The Heist (7 page)

“You’re not going to contaminate anything, are you?”

“Only my lungs,” replied Gabriel.

Upstairs he removed the canvas from its frame, propped it on an armless chair, and illuminated its surface with as much light as he could find. Then he mixed equal amounts of acetone, alcohol, and distilled water in the beaker and fashioned a swab using a dowel and cotton wool. Working quickly, he removed the fresh varnish and inpainting from a small rectangle—about two inches by one inch—at the bottom left corner of the canvas. Restorers referred to the technique as “opening a window.” Usually, it was done to test the strength and effectiveness of a solvent solution. In this case, however, Gabriel was opening a window in order to strip away the surface layers of the painting to see what lay beneath. What he discovered were the lush folds of a crimson garment. Clearly, there was an intact painting beneath the three Dutch washerwomen working in a courtyard—a painting that, in Gabriel’s opinion, had been produced by a true Old Master of considerable talent.

He quickly opened three more windows, one at the bottom right of the canvas and two more across the top. At the bottom right, he found additional fabric, darker and less distinct; but at the top right, the canvas was nearly black. At the top left, he found a tawny-colored Roman arch that looked as though it was part of an architectural background. The four open windows gave him a rough sense of how the figures were arrayed upon the canvas. More important, they told him that, in all likelihood, the painting was the work of an Italian rather than an artist from the Dutch or Flemish schools.

Gabriel opened a fifth window a few inches below the Roman arch and discovered a balding male pate. Expanding it, he found the bridge of a nose and an eye that was staring directly toward the viewer. Next he opened a window a few inches to the right and found the pale, luminous forehead of a young female. He expanded that window, too, and found a pair of downward-cast eyes. A long nose emerged next, followed by a pair of small red lips and a delicate chin. Then, after another minute of work, Gabriel saw the outstretched hand of a child.
A man, a woman, a child
. . . Gabriel studied the hand of the child—specifically, the way the thumb and forefinger were touching the chin of the woman. The pose was familiar to him. So was the brushwork.

He crossed the hall to Jack Bradshaw’s office, switched on the computer, and went to the Web site of the Art Loss Register, the world’s largest private database of stolen, missing, and looted artwork. After a few keystrokes, a photograph of a painting appeared on the screen—the same painting that was now propped on a chair in the room across the hall. Beneath the photo was a brief description:

The Art Squad had been searching for the missing painting for more than a decade. And now Gabriel had found it, in the villa of a dead Englishman, hidden beneath a copy of a Dutch painting by Willem Kalf. He started to dial General Ferrari’s number but stopped. Where there was one, he thought, there would surely be others. He rose from the dead man’s desk and started looking.

Gabriel discovered two additional paintings in the storeroom that, when subjected to ultraviolet light, were totally black. One was a Dutch School coastal scene reminiscent of the work of Simon de Vlieger; the other was a vase of flowers that appeared to be a copy of a painting by the Viennese artist Johann Baptist Drechsler. Gabriel began opening windows.

Dip, twirl, discard
. . .

A swollen tree against a cloud-streaked sky, the folds of a skirt spread across a meadow, the naked flank of a corpulent woman . . .

Dip, twirl, discard
. . .

A patch of blue-green background, a floral blouse, a wide, sleepy eye above a rose-colored cheek . . .

Gabriel recognized both paintings. He sat down at the computer and returned to the Web site of the Art Loss Register. After a few keystrokes, a photograph of a painting appeared on the screen:

    
More keystrokes, another painting, another story of loss:

Gabriel placed the Renoir and the Klimt next to the Parmigianino, snapped a photograph with his mobile phone, and quickly forwarded it to the palazzo. General Ferrari rang him back thirty seconds later. Help was on the way.

