False Impression (30 page)

‘What are you
getting at?’ shouted Fenston.

‘Only
that my New York lawyers will need to know who they’re up against.
Will it be
Bryce Fenston, the chairman of Fenston Finance, or Nicu Munteanu, money
launderer to Ceau§escu, the late dictator of Romania?’

‘Don’t threaten
me, Nakamura, or I’E...’

‘Break my
driver’s neck?’

‘It won’t be
your driver next time.’

There was a long
pause, before Nakamura said, ‘Then perhaps I ought to reconsider whether it’s
really worth paying that much for the Van Gogh.’

‘A sensible
decision,’ said Fenston.

‘Thank you, Mr
Fenston. You have convinced me that what I had originally planned might not be
the wisest course of action, after all.’

‘I knew you’d
come to your senses in the end,’ said Fenston, before putting down the phone.

When Anna
boarded the flight for Bucharest an hour later, she felt confident that she had
shaken off Fenston’s man. Following her call to Tina, they would have been
convinced that she was on her way back to London to pick up the painting, where
it’s always been. The sort of clue Fenston and Leapman would undoubtedly have
argued over.

She had perhaps
overdone it a little by spending so much time at the British Airways desk and
then heading straight for Gate 91B when she didn’t even have a ticket. The
little boy turned out to be a bonus, but even Anna was surprised by how much
fuss he made when she’d pinched him on his calf.

Anna’s only real
concern was for Tina. By this time tomorrow,

Fenston and
Leapman would realize that Anna had fed them false information, having
obviously worked out that her conversations were being bugged. Anna feared that
losing her job might end up the least of Tina’s problems.

As the wheels
lifted off Japanese soil, Anna’s mind drifted to Anton. She only hoped that
three days would have proved long enough.

Fenston’s man
was chasing her down an alley. At the far end was a high, jagged stone wall
covered in barbed wire. Anna knew there was no way out. She turned to face her
adversary as he came to a halt only a few feet in front of her. The short, ugly
man drew a pistol from his holster, cocked the trigger, grinned and aimed it
directly at her heart. She turned as she felt the bullet graze her shoulder...
‘If you would like to adjust your watches, the time in Bucharest is now three
twenty in the afternoon.’

Anna woke with a
start. “What day is it? ‘
she
asked the passing
steward.

‘Thursday
the twentieth, madam.’

A
nna rubbed her
eyes, and set her watch to the correct time.

She had kept her
agreement with Anton to be back within four days. Now her biggest problem would
be to transport the painting to London, while at the same time... ‘Ladies and
gentlemen, the captain has turned on the Fasten seatbelt sign. We will be
landing in Bucharest in approximately twenty minutes.’

She smiled at
the thought that by now Fenston’s man would have landed in Hong Kong, and would
be puzzled why this time he couldn’t spot her in duty free. Would he carry on
to London, or risk switching flights for the Romanian capital? Perhaps he would
arrive back in Bucharest just as she set off for London.

When Anna
stepped out onto the pavement, she was delighted to see a smiling Sergei,
standing by the door of his yellow Mercedes. He opened the back door for her.
Her only problem was she barely had enough cash to cover his fare.

Where to?’ he
asked.

‘First, I need
to go to the academy,’ she told him.

Anna would have
liked to share with Sergei all she had been through, but still didn’t feel she
knew him well enough to risk it.

Not trusting
people was another experience she didn’t enjoy.

Sergei dropped
her at the bottom of the steps, where she’d left Anton before going to the
airport. She no longer needed to ask him to wait. The student working at the
reception desk told Anna that Professor Teodorescu’s lecture on ‘Attribution’
was just about to begin.

Anna made her
way to the lecture theatre on the first floor. She followed a couple of
students in just as the lights were dimmed, and slipped into a seat at the end
of the second row, looking forward to a few minutes’ escape from the real
world.

‘Attribution and
provenance,’ began Anton, running a hand through his hair in that familiar way
the students mimicked behind his back, ‘are the cause of more discussion and
disagreement among art scholars than any other subject. Why?
Because
it’s sexy, open to debate and rarely conclusive.
There is no doubt that
several of the world’s most popular galleries currently display works that were
not painted by the artists whose names are suggested on the frame. It is, of
course, possible that the master painted the main figure, the Virgin or Christ
for example, while leaving an assistant to fill in the background. We must
consider, therefore, whether several paintings, all depicting the same subject,
can have been executed by one master, or if it is more likely that one of them,
possibly even more, are the works of his star pupils, which several hundred
years later are mistaken for the master.’ Anna smiled at the words ‘star
pupil’, and remembered the letter she had to pass on to Danuta Sekalska.

‘Now let us
consider some examples,’ continued Anton, ‘and see if you can detect the hand
of a lesser mortal. The first is of a painting currently on display at the
Frick Museum in New York.’

A slide was beamed
up on the screen behind Anton. ‘Rembrandt,

I hear you cry,
but the Rembrandt research project, set up in 1974, would not agree with you.
They believe that The Polish Rider is the work of at least two hands, one of
which may – I repeat, may have been that of Rembrandt. The Metropolitan Museum,
just a few blocks away from the Frick on the other side of 5th Avenue, was
unable to hide its angst when the same distinguished scholars dismissed the two
portraits of The Beresteyn Family, acquired by them in 1929, as not executed by
the Dutch master.

