by Daniel Silva
“So you’ll keep a place there.”
“The money wouldn’t be nearly as good.”
“No,” agreed Gabriel, “but you have plenty of money already.”
“It would be a big change.”
“Sometimes a change is good.”
Keller made a show of thought. “I’ve never really enjoyed killing people, you know. It’s just something I’m good at.”
“I know exactly how you feel, Christopher.” Gabriel looked at his BlackBerry again.
“Where is he?”
“Close,” said Gabriel. “Very close.”
“Where?” asked Keller again.
Gabriel nodded toward the rue Grenette. “Right there.”
57
ANNECY, FRANCE
IT WAS THE SAME MERCEDES that had taken him to his appointment at Société Générale, driven by the same Paris operative of Syrian intelligence. Mikhail slid into the backseat and, with a gun pointed at the driver’s spine, gave Waleed al-Siddiqi a thorough and invasive search. When it was complete, the two men climbed out and stood on the pavement while the car moved off along the street. Then Mikhail escorted al-Siddiqi across the empty church square and deposited him at the table of the Savoie Bar where Gabriel and Keller sat waiting. The Syrian was not looking particularly well, but that wasn’t surprising. Bankers who lost $8 billion in a single afternoon rarely did.
“Waleed,” said Gabriel brightly. “Good of you to come. Sorry to drag you all the way down here, but these things are best done face-to-face.”
“Where’s the money?”
“Where’s my girl?”
“I don’t know.”
“Wrong answer.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Give me your phone.”
The Syrian banker surrendered it. Gabriel opened the directory of recent calls and saw the numbers al-Siddiqi had been dialing frantically since discovering that $8 billion belonging to the ruler of Syria was suddenly missing.
“Which one?” asked Gabriel.
“That one,” replied the banker, touching the screen.
“Who’s going to answer?”
“A gentleman called Mr. Omari.”
“What does this gentleman do for a living?”
“Mukhabarat.”
“Did he hurt her?”
“I’m afraid that’s what he does.”
Gabriel dialed the number. Two rings, then a male voice.
“Mr. Omari, I presume?”
“Who is this?”
“My name is Gabriel Allon. Perhaps you’ve heard of me.”
There was silence.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” said Gabriel. “Now if you’ll be kind enough to give the phone to Jihan for a moment. I want to make sure you’ve really got her.”
There was a brief silence. The Gabriel heard the sound of Jihan’s voice.
“It’s me,” was all she said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did they hurt you?”
“It wasn’t too bad.”
“Stay with me, Jihan. You’re almost home.”
The phone changed hands. Mr. Omari came back on the line.
“Where do you want us to go?” he asked.
“The rue Grenette in the center of Annecy. There’s a place near the church called Chez Lise. Park outside and wait for my call. And don’t you dare so much as touch her again. If you do, I’m going to make it my life’s work to find you and kill you. Just so we’re clear.”
Gabriel severed the connection and returned the phone to al-Siddiqi.
“I thought you looked familiar,” the Syrian said. Then he glanced at Keller and added, “Him, too. In fact, he looks a great deal like a man who was trying to sell a stolen van Gogh in Paris a few weeks ago.”
“And you were stupid enough to buy it. But don’t worry,” Gabriel added. “It wasn’t the real thing.”
“And the European Business Initiative in London? I suppose that was a forgery, too.”
Gabriel said nothing.
“My compliments, Allon. I’d always heard you had a creative streak.”
“How many have you got, Waleed?”
“Paintings?”
Gabriel nodded.
“Enough to fill a small museum.”
“Enough to keep the ruling family in the style to which they are accustomed,” said Gabriel coldly, “just in case someone ever found the bank accounts.”
“Yes,” the Syrian said. “Just in case.”
“Where are the paintings now?”
“Here and there,” al-Siddiqi answered. “Bank vaults mainly.”
