Daniel Silva - The English Assassin

“Tell me about the Swiss connection.”

“Neutrality left the dealers and collectors of Switzerland in a unique position to capitalize on the rape of Paris. The Swiss were permitted to travel throughout much of Europe, and the Swiss franc was the world’s only universally accepted currency. And don’t forget that places like Zurich were awash in the profits of collaborating with Hitler. Paris was the place to buy looted art, but Zurich, Lucerne, and Geneva were the places to unload it.”

“Or stash it?”

“But of course. The banking secrecy laws made Switzerland a natural dumping ground for looted art. So did the laws covering the receipt of stolen property.”

“Explain the laws to me.”

“They were brilliant, and thoroughly Swiss in subtlety. For example, if a person takes possession of an object in good faith, and that object happens to be stolen, it’s rightfully his after five years.”

“How convenient.”

“Wait, there’s more. If an art dealer finds himself in possession of a stolen work, it’s the responsibility of the true owner to reimburse the dealer in order to reclaim his painting.”

“So Swiss dealers and collectors could receive stolen works without any fear of the law or of losing money?”

“Exactly.”

“What happened after the war?”

“The Allies dispatched an art expert named Douglas Cooper to Switzerland to try to find the truth. Cooper determined that hundreds, if not thousands, of stolen works had entered Switzerland during the war. He was convinced that many of them were hidden in bank vaults and bonded warehouses. Paul Rosenberg went to Switzerland to have a look round for himself. In a gallery in Zurich, he was offered a Matisse that had been looted from his very own collection.”

“Remarkable,” Gabriel said. “What did the Swiss government do with this information?”

“It promised the Allies that it would cooperate in a thorough inquiry. It promised to freeze all German assets that had entered the country during the war and to conduct a nationwide census of all such assets. It implemented neither measure. Douglas Cooper suggested suspending the licenses of any dealer who traded in looted art. The Swiss government refused. Then the Swiss Federation of Art Dealers told its members not to cooperate. In short, the Swiss government did what it always does. It shielded its business and its citizens from the eyes of foreigners.”

“Did dealers like Paul Rosenberg try to reclaim their paintings in court?”

“A few tried, but the deck was stacked against them. The Swiss made it time-consuming and very expensive for a foreigner to try to reclaim property from a Swiss citizen. The Swiss usually took shelter behind a claim of good faith. And remember, most of the art in question was stolen by the Nazis in 1940. By 1945, under the five-year rule of Swiss law, the rightful owners no longer had a valid legal claim. Needless to say, most plaintiffs walked away empty-handed.”

“Do you think any of it’s still there?”

“In my opinion, Gabriel, most of it’s still there. From the little bit you’ve told me, it sounds as though some of those paintings may have been in the hands of Augustus Rolfe.”

“Not anymore.”

Isherwood finished the last of his wine, and his gaze drifted back to the fire. “I think it’s your turn to do the talking, Gabriel. Tell me everything. And no lies this time. I’m too old to be lied to anymore.”

OUTSIDE it was raining again. On the way back to the gallery they sheltered together beneath Isherwood’s umbrella like mourners in a cortege. Gabriel had told Isherwood everything, beginning with the discovery of Rolfe’s body and ending with the explosion at Werner Müller’s gallery in Paris. Isherwood had drunk two more glasses of Médoc, and his haphazard gait showed the effects.

“Shamron,” Isherwood said sotto voce, his voice dripping with scorn. “I should have known that bastard had something to do with this. I thought they’d finally put him out to pasture for good this time.”

“They always find a reason to bring him back.”

“They say she’s quite the diva, Anna Rolfe.”

“She has her moments.”

“If I can give you one piece of advice, my dear boy, assume at all times that she knows more about her father and his collection than she’s telling you. Daughters tend to be very protective of their fathers, even when they think their fathers are complete bastards.”

“I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

“It may just be an ordinary art theft.”

“They left a Raphael hanging on the wall of the parlor and blew up the art gallery belonging to the man who oversaw the collection. I don’t think there’s anything ordinary about what happened.”

“Point taken,” Isherwood said. “In fact, it sounds to me as if the only things you can trust in this whole wretched affair are the paintings themselves.”

“I hate to be the one to break this to you, Julian, but paintings can’t really talk. Besides, the collection is gone.”

“The paintings can’t talk, but their provenance can. Clearly, Augustus Rolfe took his collecting very seriously. Even if he acquired the paintings under less than perfect circumstances, he would have insisted on a provenance for each one of them. Provenance, after all, is everything.”

“And if I can get the provenance?”

“Then I’ll be able to tell you whether he was a legitimate collector or whether the old bastard was sitting atop a vault filled with looted art.”

GABRIEL had planned to leave him in Duke Street, but Isherwood took him by the elbow and pulled him through the passageway into Mason’s Yard. “Come with me. There’s one more thing I need to show you.”

As they entered the gallery, Irina recognized the telltale signs of a bottled lunch. She gave Isherwood a stack of telephone messages and went to work on a pot of coffee. Back in his office, Isherwood opened his private safe and withdrew two items, a sketch of a young boy and a photocopy of an old document several pages in length. He held up the sketch for Gabriel to see.

“Look familiar?”

“I can’t say it does.”

“The subject is me. The artist is Pablo Picasso. I carried it out of France with me.”

“And the document?”

“I carried that as well. My father gave it to me right before I set out with the Basques. It’s a detailed list of every painting in his private collection and professional inventory, written in his own hand. This is a copy, of course. The original’s in terrible shape now.”

He handed the list to Gabriel.

“I don’t know how far you plan to take this thing, but if you happen to come across any of these, you’ll let me know, won’t you, petal?”

Gabriel slipped the list into the breast pocket of his jacket.

“Where are you off to now?” Isherwood asked.

“I’m not sure.”

“There’s a man you should talk to in Lyons. He helped me with a few things when I was researching the book. If Augustus Rolfe has any dirt under his fingernails, this man will know about it.”

Isherwood flipped through the Rolodex and gave Gabriel the telephone numbers.

AROUND THE CORNER from Isherwood Fine Arts, in Jermyn Street, a fair-haired man sat behind the wheel of a Rover sedan listening to the radio. For five days he had been watching the art dealer. He had followed him to his drunken lunches. Followed him home at night to his house in South Kensington. He’d even posed as a potential buyer in order to conceal a pair of tiny transmitters in the dealer’s office. The transmitter broadcast a weak analog signal over an ordinary FM wavelength. The man was using the radio in the Rover to monitor the output. Ten minutes later, when the conversation inside ended, he picked up his cellular phone and dialed a number in Zurich.