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He asked about de Haan’s trip as they managed to squeeze in at the lunch counter.
Once they got the niceties out of the way, de Haan said, “Mr. Thompson is still refusing to speak to me. He says I must speak to Quilletta.”
Quilletta McCoy was Bert’s sister. There was a great-niece as well, but Bert and Quilletta were Roy Thompson’s primary heirs. To them had gone all Roy’s worldly possessions, including his spoils of war. In that idiosyncratic cache of stolen art and artifacts was the tantalizing possibility of a missing legendary Vermeer painting known as A Gentleman Washing His Hands in a Perspectival Room with Figures, Artful and Rare, last listed in a Dutch auction catalog in 1696.
The possibility of the Vermeer was what most excited—and worried—Jason. A rediscovered Vermeer was always going to attract a huge amount of media attention. And attention of any kind was the last thing he wanted. For a lot of reasons.
“Don’t worry, we’ll speak to Quilletta,” Jason said. “And Thompson is sure as hell going to speak to me.”
“I like your certainty, Agent West.”
Jason shrugged. He had experience in convincing people it was in their best interests to talk to him.
“Not everyone in your government has been so cooperative.”
No surprise there.
Jason said, “Regardless, there’s no excuse for what Captain Thompson did—it reflects on his unit and the entire US occupying force.”
“This is how I view it. The man was a thief. His is a family of thieves.”
Well… It wasn’t quite that simple. Thompson’s heirs believed they had a legitimate and legal claim to items that had been in their family for over seventy years. And they weren’t alone in thinking that.
Jason said, “At least Captain Thompson was there, at least he served. He’d seen combat. He’d seen…maybe too much. His motives could have been mixed. His family…they don’t necessarily understand that they’re attempting to hang on to stolen art.”
“Not just stolen art—the cultural treasures of another country!”
True. But Jason wished de Haan could be a little less passionate about it. Or at least keep his voice down.
According to de Haan’s painstaking research at the National Archives in Maryland, in 1945, Captain Roy Thompson had been part of the US occupying forces in the southwest region of Bavaria, where a treasure trove of art and cultural artifacts stolen by the Nazis had been discovered in the tunnels beneath a castle.
Jason didn’t doubt de Haan’s research—or deductions.
The problem he had was with Captain Thompson’s claim that he had been allowed to remove the items by a commanding officer, one Emerson Harley.
Problematic because Harley had been one of the legendary Monuments Men, whose mission was the “Protection and Salvage of Artistic and Historic Monuments in War Areas.” In fact, Harley had been Deputy Chief of the Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives program.
Doubly problematic because Harley was Jason’s grandfather.
Not just his grandfather, but his boyhood idol. It was because of Emerson Harley’s courageous efforts to preserve and protect the world’s cultural heritage that Jason had taken his love of art and passion for history and joined the FBI’s Art Crime Team.
Hearing that Harley had not only turned a blind eye to what amounted to theft and looting, but had possibly been complicit was horrifying.
Not that Jason believed it. The idea was preposterous. But that didn’t mean Grandpa Harley—or at least his good name—was unassailable. If mud was thrown, some of it would stick. That was inevitable, unless the accusations were nullified before they could ever be cast.
Emerson Harley had passed away four years ago and could not defend his name. Thompson had died one year ago and was also unavailable for questioning. Jason’s only potential witnesses were the remaining Thompson family members. And regarding the provenance of the stolen art, the Thompsons currently denied having the items in question in their possession—while simultaneously trying to establish their legal claim to those “liberated” pieces they had already tried to sell.
“I understand. We’re going to do everything we can to fix this.”
De Haan smiled faintly. “You’re still young enough to be idealistic, Agent West.”
Jason smiled too. “You seem pretty idealistic yourself, Mr. de Haan. I’m sure plenty of people told you at the start of your search that you were never going to find these pieces.”
“That is more true than you are aware.”
De Haan did not know of Jason’s personal connection to the case. No one did. No one could, because if his personal connection was discovered, Jason would be off the investigation in nothing flat and it would be handed over to another agent. An agent who might be willing to accept how things first appeared on paper as fact, an agent who wouldn’t be willing to keep digging and digging, because he—or she—hadn’t had the advantage of actually knowing Emerson Harley.
In Jason’s opinion, his lack of objectivity was a plus because he knew going in that there was no chance in hell his grandfather had turned a blind eye, let alone condoned, the theft of the world’s cultural treasures. He knew there was more to the story. Knew he had to keep digging to get to the truth.
