Neil Olson - The Icon

Lord Byron, on his first, nonfatal sojourn in Greece in 1809, made mention of a miraculous Holy Mother icon possessed by the Muslim tyrant Ali Pasha, who was already old but vigorous in mind and body, and would remain so until his death at the hands his Turkish overlords in 1822. Again, the description was very close to the Katarini icon, and Byron reported a strange golden aura about the work. Matthew shook his head. If I drank as much as you, Georgie boy, he thought, I’d see auras around paintings too.

The last volume on the table, however, was the one that troubled him most. Johann Mayer-Goff was a traveler of the late nineteenth century and a self-trained specialist on Orthodox art. The German was a sober, stolid, even somewhat boring writer, at least in translation, not given to hyperbole or floating monks. He was the first to name the village of Katarini as the residence of the icon, and he had attended the feast of the Annunciation in that same old church which Fotis’ man burned down sixty years later. The day was rainy, Mayer-Goff wrote, and only candlelight illuminated the dank stone sanctuary:

The icon was brought forth from its place of hiding and positioned near the altar. The peasant women wept in their seats, until they fell into the aisle and approached the Mother of God upon their knees, caressing the wood with their gnarled hands. One among them, who had not walked unaided in many years, stood suddenly upon shaking feet and praised Heaven. At the last, a blind old shepherd with an angry face was led forward by a young man and a girl, who seemed to pull him against his will. When his hand was placed against the forehead of the All-Holy, he cried out once and fixed his eyes upon the nearest candle flame, then upon all of us in the congregation. It was made clear from his movements that he could see us, and with another cry he fell upon the stone floor and wept like child. I saw this with my own eyes.

Matthew began to see dark spots on the page and realized that he had not taken a breath in many moments. Inhaling deeply, he then exhaled an embarrassed laugh. Get a grip on yourself, buddy.

“There you are.”

He looked up to see his older colleague Carol Voss standing before the table, and slapped shut the volume of Mayer-Goff as if he’d been caught by his mother reading Penthouse.

“Here I am, indeed.”

“Not answering your e-mails,” she scolded gently, her green eyes behind large glasses looking him over carefully. Carol was a mentor of sorts, his only close friend at the museum, and there was little he could keep from her.

“It’s not just yours I’m ignoring, if that makes you feel better.”

“This about the Kessler icon?” she waved at the books on the table.

“Yes.”

“Checking provenance?”

“More or less. It’s sketchy.”

“Are we serious about this?” she asked skeptically.

“Are you pretending that I would know that better than you, Ms. Finger-on-the-Director’s-pulse?”

She laughed. “I haven’t a clue. Nevins seems excited.”

“Yeah, but he’s up at the Cloisters every day. I don’t even know if he’s spoken to Fearless Leader.”

“Speak to him yourself.”

“We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“You seem worried,” she said, out of nowhere. “Are there ownership issues?”

“Maybe,” he conceded, in a barely audible tone.

“Have we filed with the Art Loss Register?”

“Not yet. We need to be a little more certain we want it, right? Besides, if there’s a theft involved, it isn’t going to show up there. It would be older.”

The phrase “wartime loot” hung in the air between them, unspoken. Carol clearly thought of saying more, and Matthew found himself wishing she would, wishing for someone upon whom to unburden himself. She squeezed his shoulder instead.

“Good luck, kiddo. Tell me if you want help. And Matthew, I know this is a fantastic piece and all, but it’s just one piece. It’s not your whole life.”

Calling Benny Ezraki was a long shot. The card with the message service number was years old, and Andreas did not know if Benny was alive, much less still in the business of finding people, but he was unquestionably the right man for the job if he would take it. There was no recorded voice, just a tone. Andreas left his name and the hotel number, and ten minutes later his old Israeli contact called back. Andreas could stop by his new office, if he liked, but he might not approve of it. The old man knew he was being baited but agreed to go there anyway.

The name on the door was for a travel agency, and indeed the posters of Turkey and Egypt on the walls and the efficient young women with their headsets seemed to confer legitimacy. But that was only the first floor. The second, reached by a long stairway, consisted of narrow corridors and closed doors, and the barely dressed, boldly casual women smoking in the small lounge completed the picture. They all smiled at Andreas and pointed to the office in back.

Benny met him with a bear hug, which seamlessly segued into a frisk. Habit, he apologized. The wily Greek Jew still looked younger than his age, which must be late fifties, though he seemed a little beaten down and tired. The beard was graying faster then the hair, the huge shoulders were more hunched, the pouches beneath the gentle brown eyes were more pronounced. The office had a view of the alley, a large computer monitor on the table, and a Pissarro calendar on the wall. The light was poor, and the cramped space was shrouded in blue cigarette smoke.

“Did you really expect me to be shocked by this place?”

“I was hoping so; you Athenians are all prudes. But I forget you are a man of the world.”

“This is your new business?”

The big man sucked on a cigarette as if his life depended upon it, blew smoke just to the left of Andreas’ face. He seldom smiled, even when he was kidding around.

“Always the same business. Travel, marketing, whores, it’s all about information. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this years ago. You wouldn’t believe the kinds of things these girls find out.”

Andreas, a connoisseur of human nature, found it very easy to believe.

“Are they safe?”

“A doctor checks them every month. You want to try one?”

“That is not what I’m asking.”

“I don’t give them sensitive stuff. Mostly names. Send them around to the hotels whose databases we can’t hack. But they always come back with stories. You know, blackmail is not my thing, but if it were I could make a fortune.”

“You’re too casual for that kind of work; you would get yourself killed.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Can we speak freely? Is the Israeli ambassador in the next room?”

“We get very little traffic in here,” Benny replied, the battered ergonomic chair groaning beneath his shifting weight. “Mostly we send out. Like Chinese food. This isn’t a bordello.”

“No?”

“No, we’re an escort service. These aren’t even the prime girls.”

“Not so loud.”

“The prime girls wait at home for the phone to ring. We screen it, make sure it’s safe, get the credit card number, send them out.”

“All in the name of information.”

“That’s my business.”

“Excellent. I’m looking for someone.”

Benny twisted awkwardly to reach the ashtray on his cluttered desk, mashed out one Gauloises, and immediately lit another.

“Aren’t you retired?”

“For years.”

“But never completely, right?”

“I kept my hand in for a while. Until the idiots brought Papandreou back. That was the end.”

“Papandreou, Mitsotakis, not much to choose from there. This new one seems like a decent fellow. Now our Israeli politicians-”