Silken Whispers: Casefile: The Yemeni Proposal

SILKEN WHISPERS

CASEFILE: THE YEMENI PROPOSAL

By LC Schwartz

Smashwords Edition

Published by: LC Schwartz on Smashwords

Cover art by: LC Schwartz

Silken Whispers — Casefile: The Yemeni Proposal

Copyright © 2015 by LC Schwartz

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This book is a work of fiction. The characters are productions of the author's imagination and used fictitiously.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter I - Midnight in the Gallery

Chapter II - The Cliffhanger

Chapter III - The Painting and the Library

Chapter IV - An Interesting Proposal

Chapter V - From the Shadows

Chapter VI - The Morning After

Chapter VII - The Hindenburg

Chapter VIII - Death over the High Seas

Chapter IX - Truth-tellings

Chapter X - Symbols

Chapter XI - The Third Reich

Chapter XII - Midnight Rendezvous

Chapter XIII - The Orient Express

Chapter XIV - The Morning After

Chapter XV - Eye Spy

Chapter I

Midnight in the Gallery

Sylvia: Hello, my darling. Are you ready to add to our memoirs?

Interviewer: Of course, Ms. Havenwood. You and Ms. Nixon always tell such fantastical tales.

Sylvia: And you always have such adorable scepticism.

Interviewer: I think you mock me, Ms. Havenwood.

Sylvia: Not at all, my love. As we have discussed. I merely appreciate your candor and diligence. You would forgive me if I do poke a little at you. Yes?

Interviewer: Of course. I would be remiss in my duties by not allowing you and Ms. Nixon to have your fun. Where would you like to start?

Sylvia: Well. After our retreat from Chicago, there is little to speak of beyond some minor work, and petty thievery.

Interviewer: Petty thievery?

Sylvia: Shush please. I am recounting a tale, my darling.

Interviewer: Of course, my apologies.

Sylvia: As I mentioned, there is little to speak of... until Philadelphia.

Tuesday, 7 July, 1936 – 23:48

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, United States

The shadows of the galleries ripple with the reverberating echoes of cracking gunshots. Bullets pound into the walls, blowing through the thin material; or glance loudly off the unfinished would-be tiled floor and leaving behind shattered ceramic.

Amidst the hail of deadly lead, a lithe feminine figure sprints through the unfinished halls. Her booted feet thump hard against the bare floor with body jolting impacts that propel her faster away from the platoon of guards swarming through the darkness behind her.

The museum is mostly unlit, leaving spots of light between chasms of darkness — yet not quite dark enough to shelter the fleeing woman.

The guards yell at her to stop, which she plainly ignores.

The ones with the drawn pistols try desperately to bring the ducking redhead low with a bullet or two through her irritatingly quick and agile body.

Welsh bounds bodily over work-horses and ducks under low-hanging ‘temporary’ support beams as she careens through the East Wing of the future museum of art.

Silently she is thankful for the National Firearms Act that regulated the sale of automatic weapons two years earlier — elsewise she is certain some of these gun-happy guardians of art and antiquities would be hauling around Tommy guns in readied defense of brazen thievery and gangster hooliganism. She highly doubts the museum would approve of automatic weaponry inside its walls, but you never know with the American love of rat-tat-tat guns. And she is certain she’d now be perforated with heavy slugs along with the half-completed gallery walls she passes at a sprint.

The Great Depression fully hit the United States shortly after her and Sylvia’s escape from Chicago. But their new Canadian haven was no sanctuary from the same economic hardships as the northern nation quickly followed its cousin into destitution.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is a poignant echo of the nation’s troubles. A grand idea that soon ran afoul of limited funds, leaving the vast interior largely unfinished. Still some effort to maintain their status as a museum gallery with hastily erected displays being offered for viewing to the public.

Welsh just brazenly looted one of these galleries — an act that made the guards so adamant in their pursuit.

Yet they seem more concerned with stopping her flight than protecting the painting she holds tightly under her arm. Even though the art is shielded by a canvas bag custom made to fit the painting snugly, it wouldn’t do a thing against a bullet.

I hate you so much right now, Syl, she hisses under her breath as she rounds a corner and springs off a wall.

The guards, their shots wild with their own pursuit, have been unable to hit the ducking and weaving cat-burglar as she cuts through the doorways of empty galleries scattered with the forgotten tools of the displaced workmen.

Welsh laughs brazenly at their ineptitude, taunting them.

The threat of the bullets winging past her is muted by her own sense of invulnerability — until one clips her shoulder, tearing through the knitted fabric of her dark sweater.

