The Angel of Earth

by

Rodford Edmiston

Part Six

Melody arrived at the diner a bit early. The man the reporter was there to
meet was already waiting, but he was seated unobtrusively at the far end of
the counter, where he could see pretty much everything happening in the place.
Including who arrived. After Melody sat in the booth they had agreed on
beforehand he looked around carefully. Not in a paranoid, nervous way, but
casually, in the way of someone who knew what he was doing and who had good
reason to be careful. Satisfied she hadn't been followed, and wasn't being
watched, he joined her. The booth was in a back corner, with a good view of
the room and away from windows. During this slack time between the usual
periods for meals they had the place mostly to themselves.

"Mister..." said Melody, on a rising note. She pulled out her tablet and
surreptitiously set it to record, while pretending to rummage for her notebook
and pen in her voluminous purse.

"Call me the Recovery Agent," he said, quietly. He was average in height,
though he had a lean, athletic build. He appeared to be of Mediterranean or
Middle Eastern descent. He might simply be Caucasian with a good tan and a bit
of careful makeup. His English was London British with a middle-class accent,
though his vocabulary was a bit off for that. "Recoverer also works."

"All right, Recovery Agent," said Melody, with a slight smile. "There's only
one waitress on duty just now, so even with the lack of customers it will be a
while before she comes to get our orders. Let's start the interview while we
pretend to look at the menu. You somehow tracked down this lost painting..."

"It wasn't actually lost," he said, with a tired sigh. "The Nazis stole so
much, that people going through the voluminous, meticulous records they kept
are still making discoveries. I speak - and read - several languages, German
among them. I have an excellent memory and a knack for learning things. So
I've been able to help with several such cases. Anyway, a scholar I know who
has made a career of examining and organizing those old records contacted me
about this piece. We've worked together before.

"For the painting we're talking about, she found which high-ranking party
member had the winning bid in an auction of 'liberated art' which was held
after the fall of France. This event was a reward for their early party
support. I tracked that party member down. That was easy. He was still using
the same name and even proudly displaying his 'acquisitions' right up to his
death in the early Seventies. I discovered that his estate then quickly sold
most of the items which might be challenged, before the true provenance of
what was being sold could become public knowledge."

He stopped and smiled at the reporter, as the waitress approached. The pair
made their order - Melody making sure the waitress knew the meal was on the
reporter - and resumed after the younger woman left.

"Have you ever read or seen a movie version of The Maltese Falcon?"

"I take it from that remark that tracking down the location of the painting
subsequent to that estate sale was difficult," said Melody, dryly.

"This project took five years of work," said the man. "Oh, that was far from
the only thing I was doing during that period. Anyway, the last trace we could
find then was from the late Seventies. At that time the buyer was the oldest
son of a recently deceased, wealthy and influential Arab businessman. After
inheriting his father's estate, he went on several types of buying sprees to
celebrate getting control of the family wealth. By the time I confirmed that
the painting was still with that family he - the son and the last buyer of
record - had been dead for several years.

"Thinking, perhaps naively, that the family didn't know that the painting had
been stolen, I tried to contact them. They ignored me. I used several
different means, too, including getting the French museum which the Nazis had
stolen the painting from to send them a letter. Nothing."

"You might just have warned them," said Melody, who was familiar with similar
recovery efforts. "They could have sold it, or even destroyed it."

"Except that there are photos and videos of the family's luxurious homes made
since then. Some of which still show the subject painting. It wasn't in a
climate-controlled storage. There wasn't even glass over the painting. It
looked like it had obviously deteriorated, been badly restored, then allowed
to deteriorate again, since the last official photos, which were in the old
Nazi Party auction book. There were enough images I could even track the
changes through time, actually. Experts I spoke to said it was either beyond
easy restoration or soon would be."

"Ow," said Melody. "So, what was next? Legal action? I know there has been a
lot of that lately, but it is usually over things which have only gone missing
in the past few years. Stolen archeological items, and such."

"We did try working through government channels," said Recovery Agent. "That
is, the museum in France did. The Saudi family eventually - apparently feeling
the pressure - supplied documentation going back to the man who bought the
stolen painting at the Nazi auction. They claimed this provided the
provenance, and proved that the painting was legitimately purchased at every
step. Their stance was that it had been legally acquired by conquest, then
legally sold. They seemed to feel that settled the matter. The French
government was formally told by the Saudi Arabian government to stop pursuing
the matter."

"I don't imagine that went over too well in Paris," said Melody, dryly.

