The Heist

Seymour made no response other than to ponder his wristwatch with the air of a man who was running late for an appointment he would rather not keep. “Helen is expecting me for dinner,” he said with a profound lack of enthusiasm. “I’m afraid she’s on an African kick at the moment. I’m not sure, but it’s possible I may have eaten goat last week.”

“You’re a lucky man, Graham.”

“Helen says the same thing. My doctor isn’t so sure.”

Seymour put down his drink and got to his feet. Gabriel remained motionless.

“I take it you have another question,” Seymour said.

“Two, actually.”

“I’m listening.”

“Is there any chance I can have a look at Bradshaw’s file?”

“Next question.”

“Who’s Samir?”

“Last name?”

“I’m working on that.”

Seymour lifted his gaze to the ceiling. “There’s a Samir who runs a little grocery around the corner from my flat. He’s a devout member of the Muslim Brotherhood who believes Britain should be governed by shari’a law.” He looked at Gabriel and smiled. “Otherwise, he’s a rather nice chap.”

The Israeli embassy was located on the other side of the Thames, in a quiet corner of Kensington just off the High Street. Gabriel slipped into the building through an unmarked door in the rear and made his way downstairs to the lead-lined suite of rooms reserved for the Office. The station chief was not present, only a young field hand called Noah who leapt to his feet when his future director came striding through the door unannounced. Gabriel entered the secure communications pod—in the lexicon of the Office it was referred to as the Holy of Holies—and sent a message to King Saul Boulevard requesting access to any files related to a Lebanese businessman named Ali Rashid. He didn’t bother to state the reason for his request. Impending rank had its privileges.

Twenty minutes elapsed before the file appeared over the secure link—long enough, Gabriel reckoned, for the current chief of the Office to approve its transmission. It was brief, about a thousand words in length, and composed in the terse style demanded of Office analysts. It stated that Ali Rashid was a known asset of Syrian intelligence, that he served as a paymaster for a large Syrian network in Lebanon, and that he died in a car bombing in the Lebanese capital in 2011, the authorship of which was unknown. At the bottom of the file was the six-digit numerical cipher of the originating officer. Gabriel recognized it; the analyst had once been the Office’s top expert on Syria and the Baath Party. These days she was noteworthy for another reason. She was the wife of the soon-to-be-former chief.

Like most Office outposts around the world, London Station contained a small bedroom for times of crisis. Gabriel knew the room well, for he had stayed in it many times. He stretched out on the uncomfortable single bed and tried to sleep, but it was no good; the case would not leave his thoughts. A promising British spy gone bad, a Syrian intelligence asset blown to bits by a car bomb, three stolen paintings covered by high-quality forgeries, a vault in the Geneva Freeport … The possibilities, thought Gabriel, were endless. It was no use trying to force the pieces now. He needed to open another window—a window onto the global trade in stolen paintings—and for that he needed the help of a master art thief.

And so he lay sleepless on the stiff little bed, wrestling with memories and with thoughts of his future, until six the following morning. After showering and changing his clothes, he left the embassy in darkness and rode the Underground to St. Pancras Station. A Eurostar was leaving for Paris at half past seven; he bought a stack of newspapers before boarding and finished reading them as the train eased to a stop at the Gare du Nord. Outside, a line of wet taxis waited under a sky the color of gunmetal. Gabriel slipped past them and spent an hour walking the busy streets around the station until he was certain he was not being followed. Then he set out for the Eighth Arrondissement and a street called the rue de Miromesnil.

10 (#ulink_d7f61fe6-0813-5bfd-88cf-d0ce18eeafcc)

RUE DE MIROMESNIL, PARIS (#ulink_d7f61fe6-0813-5bfd-88cf-d0ce18eeafcc)

IN THE INTELLIGENCE BUSINESS, as in life, it is sometimes necessary to deal with individuals whose hands are far from clean. The best way to catch a terrorist is to employ another terrorist as a source. The same was true, Gabriel reckoned, when one was trying to catch a thief. Which explained why, at 9:55, he was seated at a window table of a rather good brasserie on the rue de Miromesnil, a copy of Le Monde spread before him, a steaming café crème at his elbow. At 9:58 he spotted an overcoated, hatted figure walking briskly along the pavement from the direction of the Élysée Palace. The figure entered a small shop called Antiquités Scientifiques at the stroke of ten, switched on the lights, and changed the sign in the window from FERMÉ to OUVERT. Maurice Durand, thought Gabriel, smiling, was nothing if not reliable. He finished his coffee and crossed the empty street to the entrance of the shop. The intercom, when pressed, howled like an inconsolable child. Twenty seconds passed with no invitation to enter. Then the deadbolt snapped open with an inhospitable thud and Gabriel slipped inside.

