s gallery. Red-eyed himself from little sleep on the plane, he took a taxi to Scotland Yard’s Arts & Antiques Unit soon after checking into his hotel and grabbing a quick breakfast.

The specialized police group was based not far from New Scotland Yard’s modern twenty-story building. The location was on the other side of the Thames from Lipton’s art gallery.

Nunes envied the British resolve when it came to fighting theft of cultural items. Unlike the bare-bones FBI art theft unit, the well-staffed British unit worked closely with police agencies around the world to combat the illicit trade in stolen art and cultural property.

The FBI’s own “Most Wanted” artworks list was inspired by the unit’s SLAD, Stolen London Art Database, which stored details and images of over fifty thousand stolen items.

“Like you Americans,” Neil Tanner, an Arts & Antiquities Unit detective, told Nunes, “we take a special interest in the tragic looting of Iraq’s cultural heritage. We have an alert out to the art trade advising them to take a good look at the provenance of items from the region. Not that those in the trade are unaware of the need to investigate chains of ownership claims. Our reminders are just to nudge them a little closer to the letter of the law.”

Seated in a conference room, Nunes waited patiently while Tanner set up equipment for a slide show of digital images taken of the Lipton gallery around the time of the attack. Kaye Burl, an FBI agent from the U.S. Embassy in London, was also at the table. The FBI maintained an office in most major nations in order to coordinate international investigations and check out leads for domestic investigations.

“We’ve had an eye on Sir Henri ever since I’ve been with the unit,” Tanner said. “He’s the world’s top dealer in antiquities, and it’s a position that would be damn hard to maintain if you gave every provenance a good look, now wouldn’t it. We upped our surveillance of him since the looting of the Iraqi museum, expecting we’d see a big increase in sales of Mesopotamian antiquities, but the Semiramis was the first patently suspicious piece we’ve seen.”

Nunes nodded. “That’s because he’s been releasing the stuff very slowly through New York. He waited several years to even begin the process and didn’t really go whole hog until about a year ago. Dupre has literally stocked her museum through Lipton. But the Semiramis was the first sit-up-and-take-notice piece. I’m surprised he put it through a public auction rather than a private sale.”

“He probably tried a treaty sale first and the owner of the piece wasn’t satisfied with the price. There’s nothing comparable to the mask to help gauge a selling price, so it all came down to how much someone was willing to pay.”

Tanner got his slide show going. A series of pictures showing Madison entering Lipton’s gallery before the explosion and fire came on the screen.

“We’ve had an around-the-clock surveillance on Lipton’s gallery for weeks. We set it up when we found out he was going to auction the Semiramis. Our immediate suspicion was that it was part of the Iraqi loot. A museum piece like the mask couldn’t have been in a private collection for over a century without news of it leaking out, now would it?”

Nunes wished the FBI had the same vigilance toward contraband art. He heard about the Semiramis from the news media.

“This is the shooter,” Tanner said.

Not much of the man was exposed. He appeared bundled for the cold, wearing a full-length overcoat, with a hood and scarf. The clothing was too heavy for the weather, but in London that didn’t make the clothing stand out. Nothing was seen of his face. The form was identified as a male only because of his size. He was a large man, but not enough was exposed to determine how much of it was blubber.

He carried a long, narrow bag. Tanner used a laser pointer to emphasize the object.

“The bag’s similar to airline check-in luggage for a golf bag. In fact, we think that’s exactly what it is. Our people assumed it contained a piece of contraband artwork. It held something a helluva lot more lethal—a Soviet RPG-7. A portable shoulder-held rocket grenade launcher.”

The shooter rang the doorbell and was admitted by a woman.

“Lipton’s assistant. She was obviously expecting the visitor.”

“She’s dead?”

“We’re certain she’s one of the charred bodies. A fireman who went in looking for bodies found the weapon. The shooter simply dropped it on the floor after he used it. The firing tube is only about three feet long. Fully loaded, it weighs about twenty pounds. It’s small, lightweight, and cheap. They’re very popular with guerrillas and terrorists around the world. IRA probably has a car train load of them.”

“And they’re readily available in the international trade in contraband arms,” Nunes added. “The rocket launchers are an IRA item, a Russian mafiya weapon, a favorite of Middle Eastern terrorists and any other number of other users.”

Nunes watched the fiery holocaust engulf the gallery after the initial explosion.
A mass killer
, Nunes thought. The shooter had to know people would be in the building. The count was four. Only Madison Dupre walked away. And the shooter.

“Your curator came out the back way,” Tanner said. “Unfortunately, we had the surveillance only set up for the front.”

“Why?”

“We have limited resources and couldn’t cover everything. Besides, we set up the surveillance to shake up Lipton. We let him know we were out there. The idea was to get him scared enough to come in and make a deal. Or starve him out by scaring off his business clientele.

“We had to move cautiously… the man’s been an institution in the world of art for decades. Most of the power players in the country have bought art from him, including royals. We were watching for sellers and buyers of artworks and expected them to come through the front door. Unfortunately, we got a shooter who walked in the front and left by the back.”

“Along with the Dupre woman,” Nunes said. “Rather convenient.”

