Free The Girl With the Botticelli Eyes by Herbert Lieberman

series of thirteen which had never before been exhibited as a group. This was to be virtually the series debut before the public. He had to admit that, from all appearances, the odds were greatly against his ever getting his hands on the missing three.
    He had spoken that day to the Interpol people at St. Cloud, telling them what he’d learned from von Marie, the art-thefts-division head in Berlin. They discussed the German’s belief that the thief or thieves had been Italian, possibly Corsican, and part of some quasi-military organization with vague connections to the loosely knit, nearly extinct Italian Neo-Fascist party. The people at St. Cloud had listened politely but were not impressed.
    All the while he spoke of the theft of the three Chigi sketches in Leipzig, she remained perfectly silent. But slowly, the drowsy eyes widened and grew alert.
    “This organization …” she interrupted.
    “I don’t say it’s an organization that’s behind it. The Germans do. It could just as well be some solitary malcontent full of personal grievances and working out his own agenda for redress. I rather tend to that theory myself.”
    Her brow arched. “Agenda for what?”
    “Social change, perhaps. I don’t know. It could be anything.”
    “Murder, theft, the mutilation of priceless masterpieces—that doesn’t sound like just anything.” Wine had punctured some of her reserve. “It sounds too planned, orchestrated, carefully worked out. Tell me, what did the Germans learn?”
    “Nothing.” He refilled her wineglass. “Moreover, several of their own people who’d traced the drawings to Corsica and then Rome subsequently disappeared.”
    “And so?”
    “Nothing,” he said again, tight-lipped, reluctant to go on. “The Germans lost interest or, what’s more probable, funding to carry on the search. They just gave up.”
    She picked idly at her salad. “There are groups like that still around, you know.”
    “Groups?”
    “Neofascists—little cells of them. Squadre d’Azione, Ordine Nuovo, and Avanguardia Nazionale. Men like Almirante and Pino Rauti. Elitists. They live in the past, these people. They want all foreigners out of Italy. They swagger about in black shirts and wear pistols on their hips. They blow up public buildings, railroad terminals, labor union headquarters. Italy for the Italians, that sort of thing.”
    “Where do they get their funds? Who finances them?”
    “There are some very wealthy people in Italy who would have preferred to see the war go the other way—industrialists, aristocrats, even some intellectuals. You’d be surprised at some of the names. People who wouldn’t be caught dead in the presence of such riffraff as the Squadre d’Azione but who subscribe on the sly to their agenda.”
    Manship scoffed. “But they were around in the sixties and seventies, making bombs and conducting domestic sabotage. They’re mostly gone now.”
    “Mostly,” she agreed. “Even hate dies without some encouragement. But you’re right—most of the big neofascist groups are gone. Yet there are still stubborn little pockets of them left over from the war. Their numbers are minuscule. Only the die-hard lunatics have held on. But they’re the most dangerous, the zealots.”
    Manship slowly twirled the stem of his wineglass between two fingers. “I understand all that. But what I still fail to grasp is what possible interest such groups would have in Renaissance paintings.”
    “It’s not money, if that’s what you’re thinking. They don’t steal these works of art with the intention of selling them for great sums of money. That’s not their game.”
    “Then what is?”
    She gazed up at the ceiling as if organizing her thoughts. “These people are xenophobic. They see themselves as heirs of Caesar, and Italy still as the Roman Empire before Charlemagne. These paintings are Italy’s greatest heritage, its claim to the greatness of its past. When Squadre d’Azione steal such