False Impression

by Jeffrey Archer

  “Open it,” ordered Fenston, long before the box had been propped up against the wall in his office. Barry and the driver undid the special clamps before setting about extracting the long nails that had been hammered firmly into the rim of the wooden crate, while Fenston, Leapman, and Tina looked on. When the lid was finally pried open and the polystyrene corners that were holding the painting in place were removed, Barry lifted the painting carefully out of the wooden crate and leaned it up against the chairman’s desk. Fenston rushed forward and began to tear off the bubble wrap with his bare hands, until he could at last see what he’d been willing to kill for.

  Fenston stood back and gasped.

  No one else in the room dared to speak until he had offered an opinion. Suddenly, the words came tumbling out in a torrent.

  “It’s even more magnificent than I’d expected,” he declared. “The colors are so fresh, and the brushwork so bold. Truly a masterpiece,” he added. Leapman decided not to comment.

  “I know exactly where I’m going to hang my Van Gogh,” said Fenston.

  He looked up and stared at the wall behind his desk, where a massive photograph of George W. Bush shaking hands with him on his recent visit to Ground Zero filled the space.

  Anna was looking forward to her flight back to the States, and the chance to get to know Jack a little better during the seven-hour journey. She even hoped that he would answer one or two more questions. How did he find out her mother’s address, why was he still suspicious of Tina, and was there any proof that Fenston and Krantz even knew each other?

  Jack was waiting for her when she checked in. Anna took a little time to relax with a man she couldn’t forget had been following her for the last nine days and investigating her for the past eight weeks, but by the time they climbed the steps to the aircraft, together for a change, Jack knew she was a Knicks fan, liked spaghetti and Dustin Hoffman, while Anna had found out that he also supported the Knicks, that his favorite modern artist was Fernando Botero, and nothing could replace his mother’s Irish stew.

  Anna was wondering if he liked fat women when his head fell onto her shoulder. As she was the cause of his not getting much sleep the previous night, Anna felt she was hardly in a position to complain. She pushed his head gently back up, not wishing to wake him. She began making a list of things she needed to do once she was back in New York, when Jack slumped back down onto her shoulder. Anna gave in and tried to sleep with his head there. She had once read that the head is one-seventh of your body weight. She no longer needed to be convinced.

  She woke about an hour before they were due to land to find Jack was still asleep, but his arm was now draped around her shoulder. She sat up sleepily and accepted a cup of tea from the stewardess.

  Jack leaned across. “So how was it for you?” he asked, grinning.

  “I’ve had worse,” she replied, “and some of them were awake.”

  “So what’s the first thing you’re going to do now that you’ve miraculously risen from the dead?” he asked.

  “Call my family and friends and let them know just how alive I am, and then find out if anyone wants to employ me. And you?”

  “I’ll have to check in with my boss and let him know I’m no nearer to nailing Fenston, which will be greeted with one of his two favorite maxims: ‘Raise your game, Jack,’ or ‘Step it up a notch.’ ”

  “That’s hardly fair,” said Anna, “now that Krantz is safely behind bars.”

  “No thanks to me,” said Jack. “And then I’ll have to face up to an even fiercer wrath than the boss’s, when I try to explain to my mother why I didn’t call her from London and apologize for not turning up for her Irish stew night. No, my only hope of redemption is to discover what NYRC stands for.” Jack put a hand in his top pocket. “After I’d checked out of the Wentworth Arms, I traveled on to the embassy with Tom, and thanks to modern technology, he was able to produce an exact copy of the key, even though the original is still in Romania.” He pulled the facsimile out of his top pocket and handed it across to Anna.

  Anna turned the small brass key over in her hands. “NYRC 13. Got any ideas?” she asked.

  “Only the obvious ones,” said Jack.

  “New York Racing Club, New York Rowing Club, anything else?”

  “New York Racquet Club, but if you come up with any others, let me know, because I intend to spend the rest of the weekend trying to find out if it’s any of those. I need to come up with something positive before I face the boss on Monday.”

