BERLIN, SCHWANENWERDER
The villa sat on the island like a stone outcropping emerging from the deep emerald of the German woods. A nineteenth-century residence in the neoclassical style, it was made of gray limestone. From its high elevation it commanded a panoramic view that took in the exclusive villa district of Nikolassee on the opposite shore as well as the broad waist of the Havel River. In the distance the river narrowed as it neared Pichelsdorf, the densely wooded banks closing in and gradually swallowing the water in a throat of green.
A Mercedes motored slowly across the bridge from the mainland and proceeded to make its way along the narrow drive to the gates below the villa. Here the Mercedes stopped while Bill Howard presented his identification at the gatehouse, then continued up a serpentine lane to a motor court in front of the villa.
The view from here was stunning in the summer sunshine, but Howard did not bother to stop and look at it. He was welcomed by a young man dressed in a business suit and carrying a clipboard who led him into the villa and up several flights of wide stone stairways whose steps were so shallow that the climb was hardly noticeable at all. At every turn Howard caught sight of the Havel from windows that perfectly framed different views and brought him to the top of the stairs and an anteroom.
If he had known what he was looking at, which he did not, he would have found himself surrounded by works of art by some of the finest French, German, and Flemish artists of the late Gothic period: van Eyck, da Fabriano, Bosch, Fouquet, and Wiertz. Careful thought had gone into the manner in which the works were displayed, their sequence, their visual impact, their dominant color schemes, subtleties completely lost on Bill Howard. In fact, he had mused privately that the overall effect of this curious collection of paintings was rather grim and severe. He also assumed that the art in the anteroom had cost a fortune. This time he was closer to the mark.
Though several doorways exited off this anteroom, he was ushered toward the one straight in front of him. The room he entered was perhaps four times as long as its width and terminated at the far end with a huge window that once again provided a spectacular view of the heavily bowered Havel. More paintings and drawings hung along the high walls of the room, and down the center of its entire length was a series of waist-high lime wood cabinets with narrow horizontal shelves that contained scores of leather-bound portfolio boxes. Each box had gilt stamping on its face and spine, identifying a specific collection of drawings. One portfolio lay open on the slanted top of each cabinet, its contents ready for perusal. Farther toward the windows was a sitting area, and beyond that, just in front of the window itself, was a massive antique desk at which sat Wolfram Schrade.
Howard had been here many times before, and he knew the routine. Schrade was busy at his desk, so Howard did not speak to him but took a seat in one of the armchairs in the sitting area. Schrade ignored him. Howard let his eyes wander around the room. The place was a goddamn museum. It gave him the creeps.
After about ten minutes Howard heard some shuffling at the desk. He looked around to see Schrade standing, taking off his reading glasses as he came round the side of his desk. He was buttoning a double-breasted navy blue suit, which he wore over a tailor-made white shirt with medium-width crimson stripes. No tie. He was tall and lean, his face angular with a straight nose. His hair was thick, the color of sun-bleached flax.
“What about the woman?” Schrade asked, as if they were picking up a conversation of a few minutes earlier. His accent was not subtle, but neither was it distracting. His voice was unconcerned, his manner relaxed. Howard had never seen him otherwise.
Howard explained that the hunch he had had about her from the beginning was proving to be right. He thought she had become sympathetic with Strand. He no longer considered her reliable.
“Have you told this to Payton?”
“No.”
“I see. Well, I am finished fucking with them, then,” Schrade said. “I want her put away.”
There it was, Schrade’s peculiar phrase that Howard always found so jarring. In his own experience the phrase was veterinary, and he wondered how Schrade had come by it in English. Howard, who did not consider himself squeamish, found it a particularly brutal expression.
He whistled softly under his breath. “You’re talking about an FIS agent now. That’s going to get a response. . . .”
“They are not going to respond to anything,” Schrade said with indifferent disdain. “Strand knows the thing is finished. Besides that, she obviously means something to him. Where are they?”
