The Icon Thief (21 page)

“Maybe. But there’s one other person involved who has the motive to fake a heist.”

“I know,” Powell said. There were reasons to be suspicious of Archvadze himself. A theft was a reasonably effective way to monetize a work of art. Even if Archvadze paid a generous fee to Sharkovsky, once he claimed the insurance, he would get the painting at a huge discount. As remote as the possibility seemed, it would be necessary to learn more about how the painting had been insured. “You still have the phone number for Archvadze’s lawyer?”

“Yeah, hold on.” At the next light, Wolfe checked her pockets and came up with the business card. “You want to arrange a meeting?”

“It can’t hurt to try.” Taking out his phone, Powell dialed the number, dimly recognizing the name of the lawyer, who had built a substantial practice for himself around a clientele of wealthy expatriates.

After being placed briefly on hold, he got through to a secretary, who transferred him to the lawyer’s private line. The phone rang twice before the lawyer brusquely answered. “Yes?”

“Hi there,” Powell said, giving his name and reaching for a notepad. “I’m a liaison officer with the Serious Organised Crime Agency in London. I’m calling about one of your clients, Anzor Archvadze—”

The lawyer broke in. “Anzor Archvadze is no longer a client of mine. We terminated our professional relationship this morning.”

Powell, surprised, glanced over at Wolfe. “Do you know where I can reach him?”

“I’m afraid not.” The lawyer’s voice grew distant. “When we last spoke, he indicated that he was going to be unreachable for the foreseeable future. As far as I know, he’s on his way back to Georgia.”

The lawyer hung up. Powell closed his cell phone. He found that the smell of death was still in the car, even though the windows had been rolled down. It seemed to be in his clothes.

“I think,” Powell said, looking out at the street, “that we have a bit of a problem.”

L
ater that day, Maddy began an investigation of her own. She had spent the morning on the phone with a public relations representative, feeding her the names of gallery contacts who might be inclined to issue a statement of support. As the exercise wore on, however, one fact became increasingly clear. Nothing they did would make any difference until the stolen painting was recovered.

As soon as she had a moment, then, she turned to another plan of attack. Like Powell, she knew that there were a limited number of ways to dispose of a stolen painting. You could store it in a country, like Italy or Japan, that had a short period of repose, claiming it once the statute of limitations had expired. You could use it as collateral for a drug or weapons deal. Or, most likely, you could sell it to a buyer who had arranged for the heist in the first place.

If this last possibility was correct, then she had investigative resources at her disposal that were not readily available to the police. The fund had devoted thousands of hours to analyzing the motives of collectors, and the name of the heist’s unknown beneficiary was almost certainly in its database. The hard part was knowing what to look for. Because the painting couldn’t be resold or
displayed, the familiar motives of greed or emulation didn’t apply. Neither did the usual metrics of wealth. The collector behind the heist didn’t need to be rich. He didn’t need to be anything at all.

But there was another way to narrow down the search. Going to the major art world and society websites, she downloaded photos from the party, which were already beginning to appear online. It was nothing but a hunch, but as she studied the snapshots from the oligarch’s mansion, she felt with sudden conviction that whoever had arranged the theft would have wanted to be there that night. And as she looked into one of the photographs, trying to see past a row of forced smiles, she noticed a blurred figure in the background.

She enlarged it. It was a man in a brown suit and black plastic glasses, a camera bag slung over his shoulder. His face was turned away from the lens, but she could remember it all too well.

Ethan, for his part, seemed to be moving in an entirely different direction. For most of the morning, his door remained closed, but from their occasional email exchanges, she sensed that he was working on something unusual. When lunchtime arrived, they met in front of the Fuller Building, where Ethan, somewhat to her surprise, hailed a cab at the corner. “Where are we going?”

“On a field trip,” Ethan said, opening the taxi door. “Come on, you’ll enjoy this.”

After a beat, she entered the cab, and Ethan gave the driver a crosstown address. As they drove off, she studied his face. Aside from the circles under his eyes, he looked good, and he had resumed the professional tone of their
relationship with an ease that she found vaguely depressing. “So what’s this all about?”

