Florian's Gate (8 page)

The hall contained a fairly typical mixture of bidders for a second-level Christie's auction. A first-level, or major auction, was scheduled on an annual or semiannual basis, and attracted museum directors and gallery owners from across the globe; the type of person who would travel only if a ten million dollar-plus purchase was being considered.

Today, several yuppies up on long lunch breaks from the City were looking for bargain investments and eyeing the ladies. The number of yuppies at such auctions had dwindled rapidly as the banking industry had bit the bullet, let them go, and forced them to fill the local used-car market with their Porsches. There was one effeminate Arab with his boyfriend. Beside him was a rock star whose presence anywhere else would have caused a minor riot; here he was just another addition to the scene.

Two contingents of professional agents and gallery owners were present. The ones there for the long haul were seated and reserved and extremely attentive. Some held portable phones and smug expressions, announcing with silent satisfaction that they represented a confidential bidder. The second group congregated at the back of the hall, whispering quietly among themselves and offering cynical comments on the state of the market. They were around to bid on one specific item, or keep tabs on the market, or pretend that they needed to.
Their shops were generally second rate, their comments acid, their faces twisted by a determined effort to get the better of everyone.

Jeffrey preferred to sit up front. It gave him the feeling of being at the heart of the fray. He was not comfortable with the clubby atmosphere at the back. The way they offered their single token bid of the day, waving a casual hand and then turning away with a smile and a spiteful word when someone else bid higher, left him certain that they would taint the joy and the thrill and the genuine love he held for this new profession.

Today marked the eleventh time Jeffrey had offered pieces for sale, and the first time he was recognized by a number of the staff as he entered—including the auctioneer. The gentleman gave him a minutely correct smile and bow from the dais as Jeffrey settled himself. He found that just being recognized raised his stock a great deal. The women—and there were many of them, most of them beautiful—watched him with a speculative eye.

Along the side wall, beginning close to the auctioneer's dais, ran a long table holding thirty phones. Telephone sales assistants discreetly came and went, depending on which languages were required by the bidders who had requested calls in advance of a particular sale.

Even after eleven visits it remained incredible to Jeffrey how fast the whole business moved. Bids were entered at the rate of over six a minute. The auctioneer handled the crowd with a surgeon's precision, squeezing the price up at an electric speed, his crisp politeness never slipping.

After several further paintings by artists Jeffrey had never heard of before, his own picture came up—a Musin boat scene. Even before the auctioneer's attention moved from the register where he noted the previous sale, Jeffrey's heart was racing. All fourteen standing telephone assistants were immediately on the phone, some handling two or even three lines and in as many languages.

“And lot fifteen, an exceptional Musin,” the auctioneer chanted, looking around and spotting the assistant with his hand in the air. “Ah, thank you very much. Showing at the back wall, being pointed out to you. Lot fifteen. Starting the bidding at fifteen thousand pounds. Fifteen thousand is offered. Seventeen thousand.”

After the opening bid was accepted, a price already bid was rarely mentioned. The exception was when the auctioneer chose to identify the bidder and place him or her momentarily in the spotlight. Otherwise attention was immediately drawn on to the next upward move by pointing to the bidder and then stating only the next asking price.

“Sixteen thousand. Seventeen thousand. Eighteen thousand. Twenty thousand. Twenty-two thousand. Twenty-four thousand pounds. It's with you at the very back, madam, at twenty-four thousand. Twenty-six thousand. Thirty thousand.”

The next bid increment was set by the auctioneer and offered as a statement, not a question. Never a question. There was no doubt in his voice, no hesitation shown as the size of the jump increased as the bidding price escalated.

“Thirty thousand, thank you. Thirty-two thousand. Thirty-five thousand. Thirty-eight thousand. Thirty-eight thousand pounds. The bidding now stands at thirty-eight thousand pounds.”

Initially the bidding was fast and furious and came from all over the room. At thirty thousand pounds the storm abated, and at thirty-five there was a moment's hesitation. The lead bid came from a gallery owner named Sarah, with whom Jeffrey had placed several works. From the light in the woman's eyes, it was clear she knew she was walking away with a steal. Thirty-five thousand pounds for such a painting was a rare bargain, caused by the recession that had wreaked random havoc throughout the art world.