“Bellagio. My tech people said this morning the signal hadn’t moved. . . .”
“Oh, your ‘tech people.’” Despite his languid manner, Schrade was expert at conveying frigid sarcasm. He was standing in front of Howard in his distinctive manner, erect posture, though not rigid, with his unoccupied arms hanging straight down by his sides. He appeared to be very comfortable that way, feeling no need to cross his arms or put his hands in his pockets or otherwise engage himself in some type of self-conscious body language that most other people could hardly avoid.
“You ought to reconsider what you’re doing to Strand,” Howard said.
“No.”
“No, shit. I’m going to tell you, you kill that woman he’s with now, and he’ll never let go of a single goddamn Deutsche mark of what he took from you. Hell, he’s got to think he can save her life by giving it up.” He paused. “Most people, Wolf, respond to pressure when they have some reason to. You take away a man’s reason to live—”
“Nothing is going to save her life.”
“Fine. Whatever.” Howard glared at him. Vicious fucker. Howard always walked a narrow line with Schrade. He had to exhibit a certain amount of brazen aggression. Schrade understood and appreciated that. But he couldn’t push it too far. Fear and fortune were closely aligned in Schrade’s orbit. Right now the guy was as serene as a nun. Howard couldn’t figure it out. He always looked as though he were wearing new clothes. His shirts and suits were unfailingly fresh and crisp. His damn pants were never even wrinkled at the crotch after he had been sitting behind his desk all day. Did he have some kind of fetish about putting on new clothes every day? That would be weird, even for Schrade.
“I have to tell you . . .” Howard started out carefully; he didn’t want to provoke the goose until he’d put one more golden egg in his own Liechtenstein account, but he had to conduct some business here. “The FIS is pretty damn hot about the way you handled the Houston hit. That was over the top.”
“The man responsible for that fiasco has been put away,” Schrade said. “That was regrettable.”
“They’re trying to contain the investigation, but, Jesus . . .” Howard hesitated, again wanting to be careful. “It’s thrown us into an emergency situation back in the States.”
Schrade’s clear eyes picked up the faintest hint of a pale glacial blue from his navy suit.
“Yes, I imagine it has. You realize, of course, I don’t give a damn. If the FIS had not been so feeble, this would not be happening. You understand, if it had not been for the very”—here his voice allowed a tonal change of nearly imperceptible difference—“thinnest margin of chance, I would never have known about this disaster in the first place. If Dennis Clymer had not made the mistake of using the same tactics to embezzle for one of Lodato’s clients, if that client’s accountant hadn’t bungled the plan, if I hadn’t agreed to launder a certain sum for Lodato, and if my accountants hadn’t seen a curious familiar pattern in Clymer’s Lodato scheme . . .” Schrade paused and approached to the very edge of Howard’s chair. “If all of that had not happened, none of this would have been discovered at all.”
Howard was looking up at him, a perspective he didn’t like. These had become Schrade’s mantras: the thinnest margin, the stupidity of the FIS, his terrible financial losses.
“That, Mr. Howard, is too many ifs,” Schrade concluded. “The FIS should not have sent you with this little complaint.” Pause. “Consi
dering our relationship, you should not have even passed it on to me.”
“I still have to work for them.”
“That is no concern of mine.” Schrade turned away and walked to the nearest of the lime wood cabinets, where he began idly paging through the drawings displayed there.
Finally he was doing something with his hands, Howard thought.
“It ought to be,” Howard said. “You’re making a fortune off the intelligence I’m still passing along to you.”
“No, it ought not to be,” Schrade disagreed with a mild finality, still studying the drawings. “My only concern regarding you is whether you are useful to me.” He looked at Howard. “Everyone is always ‘making a fortune’ off of something or someone. I hear that hyperbole all the time.”
The starched young man who had escorted Howard into the house entered the room. Schrade turned his head.
“The two representatives from Christie’s and the woman from the Galerie Séverine are here.”
Schrade gave a dismissive nod to the young man, then looked back at Howard.
