Aaron Elkins: Old Scores

"We'll still have three days together," I told her. I hoped I sounded more exuberant than I felt. "All we'll miss are the first four."

Right. Just the long, looping, lonely curves of U.S. 101, with the rockbound sea on our left and those sweeping, forested bluffs on our right. Just the brooding offshore monoliths of Bandon and Cannon Beach, shrouded in blue-gray fall mists. Just the lighthouses at Yaquina and Heceta Head on their bleak, wave-pounded promontories. Just the shout-out-loud pleasure of having an entire, endless week ahead in each other's company.

Having only the three days killed all that. You can't have an endless three days. From the beginning, you can hear the clock ticking.

"I know," she said.

"We'll drive the coast next time," I said. "It'll still be there. So will those inns along the way."

"Did you make the reservations?"

"Yes. I'll cancel them," I said glumly.

"No, don't cancel them. I think I'd like to make the drive by myself. I'll rent a car."

"It's over a thousand miles."

"That's all right. It'll be nice to look at the sea. And I can use some time by myself. I want to do some thinking."

That didn't sound exactly ominous, but it didn't suffuse me with joy either.

"We'll talk when you get back to Seattle," she said.

That sounded ominous.

"Anne, this is just one of those logistical problems, it's nothing serious. They happen, that's all. Remember when you couldn't make it to Antwerp last year?"

"Of course I remember. I know this isn't your fault."

"So what is there to talk about?"

"I don't know. I'm not making sense. I'm still half-asleep. I'm sorry I won't see you till Wednesday."

"Me too. You still have the key to my place?"

"Uh-huh."

"I'll leave some things in the refrigerator for you."

"Thank you."

"Anne?" I hesitated. "Everything's all right between us, isn't it?"

"Of course it is," she said, sounding surprised. "Don't worry, we'll work things out. Chris?"

I waited. I realized the back of my neck was tense.

"I love you. Very much." The softness was back in her voice. I felt most of the tightness melt out of my neck.

"I love you," I said sincerely. "I'll see you Wednesday."

I hung up, reassured but not totally.

What was there to work out?

A few minutes later I called Tony's administrative assistant. "Lloyd, I need some airplane tickets." I gave him the details.

"Will do," he said. "Pronto mucho."

"Oh, and I'd like to go first-class, please. Or business-class, if you can't get that."

This was taboo, as I knew very well. First-class seats were standard if you were transporting, say, a Van Gogh or a Caravaggio-one seat for you, one for the picture-but mere human beings traveling on museum business flew K-class. Generally speaking, I had no objection to the policy; this was the first time I'd asked for an exception.

There was a pause before Lloyd answered. "I'll have to clear that with Tony."

"Fine," I said. "He owes me."

"You want my best guess?" Calvin asked, looking up from a copy of the Executive Gift Catalog, which I'd gotten for him from the seat pocket on the plane. Calvin Boyer is the only person I know who actually orders things from these catalogs. I can personally affirm that on his office desk is a palm-sized digital clock, an electronic chronometer that can time up to three functions simultaneously, that his Porsche has a customized shift knob of hand-rubbed walnut and richly gleaming brass with CWB engraved on it, and that he ordinarily travels with a handy-dandy pocket calculator capable of saying "Where is the toilet?" in seven languages (something he didn't need on this trip, having lived in France until he was eleven). Even now I could see the dark glint of the multifunctional navigator's wristwatch, with "safety-ratcheted bezel," on his wrist.

Despite these and numerous other oddities of personality, Calvin is a likable guy, lively and upbeat, and even bright in an obtuse sort of way.

I turned from the window. "Sure," I said. "What's your best guess?"

We were seated side by side in the comfortable, plush chairs of a FrenchRail TGV, that sleek, silent, 180-mile-per-hour train that is usually the fastest and always the most comfortable way of getting from Paris to any other important French city. I had landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport a couple of hours earlier after a reasonably pleasant thirteen-hour flight from Seattle-the first-class seat didn't hurt any-and gone directly to the Gare de Lyon to meet Calvin in time to make the 5:19 for Dijon.

"I think these paintings of his are fakes," Calvin said. "Both of them. The Rembrandt and the other guy too."

"Leger," I said. "I agree with you."

"I think he's on another one of his crusades. He wants to show the world that art experts are fundamentally full of crap. I'm telling you."

"Could be," I said, then smiled. "You wouldn't think he'd have to go to so much trouble to make that particular point."

"He thinks the pictures are so good," Calvin continued, "that he can get them by you and most of the other pros-as long as nobody starts analyzing pigments or whatever they do in the labs. And as soon as some of you guys commit yourselves and say they're genuine, then he's going to get them scientifically tested himself, and the results are going to show that they're fakes after all, and that he put one over on you and half of the art world.

"Thereby demonstrating that art experts are fundamentally full of crap," he concluded with more verve than was strictly necessary.

"I heard you the first time, Calvin."

"Hey, nothing personal, pal. My advice to you is not to commit yourself one way or the other."

"I have to. We have to either accept it or turn it down by the end of Tuesday. Day after tomorrow."

"Hey, that's really tough," he said, his interest returning to the page. "Whoa, what about this? 'A double-sided calculator-clock desk folder. Flip it up, and it tells the time, flip it down…' "

Calvin's hypothesis was pretty much the one that I'd come up with last week in talking with Tony. Since then I'd refined it a bit. I imagined the feisty and more than slightly crackpot Vachey had in mind another one of his media extravaganzas. According to Tony, the French art experts and critics were already quarreling over the authenticity of the "newly found" paintings, and no one had even seen them yet. After the public unveiling at tomorrow's exclusive but highly publicized reception they would very likely be at each others' throats, and Vachey himself would have center stage once more. I assumed he had some kind of big finish in mind, and Calvin's guess that he himself would eventually submit the paintings to a scientific examination and then trumpet the results was as good as anything I could think of.

I had even come up with a reason for his donating the paintings to a couple of museums instead of simply announcing and displaying his "finds" and letting the critics respond on their own. He had cleverly reasoned, I thought, that museum officials, rapacious entities that we were-or that he thought we were-would be so blinded by our acquisitiveness that we might very well be a great deal less skeptical and more suggestible than the professional, presumably more objective (ha!) art critics.

I turned thoughtfully back to the darkening window. We were about twenty minutes into the trip, just breaking clear of the seemingly endless outskirts of Paris. Miles of grimy railroad yards had been succeeded by blocks of drab and graceless apartment buildings, which were followed in turn by anonymous factories, warehouses, and auto-wrecking yards, and then by great, sinister tracts of weedy, bulldozer-rutted land pockmarked with oily puddles. In the murk of dusk it had all seemed even more depressing than it actually was, but now we were in open country at last; plowed fields and ancient fortified farmhouses and rolling, wooded hills. In an hour we would be in Dijon.