The Forger (32 page)

“If it takes you going behind my back again…” I told him, but never had the chance to finish, because the elevator dragged him upward out of sight.

*   *   *

I
COULD NO LONGER
stand the half-measures of trust by which our acquaintance was defined. Too much was at stake. From now on, he was going to have to show that he had changed, not only to Pankratov and me but to himself as well, I thought. There was nothing for him to do now but wait for a chance to present itself. Until then, there would always be this strange uncertainty between us.

Chapter Thirteen

I
N THE COMING WEEKS
, Pankratov and I set about enlarging our repertoire.

I quickly learned that I couldn’t just choose any painting and begin making works in that style. Many more artists lay beyond my reach than lay within it. I attempted paintings in the manner of Correggio and Hals, but never succeeded in making a passable copy. There was no set scale of technical difficulty from one artist to another. It was more a question of matching my own skills against the particular specialties of the painter whose style I wanted to copy. Because of this, I never even tried the styles of Rubens, Titian, Rembrandt or Boucher.

These days, I knew exactly what I was doing when I went out to Rocco’s, and a number of other places, to buy up more supplies. When I chose the subject matter, I did so with an eye to what might please the buyer, rather than what would challenge me most in the drawing.

For our first large sale to Abetz, we made two drawings. One was a brown ink drawing of a Greek warrior holding a spear and shield, which we attributed to Giovanni Barbieri and which we dated around 1660. We also made a Tiepolo of a centaur cuddling up to a half goat/half woman, which Fleury informed us was called a Satyress. It was done in brown ink and gray wash over black chalk. We signed this one, using the correct signature for Tiepolo at the time—
dom. Tiepolo f.

Pankratov aged these by watering down the ink before I used it. This gave the sketches a faded look even as I drew them. He put wear on the edges by laying the ends on a table and scraping them with a blunted straight-edge razor. After this, he used the fluffy white insides of a baguette to rub down the paper on which the sketches had been made. This blurred the lines without smearing them too much. It also laid down the nap of the paper slightly, giving it the look of an older drawing that had been handled many times.

Pankratov wanted to make the drawings look as if they had been stolen from somebody’s collection, so he glued the sketches carefully into the blank pages of an old album. Then he cut out the pages with a penknife. Finally, he put his hand inside a wool sock and rubbed down the picture and the borders of the page.

He finished up by sandwiching the pages between sheets of damp and rotten paper and leaving them for a couple of days. This gave the sketches the right musty smell and faintly blotchy look of having been kept in a damp place. If the sketches had been stolen, he explained, it was more than likely that the thieves would have mishandled them.

The only painting we offered Abetz was of three musicians sitting around a table. It was a muted canvas, with creamy browns and washed-out blues for the musicians’ clothing and an unhealthy pallor in their faces. We deliberately mistook the painter as a man named J. Lopez-Rey, who was a student of Velázquez. We hoped that Abetz would recognize this as a variant of a known Velázquez, not something done by a student, and would believe that the work was done by Velázquez himself, making it worth thirty times what we were asking. One of the devices we used was to work in several pale green–brown stripes in the top left-hand corner of the canvas, which was otherwise blank, dark-painted space. Velázquez used to clean his brushes on the canvas while he worked. He would then paint on top of the marks but, over time, the smudges of his dirty brushmarks had come through. This was one of the accidental personal touches that earmarked a Velázquez.

When Pankratov decided the paint was dry, he removed the canvas from its stretcher, drawing each nail carefully from its hole and setting them on a clean white sheet of paper in the exact order that he had withdrawn them. He laid the canvas out on his worktable and slowly rolled it up. Then he unrolled it and rolled it up again. He rolled it in different directions and by the time he was done, the painting had across it a fine web of cracking, which we called a
craquelure.

When we were ready, we called up Abetz and told him what we had.

He made an appointment that same day.

Fleury and I waited for him at Pankratov’s atelier. Pankratov stayed away, as he had done the time before.

Abetz brought with him several canvases for trade, but he kept them wrapped. He said he didn’t want to show us what they were until he knew we had something to trade. He paced back and forth in front of the works, pale hands knotted behind his black coat. He put his glasses on and then took them off again.

