The Geneva Deception (18 page)

Piazza del Collegio Romano, Rome 19th March—10.49 a.m.

This was Aurelio’s Eco’s favourite art gallery. Quite an accolade, when you considered the competition. Yes, the Capitoline Museum was richer, the Vatican Museum bigger, the Galleria Borghese more beautiful. But their fatal flaw was to have been crudely sewn together from larger collections by different patrons over time, leaving ugly and unnatural scars where they joined and overlapped.

The Doria Pamphilj, on the other hand, had been carefully built over the centuries by a single family. In Aurelio’s eyes this gave it a completely unique integrity of vision and purpose that stretched unbroken, like a golden thread, back through time. It was a sacred flame, carefully tended by each passing generation and then handed on to the next custodian to nurture. Even today, the family still lived in the palazzo’s private
apartments, still owned the fabulous gallery that sheltered within its thick walls. He rather liked this—it appealed to his sense of the past and the present and the future and how they were inexorably wedded through history.

He paused on the entrance steps and snatched a glance over his shoulder, tightening his scarf around his neck. Gallo’s men weren’t even trying to pretend they weren’t following him now, two of them having parked up near where he’d been dropped off by his taxi and following on foot about thirty feet behind. He felt more like a prisoner than protected, despite what they’d told him. With a helpless shrug, he placed his hand on the door and heaved it open.

‘
Buongiorno, Professore
,’ the guard on reception welcomed him cheerily.

He was early, but then he liked to leave himself enough time to check the room and have a final read through his notes. It was funny, but even at his age, after doing this for all these years, he still got nervous. That was the problem with an academic reputation. It was brittle, like porcelain. All those years of care could be shattered in one clumsy moment. And even if you managed to find all the pieces and reassemble them, the cracks invariably showed.

‘Expecting a big turnout today?’

‘An interpretation of the archaeological remains of the Etruscan bridge complex at San Giovenale,’
Aurelio recited the title of his lecture in a deliberate monotone. ‘I almost didn’t come myself.’

‘In other words, I’ll be turning people away as usual.’ The guard’s laughter followed him along the entrance hall.

The one thing Aurelio didn’t like about this place was the lift. It was ancient and horribly cramped and seemed to rouse a latent claustrophobia that years of archaeological excavations had never previously disturbed. Still, it was only one floor, he thought to himself as the car lurched unsteadily upwards, and with his hip the way it was, it wasn’t as if he had much choice.

Stepping out, he limped though the Poussin and Velvets rooms to the ballroom, where two banks of giltwood and red velvet chairs had already been laid out. Enough seating for fifty, he noted with a smile. Perhaps the turnout wouldn’t be so bad after all.

‘Are you alone?’

He turned to see a man closing the door behind him, the key turning in the lock.

‘The lecture doesn’t start until eleven,’ he replied warily.

‘Are you alone, Aurelio?’ A woman stood framed in the doorway to the small ballroom, her face stone, her voice like ice.

Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome 19th March—10.57 a.m.

‘Allegra?’ Aurelio gasped. ‘Is that you? What have you done to yourself?’

‘How many?’ Tom growled in Italian.

‘What?’ Aurelio’s eyes flicked back to him.

‘How many men followed you here?’

‘Two,’ he stuttered. ‘Two, I think. Gallo’s. They’ve been watching me ever since…’

‘Ever since you betrayed me?’ Allegra hissed. It was strange. She’d felt many things for Aurelio since yesterday afternoon. Sadness, disbelief, confusion. But now that he was actually standing in front of her, it was her anger, instinctive and uncontained, that had come most naturally.

‘We haven’t got time for that now,’ Tom warned her, bolting shut the door that gave on to the adjacent ballroom. ‘Just show it to him.’

‘I’m sorry, Allegra. I’m so sorry,’ Aurelio
whispered, reaching pleadingly towards her. ‘I should have told you. I should have told you everything a long time ago.’

‘Save it,’ she snapped, stony faced, then pressed the photo into his hands. ‘What is it?’

He gazed down at the picture, then looked up, open mouthed.

‘Is this real?’ he croaked.

‘What is it?’ Tom repeated.

‘It looks Greek,’ Allegra prompted. ‘I thought the marble could be from Pentelikon.’

‘Greek, yes, but that’s not marble.’ He shook his head excitedly, his eyes locking with hers. ‘It’s ivory.’

‘Ivory?’ she repeated breathlessly. It was obvious, now he’d mentioned it. Obvious and yet impossible.

‘It’s a mask from a chryselephantine statue,’ Aurelio confirmed. ‘Circa 400 to 500 BC. Probably of the sun god Apollo.’ A pause. ‘Are you sure this is real?’ he asked again.