“I want to see you again tomorrow. Same time. There are some additional concerns on this issue. Aside from that, I have several client requests for intelligence. Very important. Lucrative. For both of us.”
Howard began to get up out of the overstuffed armchair, but Schrade was through and had already turned toward his desk, unfolding his reading glasses as he went. By the time Howard had gained his feet, Schrade was sitting in his chair, already absorbed in his reading. Howard paused and looked at him a moment. The impertinent son of a bitch. Never said hello, never said good-bye. Those were transitional niceties of human communication that, over the years, Schrade had gradually abridged, and then completely eliminated, from his dealings with people. At the exact moment he was through with you, you ceased to exist. The man had no soul; he really had no need for one. The only time Howard had ever seen him behave with anything resembling an actual human emotion was when he encountered new pieces of art that he wanted to buy. Only then, in the presence of oil and canvas, when his pale, pellucid eyes fell on sheets of paper scrabbled and scratched with pen or pencil or chalk, did he appear to want to interact with something outside his own intellect. Such an absence of human needs was frightening.
Howard turned and walked out of the long museum of Schrade’s mind, accompanied only by the sound of his own footsteps and a sour taste in his mouth.
CHAPTER 32
ANTIBES, FRENCH RIVIERA
Charles Rousset cautiously made his way along the stone path that for a few meters clung to the curve of the precipice above the Cap d’Antibes like a swallow’s nest glued to a cliff before it gained solid ground again and ascended toward the old house. He paused a moment and turned to enjoy the view of the Mediterranean. There was a haze over the water today, an impressionist’s interpretation. How could one help but be romantic about such a stunning perspective?
Reluctantly he turned back again to the path, which, like the house to which it led, was in a state of neglect, not from indifference, but from a lack of the proper funds to maintain it. At one time it had been a pristine piece of real estate. In the 1950s it had been purchased by a London banker who lavished a great deal of his fortune on it. In those days the footpath had been lined with brilliant bowers of saffron sepiara and the blindingly bright cerise bracts of the bougainvillea. Exotic flowering cycas marked each turning of the way, and pastel perennials of every color snuggled in among the crevices and corners.
Those were former days. The banker and his wife were long since gone, as were the flowers and the blooming trees. Common cactus and weeds had now overgrown the edges of the footpath, and unforgiving rocks gouged up through the flat stones to make walking a precarious effort.
The house was large but could not be called a proper villa. It was sited handsomely above the blue-and-green bay, and though its stucco was cracked and stained, though the stones of its courtyard and terrace were loosened and hosted sprays of dried native grass, and though some of its terra-cotta roof tiles were slipping and askew, the style and beauty of the house still gave Rousset a thrill as he rounded the last turn in the footpath and came upon it, silhouetted against the ageless Mediterranean.
Edith Vernon was the only child of the banker who had built the house, and when her father died, in much reduced circumstances, the house was the only thing he left her. Though it was debt free, Edie, who was now in her early sixties, was hard-pressed to keep it up and pay the proper taxes. When her father was in his financial heyday, Edie was in hers as well. An art student in her university years, she fully partook of Rome’s la dolce vita, and her beauty opened what few doors her father’s money would not. Though the memories of those days remained, they were all that remained, and Edie had scratched out a poor living during the last two decades, trying to live off her art. Like many artists, she was a better copier of others’ work than she was a creator of her own. At this she was brilliant.
“Good God!” she exclaimed. She was standing solidly in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her hips, looking out at him. “Claude?”
“Indeed.”
She gaped at him.
“And”—he tipped his head forward in a polite bow, smiling—“Charles Rousset.”
“My Gahhhhd! I don’t believe it!”
“Oh, do, Edie. You really must.” Corsier laughed as Edie stepped outside and embraced him. She was wearing a long peasant skirt and a cotton blouse hanging loose to distract from the fact that she no longer had much of a definable waist. Her long honey-colored hair was shot through with gray, and she had it pulled back and piled in a rough chignon. She was thicker now, but even so there was something undeniably sensual about her that made hugging her a pleasure. She smelled of lavender and the musk of oil paints.
