Part 12 (1/2)

”Horses.h.i.+t!” Hill said. ”It can wait 'til morning. I'm not going anywhere now.”

The newcomer turned toward Hill. ”Why is that door open? Close it.” ”I'm not closing the door.” The stranger again. ”Close it!”

”Listen, if one of you guys pulls out a .38 and points it at me, I want to cause you some problems. If you're going to get me, you're going to have to be quick.”

It was a standoff, but the crooks seemed to like the tough-guy talk. The stranger was a thug and Johnsen was a bully, and Hill had responded in a way they understood. Rash though he could be, Hill had been serious about not going anywhere. A drive in the dark to a destination he didn't know, on his own, in a foreign country-he'd have to be nuts. Hill looked at the black-clad, bug-eyed crook trying to cajole him into this dubious excursion, and an image of the wolf and Little Red Riding Hood flashed into his mind. Who's for a walk in the woods? Who's for a walk in the woods?

”I'm not going to sit here forever,” Hill said. ”It's cold, and I've got no socks on.” Johnsen and the stranger craned around for a look. This was Norway, in winter. The tension ratcheted down a notch.

”I'll be happy to travel anywhere you want me to in the morning,” Hill said.

Ulving chimed in. ”Let's do it now.”

The others ignored him. Hill turned to Johnsen. ”If you want to keep an eye on me, why don't you stay in the hotel overnight? Let's book you a room.”

Hill and Johnsen headed toward the hotel. Ulving stayed behind with the stranger with the manic eyes. Hill stepped up to the reception desk. ”Do you have a room?” This could have been trouble. With hundreds of narcotics officers gathered for a convention, the hotel might be full. Hill hadn't made a backup plan.

”Yes, Mr. Roberts, of course.”

Hill handed over his Getty credit card and signed for Johnsen's room without asking the rate. Johnsen watched closely, noting the clerk's obsequiousness and registering all the little flourishes that marked Hill as a man of the world. Hill was, Johnsen would say later, ”a very elegant gentleman, a little too elegant, in my opinion, to be a police officer.”

With Johnsen safely a.s.signed to a room well away from his own, Hill hurried off to Butler's room, to brief him. Butler was irritated that Hill had gone out of the hotel, but Hill brushed the scolding aside. It was his a.s.s on the line; he'd make his own calls.

But there was a problem with the next day's plans. Ulving and Johnsen and the stranger had said something about driving out of the city.

”You say you're going south south with these guys?” Butler asked. with these guys?” Butler asked.

”Yeah.”

The Scotland Yard detectives had permission to wander around Oslo as they pleased, but for reasons Hill didn't quite follow, they had been warned to steer clear of the area south of the city.

”John, for f.u.c.k's sake, what are you talking about?” Hill shouted. ”Are we going to get this painting back or not? What is this police bureaucracy territorial-imperative jurisdictional-ha.s.sle s.h.i.+t? I mean, stop it!”

”No. You can't do it.”

”John, if we don't do it this way, there's no chance we can keep our credibility with these a.s.sholes.”

”f.u.c.k it, you're not going! There are procedural problems, and you can't do it.”

For the first time, Sid Walker joined the argument. ”Well, John,” he said quietly, ”Charley's got a point.”

Outvoted two to one, Butler gave in. The three men made a plan, or at least agreed to proceed without a real plan. They did take steps to safeguard the fortune in kroner that Walker had flashed under Johnsen's nose. At dawn, Walker would take his bagful of cash out of the Plaza, book a room at the Grand Hotel, and lock the money in a safe there.

Beyond that, they would have to wing it. Come morning, Hill and Walker would go off with Johnsen to wherever it was the Norwegians had been so eager to get to the previous midnight.

32.

On the Road EARLY MORNING, MAY 7, 1994.

Hill and Walker left Butler and headed off to their own rooms. It was late-Hill hadn't gone out to Ulving's car until midnight-and they would be underway early the next morning. (Walker, who had to switch hotels, would be on the move even earlier than Hill.) But they had time to grab a few hours' sleep. For Einar-Tore Ulving, on the other hand, the night of May 6, 1994, would prove the longest of his life.

The art dealer's ordeal began at midnight, when the stranger slipped into his car. Even with Johnsen and Hill out of the car and in the hotel, the newcomer stayed in the back seat, his eyes fixed on Ulving at the wheel. In the dark, with his cap pulled low over his eyes and his scarf pulled high over his chin, he was a large and looming shape. Afraid to speak or to turn around, Ulving sat cowering and waiting for instructions. His unwelcome guest never gave his name. The art dealer thought of him simply as ”the man with the cap.”

Finally the stranger broke the silence. ”Drive,” he said, directing Ulving through the near-empty streets of a wintry Oslo night. ”Right.” ”Left.” ”Through the tunnel.”

Ulving obeyed. The route led out of the city, but Ulving had no idea of their destination. Soon they were on a quiet road. The houses were dark, the street deserted. No streetlights, no traffic, no pedestrians. ”Stop!”

Ulving pulled over. ”Wait here.” The stranger walked to a pay phone. A minute or two later, he returned and gestured to Ulving to roll down his window. ”Drive south on the E-18,” he said, ”and someone will phone you.”

Then he vanished into the gloom.

Ulving found his way to the motorway. He knew the E-18. He drove along, expecting his cell phone to ring at any moment. It didn't. For an hour and fifty minutes he sped along the motorway in silence. The E-18 south from Oslo, as it happened, led toward the town of Tnsberg, where Ulving lived. He decided to drive home.

By now it was well past two in the morning. Ulving entered his darkened house. At once the phone rang. Unnervingly, the call came not on Ulving's cell phone, as he had been expecting, but on his home phone. How did they know where I was? How did they know where I was? The stranger again, with more instructions. ”Get back on the E-18 and go to the By the Way.” The stranger again, with more instructions. ”Get back on the E-18 and go to the By the Way.”

Ulving knew the name-the By the Way was a restaurant on the expressway only five or ten minutes from his house. He sped over. The restaurant was long since closed, and the parking lot was empty. Ulving pulled his car to the edge of the lot and parked by a low stone wall. Then he sat in the dark and waited.

Suddenly the stranger materialized in front of Ulving's car. ”Get out!”

Ulving stood in the deserted parking lot. The man in the cap stared at him, silently, for a minute or two. ”Open the back!”

The stranger moved a short distance away. Another man took shape in the darkness, on the far side of the stone wall. He carried a neatly folded blanket with something wrapped inside. He handed the blanket to the stranger and disappeared again. The stranger placed the blanket and its contents in the back of Ulving's station wagon.

”That's the picture.”

Ulving gathered his nerve. ”I don't want it in my car.”

”Well, it's in your car.”

”Where are we going to take it?”

”To your house.”

”We can't. My kids and my wife are there. But I've got a summerhouse in sgrdstrand. It's empty now. We can take it there.”

The man in the cap went along with the new plan. sgrdstrand was only a few miles away. He and Ulving drove off and hid their package in Ulving's summer house.

Ulving, exhausted, pleaded with the stranger. Couldn't he go home and take a shower and change his clothes?

Yes, he could. This was unexpected good news, the first conciliatory remark the stranger had made. Ulving drove home eagerly and entered his dark house. To his dismay, the man in the cap barged into the house behind him. Ulving walked into the bathroom and climbed into the shower. His ”guest” shoved the bathroom door open, then stood a yard from the shower, watching.