“Thirty-eight thousand. Am I bid thirty-eight thousand.
Ah, thank you, bid from the phone for thirty-eight thousand. Forty thousand.”

A new opponent had appeared, an invisible bidder whose presence was announced by a heretofore silent telephone operator raising one hand and accepting the thirty-eight thousand bid. Jeffrey watched the gallery owner's excitement turn to brassy defiance. Sarah accepted the forty thousand bid with an angry gesture. The auctioneer recognized the beginning of a battle with a smugly satisfied smile.

“Forty-two thousand. Forty-five thousand. Forty-eight thousand. Fifty thousand. Fifty-five thousand. Sixty thousand. Sixty-five thousand. Seventy thousand pounds.”

A light hum rose from the room as the bids began rising at increments of about eight thousand dollars. Sarah continued to make counter-offers with furious jerky gestures of her card. The card had a number, assigned to her prior to the auction's start, and was utilized by habitual buyers to both ensure no confusion over purchases and reduce the need to be identified and fill out forms while the next lot was being offered. The steely grip with which the gallery owner continually thrust her card upward gave her fingers the look of talons locked in a death grip.

The young lady manning the phone read the newly accepted bid-value from the computer board, and relayed it into the telephone with a voice pitched too low for Jeffrey to catch the language she spoke. With each new bid from Sarah and subsequent price-rise offered by the auctioneer, she would whisper, wait, then lift her eyes and nod to the waiting auctioneer.

“Ninety-five thousand.” Another pause, this one from the gallery owner. Jeffrey kept his hands still by clenching the auction catalog in his lap. “Ninety-five thousand against you at the back. Thank you, madam. One hundred thousand. Am I bid one hundred thousand pounds. Yes, from the telephone. One hundred and five thousand. At the back one hundred and five thousand pounds is bid. One hundred and ten thousand.
One hundred and ten, thank you. One hundred and fifteen, yes, thank you, madam. One hundred and fifteen is bid at the back. One hundred and twenty thousand pounds.”

The telephone assistant spoke the bid, waited.

“Am I bid one hundred and twenty thousand pounds.”

The girl spoke again, waited, then looked up and shook her head with an apologetic smile. The entire room finally took a breath.

“A valiant try,” the auctioneer said to the telephone assistant. Then with a smack of his gavel he said, “Sold for one hundred and fifteen thousand pounds to you, madam. Buyer one-eight,” he intoned as he wrote, naming the number on Sarah's card. “Congratulations, madam. A lovely acquisition.”

The sale had taken less than three minutes.

Jeffrey raced up the stairs to the larger auction hall, where last week's furniture sale had taken place. The assistant chief of their furniture division was a young man by the name of Trevor with a decidedly Oxbridge accent. He brightened immensely at Jeffrey's arrival.

“Ah excellent, excellent. Mr. Sinclair, may I take this opportunity to introduce Professor Halbmeier from Bonn.”

The man did not offer his hand. “I would like to know where you obtained this piece.”

“I don't know,” Jeffrey replied, bridling at his tone. “And if I did I wouldn't tell you.”

“Yes, well, perhaps we might just have a look at it ourselves, shall we?” Trevor exposed a bland peacemaking smile to all and sundry. “The professor was just telling me that he was not familiar with the item.”

“How could I be? There was no record of anything from the Kaiser's palace having survived.”

“Yes, it must be quite a shock. Shall we?” He drew the professor over, ran a hand along the top, said, “This is actually something we sold last week, as I told you on the phone.”

“That remains to be seen,” the professor replied ominously.

“Yes, well.” Trevor cleared his throat. “In any case, it's by perhaps the greatest German cabinet maker, certainly the greatest neoclassic cabinet maker, a fellow by the name of Johann Gottlieb Fiedler. There are very,
very
few pieces by him still around. Wars and such, you know. Bombs tend to have a rather lasting effect on wood.

