The Geneva Deception

by James Twining

  He walked over to the desk and perched on its edge, indicating that she should sit in one of the low armchairs opposite. She recognised this as one of his usual tricks; a clumsy attempt, no doubt picked up from some assertiveness training course, to gain the psychological advantage by physically dominating the conversation.

  ‘I’ll stand, if that’s all right,’ she said, enjoying his small flicker of anxiety.

  ‘Good idea.’ He jumped up, clearly not wanting to get caught out at his own game. ‘Too much sitting around in this job.’

  ‘Dominic, I thought it was time we talked. Alone.’

  ‘Yes, yes.’ Bury seemed strangely pleased that she’d said this, like someone who was desperate to break up with their partner, but too chicken to bring it up first. He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Drink?’

  The offer appeared to be directed more at himself than her. She shook her head, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

  ‘It’s a little early, isn’t it?’

  ‘Not in Europe,’ he said quickly. ‘When in Rome and all that, hey?’

  There was another strained silence as he busied himself over a bottle of scotch and some ice, the neck of the bottle chiming against the glass’s rim as his hand trembled while he poured.

  ‘Cheers!’ he said, with a rather forced enthusiasm.

  ‘About the other day…’ she began.

  ‘Very unfortunate,’ he immediately agreed, refilling his glass. ‘All those people, all those questions…’ He knocked back another mouthful, swallowing it before it had touched the back of his throat. ‘It doesn’t look good, you understand.’

  ‘The kouros is genuine,’ she insisted. ‘You saw the forensic tests.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘Only sometimes it’s easier for people to attack us than it is for them to accept that their fixed views on the evolution of Greek sculpture might be wrong,’ she said, paraphrasing Faulks’s rather more eloquent argument from the previous day.

  ‘I know, I know.’ Bury sat down wearily, momentarily forgetting his usual mind games, it seemed. ‘But the trustees…’ he said the word as if they were a local street gang who he suspected of vandalising his car. ‘They get nervous.’

  ‘Building a collection like ours isn’t risk free,’ she observed dryly. ‘Their canapés and cocktails come with some strings attached.’

  ‘They don’t understand the art world,’ he agreed. ‘They don’t understand what it takes to play catch-up with the Europeans and the Met.’

  ‘They’re out of their depth,’ she nodded. ‘And they’re dragging us under with them.’

  He shrugged and gave a weak smile, not disagreeing with her, she noted.

  ‘They just want to wake up to the right sort of headlines.’

  ‘Then I have just the thing for them,’ she jumped in, sensing her moment. ‘A unique piece. Impeccable provenance. I’m flying to Geneva tomorrow to see it.’

  ‘Verity-’ he stood up again, as if he sensed a negotiation looming and therefore the need to physically reassert himself once more ‘- I have to tell you that it’s going to be a while before the trustees, or me, for that matter…’

  She thrust the Polaroid Faulks had entrusted her with towards him. He sat down again heavily, his face pale. ‘That’s…’

  ‘Impossible? Wait until I tell you who I think carved it.’

  FORTY-THREE

  Piazza del Collegio Romano, Rome 19th March-10.49 a.m.

  This was Aurelio’s Eco’s favourite art gallery. Quite an accolade, when you considered the competition. Yes, the Capitoline Museum was richer, the Vatican Museum bigger, the Galleria Borghese more beautiful. But their fatal flaw was to have been crudely sewn together from larger collections by different patrons over time, leaving ugly and unnatural scars where they joined and overlapped.

  The Doria Pamphilj, on the other hand, had been carefully built over the centuries by a single family. In Aurelio’s eyes this gave it a completely unique integrity of vision and purpose that stretched unbroken, like a golden thread, back through time. It was a sacred flame, carefully tended by each passing generation and then handed on to the next custodian to nurture. Even today, the family still lived in the palazzo’s private apartments, still owned the fabulous gallery that sheltered within its thick walls. He rather liked this-it appealed to his sense of the past and the present and the future and how they were inexorably wedded through history.

