The Cézanne Chase (14 page)

On the day after she met Edwin Llewellyn at Christie's, Astrid Haraldsen had flown to Boston for a visit to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, where she had presented herself as a photojournalist with ties to major Scandinavian newspapers. She had been given a press pass and a packet of information that described each artist and every one of the 116 pieces of art in the exhibition. Astrid was, in fact, an adequate photographer, having learned about cameras and lenses during the year she studied interior design at the Kunst Og Handverks Hoyskole in Oslo. She had other skills. Peder had taught her the importance of time and place, drilling into her how essential it was for her to be familiar with distances, steps and elevators, the location of phones and lavatories, and how each was equipped and lighted. “Know where you must go and how you get there so well that you can do it in the dark,” he had told her. Again she covered the distance from the large reception hall to Cézanne's self-portrait, and again checked the precise number of steps from the top of the
grand staircase (forty-three) to the entrance to the French Impressionists gallery. The painting had not been moved nor had a sheet of Plexiglas been put over it, as some had speculated. It was as before, fully exposed and vulnerable.

Astrid's first visit to the museum had been on a hot August day when she and Peder had driven to Boston from New York. It was during the six-hour drive that Peder had told her of his contract to destroy self-portraits by Cézanne in St. Petersburg, London, and Boston. She remembered how he enthusiastically described the new solvent he had compounded and how the chemicals worked through the layers of lacquer into the paint. It was during that same visit when they learned of the exhibition of New England artists and that a gala reception had been scheduled for the evening before the show opened to the public. It was then that Peder conceived a plan for Astrid to follow.

Peder's own plans had changed drastically in the six weeks since their visit to the Boston Museum. Astrid felt there had been too many changes, too many dangerous changes. Her reserves of nervous energy ran low too often, and she frequently dipped into the supply of medications Peder had put together for her. She had started with a small dose of amphetamine, but within four days she had doubled the dosage and had persuaded a doctor in a walk-up office on East 14th Street to replace her Valium prescription, the one she had “carelessly left behind in Norway.” More recently she was alternating the amphetamine with 10 mg tablets of Valium, and though she was aware there could be serious consequences, she was quickly drawn into a whirlpool of highs and lows, allowing the drugs to twist her mood and spirit.

Now, ten days later, she found that it was taking an extraordinary effort to prepare for the mission. She was careful to darken her makeup and eyebrows and comb the hair of the brown wig so that it looked very much to be her own. She wore pants and a jacket on which she pinned her press badge.

Her camera equipment had been rented from a dealer on Lexington Avenue and consisted of two Nikon bodies, a choice of lenses, high-speed Ecktachrome, and 1000-speed black-and-white film. An accessory bag contained it all plus a flash attachment, a notepad, and, in separate compartments, a pen-sized flashlight and an aerosol can with a hair-spray label.

The reception began at 6:30. There were two bars and two tables of food. There were no speeches, and word quickly spread that the
former president would be unable to attend, but that his wife was on her way down from their summer home. Guests arrived and were served drinks in plastic cups, and those who wandered into the galleries wandered back to wait for the celebrities.

Astrid ordered a vodka and soda and drank it quickly. It burned the back of her throat and made her cough, but she asked for another and drank it more carefully, wanting badly to feel heat in her stomach and the feeling of calm the alcohol would give her. She wanted desperately to level out the fear that was beginning to build inside her.

The reception and special exhibition galleries were on the main floor, and the bars and food tables were in a long gallery that regularly held paintings loosely categorized as American Modern. The VIP party would enter the west wing. Astrid took a position at the bottom of the staircase that led up to the collection of European paintings. The noise generated by several hundred people became a persistent buzz that was punctuated by high-pitched laughs and occasional shouts of friends greeting friends. Then a quiet came over those nearest the west entrance, and a hush rolled over the entire assemblage.

