Chapter 23 - The Virgin with Daisies

Two sleeping pills and a tall glass of warm milk later, Khushi attempted to sleep. ASR was furiously banging away on his keyboard seated next to her on the bed as she watched his worried face. A sudden surge of affection filled her when she realized she could count on him, no matter what. The rest of her world was in tatters.

Garima had tried calling her. News of Payal’s arrest reached them within minutes, sending Garima and Sasi into frenzied search for a good lawyer. Garima appealed to Khushi to let her know that she was safe and asked for forgiveness on Payal’s behalf. Khushi wanted to forget the episode had ever happened and if she could will it away, she would have. But the stark duplicity shocked her gentle nerves.

ASR pored through the email from Akash and Avni. The serial numbers from Sabres were not merely factory order numbers. Avni, the expert in WW2 cryptography, had deciphered the numbers using the Enigma cryptography made popular by Germans during the WW2 era. The numbers had translated themselves to a ditty that made no sense to ASR. He read the ditty many times over, but it did not manifest into anything he had ever heard or learned. 

“Khushi, do you know what this ditty could mean?” he asked.

Silence.

He noted that she had finally managed to fall asleep. The decoding of the ditty will need to wait.

At that moment, the door bell rang, shaking ASR from his deep thoughts. Who could it be at this hour?

*****

“NK! What are you doing here?”

“Can I come in, before I freeze to death?” NK’s apologetic eyes sought comfort.

“Come in.” ASR stepped aside letting him in.

“What brings you here?” ASR was curt and the tone of rudeness showed his bitterness of not being part of the crux of the Sabres case. 

“Look, I need to explain to you why you were not told about anything. But do you mind pouring me a drink first?” NK urged as he took off his winter jacket and gloves.

“Sure”

ASR brought two whiskey glasses with golden liquid and handed one to NK. Making light of the tension between them, NK joked, “Ah! I see you’ve graduated to Scotch. No more bourbon!”

“I don’t like masqueraders and fakers.” ASR’s blunt rebuttal cleared any delusions for NK.

“ASR, don’t make it more difficult than it already is. I was specifically told by Kevin not to involve you in any of this. We knew there was a mole. I suspected it was Gitu, but when I found out that she works for the CIA, we found ourselves in the midst of our bosses in both agencies embroiled in turf wars and power struggle. It took a lot of negotiations and back and forth before we could reach a working plan. Gitu and I were under a lot of pressure, we could not have shared anything.”

NK paused before continuing, “In any case, I am off the case and so is Gitu. We’ve both tendered our resignations.”

“Why? You don’t have to feel guilty for doing your jobs.”

“Its not guilt. We don’t want to live with uncertainty and our jobs looming over heads.”

ASR raised one eyebrow not quite comprehending where this was headed.

“We are in love, ASR. I proposed and she accepted.” NK clarified with a short smile.

“Wow! When were you planning to tell me?”

“You’re the first to know.”

“Wow! Congratulations. While the world burns all around you, you go on with your life like nothing happened. The master minds behind Sabres are still out there somewhere, Kevin is only too happy to close the case and my best friend and partner is getting married. I feel…I don’t know what I feel.” ASR stood up shaking his head.

“We have the Sabres, we have the guys who were after Khushi and we have the snitch. I think it’s a good day’s work ASR. We will never completely infiltrate the mafia or get to the root of the organization, they are just too many. You know they will lie low for a while now, leaving us no leads. This case is dormant at best for as long as I can see.” NK reasoned.

“Fuck! Dormant? Nothing’s dormant! Khushi’s life is still in danger and unless we find out what those Sabres meant to the mafia, she’s never safe.”

ASR debated whether he should talk about the decryption of serial numbers on Sabres, he decided against it.

He suddenly recalled the final missing piece of the puzzle - the Sabre tooth tiger and the serial number on it. He could not let NK know that he was still in hot pursuit of the case. He could not let anyone know. It was best to let the world think the case was over. It was safer for Khushi if the mafia thought the FBI had left them alone.

It was time to visit the Isaacson bungalow to fit the final piece of puzzle.

*****

“Coffee?” Khushi offered as ASR trudged through the kitchen, the scotch from the previous still wreaking havoc on his temper.

“Thanks!” he leaned over and kissed her cheek. The domestic scene was so appealing he could almost feel it becoming part of his daily routine. He would welcome the day.

“What did NK have to say?” she asked over the steaming cup. Her eyes had sunk into hollows more than ever.

“He came to apologize on behalf of Gitu and him. They are quitting their jobs and getting married.”

“Hmm, that’s good. They are good together.” she noted, “I hope it’s not because of guilt. I mean, I am mad at Gitu for not telling me that she was undercover, but, it’s a job I guess. And I can understand that.”

“This is not over, Khushi. We still don’t know who master minded the operations. By the way, I have something for you.” He opened the drawer next to his laptop table and handed out a piece of paper to her.

“Does any of this make sense to you?”

She read the paper a few times and shook her head.

“It seems like a short ditty. Where is this from?”

“My cryptographer friends decrypted it from the serial numbers on the Sabres.” He offered.

