He shook his head. “Please, it is my pleasure. Besides, this is all very exciting. I never thought that in my father’s archives would be something so fascinating. I just always assumed it was nothing but records for his junk. Now, off we go. Tomorrow is a long day.”
14
Allyson awoke suddenly, startled by something. She’d spent the night at a pulloff a few hundred yards from the mountain driveway.
The previous evening, she had parked her car and walked over to the drive, waiting in the shadows of the forest for twenty minutes before deciding to go up on foot. Taking her car up the hill would be like throwing a fistful of steel bearings into a china shop: loud and messy. It would be more prudent to not alert the others to her presence. And Allyson desperately wanted to keep the element of surprise. When she reached a curve in the driveway, she saw the gate and the exchange take place with the guards. Adriana had taken one of them down and used him as leverage to get into the property. What the other woman said was hard to tell, but she definitely shouted the name Hummels.
It was unclear whether the owner of the property possessed the painting, but at some point Adriana would have to leave. That would give Allyson the chance to ambush the two marks and take the painting. A sinister little plan formulated in her mind. Maybe a little payback for the Mexico incident.
But as minutes turned into hours and darkness descended onto the valley, Allyson realized that her targets were either going to be staying overnight or something had happened to them. No other vehicles left the premises, and none arrived. After careful consideration, she decided to wait it out, all night if she had to. Which was exactly what happened.
The following morning, after a fitful night of sleeping in twenty-minute increments, she woke to the faint light of the sun radiating in the sky over the horizon. Her back ached from trying to sleep upright in the car. She was hungry and still exhausted. Her mind, though, was still sharp enough to think clearly.
No one had left during the night. That meant Adriana and the professor were still inside.
At seven o’clock in the morning, she saw headlight beams peeking through the tree trunks as a car came down the driveway. She’d found a pulloff a thousand or so feet away on the right and to the side of the road and watched, catching glimpses of the red BMW as it left the driveway and drove off down the main road. She couldn’t be sure, but Allyson thought she noticed three people in the car.
She revved up her engine and guided the car back onto the road, following the other vehicle at a good distance until it reached the Innsbruck train station. Wherever the group was going, taking a train could provide new opportunities for an ambush. It could also cause problems with too many witnesses. Smart move; Adriana knew she was being followed. Allyson ruled out that possibility. She steered her rental into a parking spot a few rows away from the BMW and watched as three people emerged. Her first suspicion had been right. There were three people. But who was the third? The man turned his head in her direction, and she realized it was Hummels.
After hearing the name Hummels in the exchange with the guards, Allyson spent a little time on her phone researching the name. It turned out that a Friedrich Hummels was a local philanthropist in Innsbruck and dedicated much of his time and resources to promoting the arts in the city. He had a sordid ancestry, a father who worked high in the ranks of the Nazi military. But it appeared he’d never been charged with any war crimes.
Allyson lowered the bill on her baseball cap, peering out from under it as the three made their way into the station. The second they passed through the doors, she exited her vehicle and jogged across the parking lot to the entrance. She waited a moment, letting a group of college-aged Americans go through the doors first. They were laughing and talking about something that happened the night before with some beer they’d been drinking. She shook her head. Always giving Americans a bad name, she thought.
Inside, the train station was bustling with all manner of travelers. Young people with book bags and backpacks, businessmen and women in suits and dresses carrying briefcases and laptop bags, and a few strays who fell somewhere in between filled the long, narrow interior. The area felt like being inside a giant wooden box. The walls shot straight up to the ceiling, at least forty feet high. Automated ticket kiosks lined one wall in recessed spaces to make buying tickets easier. Amid the chaos, Allyson started worrying less about being spotted and more about losing her quarry. Through the tangled, writhing mass of people, she caught a glimpse of bright red hair. It was Adriana. Her two companions were with her, the taller man stood in front of her and the professor as they waited to buy tickets from one of the service counters. Allyson wondered why they didn’t just go get a ticket from one of the kiosks, but sometimes people were weird about using those things.
There wasn’t much time. The three were almost to the ticket counter, and if they made a purchase before she interrupted, Allyson would have no idea what train they were getting on and where they were going. Before panic settled in, she realized that it was possible to buy a ticket to gain entry to the platforms. But that still wouldn’t tell her which train they were on, and there were at least eight people waiting in line to buy tickets between her and the other three.
Allyson had another idea.
She twisted and shuffled through the crowd and made her way to the ticket line, keeping her hat pulled down low to cover her face. Occasionally, she raised her head to check on the progress of her targets. The last time she did so, they were finishing their transaction. Seconds later, they went left toward the escalators at the end of the room. Allyson kept an eye on them as they stepped onto the escalator, ascended to the next level, and walked to the right, disappearing around the corner. She kept her breathing calm and checked the signs pointing to the areas of the platform that went to the right. Then she cross-referenced them with the platforms listed on the sign behind the ticket counter. Only two trains were leaving in the next thirty minutes from that platform. One was heading to Prague, the other to Zurich. An elderly couple two places up from her in line seemed to be taking forever deciding which tickets to buy. They spoke with English accents. More tourists on holiday. Granted, she wasn’t from around here and she didn’t even know where she was going yet, but Allyson would spend less time at the checkout counter than those two.
After what seemed like half an hour, the couple received their tickets and meandered away, appearing to have no idea where they were supposed to go next in spite of the young man at the counter giving explicit directions.
The next two customers were processed much faster. One businessman was simply making sure he was going to the right place, and the other was a young woman who had a question about travel times and return trips. When the girl stepped out of the way, Allyson moved to the desk.
“How may I help you?” the man asked in German.
“I’m supposed to be meeting some friends here that are heading to Zurich,” she lied, taking a chance that the Swiss city was where Adriana and the others were headed. It could have easily been Prague. If that were the case, she’d go to one of the kiosks and buy a ticket to the Czech Republic. “They may have already come through here. One was a tall, older man with thinning hair, the other man shorter, kind of curly hair and a little older. They were with a young woman.”
The ticket agent smiled. “Yes, they came through just a few minutes ago. Do you need to buy a ticket to Zurich as well?”
Allyson smiled. “Actually, yes. I haven’t purchased mine yet. How much?”