The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,90
world press.” He sighed. “That was all we were after. We were getting the Anatrurians to rise up just so the Russkies could cut them down.” He flashed a rueful smile at Ilona, who looked horrified by what he’d just said. “Sorry, Miss Markova, but that was the job they handed us. Stir something up, make some mischief, embarrass the comrades. Like Werner von Braun with his rockets. His job was to get them off the ground. Where they came down was somebody else’s department. He wrote an autobiography, I Aim for the Stars.” He winked. “Maybe so, Werner, but you sure hit London a lot.”
“The Anatrurian rising never did get off the ground,” I went on. “There was a betrayal.”
“The woodchuck’s doing,” Weeks said. “At least that was what we always thought.”
“The Americans scattered,” I said, “and left the country separately. Government authorities swooped down on the Anatrurians and took the heart of the movement into custody. There were some long prison sentences, a few summary executions. According to rumor, Todor Vladov got a bullet in the back of the neck and a secret burial in an unmarked grave. In point of fact he slipped through a border checkpoint just in time and never again returned to Anatruria.”
Ray wanted to know how old he’d be now.
“He’d be close to eighty,” I said, “but he died last fall.”
“And the treasury,” Tsarnoff said. “What becomes of the treasury upon Todor’s death?”
“The treasury?”
“The war chest,” Rasmoulian said, impatient. “The Anatrurian royal treasury.”
“Old Vlados’s backers were grabbing with both hands when the Austrian and Ottoman empires were falling apart,” Tsarnoff explained. “When they found themselves disappointed at Versailles, they packed their bags and hied themselves to Zurich, where they established a Swiss corporation and shunted everything they had into it. The corporation’s liquid assets went into a numbered account, everything else into a safe-deposit box.”
“Much must be worthless,” Rasmoulian said, from deep within the shelter of his trench coat. “Czarist bonds, deeds to property expropriated by dictatorships of the left and right. Shares of stock in defunct corporations.”
“The Assyrian is correct, sir. Much would indeed be worthless, but that which is not worthless could very well be priceless. Valid deeds, shares in firms which have thrived. And, while the bonds and currencies of fallen regimes would be of value only as curiosities, instruments of title to business and real property seized by the communists are worth another look now that communism has itself gone obsolete.”
“There is no telling what it’s all worth,” Rasmoulian said, his spots of color glowing.
“Indeed, sir. There is no telling what money remains in that numbered account, or what assets the corporation retains. What could old Vlados have drained off? And what about his son, of blessed memory? No one goes through capital like a pretender trying to maintain a pretense.”
“Vlados had an income,” Weeks said. “Remember, the people who chose him for the throne didn’t pick him off a dunghill. He was a shirttail cousin of the king of Sweden and claimed descent on his mother’s side from Maria Theresa of Austria. Queen Liliana was some kind of grandniece of Queen Victoria. They weren’t rich enough to buy the Congo from Leopold of Belgium, but Liliana never had to shop at Kmart either. They had an income and they lived within it.”
“And Todor?”
“Same story for the colt. We didn’t get him back to Anatruria by dangling some dough in front of him. He worked for a living, fronting an investment syndicate based in Luxembourg, but he was comfortable.” He grinned. “We hooked him by the ego. He figured he’d look good with a crown on his head.”
“He was a patriot,” Ilona said. “That is not ego, to go to the aid of your people. It is self-sacrifice.”
“How would you know so much about it, little lady? He was long gone from Anatruria before you were born.”
He didn’t sound as though he expected an answer, and she didn’t give him one. I said, “Let’s flash-forward to the present, okay? I’d like to tell you about a man named Hugo Candlemas. That’s an unusual name, and he was an unusual man, erudite and personable. Earlier this year he came to New York and took an apartment on the Upper East Side. And a matter of days ago he came into this store and introduced himself to me. He persuaded me to break into an apartment a few blocks away from his and steal a leather portfolio.”