The sudden sharp agony causes her to yelp. The shock stumbles her, sending her into a tumble across the floor of one of the outer galleries. She rolls onto her shoulders. A stab of intense pain from the wound shoots through her body and causes her vision to swirl. She uses the momentum of her forward tumble to roll off her knees and back onto her feet.

But the delay cost her dearly.

The guards are on her. Her delay let them to catch up and close in around her.

Seeing her escape cut off, Welsh snatches up a hammer left forgotten on a nearby workbench.

She waves it around as the guards block any openings for flight.

Welsh puts her back to the outer wall of the gallery. Large windows let in the meager light of the financially beleaguered city outside. Though she could easily fit through, the windows are two storeys above the museum’s cultivated gardens. Any attempted leap from them would most certainly result in broken bones.

The guards’ angry faces glare back at her in the golden glow of the city’s lamps.

Holding the hammer out in front of her to ward off the guards, Welsh keeps them at bay.

Nowhere to run, girly, one of the guards says — the one most annoyed by her intrusion as he was doing so well in the poker game when the patrol caught sight of her entry. Best you come along now nice and quiet like.

Or what? Welsh says with a slight sneer in voice. Since she’s stopped running, the pistol holders are disinclined to plug her with lead. But if she tried to bolt, they would have her dead to rights. The other three guards wave their Billy clubs back at her.

Seven of you big boys against one little old me. Afraid of the five foot Scot terror? Fuckin’ chickenshits.

The lead guard narrows his eyes. You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you.

Ya, I do, she says with a slight grin.

But he distracted her.

She got too caught up in mocking him that one of the other guards sees a chance to get in close to her with his club.

Alarmed, she takes a swipe at him. But the work dust in the unfinished gallery and the sweat of her hands makes the handle slippery. The hammer slips from her grasp with the force of her swing and smashes through the window behind her. Her makeshift weapon shatters the glass panes with a loud crash and vanishes outside.

Ah, fuck me, she curses, watching the bits of glass and her hammer fall to the ground two storeys below. The guards laugh.

Put the dumb broad down, the leader growls.

One of the men comes at her. He swings high — but recoils violently from a lightning quick foot to the groin. With the same raised foot, she drives her heel into the chest of his buddy to the side.

Using the impact of the heavy man as a springboard, she launches herself at the broken window.

She tucks in her head, hunching over to protect the painting as the weight of her small body bursts through the remaining glass and frame. She tumbles and flips out into the air some thirty feet above the gardens below.

Her body straightens. Using the flat plane of the painting as an air stabilizer; she directs her feet towards the ground.

The guards yell from behind her. Some even try a hopeless shot or two at the falling figure.

The ground comes up fast. She yelps as she hits the lawn. Jolts of pain shoot up her legs and back. She ducks herself into a tumble. Her wounded shoulder screams at her against the impact with the ground. Bullets dig into the dirt around her tumbling body.

Coming up onto her feet, she throws herself bodily into the nearby brush.

More bullets smash through the ornate bushes. Random shots range in on where she vanished. Silence follows as they lose sight of her in the dense sculpted foliage.

With the momentary peace, Welsh catches her breath. She takes stock of her wounded shoulder. The bullet pierced her sweater, and bit a few fractions of an inch into the flesh beneath it.

The wound stings, though she can already feel the tingles as her body repairs the blemish by re-assuming its form prior to her death in Chicago.

After spending a few moments to catch her breath under the cover of the foliage shadows, she hears shouted commands down at ground level. She shifts in her hidden alcove to peer over the bushes. From around the nearby east wing a trio of guards with flashlights come running down the open plaza. Another trio comes out of the west entrance at the back to swing around to the east of the gardens in hopes of cutting off her flight.

Oh, fuck you, she mutters.

She slides the strap of the canvas painting bag over her head and across her chest, securing the painting on her back.

With the art out of the way, she quickly moves off while keeping herself low.

Welsh opts to head southeast at an angle to the open concourse that leads up to the museum. The concourse is bathed in electric lights and she would spotted instantly if she tried to cross that — even though her predetermined rendezvous lies on the other side of the open ground at the double-decker Callowhill Street Bridge.

The original plan was to meet with her partner at the bridge for a pickup after she ducked out a side exit of the West Wing. When the job went sideways from the late guard patrol she was forced up a floor and over to the East Wing instead.

Welsh angles her flight to run parallel to the open concourse. She uses the thick hedging as cover. The parkway to the south is not far and still busy with traffic even at this hour. She figures she might be able to use the traffic and pedestrians as shelter to duck over and still make her scheduled rendezvous.

Last thing she needs is Silk worrying over her like she’s a troublesome child. She’ll never hear the end of it if