She stepped back and put the palm of one hand against his goatee. “This becomes you, dear. Very fetching.” He smiled. “The Schieles,” she said. “I did these . . . these darlings for you?”
“Indeed.”
“Oh, Claude!” She clapped her hands together. “Quelle intrigue!”
• • •
They had tea on the frumpy terrace and brought each other up-to-date on the gossipy parts of their lives in the intervening five years since they had seen each other. Corsier, of course, left out almost everything, and he supposed that Edie did also.
“Well,” she said finally, setting aside the tiny wicker tea table and putting her hands on her knees, which were spread apart underneath the long skirt, “let’s get down to business.”
She got up and returned in a moment with two drawing boards with butcher’s paper covering the image on each. She propped them against the legs of the tea table and went out again, returning instantly with two thin easels, which she set up with their backs to the house so that the pictures would catch the light from the sea. She put a board on each easel and removed the papers. Then she stepped back beside Corsier so that they could look at the pictures together.
Corsier smiled. He was thrilled.
“You like them, then,” she said.
“They’re perfect.” He got up from his chair and went over to look at each of them more closely. “Edie,” he said, his face glued to the pictures, “these are exquisite.”
“Schiele,” she said, “the man’s a freak. Insane.” She came up beside Corsier. “You were very precise, as usual, Claude. I confess, I wasn’t always sure I was doing the right thing. You said to have her arms thus, as in this picture. Her legs thus. Her hair thus, but opposite, as in that picture. Her eyes looking directly at you, but vacant.”
“I left the color to you.”
“I knew them. I remember the originals that I’ve seen as though I had owned them myself.”
She pondered her drawings. “Despite your assurances to the contrary, I had a friend in Berlin send me some old drawing paper he had salvaged from a prewar paper mill near Munich. It’ll pass close examination, but not a chemical analysis. The pencil wasn’
t a problem. Getting the right shade on the watercolor was a little tough.”
Corsier stepped back again from the two pictures, each of them roughly twenty-one inches high by fourteen inches wide. Both of them were unabashed exhibitionist portrayals of the female body, the distinctive mark of Egon Schiele. The first was a pencil drawing of a nude woman standing, looking at herself in the mirror. The back of the woman was nearest the viewer, and then another, smaller image of the woman was seen from the front, behind the first image, this one being the actual reflection. She was vamping for the artist, wearing only black stockings pulled up to midthigh. She had short bobbed hair and thin, horizontal eyes encircled by smoky shading.
The second picture was of two nude young women, done in pencil and watercolor. The two women lounged on a dark amethyst drapery. One of them had bobbed hair, the other long raven tresses. Their pubic hair was as jet as their ringlets, and there were pale splotches of lilac on their cheeks and nipples. Both of them were looking at the artist, one of them from the corners of her eyes as though she were just in the beginning movements of looking away.
“Nineteen eleven,” Corsier said. “I wanted them to precede his harsh, ectomorphic later works. You’ve done a wonderful job, Edie, of making them sensual while hinting at the meanness that was soon to dominate his style.”
“Those rather prissy mouths,” Edie said. “I liked doing them. I liked doing the eyes.” She paused. “But the pelvis on this one”—she pointed to one of the figures—“was difficult . . . maddening. Those explicit crotches on them were problems.” She laughed at herself.
“Good use of the amethyst”—Corsier came in closer to the dual portrait—“on the drapery, darker at the edges. Mmmmmm. I like this horizontal line above her stomach.” He perused the drawings for a long time.
Finally he straightened up. “Les splendide!”
Edie laughed. “God,” she said, “I can’t believe I’ve done this.” She stepped back and leaned on a stone pillar. “I don’t know what’s going on here, Claude,” she said, her voice a little more sober, “but frankly, at my age prison doesn’t suit me at all.”
The Color of Night Page 20
