The Rembrandt Affair ga-10 Page 6

  "There's just one thing I don't understand," Chiara said. "Why didn't the thief take any of the other paintings, like the Monet or the Cezanne?"

  "Because he was a professional. He came there for the Rembrandt. And he left with it."

  "So what do we do now?"

  "Sometimes the best way to find a painting is to discover where it's been."

  "Where do we start?"

  "At the beginning," said Gabriel. "In Amsterdam."

  12

  MARSEILLES

  If Maurice Durand were inclined toward introspection, which he was not, he might have concluded that the course of his life was determined the day he first heard the story of Vincenzo Peruggia.

  A carpenter from northern Italy, Peruggia entered the Louvre on the afternoon of Sunday, August 20, 1911, and concealed himself in a storage closet. He emerged early the following morning dressed in a workman's white smock and strode into the Salon Carre. He knew the room well; several months earlier, he had helped to construct a special protective case over its most famous attraction, the Mona Lisa. Because it was a Monday, the day the Louvre was closed to the public, he had the salon to himself, and it took only a few seconds to lift Leonardo's small panel from the wall and carry it to a nearby stairwell. A few moments later, with the painting concealed beneath his smock, Peruggia walked past an unmanned guard post and struck out across the Louvre's vast center courtyard. And with that the world's most famous work of art vanished into the Paris morning.

  Even more remarkable, twenty-four hours would elapse before anyone noticed the picture was missing. When the alert finally went out, the French police launched a massive if somewhat farcical search. Among their first suspects was an avant-garde painter named Pablo Picasso, who was arrested at his Montmartre apartment despite the fact he had been hundreds of miles from Paris at the time of the actual theft.

  Eventually, the gendarmes managed to track down Peruggia but quickly cleared him of any suspicion. Had they bothered to look inside the large trunk in his bedroom, the search for the Mona Lisa would have ended. Instead, the painting remained hidden there for two years, until Peruggia foolishly tried to sell it to a well-known dealer in Florence. Peruggia was arrested but spent just seven months in jail. Years later, he was actually permitted to return to France. Oddly enough, the man who carried out the greatest art crime in history then opened a paint store in the Haute-Savoie and lived there quietly until his death.

  Maurice Durand learned several important lessons from the strange case of Peruggia. He learned that stealing great paintings was not as difficult as one might think, that the authorities were largely indifferent to art crime, and that the penalties generally were light. But the story of Peruggia also whet Durand's appetite. Antique scientific instruments were his birthright—the shop had belonged to his father, and his grandfather before that—but art had always been his great passion. And while it was true there were worse places to spend one's day than the first arrondissement of Paris, the shop was not a particularly exciting way to earn a living. There were times when Durand felt a bit like the trinkets lining his little display window—polished and reasonably attractive but ultimately good for little more than gathering dust.

  It was this combination of factors, twenty-five years earlier, that had compelled Durand to steal his first painting from the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg—a small still life by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin that hung in a corner rarely visited by guards or patrons. Using an old-fashioned razor, Durand sliced the painting from its frame and slipped it into his attache case. Later, during the train ride back to Paris, he attempted to recall his emotions at the moment of the crime and realized he had felt nothing other than contentment. It was then that Maurice Durand knew he possessed the qualities of a perfect thief.

  Like Peruggia before him, Durand kept his trophy in his Paris apartment, not for two years but for two days. Unlike the Italian, Durand already had a buyer waiting, a disreputable collector who happened to be in the market for a Chardin and wasn't worried about messy details like provenance. Durand was well paid, the client was happy, and a career was born.

  It was a career characterized by discipline. Durand never stole paintings to acquire ransom or reward money, only to provide inventory. At first he left the masterpieces to the dreamers and fools, focusing instead on midlevel paintings by quality artists or works that might reasonably be confused for pictures with no problem of provenance. And while Durand occasionally stole from small museums and galleries, he did most of his hunting in private villas and chateaux, which were poorly protected and filled to the roof with valuables.

