Audley was no longer listening. Instead his mind was racing back over the previous thirty-six hours, to the one assumption he had been at least reasonably sure of, but which was suddenly crumbling before his eyes.
'. . . also at Friedrichshain, smaller of course. G Tower was by far the biggest. About 130 feet high.'
It had been a preconception, of course. And even if it didn't fit the facts any more, it still rang true.
'And there were animals in the zoo right up to the end.'
The boredom was replaced by incredulity. 'Bloody lions and hippos mixing it with the Russians, I shouldn't wonder.'
Abstractedly he thanked the man, who seemed quite taken with the Wagnerian last hours of the Thousand Year Reich as it affected the unfortunate beasts in Berlin zoo, and replaced the receiver.
He began to reach down towards his brief-case, but stopped midway. He knew perfectly well what was in the Panin file, which reposed there entirely against regulations. And it was no use pretending that there wasn't a possible link here between Panin and dummy4
Steerforth, even if it wasn't the sort of link he had envisaged.
Indeed, if it made sense in 1945 it made nonsense in 1969.
But it would have to be checked.
Theodore Freisler might well know the answer. But there was one man who would certainly know it. He took his address book from its drawer and looked at the grandfather clock, weighing the lateness of the time against the slightness of his acquaintance with Sir Kenneth Allen. Their meeting in Rome had been strictly social, but nonetheless daunting; Audley had felt intellectually laundered after half an hour's conversation, then weighed up and courteously dismissed as a middle-weight.
But the great man had been on occasion consulted by the department, and whatever he might think of Audley he would never turn him away. Moreover, if the bored voice was now passing on his G Tower information, then Stocker might come to the same conclusion, and he wouldn't hesitate to haul Sir Kenneth from his high table or senior common room. And if Stocker's was the second call — that rewarding possibility was enough to decide him.
When he returned to the kitchen a quarter of an hour later Faith was just finishing the last of the washing-up. She turned towards him with a look of muted expectation which faded as she saw his own puzzled expression.
'Didn't you get what you wanted?'
'What I wanted?' He sat down at the old kitchen table and stared at the scarred and scrubbed wooden surface. 'I didn't get what I dummy4
expected, certainly. And I got rather more than I expected, too.'
He looked up at her.
'You know, Faith, I think I know what your father's cargo was.'
'. . . we met at Rome at the Egyptian studies symposium, Sir Kenneth.'
'Indeed, I remember you well, Dr Audley,' That beautiful voice was heavy with authority, but utterly free from arrogance. 'Your paper on Shirkuh was admirable. I entirely agree with you that Nur ed-Din and Saladin have taken too much attention from him. But what can I do for you?'
'I think you may be able to help us with a problem we have in the department.'
That made it official, but Sir Kenneth was not a man to be hoodwinked anyway.
'Indeed?'
'I believe you were on the Allied Art Treasure Committee in Berlin in 1945?'
'I was, Dr Audley. A relatively humble member, though.'
'Do you remember G Tower, Sir Kenneth?'
Faith was staring at him.
'The Schliemann Collection.'
She frowned.
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'Troy, Faith–Troy! The topless towers and the windy plains–Troy!'
The frown faded. Her jaw dropped a fraction, and then tightened.
She said nothing.
'You've heard of Heinrich Schliemann?'
'Of course I've heard of him,' she said sharply. 'He discovered Troy, everyone knows that.'
'More than Troy, Faith. Much more than Troy. He found the royal treasure–one of the greatest treasure troves of all time.
'He stole it from the Turks and he gave it to the Germans. And after the war the Russians found it, and they took it–and they lost it. No one's set eyes on it since the summer of 1945.'
Anger was not an emotion in which Sir Kenneth Allen indulged, but his displeasure was magisteriaclass="underline" '. . . in that matter, Dr Audley, the Russian High Command was something less than straightforward with us. I do not question their removal of the Schliemann Collection from G Tower, or their right to it as spoils of war. They had suffered great loss of their own treasures, great loss. They had the right to a measure of recompense.
'But to remove it–and there is no doubt that they did remove it —
and then to allow it to be lost: that was an unpardonable act of carelessness.
'Some of my colleagues still believe that it was never lost, and that it rests in the Kremlin vaults. Mere wishful thinking! If it had survived it would have been restored to East Berlin, to the Staatliche Museum, long ago.'
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Faith sat down opposite him, her shoulders drooping.
Then she braced herself. 'You said you think you know? But how sure are you–and how do you know, anyway?'
'Nikolai Andrievich Panin, Faith–that Russian I told you about.
He's my clue. You see, I thought if I could find out just what he was doing in Berlin back in 1945, before he came looking for your father's Dakota, it might give us a line on what was supposed to be in the plane.'
Her eyes widened. 'It was the same man then?'
'That's really what all the fuss is about. He was just a nobody then, doing what he was told. But he's very far from being a nobody now.'
'And what was he doing–when he was a nobody?'
'He was a soldier. One of the very few who made it all the way from Stalingrad to Berlin. But before that he was an archaeologist, and there's only one thing that would interest him in G Tower.'
'G Tower?'
'That was where he was working after the Russians took the city. It was an anti-aircraft fort as big as a city block. A fort and a hospital and an air raid shelter. And a treasure house.'
'. . . Coins, tapestries and sculpture were recovered, but not the Schliemann Collection. All the Staatliche has now of Troy is a pathetic handful of minor objects.
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'And what makes the tragedy absolute, Dr Audley, is that but for England's stupidity the collection need never have gone to Berlin in the first place. Schliemann offered everything to the British Museum — as a gift. And Winter Jones turned him down . . . He turned him down because there was no room for it!'
Fate had been cruel to the treasure of Troy. The Russians and the French had bid high for it. The Greeks, having overlooked it in one sack, claimed it by right of Homer. But all three nations had combined to help Schliemann resist Turkey's demand for the restoration of her property, each in the hope of receiving it as a reward.
And the British turned it down as an inconvenience!