The Heist (13 page)

“When?” asked Gabriel.

“While you were in the company of the one-eyed creature in the town near the sea.”

“Where is she now?”

“She’s waiting for you,” the old woman said, “in the city of light.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” she said as her eyelids closed. “The old man doesn’t have long to live. Make peace with him before it’s too late.”

She was right about at least one thing; it seemed Chiara had indeed left Venice. During a brief call to her mobile phone, she said she was feeling well and that it was raining again. Gabriel quickly checked the weather for Venice and saw that it had been sunny for days. Calls to the phone in their apartment went unanswered, and her father, the inscrutable Rabbi Zolli, seemed to have a list of ready-made excuses to explain why his daughter was not at her desk. She was shopping, she was in the ghetto bookstore, she was visiting the old ones in the rest home. “I’ll have her call you the moment she returns. Shalom, Gabriel.” Gabriel wondered whether the general’s handsome bodyguard was complicit in Chiara’s disappearance or whether he had been duped, too. He suspected it was the latter. Chiara was better trained and more experienced than any hunk of Carabinieri muscle.

He went to the village twice each day, once in the morning for his bread and coffee, and again in the evening for a glass of wine at the café near the
boules
game. On both occasions he saw the
signadora
leaving the church after mass. On the first evening, she paid him no heed. But on the second, the boy with curly hair appeared at his table with another note. It seemed the man for whom Gabriel was waiting would be arriving in Calvi by ferry the next day. Gabriel called Don Orsati, who confirmed it was true.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“The
macchia
has no eyes,” said Gabriel cryptically, and rang off. He spent the next morning putting the finishing touches on his plan to find the missing Caravaggio. Then, at noon, he walked to the three ancient olive trees and freed Don Casabianca’s goat from its tether. An hour later he saw a battered Renault hatchback coming up the valley in a cloud of dust. As it approached the three ancient olive trees, the old goat stepped defiantly into its path. A car horn blared, and soon the valley echoed with profane insults and threats of unspeakable violence. Gabriel went into the kitchen and opened the Chablis. The Englishman had returned to Corsica.

I
T WAS NOT OFTEN THAT
one had occasion to shake the hand of a dead man, but that is precisely what occurred, two minutes later, when Christopher Keller stepped through the door of the villa. According to British military records, he died in January 1991 during the first Persian Gulf war, when his Special Air Services Sabre squadron came under Coalition air attack in a tragic case of friendly fire. His parents, both respected Harley Street physicians, mourned him as a hero in public, though privately they told each other that his death would never have come to pass had he stayed at Cambridge instead of running off to join the army. To this day, they still did not know that he alone had survived the attack on his squadron. Nor did they know that, after walking out of Iraq disguised as an Arab, he had made his way across Europe to Corsica, where he had fallen into the waiting arms of Don Anton Orsati. Gabriel had forgiven Keller for once trying to kill him. But he could not countenance the fact that the Englishman had allowed his parents to grow old believing their only child was dead.

Keller looked well for a dead man. His eyes were clear and blue, his cropped hair was bleached nearly white from the sea and the sun, his skin was taut and deeply tanned. He wore a white dress shirt, open at the neck, and a business suit weary with travel. When he removed the jacket, the lethality of his physique was revealed. Everything about Keller, from his powerful shoulders to his coiled forearms, seemed to have been expressly designed for the purpose of killing. He tossed the jacket over the back of a chair and glanced at the Tanfoglio pistol resting on the coffee table, next to the general’s Caravaggio file.

“That’s mine,” he said of the gun.

“Not anymore.”

Keller walked over to the open bottle of Chablis and poured himself a glass.

“How was your trip?” asked Gabriel.

“Successful.”

“I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Better than the alternative.”

“What kind of job was it?”

“I was delivering food and medicine to widows and orphans.”

“Where?”

“Warsaw.”

“My favorite city.”

“God, what a dump. And the weather’s lovely this time of year.”

“What were you really doing, Christopher?”

