Ji-Woo’s jaw was tight as she tried to placate the girl, who was surrounded by a clutch of annoyed-looking bridesmaids.
Helen strode through them and dropped our keys on the front desk. “I am afraid the rooms are not to our satisfaction,” she said loftily. “Kindly arrange for a taxi. We will be leaving.”
Ji-Woo snapped her fingers for a porter to flag a taxi and turned to the weeping bride. “Good news, Miss Williams. Two rooms have just come available.”
The bridesmaids cheered and we tottered out into the early evening. Natalie had been carrying the garbage bag in her suitcase, so we dumped it in the first trash bin we saw at the station. We caught the next train to Geneva, where we had booked into a small, discreet hotel and made late reservations at the Taverne du Valais for charbonnade and red wine. We toasted our success with a single glass each and turned in by midnight. By seven the next morning, we were on a train, headed back to England via Amsterdam.
One down. Two to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
JULY 1981
“Zanzibar,” Mary Alice says, letting her breath hang on the last syllable. “Can you imagine? I’ve never heard of anything so romantic in my life.”
“Romantic? We’re going to kill an old woman,” Billie reminds her, but she is smiling. It is the first time they have worked together since killing the bishop in Rome fifteen months before, and it feels good to be reunited even if they have been relegated to supporting roles. They are backing up Vance Gilchrist and Thierry Carapaz, a Frenchman they met up with at the airport in London. Carapaz carried their documents identifying them as a group of graduate archaeological students excavating the ruins of an old clove plantation in Zanzibar. The plantation is adjacent to the house of their target—Baroness Elisabeth von Waldenheim, a prominent Nazi whose whereabouts have been unknown for the better part of forty years.
But the Provenance department has done its job well, positively identifying the reclusive baroness through the hairdresser who comes once a week to wash and set her hair. The baroness lives with her art collection and a pair of servants who have worked for her since she sat at the center of the Führer’s inner circle. The art collection—pieces purloined with the help of Hermann G?ring—is to be saved but the servants are not. The dossier prepared by Provenance is thorough, and the Volkmars’ guilt is never in question. Their crimes, and those of the baroness, are detailed at length. Included in the dossier are maps of the house and its grounds and photographs of the targets and the art collection.
One photograph in particular has captured Billie’s attention. It is poor, black-and-white and blurred—no doubt a fourth-or fifth-generation photocopy—and inked around the border are the words The Queen of Sheba Arising by Sofonisba Anguissola. The notes say the photograph was taken in 1931, the last known image of the painting. The subject is a common one in Renaissance and Baroque art. Claude Lorrain, Tintoretto, Lavinia Fontana—all have painted the Queen of Sheba garbed in elaborate clothing contemporary to their time, rich brocades and heavy velvets giving witness to her legendary wealth as she makes her first appearance at the court of King Solomon.
But Anguissola has chosen differently. To begin with, she has painted a woman with dark skin, Billie sees. Where other artists have chosen to depict the queen with the fashionable blond tresses of the Renaissance ideal, Anguissola depicts her as she would have been—an African queen. And where others have painted her arriving at the court of Solomon, received with fanfare and lavish ceremony, Anguissola has chosen to portray her rising from her bed after her tempestuous night with the king, grasping a white sheet for contrast against her skin. Her hands and wrists are hung with gorgeous jewels, rubies and emeralds, Billie guesses, although it is impossible to tell from the black-and-white reproduction. One enormous pearl hangs from a tiny chain threaded through her curls, resting voluptuously on her brow. There is a knowingness in the eyes that says she understands and knows you do too. Behind her is a stately bed, gilded and hung with swags of velvet draperies. And just visible in the tangle of tousled bedclothes is the bare thigh of a sleeping man, his luscious robes and hastily discarded bits of armor strewn about the floor. The queen’s heavy-lidded eyes say it all. She hasn’t slept because she has been too busy conquering a king. It is sensual and yet domestic, an intimate moment of grand people, and Billie is glad that her job will be helping to restore the painting to its rightful owners.
She does not think about the baroness or the Volkmars as they make their preparations. They are camping at the clove plantation in the ruins of the overseer’s house, planning to use the punishment cells beneath to access a tunnel that runs from the main house to the area that once housed the enslaved farmworkers. Vance has explained that the original owner, not wanting his gardens spoiled by workers coming and going, ordered the tunnel dug to keep them out of sight. It has been decades since the tunnel was in use, but they will have a week to shore it up and surveil the baroness. Carapaz will take care of dispatching the Volkmars while Vance has reserved the baroness for himself. She is the first Nazi the Museum has targeted in over a decade, and taking her out will ensure a promotion. Money, status—these are important to Vance, but nothing means as much as going down in the history of the Museum as a Nazi killer. It is the reason the Museum exists, and it is a demonstration of the board’s faith in him that they have assigned him leadership of the mission. The women are to give weight to the cover story as a student expedition and to secure the paintings and that is all.