The Deceivers

by Harold Robbins

  “Let me assure you that you aren’t the first curator to buy an artifact with a bad provenance. The collections in museums all over the world contain such items.”

  “It was a small museum, a big price tag, and a very high profile heist. Uh, what do you want from me?”

  “May I ask you a question first? What is your opinion of the Khmer piece you examined? The Apsarases.”

  I hesitated. Having watched cop shows on TV, I knew the conversation was probably being recorded, perhaps even videotaped. And it struck me that Detective Anthony had chosen an unusual moment to walk out. Were they playing good-cop, bad-cop?

  “I didn’t really examine it. I just got a quick glance at it before Sammy, the man who showed it to me, grabbed it back and ran. But it looked like an antiquity, it had the right color of patina and the wear and tear that sandstone gets from a thousand years of sun, rain, and wind … but one thing did strike me.”

  “Yes?”

  “The artistry was exceptional. I’m sure you know that when an expert examines an antiquity, they’re not just gauging how old it is, but looking at the artistic workmanship. A poorly made Khmer piece is worth a hundred times less than one with exceptional workmanship even if both are centuries old. This piece had some very fine details, especially the dancers’ jewelry. It was exceptionally well defined.”

  I took a deep breath. I was telling the truth. It just sort of burst out of me and I kept going. I paused and locked eyes with him. Not even Bolger had come up with the conclusion I was about to drop on the Cambodian prince.

  “It’s a fake,” I said. “That’s my conclusion without being able to get a more thorough examination and scientific study. And I base that on the eyes in my gut because the ones in my head scream it’s genuine.”

  “A fake because it’s too exquisite?”

  I spread my hands on the table. “In a manner of speaking, yes. If this artist had done this fine a piece in ancient times, we would see more of his work because he would have been in great demand. This piece is also broken off a longer relief. If the rest of it was out there, it would be noticeable because it is done so well.” I shrugged. “That’s it. The exceptional detail was the tip-off. It’s made by a master, there’s no more of his work known, so the odds are that it’s a fake.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Two experts, a curator from the Met and the head of the largest gallery in the country specializing in Khmer art, examined the piece this afternoon and validated it as authentic. Made about nine hundred years ago.”

  I shrugged. “It’s not the first time I’ve been wrong.”

  “But you’re not wrong. It is fake. An exceptional one done by an exceptional artist. We know that for a certainty.”

  “Okay … so why quiz me about it?”

  “To test you.”

  “Test me? I’m being held in a—”

  Anthony entered and I shut up. He sat a coffee cup down in front of me. “Sorry. The only water is from the New York City pipes that feed the water cooler out in the corridor. The one with the green slime and ugly brown gook around the spout.”

  The beige mug had a red lipstick stain. I smiled at the detective and raised my eyebrows, pointing at the mug. “Your shade?”

  Ranar smothered a grin. He took an unopened bottle of water from his briefcase and set it on the table.

  I ignored the water and stood up. “I appreciate the courtesy, but I’m finished here.”

  Detective Anthony frowned at me. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Home. I’m hungry, thirsty, tired, and angry. I’ve had it with you and your arrogant attitude and rudeness. You’re a policeman, not the Gestapo. And as this nice gentleman said, the piece is a fake—just as I thought. And I don’t think there’s any law about fakes.” I suppose there was a law for just about everything under the sun, but I was hoping I was right about fakes.

  “Please.” Prince Ranar held up his hand again to calm the children in the playground. “My limo is outside. I suggest we all retire to a restaurant of Ms. Dupre’s choice and discuss this matter in a civilized manner over a meal and fine wine.”

  “Nobu’s,” I said.

  10

  At the restaurant I tried not to appear famished as I devoured a lobster salad. Ah, lobster. Sex on a plate.

  I felt like I was back on top with a penthouse, an expense account, and a reputation. I’d done this scene a hundred times, sitting in an upscale restaurant sipping wine and talking art. Though not with a cop and a prince.