  He paused on the entrance steps and snatched a glance over his shoulder, tightening his scarf around his neck. Gallo’s men weren’t even trying to pretend they weren’t following him now, two of them having parked up near where he’d been dropped off by his taxi and following on foot about thirty feet behind. He felt more like a prisoner than protected, despite what they’d told him. With a helpless shrug, he placed his hand on the door and heaved it open.

  ‘Buongiorno, Professore,’ the guard on reception welcomed him cheerily.

  He was early, but then he liked to leave himself enough time to check the room and have a final read through his notes. It was funny, but even at his age, after doing this for all these years, he still got nervous. That was the problem with an academic reputation. It was brittle, like porcelain. All those years of care could be shattered in one clumsy moment. And even if you managed to find all the pieces and reassemble them, the cracks invariably showed.

  ‘Expecting a big turnout today?’

  ‘An interpretation of the archaeological remains of the Etruscan bridge complex at San Giovenale,’ Aurelio recited the title of his lecture in a deliberate monotone. ‘I almost didn’t come myself.’

  ‘In other words, I’ll be turning people away as usual.’ The guard’s laughter followed him along the entrance hall.

  The one thing Aurelio didn’t like about this place was the lift. It was ancient and horribly cramped and seemed to rouse a latent claustrophobia that years of archaeological excavations had never previously disturbed. Still, it was only one floor, he thought to himself as the car lurched unsteadily upwards, and with his hip the way it was, it wasn’t as if he had much choice.

  Stepping out, he limped though the Poussin and Velvets rooms to the ballroom, where two banks of giltwood and red velvet chairs had already been laid out. Enough seating for fifty, he noted with a smile. Perhaps the turnout wouldn’t be so bad after all.

  ‘Are you alone?’

  He turned to see a man closing the door behind him, the key turning in the lock.

  ‘The lecture doesn’t start until eleven,’ he replied warily.

  ‘Are you alone, Aurelio?’ A woman stood framed in the doorway to the small ballroom, her face stone, her voice like ice.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome 19th March-10.57 a.m.

  ‘Allegra?’ Aurelio gasped. ‘Is that you? What have you done to yourself?’

  ‘How many?’ Tom growled in Italian.

  ‘What?’ Aurelio’s eyes flicked back to him.

  ‘How many men followed you here?’

  ‘Two,’ he stuttered. ‘Two, I think. Gallo’s. They’ve been watching me ever since…’

  ‘Ever since you betrayed me?’ Allegra hissed. It was strange. She’d felt many things for Aurelio since yesterday afternoon. Sadness, disbelief, confusion. But now that he was actually standing in front of her, it was her anger, instinctive and uncontained, that had come most naturally.

  ‘We haven’t got time for that now,’ Tom warned her, bolting shut the door that gave on to the adjacent ballroom. ‘Just show it to him.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Allegra. I’m so sorry,’ Aurelio whispered, reaching pleadingly towards her. ‘I should have told you. I should have told you everything a long time ago.’

  ‘Save it,’ she snapped, stony faced, then pressed the photo into his hands. ‘What is it?’

  He gazed down at the picture, then looked up, open mouthed.

  ‘Is this real?’ he croaked.

  ‘What is it?’ Tom repeated.

  �
��It looks Greek,’ Allegra prompted. ‘I thought the marble could be from Pentelikon.’

  ‘Greek, yes, but that’s not marble.’ He shook his head excitedly, his eyes locking with hers. ‘It’s ivory.’

  ‘Ivory?’ she repeated breathlessly. It was obvious, now he’d mentioned it. Obvious and yet impossible.

  ‘It’s a mask from a chryselephantine statue,’ Aurelio confirmed. ‘Circa 400 to 500 BC. Probably of the sun god Apollo.’ A pause. ‘Are you sure this is real?’ he asked again.

  ‘Chryselephantine means gold and ivory in Greek,’ Allegra quickly explained in English, seeing the confused look on Tom’s face. ‘They used to fix carved slabs of ivory on to a wooden frame for the head, hands and feet and then beat sheets of gold leaf on to the rest to form the clothes, armour and hair.’