The small showroom, like Durand himself, was a model of order and precision. Antique microscopes and barometers stood in neat rows along the shelves, their brass fittings shining like the buttons of a soldier’s dress tunic; cameras and telescopes peered blindly into the past. In the center of the room was a nineteenth-century Italian terrestrial floor globe, price available upon request. Durand’s tiny right hand rested atop Asia Minor. He wore a dark suit, a candy-wrapper gold necktie, and the most insincere smile Gabriel had ever seen. His bald pate shone in the overhead lighting. His small eyes stared straight ahead with the alertness of a terrier.

“How’s business?” asked Gabriel cordially.

Durand moved to the photographic devices and picked up an early-twentieth-century camera with a brass lens by Poulenc of Paris. “I’m shipping this to a collector in Australia,” he said. “Six hundred euros. Not as much as I would have hoped, but he drove a hard bargain.”

“Not that business, Maurice.”

Durand made no reply.

“That was a lovely piece of work you and your men pulled off in Munich last month,” Gabriel said. “An El Greco portrait disappears from the Alte Pinakothek, and no one’s seen or heard of it since. No ransom demands. No hints from the German police that they’re close to cracking the case. Nothing but silence and a blank spot on a museum wall where a masterpiece used to hang.”

“You don’t ask me about my business,” said Durand, “and I don’t ask you about yours. Those are the rules of our relationship.”

“Where’s the El Greco, Maurice?”

“It’s in Buenos Aires, in the hands of one of my best customers. He has a weakness,” Durand added, “an insatiable appetite that only I can satisfy.”

“What’s that?”

“He likes to own the unownable.” Durand returned the camera to the display shelf. “I assume this isn’t a social call.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“What do you want this time?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“A dead Englishman named Jack Bradshaw.”

Durand’s face remained expressionless.

“I assume you knew him?” asked Gabriel.

“Only by reputation.”

“Any idea who cut him to pieces?”

“No,” said Durand, shaking his head slowly. “But I might be able to point you in the right direction.”

Gabriel walked over to the window and turned the sign from OUVERT to FERMÉ. Durand exhaled heavily and pulled on his overcoat.

They were as unlikely a pairing as one might have found in Paris that chill spring morning, the art thief and the intelligence operative, walking side by side through the streets of the Eighth Arrondissement. Maurice Durand, meticulous in all things, began with a brief primer on the trade in stolen art. Each year thousands of paintings and other objets d’art went missing from museums, galleries, public institutions, and private homes. Estimates of their value ranged as high as $6 billion, making art crime the fourth most lucrative illicit activity in the world, behind only drug trafficking, money laundering, and arms dealing. And Maurice Durand was responsible for much of it. Working with a stable of Marseilles-based professional thieves, he had carried off some of history’s greatest art heists. He no longer thought of himself as a mere art thief. He was a global businessman, a broker of sorts, who specialized in the quiet acquisition of paintings that were not actually for sale.

“In my humble opinion,” he continued without a trace of humility in his voice, “there are four distinct types of art thieves. The first is the thrill seeker, the art lover who steals to attain something he could never possibly afford. Stéphane Breitwieser comes to mind.” He cast a sidelong glance at Gabriel. “Know the name?”

“Breitwieser was the waiter who stole more than a billion dollars’ worth of art for his private collection.”

“Including Sybille of Cleves by Lucas Cranach the Elder. After he was arrested, his mother cut the paintings into small pieces and threw them out with her kitchen garbage.” The Frenchman shook his head reproachfully. “I am far from a perfect person, but I have never destroyed a painting.” He cast another glance at Gabriel. “Even when I should have.”

“And the second category?”

“The incompetent loser. He steals a painting, doesn’t know what to do with it, and panics. Sometimes he manages to collect a bit of ransom or reward money. Oftentimes he gets caught. Frankly,” Durand added, “I resent him. He gives people like me a bad name.”

“Professionals who carry out commissioned thefts?”

Durand nodded. They were walking along the avenue Matignon. They passed the Paris offices of Christie’s and then turned into the Champs-Élysées. The limbs of the chestnut trees lay bare against the gray sky.