“Taking care of a problem for a private banker in Switzerland.”

“What kind of problem?”

“A Russian problem.”

“Did the Russian have a name?”

“Let’s call him Igor.”

“Was Igor legit?”

“Not even close.”

“
Mafiya
?”

“To the core.”

“I take it Igor of the
mafiya
entrusted money to the private banker in Switzerland.”

“A great deal of money,” Keller said. “But he was unhappy with the interest he was earning on his investments. He told the Swiss banker to improve his performance. Otherwise, he was going to kill the banker, his wife, his children, and his dog.”

“So the Swiss banker turned to Don Orsati for help.”

“What choice did he have?”

“What happened to the Russian?”

“He had a mishap following a meeting with a prospective business partner. I won’t bore you with the details.”

“And his money?”

“A portion of it has been wired into an account controlled by the Orsati Olive Oil Company. The rest is still in Switzerland. You know how those Swiss bankers are,” Keller added. “They don’t like to part with money.”

The Englishman sat on the couch, opened the general’s Caravaggio file, and removed the photograph of the empty frame in the Oratorio di San Lorenzo. “A pity,” he said, shaking his head. “Those Sicilian bastards have no respect for anything.”

“Did Don Orsati ever tell you that he was the one who discovered the painting had been stolen?”

“He might have mentioned it one night when his well of Corsican proverbs had run dry. It’s a shame he didn’t arrive at the oratorio a few minutes earlier,” added Keller. “He might have been able to prevent the thieves from stealing the painting.”

“Or the thieves might have killed him before leaving the church.”

“You underestimate the don.”

“Never.”

Keller returned the photograph to the file. “What does this have to do with me?”

“The Carabinieri have retained me to recover the painting. I need your help.”

“What kind of help?”

“Nothing much,” answered Gabriel. “I just need you to steal a priceless masterpiece and sell it to a man who’s killed two people in less than a week.”

“Is that all?” Keller smiled. “I was afraid you were going to ask me to do something difficult.”

Gabriel told him the entire story, beginning with Julian Isherwood’s star-crossed visit to Lake Como and ending with General Ferrari’s unorthodox proposal for recovering the world’s most coveted missing painting. Keller remained motionless throughout, his forearms resting on his knees, his hands folded, like a reluctant penitent. His capacity for long periods of complete stillness unnerved even Gabriel. While serving in the SAS in Northern Ireland, Keller had specialized in close observation, a dangerous surveillance technique that required him to spend weeks in cramped “hides” such as attics and haylofts. He had also infiltrated the Irish Republican Army by posing as a Catholic from West Belfast, which was why Gabriel was confident Keller could play the role of an art thief with a hot picture to unload. The Englishman, however, wasn’t so sure.

“It’s not what I do,” he said when Gabriel had finished the briefing. “I watch people, I kill people, I blow things up. But I don’t steal paintings. And I don’t sell them on the black market.”

“If you can pass as a Catholic from the Ballymurphy housing estates, you can pass as a hood from East London. If memory serves,” Gabriel added, “you’re rather good at accents.”

“True,” admitted Keller. “But I know very little about art.”

“Most thieves don’t. That’s why they’re thieves instead of curators or art historians. But don’t worry, Keller. You’ll have me whispering in your ear.”

“I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that.”

Gabriel said nothing.

“What about the Italians?” Keller asked.

“What about them?”

“I’m a professional killer who, on occasion, has been known to ply his trade on Italian soil. I won’t be able to go back there if your friend from the Carabinieri ever finds out I was working with you.”

“The general will never know you were involved.”

“How can you be certain?”

“Because he doesn’t
want
to know.”

Keller didn’t appear convinced. He lit a cigarette and blew a cloud of smoke thoughtfully toward the ceiling.

“Must you?” asked Gabriel.

“It helps me think.”

“It makes it difficult for me to breathe.”

“Are you sure you’re Israeli?”

“The don seems to think I’m a closet Corsican.”

“Not possible,” said Keller. “No Corsican would ever have agreed to find a painting that’s been missing for more than forty years, especially for a bloody Italian.”