‘Chryselephantine means gold and ivory in Greek,’ Allegra quickly explained in English, seeing the confused look on Tom’s face. ‘They used to fix carved slabs of ivory on to a wooden frame for the head, hands and feet and then beat sheets of gold leaf on to the rest to form the clothes, armour and hair.’

‘It’s rare?’

‘It’s a miracle,’ Aurelio replied in a hushed tone, almost as if they weren’t there. ‘There used to be
seventy-four of them in Rome, but they all vanished when it was sacked by the Barbarians in 410 AD. Apart from two fire-damaged examples found in Greece and a fragment in the Vatican Museum, not a single piece has survived. Certainly nothing of this size and quality.’

Their eyes all shot to the door as someone tried the handle, rattling it noisily.

‘Time to go,’ Tom said firmly, snatching the photo from his grasp. ‘The private apartments should still be clear. We can go out the same way we came in.’

‘Wait,’ Aurelio called after them. ‘Don’t you want to know who it’s by?’

‘You can tell that from a photo?’ Allegra frowned, something in his voice making her pause.

There was a muffled shout and then a heavy drum roll of pounding fists.

‘Not definitively. Not without seeing it,’ he admitted. ‘But if I had to guess…there’s only one sculptor from that period that we know of who was capable of something of that quality. The same person who carved the statue of Athena in the Parthenon. The same person who carved the statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.’

‘Phidias?’ Allegra guessed, her mouth suddenly dry. No wonder Aurelio had turned pale.

‘Who else?’ He nodded excitedly. ‘Don’t you see, Allegra? It’s a miracle.’

‘Let’s go,’ Tom repeated, grabbing Allegra’s arm,
the door now shaking violently. But she wrestled herself free, determined to ask the one question that she most wanted answered.

‘Why did you do it, Aurelio?’ she snapped. ‘Has Gallo got something on you?’

‘Gallo? I’d never even heard of him until yesterday,’ he protested.

‘Then who were you on the phone to?’

There was a long pause, Aurelio’s lips quivering as though the words were trapped in his mouth.

‘The League.’

‘The Delian League?’ she breathed, not sure which was worse—Aurelio working with Gallo, as she’d first assumed, or this?

‘They said they wouldn’t hurt you. That they just wanted to see what you knew,’ he pleaded. ‘I wanted to tell you everything. Have done for a long time. When you told me about the lead discs and the killings…I tried to point you in the right direction. But I was afraid.’

Abruptly, the noise outside stopped.

‘They’ll be back with a key,’ urged Tom. ‘Come on!’

‘You could have trusted me,’ she insisted, ignoring Tom. ‘I could have helped you.’

‘It was too late for that. It’s been twenty, thirty years. They’d kept records of everything I’d ever done for them. The false attributions, the inflated valuations, the invented provenances. I needed the
money. You see that, don’t you? I needed the money to finance my work. Who else was going to pay? The university? The government? Pah!’

‘Who are they?’ she pressed. ‘Give me a name.’

‘Th-there was a dealer who I met a few times,’ he muttered. ‘An American called Faulks who used to fly in from Geneva. He was with them, I’m sure of it. But everyone else was just a voice on the phone. Believe me, Allegra, I tried to get out so many times. Tried to give it up. But the older I got, the harder it became to throw everything away.’

‘Throw what away?’

‘Oh, you don’t understand. You’re too young.’ He gave an exasperated sigh, throwing his hands up as if she had somehow let him down. ‘You don’t know what it means to be old, to be out of breath from tying your shoelaces, to not be able to take a piss without it hurting.’

‘What’s that got to do…?’

‘My books, my research—everything I’d ever worked for…my whole life. It would all have been for nothing if they’d leaked my involvement.’

‘Your books?’ she repeated with an empty laugh. ‘Your books!’

‘Don’t you see?’ he pleaded, a desperate edge to his voice now. ‘I had no choice. My reputation was all I had left.’

‘No,’ she said, with a broken smile. ‘You had me.’

Quai du Mont Blanc, Geneva 19th March—11.16 a.m.

There was a definite spring in Earl Faulks’s step that morning, despite the slightly bitter taste left by Deena Carroll’s sermonising earlier. After everything he’d done for them over the years…the ungrateful bitch. The truth was that, having thought about it, he was rather glad she’d turned him down. With Klein as good as dead, he was no use to him any more anyway, so why do her any favours? Better to give someone else a sniff of the action.

Besides, he could afford to take a small risk. Things were going well. Much better, in fact than he had anticipated. His courier had cleared the border at Lake Lugano that morning and was due down at the Free Port any time now. In Rome, meanwhile, events were unfolding far more quickly and dramatically than he had ever dreamt
would be possible. That was the beauty of the Italians, he mused. They were an amaretto paper of a race —ready to ignite at the faintest spark.

