The Appraisal

by Anna Porter

  “Furthermore, you should know that Piotr Denisovich did not have Krestin killed. He is not a stupid man. When this whole thing about the fake Titian hits the international press, he does not want to be in the limelight. For one thing, he wouldn’t want it known that he can’t tell a real Titian from a fake or that he hadn’t hired his own expert. It would make him look cheap or unprofessional. But he does know some stuff about Krestin, as do I, that may help bring this sorry mess to a happy end.”

  “More than there is in the National Archive?”

  “Your Archive is shit on the old ÁVO men. Your minister, Barross, let them take whatever they wanted before he decided to have the leftover files stored. The Stasi kept much better records. In Germany, there are some useful files. Here, not so much.”

  Attila grudgingly told him what he had found in the file. He was still annoyed with Alexander, but a good way to pull him back onside was to share information. He needed to find out what Alexander knew.

  “I hear you checked on the Ukrainian,” Alexander said. “Good move. Those guys were in the thick of things under the Nazis, and you would want to find out how Azarov knew about the painting.”

  “Did you have me followed?”

  Alexander shook his head. “Not I, old friend, not I, but you have made sure there are others interested in your movements.”

  “As far as I can tell,” Attila said, “everybody knew about the painting. Kis, or Krestin, or both of them, broadcast the sale to collectors and would-be collectors wherever they live.”

  “This particular Ukrainian had a father interned in the same mining camp where Márton and Krestin were.”

  “Krestin?”

  “They were all there.”

  “What mine?”

  “Number 442 Gulag. One of our great socialist re-education schemes. After we won the war that you guys lost. We picked up some of your losers — not many, considering — and transferred them to the Gulag.”

  “Re-education!”

  “Maljekij robot. Slave labour. Call it what you will, it really doesn’t matter. Vladimir Azarov’s father was in the same mine as Krestin. Vorkuta.”

  “Why?”

  “Why Azarov? One of his neighbours ratted him out as a Nazi sympathizer. There were a lot of those in Ukraine, didn’t you know that?”

  “And was he?”

  “It turned out he wasn’t, but what with a war to win and Comrade Stalin issuing orders from the Kremlin, who had time to check?”

  “He was a prisoner?”

  “Not exactly. He managed to get himself promoted to guard.”

  “And Krestin?”

  “He was a good Communist, and our fathers and grandfathers were smart to have placed a few of them among the prisoners so they would know what they talked about. There were also some unfortunate whispers about his activities in ’44 that he escaped by disappearing into the camps.”

  “What kind of whispers?”

  “The kind that could have had him hanged after the war.”

  “And was there talk about a big Titian painting?”

  Alexander lit another cigarette, although his last one was still smouldering in the ashtray. “Perhaps,” he said.

  “Was it Márton’s?”

  “That’s what I heard, and if you stop bothering my Russian, I’ll tell you more about your Hungarians and that Uke. Is that a deal?”

  Attila nodded.

  “Word of honour?”

  “Becs szo, but don’t use that expression, please. You’re dating yourself.”

  Alexander laughed. “Touché. The longer I spend in the service of the state, the more dated I feel.” He was slowly reverting to the usual Alexander: cheerful, friendly, a smartass but with an edge that denoted his FSB connection. “There was talk in the camp of a Titian that Géza Márton had back home. He offered to sell it.”

  “Sell it? To whom?”

  “To anyone who had food to trade.”

  CHAPTER 28

  Helena found an afternoon flight to Paris. The night before, she had checked into the Gresham in her own name — in case Attila Fehér or a real policeman came looking for her — and this morning she checked out Marianne Lewis. She packed all the essentials for her trip, including the wigs, the gun, the passports, and left all her toiletries and enough clothes for the maid to ascertain that Ms. Marsh was still in residence. Steinbrunner would not need a change of clothes or a passport to go to Slovakia. And, as she had been dead for some years, she was not on anyone’s list of suspects.

