The Rembrandt Affair (34 page)

81

LIZARD POINT, CORNWALL

T
he terrace was in bright sunlight. They sat alone in the corner beneath the shade of a parasol, Shamron with his back to the sea, Gabriel directly opposite. He was dressed in hiking shorts and waterproof boots with thick socks pulled down to the ankle. Shamron stirred two packets of sugar into his coffee and in Hebrew asked whether Gabriel was armed. Gabriel glanced at the nylon rucksack resting on the empty chair next to him. Shamron pulled a frown.

"It's a violation of Office doctrine to carry weapons in separate containers. That gun is supposed to be at the small of your back where you can get to it quickly."

"It bothers my back on long walks."

Shamron, sufferer of chronic pain, gave a sympathetic nod. "I'm just relieved the British have finally given you formal permission to carry a gun at all times." He gave a faint smile. "I suppose we have the Iranians to thank for that."

"Are you hearing anything?"

Shamron nodded gravely. "They're convinced we were behind it and they're anxious to return the favor. We know that Hezbollah's top terror planner made a trip to Tehran last week. We also know that a number of operatives have been unusually chatty the last few days. It's only a matter of time before they hit us."

"Has my name come up?"

"Not yet."

Gabriel sipped his mineral water and asked Shamron what he was doing in the country.

"A bit of post-Masterpiece housekeeping."

"Of what sort?"

"The final interservice operational review," Shamron said disdainfully. "My personal nightmare. For the past few days, I've been locked in a room at Thames House with two dozen British and American spies who think it is their God-given right to ask me any question they please."

"It's a new world, Ari."

"I like the old ways better. They were less complicated. Besides, I've never played well with others."

"Why didn't Uzi handle the review himself?"

"Uzi is far too busy to deal with something so trivial," Shamron said sardonically. "He asked me to take care of it. I suppose it wasn't a complete waste of time. There were some fences that needed mending. Things got a little tense in the ops center on the final night."

"How did I manage to stay off the invitation list for this little gathering?"

"Graham Seymour felt you deserved a break."

"How thoughtful."

"I'm afraid he does have a couple of questions before the case file can be officially closed."

"What sort of questions?"

"About the
art
end of the affair."

"Such as?"

"How did Landesmann know the Rembrandt had resurfaced?"

"Gustaaf van Berkel of the Rembrandt Committee."

"What was the connection?"

"Who do you think was the committee's main source of funding?"

"Martin Landesmann?"

Gabriel nodded. "What better way to find a long-lost Rembrandt than to create the most august body of Rembrandt scholars in the world? Van Berkel and his staff knew the location of every known Rembrandt. And when new paintings were discovered, they were automatically brought to Van Berkel and his committee for attribution."

"How
Martin,
" said Shamron. "So when the painting was moved to Glastonbury for cleaning, Martin hired a professional to steal it for him?"

"Correct," said Gabriel. "But his thief turned out to have a conscience, something Martin was never burdened with."

"The Frenchman?"

"I assume so," said Gabriel. "But under no circumstances are you to say anything about Maurice Durand to the British."

"Because you made a deal with him?"

"Actually, it was Eli."

Shamron gave a dismissive wave of his hand. "As someone who's devoted your life to preservation of paintings, have you no misgivings about protecting the identity of a man who has stolen
billions
of dollars' worth of art?"

"If Durand hadn't given that list of names and account numbers to Hannah Weinberg, we would never have been able to break Martin. The list was Martin's undoing."

"So the end justifies the means?"

"You've made deals with people who are far worse than a professional art thief, Ari. Besides, Maurice Durand might come in handy the next time the Office needs to steal something. If I were Uzi, I'd stick him in my back pocket along with Martin Landesmann."

"He sends his regards, by the way."

"Uzi?"

"Landesmann," said Shamron, clearly enjoying the look of surprise on Gabriel's face. "He was wondering whether the two of you might meet on neutral territory for a quiet dinner."

