Templar 09 - Secret of the Templars by Paul Christopher

Both had been furniture manufacturers and had a fondness for antiquities. They decided to consolidate their interests and leave the dreary ledgers and tolling bells of the insurance business to establish the firm of auctioneers that still bore their name.
    Since the establishment of Blackthorn and Cole coincided with the huge speculative losses in the American land bubble and the resulting crisis in the British monetary system, the two men had no difficulty finding antiquities. Blackthorn coinedwhat was to become the firm’s dark and unwritten motto: “We prosper on the desperate tears and broken dreams of others.”
    Apparently, while they prospered on other people’s desperate situations, they developed a long-standing reputation for discretion. If anyone employed by the firm was ever caught whispering about the sudden sale of a duke’s gold-plated candelabras, for instance, he was immediately terminated. Rumor and gossip had no place at Blackthorn and Cole.
    With the rise of Hitler and the blossoming of the Third Reich, their respective grandsons saw the handwriting on the wall and an opportunity to prosper even more. David Blackthorn arrived in New York in late 1934 and immediately purchased a large plain brownstone office building on Madison Avenue. From 1934 to 1941 Blackthorn’s representatives began purchasing from a variety of auctions and sales in Switzerland, France and Germany. Most of what they purchased either had been from Jewish dealers fleeing and trying to liquidate their inventory or had been outright plundered by Hitler’s Rosenberg brigades. Tens of millions of dollars exchanged hands. Buying almost up to America’s entrance into the war in December 1942, the New Yorkdivision shipped out the last purchases within a few days of the attack on Pearl Harbor.
    When the shipments arrived, they had nothing more than coded labels on the crates containing the paintings, sculptures and other precious objects. They disappeared into the basement storage rooms of the building on Madison Avenue and did not appear on any inventory lists. The artworks simply ceased to exist.
    Shortly after the arrival of the last shipment, Michael Cole left England on a Swissair diplomatic flight to Lisbon. He then took a Pan American flying boat to New York, stopping once to refuel in Bermuda. Cole and Blackthorn greeted each other at the LaGuardia Marine Air Terminal. They shook hands warmly, but the sadness in their expressions told the true story: they had plundered the past and defiled a people to mortgage their own future. Both men felt like grave robbers, which was exactly what they turned out to be.
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    Holliday, Lazarus and Kruger traveled south to Madison, where they dropped the minivan in one of the university parking lots and took an Amtrak bus to Chicago. From there they took the LakeShore Limited into New York and got a room at the Fifty-seventh Street Holiday Inn. With the stolen minivan and a dead body behind them, traveling by bus and train offered the smallest security risk. At the hotel, Doc Holliday used one of his inexhaustible credit cards and paid for all three rooms.
    Late the next morning they stood at the hot dog stand in front of the Whitney Museum.
    â€œHow do we approach this?” Holliday asked.
    â€œI called after breakfast and asked for Rupert Sheridan. It turns out he’s one of their top appraisers,” Lazarus said. “I told him I had a Rubens I wanted to sell and asked if he’d give me some help. He said that as long as we sold it through Blackthorn and Cole he’d have no problem. We have a meeting in five minutes.”
    â€œWhat do we do while you’re having your meeting?” Holliday asked. “I thought there might be some shock value in confronting him with Hannah.”
    â€œI’m the copier, remember?” Lazarus said. “We keep Hannah in reserve. Bring her in now and they’ll just shut down