The Forger (29 page)

There was that word again. “Instinct.” I was beginning to see that Pankratov and Fleury’s work had the same task, to put the buyers at ease without letting them know exactly why.

Pankratov spread a clean handkerchief on his worktable and emptied out the dust from Notre-Dame. He lifted some of the gray flecks with the tip of his knife and carefully worked them into cracks on the side of the painting. When each crack was filled, he tipped his little finger into the gray sludge and dabbed it over the crack, sealing in the dust.

“I can’t wait to show this to Fleury,” I said.

Pankratov picked up the painting and held it out at arm’s length, studying his work. “Tomorrow, we’ll give it to Fleury. Then he can sell it to Abetz.”

“I’d buy it myself if I didn’t know any better. It’s perfect.”

“There’s no such thing as perfect,” said Pankratov. “The best it can be is persuasive.” Whenever someone paid Pankratov a compliment, he would find some way to deflect it.

I sighed and looked around. “Who’d have guessed we’d end up doing this?”

“The mission always changes,” said Pankratov.

“And what does that mean?” I asked.

Pankratov made no reply. He was lost some place inside his head, long in the past, out on the frozen lake, in the darkness of the arctic winter night.

Chapter Twelve

I
WRAPPED THE PAINTING
in brown paper and brought it to Fleury’s gallery. He had told me to come by at four o’clock, and kept me waiting while he closed the doors downstairs. I unwrapped the Cranach and placed it on an easel. I sat down to wait on Fleury’s leather couch. It felt cold and rubbery. My earlier confidence had begun to fail me in the formality of these surroundings. My lips and my knuckles dried out with worry. I jerked the knot of my tie back and forth. Then I got up and covered the painting with a brown cloth that I’d found slung over the easel. I was too nervous to look at it.

I heard him climb the stairs, slow and light-footed. His steps made a swishing sound like someone sanding a piece of wood. He appeared in the doorway, wearing a blue suit, with a red silk cravat bunched at his throat. “Ah,” he said, looking at the brown cloth. “You’ve gone for the dramatic moment.”

“The what?” I asked.

“It’s what we call ‘the dramatic moment’ when you cover a painting and unveil it before the buyer’s eyes. It only works with a certain kind of client. You have to know which ones.”

I tugged off the brown cloth.

Fleury’s eyes narrowed. He was quiet for a moment. Then he mumbled, “This is some kind of sorcery.”

“Will it do?” I asked.

“It will,” he said. “It will do very nicely.”

I couldn’t help smiling.

Fleury walked right past me and up to the canvas. He pulled a kind of monocle from his shirt pocket and peered at the painting through the lens. “Layering,” he said. “Good. Patina. Good. Frame. Period. Wormholes. Nice touch. The right amount of dirt.
Craquelure.
Yes, good.” Then he came very close to the painting and breathed in through his hawk’s beak nose, which made a tiny, whistling sound. “Oh, yes. Oh, yes, that’s just right.” He walked around behind it. “Leonid,” he said. His head popped up. “Did you do this?”

“It was there when we began. We can lose it if you want.”

“No need,” he said cheerfully, and disappeared back behind the painting.

I felt the muscles of my shoulders and at the base of my skull unclenching with relief. I went back to the couch and sat down.

“All right!” announced Fleury. He walked up to me, waggling the monocle absentmindedly in one hand. “You look like you could use a holiday.”

“I expect I could,” I replied.

“Unfortunately you can’t have one just yet, because now that you’ve given me this painting, I want you to steal it back.”

I waited for an explanation.

“I want you to take it to Behr and tell him you’ve recovered the painting from a private collection. That’s the word I want you to use. ‘Recovered.’ He won’t ask too many questions. He’ll think you’ve stolen it and have chosen to cut me out of the deal. Tell him I wasn’t paying you enough. Tell him we had an argument and that you decided to go into business for yourself. Tell him you don’t want money. You want to trade this for some modernist works, which you then intend to sell out of the country. If he asks, you can tell him you have a buyer in Switzerland.”

“And why am I doing this?” I asked.

“Because if Behr thinks he can get a better deal from you, he’ll take it. Besides, the more disorganized we seem to be, the more he’ll feel like he’s in charge.”

“You’ve done this before,” I said.