  ‘It’s rare?’

  ‘It’s a miracle,’ Aurelio replied in a hushed tone, almost as if they weren’t there. ‘There used to be seventy-four of them in Rome, but they all vanished when it was sacked by the Barbarians in 410 AD. Apart from two fire-damaged examples found in Greece and a fragment in the Vatican Museum, not a single piece has survived. Certainly nothing of this size and quality.’

  Their eyes all shot to the door as someone tried the handle, rattling it noisily.

  ‘Time to go,’ Tom said firmly, snatching the photo from his grasp. ‘The private apartments should still be clear. We can go out the same way we came in.’

  ‘Wait,’ Aurelio called after them. ‘Don’t you want to know who it’s by?’

  ‘You can tell that from a photo?’ Allegra frowned, something in his voice making her pause.

  There was a muffled shout and then a heavy drum roll of pounding fists.

  ‘Not definitively. Not without seeing it,’ he admitted. ‘But if I had to guess…there’s only one sculptor from that period that we know of who was capable of something of that quality. The same person who carved the statue of Athena in the Parthenon. The same person who carved the statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.’

  ‘Phidias?’ Allegra guessed, her mouth suddenly dry. No wonder Aurelio had turned pale.

  ‘Who else?’ He nodded excitedly. ‘Don’t you see, Allegra? It’s a miracle.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Tom repeated, grabbing Allegra’s arm, the door now shaking violently. But she wrestled herself free, determined to ask the one question that she most wanted answered.

  ‘Why did you do it, Aurelio?’ she snapped. ‘Has Gallo got something on you?’

  ‘Gallo? I’d never even heard of him until yesterday,’ he protested.

  ‘Then who were you on the phone to?’

  There was a long pause, Aurelio’s lips quivering as though the words were trapped in his mouth.

  ‘The League.’

  ‘The Delian League?’ she breathed, not sure which was worse-Aurelio working with Gallo, as she’d first assumed, or this?

  ‘They said they wouldn’t hurt you. That they just wanted to see what you knew,’ he pleaded. ‘I wanted to tell you everything. Have done for a long time. When you told me about the lead discs and the killings…I tried to point you in the right direction. But I was afraid.’

  Abruptly, the noise outside stopped.

  ‘They’ll be back with a key,’ urged Tom. ‘Come on!’

  ‘You could have trusted me,’ she insisted, ignoring Tom. ‘I could have helped you.’

  ‘It was too late for that. It’s been twenty, thirty years. They’d kept records of everything I’d ever done for them. The false attributions, the inflated valuations, the invented provenances. I needed the money. You see that, don’t you? I needed the money to finance my work. Who else was going to pay? The university? The government? Pah!’

  ‘Who are they?’ she pressed. ‘Give me a name.’

  ‘Th-there was a dealer who I met a few times,’ he muttered. ‘An American called Faulks who used to fly in from Geneva. He was with them, I’m sure of it. But everyone else was just a voice on the phone. Believe me, Allegra, I tried to get out so many times. Tried to give it up. But the older I got, the harder it became to throw everything away.’

  ‘Throw what away?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t understand. You’re too young.’ He gave an exasperated sigh, throwing his hands up as if she had somehow let him down. ‘You don’t know what it means to be old, to be out of breath from tying your shoelaces, to not be able to take a piss without it hurting.’

  ‘What’s that got to do…?’

  ‘My books, my research-everything I’d ever worked for…my whole life. It would all have been for nothing if they’d leaked my involvement.’

  ‘Your books?’ she repeated with an empty laugh. ‘Your books!’

  ‘Don’t you see?’ he pleaded, a desperate edge to his voice now. ‘I had no choice. My reputation was all I had left.’

  ‘No,’ she said, with a broken smile. ‘You had me.’

  FORTY-FIVE

  Quai du Mont Blanc, Geneva 19th March-11.16 a.m.