Astrid climbed a few steps and focused her camera on the figure at the leading edge of the group entering the hall. The former First Lady wore a bright blue dress, a strand of pearls, and a flattering tan that contrasted with her white hair. She was flanked by Chauncey Eaton plus a half dozen of his associates and a single secret service agent. Astrid continued taking pictures and, after each click of the camera, moved a step higher. When the attention of the guests was squarely on the honored guest, Astrid turned and ran quickly up the remaining steps to the second floor.

She was in the William Koch gallery, a long, narrow room illuminated by small ceiling lights. They cast soft shadows and reached only dimly into the display galleries that were at each end. She stood at the entrance to the darkened gallery that contained the French Impressionists. She stepped off fifteen paces, then turned to her left and took out the flashlight from the camera bag. She stood absolutely still, hearing the music and hum from several hundred patrons of the arts rising from the floor below, listening to her own heavy breathing. Astrid flicked on the light, and it shone straight ahead onto the portrait Cézanne had painted of himself in 1898. The artist, then nearing sixty, was wearing a floppy beret, his white beard neatly trimmed. Then she took the can of hairspray
from the camera bag—SofTouch was the name on the label—and took off its cover. She stepped closer to the painting.

She paused, hearing a saxophone playing music programmed for the gray-haired, deep-pocket crowd. She held up the can unsteadily and aimed the spray nozzle at the artist 's forehead. Her fingers tightened.

A woman's voice called out in a frightened whisper. “Eddy? Eddy, where are you?” Astrid dropped the flashlight then quickly retrieved it and turned it off. She knelt on the floor, frozen in place.

“Damn it, Eddy. It's dark. I'm scared.”

Then a man's voice. “For Christ's sake, Shirley, what're you doing up here?”

Excited words were exchanged, then a scampering of feet, and the couple disappeared.

Astrid got back on her feet, turned on the flashlight and held the can up again. “Do it!” she said in a low, hoarse whisper. “Do it and get out of here!”

Seconds went by ... a half a minute. She stood as if transfixed by a power flowing off the canvas. Then she cried, and her arms fell to her side. She dropped to her knees and sobbed. She cried out of fear that Peder would be furiously disappointed, and she cried with relief that she had not sprayed the devastating liquid over the painting.

She covered the spray can and slipped it into the camera bag, then went back through the tapestry gallery. Ahead was the staircase that led down to the first floor, and at the top were two men wearing the uniform of the museum's security staff. She continued past them, busy again with her camera, seeming intent on getting an unusual shot of the guests below. But her heart was pounding, and she cared only about escaping into the night air.

She ran, nearly stumbling as she went to her car and got inside. Then an awful feeling of nausea came over her, and she opened the door, turned and vomited onto the gravel. Finally she was able to stand and lean against the car and breathe in the cool air. And let the tears flow. Peder might punish her and hurt her, but the agony of the decision that had been plaguing her for so long was finally over. That had been pain enough.

She drove to Logan Airport and was on the midnight shuttle to La Guardia.

I
nformation concerning the destruction of each self-portrait had flowed into Interpol World Headquarters in Lyon, France. Details varied from the most reliable in the instance of the “smoke and burn” case in London's National Gallery, to the sketchy and obtuse reports from the police in St. Petersburg, which had been made more confusing by the heavy hand of a new police regime in Moscow. Data that related to the “Bletchingly Incident” (subtitled Pinkster Gallery) had been supplied by the Surrey Police as well as Scotland Yard, and each were vying in a territorial dispute for ultimate investigative responsibility. Usually if the Yard wanted to win such bureaucratic infighting, it would. However well or poorly the information had been gathered, all of it was eventually submitted to the appropriate National Central Bureau (NCB) in each country and sent to the receiving unit of the Secretariat General at Interpol.

From Interpol, following the processing of incoming information, an all points bulletin (APB) was generally telecommunicated worldwide by Interpol's Notices Group. The APB was short on details, promising additional information in a Stolen Art/Cultural Property Notice due to be faxed the following morning. It was, in Interpol jargon, a Blue Notice, which both gave and asked for information on a specific crime or criminal. A Red Notice urged capture and arrest, frequently followed by extradition procedures. Interpol's Notices Group also issued Green, Yellow, Orange, and Black Notices, each designed to disseminate or request information on a range of international crimes.