“And the Caravaggio?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
Gabriel leaned menacingly across the table. “I consider myself a reasonable fellow, Waleed, but my friend Mr. Bartholomew is known for the shortness of his fuse. He also happens to be one of the few people in the world who’s more dangerous than I am, so this is no time to play dumb.”
“I’m telling you the truth, Allon. I don’t know where the Caravaggio is.”
“Who had it last?”
“That’s hard to say. But if I had to guess, it was Jack Bradshaw.”
“Which is why you had him killed.”
“Me?” Al-Siddiqi shook his head. “I had nothing to do with Bradshaw’s death. Why would I kill him? He was my only link to the dirty end of the art world. I was planning to use him to dispose of the paintings if I ever needed to raise cash in a hurry.”
“So who killed him?”
“It was Mr. Omari.”
“Why would a mid-level Mukhabarat man kill someone like Jack Bradshaw?”
“Because he was ordered to.”
“By whom?”
“The president of Syria, of course.”
Gabriel did not want Jihan to remain in the hands of the murderers for a minute longer than was necessary, but there was no turning back now; he had to know. And so, as the evening gathered around them and bells tolled in the church towers, he listened as the banker explained that the Caravaggio was never to be used as a stash of underworld cash. It was to be smuggled back to Syria, restored, and hung in one of the ruler’s palaces. And when the painting disappeared, the ruler flew into a violent rage. Then he ordered Mr. Omari, a respected officer of the Mukhabarat and trusted former bodyguard of his father, to find out where the painting had gone. He started his search at the Lake Como residence of Jack Bradshaw.
“It was Omari who killed Bradshaw?” asked Gabriel.
“And his forger, too,” replied al-Siddiqi.
“What about Samir?”
“He’d outlived his usefulness.”
So have you, thought Gabriel. Then he asked, “Where’s the Caravaggio now?”
“Omari was never able to find it. The Caravaggio is gone. Who knows?” al-Siddiqi added with a shrug. “Maybe there never was a Caravaggio.”
Just then, a car drew to a stop on the rue Grenette, a black Mercedes, tinted windows. Gabriel picked up al-Siddiqi’s phone and dialed. Omari answered immediately. Gabriel told him to hand the phone to Jihan.
“It’s me,” she said again.
“Where are you?” asked Gabriel.
“Parked on a street in Annecy.”
“Are you near a restaurant?”
“Yes.”
“What’s it called?”
“Chez Lise.”
“A couple more minutes, Jihan. Then you can come home.”
The line went dead. Gabriel handed the phone to al-Siddiqi and told him the terms of the deal.
They were quite simple: $8.2 billion for one woman, minus $50 million to cover resettlement and security costs for the remainder of her life. Al-Siddiqi agreed without negotiation or equivocation. Frankly, he was astonished at the generosity of the offer.
“Where would you like me to send the money?” asked Gabriel.
“Gazprombank in Moscow.”
“Account number?”
Al-Siddiqi handed Gabriel a slip of paper with the number written on it. Gabriel forwarded it to King Saul Boulevard and instructed Uzi Navot to push the button a second time. Ten seconds was all it took. Then the money was gone.
“Call your man at Gazprombank,” said Gabriel. “He’ll tell you the bank’s assets have just increased by a rather large amount.”
It was midnight in Moscow, but al-Siddiqi’s contact was at his desk waiting for the call. Gabriel could hear the excitement in his voice through al-Siddiqi’s phone. He wondered how much of the money the Russian president would take before the Syrian managed to move it to more reliable shores.
“Satisfied?” asked Gabriel.
“Very impressive,” said the banker.
“Spare me the compliments, Waleed. Just call Mr. Omari and tell him to open the damn door.”