  There was a definite spring in Earl Faulks’s step that morning, despite the slightly bitter taste left by Deena Carroll’s sermonising earlier. After everything he’d done for them over the years…the ungrateful bitch. The truth was that, having thought about it, he was rather glad she’d turned him down. With Klein as good as dead, he was no use to him any more anyway, so why do her any favours? Better to give someone else a sniff of the action.

  Besides, he could afford to take a small risk. Things were going well. Much better, in fact than he had anticipated. His courier had cleared the border at Lake Lugano that morning and was due down at the Free Port any time now. In Rome, meanwhile, events were unfolding far more quickly and dramatically than he had ever dreamt would be possible. That was the beauty of the Italians, he mused. They were an amaretto paper of a race -ready to ignite at the faintest spark.

  There had been that unhelpful little episode with the kouros at the Getty, of course, although for the moment at least, tempers seemed to have cooled. Having seen the ivory mask, Verity had understood that there was a far greater prize at stake here than a dry academic debate over a statue’s marble type and muscle tone. Barring any last-minute disaster, she was due in from Madrid around lunchtime the following day.

  Until then he had an auction to prepare for, lots to examine, commission bids to place…On cue, his car drew up outside Sotheby’s. He sat back, waiting for his chauffer to jog round and open his door, but then waved him away when his phone began to ring. An American number that he didn’t recognise. A call he wanted to take.

  ‘Faulks.’

  ‘This is Kezman,’ the voice replied.

  ‘Mr Kezman…’ Faulks checked his watch in surprise-a classic fluted steel Boucheron. ‘Thank you for returning my call. I wasn’t expecting to hear from you so late.’

  ‘I’m in the casino business. This is early,’ he growled.

  ‘Mr Kezman, I don’t know if you know…’

  ‘Yeah, I know who you are,’ he shot back. ‘Avner Klein’s a personal friend. He told me about you.’

  ‘And he told me about you,’ purred Faulks. ‘Said you were a shrewd collector.’

  ‘Don’t blow smoke up my ass. I pay people for that and I guarantee they’ve all got bigger tits than you. If you’ve got something to sell, sell it.’

  ‘Fair enough. Here’s the pitch: seven and a half million and your name in lights.’

  ‘My name’s in ten foot neon out on the Strip already.’ Kezman gave an impatient laugh. ‘Tell me about the money.’

  ‘Seven and a half million dollars,’ Faulks repeated slowly. ‘Risk free.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave the odds to the experts?’ Kezman snapped.

  ‘How would you price a federal government guarantee?’

  There was a pause.

  ‘Go on.’

  Faulks smiled. He had his attention now.

  ‘An…item has come into my possession. An item of immense historical and cult
ural significance. I want you to buy it off me for ten million dollars.’

  ‘Sure. Why not make it twenty?’ Kezman gave a hollow laugh. ‘The global economy’s on its knees, but let’s not let small details like that get in the way.’

  ‘Then, you’re going to donate it to Verity Bruce at the Getty,’ he continued, ignoring the interruption. ‘She will value it at fifty million, its true price. This will lead the IRS…’

  ‘To give me a seventeen and a half million tax credit for having made a fifty-million-dollar charitable donation,’ Kezman breathed, his flippant tone vanishing.

  ‘Which, subtracting the ten you will have paid me, nets out at a seven and a half million profit, courtesy of Uncle Sam. Not to mention the PR value of the coverage that will be triggered by your generosity,’ Faulks added. ‘Hell, they’d probably name a wing after you, if you asked.’

  ‘How firm is the valuation?’

  ‘Do you know Verity Bruce?’ Faulks asked.

  ‘I had breakfast with her two weeks ago.’

  ‘She’s due here tomorrow to authenticate the piece. Something this rare isn’t affected by shortterm economic factors. The value will hold.’

  Kezman was silent for a few moments. Faulks waited, knowing that his next question would reveal how well he’d played his hand.

  ‘When would you need the money?’

  Blackjack.

  ‘A few days. A week at most.’

  ‘If Verity okays it, I’m in,’ Kezman confirmed. ‘You have my private number now. Just get her to call me when she’s seen it.’