  She ordered a taxi for 7 a.m. They crossed the Széchenyi Chain Bridge and ascended the switchback road to the Hilton at breakneck speed. Other than a couple of other taxis, there was no traffic. No sign of any car following them. Then again, she hadn’t noticed Grigoriev’s men (or women) tracking her, so they must blend into the environment. Either that, or she had become sloppy.

  Her mother had warned her never to confuse comfort with security, as Simon had done with disastrous results. Besides, Annelise argued, Helena was now cutting her own trail. Since he hadn’t lived with them or ever acknowledged that Helena was his daughter, she didn’t have to carry the burden of guilt for her father’s actions. Yet Helena remembered the times Annelise had screamed at him and the days she spent in tears every time he left. Her mother had never learned to cut her own trail, never even tried to walk away from him. It was always Simon who left.

  They whizzed past the Matthias Church, the early vendors were unwrapping their wares, and stopped in front of the Hilton’s grand entrance. She waved off the eager porter and carried her own small bag into the lobby. Despite its unusual surrounding and being built into a castle wall, it was a standard Hilton lobby. Even the house phone was where Hilton always puts its house phones. She asked the operator for Ms. Hoffman.

  Sylvie sounded as if she had just been woken up. Muffled, snotty, hoarse. Perhaps the party had gone on too long or she had indulged too much. Helena hoped she had been drowning her sorrows, rather than celebrating prematurely.

  “Hullo, Sylvie,” she trilled with exaggerated good cheer. “So happy to catch you in. I’m in the restaurant, should I order you coffee? Juice? A continental? Or would you prefer something more substantial? Eggs?”

  Sylvie groaned.

  “There is a very tempting buffet with fresh eggs and bacon, Benedict, if you feel like hollandaise or —”

  “For God’s sake, who are you?” Sylvie mumbled.

  “Helena Marsh, of course.”

  “Dear God. What are you . . . why?”

  “How silly,” Helena chided, in her over-the-top voice. “We agreed to meet, and here I am. Or would you prefer that I come to your room and we order in? Goodness, Sylvie, you sound a bit under the weather.”

  “No,” Sylvie said, suddenly finding her voice. “You said sometime. Today is not good, really. I have a meeting at ten.”

  “Perfect,” Helena pounced. “That gives us two hours. Sadly, I have only one hour, this morning. So much to tell you. So little time. In the Icon, then?”

  “Okay,” Sylvie said feebly.

  Helena took a table by the window overlooking the Fisherman’s Bastion and sat with her back to the wall as she always did.

  She made a production of looking at her watch, and when the maître d’ came to offer his help, she asked to be connected with Ms. Hoffman in Room 550. The maître d’ checked his computer and informed her that she had made a mistake. Ms. Hoffman was not in 550, she was in the Turquoise Suite on the third floor. He would immediately connect her. Helena smiled and said she thought she should maybe just wait a little longer. Her friend had enjoyed herself too much the night before. When the maître d’ was no longer watching, she took the elevator to the third floor and waited outside Sylvie’s door.

  “Oh,” Sylvie exclaimed when she saw Helena. “You are here.”

 
She looked considerably less imperious than the day before at the gallery and a great deal less charming than at the party held in her honour. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her shirt was misbuttoned. She was wearing loose grey pants and loafers.

  “I thought you might need a little help finding the Icon. We have a table with a lovely view.”

  “The what?” Sylvie croaked.

  “The restaurant is called the Icon.” Helena said. She took a paper handkerchief from her bag and suggested that Sylvie dab off the mascara that had collected overnight under her eyes. Then she steered her to the elevator. She still had her by the elbow when they arrived at their table. Helena signalled the waiter for coffee and thrust the menu into Sylvie’s hand. “This won’t take long,” she said. “I want to give you some advice about Kis and the painting. You know, I assume, about the murder?”

  The local papers and newscasts had been full of Krestin’s death, but Sylvie Hoffman couldn’t understand Hungarian. The English-language Budapest News hadn’t caught up with the story yet. Krestin wasn’t a news item in the U.S. media online. Helena presumed that Kis hadn’t told her, as he wouldn’t have wanted to scare her off.