  On the way over, we chatted about the difference in the weather between New York and Cambodia. Cambodia was tropical year round while New York went from steamy August to frigid January. Not the most fascinating subject, but Prince Ranar brought up the subject, obviously to talk about something entirely neutral.

  Sitting close to both of them in the Mercedes limo, Detective Anthony smelled of male aftershave with a tinge of workout sweat while the prince’s cologne had the sweet smell of money. Even though the detective annoyed me, his masculine scent was more of a turn-on to me than the prince’s expensive fragrance.

  While Prince Ranar reeked of money and culture, Anthony was probably the kind of guy who watched football games with his pals at a sports bar, came home with booze on his breath and lipstick on his collar, and made passionate love with his significant other after a knockdown, drag-out fight about what an inconsiderate bastard he was; the kind of guy I’d met too often in my life and had been attracted to. When it came to men, I had beer tastes when it should have been champagne.

  I wondered what kind of prince Ranar was. Having dealt with “princes” and “princesses” a couple of times when I worked at a big auction house, I knew that the title oftentimes had only vague connections to royalty. Mostly it was a centuries-old empty title passed down long after the last king had lost his head. I discovered Cambodia still indeed had a king when Ranar mentioned that the king was in town to address the United Nations.

  I didn’t want to get into a discussion about his country and expose that I knew little about it other than the brief art history lesson—and political horror story—Bolger had told me. With a proposition being hinted at that meant money for me, exposing my ignorance didn’t seem too clever. I was curious about the proposition, but didn’t press for details because I didn’t want to appear too eager.

  The chitchat about nothing continued through another glass of wine and a dessert that included coconut sorbet and Jasmine ice cream. Wine and ice cream topped my list of favorite foods … next to chocolate, of course, which I ordered as a second dessert along with what I hoped was a ladylike smile to take the edge off of what they thought of my appetite. I didn’t want to leave the impression—the correct impression—that I had been subsisting on fast food and hadn’t had a high-end dinner in months.

  I had inhaled my first glass of wine and ate as slow and ladylike as I could manage with a growling stomach urging me on. The wine hit me almost immediately, giving me a buzz because I drank it before food came. And I ordered another. One good thing about living in Manhattan even if I didn’t have limo service home—I didn’t have to worry about driving and drinking because I’d go home in a cab or subway.

  Ranar finally broached the subject of Cambodian art over coffee drinks and more wine at the end of the meal.

  “As I’m sure you know, Cambodia is one of the areas in the world where antiquities are being looted and destroyed on a daily basis. The pillaging is as blatant and ubiquitous as what happened to Iraq following the American invasion. Organized gangs that Detective Anthony calls a Thai-Cambodian mafia have a network that extends from stealing antiquities to smuggling them out of Cambodia and into the West and Japan, often with a stopover in Hong Kong.”

  Detective Anthony said, “Police agencies internationally have banded together to exchange information about the problem. The FBI, Sûreté and Interpol in Paris, the Art Theft unit in London, NYPD, and LAPD are all cooperating.”

  “Is that what Samm
y is, some kind of mafia?” I asked the detective.

  “Sammy’s a deliveryman with a gambling problem. He was supposed to take that Apsaras piece to a gallery, but thought about selling it to you because the gamblers he owed money to were going to cut him off at the knees. When he didn’t show up at the gallery, a phone call went out from the restaurant to find out what happened to him. He was with you, of course. The gunman in the alley was from the gamblers.”

  I gave him one of my brilliant smiles but wanted to stab him in the heart with my fork. “So you knew all the time that he came to my place on impulse, but still put me through the third degree.”

  “Actually, I didn’t know if you two had conspired about bringing it to you. I’m still working on that angle.”

  What a bastard.

  He gave me a malicious grin. “Don’t think you did us any favors by making us come in to save your ass in that alley. I planned to have a surveillance go for weeks and net some big fish, but we had to break our cover because you blundered in.”

