A Glancing Light (A Chris Norgren Mystery)

by Aaron Elkins

  I opened the door to my room, motioned him into one of the two worn armchairs, and picked up the telephone.

  "Wait a minute," I said. "It's ten-thirty. Tony could have called hours ago. What time is it in Tokyo?"

  The question delighted him, giving him as it did an opportunity to employ his high-tech wristwatch. He did something to his ratcheted safety bezel, pressed a micro-button on the mini keyboard, and consulted one of the dual LCD displays

  "Well, um, it's two-thirty in Karachi," he said slowly. “A.M.”

  "Hey, that's good to know, Calvin. I guess we better not call anybody in Karachi."

  "Wait a minute, wait a minute." He fussed some more with the watch. "Tokyo! Ha! It's eight-thirty in the morning. Tomorrow, according to this." He hesitated. "Or is it yesterday? Which way does the international date line go?"

  "I don't know, but we better get it straight. I don't see much point in calling him yesterday."

  Calvin grumbled something and I punched in the thirteen digits it took to reach room 1804 at the Imperial Hotel.

  "Tony? It's Chris."

  "Everything okay there?" he asked. "You didn't get run over again or anything?"

  "No. Oh, I've had a few interesting adventures with the Eagle of Lombardy, but that can wait till I get back."

  "Who the hell is the Eagle of Lombardy?"

  "Colonnello Cesare Antuono—the man who was so anxious to hear any shreds of information I might be willing to pass along?"

  "Oh, Antuono, sure. Are you going to tell me what that tone of voice is supposed to mean?"

  "Come on, Tony, the guy didn't have any use for me. The further I stay away from him the happier he is. That business about meeting with him to report 'pertinent' information— you set that up."

  "Me? What for?"

  "To get the museum some good press, I suppose. You contacted the FBI to offer my services, and the FBI contacted him, so he went along with it. But he didn't want to."

  "Chris—"

  "Tony, he told me."

  "I don't give a damn what he told you. I'm telling you this FBI guy called me—I can't think of his name—Mr. . . . I can't remember. Out of the blue. Watfield, it was. Then he came over to my office. No, Sheffield. He told me he'd just gotten a call from New York, I mean from D.C., that this Colonel Antuono in Rome was looking for all the help he could get—that is, he was going to be assigned to a case in Bologna, and seeing as how we were involved in the art scene there—in Bologna, I mean . ."

  Now Tony, as I mentioned earlier, has been known to deviate from the unadorned facts in the interest of the greater good, but I thought I knew him well enough to sense from his voice when I was being led astray, even over the telephone. When Tony lied, he was straightforward and fluent; it was when he was telling the truth that he tended to trip over his tongue and sound shifty. Which meant, unless he was being even more devious than I gave him credit for, that this was probably the truth. Which meant that Antuono had lied about it; he had asked the FBI for my help, then told me that he hadn't.

  Which made no sense at all, whichever way I came at it.

  ". . . is all I know about it," Tony finished up defensively.

  "I guess it was just a misunderstanding," I said.

  "Of course. We're dealing with two different languages here. You didn't think," he said, sounding hurt, "that I'd purposely mislead you, do you?"

  That was another question, best left alone. "Tony, what am I calling you about?"

  "Well, I've had some news from Seattle I thought you might be interested in. You know that painting of Mike Blusher's—"

  "Calvin told me. Blusher donated the reward to the museum."

  "Not that one, the other one. The van Eyck. It—"

  "The fake van Eyck," I said.

  "Well, the thing is, it isn't a fake, not exactly. It—"

  "What? Of course it's a fake! The techniques are eighteenth-century at the earliest, to say nothing of the craquelure, which is—"

  "Will you let me say something, for Christ's sake? The van Eyck painting is a fake, yes. But Blusher took your advice and took it into the university to have it examined, and the panel that it's painted over turns out not to be a fake. Eleanor Freeman—"

  "Of course the panel's not a fake! It's early seventeenth- century, manufactured for the Guild of St. Luke in Utrecht. I told Blusher it was real. I told you it was real—"

  "You told me it was real," supplied Calvin, who was listening to my side of the conversation from his chair.