  “Perhaps you could slow down enough on your morning run to let me know if you’ve cracked it.”

  “I was rather hoping to tell you over dinner tonight,” said Jack.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, Jack, much as I’d love to, I’m having dinner with Tina.”

  “Are you?” said Jack. “Well, just be careful.”

  “Six o’clock tomorrow morning suit you?” asked Anna, ignoring the comment.

  “That means I’ll have to set my alarm for six thirty if we’re going to meet up about halfway around.”

  “I’ll be out of my shower by then.”

  “I’ll be sorry to miss that.”

  “By the way,” said Anna, “can you do me a favor?”

  Leapman strode into the chairman’s office without knocking.

  “Have you seen this?” he asked, placing a copy of The New York Times on the desk and jabbing a finger at an article from the international section.

  Fenston studied the headline: ROMANIAN POLICE ARREST ASSASSIN. He read the short article twice before speaking.

  “Find out how much the chief of police wants.”

  “It may not prove to be that easy,” suggested Leapman.

  “It’s always that easy,” said Fenston, looking up. “Only agreeing on a price will prove difficult.”

  Leapman frowned. “And there’s another matter you should consider.”

  “And what’s that?” asked Fenston.

  “The Van Gogh. You ought to have the painting insured, after what happened to the Monet.”

  “I never insure my paintings. I don’t need the IRS to find out how much my collection is worth, and in any case it’s never going to happen twice.”

  “It already has,” said Leapman.

  Fenston scowled and didn’t reply for some time.

  “All right, but only the Van Gogh,” he eventually said. “Make it Lloyd’s of London, and be sure you keep the book value below twenty million.”

  “Why such a low figure?” queried Leapman.

  “Because the last thing I need is to have the Van Gogh with an asset value of a hundred million while I’m still hoping to get my hands on the rest of the Wentworth collection.”

  Leapman nodded and turned to leave.

  “By the way,” said Fenston, looking back down at the article. “Do you still have the second key?”

  “Yes I do,” said Leapman. “Why?”

  “Because when she escapes, you’ll need to make a further deposit.”

  Leapman smiled. A rarity, which even Fenston noticed.

  __________

  Krantz wet her bed, and then explained to the doctor about her weak bladder. He authorized periodic visits to the bathroom, but only when accompanied by at least two guards.

  These regular little outings up and down the corridor gave Krantz an opportunity to study the layout of the floor: a reception desk at the far end of the landing manned by a single nurse; a drug clinic that could only be unlocked if a doctor was present; a linen closet; three other single rooms; one bathroom; and, at the other end of the corridor, a ward containing sixteen beds, opposite a fire escape.

  But the outings also served another, more important purpose, and it certainly wasn’t anything the young doctor would have come across when reading his medical textbooks or carrying out his ward rounds.

  Once they had locked Krantz into her cubicle, also windowless, she sat on the toilet seat, placed two fingers up her rectum, and slowly extracted a condom. She the
n washed the rubber container in the toilet water, undid the knot at the top, and pulled out a roll of tightly wrapped twenty-dollar bills. She extracted two from the roll, tucked them into her sling, and then carried out the whole process in reverse.

  Krantz pulled the chain and was escorted back to her room. She spent the rest of the day sleeping. She needed to be wide awake during the night shift.

  Jack sat in the back of the taxi, looking out of the window.

  The gray cloak of 9/11 still hadn’t lifted from Manhattan, although New Yorkers rushing by no longer stared upward in disbelief. Terrorism was something else the most frenetic city on earth had already learned to take in its stride.

  Jack sat back and thought about the favor he’d promised Anna. He dialed the number she’d given him. Sam picked up the phone. Jack told him that Anna was alive and well, and that she had been visiting her mother in Romania, and he could expect her back that evening. Nice to start the day making someone feel good, thought Jack, which wasn’t going to be the case with his second call. He phoned his boss to let him know that he was back in New York. Macy told him that Krantz had been taken to a local hospital in Bucharest to undergo an operation on her shoulder. She was being guarded round the clock by half a dozen cops.