"Especially since the French government wasn't involved, except as an
intermediary. Anyway, that was when I decided to simply take it," said
Recoverer, in a matter-of-fact tone. "That wasn't very difficult. Their
security was good for a wealthy family home, but nothing like what you find in
a modern museum holding valuable art. I researched carefully, hired
trustworthy people, then performed the actual retrieval myself. We smuggled it
out of the country and took it straight back to the museum in France. They
were very appreciative. Even paid my expenses and gave me the reward they had
posted - and updated for inflation - since 1945, with little fuss."

"Then - few months later, after it had been professionally restored but
before it was put back on display - The Protectorate took it by force from the
museum," said Melody, trying to be neutral and failing. "Injuring several
staff members and patrons. Doing millions of Euros of infrastructure damage
and inestimable damage to other artworks in the process. As if that wasn't
enough, another branch of The Protectorate tracked you down to Brighton, where
you were taking a break with your wife and kids after another case, and
attacked you."

"They nearly killed me," said Recoverer, bitterly. "Ambushed me on a crowded
beach. They endangered my family! Hundreds of holiday goers were also put in
harm's way, dozens were hurt. If the police hadn't arrived quickly and chased
them off they probably would have killed me."

"There has been a major international diplomatic fuss over this," said
Melody. "I don't know if you've heard, but both Britain and France have both
filed formal charges against certain members of The Protectorate. So far the
US government is not only refusing to cooperate with Interpol, but claiming
the members of The Protectorate who are being charged were set up. That they
couldn't have committed such an assault and none of them were even in either
nation at the time. A different branch of the US government is
-contradictorily - saying the operation at the French museum was completely
legal since the painting had been stolen from the rightful owners and the
museum refused to even acknowledge this. As well as that the French government
had approved the operation! Finally, since that family got the painting back
they have been very, ah, grateful to The Protectorate."

"None of the political 'fuss' has changed things, of course," said Recoverer,
tone again carefully neutral. "Except that now the family have seriously
upgraded their security. Their primary attitude in this matter seems to be a
haughty, petty vindictiveness. They didn't really appreciate the painting
before, but now, well, if someone else wants it that badly they can't have
it!"

* * *

The crew in the cargo helicopter had been chosen for their loyalty to the
national government, as well as their reliability. This was not only
understandable, for the current mission it was necessary. Their assigned task
was to drop a barrel of explosives on a hospital, in an area held by enemy
forces. That the "enemy forces" claimed they were trying to liberate their
nation from a despot who had lost the previous two presidential elections was
irrelevant. That the building those in the helicopter were about to bomb was
the only significant source of medical care in the area was also irrelevant.
To those in the helicopter. Those on the ground had different opinions.
Unfortunately, they had few weapons. They watched in horror as the helicopter
hovered high over the building.

Those in the cargo compartment armed the fuse on the barrel bomb. They waited
until they were in a stable hover, high above the main building of the
hospital, then shoved it out the open doorway.

The barrel bomb exploded just below the helicopter.

The damage to the flying machine from the premature explosion was
significant. The pilot, seeing that indicators for both turbines were showing
immediate failure, used the last of their power to make a hard but survivable
landing in the hospital's parking lot.

The crew knew they were in trouble. They were down in enemy territory, with
little hope of rescue and only assault rifles and handguns for defense. Still,
they had those weapons and plenty of ammunition. With the rotor still spinning
down, the crew of the downed aircraft made ready to fight their way out of
enemy territory.

They never had the chance to even start the fight. Because it suddenly came
to them.

A literally screaming mob ran up while the soldiers in the helicopter were
still trying to recover from the impact of their forced landing. Before those
inside could exit, those outside had rolled the machine onto its side -
causing the still-spinning rotor to break into multiple, high-speed pieces -
and threw lit petrol bombs into it, through the open doorway. Only two of
those inside managed to leave the helicopter. Despite being armed, they were
literally torn to pieces by the mob before they could fire a single shot.

"We are so lucky that bomb detonated early," said one of the harried doctors
at the hospital, as he watched the helicopter burn from a second floor lounge
window.

"Not luck," said one of the orderlies, an older man who seemed perpetually
tired. "I saw an angel hurl a flaming spear at the bomb."

* * *

The massive ship cruised at high speed, crashing through the waves. Those had
been kicked up by the remnants of a storm the ship had bulled its way through
the night before. Now, the skies were propitiously clear, the winds dying
down.

El Presidente was proud of what his nation - what he - had accomplished.
Through multiple intermediaries, his country had purchased one of the last
true battleships remaining in the mothballed fleet of the so-called United
States. Completed too late for the Second World War, never used except for a
few shore bombardments in other conflicts, it had not been considered worth
preserving for historic reasons, and updating it for modern service was
politically untenable. For generations the huge ship was maintained in the
expectation that the huge - and hugely expensive - platform might be useful
for something. Eventually it was sold for scrap. To a legitimate business,
but one which was all too glad to get a lump sum for the nearly intact ship
instead of having to spend years cutting it apart.

