Never Sleep With a Suspect on Gabriola Island (20 page)

“Delicious.”

He sat and smiled. “Yes.”

She couldn't keep from smiling back. The silence, not more than four or five seconds, for Kyra was a twist down to a pleasant place, a weakness in her thighs, an instant sweet ping at her temples— To be disregarded. “I need some information.” She sat up straight. “For another case.”

“I'll do my best.” He sat back, his eyes still on hers. “And then I'll ask you something.” His lip corners turned up, just a touch. “Okay?”

Kyra said, “You can always ask,” but felt as if she'd signed her name to a pact she'd not read. Quick, her close-to-the-truth story. “We're acting as agents for a consortium of antique dealers. They know you've found a good many schools-of in the last few years.”

“Mmm,” said Tam.

She speeded her delivery. “They'd like to buy up to three between them.” She took another sip. Superior wine. She sat back. “Will Artemus have paintings soon?” She raised her eyebrows, she hoped innocently. Another sip. What, nearly empty?

He too sipped. “Can you tell me who your consortium is?”

She shook her head. “Afraid not.” And only then saw where he was headed.

He nodded. “I understand.” His tone, all business. “And as you must understand, I can't tell you anything about the paintings.” He shook his head. “If I did, Artemus would have my ass.”

It took her half a second but she blurted a laugh.

He laughed too. “It's true, he would.” He picked up the bottle and poured her more wine.

She reached over, let the lovely fluid flow, with one finger stayed his hand, “Thank you. So I can't learn anything from you.” This time she found his eye.

He smiled.

“I went to see that Sienese school-of painting in Bellingham, the one you told me about.”

“Oh good.” A pleased smile. “It's a pretty good one.”

“Yes. But that poor Madonna, forever sliding off her chair.”

A laugh. “A gift to the museum. Probably lost for hundreds of years.”

“How do they get lost like that?” She gave him a naive little smile, awaiting his wisdom.

“Sometimes people don't know what they have in their attics. Sometimes they're hanging on the wall, been there so long nobody looks at them anymore.”

“And how come they get found?”

“People track them down.”

“Oh? Is that difficult?”

“Not if you know the scene. Not if you're smart.”

She nodded as he spoke, appreciating his insight. “But how do you know which attic or wall? There must be millions of eighteenth-century attics in Europe.”

“No, it's easier than that.” He sat back, stretched out his long bare legs thick with dark hair. “We have a team.”

“Ah.”

“Scouts. I told you about this when we had coffee, remember? Throughout Europe. And we may expand into western Asia.”

Her smile must say his words were full of meaning. It wasn't hard. She enjoyed his voice.

“They find paintings shut away in storerooms or warehouses or sheds, forgotten for lifetimes. Literally. Or buried away during World War Two to hide them from the Nazis, only coming out now. Sometimes bedding for rats and spiders, sometimes in strangely good shape. Our scouts are clever. You can't imagine how many unemployed art historians there are in Eastern Europe. One-time university professors. They know their territory.”

She continued to nod. “And?”

“We get a report. Sometimes they contact Artemus, sometimes me directly. If the report sounds good I go to examine the painting. I'm a fair historian myself. I evaluate the quality of the work and the state it's in. And I decide whether to buy. I set up authentication tests, that's a necessary part. Each scout gets a finder's fee.”

“Is authentication hard?”

“We work with several experts. So, no.”

“You buy most of what you hear about?”

“Oh, about half.” He sat forward again. “I used to love it, seeing remarkable parts of the world, finding a hidden treasure. A real adventure.” He leaned toward her. “But you know, something's new in me recently. More and more, all that feels like part of my past.” Even as he nodded he held her gaze. “I've got to change myself.”

He sees inside me. Danger. “Yes.” She placed her again empty glass on the table.

Tam picked up the bottle and reached over to pour.

She covered her glass. “I think I've had enough.” Time to go.

“A little more won't hurt.”

She smiled. “Actually, it might.” She stood. “I know so little about history. But this has been fascinating. And the wine was delicious.

Thank you.”

“Do you really have to leave?”

“I think so. Yes.”

He stood, never looking away, not for a flicker. She slid through the door, looked back, saw her jacket on her chair. To retrieve it she had to brush by Tam twice. He did not move out of her way.