“I’ve done just about everything,” replied Fleury. He handed me a list of paintings. On it were two Picassos, one a charcoal of the head of a man with a pipe, the other a pen and ink wash of a couple at a bar. There was a Matisse entitled
La Danse,
a découpage done in ink and watercolor. A Redon charcoal of a skull on brown paper. A Monet pastel of the cliffs at Etretat. “I happen to know that these paintings have been acquired by Abetz.”

“Are you the only dealer Abetz is working with?” I asked.

He laughed. “A good number of dealers in Paris are squabbling over those great Jewish collections. Some are making deals with the Germans to let them know where the hidden paintings can be found. The Parisian art world is too small for keeping secrets and some dealers are too greedy to let a bargain pass them by. If this war lasts ten years, there’ll be another fifty years of people denying what they’ve done.”

*   *   *

I
MET
P
ANKRATOV AT
the Dimitri and told him what Fleury had said.

Pankratov showed no emotion. He sat with arms folded, Café National steaming in front of him. When I finished talking, Pankratov rubbed his hands across his face and sighed. “That bastard,” he said.

“Why’s he a bastard?” I asked. “It sounds like a fairly good plan.”

“What he’s doing,” explained Pankratov, “is covering himself in case something goes wrong. If the Germans don’t believe it’s genuine, Fleury can say he never saw the painting up close. He can say, quite rightly, that he wasn’t the one who sold it. He can load all the blame on you.”

“You don’t know that,” I said. I didn’t want to believe it.

“Valya came to see me today,” he said. “Valya and Dietrich. They came to where I live.”

“What did they want?” I asked.

“Dietrich wants us to work for him, too,” said Pankratov. “She says he can convince us, whatever that means.”

“Doesn’t it bother you that Valya is with that Nazi?” I asked.

Pankratov was picking at his teeth with his thumbnail, staring off down the street. “Valya’s never had beautiful clothes,” he said. “Never been to black tie parties. No one ever bought her pearl necklaces. This is a fairy tale for her. Why should she worry about the suffering of others when no one seems to care about what she’s lived through?” He paused then, perhaps to let me agree.

But I had no answer for him.

*   *   *

T
HE NEXT DAY, FOLLOWING
Fleury’s instructions, I went to see Leutnant Behr.

He sat in his windowless, underground office. The clicking hammer of typewriters sounded from other rooms. “Where’s Fleury?” he asked.

“Not here,” I said. I told Behr the story. “It will work out better for all of us.”

Behr sat back. “What makes you think I won’t just call up Fleury right now and get you arrested?”

I shrugged. “You wouldn’t get the painting.”

He laughed a thin, wheezy laugh. “We’d get it. Believe me.”

“All right, then,” I told him, “for argument’s sake, let’s say you did get it. But that’s all you’d get, instead of a chance at some paintings which you could buy more cheaply from me than from Fleury.”

Behr was scratching the back of his neck. “What am I supposed to tell him?” Behr was hooked. Fleury had read him correctly.

“Don’t tell him anything,” I said.

Behr stood and began to pace back and forth behind his desk. “You said I could get this Cranach more cheaply from you than from Fleury.”

I nodded.

“How do I know that?” asked Behr.

“Simple. Ask him what he wants for it.”

Behr had begun to nod his head in rhythm with my words. “Have you got the painting?”

“Yes.”

“Here?”

“It’s in a safe place.” I pulled out the list Fleury had given me. “These are the paintings I would like in exchange.”

Behr snatched the list and read it. “What makes you think we have these?”

I didn’t answer him.

“How the hell did you know?” he asked.

“Call Fleury,” I said, “and ask what he wants for the Cranach.”

“All right,” Behr mumbled. “I’ll call him. Come back tomorrow. Nine
A.M.
” With great care, he folded the piece of paper, lining up the corners and sliding his thumbnail down the middle to make the crease. He seemed to have forgotten I was there.

I slipped out of Behr’s office and up the concrete stairway to the street, breathing the cool air outside.

*   *   *

T
HE NEXT DAY
I was back at Behr’s office.

“The ambassador agrees,” he said. “We’ll meet you at midday today.”

I told him the address of Pankratov’s atelier.

“You will have brought the painting,” he told me.

I nodded and left.

They were on time.