There had been that unhelpful little episode with the kouros at the Getty, of course, although for the moment at least, tempers seemed to have cooled. Having seen the ivory mask, Verity had understood that there was a far greater prize at stake here than a dry academic debate over a statue’s marble type and muscle tone. Barring any last-minute disaster, she was due in from Madrid around lunchtime the following day.

Until then he had an auction to prepare for, lots to examine, commission bids to place…On cue, his car drew up outside Sotheby’s. He sat back, waiting for his chauffer to jog round and open his door, but then waved him away when his phone began to ring. An American number that he didn’t recognise. A call he wanted to take.

‘Faulks.’

‘This is Kezman,’ the voice replied.

‘Mr Kezman…’ Faulks checked his watch in surprise—a classic fluted steel Boucheron. ‘Thank you for returning my call. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so late.’

‘I’m in the casino business. This is early,’ he growled.

‘Mr Kezman, I don’t know if you know…’

‘Yeah, I know who you are,’ he shot back.
‘Avner Klein’s a personal friend. He told me about you.’

‘And he told me about you,’ purred Faulks. ‘Said you were a shrewd collector.’

‘Don’t blow smoke up my ass. I pay people for that and I guarantee they’ve all got bigger tits than you. If you’ve got something to sell, sell it.’

‘Fair enough. Here’s the pitch: seven and a half million and your name in lights.’

‘My name’s in ten foot neon out on the Strip already.’ Kezman gave an impatient laugh. ‘Tell me about the money.’

‘Seven and a half million dollars,’ Faulks repeated slowly. ‘Risk free.’

‘Why don’t you leave the odds to the experts?’ Kezman snapped.

‘How would you price a federal government guarantee?’

There was a pause.

‘Go on.’

Faulks smiled. He had his attention now.

‘An…item has come into my possession. An item of immense historical and cultural significance. I want you to buy it off me for ten million dollars.’

‘Sure. Why not make it twenty?’ Kezman gave a hollow laugh. ‘The global economy’s on its knees, but let’s not let small details like that get in the way.’

‘Then, you’re going to donate it to Verity Bruce
at the Getty,’ he continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘She will value it at fifty million, its true price. This will lead the IRS…’

‘To give me a seventeen and a half million tax credit for having made a fifty-million-dollar charitable donation,’ Kezman breathed, his flippant tone vanishing.

‘Which, subtracting the ten you will have paid me, nets out at a seven and a half million profit, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Not to mention the PR value of the coverage that will be triggered by your generosity,’ Faulks added. ‘Hell, they’d probably name a wing after you, if you asked.’

‘How firm is the valuation?’

‘Do you know Verity Bruce?’ Faulks asked.

‘I had breakfast with her two weeks ago.’

‘She’s due here tomorrow to authenticate the piece. Something this rare isn’t affected by shortterm economic factors. The value will hold.’

Kezman was silent for a few moments. Faulks waited, knowing that his next question would reveal how well he’d played his hand.

‘When would you need the money?’

Blackjack.

‘A few days. A week at most.’

‘If Verity okays it, I’m in,’ Kezman confirmed. ‘You have my private number now. Just get her to call me when she’s seen it.’

‘Wait! Don’t you even want to know what it is?’ Faulks asked with a frown.

A pause.

‘Will I make any more if I do?’

‘No,’ Faulks conceded.

‘Then why should I care?’

Via del Governo Vecchio, Rome 19th March—11.32 a.m.

The streets were dark and narrow here, the buildings seeming to arch together over Tom and Allegra’s heads like trees kissing over a country lane. It was busy too; people carefully picking their way along the narrow pavements, dodging around the occasional dog turds and an elderly woman who was furiously scrubbing her marble doorstep. The traffic, meanwhile, was backed up behind a florist’s van which had stopped to make a delivery. Alerted by the relentless sounding of impatient car horns, a few people were leaning curiously over their balconies, some observing events with a detached familiarity, others hurling insults at the van driver for his selfishness. Glancing up, he made an obscene gesture, and pulled away.

Allegra was silent, her eyes rarely lifting from
her shoes. She was hurting, Tom knew, probably even blaming herself for Aurelio’s betrayal, as if his selfishness and pride was somehow her fault. He tried to think of something to say that might comfort her and relieve her imagined guilt. But he couldn’t. Not without lying. The truth was that in time the floodwaters of her anger and confusion would recede, leaving behind them the tidemark of their lost friendship. And whatever he said, that would never fade. He, of all people, bore the fears of betrayal.