Gabriel carried the three paintings downstairs and propped them on one of the couches in the great room.
Parmigianino, Renoir, Klimt
. . . Three missing paintings by three prominent artists, all concealed beneath copies of lesser works. Even so, the copies had been of extremely high quality. They were the work of a master forger, thought Gabriel. Perhaps even a restorer. But why go to the trouble of commissioning a copy in order to conceal a stolen work? Clearly, Jack Bradshaw was connected to a sophisticated network that dealt in stolen and smuggled art. Where there were three, thought Gabriel, looking at the paintings, there would be more. Many more.

He picked up one of the photographs of a youthful Jack Bradshaw. His curriculum vitae read like something from a lost age. Educated at Eton and Oxford, fluent in Arabic and Persian, he had been sent into the world to do the bidding of a once-mighty empire that had fallen into terminal decline. Perhaps he had been an ordinary diplomat, an issuer of visas, a stamper of passports, a writer of thoughtful cables that no one bothered to read. Or perhaps he had been something else entirely. Gabriel knew a man in London who could put flesh on the bones of Jack Bradshaw’s dubiously thin résumé. The truth would not come without a price. In the espionage business, truth rarely did.

Gabriel set aside the photograph and used his mobile phone to book a seat on the morning flight to Heathrow. Then he picked up the slip of paper on which he’d written the number from the dialing directory of Bradshaw’s phone.

6215845
. . .

This is Father Marco. How can I help you?

He dialed the number again now, but this time it rang unanswered. Then, reluctantly, he forwarded it securely to the Operations Desk at King Saul Boulevard and asked for a routine check. Ten minutes later came the reply: 6215845 was an unpublished number located in the rectory of the Church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Brienno, which was located a few kilometers up the lakeshore.

Gabriel picked up the slip of paper that had been at the top of Jack Bradshaw’s telephone message pad on the night of his murder. Tilting it toward the lamp, he studied the indentations that had been left by Bradshaw’s fountain pen. Then he removed a pencil from the top drawer of the desk and rubbed the tip gently across the surface until a pattern of lines emerged. Most of it was an impenetrable mess: the numeral 4, the numeral 8, the letters C and V and O. At the bottom of the page, however, a single word was clearly visible.

Samir
. . .

T
HE ROAD WAS CALLED
P
ARADISE
, but it was a paradise lost: tattered blocks of redbrick council flats, a patch of trampled grass, a childless playground where a merry-go-round rotated slowly in the wind. Gabriel lingered there only long enough to make sure he was not being followed. He pulled his coat collar around his ears and shivered. Spring had not yet arrived in London.

Beyond the playground a dirty passageway led to Clapham Road. Gabriel turned to the left and walked through the glare of the oncoming traffic to the Stockwell Tube station. Another turn brought him to a quiet street with a terrace of sooty postwar houses. Number 8 had a crooked black fence of wrought iron and a tiny cement garden with no decoration other than a royal blue recycling bin. Gabriel lifted the lid, saw the bin was empty, and climbed the three steps to the front door. A sign stated that solicitations of any kind were unwelcome. Ignoring it, he placed his thumb atop the bell push—two short bursts, a longer third, just as he had been told. “Mr. Baker,” said the man who appeared in the doorway. “So good of you to come. I’m Davies. I’m here to look after you.”

Gabriel entered the house and waited for the door to close before turning to face the man who had admitted him. He had soft pale hair and the guiltless face of a country parson. His name was not Davies. It was Nigel Whitcombe.

“Why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff?” asked Gabriel. “I’m not defecting. I just need a word with the boss.”

“The Intelligence Service frowns on the use of real names in safe houses. Davies is my work name.”

“Catchy,” said Gabriel.

“I chose it myself. I was always fond of the Kinks.”

“Who’s Baker?”

“You’re Baker,” replied Whitcombe without a trace of irony in his voice.

Gabriel entered the small sitting room. It was furnished with all the charm of an airport departure lounge.

“You couldn’t find a safe house in Mayfair or Chelsea?”

“All the West End properties were taken. Besides, this one’s closer to Vauxhall Cross.”