  “I’m sure Ms. Dupre’s motives were pure,” Prince Ranar said. “The police in my own country are, of course, fully cooperating with the international effort to stop this savage looting of Khmer treasures.”

  I had the feeling that Ranar’s comment was directed at the detective. I detected friction between the two. From what Bolger said about the chaotic situation in Cambodia, I had a suspicion that the NYPD detective was not happy with the performance of his Cambodian counterparts.

  “I’m confused,” I said. “You say the Apsaras piece is a fake, a really good one at that. But there’s widespread looting. Why bother making a fake if authentic pieces can be stolen so easily?”

  “Money,” Detective Anthony said. “The demand is greater than the supply. The market for Asian art has skyrocketed while the supply is shrinking as the international art community gets more educated about the damage being done to Khmer art. And as you said, the piece was exceptional. It wouldn’t be sold as a fake.”

  So he had eavesdropped after he stepped out of the room.

  The detective grinned, realizing he had slipped up. “The fact there’s no meaningful catalog of Khmer art on the market means that an exceptional fake can be passed off as the real thing. The art gallery chosen to move the piece in New York may not have known it was a fake … or wouldn’t care if they knew. For sure, the buyer wouldn’t know and in some cases also wouldn’t care. Because of its artistic appeal, the piece would have sold for many times the average Khmer artifact.”

  “What a businessman would call diversification has happened,” Prince Ranar said. “With less exceptional pieces on the market, gangs of criminals have started pushing exceptional fakes.”

  “Must be real money in it,” I said. I was dying to know how much.

  Detective Anthony pulled a four-by-six picture from an inside pocket of his coat. “Art crimes rank third after drug trafficking and illegal arms sales in the financial impact of crime. This is why.”

  He handed me the picture.

  “A Siva,” I said.

  Siva was one of the main gods of Hinduism, the paramount lord in the pantheon of gods in some sects. A very complicated deity, the Hindus considered him both a destroyer and a restorer, a wrathful avenger yet sensual and a herdsman of souls.

  The sandstone statue in the photograph was typical of how Siva was portrayed in works of art: It had four arms and three eyes, one of them giving him inner vision but capable of fiery destruction when focused outward. His necklace was a serpent threaded through skulls. He sat in the lotus position, with legs intertwined, left foot over right thigh, the right foot over the left thigh.

  One arm was broken off at the elbow and a hand was missing at the wrist. Limbs were the first to go on stone figures as war and mishandling occurred over the ages, which was why bronze was a more typical material for this type of complicated piece. But the price of a truly fine piece of art wasn’t much affected by broken limbs. The Venus de Milo, with one arm broken off at the shoulder and the other above the elbow, was proof of that.

  “An exquisite piece,” I said. “How large is it?”

  “About a foot,” Detective Anthony said. “It was sold to a private party for twenty-two million.”

  “It’s fake?”

  “How could you tell it’s fake?”

  “That was a question, not an opinion. I can’t tell from a picture, but we were talking about fakes. It certainly looks real, but so did the Apsarases.”

  “It’s a fake,” Prince Ranar said. “Another excellent piece. Detective Anthony believes it’s by the same artist who did the Apsaras piece.”

  “The only reason why it got exposed as a fake is because the buyer, a woman who runs a home goods company and has a weekly TV show on decorating, decided to show it off when she did a segment on her new apartment here in Manhattan. Someone from the Cambodian embassy spotted the piece. A quick check with the National Museum in Cambodia confirmed that the original was still there.”

  “Did the same people who smuggled in the Apsaras piece bring in this one?”

  Detective Anthony shook his head. “Actually, this one came through Hong Kong. It was owned by a Russian, one of those ex-KGB thug types who got rich in the nineties after the Soviet Union collapsed. Oil, I think. Great system. Pay off politicians and suddenly you’re an oil billionaire. He may have bought it legitimately, thinking it was authentic.”

  “How did he get the piece?”

  “I don’t know and he’s not talking.”

  “Can’t the police—”

  “He’s dead.”

  “Oh … because of the Siva?”