  "I told Calvin it was real. Everybody agrees it's real. The International Herald Tribune says it's real—"

  "Time says it's real," Calvin supplied.

  "Time says it's real—" I said, then stopped. I hadn't heard anything from Tony for a while. Now there was a long, full sigh, deeply indrawn, slowly let out. An expensive one, considering that it was delivered from Tokyo to Bologna.

  "Are you actually going to let me say something now?" he asked. "Like maybe two complete sentences?"

  "I'm sorry, Tony, go ahead."

  "In a row?"

  I laughed. "What did Eleanor come up with?"

  "Chris, the X rays show a painting under the van Eyck."

  And not just any painting, either. Eleanor Freeman, the university radiographer-art historian whose specialty was Old Master fluoroscopic analysis, had concluded that the painting beneath the forged van Eyck "appeared in all probability" to be Hendrik Terbrugghen, an important seventeenth‑century Dutch painter and a member of the Utrecht Guild from 1616 until he died in 1629.

  "I don't believe it," I said flatly.

  "Why not?"

  "Because it's all too weird, that's why. Every time I turn around there's another update on the story that's more bizarre than the one before. I don't know what kind of scam Blusher is pulling, but there's something."

  "Chris, he just pledged the museum $150,000," Tony said reproachfully.

  "Well, I'd spend it pretty fast if I were you."

  "I'm working on it. Look, it's weird, all right, but it's true all the same. Neuhaus and Boden agree with her."

  I relented slightly. "What's it look like?"

  "Half-length portrait of a young man playing a lute, seen three-quarters from behind; very Caravaggist. You know the type; Terbrugghen's done a bunch of them. This one's monogrammed and dated 1621. I haven't seen the X rays yet myself, but Eleanor tells me even the brush strokes and the construction are right. She says if it's not by Terbrugghen it's by the world's greatest Terbrugghen scholar."

  No, I thought stubbornly, not necessarily the greatest, just a Terbrugghen scholar. Eleanor knew the Old Masters' methods; so did a lot of other people, including forgers. You can check books on the subject out of the library.

  "Any craquelure?"

  "Yeah, and this time it runs the right way. And of course, as you pointed out, the thing is done on a Utrecht guild panel, complete with logo, from the first third of the seventeenth century—which isn't exactly easy to lay your hands on. So if what you're thinking is that it's a forgery, I don't see it."

  I relented some more. "It sounds authentic," I allowed, "but I still—"

  "Chris, listen. Would someone paint a first-class forgery, then cover it up with another one so nobody could see it? That's crazy. Look, tell me, just what is it you think the guy's pulling?"

  "I don't know. How much reward money's involved?"

  "None, as far as anybody knows. There aren't any missing Terbrugghens in the Interpol list or the carabinieri bulletin. It may never have been stolen. For all anybody knows, somebody painted over it a hundred years ago because he didn't know it was worth anything."

  I still wasn't satisfied. "Tony, have they done any physical tests for age, any pigment analysis, any—"

  "No, apparently Blusher jumped three feet off the ground when he heard the X-ray results, and he didn't want anyone fooling with it anymore. He had a truck there for it inside of an hour. I hear it's in a bank vault now."

  "So wh
at's going to happen to it?"

  "Who knows? It's up to him."

  "You mean he gets to keep it?"

  "I don't see why not. Who else has a claim? The shippers say they don't know how it got into the shipment or where it came from, and nobody knows who owned it."

  “What about the Italian government? There's a law about taking art out of Italy."

  "Wrong, there's a law about taking genuine art out of Italy. You can take out all the fakes you want to. Blusher's saying that when it left Italy it was a forged van Eyck, not a genuine Terbrugghen, so Italy has no claim. Personally, I think he's right, and from what I hear so far, they're not going to contest it.

  "There you are, Tony," I said excitedly, "that's the scam! It's genuine, all right, and he had it painted over to get it out of Italy. Then, once it's here he sets up this elaborate routine that winds up with the supposedly amazing discovery that there's a valuable work of art underneath—and he gets to keep it. "

  "Oh, sure, nice and simple. All it leaves is one or two inconsequential little questions."

