Deceptions

by Anna Porter

  Annelise told her all this had been his legacy. Perhaps he had felt guilty about leaving, and he had wanted to make sure they had everything they needed — except, of course, his love. It was not until she was fifteen, travelling in Europe with “family friend” Simon (a birthday gift) that the truth emerged. Even then, he wouldn’t acknowledge her publicly as his daughter (“It will be our secret,” he told her), and she was too angry about his years of subterfuge to even want to acknowledge him.

  * * *

  The call had come early in the morning. Louise had just arrived with her café au lait and pain au chocolat and listened for a minute with her mouth full before she managed to tell the man that she was not Madame Marsh and that Madame Marsh would not be back from Brussels for two more days.

  He hadn’t left a message.

  When he called again, Helena was in her office. He introduced himself as Mrs. Vaszary’s lawyer — Magoci (no first name) — and that if she was interested in the offer, she should come to Strasbourg, and he confirmed he would meet her at noon the next day on the tour boat that moored near the marché marked on the map she had received. Madame Marsh, he said, had been highly recommended. No pleasantries, no polite introductory remarks, no explanation of the odd choice of place for the meeting. He provided his instructions and hung up. He had a Slavic accent — not Russian — and he had spoken clearly and with authority.

  The Place de la Cathédrale was packed with tourists. They stood shoulder to shoulder, studying the gargoyles as their guides droned on about history, the quality of the stones, and the mastery of the craftsmen. Helena skirted the periphery, stepping around tables and chairs, children with ice cream cones, waiters with trays, and a range of well-behaved dogs. She continued to the south side of the cathedral, past the lineup for the public toilets, past the cathedral’s museum where there was no lineup, and down Rue de Rohan to the quay where the tour boats waited. She bought her ticket for the Batorama boat scheduled to depart at noon.

  Passengers were already waiting, four across and forty deep, chattering in a variety of languages, the children excited about a boat trip, the adults taking photographs of themselves. She took her place behind a group of noisy Swedes.

  No one approached her, and no one looked like a lawyer. On the other hand, colourful jackets and T-shirts with ads for Adidas or Nike or with large Chinese lettering could be a clever disguise. But why would he bother?

  The ticket-takers made their multilingual announcements, then ushered everyone onto the boat. Helena walked down the aisle between the rows of wooden seats, looking for a man with a briefcase. Instead, he wore a brown fedora, check shirt, chinos, and sandals, and carried a camera. He stood as she approached, indicating the seat next to his own, where he had placed a raincoat. He was shorter than Helena but sturdy, his back curved slightly — perhaps he lifted weights. He motioned to let her pass, but Helena demurred.

  “I prefer the outside,” she told him in French.

  The man shrugged, moved over, and offered a welcoming smile. “You’re younger than we thought,” he told her under the noise of the loudspeaker advising passengers to stay in their seats during the trip, to turn to their own language on the headphones, to keep their hands inside. “You should wear the headset,” he suggested. “We can talk after the engines start.” He was tanned, fashionably shaved to an even five o’clock shadow, deep lines down from the mouth, maybe fifty years old, hard to tell in the shadow of his fedora. And that slurry accent. Czech? Thin overlay on local dialect?

  She adjusted the headset to cover her ears.

  As soon as the boat pulled away from the dock, she heard him tell her to keep looking ahead. “This will take only an hour,” he added. “Please do not draw attention. Observe the buildings on either side. They are very beautiful. Please don’t look at me.”

  “Why in hell not?” Helena asked.

  “We are on a tour boat. Take the tour. Could you use a scarf or a handkerchief to disguise that you are talking? I am using my hand,” he said, quite unnecessarily because she could see he was shading his mouth with his right hand. Two rings, a gold band on his ring finger and a larger chunky one with a green stone on his middle finger. Way too much jewellery for a lawyer.

  She took a tissue from her backpack and started to wipe her nose.