Vauxhall Cross was the headquarters of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, also known as MI6. There was a time when the service operated from a dingy building in Broadway and its director-general was known only as “C.” Now the spies worked in one of London’s flashiest landmarks, and their boss’s name appeared regularly in the press. Gabriel liked the old ways better. In matters of intelligence, as in art, he was a traditionalist by nature.

“Does the Intelligence Service allow coffee in safe houses these days?” he asked.

“Not real coffee,” replied Whitcombe, smiling. “But there might be a jar of Nescafé in the pantry.”

Gabriel shrugged, as if to say one could certainly do worse than Nescafé, and followed Whitcombe into the galley kitchen. It looked as though it belonged to a man who was recently separated and hoping for a quick reconciliation. There was indeed a container of Nescafé, along with a tin of Twinings that looked as though it had been there when Edward Heath was prime minister. Whitcombe filled the electric kettle with water while Gabriel searched the cabinets for a mug. There were two, one with the logo of the London Olympic Games, the other with the face of the Queen. When Gabriel chose the mug with the Queen, Whitcombe smiled.

“I never realized you were an admirer of Her Majesty.”

“She has good taste in art.”

“She can afford to.”

Whitcombe offered this assessment not as a criticism but merely an observation of fact. He was like that: careful, shrewd, opaque as a concrete wall. He had started his career at MI5, where he had cut his operational teeth working with Gabriel against a Russian oligarch and arms dealer named Ivan Kharkov. Soon after, he became the primary aide-de-camp and runner of off-the-record errands for Graham Seymour, MI5’s deputy director-general. Seymour had recently been named the new chief of MI6, a move that surprised everyone in the intelligence trade except Gabriel. Whitcombe was now serving his master in the same capacity, which explained his presence in the Stockwell safe house. He spooned the Nescafé into the mug and watched the steam rising from the spout of the kettle.

“How’s life at Six?” asked Gabriel.

“When we first arrived, there was a great deal of suspicion among the troops. I suppose they had a right to be uneasy. After all, we were coming across the river from a rival service.”

“It’s not as if Graham was a total outsider. His father was an MI6 legend. He was practically raised within the service.”

“Which is one of the reasons any concerns were short-lived.” Whitcombe drew a mobile device from the breast pocket of his suit and peered at the screen. “He’s pulling up now. Can you manage the coffee on your own?”

“Pour in the water, then stir, right?”

Whitcombe departed. Gabriel prepared the coffee and went into the sitting room. Entering, he saw a tall figure clad in a perfectly fitted charcoal-gray suit and a striped blue necktie. His face was fine boned and even featured; his hair had a rich silvery cast that made him look like a male model one might see in ads for costly but needless trinkets. He was holding a mobile phone to his ear with his left hand. The right he stretched absently toward Gabriel. His handshake was firm, confident, and appropriate in duration. It was an unfair weapon to be deployed against inferior opponents. It said he had attended the better schools, belonged to the better clubs, and was good at gentlemanly games like tennis and golf, all of which happened to be true. Graham Seymour was a relic of Britain’s glorious past, a child of the administrative classes who had been bred, educated, and programmed to lead. A few months earlier, weary after years of trying to protect the British homeland from the forces of Islamic extremism, he had privately told Gabriel of his plans to leave the intelligence trade and retire to his villa in Portugal. Now, unexpectedly, he had been handed the keys to his father’s old service. Gabriel suddenly felt guilty about coming to London. He was about to hand Seymour his first potential crisis at MI6.

Seymour murmured a few words into the mobile phone, severed the connection, and handed it to Nigel Whitcombe. Then he turned toward Gabriel and regarded him curiously for a moment. “Given our long history together,” Seymour said finally, “I’m a bit reluctant to ask what brings you to town. But I suppose I have no choice.”

Gabriel responded by telling Seymour a small portion of the truth—that he had come to London because he was looking into the murder of an expatriate Englishman living in Italy.

“Does the expatriate Englishman have a name?” asked Seymour.