Ethan glanced at the driver, who did not seem to be listening to their conversation, then lowered his voice. “So you remember what I said yesterday. You can gain insight into an artist by considering the interests of his patrons, who inevitably influence his work.”

“You don’t need to convince me of this,” Maddy said, rolling down her window as they took the transverse road through the park. “Anyone who claims to be untouched by the market is lying.”

“Well, Duchamp claimed it, and at first, it’s hard to prove otherwise. For one thing, it’s unclear where he got the money to live.” Taking a rumpled sheet of notes from his pocket, Ethan glanced at their driver once more before continuing. “Look at the timeline. In 1913, Duchamp appears in his first major show, making him famous overnight. The following summer, Walter Pach, a prominent critic, meets with him in Paris, shortly after war is declared.”

“I know who Pach was,” Maddy said. “He was an important New York art adviser.”

Ethan refolded his notes as they emerged from the park, heading a block north. “Then you probably know that one of his clients was a lawyer and art collector named John Quinn, who advised him to see Duchamp. We don’t know what they talk about, but the following year, instead of joining the war effort, Duchamp goes to New York. When he arrives, Pach arranges for a place for him to stay. Which, as it happens, is where we are now.”

They halted halfway up a street lined with shade trees. After paying the driver, Ethan slid out, followed by
Maddy, who saw that they were standing before a prewar apartment complex. “So where are we, exactly?”

“Walter Arensberg’s apartment.” Ethan pointed to a window two stories up the brick façade. “He and his wife lived on the second floor. Pach arranged for Duchamp to live here while the Arensbergs were gone.”

Maddy leaned back, trying to see past the overhanging branches. “All right. So what’s your point?”

“Well, you can’t tell from here, but we’re standing at the tip of a very interesting triangle.” Ethan gestured toward the park. “Quinn’s apartment was three hundred yards to the southeast. Duchamp went there every day, supporting himself by giving French lessons to Quinn, or so he claimed. But look here.”

He pointed southwest. “Soon after Duchamp moved out of Arensberg’s apartment, he took a room in a building on Broadway, also three hundred yards away. In the meantime, he briefly lived across the street from Walter Pach. Which means that in all the months he spent in New York, a city of five million people, he was never more than a block away from one of these three men. Now follow me.”

As they headed up the street, moving toward the unseen vastness of Lincoln Center, Maddy felt obliged to assume a more skeptical tone. “None of this is so surprising. This whole neighborhood was an enclave for artists.”

“Fair enough,” Ethan said. “But look at what happens next. When Duchamp says that he’s looking for a steady job, Quinn tells him to contact Belle Greene, the director of the Morgan Library. She finds him a position at the French consulate, but pays his salary herself. Even his biographers don’t know why.”

“It isn’t so strange,” Maddy said. “A lot of artists have messy financial lives.”

“True. In fact, I can tell you a similar story. Around the same time, a British writer is hired as a purchasing agent in New York, a position for which he has no obvious qualifications. On his arrival, he meets with Quinn, who gives him financial assistance. The writer’s name is Aleister Crowley.”

Maddy recognized the name of the notorious occultist. “Quinn was friends with both Crowley and Duchamp?”

“More than just friends. It’s generally believed that Crowley was working as an intelligence agent. Quinn was his paymaster, probably through Belle Greene, whom Crowley mentions in his diary. His mission was to investigate individuals believed to harbor sympathies toward Germany, notably Roger Casement, an Irish revolutionary who was negotiating for support from the Kaiser.”

As they continued toward Columbus Avenue, Maddy began to see where this was going. “And Duchamp was doing the same thing?”

“Look at his profile. Crowley was recruited because, as an avowed sexual deviant, he could get close to Casement, who had a fondness for young boys. And Duchamp was chosen because he was a famous painter who could easily befriend a patron of the arts. I’m talking about Walter Arensberg.”

“Why would the intelligence community care about what Arensberg was doing?”

“Because of his obsession with the Rosicrucians. Arensberg is openly interested in a secret society founded in Germany, which automatically makes him a target of suspicion. The proof is that Crowley, in his capacity as an
intelligence agent, made a point of befriending the founder of the Rosicrucian order in New York. If Quinn ordered him to infiltrate the Rosicrucians, it isn’t hard to believe that he told Duchamp to keep an eye on Arensberg for the same reason.”