  Sylvie stared at her. So, no, she hadn’t known.

  Helena was also the first to tell her that Giorgio had played her for a sucker, and that the Titian was a fake. She showed her Giorgio’s letter.

  When Helena finished, Sylvie hadn’t even touched her coffee. She kept looking out the window at the restored fortification, her eyes fixed on the spires. She claimed to have a colossal headache.

  “What were you drinking?” Helena asked in the most sympathetic voice she could conjure.

  “Wine,” Sylvie muttered, dabbing her damp forehead with her napkin. “And something called palinka. Kis said it was the national drink.” She had begun to take deep breaths while Helena was talking. Then she stood up.

  “I need to think about this,” she said and rushed into the lobby.

  She needed to throw up, of course. Helena hoped she’d make it to a toilet. Next, Sylvie would call the hedge-fund king for instructions. It was unlikely a man with such an ego would intentionally buy a fake. He had bought a couple of Simon specials back in the day, but experts had certified them. To prove their worth, Simon had sold one to a dealer in Berlin, a Corot landscape with fauns. Hundreds of similar paintings were produced in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and John Myatt had made a few excellent imitations in the early 1980s.

  Simon had been a steadfast supporter of the market in Corot and Cellini fakes. It was difficult to overestimate the gullibility of avid collectors, he had told her, and fakes were, generally, easier to steal than the real thing — unless, of course, they were already masquerading as the real thing, preening on museum walls and protected by elaborate alarm systems.

  Myatt’s genius for creating acknowledged fakes had been rewarded with a sale that had netted his dealer about sixty thousand dollars. It had been a small step from there to forging “original” works by Matisse, Giacometti, Chagall, and others. Simon had met Myatt a few times before Myatt was convicted of wholesale fraud. He was convinced that Myatt’s forgeries would one day be so highly valued that the saps who had bought them would stop complaining. He had been prescient. There was going to be an exhibition of Myatt’s works in Prague this summer and next year there would be another, in New York. Myatts had become a valued commodity.

  That Simon ended up with a fine collection of Myatts was merely good fortune. He had been able to wait until the furor died down and then slowly trickled the paintings out into the eager art marketplace. Unlike John Drew, who was arrested, charged, and imprisoned, Simon was not caught and discovered. Helena thought there were still hundreds of forgeries in what he had called “safe houses” — watertight metal boxes in which he had hidden the paintings underground. During the last ten years or so of his life, Simon had commissioned high-end forgeries only from Chinese workshops. A few of these had come to light before his death. Most of them had not.

  Helena was no longer sure when she realized that Simon was more than an art connoisseur. That he was an expert across several centuries was rare, but not unique. That he was secretive and never flaunted his expertise was more unusual, but Simon had convinced her that his clients were allergic to publicity and that they refused to show off their collections in case of theft or simple envy. They did not want the art world to speculate about how they had acquired their wealth and what they liked to hang on their walls.

  That Simon never acknowledged his daughter in public was painful, but since her parents had never married, his vanishing acts were merely irksome. She had never expected him to stay.

  Helena was confident Sylvie would be out of her way before she returned from Toronto.

  She finished the eggs Benedict and a couple of croissants. They were good and crumbly, but no competition to those at the corner café on Rue Jacob.

  She hired a taxi to take her to Bratislava. Two hours on the highway and only $250. She needed the rest.

  CHAPTER 29

  The second Mrs. Krestin was waiting in Tóth’s office while Attila was being given the third degree by the security guard. Although Tóth had left instructions that Attila was expected, the overweight policewoman had subjected him to the usual lengthy search and myriad questions.

  Tóth had explained that it would be less stressful for the new widow to be far away from the scene of her husband’s death, a place currently cordoned off by the police. The forensics team, he said, had already dusted for prints, examined the gardens for footprints, and photographed every one of them. They had also photographed every room and every object in Krestin’s study and, after the medical examiner finished his preliminary examination, had drawn the position of his body on the carpet and bagged it.