Gabriel went into the kitchen, took a saucer down from the cabinet, and placed it in front of Keller. The Englishman took one final pull at his cigarette before crushing it out.

“What are you planning to use for money?”

Gabriel told Keller about the suitcase filled with a million euros given to him by the general.

“A million won’t get you far.”

“Do you have any loose change lying around?”

“I might have a bit of pocket money left over from the Warsaw hit.”

“How much?”

“Five or six hundred.”

“That’s very generous of you, Christopher.”

“It’s my money.”

“What’s five or six hundred between friends?”

“A lot of money.” Keller let out a long breath. “I’m still not sure whether I can pull it off.”

“Pull what off?”

“Passing myself off as an art thief.”

“You kill people for money,” said Gabriel. “I don’t think it will be much of a stretch.”

Dressing Christopher Keller for the role of an international art thief proved to be the easiest part of his preparation, for in the closet of his villa was a large selection of clothing for any occasion or assassination. There was Keller the wandering bohemian, Keller the jet-setting elite, and Keller the mountain-climbing outdoorsman. There was even Keller the Roman Catholic priest, complete with a breviary and a traveling mass kit. In the end, Gabriel chose the sort of clothing that Keller wore naturally—white dress shirts, tailored dark suits, and fashionable loafers. He accessorized the Englishman’s appearance with several gold chains and bracelets, a flashy Swiss wristwatch, blue-tinted spectacles, and a blond wig with a dense forelock. Keller supplied his own false British passport and credit cards in the name of Peter Rutledge. Gabriel thought it sounded a bit too upper-class for a criminal from the East End, but it didn’t matter. No one in the art world would ever know the thief’s name.

T
HEY GATHERED IN THE CRAMPED
back office of Antiquités Scientifiques at eleven the following morning: the art thief, the professional killer, and the once and future operative of the Israeli secret intelligence service. The operative quickly explained to the art thief how he intended to find the long-missing Caravaggio altarpiece. The thief, like the killer before him, was dubious at best.

“I steal paintings,” he pointed out, his tone laborious. “I don’t
find
them on behalf of the police. In fact, I do my very best to avoid the police altogether.”

“The Italians will never know of your involvement.”

“So you say.”

“Do I need to remind you that the man who acquired the Caravaggio killed your friend and associate?”

“No, Monsieur Allon, you do not.”

The buzzer howled. Maurice Durand ignored it.

“What would you need me to do?”

“I need you to steal something no dirty collector could resist.”

“And then?”

“When rumors start swirling through the nether regions of the art world that the painting is in Paris, I’ll need you to point the vultures in the right direction.”

Durand looked at Keller. “Toward him?”

Gabriel nodded.

“And why will the vultures think the painting is in Paris?”

“Because I’m going to tell them it is.”

“You do think of everything, don’t you, Monsieur Allon?”

“The best way to win at a game of chance is to remove chance from the equation.”

“I’ll try to remember that.” Durand looked at Keller again and asked, “How much does he know about the trade in stolen art?”

“Nothing,” admitted Gabriel. “But he’s a quick study.”

“What does he do for a living?”

“He cares for widows and orphans.”

“Yes,” said Durand skeptically. “And I’m the president of France.”

They spent the remainder of the day working out the details of the operation. Then, as night fell over the Eighth Arrondissement, Monsieur Durand switched the sign in the window from
OUVERT
to
FERMÉ
, and they filed into the rue de Miromesnil. The art thief headed to the brasserie across the street for his nightly glass of red wine, the killer took a taxi to a hotel on the rue de Rivoli, and the once and future operative of Israeli intelligence walked to an Office safe flat overlooking the Pont Marie. He saw a pair of security agents sitting in a parked car outside the entrance of the building; and when he entered the flat, he smelled the aroma of cooking and heard Chiara singing softly to herself. He kissed her lips and led her into the bedroom. He didn’t ask her how she was feeling. He didn’t ask her anything at all.