  “Thank you,” he said. “We think it’s best if it is not noticed that we are together. The painting is likely genuine, but there are a few strange aspects. It could be an early work. Apparently, she didn’t do this sort of painting late in life. But we need to be sure.” His English was very precise.

  “Have you already had an expert opinion, or is this your own observation?”

  They were passing under a covered bridge, grey stocky buildings on one side. “An expert has looked at it, but he was hired by the husband. He said it was a copy made in the eighteenth century, and since it is such a fine copy, it could be worth two or three thousand euros. We think it’s the real thing and could be worth millions.”

  “He said it was a copy of an early work?”

  “Yes, he seemed sure of that.”

  “He said it was a copy? Or a forgery?”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “No.” Her father had commissioned forgeries, never copies. Copies are a mug’s game, he had told her, but to produce a new work that could have been made by the artist himself was phenomenal; to do it with the same paints, the same canvas as the original was genius. He had taken her to the Louvre to see two Monets and a Rubens he had sold them. Their experts had studied the paintings and asked no questions. Monet, Simon had told her, would have been proud to have painted these two. “A copy is made by copying something. A forgery is an original work, painted in the style of the artist, but done by someone else. It’s really a tribute from one artist to another. . . .”

  “Has Madame Vaszary researched its history? Is there a record of who had owned it previously? A reason you think it’s a genuine Gentileschi?”

  “Monsieur Vaszary bought it from someone who needed the money quickly. We don’t know how much he paid, but we think it was more than he would pay for a simple copy.”

  “Where did he say the original is?”

  “In the Hermitage. The basement.”

  Helena had spent a couple of years in that basement, studying Renaissance art that the Soviet army had collected to celebrate its World War II victories. It had been challenging work, authenticating Titians, a Rembrandt, a Raphael, a Caravaggio, and fifty or more Impressionists. She had reported that several of them were forgeries, but the museum had not concurred with her findings. She had long suspected that one of the more thuggish Russian oligarchs, Piotr Grigoriev, had been behind the museum’s reluctance. He, after all, had sold them one of the paintings she had failed to authenticate.

  “I assume your client wants me to see it?” She had meant to be ironic, but what with the handkerchief, the noise from the engine, and the insistent loudspeaker, her tone would have been lost on the lawyer.

  “Today. We checked your credentials. You have a reputation for being tough. And fast,” he said. “You don’t look like your photograph in the journals,” he added.

  “Since you invited me here to see a painting, why are we taking this boat tour?”

  “. . . passing the old Douane building on the right. It’s where in past centuries you had to deliver your goods for inspection. . . . Look for the thirteenth-century slaughterhouse bridge coming up . . .”

  “Excuse this extra caution, but we wanted you to understand that your visit here has to be absolutely confidential. The husband . . .” He coughed as the Musée Alsacien slipped by on the left. “Details of your appointment are in your hotel.”

  “He doesn’t know I’m here?” she asked.

  “N—”

  The lawyer dropped his hand from his mouth to clutch at his throat. He fell back, blood squirting
between his fingers, trickling down his shirt front past the feathered end of an arrow protruding from his neck. Helena resisted her first impulse to pull out the arrow. She shouted at the guide (still talking about the thirteenth century in Strasbourg) to call an ambulance.

  She saw a man standing at the railing of the bridge above, looking down at the tour boat, waiting. Then he pulled his grey hat low over his face, tucked something that looked very much like a longbow down the inside of his beige coat, and began to walk toward the French Quarter. Helena jumped over the lawyer and the next two passengers to get to the railing. Using it to steady herself, she leapt off the boat and landed on the embankment. She ran toward the figure retreating to the other side of the bridge who looked once over his shoulder reflexively. She could see his round flat face with sunglasses slipping down (he was likely not used to wearing glasses), his flat nose, and his thin slash of a mouth. His coat flapped open as he ran, revealing the bow now flat against his side. He crashed into a couple looking into a gift-shop window, ran down Rue de l’Ail, over the tram rails, and up to the pedestrian street, mingling with a Japanese group. He checked over his shoulder once more, shoved past the umbrella-wielding tour guide, and ran into the cathedral.

