The Cézanne Chase (2 page)

His small but powerful binoculars slowly panned across the rows of standees and stopped at a tall woman wearing a strand of pearls and a brightly colored handerchief placed carefully in the breast pocket of her tailored, pale gray suit. He caught her leafing through her catalogue, and then, suddenly, she raised her eyes and looked directly toward him. The binoculars had brought her so close it seemed
Llewellyn could touch her. Blonde hair was combed back under a wide-brimmed hat that framed her face, and the bright lights made her pale skin seem nearly white and created soft shadows beneath her prominent cheekbones. The tip of her tongue moistened her lips, which parted into a smile, and at that moment he felt as if he had been caught peeking. He reacted with an embarrassed grin, then he extended two fingers upward and made a sort of friendly wave.

The auction began. Eighteen unimportant paintings were put up in the first twenty minutes, each one selling quickly as the auctioneer repeated the bids in a singsong chant accompanied by “do I hear more,” then finally announcing the paddle number of the winning bidder. Then came the Pontormo. Llewellyn served on the museums's acquisition committee and joined the majority who opposed any effort to acquire the large portrait. His reason was arbitrary. Old Masters bored him, and the young man in the portrait looked inbred and arrogant; and besides, it didn't matter how he or his committee felt about the Pontormo. Gerald Bontannomo, Director of the Metropolitan, listened to but rarely accepted advice on major acquisitions.

The bidding opened at $20 million. Even to Llewellyn, who showed a practiced nonchalance toward money, it was a vastly unreasonable sum. Within two minutes it was more unreasonable. By twenty-eight million there were three bidders, at thirty, there were two. The Getty Museum's representative was in the room competing against an anonymous telephone bidder.

Quickly the bidding rose to thirty-five million. At $35.2 million it was over, and the Getty Museum was the new owner;
Halberdier
would remain in the United States. A dozen more unimportant works were hammered down, including an inferior painting by Pieter Brueghel that mildly interested Llewellyn as a purely speculative play. It was a game. If he could sneak by with a low bid, he would take it, wait a year and then sell it. He stopped raising his paddle when the bidding reached and stopped at a half million dollars, and he heard the auctioneer quietly call pass. It was a no-sale, the painting had been “bought-in.” Obvious to Llewellyn and a few others, the reserve had not been met, and Christie's had entered and accepted its own bid. How much didn't matter, as no money would trade hands. The gallery thinned to a hard core of dealers and agents looking for a bargain.

Llewellyn remained seated while he made notes in the catalogue. This had become a ritual, and he had accumulated several dozen catalogues filled with prices paid for important works, along with his observations on the bidding strategies of the top dealers. When he got to his feet there were but a half dozen lingerers, including the blonde in the gray suit.

As he walked near her she said with a slightly accented voice, “I'm sorry you did not get the Brueghel.”

Llewellyn stopped. He stood an even six feet, yet she was about as tall as he. “I was looking for a bargain. It sold two years ago for nearly as much.”

“Are you Mr. Llewellyn?” she asked.

“I am. But I don't believe I know your name.” He said it in a way that suggested it was possible they had met before.

“I am Astrid Haraldsen, and I apologize if I seem to be—” she made a gesture as if searching for the right word—“if I am being forward.”

Llewellyn smiled—a warm smile emphasized by brown eyes that were happy, too. He looked distinguished in his blue blazer and shock of gray hair. He was deeply tanned, the result of a week with old friends on Jupiter Island in Florida.

“Do you come to these things regularly?”

“I am beginning to. But mostly I go to the smaller auctions.”

“Do you collect?” Llewellyn was enjoying the fact he had been picked from the crowd.

“It's too expensive.” She looked down to the catalogue she had been rolling and unrolling. “I am a designer. Of interiors,” she added quickly. “I look for special items for my clients.”

“There wasn't much here today. Awful stuff, I thought.” Then he said, “The Doyle Galleries would have better choices for you.”

Her eyes came up to his for the first time. “I wanted to meet you.”

“How nice.” He smiled a little shyly. “How very nice.”

For the instant when she looked directly into his eyes he felt as if she possessed an inner power, a nearly hypnotic influence. Certainly he felt sexually aroused. But her eyes strayed off and those feelings subsided.