  From his base of operations in Paris he built a far-flung network of contacts, selling to dealers as far away as Hong Kong, New York, Dubai, and Tokyo. Gradually, he set his sights on bigger game—the museum-quality masterpieces valued at tens of millions, or in some cases hundreds of millions, of dollars. But he always operated by a simple rule. No painting was ever stolen unless a buyer was waiting, and he only did business with people he knew. Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear was now hanging in the palace of a Saudi sheikh who had a penchant for violence involving knives. The Caravaggio had found its way to a factory owner in Shanghai while the Picasso was in the hands of a Mexican billionaire with uncomfortably close ties to the country's drug cartels. All three paintings had one thing in common. They would never be seen again by the public.

  Needless to say, it had been many years since Maurice Durand had personally stolen a painting. It was a young man's profession, and he had retired after a skylight assault on a small gallery in Austria resulted in a back injury that left him in constant pain. Ever since then he had been forced to utilize the services of hired professionals. The arrangement was less than ideal for all the obvious reasons, but Durand treated his fieldmen fairly and paid them exceedingly well. As a result, he had never had a single unpleasant complication. Until now.

  It was the south that produced the finest wines in France and, in Durand's estimation, its best thieves as well. Nowhere was that more true than the ancient port of Marseilles. Stepping from the Gare de Marseille Saint-Charles, Durand was pleased to find the temperature several degrees warmer than it had been in Paris. He walked quickly through the brilliant sunshine along the Boulevard d'Athenes, then turned to the right and headed down to the Old Port. It was approaching midday. The fishing boats had returned from their morning runs and atop the steel tables lining the port's eastern flank were arrayed all manner of hideous-looking sea creatures, soon to be turned into bouillabaisse by the city's chefs. Normally, Durand would have stopped to survey the contents of each with an appreciation only a Frenchman could manage, but today he headed straight for the table of a gray-haired man dressed in a tattered wool sweater and a rubber apron. By all appearances, he was a fisherman who scrounged a respectable living from a sea now empty of fish. But Pascal Rameau was anything but respectable. And he didn't seem surprised to see Maurice Durand.

  "How was the catch, Pascal?"

  "Merde," Rameau muttered. "It seems like we get a little less every day. Soon..." He pulled his lips downward into a Gallic expression of disgust. "There'll be nothing left but garbage."

  "It's the Italians' fault," said Durand.

  "Everything is the Italians' fault," Rameau said. "How's your back?"

  Durand frowned. "As ever, Pascal."

  Rameau made an empathetic face. "Mine, too. I'm not sure how much longer I can work the boat."

  "You're the richest man in Marseilles. Why do you still go to sea every morning?"

  "I'm one of the richest. And I go out for the same reason you go to your shop." Rameau smiled and looked at Durand's attache case. "You brought the money?"

  Durand nodded.

  "It's not wise to carry large amounts of cash in Marseilles. Haven't you heard, Maurice? This town is full of thieves."

  "Very good thieves," Durand agreed. "At least, they used to be."

  "A business like ours can be unpredictable."r />
  "Weren't you the one who always told me that blood is bad for business, Pascal?"

  "That's true. But sometimes it's unavoidable."

  "Where is he?"

  Rameau tilted his head to the right. Durand walked along the Quai de Rive Neuve toward the mouth of the harbor. About halfway down the marina was a motor yacht called Mistral. Seated on the aft deck, feet propped on the gunwale, eyes concealed by dark glasses, was a man with shoulder-length dark hair pulled into a stubby ponytail. His name was Rene Monjean, among the most gifted of Durand's thieves and usually the most dependable.

  "What happened in England, Rene?"

  "There were complications."

  "What kind of complications?"

  Monjean removed the sunglasses and stared at Durand with a pair of bloodred eyes.

  "Where's my painting?"

  "Where's my money?"

  Durand held up the attache case. Monjean put on the glasses and got to his feet.

