Aaron Elkins: A Deceptive Clarity

Anne and I seized the opportunity to move on, but after three steps I froze on the spot.

"Anne…? I just realized-preconceptions-expectations-the integrity of-of-"

"I think," she said gravely, "you've been talking to Lorenzo too much."

"No." I shook my head impatiently. "Remember what Peter told me? To look at everything without preconception? Well, I haven't done it. I haven't done it!" I laughed, no doubt a little wildly.

"Chris-"

"Come on." I grabbed her wrist and broke toward the neglected alcove where the eleven copies of the missing paintings were.

"Dr. Norgren, a little decorum, please!" she yelped, tripping after me. "Remember, we represent the dignity and majesty of the government of the United-"

"Screw decorum! Anne, if I'm right… if I'm right-!"

I was right.

"Chris," Anne said, looking uncertainly up at my face, "you're making me nervous. What's going on?"

"Nervous?" I said, barely hearing her. "Why?"

"For one thing, because you're staring at that picture with a look on your face like that orangutan with his banana, only you're sort of chuckling and oinking-"

"Oinking?" I repeated, not taking my eyes off the painting. "I don't think I'm oinking."

"Well, you are, and before that you practically yanked me off my feet, which isn't like you. You also said 'screw,' which also isn't like you-"

"Did I say 'screw'?" I asked dreamily.

"Yes," she said, "you did. Christopher, what… is… going… on?"

"Yeah, what?" Harry appeared at the entrance to the alcove. He, too, was in mess dress and looking uncomfortable, as if he longed to stick a finger down his starched collar and tug. "You practically ran me over getting here. What's the big deal?"

"The deal," I said slowly, relishing this moment so much I didn't want to move on. "The deal is, I've found Peter's fake."

In real life, people don't do double takes very often, but they both did one now. From vague, uncomprehending stares at the painting, their eyes jumped to me and then leaped again to fasten on the smallish, modestiy framed picture we stood before.

"This?" Harry said in a squawk of surprise. "This?" He leaned closer to the identifying plaque, a neat white rectangle of cardboard on the brown wall covering, a few inches from the picture's bottom right corner.

" 'A Woman Peeling Apples,' " he read, " 'Jan Vermeer, sixteen-' "

"I don't understand," Anne interrupted. "How can this be a fake? I mean, it already is a fake." She gestured at the other ten copies in the alcove. "These are all fakes. That's what they're supposed to be."

"Yes," I said, "but this is a fake fake." I know I chortled; maybe I even oinked.

"Listen, Chris," Harry said evenly, "it's real nice to see you having such a good time, but I think maybe you better let the rest of us in-"

"It's real."

Silence.

"It's a genuine Vermeer," I said.

Silence.

I finally looked away from the painting and at the two of them. "This is Peter's 'forgery.' That's why he was so funny about it. It's not a fake that everyone thought was an original, it's an original that everyone thought was a fake."

"Are you sure?" Anne said in a bewildered whisper.

"Absolutely. Look at the pointilles, look at the wall texture with all those incredibly tiny color variations; who else ever understood enough to do that? No question about it. It's obvious." I shook my head, not sure if I were more pleased with how clever I was or distressed with how slow I'd been to get here.

"Well, what the hell are you looking so smug about?" Harry asked almost angrily. "And if it's so obvious, what in the goddamn hell took you so long to find it?"

"What took so long was that I wasn't looking for it. Not here, anyway, among the copies. They were supposed to be fakes, so I saw them as fakes, and I didn't pay any attention to them. Damn, I should have figured this out weeks ago, but I didn't do what Peter said-I didn't start without preconceptions. My inner reality-"

"Inner reality!" Harry exploded, and looked at Anne. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

"Sure. Expectancy. The imposition of our values and expectations on the supposedly objective exterior world. Kant. Kafka. Heidegger. Ask Lorenzo; he'll explain it to you."

"You're getting weird, too," Harry muttered. "All right, it's real. I'll take your word for it." He folded his arms, pulled at the side of his beard, and stared hard at the simple homely scene on the canvas; a seated, house-jacketed woman peeling apples from a basket on her lap, with a little girl standing at her side, both figures bathed in Vermeer's wonderful, clean light pouring in through the window on their left.

"A Woman Peeling Apples," he said musingly. "This is why van Cortlandt got killed? Because he figured out what you just figured out?"

So much for chortling and oinking. In the excitement of discovery, I'd actually forgotten the point. "It's got to be that," I said, sobered. "And I think that's why somebody's been trying to do me in, too, before I figured it out as well. I'm supposed to be a Vermeer expert, remember?" I shook my head ruefully again. "Down my alley, Peter said. Right smack down the middle of my alley."

"No, wait a minute," Anne said. "Why you and only you? If it's so obvious, couldn't someone else have found it, too? What about Earl, for instance? He's also an art expert. Why hasn't someone been trying to kill him before he-" Her eyes widened. "You don't-do you really think he might be the… Heinrich Schliemann… might be Earl?"

"No, I don't. What motive could he possibly have? Even if he believes that junk he wrote in those letters, how would substituting a genuine painting for a copy help him?"

"All right, forget the letters," Harry said. "What about simple greed? Maybe he stole the real one-the real fake, I mean-and switched

… No, what kind of sense would that make?"

"None," I agreed. "Stealing an original to sell it off and substituting a copy for it is one thing, but stealing a fake and substituting a genuine three-million-dollar masterpiece for it-why would he want to do that?"

"Why would anybody want to do it?" Anne asked sensibly. "It doesn't sound tike a very good business proposition. Harry, what do you think?"

"I think we better get back to the other room. Somebody's going to notice we've been in here a long time, and they're liable to figure out what we've been talking about."

"You're right," I said. "Let's go." But I didn't go, I stood there looking at the picture, chewing on my lip. "Come to think of it, where did this come from? It's been missing since 1944. That's why it's here in this alcove. I mean that's why the copy's supposed to be here in this room."

"It just doesn't make sense," Anne murmured. "No sense at all."

But it was starting to make sense to me. Just a glimmer of sense, a hazy vision of the threads that bound it all together; the hoax, the murder, everything. Even the storage-room break-in.

"No," I said slowly, "I think maybe it does make sense… but we're going to have a hell of a time proving it."

"Proving what?" they said together.

"Harry, I've got an idea. It'd involve using one of the security guards and-well-staging a sort of incident. Entrapment, some might even say. Would you be game to go along with it?"

"Let me hear the idea first," Harry said warily, but I saw his dark eyes glint.

After the reception about a dozen of us sat tiredly in a closed-off section of the Columbia House dining room awaiting a private dinner, courtesy of the Defense Department. The exhibition's senior staff was there, and the Bolzanos, and Emanuel Traben from the Frankfurt Kunstmuseum. There were some others too: a youngish air-force one-star general, somebody from the American ambassador's office, and a Bundestag member. An uneasy-looking Conrad Jessick was crimped into a corner chair, trying to look inconspicuous among all the brass.