They arrived at the main square, where Ethan pointed toward the plaza. “Duchamp lived right here, at the old Lincoln Arcade. The building was torn down in the fifties, but at the time, it was a rat’s nest of artists, fortune-tellers, and detective agencies, exactly the sort of place where an undercover agent would feel at home. And, as we’ve seen, it was only a block from Arensberg’s apartment.”

“But it must have been a waste of time,” Maddy said. “Didn’t we say that Arensberg was a lunatic?”

“Exactly. You’ve seen his book. It isn’t the testimony of an insider. He’s on the outside, looking in. Duchamp evidently concludes the same thing, which is why he goes to Buenos Aires, saying that he’s bored by the Arensbergs. Once he’s there, what does he do? He plays chess. He carves his own pieces and devotes himself entirely to the game. Or so he says.”

“But you think that he kept working as an intelligence agent, even after the war.”

“If he did, it explains his unknown source of income and his love of disguises, as well as some of the stranger episodes in his life. You see? He says that he has retired from art to focus on chess, but he’s really playing a game of chess that spans the entire globe. And the proof is in the art itself.”

Maddy, who had been looking out at the crowds in the plaza, was brought up short by this last statement. “Hold on. You’re saying that his art was influenced by his intelligence work?”

“Well, after the war ends, he becomes a Grand Satrap of the Society of Pataphysics, a parody of Rosicrucianism. He poses nude at a ballet performance, using a rose as a fig leaf. Even the readymades are messages. Look at that ball of twine. It was made on the three hundredth anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, but it was also the day of the Easter Rising in Ireland, a rebellion organized by Roger Casement, the man Crowley was watching in New York.”

Maddy was struck by this connection, but still wanted to slow the conversation down. “How do you know all this?”

“It’s what I do every day. We’ve gathered an enormous amount of information on the art world, not just price data, but articles, reviews, academic research. It’s how we make money. And this isn’t so different. Once you have the basic premise, the rest of it is obvious—”

Ethan trailed off. Following his gaze, Maddy saw that he was looking at a young man with a violin case standing a few yards away. “See that guy?” Ethan asked softly. “I think he’s been following us.”

Maddy frowned. “He’s a music student. He’s probably heading for Juilliard.”

“Maybe.” Ethan watched as the student continued toward a crosswalk, waiting for the light to change. “In any case, we need to be careful.”

She was unsettled by the note of paranoia in his voice. “But what’s the point? You said you were working on something that would help the fund. I don’t see how any of this qualifies.”

“Easy. We use it to figure out who ordered the heist.” Ethan waited until the student had crossed the street, then turned to her again. “It’s a trade model in reverse.
Normally, we look at an investor’s behavior to forecast what he’ll buy next, but I can also use sales records to create a portrait of a hypothetical collector. A man like Arensberg, say, who is looking for insight into the groups that Duchamp was watching. If he’s been active in the market, we can track him through his purchases. It’s like finding a black hole by observing its gravitational field.”

“So we look at works by Duchamp, or other artists with Rosicrucian ties, and see who has bought them before,” Maddy said, understanding his idea at last. “And if we can find our hypothetical collector—”

“We find the study,” Ethan said, his eye straying back to the student, who had taken a seat near the fountain. “Simple as that.”

He hailed another cab. As they returned to the office in silence, Maddy tried to work out the implications of what Ethan had said. She ultimately concluded that the approach might be worth pursuing, but only if they could narrow its scope. With so much data at their disposal, it would be easy to see connections that weren’t really there. To refine the parameters, they needed a source who could help them sort through the noise. Which meant that she had to talk to Lermontov.

The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, although Maddy continued to wonder about the paranoid streak that Ethan had begun to display. Four hours later, she got off the train at Atlantic Avenue and walked the five blocks to her building. As she was ascending the brownstone steps, her eye was caught by a car across the street. Behind the wheel sat a man in a tracksuit, his blond ponytail gathered in a tight apostrophe at the nape of his neck.