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Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse in Berlin and even commissioned a second painting. When he discovered the truth, he had the SS officer shot and Bellak arrested and sent to Auschwitz. Then he ordered that every last one of Bellak’s works was to be tracked down and disposed of.”
    “Clearly, some survived,” Tom said. “This one was stolen a few days ago.”
    “Why bother pinching that? The frame they had it in was probably worth more than the painting.”
    “I don’t know. Maybe because he was Jewish,” Tom said.
    “What do you mean?”
    “You should have seen the place.” Tom was surprised at the instinctive anger in his voice. “Someone had done a real number on it. Swastikas and graffiti sprayed all over the walls. Children’s drawings from a local death camp torn to shreds, as if they were trying to make confetti.”
    “Bastards,” Archie muttered, flicking his cigarette butt into the gutter. “And the painting?”
    “Sliced out of its frame and taken with them.”
    “But what would they want with it?”
    “That’s
    what
    I’ve
    been
    wondering.”
    34 james twining
    “Unless . . .”
    “Unless what?”
    Overhead, a train crashed its way toward London Bridge, and Archie waited until the raucous clanking had subsided before answering.
    “Unless the painting was what this was all about. Unless they were trying to be clever by disguising an old-fashioned robbery as some sort of anti-Semitic attack.”
    “Exactly,” Tom said, reassured that Archie had come to the same conclusion as him.
    “So I made some calls. And from what I can work out, it seems that over the last year or so there have been six thefts of alleged Bellak paintings from various private homes and collections across Europe.”
    “Six? I’d no idea that many had survived.”
    “Well, they’re not exactly the sort of thing anyone would bother cataloging, are they?
    Even now, no one’s managed to join the dots. The cases have just stuck with the local police in each area. The insurance companies haven’t got involved because the pictures aren’t worth anything. I only found out because I knew who to ask.”
    “Someone’s going to a hell of a lot of trouble to steal a bunch of supposedly worthless paintings.” A pause. “Tom? You listening?” Archie looked up at him questioningly.
    “Don’t turn round,” Tom said in a low voice, “but I think we’re being followed.”

CHAPTER SEVEN
    BLACK PINE MOUNTAINS, NEAR MALTA, IDAHO
    January 5—5:34 a.m.
    What’s the latest from inside the compound?” Special Agent Paul Viggiano spoke over the background noise of technicians and ringing telephones, a trim, muscular figure in his blue windbreaker, FBI stamped in large yellow letters across the back. Bailey, sitting at the kitchen table of the cabin they had commandeered the previous evening as their operational HQ, was the first to speak.
    “No movement, nothing. Not a single phone call. Even the generator shut down this morning. I figure it ran out of gas. No one’s come out to fix it.”
    “What about the dogs?” Silvio Vasquez this time, the leader of the fourteen-man FBI Hostage Rescue Team that had been assigned to the investigation, sitting to Bailey’s right.
    “What?” Viggiano frowned. “What the hell’s that got to do with anything?”
    “Didn’t someone say they had dogs? Have you seen them?”
    “No.” Bailey shook his head. “Nothing.”
    “So that’s weird, right?” Vasquez concluded. “A dog’s gotta take a leak.”
    “When
    did
    it
    last
    snow?”
    Viggiano
    asked.
    Bailey
    noticed
    36 james twining
    that he had found some loose matches and was arranging
    them into neat parallel lines as he spoke.
    “Two days ago,” Vasquez answered.
    “And there are no footprints? You’re seriously saying no one has stepped outside that farmhouse for two days?” Peering over, Bailey could see that he had rearranged the matches into a square.
    “Not unless they can fly,” Bailey confirmed. “And that includes