  Uniformed officers had gone house to house asking residents whether they had seen anyone enter or leave the day before. Tóth had sent another team of detectives to Krestin’s office to question his staff. It seemed that during the past couple of years he had reduced the size of his staff and there were now only two people working directly for him. One was an appointments secretary, the other an accountant in charge of Krestin’s investments. He no longer ran any companies, had resigned from his boards, and had told most of his staff they would no longer be needed. He did that on his eighty-fifth birthday, during the office party in his honour.

  The appointments secretary was sitting on the bench where Tóth usually kept Attila waiting.

  Since the homicide team was so busy, Tóth had decided to talk to Vera Krestin himself. He seemed pleased with this new role, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, almost preening. He’d already told Attila to remain quiet unless asked to speak by Tóth himself. Attila assumed he owed the honour of Tóth’s summons to there being too many police officers covering the crime scene and traipsing around Rózsadomb, asking questions. Tóth needed someone to listen and take notes.

  Vera Krestin must have been at least thirty years younger than her husband, although she had made the effort to look older, more suited to the role she played. She was wearing a conservative dark-blue suit with a thin belt, a white blouse, and pearls. She had gathered her hair in a thick bun, which made her high cheekbones more prominent. She had slightly slanted grey eyes that would have been attractive had she made the effort to make them so. She wore no makeup at all, and the bare bulb hanging from the ceiling made her look almost ghostly. Her voice matched her appearance: soft and husky, but not tearful. She seemed remote, as if her mind were on something else, not on the questions Tóth was asking about her husband. Attila wondered whether she had taken a large dose of tranquilizers.

  Vera Krestin had found the body. She had called emergency around 3 p.m. and told the operator that there had been a terrible accident.

  “When was the last time you saw your husband?” Tóth asked in his kindest tone.


  “You mean before then?” Vera Krestin asked.

  “Yes, before.” Since he had died between noon and 3 p.m., according to the medical examiner’s initial assessment, that was a good question, Attila thought. Good but acerbic, rather than merely stupid. Attila knew acerbic. He had heard enough of it from his mother.

  “When I took him his lunch at noon. He liked me to be punctual and lunch was always at noon. An omelet yesterday. Havarti and ham, tomatoes on the side. Toast.”

  “He was alone?”

  “He liked to eat his lunch alone. He was working.”

  “What, in particular, was he working on?” Tóth asked.

  “I don’t know. János never shared that sort of information with me. He had a lot of business interests, here and abroad. He had his computer on and his diary out.”

  “Diary?” Tóth asked.

  “His leather-bound diary, or notepad. He kept notes of his conversations.”

  The forensics boys had taken the computer but they hadn’t mentioned a diary or a notepad. Tóth lumbered to the door and yelled at someone about the notepad. Whatever the answer was, it made Tóth sufficiently angry that he forgot his formerly tender tone when he asked Vera Krestin if she was sure there was a diary on her husband’s desk.

  “Of course,” she said. “He always had one.”

  “Where did he keep it? On his desk? Next to his phone?”

  “On his desk, except when he went out.”

  “It isn’t there now. Did he put it in a drawer? In the safe?”

  She didn’t respond. She was twisting her ring around her finger and looking at her hands. “I never saw him put it in the safe, but he may have,” she said.

  Tóth changed tack. “Did he have any visitors yesterday?”

  “None that I saw,” she whispered, her eyes cast down.

  “Were you home most of the afternoon?” Tóth had begun to sound like someone talking to a small child.

  “No. I went out to the hairdresser shortly after I took in his lunch, and I had a pedicure right after. In the same place. I stopped for coffee on the way home. Do you need to know where?” She crossed her shapely knees and stared at Tóth, as if she expected him to demand the name of her hairdresser. Attila would have done that, but Tóth didn’t. He was still bent on not offending her.