‘What other Phidias pieces are there?’ he asked, stepping to one side to let a woman past holding on to five yapping dogs, the leashes stretching from her hands like tentacles.

‘There’s a torso of Athena in the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris that’s been attributed to him,’ she replied without looking up. ‘And they found a cup inscribed with his name in the ruins of the workshop at Olympia where he assembled the statue of Zeus.’

‘But nothing like the mask?’

‘Not even close.’ She shook her head. ‘If Aurelio’s right, it’s priceless.’

‘Everything has a price,’ Tom smiled. ‘The trick is finding someone willing to pay it.’

‘Maybe that’s what Cavalli was doing the night he was killed,’ she said, grimacing as an ancient Vespa laboured past, its wheezing engine making the windows around them rattle under the strain.
‘Meeting a buyer. Or at least someone he thought was a buyer.’

‘It would explain why he had the Polaroid on him,’ Tom agreed. ‘And why he hid it when he realised what they really wanted.’

‘But not where he got the mask from in the first place.’ She paused, frowning, as the road brought them out on to the Piazza Ponte Sant’Angelo. ‘What are we doing here?’

‘Isn’t this where you said Cavalli was killed?’ Tom asked.

‘Yes, but…’

‘I thought we should take a look.’

A steady two-way traffic of pedestrians was streaming over the bridge’s polished cobbles, the hands and faces of the statues lining the parapet seeming strangely animated under the sun’s flickering caress, as if they were waving them forward. For Tom, at least, the wide-open vista was a welcome relief from the narrow street’s dark embrace.

‘Where did they find him?’ he asked, hands shoved deep into his coat pockets.

‘In the river. Hanging from one of the statues.’

‘Killed on the anniversary of Caesar’s murder, only for Ricci to be murdered on the site of Caesar’s assassination,’ he said thoughtfully.

‘With both Ricci’s and Argento’s deaths staged as a re-enactment of a Caravaggio painting.’ She nodded impatiently. ‘We’ve been through all this.’

‘I know.’ He shrugged. ‘It’s just that everything about these murders has been so deliberate. The dates, the locations, the arrangement of the bodies, the careful echoing of some element of the one that had preceded it. It’s almost as if…they weren’t just killings.’

‘Then what were they?’

Tom paused before answering. In the distance the glorious dome of St Peter’s rose into the sky, massive and immutable. Around it swarmed a flock of pigeons, their solid mass wheeling and circling like a shroud caught in the wind.

‘Messages,’ he said eventually. ‘Maybe someone was trying to have a conversation.’

‘If you’re right it started with Cavalli,’ she said slowly, her eyes narrowing in understanding.

‘Exactly. So why kill him here? Why this bridge? They must have chosen it for a reason.’

Allegra paused a few moments before answering, her face creased in thought.

‘It was originally built to connect the city to Hadrian’s mausoleum. Before becoming a toll road for pilgrims who wanted to reach St Peter’s. And in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, famously of course, they used to display the bodies of executed prisoners along it as a warning.’

‘A warning to who?’ Tom frowned, then nodded at the weathered shapes looming over them. ‘What about the statues? Do they mean anything?’

‘Commissioned from Bernini by Pope Clement IX.
Each angel is holding an object from the Passion. Cavalli’s rope was tied to the one holding a cross.’

‘Which was then echoed by Ricci’s inverted crucifixion and Argento being found in a church.’ Tom clicked his fingers as two more small pieces of the puzzle fell into place.

‘That’s not the only thing,’ Allegra added excitedly, a thought having just occurred to her. ‘Cavalli’s not the first person to have been killed here.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘A noblewoman called Beatrice Cenci was tortured and put to death on the Piazza Ponte Sant’Angelo in 1599,’ she explained. ‘It was one of Rome’s most notorious public executions.’

‘What had she done?’

‘Murdered her father.’

Tom nodded slowly, remembering the deliberate violence with which Cavalli’s house had been ransacked.

‘Patricide. Treason. Maybe that’s it. Maybe Cavalli had betrayed the League and this was his punishment?’ He gave a deep sigh, then turned to her with a shrug. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Come on, let’s try and call Archie. He should have landed by now.’

They turned and walked to the end of the bridge, Tom reaching for his phone as they waited for a break in the traffic. But before they could cross, a large armoured truck gunned down the
road towards them. Two men jumped down holding what Tom recognized as what the Sicilian mafia called a Lupara—a traditional break-open design shotgun, sawn off a few inches beyond the stock to make it more effective at close range and easier to manoeuvre and hide. The weapon of choice in old-school vendettas.

A woman behind screamed and Tom could hear the fumbling scramble of panicked feet behind him as people scattered.

‘Get in,’ one of the men barked.