Jeffrey Archer: False Impression

Tina lay soaking in the bath — a luxury she usually only allowed herself at weekends — wondering when it would be her turn to be fired. She’d been Fenston’s personal assistant for over a year, and although she despised the man and all he stood for, she’d still tried to make herself indispensable. Tina knew that she couldn’t consider resigning until...

The phone rang in her bedroom, but she made no attempt to answer it. She assumed it would be Fenston demanding to know where a particular file was, a phone number, even his diary. “On the desk in front of you” was usually the answer. She wondered for a moment if it might be Anna, the only real friend she’d made since moving from the West Coast. Unlikely, she concluded, as Anna would be presenting her report to the chairman at eight o’clock, and was probably, even now, going over the finer details for the twentieth time.

Tina smiled as she climbed out of the bath and wrapped a towel around her body. She strolled across the corridor and into her bedroom. Whenever a guest spent the night in her cramped apartment they had to share her bed or sleep on the sofa. They had little choice, as she only had one bedroom. Not many takers lately, and not because of any shortage of offers. But after what she’d been through with Fenston, Tina no longer trusted anyone. Recently she’d wanted to confide in Anna, but this remained the one secret she couldn’t risk sharing.

Tina pulled open the curtains and, despite its being September, the clear, sparkling morning convinced her that she should wear a summer dress. It might even make her relax when she stared up at the dentist’s drill.

Once she was dressed and had checked her appearance in the mirror, Tina went off to the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. She wasn’t allowed to have anything else for breakfast, not even toast — instructions from the ferocious dental assistant — so she flicked on the television to catch the early morning news. There wasn’t any. A suicide bomber on the West Bank was followed by a 320-pound woman who was suing McDonald’s for ruining her sex life. Tina was just about to turn off Good Morning America when the quarterback for the 49ers appeared on the screen.

It made Tina think of her father.

Jack Delaney arrived at his office at 26 Federal Plaza just after seven that morning. He felt depressed as he stared down at the countless files that littered his desk. Every one of them connected with his investigation of Bryce Fenston, and a year later he was no nearer to presenting his boss with enough evidence to ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant.

Jack opened Fenston’s personal file in the vain hope that he might stumble across some tiny clue, some personal trait, or just a mistake that would finally link Fenston directly to the three vicious murders that had taken place in Marseille, Los Angeles, and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1984, the thirty-two-year-old Nicu Munteanu had presented himself at the American Embassy in Bucharest, claiming that he could identify two spies working in the heart of Washington, information he was willing to trade in exchange for an American passport. A dozen such claims were handled by the embassy every week and almost all proved groundless, but in Munteanu’s case the information stood up. Within a month, two well-placed officials found themselves on a flight back to Moscow, and Munteanu was issued an American passport.

Nicu Munteanu landed in New York on February 17, 1985. Jack had been able to find little intelligence on Munteanu’s activities during the following year, but he suddenly reemerged with enough money to take over Fenston Finance, a small, ailing bank in Manhattan. Nicu Munteanu changed his name to Bryce Fenston — not a crime in itself — but no one could identify his backers, despite the fact that during the next few years the bank began to accept large deposits from unlisted companies across Eastern Europe. Then in 1989 the cash flow suddenly dried up, the same year Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, fled from Bucharest following the uprising. Within days they were captured, tried, and executed.

Jack looked out of his window over lower Manhattan and recalled the FBI maxim: never believe in coincidences, but never dismiss them.

Following Ceauşescu’s death, the bank appeared to go through a couple of lean years until Fenston met up with Karl Leapman, a disbarred lawyer who had recently been released from prison for fraud. It was not too long before the bank resumed its profitable ways.

Jack stared down at several photographs of Bryce Fenston, who regularly appeared in the gossip columns with one of New York’s most fashionable women on his arm. He was variously described as a brilliant banker, a leading financier, even a generous benefactor, and with almost every mention of his name there was a reference to his magnificent art collection. Jack pushed the photographs to one side. He hadn’t yet come to terms with a man who wore an earring, and he was even more puzzled why someone who had a full head of hair when he first came to America would choose to shave himself bald. Who was he hiding from?

Jack closed the Munteanu/Fenston personal file and turned his attention to Pierre de Rochelle, the first of the victims.

Rochelle required seventy million francs to pay for his share in a vineyard. His only previous experience of the wine industry seemed to have come from draining the bottles on a regular basis. Even a cursory inspection would have revealed that his investment plan didn’t appear to fulfill the banking maxim of being “sound.” However, what caught Fenston’s attention when he perused the application was that the young man had recently inherited a château in the Dordogne, in which every wall was graced with fine Impressionist paintings, including a Degas, two Pissarros, and a Monet of Argenteuil .

The vineyard failed to show a return for four fruitless years, during which time the château began to render up its assets, leaving only outline shapes where the pictures had once hung. By the time Fenston had shipped the last painting back to New York to join his private collection, Pierre’s original loan had, with accumulated interest, more than doubled. When his château was finally placed on the market, Pierre took up residence in a small flat in Marseille, where each night he would drink himself into a senseless stupor. That was until a bright young lady, just out of law school, suggested to Pierre, in one of his sober moments, that were Fenston Finance to sell his Degas, the Monet, and the two Pissarros, he could not only pay off his debt but take the château off the market and reclaim the rest of his collection. This suggestion did not fit in with Fenston’s long-term plans.

A week later, the drunken body of Pierre de Rochelle was found slumped in a Marseille alley, his throat sliced open.

Four years later, the Marseille police closed the file, with the words NON RESOLU stamped on the cover.

When the estate was finally settled, Fenston had sold off all the works, with the exception of the Renoir, the Monet, and the two Pissarros; and after compound interest, bank charges, and lawyers’ fees, Pierre’s younger brother, Simon de Rochelle, inherited the flat in Marseille.

Jack rose from behind his desk, stretched his cramped limbs, and yawned wearily before he considered tackling Chris Adams, Jr., although he knew Adams’s case history almost by heart.

Chris Adams, Sr., had operated a highly successful fine art gallery on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He specialized in the American School so admired by the Hollywood glitterati. His untimely death in a car crash left his son Chris, Jr., with a collection of Rothkos, Pollocks, Jasper Johnses, Rauschenbergs, and several Warhol acrylics, including a Black Marilyn .