Llewellyn guessed correctly. She was Scandinavian. Probably resolute, too. “Do you have a card?”

In fact she had several cards in her hand, ready to pass them on if
asked. “I have a presentation of my work. I would like to show it to you.”

He looked at her card on which she had written the Westbury Hotel. “I like your address, we're practically neighbors.”

She smiled, “I'm looking for a sublease. The hotel is very expensive.”

By this time Llewellyn had made a more complete evaluation of Astrid Haraldsen. Her suit was silk, probably a Giorgio Armani; the salmon-colored blouse had expensive detailing; and her shoes were in the three-hundred-dollar range. She used makeup effectively, highlighting her cheeks and making her lips appear fuller. She hadn't fussed with eye liner and mascara, preferring only to accent the full brows that arched over the pale blue eyes he had noted when he first trained his binoculars on her. She had a good nose, which meant it wasn't a bad one, and probably in Llewellyn's mind not her best feature. Her perfume, Shalimar he thought, was one he liked.

After an awkward pause, he said, “Now that we've met, what can I do for you?”

“Help me to get an assignment. Perhaps a friend, or your own apartment.” She hesitated briefly, then said quietly, “Because I am new and need references, I will not charge a fee.”

She wasn't wasting any time, he thought. “I have friends at McMillan. You might find an opening there.”

“I have worked with the finest designers in Norway and Denmark. And a very good one in London.”

“Call me in a week,” he said. “I'll see what I can do.”

“I won't disappoint you.” She turned her eyes to meet his. “Thank you.”

It happened again. In that brief exchange, Llewellyn felt that she had exuded some sort of extraordinary energy. She turned and walked toward the door leading out from the auction room. He watched her, his smile still in place. He added great legs to the inventory he had made.

At the door Llewellyn was met by a short man blessed with a marvelous voice and bright eyes that lit up a small, round face. “Who's your friend?”

Llewellyn showed one of Astrid's cards. “New York's newest interior decorator drumming up business. Interested?”

“She's too tall. We'd never see eye to eye.” The short man laughed. He was Harvey Duncan, director of Christie's Impressionist and
Modern Paintings Department. “What did you think of the Pontoromo?”

“Not a great deal,” Llewellyn replied. “Not worth what the Getty paid.”

“Agreed,” Harvey said. The brightness in his eyes suddenly faded. “I've been waiting to give you a piece of bad news we received from our Moscow agent this morning. The media's not in on it yet.” He moved closer to Llewellyn. “The Cézanne self-portrait in the Hermitage was destroyed.”

“Destroyed!C Llewellyn said incredulously. “How in God's name did that happen?”

“Not sure.” Harvey shrugged. “We havn't received a complete report, but we think it was sprayed with some kind of acid. Whatever it was, the painting's a complete ruin.”

Llewellyn stared past Harvey Duncan to the small stage, where minutes earlier a painting, to his mind of no great consequence, had sold for $35 million. “Any idea who did it?”

Harvey shook his small, round head. “No. But I suggest you tighten up security around that collection of yours. You act as if all you had were a few old copies of the
National Geographic
.”

In fact, Llewellyn had inherited a collection of paintings. The star among them was a self-portrait by Cézanne. His grandfather had bought it from Cézanne's agent Ambroise Vollard in 1903. The others were the work of run-of-the-mill artists and together were worth a fraction of the value of the Cézanne. He had acquired other paintings, each one valuable, all by Americans except one by Marc Fortin, a Canadian.

“No one gets past Fraser, and I've got triple locks everywhere,” Llewellyn said triumphantly. “And then there's Clyde.” Fraser was a combination handy man, cook, and family retainer, and Clyde was a Norwich terrier with a marked proclivity for barking at the slightest provocation.

Harvey replied wryly, “Yes, of course, there's Clyde.” He looked up at Llewellyn, his eyes now showing deep concern. “We're friends, Lew, and I don't want anything to happen to you or your painting, but THOMAS SWAN Rembrandt's
Night Watch
a few weeks ago. Fast work and a layer of lacquer saved it.”

