The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart - By Lawrence Block Page 0,92

the Anatrurian throne.”

CHAPTER

Twenty-two

I guess we’re all suckers for royalty. Half the house must have known or suspected Mike’s place in the scheme of things, but all the same a hush fell over the room, and it hung there until Carolyn broke it. “A king,” she said. “I can’t believe it. In my store.”

“Your store?”

“Well, it’s almost my store, Bern. Who kept it open over the weekend? Uh, speaking of my store, Your Majesty, I don’t suppose you have a dog that needs washing, but if you ever do—”

“I’ll most certainly think of you,” he said, whereupon Carolyn looked almost glassy-eyed enough to drop a curtsy. “Mr. Rhodenbarr, I haven’t said anything until now, but perhaps I should. This business of an Anatrurian throne makes me quite uncomfortable. My grandfather’s moment of glory occurred ages ago, and my father’s little adventure took place before I was born, and very nearly cost him his life. That my family had a tentative claim on a putative crown was interesting, even amusing, something to impress a girl or enliven a social gathering. I have my own life, with a small amount of capital and a career in international finance and economic development. I don’t spend time nostalgic for a royal past or dreaming of a royal future.”

“And yet you came to New York,” I said gently.

“To get away from Europe and its talk of thrones and crowns.”

“And you brought a gold-stamped leather portfolio.”

He sighed heavily. “When my father lay dying,” he said, “he called me to his side and turned over to me the portfolio of which you speak. Until then I did not know of its existence.”

“And?”

“He had scarcely spoken to me of Anatruria. You must understand that none of our family had ever lived there. My grandfather was chosen to be king of the Anatrurians, but he was not previously Anatrurian himself. Now, on his deathbed, my father spoke of his deep love for this small mountainous nation, of the loyalty our family commanded there and the responsibility which consequently devolved upon us. I thought he was raving, affected by the drugs his doctors had given him. And perhaps he was.”

“He was a great man,” Ilona said.

“I would say so, but then he was my father. Middle-aged when I was born, often absent while I was growing up, but surely a great man in my eyes. With his dying breath he told me of my duty to Anatruria, and passed on the royal portfolio.”

“What did it hold?”

“Papers, documents, souvenirs. Shares of stock in a Swiss corporation.”

“Bearer shares,” I said.

“Yes, I believe so.”

“Like bearer bonds,” Charlie Weeks said. “The Swiss are nuts about that sort of thing. When they change hands, there’s no need to go through any paperwork to record the transfer. They’re like cash, they belong to whoever is in possession of them.”

“And with them in your hands,” I said, “you could take possession of all the assets of the corporation.”

Todd—Mikhail? The king?—shook his royal head. “No,” he said.

“No?”

“You need the account number and the shares,” he said. “Believe me, I went to Zurich, I consulted bankers and attorneys there. This corporation was set up in an unusual fashion, and one must be in possession of the bearer shares and know the number of the account in order to lay hands on any of the corporation’s assets. My father passed on the shares, which he had received from his father, but neither he nor his father had been entrusted with the account number.”

“Out with it, man,” said Tsarnoff. “Who has it?”

“Probably no one,” Todd said.

“Ridiculous! Someone must know.”

“Someone must have known once, some leader of the Anatrurian movement. Perhaps several people knew. You have already said that my father was lucky to get out of Anatruria with his life. Others were not so lucky. So many were taken from their families, only to receive a bullet in the back of the neck and burial without ceremony in an unmarked grave. I would guess that many secrets were buried along with those men, and that the number of the Swiss account was one of those secrets.”

He sighed again. “I remember sitting at a café after my last meeting with a lawyer and a banker, sitting with a glass of wine and wishing my father had taken the portfolio to the grave with him as some Anatrurian had taken the account number. But instead he’d entrusted it to me. In a sense, he’d pressed a crown on my head, and it was not