Thirty seconds later, the door swung open and a sensible pump reached down toward the street. Then she emerged in a blur, her movie-starlet sunglasses covering the bruises on her face, her handbag over her shoulder. It was her left shoulder, Gabriel noticed, because her right hand was too heavily bandaged to be of any use. She started across the church square, her heels clattering over the paving stones, but Mikhail quickly led her to a waiting car, and she disappeared from view. A moment later, al-Siddiqi took her place in the Mercedes, and then he was gone, too, leaving Gabriel and Keller alone in the café.
“Do you think they run operations like this at MI6?” asked Keller.
“Only when we’re involved.”
“No second thoughts?”
“About what, Christopher?”
“Eight billion dollars for a single life.”
“No,” said Gabriel, smiling. “Best deal I ever made.”
PART FIVE
ONE LAST WINDOW
58
VENICE
FOR THE NEXT NINE DAYS, the art world spun smoothly on its gilded axis, blissfully unaware of the lost riches that would soon be flowing its way. Then, on a sultry afternoon in early August, the managing director of the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh announced that Sunflowers, oil on canvas, 95 by 73 centimeters, was home again. The director refused to say precisely where the missing masterpiece had been found, though later it would emerge that it had been left in an Amsterdam hotel room. The painting had suffered no damage during its long stay in captivity; in fact, said the managing director, it looked better than it had at the time of the theft. The chief of the Dutch police publicly took credit for the recovery, even though he’d had nothing at all to do with it. Julian Isherwood, chairman of the Committee to Protect Art, released a hyperbolic statement in London calling it “a great day for mankind and all that is decent and beautiful in this world.” That evening he was spotted at his usual table at Green’s Restaurant, accompanied by Amanda Clifton of Sotheby’s. All those present would later describe the expression on her face as one of enchantment. Oliver Dimbleby was said to have been seething with jealousy.
Only Julian Isherwood, the secret helper of spies, one spy in particular, knew there were more riches to come. Another week would pass, long enough, it was said later, for the euphoria over Sunflowers to die down. Then, in a cream-colored palazzo in the center of Rome, General Cesare Ferrari of the Art Squad unveiled three paintings, long missing, now recovered: The Holy Family by Parmigianino, Young Women in the Country by Renoir, and Klimt’s Portrait of a Woman. But the general was not finished. He also announced the recovery of Beach in Pourville by Monet and Woman with a Fan by Modigliani, along with works by Matisse, Degas, Picasso, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Delacroix, and something that may or may not have been a Titian. The press conference was conducted with all the flair and drama for which General Ferrari was known, yet it was perhaps most memorable for what the Italian art sleuth did not say—specifically, where and how any of the works had been found. He hinted at a large, highly sophisticated network of thieves, smugglers, and fences and suggested there were more paintings to come. Then, hiding behind the shield of a continuing investigation, he made for the door, pausing long enough to field the obligatory question about the prospects for finding the Art Squad’s number-one target: the Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, by Caravaggio. “One hates to use the word never,” he said sadly, and then he was gone.
The events in Amsterdam and Rome stood in stark contrast to the news from Austria, where authorities were attempting to solve a mystery of a different sort: the disappearance of two people, a man in his early fifties and a woman of thirty-nine, from the ancient Danube trading town of Linz. The man was Waleed al-Siddiqi, a minority partner in a small private bank. The woman was Jihan Nawaz, the bank’s account manager. The fact that both were originally from Syria fueled speculation of foul play, as did Jihan Nawaz’s movements on the day of her disappearance. She had traveled from Linz to Geneva, according to the authorities, where security cameras of the Hotel Métropole had photographed her entering the room of Kemel al-Farouk, Syria’s deputy foreign minister and a close aide and adviser to the country’s president. Inevitably, this led to speculation that Miss Nawaz was an agent of the Syrian government; indeed, a once-reputable magazine from Germany published a lengthy article accusing her of being a spy for the Syrian intelligence service. The story collapsed two days later when a relative from Hamburg admitted that the missing woman’s German immigration forms were not entirely accurate. She had not been born in Damascus, as previously stated, but in the town of Hama, where regime forces had slaughtered her entire family in February 1982. Jihan Nawaz was not an agent of the regime, said the relative, but a committed opponent.