  “We don’t think so. He was gunned down in a nightclub in Hong Kong, apparently by other ex-KGB types to whom he wasn’t paying enough protection. His girlfriend, a model, is still in Hong Kong. She’s the one who put the piece on the market. We think she’s sitting on more, but she’s not talking, either. And there’s not much we can do about it. Hong Kong’s the gateway for much of the contraband art coming out of Asia.”

  Asian mafia. Ex-KGB billionaires. Murder. A Hong Kong model sitting on a hoard of fake art. Where did I fit into this? I asked the question and the detective answered.

  “We’re never going to stop the smuggling of contraband art, looted or faked, until we get to the source. The police in Thailand, Cambodia, and the Hong Kong territory of China are not always helpful.”

  “We are a poor country,” Prince Ranar said, “the poorest of the three mentioned. We have more land mines left over from wars than people to step on them. We’ve had revolutions that crippled us and even today there is an uneasy truce among political factions. Our police are overwhelmed with struggles against drug trafficking and prostitution that destroy the lives of young girls. The looting of our antiquities is the third arm of this trinity of evils. Unfortunately, these evils are rampant because Westerners feed the corruption with money. They buy drugs, sex, and stolen art.

  “Our cultural heritage is being vandalized, but we lack resources to deal with it. There are thousands of antiquity sites, many of them still covered by jungle, making it an impossible task to police with our limited resources. In our opinion, the best alternative is to increase the criminal sanctions against the wealthy Americans, Europeans, and Japanese who finance the crimes by paying enormous prices for unlawful goods.”

  The detective shook his head. “That isn’t practical. People have the right to buy art and rely on provenances.”

  I suddenly realized the role they wanted me to play. “You want me to act as an antiquities buyer.”

  “That is what Detective Anthony had in mind,” Ranar said.

  “An undercover thing,” I said. “Pretend to be in the market for stolen art.”

  “You’ve got it,” Detective Anthony said.

  I thought about it. Probably dangerous because the criminals wouldn’t be happy when they found out I set them up. I wasn’t about to get myself killed for the love of art. But I could set
up perimeters as to how far I was willing to go—like never meeting with the devils except in a safe place with a lot of police surrounding me. Of course, the most important thing after safety was my commission. So I asked and Detective Anthony gave me the answer.

  “All expenses … and a big bonus if you get us a bona fide lead.”

  “How big a bonus?”

  He nodded at Ranar. “Get the name of the head of the operations and the Cambodian government will pay you a fee of fifty thousand.”

  Almost chump change when I was a high roller in the art trade, but it sounded like a fortune to me now. But I shook my head. Never take the first offer was a rule of my chosen profession.

  “I want a hundred thousand and all anticipated expenses up-front.”

  Detective Anthony looked to Ranar and raised his eyebrows. “You said a hundred thousand. Still willing to pay it?”

  Ranar nodded. “Yes.”

  Damn. I should have asked for more. He had tricked me by lowballing the offer.

  “Okay. When do I start?”

  “Can you expedite getting her a visa?” Detective Anthony asked.

  “A visa? What do I need a visa for?”

  “You can’t get into Cambodia without one.”

  “Cambodia? Are you insane? I’m not going to Cambodia.”

  11

  Jungles. Temple looting. Revolutions. Drug trafficking and prostitution practiced openly. People stepping on land mines—when they weren’t stepping on poisonous snakes or being eaten by crocodiles … That was how Ranar had described his country—and I had the impression that he was deliberately downplaying the country’s problems.

  In the best light that Ranar gave it, the country sounded like a disaster in the making for me. The sort of place that news stories report, “An American was reported missing today in…” before the story just falls off the radar until a couple years later when they find the decomposing body in the jungle.

  Now that was a pleasant thought.

  I lay in bed the next morning and considered the proposition. A cop called Michelangelo wanted me to go to Cambodia. Find out who was running the Thai-Cambodian mafia or whatever it was. Come back and collect a hundred thousand. If I was still alive.