  13

  MARSEILLES

  "You really should see a doctor, Rene. Acetone can cause permanent damage to the cornea."

  "And when the doctor asks how the acetone got in my eyes?"

  "Your doctor wouldn't dare ask."

  Monjean opened the door of the small fridge in the galley and took out two bottles of Kronenbourg.

  "It's a bit early for me, Rene."

  Monjean put one bottle back and shrugged—Northerners. Durand sat down at the small table.

  "Was there really no other way to deal with the situation?"

  "I suppose I could have let him escape so he could telephone the police. But that didn't seem like such a good idea." He paused, then added, "For either one of us."

  "Couldn't you have just disabled him a little?"

  "I'm surprised I actually managed to hit him. I really couldn't see much at all when I pulled the trigger." Monjean pried the top from the bottle of beer. "You've never—"

  "Shot someone?" Durand shook his head. "I've never even carried a gun."

  "The world has changed, Maurice." Monjean looked at the attache case. "You have something in there for me?"

  Durand popped open the locks and removed several bundles of hundred-euro notes.

  "Your turn, Rene."

  Monjean opened an overhead locker and removed a cardboard tube, roughly five inches in diameter and three feet in length. He pried off the aluminum top and shook the tube several times until three inches of canvas was protruding from the end.

  "Be careful, Rene. You'll damage it."

  "I'm afraid it's a bit late to worry about that."

  Monjean unfurled the painting across the tabletop. Durand stared in horror. Just above the right eye of the woman was a perforation that looked as if it could have been made by a pencil. Her silk wrap was stained with something dark, as were her breasts.

  "Tell me that isn't blood."

  "I could," Monjean said, "but it wouldn't be the truth."

  "Who did it belong to?"

  "Who do you think?" Monjean took a long pull at his beer and explained.

  "Too bad you didn't take more careful aim," Durand said. "You might have actually hit her right between the eyes."

  He probed at the hole, then licked the tip of his finger and scrubbed at the surface of the painting until he smeared a small patch of the blood.

  "Looks like it will come right off," Monjean said.

  "It should."

  "What about the bullet hole?"

  "I know a man in Paris who might be able to repair it."

  "What kind of man?"

  "The kind who produces forgeries."

  "You need a restorer, Maurice. A very good one."

  "At the core of every good restorer lies a forger."

  Monjean didn't appear convinced. "May I give you a piece of advice, Maurice?"

  "You just shot a Rembrandt worth forty-five million dollars. But please, Rene, feel free."

  "This painting is trouble. Burn it and forget about it. Besides, we can always steal another one."

  "I'm tempted."

  "But?"

  "I have a client waiting. And my clients expect me to deliver. Besides, Rene, I didn't get into this business to destroy paintings. Especially not one as beautiful as this."

  14

  AMSTERDAM

  In the cutthroat world of the art trade, there was one principle that was supposed to be sacrosanct. Provenance, the written record of a painting's chain of ownership, was everything. Theoretically, dealers did not sell paintings without a proper provenance, collectors did not buy them, and no decent restorer would ever lay hands on a picture without knowing where it had been and under what conditions it had hung. But after many years of conducting provenance research, Gabriel had learned never to be shocked by the secret lives led by some of the world's most sought-after works of art. He knew that paintings, like people, sometimes lied about their pasts. And he knew that, often, those lies revealed more than the so-called truths contained in their printed pedigrees. All of which explained his interest in De Vries Fine Arts, purveyors of quality Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings since 1882.

  Occupying a stately if somewhat sullen building overlooking Amsterdam's Herengracht canal, the gallery had always presented itself as the very picture of stability and good manners, though a brief glimpse into the darkest chambers of its past would tell a markedly different story. Regrettably, none was darker than its conduct during the Second World War. Within weeks of Holland's capitulation, Amsterdam was inundated by a wave of Germans looking for Dutch paintings. Prices soared so quickly that ordinary citizens were soon scouring their closets for anything that might be regarded as an Old Master. The De Vries gallery welcomed the Germans with open arms. Its best customer was none other than Hermann Goring, who purchased more than a dozen paintings from the gallery between 1940 and 1942. The staff found Goring to be a shrewd negotiator and secretly enjoyed his roguish charm. For his part, Goring would tell colleagues in Berlin that no shopping spree in Amsterdam was complete without a stop at the exquisite gallery along the Herengracht.

