The Forger (39 page)

Fleury was quiet for a moment. His eyes closed slowly and then opened again. “I’m telling you now, if it doesn’t look right.…”

I sighed. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” said Fleury.

*   *   *

M
ADAME
P
ONTIER AGREED TO
meet me on the Pont Royal. She told me to come alone. It would look less suspicious that way.

We stood on a part of the walkway that jutted out over the river and had stone seats built into it. It was a cool day. Hard wind blew down the Seine into our faces.

A silk scarf was drawn over her hair. She kept her hands in the pockets of her loden coat.

I told her about Göring’s offer and our plan.

Before I’d even finished, she told me it was out of the question.

“But we can’t reproduce the Vermeer if we don’t have it in front of us,” I said, exasperated. “You’ve understood that with other works. Why not with this?”

“You must let it go,” she said. “For everything else you have done, I am grateful to you. The people of France are grateful…”

“I’m not doing this for the people of France,” I told her angrily.

“Then the artists themselves, whether they’re alive or not, would all be grateful…”

“I’m not doing it for them either, Madame Pontier.”

She watched me for a long time, as if waiting for me to flinch. “I have never cared about your motives,” she said. “Only your results. The answer is no, Mr. Halifax.” She turned to leave.

“Why do you hate us so much?” I asked.

She stopped and turned around. “Do you really believe that I hate you?” She gave me no chance to reply. “If you try to do this Vermeer, you will fail. And if you fail, you will end up dead. The forgery cannot be done.” The condensation of her breath made it seem as if her lungs were smoldering. “The painting is too well known. Hitler appointed a man named Dr. Hans Posse to be in charge of selecting paintings for the museum he hopes to build in Linz. Dr. Posse died two years ago, and the man who took his place is Hermann Voss. Voss is far too busy to check every painting being shipped into the Reich. He’s too busy at the moment even to unpack most of them. But the Vermeer he will examine. And you might be able to fool Dietrich, or Göring, or even Hitler, but you will not fool Hermann Voss. He’s studied the original. It’s not going to be like those others you’ve made.”

She paused for a moment, blinking in the freezing air. “I am saving your life, Monsieur Halifax. I know the stories people tell about me—that I care more for paintings than I do for people. I know how it must look to you. I am what I need to be. And I am looking out for you.” She was already walking away. When she reached the end of the bridge, a man who had been standing under a lamppost smoking a cigarette fell in step with her and they crossed the road together. It was Tombeau. He had kept his distance, not showing himself to add to Madame Pontier’s threat. But the fact that he stayed out of sight showed me they were beyond the point of making threats. She may have been looking out for me, but if I went ahead and put her in danger, or the paintings in danger, she would have me killed. It would not be personal, as Tombeau had told me before.

But I wondered if had misjudged her all along.

That evening, Pankratov came to my apartment, where Fleury and I were once again eating mashed turnip for dinner. I told them what she’d said.

“There,” said Fleury, laying down his spoon. “It’s over with.”

Pankratov reached into his pocket and pulled out a sheet of paper. He laid it on the table, smoothing out its creases with the heel of his palm. “This is a list of the paintings in the Gottheim Collection. I picked it up from Dietrich earlier today.” He slid the page across the table toward me.

I checked down the list of names, feeling sick at the thought of these paintings fading back into irretrievable darkness. Corot, Klee, Sisley, Picasso, Picabia, Munch, Dufy, Braque, Léger, Masson. Then, jabbing at my sight as if something were rising off the page, I read the name Pankratov. There was one painting, titled
Valya.
Confusion twisted inside me. “I don’t understand,” I said.

Pankratov was clearly upset. With shaking hands, he brought out his halved cigarettes and shook one out of the packet. He put it in his mouth but couldn’t get a match lit. The sticks kept breaking on the box. Eventually, he gave up, forced a deep breath down his throat and put the cigarette down on the table. He spoke in a wavering voice. “In 1938, a gallery here in Paris decided to have a retrospective of all my paintings. The gallery managed to persuade all the various owners to lend them for the show. We stored them at my studio. I had all except one, and that was Gottheim’s. The National Socialists were in power and Gottheim didn’t think he could transport the paintings safely out of the country. So he refused. One year later, the Nazi turned his whole collection into their sacrificial lamb.” Pankratov picked up the cigarette again and this time succeeded in lighting it.