"I'd rather take your place at the interservice operational review. But tell him thanks for the offer."

"I'm sure he's going to be disappointed. He says he has a great deal of respect for you. Apparently, Martin's become quite philosophical about the entire affair."

"How long before he tries to dissolve our partnership?"

"Actually, his efforts commenced not long after the explosions at the Iranian plants. Martin believes he's lived up to his end of the deal and would like to be released from any further obligations. What he doesn't quite understand is that our relationship is just beginning. Eventually, the Iranians will try to rebuild those enrichment plants. And we plan to make sure Martin is there to offer them a helping hand."

"Will the Iranians trust him?"

"We've given them no reason not to. As far as the mullahs are concerned,
we
tampered with the centrifuges while they were in transit. Which means Martin is going to pay dividends for years, and Uzi will be the primary beneficiary. No matter what happens for the rest of his term, Uzi will go down as one of the greatest directors in Office history. And all because of you."

Shamron scrutinized Gabriel. "It doesn't bother you that Uzi is getting all the credit for your work?"

"It wasn't my work, Ari. It was a team effort. Besides, after everything I've done to make Uzi's life miserable, he deserves to have a little glory thrown his way."

"The glory is yours, Gabriel. It's quite possible you've derailed the Iranian program for years. And in the process you've also managed to restore three remarkable women."

"Three?"

"Lena, Zoe, and Hendrickje. All in all, not bad for a few months' work." Shamron paused, then added, "Which leaves only you."

Gabriel made no response.

"I suppose this is the part where you tell me you're going to retire again?" Shamron shook his head slowly. "Maybe for a while. But then another Martin will come along. Or a new terrorist will carry out another massacre of innocents. And you'll be back on the field of battle."

"You're sure about that, Ari?

"Your mother named you Gabriel for a reason. You're eternal. Just like me."

Gabriel gazed silently at the purple thrift glowing atop the cliffs in the late-afternoon sun. Shamron seemed to sense that this time it was different. He looked around the terrace of the cafe and smiled reflectively.

"Do you remember the afternoon we came here a long time ago? It was after Tariq killed our ambassador and his wife in Paris."

"I remember, Ari."

"There was a girl," Shamron said after a long pause. "The one with all the earrings and bracelets. She was like a human wind chime. Do you remember her, Gabriel? She reminded me of--"

Shamron stopped himself. Gabriel seemed not to be listening anymore. He was staring at the cliffs, lost in memory.

"I'm sorry, Gabriel. I didn't mean to--"

"Don't apologize, Ari. I'll carry Leah and Dani with me for the rest of my life."

"You've given enough, Gabriel. Too much. I suppose it's fitting it should all end here."

"Yes," said Gabriel distantly, "I suppose it is."

"Can I at least give you a ride back to your cottage?"

"No," said Gabriel. "I'll walk."

He shouldered his rucksack and stood. Shamron remained seated, one final act of defiance.

"Learn from my mistakes, Gabriel. Take good care of your wife. And if you're fortunate enough to have children, take good care of them, too."

"I will, Ari."

Gabriel bent down and kissed Shamron's forehead, then started across the terrace.

"There's one more thing," Shamron called out in Hebrew.

Gabriel stopped and turned around.

"Put that gun at the small of your back where it belongs."

Gabriel smiled. "It's already there."

"I never saw a thing."

"You never did, Abba."

Gabriel left without another word. Shamron saw him one last time, as he made his way swiftly along the cliffs of Kynance Cove. Then Gabriel vanished into the fire of the setting sun and was gone.

AUTHOR'S NOTE

The Rembrandt Affair
is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author's imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The statistics regarding art theft cited in the novel are accurate, as are the accounts of the theft of Leonardo's
Mona Lisa
in 1911 and Corot's
Le Chemin de Sevres
in 1998. The
Portrait of a Young Woman
that appears in the pages of
The Rembrandt Affair
could never have been stolen, for it does not exist. If there was such a painting, it would look markedly like
Portrait of Hendrickje Stoffels
, oil on canvas, 101.9 by 83.7 centimeters, which hangs in Room 23 of the National Gallery in London.