  The gallery had also played a prominent role in the history of Rembrandt's Portrait of a Young Woman. Of the three known times that the painting changed hands in the twentieth century, two of the sales had been conducted under the auspices of De Vries Fine Arts. The first sale had occurred in 1919, the second in 1936. Both had been private, meaning that the identity of buyer and seller were known only to the gallery itself. Under the rules of the art trade, such transactions were to remain confidential for all eternity. But in some circumstances—with the passage of enough time or for the right amount of money—a dealer could be cajoled into opening his books.

  Gabriel entrusted that delicate task to Julian Isherwood, who had always enjoyed a cordial professional relationship with the De Vries gallery despite its questionable past. It took several hours of heated telephone negotiations, but Isherwood finally convinced Geert de Vries, great-grandson of the founder, to surrender the records. Isherwood would never tell Gabriel the exact price he had paid for the documents, only that it had been steep. "Remember one thing about art dealers," he said. "They are the lowest of God's creatures. And economic times like these bring out the worst in them."

  Gabriel and Chiara monitored the final stages of the negotiations from a charming suite at the Ambassade Hotel. After receiving word that the deal had been finalized, they left the hotel a few minutes apart and made the short walk along the Herengracht to the gallery, Chiara on one side of the canal, Gabriel on the other. Geert de Vries had left photocopies of the records at the front desk in a buff envelope marked ROSSI. Gabriel slipped it into his bag and bade the receptionist a pleasant afternoon in Italian-accented English. Stepping outside, he saw Chiara leaning against a lamppost on the opposite bank of the canal. Her scarf was knotted in a way that meant she had not noticed surveillance of any sort. She followed him to a cafe in the Bloemenmarkt and drank hot chocolate while he worked his way laboriously through the do
cuments.

  "There's a reason why the Dutch speak so many languages. Their own is impenetrable."

  "Can you make it out?"

  "Most of it. The person who bought the painting in 1919 was a banker named Andries van Gelder. He must have been hit hard by the Great Depression. When he sold it in 1936, he did so at a considerable loss."

  "And the next owner?"

  "A man named Jacob Herzfeld."

  "Are Dutch boys ever named Jacob?"

  "They're usually called Jacobus."

  "So he was Jewish?"

  "Probably."

  "When was the next sale?"

  "Nineteen sixty-four at the Hoffmann Gallery of Lucerne."

  "Switzerland? Why would Jacob Herzfeld sell his painting there?"

  "I'm betting it wasn't him."

  "Why?"

  "Because unless Jacob Herzfeld was extremely lucky, he probably wasn't alive in 1964. Which means it's quite possible we've just discovered a very large hole in the painting's provenance."

  "So what are we going to do now?"

  Gabriel shoved the documents back into the envelope.

  "Find out what happened to him."

  15

  AMSTERDAM

  Portrait of a Young Woman, oil on canvas, 104 by 86 centimeters, was painted in a large house just west of Amsterdam's old center. Rembrandt purchased the property in 1639 for the price of thirteen thousand guilders, an enormous sum even for a painter of his stature and one that would eventually lead to his financial undoing. At the time, the street was known as Sint Antonisbreestraat. Later, due to a change in the neighborhood's demographics, it would be renamed Jodenbreestraat, or Jewish Broad Street. Why Rembrandt chose to live in such a place has long been a matter of debate. Was it because he harbored a secret affinity for Judaism? Or did he choose to reside in the district because it was home to many other painters and collectors? Whatever the case, one thing is beyond dispute. The greatest painter of Holland's Golden Age lived and worked among Amsterdam's Jews.