The development quickly gave rise to speculation that Jihan Nawaz had been operating on behalf not of the Syrian government but of a Western intelligence service. The theory gained traction as additional biographical information about her missing employer leaked slowly into the press, information that suggested he had been involved in concealing and managing financial assets of the Syrian ruler. Then came a report from a respected computer security firm regarding a series of financial transactions it had detected during routine monitoring of the Internet. It seemed that several billion dollars had been plucked from prominent banks around the world and moved to a single location in an unusually short period of time. The firm was never able to produce an accurate estimate of the amount of money involved, nor was it able to identify those responsible. It did, however, manage to find traces of code scattered around the world. All those who analyzed the code were shocked by its sophistication. It was not the work of ordinary hackers, they said, but of professionals working on behalf of a government. One expert compared it to the Stuxnet computer worm that had been inserted into the computer network of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.
It was at this point that the glare of an unwanted spotlight fell upon the intelligence service headquartered within an anonymous office block in Tel Aviv. The experts saw a smoking gun, a perfect nexus of capability and motive, and for once the experts were right. But none of them would ever link the suspicious movement of money to the recent recovery of several stolen masterworks, or to the man of medium height and build, the sun amid small stars, who returned to a church in Venice on the third Wednesday of August. The wooden platform atop his scaffolding was precisely as he had left it several months earlier: flasks of chemicals, a wad of cotton wool, a bundle of dowels, a magnifying visor, two powerful halogen lamps. He slipped a copy of La Bohème into the paint-smudged portable stereo and began to work. Dip, twirl, discard . . . Dip, twirl, discard . . .
There were days when he couldn’t wait to finish, and days when he hoped it would never end. His capricious state of mind played out before the canvas. At times, he worked with Veronese’s slowness; at others, with Vincent’s reckless haste, as though he were trying to capture the essence of his subject matter before it wilted and died. Fortunately, there was no one to witness his pendulum-like swings of mood. The other members of the team had all completed their work during his long absence. He was alone in the house of a
nother faith, another people.
The operation rarely left his thoughts for long. He saw it in his mind as a cycle of still lifes, landscapes, and portraits: the fallen spy, the art thief, the assassin for hire, the child of Hama writing his name on the surface of a lake. The eight-billion-dollar girl . . . He never once regretted his decision to surrender the money in exchange for her freedom. Money could be made and lost, found and frozen. But Jihan Nawaz, the only surviving member of a murdered family, was irreplaceable. She was an original. She was a masterpiece.
The Church of San Sebastiano was scheduled to reopen to the public on the first day of October, which meant that Gabriel had no choice but to work from dawn until dusk without a break. On most days, Francesco Tiepolo stopped by at midday with a bag of cornetti and a flask of fresh coffee. If Gabriel was feeling charitable, he would allow Tiepolo to do a bit of inpainting, but most days the Italian would simply hover over Gabriel’s shoulder and plead with him to work faster. And, invariably, he would gently interrogate Gabriel over his plans for the future.
“We’re about to get a commission for something good,” he said one afternoon as a thunderstorm pelted the city. “Something important.”
“How important?” asked Gabriel.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“Church or scuola?”
“Church,” said Tiepolo. “And the altarpiece has your name on it.”
Gabriel smiled and painted in silence.
“Not even tempted?”
“It’s time for me to go home, Francesco.”
“This is your home,” Tiepolo replied. “You should raise your children here in Venice. And when you die, we’ll bury you beneath a cypress tree on San Michele.”
“I’m not that old, Francesco.”
“You’re not so young, either.”
“Don’t you have anything better to do?” asked Gabriel, as he moved the brush from his right hand to his left.
“No,” said Tiepolo, smiling. “What could possibly be better than to watch you paint?”
