Daniel Silva - The Rembrandt Affair

In his youth, Gabriel had preferred to work in strict isolation, but now that he was older he no longer liked to be alone. So with Chiara's blessing, he removed the furnishings from the living room and converted it into a makeshift studio. He rose before dawn each morning and worked until early evening, granting himself just one short break each day to walk the cliffs in the bitterly cold January wind. Chiara rarely strayed far from his side. She assisted with the relining and composed a small note to Rachel Herzfeld that Gabriel concealed against the inside of the new stretcher before tapping the last brad into place. She was even present the morning Gabriel undertook the unpleasant task of removing Christopher Liddell's blood. Rather than drop the soiled swabs onto the floor, Gabriel sealed them in an aluminum canister. And when it came time to remove the dirty varnish, he began on the curve of Hendrickje's breast, the spot where Liddell had been working the night of his murder.

As usual, Chiara was bothered by the dizzying stench of Gabriel's solvents. To help cover the smell, she prepared lavish meals, which they ate by candlelight at their table overlooking Mount's Bay. Though they tried not to relive the operation over dinner, the constant presence of the Rembrandt made it a difficult subject to avoid. Invariably, Chiara would remind Gabriel that he would never have undertaken the investigation if she had not insisted.

"So you enjoyed being back at the Office?" Gabriel asked, taunting her a bit.

"Parts of it," Chiara conceded. "But I would be just as happy if the Landesmann operation turned out to be your last masterpiece."

"It's not a masterpiece," Gabriel said. "Not until those centrifuges are in place."

"Does it bother you to leave it in Uzi's hands?"

"Actually, I prefer it." Gabriel looked at the battered painting propped on the easel in the living room. "Besides, I have other problems at the moment."

"Will she be ready in time?"

"She'd better be."

"Are we going to attend the unveiling?"

"I haven't decided yet."

Chiara gazed at the painting. "I understand all the reasons why Lena decided to let the National Gallery have it, but..."

"But what?"

"I think I would find it hard to give her up."

"Not if your sister had been turned to ash because her hair was dark."

"I know, Gabriel." Chiara looked at the painting again. "I think she's happy here."

"You wouldn't feel that way if you spent as much time with her as I do."

"She's misbehaving?"

"Let's just say she has her moods."

For the most part, Gabriel and Chiara managed to keep the outside world at bay after their return to Cornwall. But in late February, as Gabriel was laboring through the teeth of the restoration, Martin Landesmann managed to intrude on their seclusion. It seemed Saint Martin, after an unusually long absence from public view, had decided to raise the stakes on his annual appearance at Davos. After opening the forum by pledging an additional hundred million dollars to his African food initiative, he delivered an electrifying speech that was unanimously declared the highlight of the week. Not only did the oracle declare an end to the Great Recession, he described himself as "more hopeful than ever" about the future of the planet.

Saint Martin seemed particularly upbeat about the potential for progress in the Middle East, though events on the ground the very day of his remarks seemed to conflict with his optimism. Along with the usual litany of terrorist horrors, there was an alarming report from the IAEA concerning the state of the Iranian nuclear program. The agency's director dispensed with his usual caution and predicted the Iranians were perhaps only months from a nuclear capability. "The time for talk is over," he said. "The time for action is finally upon us."

In a somewhat shocking break with past tradition, Martin ended his week at Davos by agreeing to make a brief appearance in the media center to take a few questions from the press. Not present was Zoe Reed, who had requested a leave of absence from the Financial Journal for reasons never made clear to her colleagues. Still more intriguing was the fact no one had seen her for some time. Like the Rembrandt, Zoe's whereabouts were strictly need to know. Indeed, even Gabriel was never told her exact location. Not that he could have been much help in her recovery. Hendrickje would never have allowed it.

In mid-April, on the first remotely pleasant day in Cornwall in months, Gerald Malone, CEO of Latham International Media, announced he was selling the venerable Financial Journal to the former Russian oligarch Viktor Orlov. Two days later, Zoe surfaced briefly to say she would be leaving the Journal to take a television job with CNBC in America. By coincidence, her announcement came on the very day Gabriel finished the retouching of Hendrickje's face. The next morning, when the painting was thoroughly dry, he covered it with a fresh coat of varnish. Chiara caught him standing in front of the canvas, one hand to his chin, head tilted slightly to one side.

"Is she ready for her coming-out party?" asked Chiara.

"I think so," said Gabriel.

"Does she approve of your work?"

"She's not speaking to me at the moment."

"Another quarrel?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Have you made a decision about Washington?"

"I think she needs us to be there."

"So do I, Gabriel. So do I."

By the time Gabriel and Chiara arrived in America, their silent but demanding houseguest of three months was an international sensation. Her celebrity was not instant; it was rooted in an affair she'd had four hundred years earlier with a painter named Rembrandt and by the long and tragic road she had traveled ever since. Once upon a time, she would have been forced to live out her days in shame. Now they were lining up for tickets just to have a glimpse of her.

In an era when museums had been scorched repeatedly by provenance scandals, the director of the National Gallery of Art had felt compelled to reveal much of her sordid past. She had been sold in Amsterdam in 1936 to a man named Abraham Herzfeld, acquired by coercion in 1943 by an SS officer named Kurt Voss, and sold twenty-one years later in a private transaction conducted by the Hoffmann Gallery of Lucerne. At the request of the White House, the National Gallery never revealed the name of the Zurich bank where she had been hidden for several years, nor was there any mention of the document once hidden inside her. Her links to a looted Holocaust fortune had been carefully erased, just like the bullet hole in her forehead and the blood that had stained her garment. No one named Landesmann had ever laid hands on her. No one named Landesmann had ever killed to protect her terrible secret.

Her scandalous past did nothing to tarnish her reception. In fact, it only added to her allure. There was no escaping her face in Washington. She stared from billboards and buses, from souvenir shirts and coffee mugs, and even from a hot-air balloon that floated over the city the day before her unveiling. Gabriel and Chiara saw her for the first time minutes after stepping off their plane at Dulles Airport, gazing at them disapprovingly from an advertisement as they glided through customs on false passports. They saw her again peering from a giant banner as they hurried up the steps of the museum through an evening thunderstorm, this time as if urging them to quicken their pace. Uncharacteristically, they were running late. The fault was entirely Gabriel's. After years of toiling in the shadows of the art world, he'd had serious misgivings about stepping onto so public a stage, even clandestinely.

The exhibition opening was a formal, invitation-only affair. Even so, all guests had to have their possessions searched, a policy instituted at the gallery immediately after the attacks of 9/11. Julian Isherwood was waiting just beyond the checkpoint beneath the soaring main rotunda, gazing nervously at his wristwatch. Seeing Gabriel and Chiara, he made a theatrical gesture of relief. Then, looking at Gabriel's clothing, he tried unsuccessfully to conceal a smile.