“Why didn’t you say anything to us earlier?” I asked.

“I wanted to be sure,” said Pankratov.

“But what would you have done with the painting, anyway?” asked Fleury. “Burned it like the others?”

Pankratov shook his head. “I burned them for reasons that made sense to me at the time. Now I look at paintings differently than I used to. I see them as separate from the people who made them. The way a child is separate once it is born. Once I made them, they became separate from me. I had no more business setting fire to them than I would have setting fire to someone else’s work.” He scratched his fingers down his forehead, streaking the skin violent red. “Things are different now,” he said.

Fleury folded the list along its original creases. He handed it back to Pankratov. “Without the original,” he said, and left it at that.

Fleury was right. The Gottheim Collection, and everything it had come to stand for in my head, now seemed completely out of reach.

Pankratov had been staring at the table for a few seconds. Now he glanced up at us. “It’s in Normandy,” he said.

“What?” I asked.

“How do you know?” Fleury’s voice was sharp and accusing. “Only Madame Pontier has that information.”

“When we stopped at that café on the way to Ardennes Abbey, and I went out to stretch my legs, I looked under the wrappings of every single painting in the truck.” Pankratov shrugged. “I couldn’t help myself.”

“But how could we get it now?” I asked. “We don’t even know if the de Boinvilles live there anymore?”

“They do,” said Pankratov. “I called Marie-Claire this afternoon.”

“Did you tell her about the Vermeer?” asked Fleury

“I couldn’t tell her exactly. I hinted at it.”

“Do you think she understood?” I asked, knowing that what Pankratov called a hint might make no sense to anyone else on the planet.

“I guess we’d know if we showed up at her door,” said Pankratov. “The question is whether we should go.”

Fleury sighed. He took off his glasses, put them in the pocket of his jacket and gently patted the pocket to make sure they were in place. Then he walked over to the sink, pushing aside the red curtain that separated the living room from the kitchen. He turned on the tap and washed his face, letting droplets run through his fingers. “What if Madame Pontier finds out what we’re doing?” he asked through the cage of his hands.

“She might not have to know,” said Pankratov, as he stood up to leave. “You two need to talk it over. Whatever you decide, we will do.”

Fleury smoothed one hand down the length of his face. “I have already made up my mind,” he told Pankratov, “but if I don’t like the look of your forgery, the whole business ends there.”

We told him that was fair enough.

Fleury smiled, which was rare for him these days. It was a smile from the old days, before we knew how lucky we had been.

*   *   *

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING
, J
UNE
6, Allied troops landed on the French beaches.

I didn’t learn about it until the evening. I spent the whole day tidying up Pankratov’s repair shop, cleaning out the fireplace, scrubbing down the work surfaces with soap and water and a wire brush. I swept months of dust from the floor. I had given myself the job mostly because I was too nervous to do anything else. I had been carried along, first by the whole idea of saving the Gottheim Collection, and then by the thought of saving Pankratov’s last surviving painting. Only now was I beginning to see how unlikely it would be for me to produce a passable forgery. I could only guess at the depth of Pankratov’s disappointment when Fleury refused to accept my work. I knew I wouldn’t blame Fleury if that happened. I was glad he had made us promise to give him the final say. It was true that Pankratov and I had allowed our minds to become clouded. Fleury had understood this before we could grasp it ourselves.

I didn’t leave the repair shop until after dark, sliding the heavy padlock into place, knocking it shut with the heel of my palm and then trudging off down the unlit alleyway, feet crunching on the gravel, hands in pockets, heading for home.

The first time I noticed anything out of the ordinary was when I stepped inside the Dimitri. There were no Germans tonight. The only customer besides myself was Le Goff, wedged behind his usual table. His piggy eyes were dull behind pasty, folded cheeks.

“Hello,” said Ivan cheerfully. He stood behind the bar, wiping out glasses with a cloth.

I took off my coat and hung it on a peg. “Quiet tonight.”

“It’s the invasion,” he said.

My whole body went numb. “Is it certain?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” said Ivan. “It’s for sure.”

“Where was it?”

“Normandy,” said Le Goff, butting in. “Those Germans you’ve been kissing up to for the past four years won’t be around much longer, will they?” He puckered up his fish-pale lips and made sloppy sounds.