“We have witness statements about her. She appeared harried, distraught, and scared. In other words, someone genuinely caught by surprise. We haven’t found anyone who saw the shooter. He apparently went out the back and melted into the crowd that gathered. But the woman stood out because she was obviously shocked and frightened.”

“Was the shooter observed in any vehicle?”

“Dropped off in front by a taxi. We’ve spoken to the driver. Said he picked up the bloke three blocks back. We think he parked his car and grabbed a passing taxi.”

“Any description from him?”

“None helpful. The shooter had a scarf covering his mouth and nose. Told the driver he had a cold. Voice was muffled.”

“Do you have
anything
on the shooter?” Nunes asked.

“What you’ve seen is what we have. A big man in an overcoat carrying a golf bag. We don’t have anything else. Lipton made quite a few enemies, it’s that kind of trade, and we’re checking alibis.”

“No candidates?”

“None that would use a terrorist weapon like a rocket launcher. That implies a professional. Ex-military. From what I’ve seen of the art crowd, Lipton’s known enemies would be more likely to put poisoned sweetener in his cappuccino. Do you people have any ideas?”

Nunes shook his head. “I’ve heard of Lipton, of course, but he hasn’t been the focus of any of our investigations. Like you, I find the choice of weapons interesting. Either someone’s hired a military man—”

“Or they’re military themselves,” Agent Burl said.

Tanner cleared his throat. “You know, there were those rumors about U.S. troops participating in the looting….”

Nunes and Burl gave him stone-cold expressions.

“Rumors of war,” Agent Burl said. “You know how it goes… rumors about U.S. troops, rumors about British troops…”

Everyone understood one another.

The notion that the shooter could be someone involved in the Baghdad heist had been roiling in Nunes’s head ever since he heard about the rocket launcher. The choice of weapon coming on the heels of the fallout over the Semiramis lent itself to an Iraqi connection. Shoulder-mounted rocket launchers were a mainstay in the violent world of Middle East wars and terrorism. But he didn’t have a clue as to whether the shooter was Iraqi or American.

Nunes said to Tanner, “I need everything you can give me on Lipton. And a copy of all the surveillance reports. I’ll see if any of it correlates to what we already have.”

“Do you have anything on the Dupre woman? Other than propinquity to Lipton?”

Nunes shook his head. “The only thing we have is that she managed to put together a Mesopotamian collection in a short time, most of it through Lipton. Frankly, if that Iraqi curator hadn’t crashed a museum event and made a claim with cameras rolling we wouldn’t be investigating Dupre or her connections. I know she’s involved, but how deep… I’m not sure yet. I’m trying to get up enough probable cause to get warrants so we can examine the provenances of all the pieces she bought that came through Lipton.”

“Any progress on the murder of the curator?”

“Well, we know Dupre didn’t actually kill him. But I don’t know if she stumbled in by accident or went there to retrieve evidence she knew the curator had. The killer obviously took it.”

“Evidence?”

“A commendation made to the father of the curator. It would prove that the Semiramis had come from the museum.”

“What’s the legal status of the Semiramis?”

“About the same as you have with Greek claims for the Elgin marbles. Unless the proof materializes, the Iraqis will still be making a demand for return of the Semiramis a hundred years from now, because there’s no solid proof it came out of the museum.”

“What’s your next step?” Tanner asked.

“Probably the same as yours—try to find Madison Dupre. Like you, I’d like to know what she saw in those moments before the gallery was destroyed. And besides the murder of the curator, there’s another body I want to talk to her about.”

He told Tanner about the arson fire at Bensky’s.

“We found his body. Someone weighted down Bensky’s body and dropped it in Long Island Sound. By sheer luck, a fisherman pulling up a trap brought it up with his catch.”

“Dupre ran from New York,” Tanner said. “We suspect she’s run from London… if she’s still alive. She didn’t return to her hotel after the explosion. Her luggage is still there. That leads us to believe she’s either too scared… or dead. It may be that the shooter caught up with her. But then again, it’s not that hard to leave our little island. Dozens of airlines, the Channel tunnel, several ferries across to France, Belgium, and Ireland… it’ll take time to check them all.”

“If she’s running,” Agent Burl said, “that certainly makes her look guilty.”

“One thing’s for certain: She knows something. Something that somebody wants her dead for… or something she thinks she can use.” Nunes pursed his lips. “My take is that she’s in over her head. She’s made herself a moving target in the hope that she’ll be harder to hit. But she’s no match for a man who uses a missile to make a hit in the middle of London.”

Chapter 33

Calais, France

I decided to rent an economical car when I arrived in Calais. I picked the Citroën because it was relatively inexpensive and also popular. That made it a low-profile car in my mind. I also purchased a Michelin road map for Western Europe.

By the time I got on the road, it was nearly seven o’clock in the evening. I didn’t want to travel all night to Zurich or even take the most direct route in the daytime. Instead, I headed for Brugge in Belgium and stayed at a roadside inn.

I chose a route that took me by Brussels, Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and Basel, in the hope that hitting four countries in one day would confuse whoever was after me.

I calculated that it would take me about eight hours to reach Zurich, so I planned an early start for the next morning.

I had been in Zurich once before when I was in college and young enough for a cheap stay in a youth hostel. It was an expensive city then as well as now.