  “I’ll be happier when she’s locked up in jail,” said Jack.

  “I’m told you speak with some experience on that subject,” said Macy.

  Jack was about to respond when Macy added, “Why don’t you take the rest of the week off, Jack? You’ve earned it.”

  “It’s Saturday,” Jack reminded his boss.

  “So I’ll see you first thing Monday morning,” said Macy.

  Jack decided to text Anna next: Told Sam U R on way home. Is he only other man in yr life? He waited a couple of minutes, but there was no reply. He called his mother.

  “Will you be coming home for supper tonight?” she asked sharply. He could almost smell the meat stewing in the background.

  “Would I miss it, Ma?”

  “You did last week.”

  “Ah, yes, I meant to call you,” said Jack, “but something came up.”

  “Will you be bringing this something with you tonight?” Jack hesitated, a foolish mistake. “Is she a good Catholic girl?” was his mother’s next question.

  “No, Mother,” Jack replied. “She’s a divorcée, three ex-husbands, two of whom died in mysterious circumstances. Oh, and she has five children, not all of them by the three husbands, but you’ll be glad to know only four of the kids are on hard drugs—the other one’s currently serving a jail sentence.”

  “Does she have a regular job?”

  “Oh yes, Ma, it’s a cash business. She services most of her customers on the weekends, but she assures me that she can always take an hour off for a bowl of Irish stew.”

  “So what does she really do?” asked his mother.

  “She’s an art thief,” said Jack, “specializes in Van Gogh and Picasso. Makes a huge profit on each assignment.”

  “Then she’ll be an improvement on the last one,” said his mother, “who specialized in losing your money.”

  “Good-bye, Mother,” said Jack. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  He ended the call, to find there was a text from Anna, using her ID for Jack:

  Switch your brain on, Stalker. Got the obvious R. U R 2 slow 4 me.

  “Damn the woman,” said Jack. His next call was to Tom in London, but all he got was an answering machine saying, “Tom Crasanti, I’m out at the moment, but will be back shortly, please leave a message.”

  Jack didn’t, as the cab was pulling up outside his apartment.

  “That’ll be thirty-two dollars.”

  Jack handed the driver four tens and didn’t ask for any change and didn’t get a thank you.

  Things were back to normal in New York.

  The night shift reported for duty at ten o’clock. The six new guards spent their first two hours marching up and down the corridor, making their presence felt. Every few minutes, one of them would unlock her door, switch on the bare bulb that hung above her bed, and check that she was “present” before he turned off the light and locked the door. This exercise was repeated at regular intervals for the first two hours, but after that it lapsed to every half an hour.

  At five minutes past four, when two of the guards went off for their meal break, Krantz pressed the buzzer by her bed. Two more guards appeared, the grumbler with money problems and the chain smoker. They both accompanied her to the bathroom, each holding an elbow. When she entered the lavatory, one remained in the corridor, while the other stood guard outside the cubicle. Krantz extracted two more notes from her rectum, folded them up in her hands and then pulled the lavatory chain. The guard opened the door. She smiled and slipped the notes into his hand. He looked at them and quickly put them in his pocket before rejoining his colleague in the corridor. They both accompanied Krantz back to her room and locked her in.

  Twenty minutes later, the other two guards returned from their meal break. One of them unlocked her door, switched on the light, and, because she was so slight, had to go up to the side of the bed to make sure she was actually there. The ritual completed, he walked back into the corridor, locked the door, and joined his colleague for a game of backgammon.

  Krantz concluded that her one chance of escaping would be between four and four twenty in the morning, when the two older guards always took their meal break—the philanderer, the smoker, and the dozer would be otherwise occupied, and her unwitting accomplice would be only too happy to accompany her to the bathroom.