At the hall door he stopped her. “I had a question, too.”

“Yes?”

He reached out his hand and took hers. He stroked her knuckles with his thumb. Brassy danger bells clanged. “May I kiss you?”

May I kiss you
? he'd really said that?
Kiss
reverberated among the bells. She felt the blush rising up from the silky collar of her shirt. He was standing close, smelled so tantalizingly male, something piney, soap or after-shave, his dark eyes— Leaning toward her, starting to pull her to him— Kyra shook her head, though her head wanted to nod— “No,” she managed to squeak. She smiled so he wouldn't feel too rejected, so he'd realize her
no
was a reluctant one. But now having said
no
did she wish she'd said
yes
? She took a deep breath. Her neck burned with blush.

With a last caress of her knuckles, he released her hand and shifted his weight away. “No means no,” he cited, smiling—how had she missed that dimple in his cheek? “It doesn't mean don't ask the question again.”

She smiled back, then turned the doorknob, “Bye,” and escaped. If she'd stayed, she'd have melted in his arms. Kyra the cliché.

IN LATE SEPTEMBER 1996, a Mossad agent acting under the alias Lev Sten—one of four working covers for his rarely used birth name, Llewellyn Katz—broke into the Jerusalem condo of Pyotr Rabinovich. From his agency control Katz had received a sweeping enter-and-investigate order. The Russian Desk, Immigrant Section, of Mossad needed to divine just where Rabinovich fitted into the panoply of newly arrived exiles under its vigil; or, if he didn't fit, why not. Katz's agency control did know, from three months of surveillance, that six days a week, from sunset Saturday to late Thursday, Rabinovich spent much of his time at the Wet Negev, a bar he'd bought the year before with cash brought into Israel via unknown routes and from undetermined sources, possibly the St. Petersburg black market. When Rabinovich first acquired the Negev he kept it open for business seven nights a week—to accommodate, he liked to say, his Arab, Christian and heathen customers—but after three weeks of warnings from a yeshiva around the corner, eighteen baseball-bat wielding thin-bearded rabbinical students, their prayer-shawls fluttering, invaded the Negev on a Friday two hours before sunset and laid its furniture, mirrors and spirits to waste. Thereafter Pyotr Rabinovich closed the Negev on the Sabbath.

The obscurity of both Rabinovich's principles and the capital that supplied them had aroused the fascination of the Mossad. A chaos of information had been gleaned from hundreds of debriefings of the many who joined Rabinovich at his table. Most claimed Pyotr as close friend and loyal acquaintance. He trusted none of them.

Rabinovich represented too many unknown, therefore dangerous, possibilities. Hence the door to Rabinovich's condo at 6:15 on a Thursday evening, hence Lev Sten as telephone repairman with a tool belt strapped to his waist, hence the electronic lock decoder.

The door opened. Too easy, thought Sten, a short blond man in khaki shirt, shorts and sandals. He called out in Hebrew, “
Bell Yisroel!
” No answer. He grimaced thinly, closed the door behind him and felt the barrel of a pistol at the back of his skull.

A voice said, “I did not order a phone repair.”

With thumb and index finger Sten took from his pocket a sheet of folded paper and showed the man the repair order. “Are you Mr. Rabinovich?”

“Yes,” said the man in English, “and your Hebrew is lousy. British?”

“Nottingham,” and Sten continued in English with a midlands accent, “and you were cursed to be born Russian.”

“A metre from the wall. Legs apart. Undo your work-belt. Drop your trousers.” Sten did. “Arms apart, high, lean against the wall. Thank you.” With his pistol Rabinovich patted Sten along his shirt and pants. “Pull your undershorts down, please. Good. Now spread the cheeks. Kick your trousers over here, please.” Rabinovich examined the tools on the man's belt. Among these, a palm-held camera. “All in order,
chaver
. Except your lock pick. Standard Mossad issue.”

Sten said nothing.

“I assume the camera is normal. Everyone in this country is a tourist.”

Sten squinted at Rabinovich as in mild disbelief.

“Please, turn around and raise your scrotum. A little higher. Good, thank you. Now put your pants on. You are here to explore my condo. I am a loyal Israeli. If Mossad believes I am a cause for concern, you must do your job.” He waved his pistol wide, an invitation. “Please.”