I tried to ignore him.

But Le Goff wasn’t finished with me yet. “Your deeds have not gone unnoticed. Your friendships with the enemy.”

“That’s enough, Le Goff,” said Ivan. “The truth may be different than you think.”

“I doubt it.” Le Goff coughed up a laugh like a man hawking phlegm. “Some heads are going to roll before too long and I expect Mr. Halifax’s will be one of them.”

I glanced back at him.

“You know what you are?” asked Le Goff. “You are a son of a bitch. If I was any younger…”

“But you aren’t younger,” I said, cutting him off. “You’re old and slow. You’re a dead man who’s forgotten to lie down.”

Le Goff slumped back in his seat. He filled the air with obscenities.

I took the opportunity to leave.

*   *   *

I
WENT STRAIGHT HOME
and knocked on Fleury’s door.

He had heard the news, and all the rumors, too. German radio reported that the landings had failed, but the military in Paris had been put on full alert. Rumors were that German divisions were now, after a delay of many hours, advancing toward the coast. At first, the German High Command had been conviced that Normandy was a decoy, with the real thrust coming at the Pas-de-Calais. “I wonder how long it will be before the Allies get to Paris.” Fleury was tying and untying the black silk belt of his smoking jacket. “I hope we get a chance to explain what we’ve been doing for the past few years.”

“Old Le Goff down at the Dimitri took a few potshots at me just now. He didn’t seem too interested in anything I had to say.”

“Potshots with words I don’t mind,” said Fleury.

“Maybe the Vermeer deal is off,” I thought out loud.

“You’ll find out tomorrow,” answered Fleury. “Dietrich’s coming by first thing in the morning. If the deal’s still on, we’d better get hold of that painting as quickly as we can, before some artillery barrage flattens the Ardennes Abbey and everything in it.”

*   *   *

F
LEURY AND
I
HAD
planned to meet Dietrich on our usual street corner at the far end of the Rue Descalzi. But either Fleury got the time wrong or Dietrich decided to come early. He showed up when I was still getting dressed.

Dietrich had never been inside the building before. When he arrived at my door, swathed in his double-breasted leather coat, he couldn’t hide his surprise that my place was so small and the furnishings so spartan. “But this is even worse than Fleury’s!” he said loudly. “He was wearing some bizarre red coat when he came to the door!”

“That’s a smoking jacket,” I explained. “It’s his armor.”

Dietrich started to laugh, but realizing that I had not meant for it to be a joke, he stopped. “Well, I made him take it off before I sent him down to the car.” Dietrich continued to look around the room, baffled by what he saw. “So what do you two do with all the money from those paintings?” he asked. “I thought you’d be rich by now.” He turned a slow circle in my living room, his fingers dragging past the old red curtains. “What’s going on?”

My mind spun like a roulette wheel. I knew I’d have to offer some excuse. “We put our money in the same Swiss banks as Hermann Göring,” I announced. “There’s no sense flaunting it here.” Then I stood very still, waiting to see what would happen next.

Dietrich nodded slowly. “Good thinking.” Satisfied, he changed the subject. “Did you hear about the invasion?”

“Of course,” I answered, the wheel in my brain slowly clattering back to its normal speed.

“God knows what will happen to us now,” said Dietrich.

It felt strange to hear him grouping his own destiny with mine. “How are things with Valya?” I asked.

Dietrich’s features softened at the mention of her name. He unbuttoned his coat and sat down at the kitchen table. He looked like some large machine collapsing in slow motion, his bones folding in on themselves. “It used to be we always had time to make up, but now I don’t know anymore, the way things are going. We will have to leave.”

“Where to?” I asked.

“It won’t be back to Germany, that’s for sure.” He straightened up, as if suddenly ashamed of his dilapidated state. “I have in mind a little town in Mexico I once saw in a picture book called San Cristobál de las Casas. I think that might be far enough away. The Fabry-Georges boys are getting restless. They’re thinking they might have backed the wrong side. There’s about ten of them I promised I’d have shot if they ever turned on me. The irony is that it’s the Fabry-Georges people who used to do all the shooting. Do you suppose I could pay them to commit suicide?” He smiled weakly.