Family Jewels (17 page)

40

P
aul Eckstein woke on his fourth day in Paris and stared at the ceiling. He had not heard a word from Randol Cohn-Blume.

“How long has it been?” his wife asked. They were waiting for breakfast.

“Four days.”

“Is he usually this slow?”

“I think he’s dragging it out in the hope of more money.”

“How much did you offer him?”

“I didn’t make an offer. I’m waiting for him to tell me what he wants.”

The doorbell rang, and Paul shouted,
“Entrez!”

The waiter came in, knowing by now where to put the table. He left them to it.

“Well,” she said, “I’m certainly enjoying our visit, but you’re not.”

“Of course I am.”

“You’re wound too tight to enjoy yourself.”

“Nonsense.” The phone rang, and he levitated about a foot.

“Perfectly relaxed, eh?”

Paul took a deep breath. “Hello?”

“Paul, it is Randol.”

“Good morning, Randol.”

“I hope I am not calling too early.”

“No, we’re just having breakfast.”

“Can we meet in an hour?”

“Can you make it two hours? We’re slow starters.” He didn’t want to seem too anxious.

“All right, an hour and a half, then.” He gave Paul an address in the Rue St.-Honoré. “It’s just a doorway—we’ll meet outside.”

“All right, an hour and a half.” Paul hung up.

“Feeling better now?” his wife asked.

“A little. I mean, if he didn’t have anything, he’d have told me so on the phone.”

“It’s Valentino for me, today, then Saint Laurent.”

—

P
aul got out of a taxi and found Randol waiting beside a door in a blank wall.

“Ah, there you are.” Randol produced a key, unlocked the
door, and they went inside, where Randol locked it behind him. He handed Paul a small, heavy flashlight. “We don’t want to turn on any lights down here. It would set off the alarm system.”

“Are we breaking and entering?” Paul asked, trying his flashlight. It was extremely powerful, in spite of its small size.

“In a manner of speaking,” Randol replied. “Follow me.” He started down a winding staircase that went on longer than Paul had expected. At the bottom, Randol followed a hallway until he came to a door, which he unlocked with another key, then locked behind them. “There,” he said, playing his light along a wall before them. It was covered with steel shelving, cabinets, and file drawers.

“Where?” Paul asked.

“That is for us to find out. We will start at opposite ends and work toward the center. Your French is good enough to read this stuff, isn’t it?”

“As long as it’s typed. I have trouble reading the handwriting of Frenchmen.”

“If it is in longhand, you will find it very neat and correct. How do you say . . . boilerplate?”

“That’s not the word, but I know what you mean.” Paul went to his end and turned on his light. “What are we looking for?”

“The name Blume, and the years 1899 and 1946. If you find those, let me know.”

—

N
early four hours later, Paul’s back hurt, he was painfully hungry, and he had covered only about a third of the distance to the middle of the wall. Then he read a tab saying:
Blume, 1894
. “Randol, I think I may have something here.”

Randol joined him and looked at the file. “Excellent,” he said. “Let’s both keep going here.” The two men pawed through the files, some of them thick, until they came to 1899. “Ah,” Randol said, “success.”

There were more than a dozen files labeled with that year, and one of them read
Bloch-Bauer
. It was a thick accordion file. Randol took it to a steel table in the center of the room and unwound the cord sealing it.

Paul’s heart was thudding against his rib cage. He watched as Randol examined each page, then came to a folded sheet of heavier paper. “Oh, yes,” he said, unfolding the sheet to its full size, about one foot by two and a half. On the sheet, finely rendered in India ink, were four drawings of the choker, each from a different angle, with each stone delineated, and the rubies colored in. On the lower right-hand corner of the sheet was the signature
François Blume, mai 1899
.

“I believe the expression is ‘pay dirt,’” Randol said.

“I believe you are right. Are there photographs of the finished piece?”

“Not in this file,” Randol said. He returned to the file drawer
and brought out another file of a different, heavier paper. He opened it and withdrew a packet of soft paper, which, when opened, had four compartments. Randol removed a pair of white cotton gloves from a pocket, put them on, then withdrew from the file a glass negative of about eight by ten inches. He played the light over the sheet, then removed and examined four more negatives. “Each is of the necklace from the angles depicted in the drawing,” he said, “except for this one.” The final negative was a photograph of the inside of the necklace.

Paul pointed at some small lettering and shone his light on it. “Can you make out what this says?”

Randol produced a loupe and held it gently against the glass. “It says, ‘Bijoux Blume 1899.’”

Paul sucked in a breath. “Can we get copies of these?” he asked.

Randol gave a short laugh. “Why don’t we just steal them?”

41

P
aul ordered his lunch, then excused himself; in the men’s room he called Stone Barrington.

“Paul?”

“It’s me, Stone.”

“How’s it going?”

“As well as I had hoped. We found the original designs.”

“That’s wonderful.”

“Now I need five thousand euros in cash, and I didn’t bring that much. It’s for the man who led me to the drawings, and it’s worth every cent.”

“I’ll call the Arrington and have them give you the cash, then charge my account.”

