Daniel Silva - The Rembrandt Affair

Needless to say, it had been many years since Maurice Durand had personally stolen a painting. It was a young man's profession, and he had retired after a skylight assault on a small gallery in Austria resulted in a back injury that left him in constant pain. Ever since then he had been forced to utilize the services of hired professionals. The arrangement was less than ideal for all the obvious reasons, but Durand treated his fieldmen fairly and paid them exceedingly well. As a result, he had never had a single unpleasant complication. Until now.

It was the south that produced the finest wines in France and, in Durand's estimation, its best thieves as well. Nowhere was that more true than the ancient port of Marseilles. Stepping from the Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles, Durand was pleased to find the temperature several degrees warmer than it had been in Paris. He walked quickly through the brilliant sunshine along the Boulevard d'Athenes, then turned to the right and headed down to the Old Port. It was approaching midday. The fishing boats had returned from their morning runs and atop the steel tables lining the port's eastern flank were arrayed all manner of hideous-looking sea creatures, soon to be turned into bouillabaisse by the city's chefs. Normally, Durand would have stopped to survey the contents of each with an appreciation only a Frenchman could manage, but today he headed straight for the table of a gray-haired man dressed in a tattered wool sweater and a rubber apron. By all appearances, he was a fisherman who scrounged a respectable living from a sea now empty of fish. But Pascal Rameau was anything but respectable. And he didn't seem surprised to see Maurice Durand.

"How was the catch, Pascal?"

"Merde," Rameau muttered. "It seems like we get a little less every day. Soon..." He pulled his lips downward into a Gallic expression of disgust. "There'll be nothing left but garbage."

"It's the Italians' fault," said Durand.

"Everything is the Italians' fault," Rameau said. "How's your back?"

Durand frowned. "As ever, Pascal."

Rameau made an empathetic face. "Mine, too. I'm not sure how much longer I can work the boat."

"You're the richest man in Marseilles. Why do you still go to sea every morning?"

"I'm one of the richest. And I go out for the same reason you go to your shop." Rameau smiled and looked at Durand's attache case. "You brought the money?"

Durand nodded.

"It's not wise to carry large amounts of cash in Marseilles. Haven't you heard, Maurice? This town is full of thieves."

"Very good thieves," Durand agreed. "At least, they used to be."

"A business like ours can be unpredictable."

"Weren't you the one who always told me that blood is bad for business, Pascal?"

"That's true. But sometimes it's unavoidable."

"Where is he?"

Rameau tilted his head to the right. Durand walked along the Quai de Rive Neuve toward the mouth of the harbor. About halfway down the marina was a motor yacht called Mistral. Seated on the aft deck, feet propped on the gunwale, eyes concealed by dark glasses, was a man with shoulder-length dark hair pulled into a stubby ponytail. His name was Rene Monjean, among the most gifted of Durand's thieves and usually the most dependable.

"What happened in England, Rene?"

"There were complications."

"What kind of complications?"

Monjean removed the sunglasses and stared at Durand with a pair of bloodred eyes.

"Where's my painting?"

"Where's my money?"

Durand held up the attache case. Monjean put on the glasses and got to his feet.

"You really should see a doctor, Rene. Acetone can cause permanent damage to the cornea."

"And when the doctor asks how the acetone got in my eyes?"

"Your doctor wouldn't dare ask."

Monjean opened the door of the small fridge in the galley and took out two bottles of Kronenbourg.

"It's a bit early for me, Rene."

Monjean put one bottle back and shrugged— Northerners . Durand sat down at the small table.

"Was there really no other way to deal with the situation?"

"I suppose I could have let him escape so he could telephone the police. But that didn't seem like such a good idea." He paused, then added, "For either one of us."

"Couldn't you have just disabled him a little?"

"I'm surprised I actually managed to hit him. I really couldn't see much at all when I pulled the trigger." Monjean pried the top from the bottle of beer. "You've never—"

"Shot someone?" Durand shook his head. "I've never even carried a gun."

"The world has changed, Maurice." Monjean looked at the attache case. "You have something in there for me?"

Durand popped open the locks and removed several bundles of hundred-euro notes.

"Your turn, Rene."

Monjean opened an overhead locker and removed a cardboard tube, roughly five inches in diameter and three feet in length. He pried off the aluminum top and shook the tube several times until three inches of canvas was protruding from the end.

"Be careful, Rene. You'll damage it."

"I'm afraid it's a bit late to worry about that."

Monjean unfurled the painting across the tabletop. Durand stared in horror. Just above the right eye of the woman was a perforation that looked as if it could have been made by a pencil. Her silk wrap was stained with something dark, as were her breasts.

"Tell me that isn't blood."

"I could," Monjean said, "but it wouldn't be the truth."

"Who did it belong to?"

"Who do you think?" Monjean took a long pull at his beer and explained.

"Too bad you didn't take more careful aim," Durand said. "You might have actually hit her right between the eyes."

He probed at the hole, then licked the tip of his finger and scrubbed at the surface of the painting until he smeared a small patch of the blood.

"Looks like it will come right off," Monjean said.

"It should."

"What about the bullet hole?"

"I know a man in Paris who might be able to repair it."

"What kind of man?"

"The kind who produces forgeries."

"You need a restorer, Maurice. A very good one."

"At the core of every good restorer lies a forger."

Monjean didn't appear convinced. "May I give you a piece of advice, Maurice?"

"You just shot a Rembrandt worth forty-five million dollars. But please, Rene, feel free."

"This painting is trouble. Burn it and forget about it. Besides, we can always steal another one."

"I'm tempted."

"But?"

"I have a client waiting. And my clients expect me to deliver. Besides, Rene, I didn't get into this business to destroy paintings. Especially not one as beautiful as this."

In the cutthroat world of the art trade, there was one principle that was supposed to be sacrosanct. Provenance, the written record of a painting's chain of ownership, was everything. Theoretically, dealers did not sell paintings without a proper provenance, collectors did not buy them, and no decent restorer would ever lay hands on a picture without knowing where it had been and under what conditions it had hung. But after many years of conducting provenance research, Gabriel had learned never to be shocked by the secret lives led by some of the world's most sought-after works of art. He knew that paintings, like people, sometimes lied about their pasts. And he knew that, often, those lies revealed more than the so-called truths contained in their printed pedigrees. All of which explained his interest in De Vries Fine Arts, purveyors of quality Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings since 1882.

Occupying a stately if somewhat sullen building overlooking Amsterdam's Herengracht canal, the gallery had always presented itself as the very picture of stability and good manners, though a brief glimpse into the darkest chambers of its past would tell a markedly different story. Regrettably, none was darker than its conduct during the Second World War. Within weeks of Holland's capitulation, Amsterdam was inundated by a wave of Germans looking for Dutch paintings. Prices soared so quickly that ordinary citizens were soon scouring their closets for anything that might be regarded as an Old Master. The De Vries gallery welcomed the Germans with open arms. Its best customer was none other than Hermann Goring, who purchased more than a dozen paintings from the gallery between 1940 and 1942. The staff found Goring to be a shrewd negotiator and secretly enjoyed his roguish charm. For his part, Goring would tell colleagues in Berlin that no shopping spree in Amsterdam was complete without a stop at the exquisite gallery along the Herengracht.