I was alone in the atelier. Fleury had wanted it that way. I sat on Valya’s chair, gripping the seat as if the legs had rockets tied to them and I was about to be blasted into the sky. I hoped to hell Pankratov had fixed that board the way I asked him to. From the drunken window of the atelier, I watched an unmarked limousine and a small delivery van pull up outside the building. The paintings, covered in paper, were unloaded by two men in blue boilersuits.

Then came footsteps up the stairs.

The first person through the door was Ambassador Abetz. He had on a black coat with a velvet collar and carried his gloves in one hand. All he said by way of greeting was “I don’t have much time.” He walked over to the easel, which was covered with a clean tablecloth.

“For a man like Abetz,” Fleury had instructed me, “you will definitely need the dramatic moment.”

After Abetz came Behr. He looked up at the rafters, as if searching for snipers.

I went over to the easel and drew back the cloth. My life is in the balance, I thought to myself. The words repeated in my head like some insane chorus. Life in the balance. In the balance. Balance.

Abetz rolled his gloves into a bundle and put them in the pocket of his coat. Then he moved up to the painting, his feet seeming to glide across the floor. He lifted the panel off the easel and walked over to the window with it. He tilted it in the light and turned it over. Next, he brought his face close to it, just as Fleury had done, and breathed in the smell of the wood. Moisture on Abetz’s forehead glimmered under the weak ceiling lights of the atelier, whose bulbs hung like drops of liquid just about to fall from the white and rust-bubbled shades.

“Has Dietrich been in touch with you again?” asked Abetz casually, not taking his eyes off the painting.

“He’s been in touch,” I replied.

“He likes to think of himself as a generous man.”

I shrugged. “He is pretty generous.”

“Dietrich is a man of limited means,” said Abetz. “He does not have the same resources at his disposal as a man in my position. If you happen to come across any more paintings, as I’m sure you will, and if Mr. Dietrich happens to find out about it, as I’m sure he will, then you must always make sure to wait for my offer.” Now he looked at me. “I can also be generous. And I don’t just mean the odd basket of goodies.” He turned back his attention to the painting. “It’s a portrait of the daughter of Martin Luther. It has on it the marking of the Italian collector Leonid. I haven’t seen it before.”

I went over to a shelf and pulled out a book of prints. “Here,” I said, opening the page to the place where a portrait of Magdalena Luther had been. A postcard of our painting had been made by Fleury, replacing the old print.

“Well,” said Abetz. “It’s certainly a Cranach.” He rose up on his toes and settled back again. “Everything appears to be in order. Some buyers require authenticators, you know. Dietrich, for example. You’ll notice that I don’t need one.”

I nodded.

“I can even tell you,” continued Abetz, “where it has been hanging, even if I do not know the exact location. It has spent some time in a church or more likely in the antechamber of a private chapel. I’m sure I can smell sandalwood. No detail is too small for me, you see. I am a connoisseur even of smoke!” Abetz turned to the men in boilersuits, who were waiting outside in the hall. “Bring them in. Take off the covers.”

The paintings were brought in and the paper wrappings removed. The room seemed to fill with light as the Picassos, the Matisse, Redon and Monet came into view.

I made a show of examining them one after the other. When I reached the last one, I looked up at Abetz and said, “Done.”

“Good!” Abetz clapped his hands together. “You can contact Leutnant Behr when another situation arises. And you may count on my discretion.” He wheeled about and started off down the stairs, followed by the men in boilersuits.

Then it was only Behr and me. “Are you happy?” I asked him.

“Abetz is happy. It’s all that matters. I wanted to thank you…” he began.

Abetz’s voice rose from far below, echoing up the flights of stairs. “For God’s sake, Behr! What’s keeping you?”

When they were gone, I went over to Pankratov’s chair and sat down, too nervous to think straight. I was still sitting there when Pankratov appeared in the doorway half an hour later.

“Would you mind telling me what you’re doing?” he asked indignantly.

“I’m sitting in your goddamned sacred chair is what I’m doing,” I replied.

Pankratov opened his mouth, left it hanging open for a moment as he hunted for something to say. Then he closed his mouth again, teeth clacking together.

“I could use a drink,” I said.

Pankratov nodded gravely. “Me too.” He looked at the paintings that Abetz had left. “Bastards,” he muttered.