While I sat on the stage, Fleury and Abetz conferred in hushed voices. Fleury let Abetz do the talking. Abetz couldn’t help giving a lecture on the artists and their painting techniques. Even though Fleury knew all this, he followed Abetz around, mumbling in theatrical amazement. The more amazed Fleury pretended to be, the more confident Abetz became, raising his voice so that I could partake of his knowledge. In the course of Abetz’s speech, Fleury learned that the man had spent time at Oxford University. As soon as Abetz paused for breath, Fleury let slip that he had also been to Oxford. What he didn’t say, but told me later, was that he had only been there for two days while touring England with his parents years ago. Abetz jumped to the conclusion that Fleury had studied at the university and Fleury said nothing to dissuade him of this. Abetz became very nostalgic as he reminisced about his evenings at a place called the Turf Tavern and tea at the Randolph Hotel.

In the end, Abetz didn’t question any of our works. “I’ll take them all,” he said. He removed the wrappings from the paintings he had brought, revealing a study by Ingres for the figure of Stratonice, an oil on canvas by Manet of a woman in a blue dress sitting in a rocking chair, another pastel, this one by Millet, of a man sowing grain in a field, and a Degas pastel of a ballerina in a white dress doing a kick step, which Abetz called a
pas battu.

While Fleury inspected the work that Abetz had brought, Abetz sat down beside me on the stage. He smoked a small cigar through a black holder. From his pocket, he took a small silver dish which he balanced on his knee and used as an ashtray.

“I hear you didn’t like my arrangement,” said Abetz.

I knew he was talking about what had happened to Fleury. “I think this way will work out better for everyone,” I told him.

He jerked his chin at the work we had for sale. “You’ve been doing well for yourselves.”

“There are a few things out there,” I said, “if you know where to find them.”

Abetz nodded. “I’m sure there are many families who have fallen on hard times.”

“Times are hard for all of us,” I said.

Abetz gave a quiet laugh at this. “Really,” he said. “I expect that there are some families who have even gone into hiding.”

“I expect so,” I replied, not really knowing what he meant.

“And I’d imagine they’d do anything to stay in hiding, including parting with their works of art.” He tapped ash from his cigarette. “Just postulating.”

Abetz got up and walked over to Fleury. He left his silver dish beside me, as if daring me to steal it. In the course of an hour of bargaining, Fleury managed to acquire everything Abetz brought. After he had left, Fleury sat down beside me and lit himself a cigarette. “What are you looking so gloomy about?” he asked.

“Why haven’t we been caught yet?” I asked him. “We may be good, but it’s just as Pankratov said. There’s no such thing as perfection.”

Fleury sipped at the smoke, then breathed it out through his nose in two gray streams. “For a start, Abetz isn’t as much of an expert as he thinks he is. And secondly, from what I’ve seen, he’s in too much of a hurry to check the work as thoroughly as he could. Almost everything he gets from France is immediately crated up, sent back to Germany and put in warehouses. He doesn’t have time to do X-rays and so on.”

“I hate having to let Abetz think we strong-arm our stuff off Jewish families. It’s bad enough that people at the Dimitri think we’re collaborators.”

“Let Abetz think whatever he wants,” said Fleury. “The worst thing would be for him not to know, or not to think he knows, where our material comes from.”

I sat back and sighed. “I was hoping we could avoid being total sons of bitches.”

“Safest thing to be,” he told me.

That evening, the paintings from Abetz were handed over to Madame Pontier.

*   *   *

T
WO DAYS LATER, ON
a brilliant early summer day, Dietrich’s limousine rumbled up to the curb outside our apartment building.

I had been sorting through some old art catalogues, trying to figure out what pieces to do next. I knew the car just from the sound of the engine and I went over to the open window and looked down. I thought—Here comes the competition. I had guessed correctly that Abetz wouldn’t be able to keep from bragging about his latest acquisitions.

It wasn’t Dietrich who showed up at the door, just his driver, Grimm, whom Dietrich had acquired after firing a series of French chauffeurs. Grimm was a tall man, with a big jaw and a sleepy expression. He wore the black uniform of an Allgemeine SS man. “Mr. Dietrich would like to see you,” he said, uncomfortable and stiff-backed as he stood in the doorway.

