The Heist Read online

  Just then, the bells of the church tolled five o’clock. A few minutes later its heavy wooden door swung open and a priest in a black cassock emerged onto the steps. He stood there smiling benevolently as several parishioners, old women mainly, filed into the square. One of the women, after absently nodding good evening to the priest, stopped suddenly, as if she alone had been alerted to the presence of danger. Then she resumed walking and disappeared through the door of a crooked little house adjoining the rectory.

  Gabriel ordered another coffee. Then he changed his mind and ordered a glass of red wine instead. The dusk was a memory; lights burned warmly in the shops and in the windows of the crooked little house next to the rectory. A boy of ten with long curly hair was now standing at the door, which was open only a few inches. A small pale hand poked through the breach clutching a slip of blue paper. The boy seized the paper and carried it across the square to the café, where he placed it on Gabriel’s table next to the glass of red wine.

  “What is it this time?” he asked.

  “She didn’t say,” replied the boy. “She never does.”

  Gabriel gave the boy a few coins to buy a sweet and drank the wine as night fell hard upon the square. Finally, he picked up the slip of paper and read the single line that had been written there:

  I can help you find what you’re looking for.

  Gabriel smiled, slipped the note into his pocket, and sat there finishing the last of his wine. Then he rose and headed across the square.

  She was standing in the doorway to receive him, a shawl around her frail shoulders. Her eyes were bottomless pools of black; her face was as white as baker’s flour. She regarded him warily before finally offering her hand. It was warm and weightless. Holding it was like cradling a songbird.

  “Welcome back to Corsica,” she said.

  “How did you know I was here?”

  “I know everything.”

  “Then tell me how I arrived on the island.”

  “Don’t insult me.”

  Gabriel’s skepticism was pretense. He had long ago relinquished any doubts about the old woman’s ability to glimpse both the past and future. She held his hand tightly and closed her eyes.

  “You were living in the city of water with your wife and working in a church where a great painter is buried. You were happy, truly happy, for the first time in your life. Then a one-eyed creature from Rome appeared and—”

  “All right,” said Gabriel. “You’ve proven your point.”

  She released Gabriel’s hand and gestured toward the small wooden table in her parlor. On it was a shallow plate of water and a vessel of olive oil. They were the tools of her trade. The old woman was a signadora. The Corsicans believed she had the power to heal those infected by the occhju, the evil eye. Gabriel had once suspected she was nothing more than a conjurer, but that was no longer the case.

  “Sit,” she said.

  “No,” replied Gabriel.

  “Why not?”

  “Because we don’t believe in such things.”

  “Israelites?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Israelites.”

  “But you did it before.”

  “You told me things about my past, things you couldn’t possibly have known.”

  “So you were curious?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “And you’re not curious now?”

  The woman sat in her usual place at the table and lit a candle. After a moment’s hesitation, Gabriel sat down opposite. He pushed the vessel of oil toward the center of the table and folded his hands obstinately. The old woman closed her eyes.

  “The one-eyed creature has asked you to find something on his behalf, yes?”

  “Yes,” answered Gabriel.

  “It’s a painting, is it not? The work of a madman, a murderer. It was taken from a small church many years ago, on an island across the water.”

  “Did Don Orsati tell you that?”

  The old woman opened her eyes. “I’ve never spoken to the don about this matter.”

  “Go on.”

  “The painting was stolen by men such as the don, only far worse. They treated it very badly. Much of it has been destroyed.”

  “But the painting survives?”

  “Yes,” she said, nodding slowly. “It survives.”

  “Where is it now?”

  “It’s close.”

  “Close to what?”

  “It is not in my power to tell you that. But if you will perform the test of the oil and the water,” she added with a glance at the center of the table, “perhaps I can be of help.”

  Gabriel remained motionless.

  “What are you afraid of?” the old woman asked.

  “You,” answered Gabriel truthfully.

  “You have the strength of God. Why should you fear someone as frail and old as me?”

  “Because you have powers, too.”

  “Powers of sight,” she said. “But not earthly powers.”

  “The ability to see the future is a great asset.”

  “Especially for someone in your line of work.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gabriel, smiling.

  “So why won’t you perform the test of the oil and the water?”

  Gabriel was silent.

  “You have lost many things,” the old woman said kindly. “A wife, a son, your mother. But your days of grief are behind you.”

  “Will my enemies ever try to kill my wife?”

  “No harm will come to her or your children.”

  The old woman nodded toward the vessel of olive oil. This time, Gabriel dipped his forefinger into it and allowed three drops to fall onto the water. By the laws of physics, the oil should have gathered into a single gobbet. Instead, it shattered into a thousand droplets and soon there was no trace of it.

  “You are infected with the occhju,” the old woman pronounced gravely. “You would be wise to let me draw it from your system.”

  “I’ll take two aspirin instead.”

  The old woman peered into the plate of water and oil. “The painting for which you are searching depicts the Christ Child, does it not?”

  “Yes.”

  “How curious that a man such as yourself would search for our Lord and savior.” Again she lowered her gaze toward the plate of water and oil. “The painting has been moved from the island across the water. It looks different than it did before.”

  “How so?”

  “It has been repaired. The man who did the work is now dead. But you already know this.”

  “Someday you’re going to have to show me how you do that.”

  “It’s not something that can be taught. It is a gift from God.”

  “Where is the painting now?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “Who has it?”

  “It is beyond my powers to give you his name. The woman can help you find it.”

  “What woman?”

  “I cannot say. Do not let any harm come to her, or you will lose everything.”

  The old woman’s head fell toward her shoulder; the prophecy had exhausted her. Gabriel slipped several bills beneath the plate of water and oil.

  “I have one more thing to tell you before you go,” the old woman said as Gabriel rose

  “What is it?”

  “Your wife has left the city of water.”

  “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 Veni
ce 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.

  16

  CORSICA

  IT 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?”