“I'm here to fix your phone.”

“Go right ahead. But place no listening devices. No, you could not, you have not brought anything with you unless you are wired ve-e-ery deep up your asshole. So. Be my guest.”

For the next two hours Sten searched in and beneath drawers and under beds, tapped walls and floorboards, examined letters and notebooks and packages of photos, showing Rabinovich in the company of publicly familiar faces. Also letters in languages Sten didn't know. He found nothing that might prove of interest to his agency control. Which itself was interesting.

Rabinovich asked Sten many questions and Sten, while going about his professionally thorough search, responded with casual truthfulness. Halfway through they discovered they shared Yiddish in common, which shifted them to first name basis. By the end they found they knew British-Jewish and Russian-Jewish versions of the same anti-Israel jokes.

Lev left as he'd entered, through the front door, thinking if he'd stayed any longer Pyotr would've offered him a drink. A convivial man. Lev felt relief that he hadn't been ordered to kill the Russian—not that he'd have been able to till the middle of their joking, then a quick jerk to the side, the wire from the belt, an instant garotting. If Pyotr hadn't shot him first.

He reported his search with precision, suggesting further surveillance. His agency control agreed with Sten's analysis and ordered the agent to spend several late afternoons a week at the Wet Negev. Over a year and a half Pyotr and Lev—Lev even after Llewellyn Katz revealed his English name, Rabinovich exclaiming, “Llewellyn?! Every parent is an anti-Semite!”—talked and joked. In the end Rabinovich sold the Negev to a South African playboy and left Israel for the US, grumbling, “No room to grow in this socialist country.”

Six years ago he asked Katz to join him at The Hermitage, head of security, vice-president electronics division. Mossad never did figure out what Rabinovich was doing in Israel.

Llewellyn Katz, arriving in Las Vegas, finding the desert landscape eerily familiar and his salary quadrupled, adapted with loyalty to his designated alias, Herm 3.

Rabinovich would this evening send Herm 3 to Nanaimo. His assignment: two detectives.

• • •

Noel wondered if he actually liked Lyle. At least Lyle was a connection to Brendan. So it was okay to see Lyle. His eye caught Lyle's painting over the chesterfield. Not bad. He loaded some CDs and set the machine to random. Melissa Etheridge sang out, “It shouldn't bother you—”

Except it bothered him a hell of a lot, the obituary that lay concealed at the back of the bottom drawer of the chest. Hidden from his eyes. Not from his mind.

Lyle arrived at 6:30 holding a bottle of 2005 Mercurey. He glanced at Noel's bare feet and kicked off his sandals. Was Lyle's mustache new? Noel couldn't remember. He did remember how Lyle slouched. Still, he looked good in blue open-collared dress shirt, maroon V-neck vest and brown corduroys. Noel took the bottle, nodded with pleasure, and offered Scotch, gin or vodka. Good thing he'd assembled the dinner this morning; he'd arrived back from Gabriola thirty minutes ago. On the stove the contents of the Dutch oven looked after themselves.

“End of September,” Lyle announced, “early evening is still vodkatonic time.”

“Right.” Noel busied himself with bottles, ice and glasses. Inside, he was wincing. Brendan and he, in summers at 5 p.m. would break into their
v
'n'
t
song: Early in the evening, Just as the sun is waning, The Friendly Giant calling, It's vodka 'n' tonic time!

Lyle surveyed the living area. “You still have my painting up.” He sounded gratified.

“Yep.” Noel handed Lyle a glass, picked up his own, clunked. “Cheers.” Noel sipped, Lyle chugged half his drink. Noel sat at one end of the chesterfield. “How's your work going?”

Lyle sat at the other end. “
Comme ci, comme ça.
” He flipped a so-so with his hand. “After the exhibit at Eaglenest I got galleries in Toronto and Montreal. Sold a few small ones. But nobody really cares about painting.” He cocked his head.

“That bad, eh?”

“My lectures about the stock market keep me in paint. How's the investigation going?”

“It's okay.” But Noel preferred
research
.

Lyle drained his drink, leaned toward the coffee table but couldn't reach it. He shifted to the middle of the chesterfield, set his tumbler down, and turned to Noel. He rested his arm along the back of the sofa. “And how you doing, buddy, really?”