  "Like what?"

  "Like where did it come from in the first place? Nobody's reported it missing."

  "Maybe it wasn't stolen. Maybe he bought it from somebody but couldn't get it legally out. Maybe—"

  "And what was that business with the Rubens all about? How did he get hold of that? And if this is all a scam, how do you explain his giving us the $150,000? I wish we'd get taken in by a scam like that every week."

  "Okay," I said wearily, "you're right. I don't know what the answers are. I can't figure out what's going on."

  "Nothing's going on, at least not the way you mean. When will you be back in Seattle?"

  "Monday. I'm all wrapped up here, but I'm catching a noon plane to Sicily tomorrow to pin things down with Ugo Scoccimarro."

  "Fine, good. See you then."

  "Don't spend that whole hundred and fifty thousand in Japan, Tony. Remember, we're buying that Boursse from Ugo. Sixty thousand."

  "Absolutely. A deal's a deal. And Chris—I can still hear those gears spinning in your head. Forget about scams, will you, and just concentrate on business. All right?"

  "Right," I said. "See you next week."

  The coffee had already been delivered and begun to cool by the time I hung up. I drank mine and ate a couple of the orange-flavored biscotti that had come with it, while I filled Calvin in on the parts of the conversation he'd missed.

  "I thought you said," he told me, "that there couldn't be any big-time artist's work underneath."

  "Well, Terbrugghen's only recently gotten to be a big name Until lately he hardly got any attention. You don't find him in the standard art history texts until the sixties or even the seventies. Whoever forged the van Eyck could easily have painted over it back then, just wanting the panel itself, and an authentic old ground to work on. The Terbrugghen itself would have been next to worthless."

  "Is that what you think happened?"

  "I don't know. I've been instructed twice today, by two authority figures on two continents, to mind my own business. I think maybe that's what I'd better do."

  Calvin leaned back and stretched. "Fascinating. Well, I guess I'll call it a night."

  "Early for you, isn't it?"

  "Yeah, but I have to get up early. This girl I met at the museum is driving me up to the Riviera for the weekend. Her folks have a beach house in Portofino. Hey, have fun in Sicily, and I'll see you back in Seattle."

  Chapter 14

  How, I wondered glumly, did the guy do it? I'd been at the museum most of the afternoon myself and nobody'd invited me on any weekend jaunts. I hadn't even spoken to a woman. I didn't remember even seeing a woman But Calvin had seen, spoken, and conquered (had he used his nifty little pocket translator?), and tomorrow he was off to the Riviera with her.

  Life was like that for him back home, too. In Seattle I'd attributed it to his Porsche, but he didn't have his Porsche here, so it wasn't that. I don't mean to say there's anything wrong with Calvin; looks and brains aren't everything and he's a nice enough guy in his own way, but I just couldn't understand why he seemed to turn up at every show reception with a new woman, while I came alone. And left alone.

  Since Anne and I had broken up I'd been in a funk as far as females were concerned. Oh, there'd been a few, but I just didn't seem to have the energy anymore, or maybe it was the patience, for the get-acquainted routine: the games, the goofy questions, the tedious self-histories ("So—now tell me about you"). I suppose if I'd stuck with it I might have met somebody, but the chances were so slim—the number of normal- looking, superficially rational screwballs wandering around had astonished me—that it just didn't seem worth the effort.

  With Anne it had been different: no games, no goofy conversations. I still had no idea what her sign was. There had just been a sweet, growing appreciation and attachment, a sense when I was with her that the world was a pretty fine place after all. Until that miserable episode in San Francisco had turned everything sour.

  But now, back in Europe where we'd met and things had gone so well for us, San Francisco no longer seemed to overshadow everything. There had been extenuating circumstances. Making an end to a ten-year marriage, no matter how rotten, was unlikely to bring out the best in anybody. So there'd been a few bad days. Anne had never thrown them up to me; I was the one who'd made all the fuss at the time, and I was the one who was still making a fuss about them. She'd even called me, and here I was, still dithering.