“Thank you, Stone.”

“When will you be back in New York?”

“In a day or two.”

“Take the weekend. I’ll see you Monday.” Stone hung up. Paul used the men’s room, then went back to the table, which was at a small restaurant across the street from the photographer who was doing the work. He sat down, and his lunch arrived. “Your cash will be available at my hotel when we’re done,” he said.

“I believe we are done,” Randol said. “All we have to do is collect the prints that are being made as we speak.”

“No, we’re not done. We have to go back to the archive and search 1946 to see if Blume made a copy of the necklace, then we have to replace the original designs and glass negatives.”

“That’s unnecessary, I assure you.”

“Randol, what if someone wants to check the authenticity of our prints? What if the originals are needed for that?”

“I could retain them.”

“They don’t belong to you.”

“A small point.”

“A very important point. The originals must be put back into the files where we found them.”

“Oh, all right.”

They finished their lunch in silence, then crossed the street to the photographer’s. Paul examined the copies of the designs and the prints from the glass negatives and pronounced himself satisfied. The photographer handed them over in a stout folder and accepted payment.

—

T
wenty minutes later they were back in the archive room, replacing the designs and negatives in their original wrappings and in their original places.

“Now, for 1946,” he said.

Both of them riffled through the drawers and located the date. They went through every piece of paper and found no reference to Blume’s having copied the necklace.

“That’s it,” Paul said. “Let’s lock up and get out of here.”

They did so and took a cab to the Arrington, where Paul called at the front desk and found a thick envelope waiting for him. He handed it to Randol. “There you are, my friend, not a bad day’s work, eh?”

“Not bad.”

“Be sure to return that key to its lawful owner,” Paul said. “And please understand, it may be necessary to find the originals we copied, and if they are not there, the police will be looking for you.”

“Paul, you offend me.”

“I don’t intend to, just to impress upon you the importance of acting properly in this case.”

“I understand.” They embraced, kissed on both cheeks, and Randol disappeared into a cab.

Paul went upstairs to see his wife.

“Is it done?” she asked.

“It is done. And mark my words, when we get back, all hell is going to break loose.”

—

O
n Monday morning Stone greeted Paul in his office. “You look jet-lagged,” he said.

“And I feel jet-lagged.” He placed a large envelope on Stone’s desk and explained what he had found in Paris.

Stone removed the contents of the envelope and looked at the prints, then he went to his safe and brought back the necklace. “Let’s compare it to the photographs,” he said, shaking the choker into his hand. He laid the choker facedown on his desk and set the photograph next to it, then handed Paul a magnifying glass. “You first.”

Paul went carefully over the photos. “First, the name and date are in exactly the same place,” he said. “In fact, every detail of your necklace is identical to the photograph. Stone, you have the original Adele Bloch-Bauer necklace. There is no disputing it. The original drawings and plates have been returned to the archive, and if there is ever any doubt cast on the authenticity of this piece, they are there for inspection.”

“What about 1946?”

“Blume made no copy of the necklace in that year, and we checked 1945 and 1947, too. If they had made a copy, it would have been in the file.”

Stone sat down, took a deep breath, and let it out. “Now what?” he said, half to himself.

“I gave this a great deal of thought on the way home,” Paul said. “Will you need to sell the necklace for the benefit of the estate?”

“Yes, I suppose so. I’m obligated to get the most for it that I can.”

“Do you have any discretion in the disposition of the estate?”

“To a degree. There is a list of organizations and charities that will benefit.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“Of course.”

“When the news breaks of the existence of this necklace, it is going to become the most famous piece of jewelry in the world, at least for a time. When that happens, people, perhaps distant relatives of the former owner, might well appear to claim it.”

“That had occurred to me.”

“Do any of the organizations mentioned in the will have a Jewish orientation?”

“Yes, the Holocaust Museum, in Washington.”

“You might think of making that museum the beneficiary of the auction.”

“That’s a brilliant idea,” Stone said. “It would certainly simplify my life.”

“Are you acquainted with anyone at the big auction houses?”

“I know Jamie Niven, at Sotheby’s.”

“You might ask him to conduct the auction and waive the house’s fees in favor of the museum. They would get an enormous amount of publicity from the sale.”

“I’ll call Jamie today.”

“Sotheby’s would organize a publicity campaign around the sale, in order to drum up bidders. Be sure you have all your ducks in a row before you make this public. You don’t want to be overwhelmed.”

“Paul, I can’t thank you enough for that advice.”

“Now, as to the rest of the estate. In a week or so we will have completed our cataloging and appraisal of the three residences, and I’ll give you a written report. At that time, we can talk about what you might want to sell for the estate and what you might include in the sale of the houses. In the meantime, you might want to be sure that everything is insured.”

“I’ve already done that—Steele is the insurer, and I sit on their board. The necklace is insured for a million dollars, but in light of what you discovered in Paris, perhaps I should increase that. What value should I put on the necklace?”

“I should think ten million dollars.”

“I’ll do that today.”

The two men shook hands; Paul left, and Stone returned the necklace to his safe.