The American swallowed hard and then shook the Assessor’s proffered hand. “Good afternoon, Your Eminence.”

“Please call me Neils,” Braun said, knowing how Americans loved, familiarity. “After all we’re just colleagues working on the same problem here.”

Braun saw the stress lines ease from the American’s face, watched the shoulders relax and the rigidness fade from his chest and knees. Good, good, the Assessor thought to himself. Setting people at ease was the first step to controlling them.

“If you say so… Neils.” The American smiled awkwardly in the face of a man who might well become Pope.

“Then come on in out of this heat.” The two bodyguards merged with the darkness behind them as Braun stood to one side and motioned the American to come in.

After a short walk up two flights of stairs and down a plain, dimly lit hallway, the American found himself settled into a brocade armchair, sitting across an elegant mahogany desk from Braun. The American squinted against the bright light flooding through the window behind the cardinal. Bars guarded the window even here on the third floor.

“Please tell me what you learned in Zurich,” Braun said without further preamble.

“Well—” The American cleared his throat. ‘To be very concise: Max is dead, the woman art broker is missing, and so are all of the paintings from Kreuzlingen.”

“The Stahl painting?”

The American shook his head. “Nowhere to be found.”

Braun frowned. “Your investigations have indicated who is responsible.”

“Not definitively.”

“But you have a… best guess?”

The American nodded. “It has all the footprints of the Russian mob, most likely with the cooperation of some of their people inside the KGB.” He thought about this for a moment. “Or it could be the other way around. The extensiveness of the corruption makes it hard to determine who is actually in command.”

“And for what reason?”

“For the money, the foreign exchange. The collection is priceless. I wouldn’t be surprised if it had the sanction of the Kremlin. Hard currency is hard currency.”

The cardinal nodded. “We have seen much of this since the collapse of the old Soviet Union and the monetary crises that have followed on its heels. Many of those who tried to assassinate me during that bad old time are still dying.”

The American wanted to ask the obvious follow-up question, but he held his tongue instead.

“Zhirinovsky,” Braun answered the American’s unspoken question. “He and his ultranationalist thugs would like to see me out of the way for the same reasons that Khruschev and Andropov did.”

Again, the American held his silence, waiting for an answer that did not come this time. Instead, the cardinal swiveled his chair a quarter turn and gazed upward for a long moment at a carved ivory crucifix on the wall. After a long sigh, he turned back to face the American.

“There are things that you must know in order to help us further,” Braun said. “These are things you may find deeply unsettling in your own spiritual life. They are unpleasant and troubling, but if you are willing to shoulder the responsibility of the truth I will tell you, you will be in a position to perform enormous service to your church.”