  Now look, Norgren, I said, you know you're going to call her back, so instead of cerebralizing for the next hour, why not save yourself the time and the angst and just do it? The hell with what Louis might think about it.

  And so I did. I got out my address book and dialed her number at the U.S. Army installation at Berchtesgaden. Finally.

  "Hello?"

  She had answered promptly on the first ring, startling me into a tongue-tied panic. I almost hung up. It occurred to me I could have done with a few more minutes of cerebralizing. Stricken mute, I stood there with the telephone at my ear.

  After a moment she spoke again, softly. "Chris?"

  That tentative, quiet syllable flowed over me like warm, perfumed water. The tension drained out of my neck. My shoulders unhunched. I sat down heavily on the bed. "God, it's good to hear your voice."

  The next twenty minutes were a blur of laughter and explanations, of cut-off sentences as we both tried to talk at once, of catching up with each other and trying to find our old familiar groove again. Then, gradually, the momentum slowed. We caught our breath.

  "I've wanted to call a hundred times," I said.

  "I know. Me too."

  "It's just . . . well, I felt so bad about the way things went."

  "We picked a rotten time to get together, that's all. It was my lousy idea, if you remember."

  "It wasn't a lousy idea, it was a good idea. I was lousy company."

  "You were awful company. Where are you calling from, Chris? Are you still in Europe?"

  "I've been here all week." Briefly I told her about the show I was working on, omitting several of the more colorful experiences of the last few days. "I only got your message last night."

  "When do you go back?"

  "Monday—"

  "Monday!"

  That little cry of dismay did me a lot of good. Until then, I hadn't been sure if she wanted to see me again, or if that initial call to say hello had been a civilized way of saying good-bye.

  "I'm in Bologna right now," I told her, "but I'm going down to Sicily for the weekend. Is there any chance you could come, too? You'd like Ugo, and he'd love to have you. And I don't have that much to do; we'd have some time to ourselves. Maybe drive around and see some of the island." I held my breath.

  "Ah, Chris, I'd love to, but I can't. I'm tied up all weekend with a NATO subcommittee meeting in Rotterdam, at the Naval Institute. Things are like a zoo right now. Damn."

  "Look," I said "I'm supposed to leav
e for home Monday morning, but I can shift it to Monday night. Will you still be in Rotterdam then?"

  "I can be."

  "All right, save Monday for me, will you? Maybe I can fly out through Amsterdam and stay for most of the day. It's just a quick train ride to Rotterdam."

  "Don't bother about that. I'll meet you in Amsterdam. Oh, Chris, could you really do that? It'd be wonderful!"

  "Don't worry," I said, my spirits higher than they'd been in months, "I'll work it out. Give me a number where I can reach you tomorrow. That'll give me a chance to figure out the logistics, okay?"

  The telephone rang the next morning at about eight, just as I finished shaving. I toweled off the shaving cream and picked up the receiver. "Pronto."

  "Dr. Norgren," the prissy voice said in English, "I am sorry to disturb you. I am Mr. Marchetti, the assistant manager You are leaving your room today, this is correct?"

  "Yes, that's right." With the towel I dabbed at some cream behind my ear.

  "We are having a small problem at the desk. Through a misunderstanding, a shortage of rooms has developed. May I ask if you will be staying until check-out time?"

  "I can check out early if that would help."

  I heard a relieved sigh. "Thank you so much."

  "What time did you have in mind?"

  "Would ten o'clock be too early? We don't want to inconvenience you."

  "No, in fact I can be out of my room in half an hour if you like."

  "Ah, that would be wonderful. You're sure it's no trouble? If you wish, you can leave your luggage with the bell captain until you need it. I will send up a boy."

  "That's all right, I'll take it down myself."

  "As you wish. You will be going to the airport? You would like a taxi?"

  "Yes, it takes about half an hour, doesn't it?"

  "On Saturday morning, about twenty minutes."

  "All right, could you have one here at eleven-thirty, please? Or better make that eleven-twenty to be on the safe side."

  "With pleasure. Molte grazie, signore."