“So far as we know, there are three pieces by Fiedler in Berlin, one in the Wallace collection, and this particular piece that literally sprang to life before our very noses. Quite a bit of conjecture about where this one came from. Gave our verifications people quite a time, I don't mind telling you.

“What's most interesting about it is the top, of course,” the young man went on. He ran a casual hand across a fitted stone block that had been made to sit on the chest's upper surface as though growing from it. Its face was a geometric mosaic, designed from hundreds of thousands of tiny multicolored flecks of marble.

“A lot of these are marbles that haven't been known since antiquity. We think many of them were probably carved out of ancient columns, but our people have been able to come up with absolutely nothing certain. Quite frustrating, really. This bit in the center appears to be one piece, perhaps lifted from some early Roman vessel, and the rest was then designed around it. But it's all conjecture.”

The mixture of colors on the face was almost psychedelic—rich hues belonging more to semiprecious stones than to modern marble.

“In any case, we do know that it was made around 1780,” the young man continued. “Most probably for the Crown Prince of Prussia, Friedrich Wilhelm. The precise date hinges around whether one thinks he was arrogant enough to have it made before his uncle the Kaiser died.”

The German official was not taking all this very well. In fact, he appeared to be building up a full head of steam.

“Our man said the fellow positively wouldn't have dared
commission it unless he was already the Kaiser,” Trevor blithely continued. “It was just so grand, you see. And there was no evidence that his uncle ever owned such a piece. It would have been a real case of one-upmanship, something he certainly couldn't have afforded until the crown was already in his grubby little hands.”

Trevor was too caught up in the tale to realize the effect his words were having on the bulbous gentleman beside him, who had begun to take on the shape and rigidity of a beached blowfish.

“At first we actually thought the top might have been put on in England. It was just the sort of thing the early nineteenth-century English grand tourers might have done, you see. They'd been in Italy, we thought, and bought themselves this magnificent top, and then either had this bottom handy or puttered around the Continent until they came upon a piece that would fit it. But then we decided the two pieces were set together too snugly to have been made separately, and also the top's thickness suggests that it was actually designed by a German craftsman.”

The man made a sound like a strangled bulldog. Trevor missed it, having bent over to roll out one of the drawers, and went on. “As you can see, there are three central concave-fronted drawers set on the most remarkable roller system. Feels light as a feather, but I would imagine each must weigh close on a hundred pounds. Solid as a rock. Immaculate construction, really. The frieze here is in walnut, but so heavily inlaid it is difficult to tell in places. The waved apron here is also heavily gilded, remarkable work. Scrolled legs, all hand carved. The gilded bronze flanking the corners here was a way of framing the work, of course. Must have been spectacular when it was new. These lion-faced handles here are a bit of a mystery, I must say. The only parts that we don't think were actually made in Prussia. In fact, they were probably bought by mail order, such as it was at the time, from England. The English were masters at the art of making these lion masks.”

Despite the gentleman's growing fury, Jeffrey could not help but become caught up in the specialist's enthusiasm. “How can you be so sure that it was not done by the duke?”

“Simply because it is the grandest of its type.” In contrast to many of his fellow antique specialists, Trevor clearly relished having someone around who shared his fascination. “He was a real style leader, this chap the crown prince. And the king, you see, his uncle, was never really interested in the whole subject. When Crown Prince Friedrich then became Kaiser, he carried his involvement along with him. Stayed right at the center of the whole style thing throughout his reign. Even retained this fellow Fiedler as his own personal cabinet maker. That of course doesn't mean his furniture was all Fiedler did, but it does make it highly unlikely that he would risk challenging his uncle in such a way before rising to the top of the heap, as it were.”

The gentleman demanded, “How did it come to be here?”

“Well, there you are,” Trevor replied eagerly. “The thing about all such articles is that with time they become unfashionable. This particular item was eventually given to the Russian ambassador, that much we've been able to piece together from the archives in Germany. It was later sold by his widow, some thirty years after. By then, of course, it had become so unfashionable it was probably used to store dirty laundry in some minor bedroom of their secondary palace.”