  Helena closed in on him as he pushed past the indignant ticket-taker and disappeared into the darkness. She handed the ticket-taker a €20 bill, jumped the metal rail, steadied herself against a pew, and scanned the aisles. Several white fedoras, a couple of beige hats, jackets, no long coats, no one running, but near the exit line, a uniformed woman trying to stop someone who tore free and hustled out into the sunshine.

  The bow was lying under a low bench near the exit. She left it there. When Helena reached the cathedral warden, she saw that the long beige coat was draped over her arm. “Mon mari a laissé son manteau ici tout juste,” she said.

  The warden looked at her suspiciously. “Votre mari?” she repeated, looking at the coat.

  “Il été tellement pressé . . .” Helena said as she grabbed the coat and ran out the door, looking for the man’s grey hat in the crowd. She lost sight of it near the tourist office, but a moment later, as she sprinted around the side of the cathedral, there was a flash of movement up past the shops with trinkets and T-shirts, and the one shop stretching out toward the cathedral. As she ran by, she saw a display of hats — some of them grey — on a low table where casual browsers may stop and be invited in by the smiling attendant offering today’s special discount. One grey hat lay casually on top of the display.

  “For sale?” Helena asked.

  “Je ne sais pas,” the helpful attendant said. “Il est juste returné.” Helena sprinted past the display and onto Rue de Dôme, past the textbooks shop and the alleyway that led to the small park. She balled up the coat and stuffed it under her arm. No sign of the man. She doubled back to Rue de Dôme, and up as far as Rue de la Mésange, but still no man. She retraced her steps, more slowly, looking into every shop. The sound of sirens grew louder as she approached the cathedral, but there was no sign of the man.

  She stopped at the corner of the alleyway where a beauty salon’s wide windows stretched both ways and a sign advertised all-time low prices for haircuts. She opened the door and asked the stylist whether he had seen anyone a few minutes ago. “He could have been running in either direction,” she said. The clean-shaven stylist looked at her hair and offered her a welcoming grin. “No,” he said, “no one in a hurry.”

  “I am trying to find a man,” she explained.

  “Aren’t we all?” said the stylist, brushing a few bits of hair from his client’s shoulders.

  Chapter Three

  Much as Gustav enjoyed Irén’s cooking and the warm, cushiony arrangements in her apartment, he was always ready to come home after a few days of her company. Attila thought it could be her lilac perfume, or her incessant fussing, but delighted as Gustav was at the beginning of his visits, Attila usually found him waiting at the door when he returned. Irén, a few years older than Attila and built for comfort, was rarely able to race Gustav to the staircase, so she would follow more sedately with one of her inevitable chicken casseroles that Gustav enjoyed more than Attila did. Too much paprika and pork fat. “My mother’s recipe,” she would say. “Good food is the direct route to a man’s heart. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Attila would nod sagely and try to make a quick getaway. Today was easier than usual because his phone was ringing and buzzing, and Gustav was aggressively pulling on his leash. “Csókolom,” he shouted over his shoulder and answered his phone. Csókolom was an old-world greeting that covered both hello and goodbye. It referenced the old custom of hand-kissing, something Attila had never done and was not likely to start now. His grandfather had been the last hand-kisser in the Fehér family.

  “Where the fuck are you?” Tóth shouted by way of a greeting.

  “Rakoczi Ut,” Attila said reasonably.

  “Not in fucking Strasbourg, then,” Tóth shouted again.

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You told me to be back today.”

  “Did not!”

  “You did!”

  “You had better get your ass in here.” Tóth yelled before ending the call.