There is no art gallery on the Herengracht called De Vries Fine Arts, though many dealers in Amsterdam and The Hague were all too happy to do a brisk trade with their German occupiers during the Second World War. The story of Lena Herzfeld and her family is fictitious, but, sadly, the details of the Holocaust in Holland cited during her "testimony" are not. Of the 140,000 Jews who resided in the Netherlands at the time the roundups began, only 25,000 managed to find a place to hide. Of those, one-third were either betrayed or arrested, oftentimes by their own countrymen. The famous Hollandsche Schouwburg theater did in fact serve as a detention center, and there was indeed a creche across the street for young children. Several hundred young lives were saved due to the courage of the staff and the Dutch Resistance, one of the few bright spots on the otherwise bleak landscape of the Holocaust in the Netherlands.

The assistance given to fugitive Nazi war criminals by the Roman Catholic Church has been well documented. So, too, has the shameful wartime behavior of Switzerland's banks. Less well known, however, is the role played by Swiss high-technology firms in secretly supplying aspiring nuclear powers with the sophisticated equipment required to produce highly enriched uranium. In his authoritative book,
Peddling Peril,
proliferation expert David Albright describes how, in the 1990s, CIA operatives "witnessed Swiss government officials helping suppliers send sensitive goods to Pakistan, making a mockery of the official Swiss policy to maintain strict export control laws." Furthermore, Albright writes, "the Swiss government demonstrated an unwillingness to take action to disrupt these activities or to work with the CIA." Quite the opposite, in the summer of 2006, Swiss prosecutors threatened to bring criminal charges against several CIA officers involved in bringing down the global nuclear-smuggling network of A. Q. Khan. Only the intervention by officials at the highest levels of the American government convinced Bern to rethink its position.

While many Swiss firms have been willing proliferators--and no doubt remain so today--there is little disagreement among intelligence officials as to which Western European country has the most firms involved in the lucrative clandestine trade in nuclear materials. That dubious distinction belongs to Germany. Indeed, according to a very senior American intelligence official I spoke with while researching
The Rembrandt Affair,
much of the material required for Iran's secret nuclear program has been happily supplied by German high-tech firms. When I asked this official why German industrialists would be willing to sell such dangerous material to so unstable a regime, he gave me a somewhat puzzled look and responded with a single word: "Greed."

One would think that businessmen from Germany, the country that carried out the Holocaust, would have at least some qualms about doing business with a regime that has spoken openly about wiping the State of Israel from the face of the map. One would think, too, that Switzerland, the country that profited most from the Holocaust, would have similar reservations. But apparently not. If Iran succeeds in developing nuclear weapons, other countries in the region will surely want a nuclear capability of their own. Which means there is the potential for enormous future profits for firms willing to sell sensitive, export-restricted material to the highest bidder.

The intelligence services of three countries--the United States, Israel, and Great Britain--have worked the hardest to prevent such critical material from reaching Iran. The extent to which they have been successful is an open question. A senior American intelligence official with whom I spoke in the autumn of 2009 told me in no uncertain terms that Iran had other secret enrichment plants in addition to Qom--sites that could not have been constructed without at least some Western technology. And in March 2010, as I was completing this manuscript, the
New York Times
reported that Iran appears to be building at least two "Qom look-alikes" in defiance of the United Nations. The story was based on interviews with intelligence officials who insisted on anonymity because the information they were disclosing was based in part on "highly classified operations." No mention was made of a long-lost portrait by Rembrandt, a corrupt Swiss financier known to all the world as a saint, or a man of medium build with gray temples often seen hiking alone along the sea cliffs of Cornwall.