Harvey gave Llewellyn a firm, yet friendly pat on the shoulder. “They're mad, some of them. And people get hurt.”

O
n Tuesday the 13, shortly before noon in the National Gallery off London's Trafalgar Square, the miniature pagers carried by security personnel emitted an irregular beeping sound that meant an emergency condition existed and commanded all guards to report immediately to their duty stations.

In the corridor off Gallery A an attaché case had burned furiously, throwing off thick, black smoke. It had caused hysteria among the visitors, particularly the crowds in rooms where the smoke had reached. The beeping of the pagers had been joined by fire alarms sounding throughout the great old structure. Foam was needed, and a crew arrived to smother the stubborn blaze and put out a row of fans to blow away the dirty, foul-smelling air. Though nearly all of it had been reduced to black ash, the attaché case was surprisingly recognizable, its metal lock and hinges intact. Someone had scooped the remains into a plastic bag.

The entire floor had been evacuated as a team from the security department began their investigation, and the curatorial staff made a room-by-room assessment of the damage. The smoke had been cleared within an hour, and the only apparent damage had been a burned scar on the wood flooring and a fine layer of soot that settled over several nearby pictures. The incident was put down as one of those bizarre and troubling affairs and most likely an accident caused by someone too embarrassed to explain what happened.

By two o'clock the gallery had been reopened, and soon after, at 2:15 according to the records, a young Australian couple had informed the guard in Gallery A that something was wrong with one of the paintings, a small Cézanne self-portrait, one that the artist had painted of himself without a hat, looking dead-even at the viewer. The paint had begun to dissolve, and splotches of foam the size of large coins were spotted over the canvas. Tiny wisps of what seemed to be smoke escaped from the foam, and a sharp, sour odor surrounded the picture.
The painting had been rushed to the conservator's laboratory where it had been bathed in mineral oil and the action of the acid halted. But all efforts to save it were too late.

There were no clues, nor had there been a warning or letter or even an irrational phone call. Bottom line: No one claimed responsibility, yet it was obvious that the smoking briefcase had been a diversion and had quite admirably served the purpose of emptying the gallery of visitors and security personnel.

The incident had been reported in the morning tabloids, and one speculative writer with the
Sunday Sport
had gratuitously given the destroyed painting a value of $29 million. Another suggested an investigation into the Gallery's security system was long overdue. The
Guardian
's headline escalated the affair to the level of a national disgrace, and an editorial in the
Times
concluded, “... there is much to explain concerning the woefully inadequate, if not complete absence of, proper surveillance and security. We have lost a national treasure.”

On the following morning, the director of the National Gallery, Sir Anthony Canfield, K.B.E., convened a meeting at ten o'clock. In attendance were three chief supervising security managers; the guard assigned to Gallery A; plus guards from the adjacent galleries, corridors, and all entrances to the building. A Miss Cook took verbatim notes. Also present was Elliott Heston, Commander of Operations Command Group—OCG—under which was the Arts and Antiques Squad, Metropolitan Police. The director of security, a curiously private man named Evan Tippett, was attending a conference in California. He had been reached by phone and given preliminary details of the painting's destruction. He had asked several questions, then directed that a full report be on his desk when he returned.

Elliott Heston focused on what he considered to be the most intriguing question: “Why a Cézanne self-portrait? Any thoughts on that?”

“I haven't a clue,” Canfield replied, “but whoever's up to this horrible mischief has a ways to go. Lionello Venturi's catalogue of Cézanne's paintings shows that he completed twenty-five self-portraits. Not the life's work of a man lacking ego, would you say?”

Heston ignored the question. “Any other portraits in England?”

“There is one. Owned privately by some upstart collector south of London ... uh, man named Pinkster.” He handed a sheet of paper to Heston. “This inventory of the self-portaits is the best we've got, but
it's incomplete and woefully out of date because at least two of the portraits have been sold, and we don't have a record of the new owners. And two more are on loan, and we're not certain where either one is at this point. There's a separate report that describes a self-portrait owned by an American named Llewellyn. It's a bit of a mystery because the public has never really seen it. We've got a black-and-white photograph and not a very good one. But its provenance is flawless. Add that to the others and there are—correction—were—twenty-six in all.”