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account.”
    Manship ignored the barb. “Okay. Enough. I know the rest. Just get me Venus’s telephone number.”
    “Wait a minute. I’ve got it right here. In Fiesole. Name’s Cattaneo.”
    A short time later, Manship called for his bill and had his bags brought down. His plane to Berlin was due to leave in less than an hour.

Five
    “A RE YOU SURE?”
    “The records are quite clear.”
    “There can be no mistake?”
    “Those are the drawings, are they not?”
    “They appear to be, although you can’t be certain with photographs.”
    “Yes, of course.” Major Von Marie, head of the art-theft division of the German Bundeskriminalamt, nodded sympathetically.
    “The old man …” Manship resumed.
    “Streicher?”
    “Dead?”
    “He died in Spandau.” Von Marie flipped through some papers. “In 1982. Convicted in Nuremberg in 1946 for high crimes against humanity.”
    The major rattled off a series of dates, indictments, and convictions in his crisp, uninflected English.
    “So you would never have known about the drawings if it hadn’t been for the murder of the son.”
    “Correct.” Von Marie inserted a cold, half-smoked Marlboro into a cigarette holder and relit it. “After all, if you’re bright enough to smuggle priceless masters out of Italy in 1940, you’re not going to be so foolish as to exhibit them on a wall in your home in Germany.”
    “His son did.”
    Von Marie smiled wearily. “Much to the poor fellow’s regret. The moment old Streicher died, the foolish boy hauled the drawings up out of storage and plastered them over his walls for all the world to see. I can show you the house. It’s in Leipzig.”
    “That won’t be necessary.” Manship dismissed the offer with a wave. “Have they ever found the fellow’s murderer?”
    The major riffled through a stack of files at the bottom of his desk drawer. Whistling softly to himself until locating a particular file, he plucked it out with an air of triumph. “Ah, here we are.”
    Glasses perched at the crown of a closely cropped pate, he lip-read to himself, peering periodically over his frames at Manship, who was seated opposite him.
    “According to this report, it was a case of robbery. Someone had evidently heard that the drawings were there in the house and relatively unprotected. He, or they, broke in on the night of October ninth, 1987, with the intention of taking them and were surprised by the son and his wife returning home after a night out. Both were killed. Horrible, filthy business. Blood. Mutilations.” The major lowered his voice to a discreet whisper. “The woman’s eyes were gouged out.”
    “Gouged out?”
    “That’s what it says here. Care to see?” Von Marie opened the folder and slid it across the desk. Manship let his eye drift down over a long official document written partly in German, partly in English. Attached to that were several fairly graphic police photos, which he declined to view at all.
    “Something wrong?” the major asked, amused at what he took to be American squeamishness.
    But it was not this report or the grim photographs that had upset Manship; rather, it was that business of the eyes. He was thinking of the mutilations in the paintings at St. Stephen’s and the Pallavicini.
    “Any witnesses?” he asked.
    “Not according to this report.”
    “Anything else taken?”
    “Other than the drawings, nothing. The matter was reported to the police, who referred it to us. Once it was determined that they were masterworks stolen during the war, naturally we became involved.”
    “Eleven through thirteen,” Manship muttered to himself.
    The major’s caterpillar brows rose up above the rims of his eyeglasses. “Pardon?”
    “Nothing. Just talking to myself. Any suspects?”
    “None to speak of.” Von Marie gave a tired shrug, then seemed to spark. “Wait.” A hand rose as if to keep Manship in his seat. “Just one moment, please.”
    “Yes? What?”
    The major did a half turn in his