“Where?” I asked.

“Mr. Dietrich would like to keep it a surprise,” said Grimm. His feet in heavy hobnailed boots stirred nervously on the bare wood floor, as if he were standing on a sheet of glass.

On the way downstairs we picked up Fleury, who appeared, as usual, in his red smoking jacket. “Is this another black tie party for me to show off my threadbare tuxedo?” he asked.

“No,” said Grimm. “No, sir.” The sight of Fleury’s garish clothes appeared to unsettle Grimm. He straightened the already straight cap on his head. He seemed determined to deny himself any of the minute deviations from regulation dress by which a soldier can claim his individuality.

Dietrich wasn’t in the limousine. Instinctively, I slouched down on the smooth leather seats, since the car drew as many stares as Tombeau’s ridiculous scooter. When I realized we were heading out of the city, I leaned forward and asked Grimm, “Are you stopping for Pankratov?”

“Only you, sir, and Monsieur Fleury,” said Grimm. He held up a piece of paper, on which his orders had been typed. Dietrich’s signature was at the bottom, the letters jagged like a scribble of a mountain range.

Grimm brought us to the warehouse of the Schneider Transport Company. The place had high brick walls around it and a large iron gate at the front.

Dietrich was there to meet us. He was standing outside the main office building, a small wooden structure dwarfed by the huge warehouse that rose up behind it. Dietrich was wearing a long brown leather coat. It was raining, and he stood outside without an umbrella. Droplets beaded down the length of his coat. He flashed us a confident smile. “Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” he said. The rain plipped on his leathered back. He turned to Fleury. “I trust you have recovered from your ordeal.”

“Yes,” said Fleury. “I am quite fine.”

“Well, you know who to blame for your discomfort,” Dietrich told him.

“Yes,” said Fleury. “I do.”

“And I trust you know who to thank for your release.”

“I know,” replied Fleury, “and I am grateful.”

“Indeed,” said Dietrich. He motioned for us to follow him and strode toward the warehouse, whose large doors were open. A stony-faced man in a dark three-piece suit was waiting there, hands folded in front of his waist and a signet ring baubled on his pinky.

We reached the entrance to the warehouse. Inside, it was cool. The summer heat hadn’t yet forced itself through the brick walls and arching roof.

“This is Monsieur Touchard.” Dietrich nodded to the slope-shouldered man in the suit. “He is the French art appraiser for the ERR. Let’s have the lights on, Touchard.”

Touchard obeyed without a word. There was a series of clunks as he hit the switches and the lights came on, one row after another.

The place was even bigger than I had imagined. Every foot of it apart from a walkway down the middle was crowded with antiques. There were statues of all types. Hands rose in the air, some holding bunches of grapes, others reaching their pale marble fingers toward bare bulbs that hung from the ceiling. I saw furniture—tables and chairs with plush red seats and cabinets with impossibly ornate carvings coiled like snakes around the legs. There were shelves of crystal, books, mirrors, candlesticks, cigar boxes and splintery wood crates which had been nailed shut and had large red crosses painted on the sides.

Dietrich held up his hands, like the ringmaster of a circus. “We used to have a little storage space in a garage on the Rue Richelieu. But that became a little too small for our collection.”

I heard Touchard snuffle out a laugh behind me.

Fleury and I said nothing. The scale of it, the rows and rows and the vastness of creativity and wealth crammed into this warehouse defied any possible comment.

It made Dietrich happy to see our amazement. He swaggered over to a table and picked up a heavy silver candlestick. “I am inviting you along on a shopping trip,” he said. “You see, these things belong to various French people. They have been confiscated, but they are still technically under the protection of the French government. The German government has established an organization called the
Kunstschutz.
It means the Art Protection Agency. It’s run by Count Franz Wolff-Metternich. He makes sure that all of these treasures don’t simply disappear in acts of looting. However, if the French government should opt to sell them, in the best interests of their owners, it is our duty to make sure that a fair price has been paid and that the necessary paperwork has been filled out.” He flashed a smile at Touchard.