She held him off, but it took some effort. “You’d better give him some of your beer before he grabs the bottle out of your hand, and tell me the rest of the story!”
He tipped the bottle toward the Agár’s eager jaws. Natalie barely registered an inward cringe as pale gold lager slopped in all directions. Duke dropped the empty bottle on the floor and was scooting it across the oak planks to extract the last drops when Dom launched into a detailed account.
“We hit the villa before Lagy had left for the bank. When Czernek showed him the search warrant, he wouldn’t let us proceed until his high-priced lawyer arrived on the scene.”
“Did Lagy recognize you?”
“Oh, yeah. He made some crack about the newspaper stories, but I could tell the fact that a St. Sebastian had showed up at his door with an armed squad made him nervous. Especially when I flashed my Interpol credentials.”
“Then what happened?”
“We cooled our heels until his lawyer showed up. Bastard had the nerve to play lord of the manor and offer us all coffee.”
“Which you accepted,” she guessed, all too mindful of the Hungarian passion for the brew.
“Which we accepted,” he confirmed. “By the time his lawyer arrived, though, we’d all had our fill of acting polite. His attorney tried to posture and bluff, but folded like an accordion when Czernek waved the search warrant under his nose. Apparently he’d gotten crosswise of this particular judge before and knew he couldn’t fast-talk his client out of this one. Then,” Dom said with savage satisfaction, “we tore the villa apart. Imagine our surprise when infrared imaging detected a vault hidden behind a false wall in Lagy’s study.”
When he paused to pop the cap on the second bottle, Natalie groaned in sheer frustration.
“Don’t you dare drink that before you tell me what was in the vault!”
“See for yourself.” Shifting her on his lap, he jammed a hand in the pocket of his jeans and extracted a folded printout. “That’s just a preliminary inventory. Each piece has to be examined and authenticated by a team of experts.”
Her hands shaking with excitement, Natalie unfolded the printout and skimmed the fourteen entries.
“Omigod!”
The list read like a who’s who of the art world. Edgar Degas. Josef Grassi. Thomas Gainsborough. And there, close to the bottom, Giovanni Canaletto.
“Did you see the Canaletto?” she asked breathlessly. “Is it the one from Karlenburgh Castle?”
“Looked like it to me.”
“I can’t believe it!”
“Lagy couldn’t, either, when Czernek called for a team to crate up his precious paintings and take them in evidence.”
She skimmed the list again, stunned by its variety and richness. “How incredible that he managed to amass such an extensive collection. It must be worth hundreds of millions.”
“He may have acquired some of it through legitimate channels. As for the rest…” Dom’s jaw hardened. “I’m guessing he inherited many of those paintings from his grandfather. Karlenburgh Castle wasn’t the only residence destroyed in retribution for their owners’ participation in the ’56 Uprising. Mladshij Lejtenant Lagy’s company of sappers would have been only too eager help take them down. God knows how many treasures the bastards managed to appropriate for themselves in the process.”
Natalie slumped against his chest and devoured the brief descriptions of the paintings removed from Lagy’s villa. Several she recognized immediately from Interpol’s database of lost or stolen art. Others she would need more detail on before she could be sure.
“This,” she said, excitement still singing through her veins, “is going make a fantastic final chapter in Sarah’s book. Her editors will eat up the personal angle. A painting purchased for a young duchess, then lost for decades. The hunt by the duchess’s granddaughter for the missing masterpiece. The raid that recovered it, which just happened to include the current Grand Duke.”
“Let’s not forget the part you played in the drama.”
“I’m just the research assistant. You St. Sebastians are the star players.”
“You’re not ‘just’ anything, Natushka.”
To emphasize the point, he tugged on her hair and tilted her head back for a long, hard kiss. Neither of them held back, taking and giving in both a welcome release of tension and celebration.
Natalie was riding high when Dom raised his head. “I can’t wait to tell Sarah about this. And the duchess! When do you think her painting will be returned to her?”