Now, Tuesday morning, Ann Browley had arrived at her customarily early hour and had gone routinely to the Information Section and made copies of all incoming communications relating to the Cézanne investigation, which, on this morning, numbered two. One message was for her; the other a copy of the APB, which had been received over Scotland Yard's secure lines to Interpol and the FBI in Washington.
She then looked for Jack Oxby, only to learn that he too had arrived early, had also checked into IS, and had gone off. When Ann finally reached her office, she found a note taped conspicuously to her chair. The message elicited a wry smile.

Westminster Abbey had opened to the rush of tour groups, and Oxby had earlier followed a familiar route to an obscure door off the Dean's Yard, rung the bell, and was admitted into the south nave.

Jack Oxby was most likely the only person in London who knew that the ghosts of the great men memorialized in Westminster Abbey met regularly for spirited debates on the condition of man, or about the state of the arts, or about politics, or, the women in their lives. He sometimes took one of his problems to the Poets Corner where he selected one or two of the minds best suited to whatever was nagging at him. Of course, it was Oxby who played all the roles, arguing strenuously with himself at times, and all the while focusing his thoughts in such a way that he was often able to see through whatever problem he was dealing with and arrive at a solution.

As he looked up to the crypts and plaques that commemorated the great men, Oxby thought of Ruskin's high moral passion for fine art and Henry James's probing insights into the intricacies of the human character. He was alone and spoke aloud, as if the great men were sitting across from him. He posed his questions then imagined their replies. The exercise was, in fact, the working over of his own thoughts, impregnated with fresh insights. It was a serious form of meditation, and it was hard work. After an hour he went to his favorite seat in the choir, where he filled a half dozen pages with facts and speculations, and from these he began to shape a hypothesis that, while riddled with too many assumptions, became a specific and tangible approach to the investigation.

Oxby was certain that the burning of the self-portraits was meant to shock the art world, yet there might be an even greater purpose. But what could that be? And who was behind it? What kind of person could do it? His eyes were closed, his concentration on the range of possible reasons for the attack on Cézanne's self-portraits. Revenge,
money, notoriety—it could be one or all or none. Or it could simply be the work of a deranged mind.

He knew from Interpol's reports that all the self-portraits had been destroyed by the same powerful solvent, but no other circumstance, fact, clue, or hint of motive was common to the three incidents. A tour group visited the Pinkster Gallery. A smoking briefcase camouflaged the act of destruction in the National Gallery, and only wild assumptions had come in from the investigators in St. Petersburg.

“Three paintings are gone,” he said aloud. “The Hermitage, the National Gallery, the Pinkster. No pattern to that, or is there and I'm missing it?” He repeated the unanswerable refrain: “Why Cézanne's self-portraits?”

In the afternoon he was scheduled to receive Nigel Jones's report on the chemicals recovered from the remains of the National Gallery and Pinkster portraits. Then there would be time with Ann Browley when he would learn of her progress in the search for sources of diisopropyl fluorophosphate, though he was not expecting much hard information so early in the hunt. Jimmy Murratore's report on Clarence Boggs's gambling history was due.

Oxby stepped down from the choir, turned to the high altar, nodded respectfully, then exited through the door he had entered and set out on Victoria Street. His office in New Scotland Yard had a single window that looked out on a sliver of St. James Park four long London blocks away. There was a desk, two side chairs, a file cabinet, and a cork board, on which were pinned routine office memos, assorted notes, newspaper clippings, and photographs. He put his briefcase on his desk and began unloading an armful of books that included John Rewald's
Paul Cézanne
and Lionello Venturi's catalogue of the artist's paintings. He looked up to find Ann Browley in the doorway, a worried expression showing clearly on her pretty face.