‘Don’t lose too
much sleep over the problems faced by these two great institutions, because, of
the twelve paintings attributed to Rembrandt in London’s Wallace Collection,
only one, Titus, the Artist’s Son, has been pronounced genuine.’ Anna became so
engrossed that she began taking notes. ‘The second artist I would ask you to
consider is the great Spanish maestro, Goya. Much to the embarrassment of the
Prado in Madrid, Juan Jose Junquera, the world’s leading authority on Goya, has
suggested that the “black paintings”, which include such haunting visions as
Satan Devouring His Children, cannot have been the hand of Goya, as he points
out that the room for which they were painted as murals was not completed until
after his death. The distinguished Australian critic Robert Hughes, in his book
on Goya, suggests they are the work of the artist’s son.

‘And now I turn
to the Impressionists. Several examples of Manet, Monet, Matisse and Van Gogh
currently on display in leading galleries around the world have not been
authenticated by the relevant scholars. Sunflowers, for example, which came
under the hammer at Christie’s in 1987 selling for just under forty million
dollars, has yet to be authenticated by Louis van Tilborgh of the Van Gogh
Museum.’

As Anton turned
to display the next slide, his eyes rested on Anna.

She smiled, and
he put up a Raphael instead of the Van Gogh, which caused a ripple of laughter
among the students. ‘As you can see, I am also capable of attributing the wrong
painting to the wrong artist.’

The laughter
turned to applause. But then, to Anna’s surprise, he looked back and stared at
her. ‘This great city,’ he said, no longer referring to his notes, ‘has
produced its own scholar in the field of attribution, who currently works out
of New York. Some years ago when we were both students, we used to have long
discussions into the night about this particular painting.’ The Raphael
returned to the screen. ‘After attending a lecture, we would meet up at our
favourite rendezvous,’ – once again he fixed his gaze on Anna ‘Koskies, where
I’m reliably informed many of you still congregate.

We always used
to meet at nine o’clock, following the evening lecture.’

He turned his
attention back to the picture on the screen. ‘This is a portrait known as The
Madonna of the Pinks, recently acquired by the National Gallery in London.
Raphael experts are divided, but many are concerned by how many examples there
are of the same subject, attributed to the same artist. Some argue that this
painting is more likely to be “school of Raphael”, or “after Raphael”.’

Anton looked
back into the audience, to see that the seat on the end of the second row was
no longer occupied.

Anna arrived at
Kosldes a few minutes before the suggested hour. Only an attentive student
would have noticed that the lecturer had departed from his prepared script for
a few moments to let her know where they should meet. She could not mistake
that look of fear in Anton’s eyes, a look that is obvious only to those who’ve
had to survive in a police state.

Anna glanced
around the room. Her old student haunt hadn’t changed that much. The same
plastic tables, the same plastic chairs and probably the same plastic wine that
couldn’t find an exporter.

Not a natural
rendezvous for a Professor of Perspective and a New York art dealer. She
ordered two glasses of the house red.

Anna could still
remember when she had considered a night at Koskies so cool, where she would
discuss with her friends the virtues of Constantin Brancusi and U2, Tom Cruise
and John Lennon, and have to suck a peppermint on the way home so that her
mother wouldn’t find out that she’d been smoking and sipping alcohol. Her
father always knew – he’d wink and point to whichever room her mother was in.

Anna recalled
when she and Anton first made love. It was so cold they both had to keep their
coats on, and when it was over,

Anna even
wondered if she would bother to do it again. No one seemed to have explained to
Anton that it might take a woman a little longer to have an orgasm.

Anna looked up
to see a tall man coming towards her. For a moment she couldn’t be sure that it
was Anton. The advancing man was dressed in an army greatcoat too big for him,
with a woollen scarf wrapped around his neck, topped off by a fur hat with
flaps that covered his ears. An ideal outfit for a New York
winter,
was her immediate thought.

Anton took the
seat opposite her and removed his hat, but nothing else. He knew that the only
heater that worked was on the other side of the room.

‘Do you have the
painting?’ asked Anna, unable to wait a moment longer to find out.

‘Yes,’ said
Anton. ‘The canvas never left my studio the whole time you were away, as even
the least observant of my students would have noticed it wasn’t my usual
style,’ he added, before sipping his red wine. Though I confess I’ll be glad to
be rid of the damn man. I went to jail for less, and I haven’t slept for the
past four days. Even my wife suspects something is wrong.’

‘I’m so sorry,’
said Anna, as Anton began to roll a cigarette. ‘I shouldn’t have placed you in
such danger, and what makes it worse is I have to ask you for another favour.’
Anton looked apprehensive, but waited to hear what her latest request would be.
“You told me you kept eight thousand dollars of my mother’s money hidden in the
house.’

Tes, most
Romanians stash the cash under their mattress, in case there’s a change of
government in the middle of the night,’ said Anton as he lit his cigarette.

‘I need to borrow
some of it,’ said Anna. ‘I’ll refund the money just as soon as I get back to
New York.’

It’s your money,
Anna, you can have every last cent.’

‘No, it’s my
mother’s, but don’t let her know, or she’ll only assume I’m in some sort of
financial trouble and start selling off the furniture.’

Anton didn’t
laugh. ‘But you are in some sort of trouble, aren’t you?’

‘Not as long as
I have the painting.’

“Would you
rather I held on to it for another dayP he asked as he took a sip of wine.

‘No, that’s kind
of you,’ said Anna, ‘but that would only mean that neither of us was able to
get a night’s sleep. I think the time has come to take the canvas off your
hands.’

Anna rose
without another word, having not touched her wine.

Anton drained
his glass, stubbed out his cigarette and left a few coins on the table. He
pulled his hat back on and followed Anna out of the bar. She couldn’t help
remembering the last time they’d walked out of Koskies together.

Anna looked up
and down the street before she joined Anton, who was whispering intently to
Sergei.

Will you have
time to visit your mother?’ asked Anton as Sergei opened the back door for her.

‘Not while
someone is watching my every move.’