“What happened then is anybody’s guess. The Soviets never turned over the museum pieces to the joint commission on missing and stolen art. Some of them have resurfaced since, but it is conceivable that the gold of Troy is still thriftily stored away in a Kremlin vault. It may have been lost or destroyed during the journey east. A group of those untutored laddies from the steppes may have smashed it to fragments in the boyish exuberance of victory. They wouldn’t have realized its value—”

“There is another possibility,” I said. “Someone may have got to it before the Russians did. Someone who did know its value. In all that pandemonium, he could have smuggled it out of the building and out of the city. It didn’t bulk that large. Schliemann bundled the whole lot into his wife’s shawl when he removed it from the excavation.”

“Anything is possible,” John said. He thought for a second and then added, “Almost anything. See here, Vicky, there are a number of points about that scenario of yours that make my hackles rise. Why was the photograph sent to you? Why didn’t the sender give you more information? Your advertisement was a wee bit misleading, you know. Black Michael and Rupert of Hentzau may not be hiding in the woodshed, but something nasty is; the bloodstain you described didn’t come from a cut finger. If the sender is still alive, why hasn’t he communicated with you?”

“He could have had an accident.”

“Tripped on a cobblestone and cut himself on a beer tin,” said John in his most disagreeable voice. “And some kindly passerby found the envelope and posted it?”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” I said. “First you tell me there’s no evidence and then you imply—”

“That the only evidence is bloody,” John said poetically. “Either way, I don’t like it.”

“Then you’re not interested?”

“No.”

The flat finality of his refusal caught me unawares. I stared at him, disconcerted and surprised; he shifted uneasily and turned away. “Give it up, Vicky. You’re wasting your time.”

“Just tell me one thing. Are there any rumors in the art underworld about the Trojan gold?”

“I have severed my connections with that ambiance,” John said primly. “I am leading a life of quiet, honest—”

“Sure you are. That’s why you’re in disguise—why you keep looking nervously in rearview mirrors, why you are so astonishingly well informed about the Battle of Berlin and the architecture of the Tiergarten bunker.”

“Oooh, what an evil, suspicious mind you have,” John murmured. “I know a lot about a lot of things, my dear.”

“Military history is not your specialty. Would you care to swear on something sacred to you—your own precious hide for example—that your interest in the gold of Troy has not been recently reawakened by some of those rumors I mentioned?”

“You cut me to the quick.” John pressed his hand against his presumably aching heart and gave me a soulful look. “In order to dispel your suspicions and restore that perfect amity that should mark our relationship, I will make a clean breast of it. I owe the information to my dear old dad.”