The people of El Presidente's nation had been wealthy at the time of the
purchase, flush with oil money, and the diversion of funds had not even been
noticed. Neither had the diversion of the ship. Instead of being turned into
tools or car bodies, the massive vessel had been brought into a shipyard also
outside El Presidente's nation, to a facility long considered defunct, in
that same country. This one was also hungry for El Presidente's money. The
tools and skills there were appropriate for a ship of this age. In return for
funding to modernize that facility, the shipyard had performed the
refurbishment work on the battleship. Ammunition for the massive guns had been
acquired surreptitiously, also from legitimate companies which had purchased
the munitions for recycling. The original idea was to turn the battleship into
a powerful instrument of El Presidente's national defensive force, to
protect El Presidente's wealthy country from the depredations of others. The
work had almost been completed when the oil market crashed. Due in large part
to the mad energy-generating inventions of some empowered finally being
approved for adoption. El Presidente had made sure the battleship project
was carried through. He spent scarce funds intended for hunger relief to
ensure both that the work was completed and that those doing the work kept
quiet about it. As well as that the skeleton crew now on board was trained in
the operation of the archaic equipment.

He had forbidden adoption of those alternate-energy devices in his nation,
certain that oil would stage a comeback. It hadn't. Now his people were
starving, and he was being called upon to save them, with no money coming in.
Some were even saying El Presidente owed this to the people, that the hunger
and poverty were somehow his fault and he must help. The fools...

Well, he would have his revenge. All who had failed or betrayed him would
pay. They would be made to pay. The battleship was cruising under its own
power, with a full load of the fuel no-one else now wanted, far faster than
any freighter, and heading for one of the most important shipping lanes in the
Atlantic. He had already radioed his demands to the shipping authorities of
all the nations who were responsible for ruining his nation: Declare the
debts owed them null and void and put a trillion dollars into his country's
accounts or lose all their cargo ships in the Atlantic, along with what they
carried. There was no military force left on the Earth which could harm this
craft or stand against it, short of nuclear weapons, and they were too
cowardly to use those. Ordinary anti-ship missiles would barely scratch the
paint of such a mighty vessel, and the puny guns on modern warcraft were not
worthy of the term.

El Presidente stood smugly on the bridge, in the custom three-piece suit
which had been made for him only a few weeks before, something designed to his
specifications, to reflect his magnificence. Part of his smugness was the
knowledge that once the Americans and Europeans and Saudis capitulated and
wired the money, a large portion - in fact, most - of those funds would only
need a coded command from him to be forwarded to his personal Swiss accounts.
By the time anyone realized that his nation's coffers weren't reflecting the
amount they should, he'd be long gone. Once the deal was sealed, he would
leave the ship's captain in charge, with orders to return to home port to the
acclaim of millions, while he flew away in a seaplane, supposedly to finalize
the negotiations. All was ready for him to send that command then disappear,
to enter his well-earned retirement under a new identity. With, of course,
enough of the funds paid supposedly for the relief of his nation's debts and
food for hungry peasants diverted to keep him beyond wealthy for the rest of
his life.

He was daydreaming of how he would spend his long retirement in anonymous
luxury, when the battleship shuddered. El Presidente thought nothing of it.
He likewise took little notice of the sudden frantic activity of the bridge
crew. Taking care of any problems with the ship was their job, not his. He was
thrown painfully to the deck when the turret nearest the bridge exploded.

"Who did that?!" he demanded, and he hauled himself back to his feet. "I had
not authorized any activity of the guns! There was not even supposed to be any
ammunition in those, yet!"

There was likewise no crew in those turrets, yet, though that was not one of
his concerns.

The foremost turret likewise exploded. A huge blast from astern shortly after
told of the third turret meeting the same fate. All three were now obviously
out of action.

"What is going on?!" El Presidente demanded of the Captain.

"We're dead in the water! There were reports that the propellers had broken
off, letting the shafts spin free, then nothing! Now the power is off! All
over the ship!"

"Well... fix it! We have a rendezvous scheduled!"

Inexcusably, the Captain was not looking at El Presidente. In fact, none of
the bridge crew were. Outraged, El Presidente spun around to see what could
possibly be considered by them to be more important than him!

An angel hovered, its enormous, grey wings stroking the air slowly, stirring
the smoke rising from the ruin of the nearest turret. He gave El Presidente
a stern look, then vanished.