  __________

  Even before Jack had showered and changed, he began to scour the New York telephone directory in search of NYRC. Other than the three Jack had already come up with, he couldn’t spot Anna’s “obvious one.” He switched on his laptop and Googled the words “new york racquet club.” He was able to retrieve a potted history of the NYRC, several photographs of an elegant building on Park Avenue, and a picture of the present chairman, Darius T. Mablethorpe III. Jack was in no doubt that the only way he was going to get past the front door was if he looked like a member. Never embarrass the Bureau.

  Once Jack had unpacked and showered, he selected a dark suit with a faint stripe, a blue shirt, and a Columbia tie for this particular outing. He left his apartment and took a cab to 370 Park Avenue. He stepped onto the sidewalk and stood staring at the building for some time. He admired the magnificent four-story Renaissance revival architecture that reminded him of a palazzo, so popular with the Italians in New York at the turn of the century. He walked up the steps toward an entrance with the letters NYRC discreetly etched into the glass.

  The doorman greeted Jack with, “Good afternoon, sir,” holding the door open, as if Jack was a lifelong member. He strolled into an elegant lobby with massive paintings on every available space of suitably attired former chairmen dressed in long white pants and blue blazers, sporting the inevitable racquet. Jack glanced up at the wide, sweeping staircase to see even more past chairmen, even more ancient; only the racquet didn’t seem to have changed. He strolled up to the reception desk.

  “May I help you, sir?” asked a young man.

  “I’m not sure if you can,” Jack admitted.

  “Try me,” he offered.

  Jack took the replica key out of his pocket and placed it on the countertop. “Ever seen one of these?” he asked.

  The young man picked up the key and turned it over, staring at the lettering for some time, before he replied, “No, sir, can’t say I have. It could well be a safety deposit box key, but not one of ours.” He turned and removed a heavy bronze key from the board behind him. A member’s name was etched on the handle, and NYRC in red along the shaft.

  “Any suggestions?” asked Jack, trying to keep any sign of desperation out of his voice.

  “No, sir,” he replied. “Not unless it was before my time,” he added. “I’ve only been here for eleven years, but perhaps Abe might be able to help. He was
here in the days when more people played racquets than tennis.”

  “And the gentlemen only played racquets,” said an older man who appeared from an office at the back to join his colleague. “And what is it that I might be able to help with?”

  “A key,” said the young man. “This gentleman wants to know if you’ve ever seen one like it,” he added as he passed the key to Abe.

  Abe turned the key over in his hands. “It’s certainly not one of ours,” he confirmed, “and never has been, but I know what the R stands for,” he added triumphantly. “Because it must have been, oh, nearly twenty years ago, when Dinkins was mayor.” He paused and looked up at Jack. “A young man came in who could hardly speak a word of English and asked if this was the Romanian Club.”

  “Of course,” murmured Jack, “how stupid of me.”

  “I remember how disappointed he was,” continued Abe, ignoring Jack’s muttered chastisement, “to find the R stood for Racquet. Not that I think he knew what a racquet was. You see, he couldn’t read English, so I had to look up the address for him. The only reason I remember anything after all this time is because the club was situated somewhere on Lincoln,” he said, emphasizing the name of the street. He glanced at Jack, who decided not to interrupt a second time. “Named after him,” he explained. Jack smiled at Abe and nodded. “Some place in Queens, I think, but I don’t recall exactly where.”

  Jack put the key back in his pocket, thanked Abe, and turned to leave before he gave him the chance to share any more reminiscences.

  Tina sat at her desk, typing out the speech. He hadn’t even thanked her for coming in on a Saturday.

  Bankers must at all times be willing to set standards that far exceed their legal requirements.

  The New York Bankers’ Association had invited Fenston to deliver the keynote speech at their annual dinner, to be held at the Sherry Netherland.

  Fenston was both surprised and delighted by the invitation, although he had been angling for it for some time.