  Attila took Gustav down to the street for a quick constitutional, encouraging him to lift a leg and leave a small deposit under the only tree left in front of the apartment building. The others had all been dug up in preparation for a sidewalk extension no one wanted or needed but, since it was paid for with EU funds, had provided an opportunity for state-sanctioned grand theft, irresistible to those with ties to the ruling party.

  After Gustav’s pensive tree exploration and a small memento of his visit, they went back up to the apartment in the hopelessly rickety wrought-iron elevator cage, ate some chicken, and Gustav listened resentfully as Attila apologized for having to leave again. After just a few months of their new bachelor life, Gustav had acquired some of the ex’s tendencies. She, too, had worn her resentments on her face.

  Twenty minutes later, Attila was at Árpád Bridge, approaching the Police Palace (so named after the government added a steel-and-glass tower to try to make the place more suitable for these proud-of-our-heritage times), showing his ID on demand to the uniformed woman who had known him for at least twenty years. It was as if he had changed his identity now that he was no longer a police officer. She then made a production of watching his wallet progress through the x-ray machine and examined his police-issue handgun as if she disapproved of his continued licence to carry it.

  “Lovely to see you, too, Margit,” Attila said with a broad grin as he collected his stuff from the conveyor belt. “Always surprised that you have made it through one more gruelling day.”

  “Hrummph.” Margit pointedly turned her attention to the long corridor where Tóth was already waiting. He had acquired a large belly (delightfully larger than Attila’s own) since his promotion but had not yet accepted the fact that his shirts needed to be replaced. Perhaps also his pants. Hard to know about the jacket since he wasn’t wearing one.

  “Your phone was off,” Tóth began.

  “Charging,” Attila said, though that didn’t quite explain why he had left his phone off after he arrived from Paris. He had needed some time to think, and it was hard to think with the phone demanding attention.

  “You should be in Strasbourg, where you are supposed to be on assignment from this department, where you have an actual job, where you were sent to be useful . . .” Tóth’s voice rose as he accumulated all the reasons why Attila should not be in Budapest.

  “Right,” Attila said patiently. “But you told me to be here for a briefing this afternoon.”

  “Plans changed. Everything changed. Your orders changed. How the fuck was I supposed to tell you if your phone was off?” Tóth led the way to his office — the one that used to be Attila’s — and slapped his bum into what used to b
e Attila’s chair. “So, you don’t know what happened in Strasbourg?”

  Attila sat on the lower chair facing his old desk — he had made that arrangement himself, as low chairs made most criminals feel self-conscious — and waited.

  “I assume you haven’t had time to watch the news, but a man was killed on a tour boat. He was shot. Son of a bitch was sitting right next to a woman who jumped out of the boat and ran off.”

  “She is the shooter?”

  “No. She is not the shooter, but she does interest the local police and should interest us if our man was interested in anything other than his belly.” They were both staring at Attila’s belly, which, Attila noted again with satisfaction, even from this vantage point, was not as large as Tóth’s. “He was shot from a bridge above the boat. But she was next to him when it happened and instead of waiting for the police, she jumps out of the boat and hares off somewhere. The French police are all over the case, wanting to know who she is and why she left the scene, the guy bleeding to death right next to her.”

  “Why does that have anything to do with us?” Attila composed his face into as curious yet unaffected an expression as he could manage.

  “Because the dead man was the Vaszarys’ lawyer. That’s why they are calling me. Plus, as I said, they now want to know who she is.”

  “We don’t know who she is,” Attila said. He breathed in and out slowly, trying to relax. It couldn’t be Helena. Could it?

  “I may not know who she is, but I have a hunch — no more than a hunch, mind — that you had something to do with this.”

  “I did? How?”

  “Because you were our man in Strasbourg.”

  “But I wasn’t even there!”

  “Maybe not, but you might know this woman.”

  “Why the fuck would you think that? There are thousands of women in Strasbourg I don’t know.”

  “But this one is some kind of art expert. And your job with Vaszary includes watching over stuff he took with him when he left here — including that painting.”