Page 35 of Don't Look Back

“Have you been direct with her, about why you’re here?”

“It isn’t really any of her business.”

He wanted to argue that point, given the assistance Freya was giving him, but Kira was right. Kira hadn’t asked for FMVs or even his help. She owed them nothing.

“Will you tell me? Please?”

She nodded.

He wondered if she’d ask him to not report back to Freya what he’d learned and was relieved when she launched into the story without making demands. “I’m here for the same reason as my dad. He had a contact in Malta helping him with his never-ending quest to find art seized by Nazis during World War II—art in general, but also his stepfather’s family’s lost art.”

“Is your family Jewish?”

She shook her head. “My mother wasn’t, and while there might be some Jewish ancestry on my father’s side, I’ve only been able to confirm my paternal step-grandfather’s Jewish heritage.” She shrugged. “My parents weren’t religious, but we celebrated Santa Claus. Mom grew up in East Germany but I’m pretty sure she was born in Russia. I believe her father was someone important, and the Communist Party sent him and his family to East Germany after the war.”

“Pretty sure. Andbelieve?”

“My mom never talked about her childhood. I know she was fluent in German and Russian—she did Russian translation work for my father sometimes, but she refused to teach me Russian.”

“You speak German, though?”

She nodded.

Remembering her conversation with the waiter, he asked, “How many languages do you speak?”

“English, of course. German, Italian, Greek.” She ticked off each language on a finger, then held up her whole hand. “Plus, I can read Latin.”

He could see why she’d be a valuable asset to Friday Morning Valkyries. When he’d first met Kira, she’d come across as deeply shy, but when she was in her element, she blossomed. He’d seen that again in the classroom on Tuesday.

Here, she wasn’t that shy woman at all. She was confidence and sparkle.

He had to force himself to return to the subject at hand, which was disconcerting. He was an operator, and this, unfortunately, was a mission, not a date.

“So you don’t know if your mother had Jewish ancestry?”

“I don’t think so, but it’s possible. All I know for certain is her childhood religion was communism, which meant she was delighted to participate in American Christmas traditions. She loved all the lights and decorations.”

She sipped her wine, then continued. “But back to the original question. My paternal grandparents immigrated to the US right after World War II. They settled in Pennsylvania, and my dad—their only child—was born in 1951. After his father died in the mid-seventies, his mom returned to West Germany and a few years later remarried. My dad ended up doing postdoc work at a university there. According to my newfound cousin, it was so he could spend time with his mom and get to know his new stepfather and stepbrother.

“Naturally, with his studies being in art history, his stepfather shared the stories of the art his family had for generations that had been stolen by the Nazis. He asked my father to look for it. My father accepted the challenge and spent the last decades of his life not just searching for the Stoltz family art, but also other art that went into Russian hands at the end of the war.”

“And your father had a contact here, in Malta?”

“It’s all a bit vague, but my father received letters. I don’t know where the correspondent lives, but I think Malta was the meet point, given my father’s frequent trips here. The last letter, received before he had his first stroke, made it sound like the Stoltz family art might have been located and they needed to meet.

“I think…I think the man my father corresponded with for over thirty years is Russian, which fits with what we know about the art that remains missing after all these years. The Soviets kept the art they found in Nazi stockpiles after the war. It was probably gifted to their best generals, who later morphed into oligarchs after the fall of the Soviet Union. This person, if their communist ties go back far enough, could know where all those magnificent pieces went.”

ChapterSeventeen

Arush of nervousness shot through Kira as she waited for Rand’s reaction. She didn’t need to hear skepticism or doubt. She didn’t need to hear him say she was too emotionally invested in this to be logical, or something else that belittled her knowledge and expertise.

“You think your father’s contact is a Russian oligarch who lives in Malta?”

Kira released her pent-up breath. He didn’t voice doubt. Just a pertinent question.

She cleared her throat. Pertinent, but not easy. “That’s where things get…murky. It’s true that many Communist Party leaders became oligarchs in the decade that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. In 2014, Malta started a ‘golden passport’ program—pay a certain amount, invest a certain amount, and have resident status in the country for a year—and you too can become a Maltese citizen, with a European Union passport. Mind you, you don’t have to actuallylivein Malta for those twelve months. You just need residentstatus. The price has fluctuated and is currently down due to severe limits on the program thanks to concern from other EU countries. But the end result is Malta has become a haven for oligarchs who want to get their money and base of operations out of an increasingly unstable Russia.

“The government has sold thousands of passports and it’s estimated they’ve raised more than a billion dollars. But for me, this means I’ve got a lot of oligarchs to wade through. A list of new citizens is part of the public record, but I don’t have time to sort through them all. So I figured I’d start with the art connection. Hence the gallery tonight.”

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