Khushi read the poem out loud in an attempt to decipher the meaning

“Coveted by fair maidens for purity

Peeking from window sills dusted country

Curvy paths seer through crimson virginity

Count me daisies in ones, fours, and fives and twenty

Blue vases caress your plentiful bounty  

Ne’er shan’t we forget the ones in blue dainty

 Oh lovely virgin with daisies, thee of eternal beauty”

“A poem on daisies?” Khushi asked quizzically, “ I wish they didn’t write riddles. It would be infinitely more easy if they just told us what those dratted numbers meant!” she sounded exasperated as she threw herself on the sofa.

“Its some sort of code. A code to something. I wish we had the document on Saber Tooth tiger from Isaacson. I am sure the final clue lies in the sculpture.”

The two of them sat quietly, ruminating over their options as the silence in the room descended portending gloom. ASR began clearing days old newspapers from the coffee table to save his sanity when the nondescript file folder caught his attention.

He picked it from the pile and a yellow sticky on the cover drew his attention

“A parting gift from Gitu and me - NK”

Curious, he opened the file and almost shouted with joy.

“Hallelujah! Praise the lord!” he exulted with naked excitement. Khushi got up startled and rushed to his side.

The two of them peered into the file and neither could contain the rush of adrenalin.

ASR roughly swiped the coffee table off all papers and tchotchkes, and carefully laid the file on the table. Khushi crushed his arm unable to control her reaction. The two sat down and lifted the first piece of paper.

“Sabre Tooth Tiger – A 3D study”

A series of pictures followed and one caught their attention. The picture showed the bottom of the sculpture and the words engraved on it.”

“Schwab, Circa 1919, Wupperal, Germany” ASR read it emphasizing each word and repeated for effect. “Do you know what that means?”

“Schwab is my mother’s last name, so this must belong to her. But she wasn’t born in 1919, so it could be one of her…I mean, my ancestors. The year 1919 seems important. It could be the year of birth or some important event that happened in that year. Wupperal could be the place where Schwab family belonged to. All guesses.”

“Pretty good guesses. The name, year and place are definitely connected. We can do an internet search to see how.” He decided.

Khushi sprang to reach for the laptop and handed it to him. His fingers barely kept steady as he typed the words, Schwab, 1919 Wupperal, Germany, into the search window.

Khushi shut her eyes tight. She was afraid to find out what secrets would reveal with this final piece of the jigsaw puzzle.

When ASR did not say anything ominous, she peeked into the laptop. He was reading through the search results and one item caught his attention. He clicked on it.

A page opened to the Kunsthaus Zurich, Museum. ASR browsed the site to open the links that led them to collections within the museum.

Fauvism, Cubism, Dadaism and Modernism post World War 1
Featured Artists (in alphabetical order) 

ASR clicked on S and a name immediately caught his attention

Schwab, Circa 1919, The Virgin with Daisies (Jungfrau mit Gänseblümchen)

“Gänseblümchen?” Khushi rubbed her forehead.

“Isn’t that German for Daisies?” he asked.

“The Virgin with Daisies!! Just like the poem says, oh lovely virgin with daisies, of eternal beauty! I think we found the answer ASR!” she was ecstatic.

“But what does it mean? Virgin with Daisies, what does it really mean?”
He clicked on the name and an entire section with details of the painting opened with the following description.

Artist: Jakub Schwab (b.1893 – d.unknown) of Wupperal, Germany.

The painting is an abstract, in the most temporal representation of Cubist artistic movement of 1910s. The painting depicts the nude of a woman, purportedly the Virgin, with a blue vase painted in brusque strokes, resting on a nearby window sill. The vase is full of daisies painted in 3D blocks of white and yellow. Out of the window one can see a curvy path of red soil parting in the middle, two abstract fields of daisies, further allusion to the impending loss of virginity of the nude maiden. The painting was commissioned by his fiancé, Salome in 1919, in honor of their impending wedding. The virgin is believed to be in the likeness of his future bride. The painter is known for erotic expressions and symbolism with spectacular details and master brush work evoking different planar shadows when viewed from different positions.

Jakub was a scion of a local business family with means at his disposal. He painted as a hobby, heavily influenced by his peers of the era, the likes of Picasso, and Braque. Jakub’s paintings were featured prominently in Wupperal art museums. However, the family fell into hard times as the WWII approached. Their immense wealth and belongings were stolen or forcibly confiscated by the ruling party of Germany, The Nazis. Jakub’s rich cache of paintings were confiscated, auctioned or simply stolen by the influential members of the party. The family escaped Wupperal using the large underground network of sympathizers in 1939 and that was the last anyone had heard of them.

The Virgin with Daisies resurfaced in Zurich in 1960 when a private collector traced the provenance of the painting back to the Schwab family. The painting was donated to the museum that year and has stayed in our possession ever since. Many attempts were made to locate the heirs of the Schwab family but the museum has thus far failed to find the rightful owners. The museum considers the painting a generous loan until a time its rightful owner is found. The whereabouts of other Schwab paintings are unknown at this time. Jakub Schwab paintings are considered worth in the neighborhood of $500K to a million apiece.

Khushi was silent, unsure of what to say.

ASR finally broke the silence, “Wow! Khushi, your great great grand dad was one helluva rich guy!”

“And horny too!” she added poker faced.