Prince of fire ga-5, Page 3

  “Ahhh,” breathed Crabbe. “The mysterious Signore Delvecchio. Know you by reputation, of course, but we’ve never actually met.” Crabbe shot Isherwood a conspiratorial glance. “Something up your sleeve, Julian? Something you’re not telling me?”

  “He cleans for me, Jeremy. It pays to have him look before I leap.”

  “This way,” Crabbe said skeptically, and led them into a small, windowless chamber just off the main saleroom floor. The exigencies of the operation had required Isherwood to express a modicum of interest in other works-otherwise Crabbe might be tempted to let it slip to one of the others that Isherwood had his eye on a particular piece. Most of the pieces were mediocre-a lackluster Madonna and child by Andrea del Sarto, a still life by Carlo Magini, a Forge of Vulcan by Paolo Pagani-but in the far corner, propped against the wall, was a large canvas without a frame. Isherwood noticed that Gabriel’s well-trained eye was immediately drawn to it. He also noticed that Gabriel, the consummate professional, immediately looked the other way.

  He started with the others first and spent precisely two minutes on each canvas. His face was a mask, betraying neither enthusiasm nor displeasure. Crabbe gave up trying to read his intentions and passed the time chewing his pipe stem instead.

  Finally he turned his attention to Lot No. 43, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, Erasmus Quellinus, 86 inches by 128 inches, oil on canvas, abraded and extremely dirty. So dirty, in fact, that the cats at the edge of the image seemed entirely concealed by shadow. He crouched and tilted his head in order to view the canvas with raked lighting. Then he licked three fingers and scrubbed at the figure of Daniel, which caused Crabbe to cluck and roll his bloodshot eyes. Ignoring him, Gabriel placed his face a few inches from the canvas and examined the manner in which Daniel’s hands were folded and the way one leg was crossed over the other.

  “Where did this come from?”

  Crabbe removed his pipe and looked into the bowl. “A drafty Georgian pile in the Cotswolds.”

  “When was it last cleaned?”

  “We’re not quite sure, but by the looks of it, Disraeli was prime minister.”

  Gabriel looked up at Isherwood, who in turn looked at Crabbe. “Give us a moment, Jeremy.”

  Crabbe slipped from the room. Gabriel opened his bag and removed the ultraviolet lamp. Isherwood doused the lights, casting the room into pitch darkness. Gabriel switched on the lamp and shone the bluish beam toward the painting.

  “Well?” asked Isherwood.

  “The last restoration was so long ago it doesn’t show up in ultraviolet.”

  Gabriel removed the infrascope from his bag. It bore an uncanny resemblance to a pistol, and Isherwood felt a sudden chill as Gabriel wrapped his hand around the grip and switched on the luminescent green light. An archipelago of dark blotches appeared on the canvas, the retouching of the last restoration. The painting, though extremely dirty, had suffered only moderate losses.

  He switched off the infrascope, then slipped on his magnifying visor and studied the figure of Daniel in the searing white glow of the halogen flashlight.

  “What do you think?” asked Isherwood, squinting.

  “Magnificent,” Gabriel replied distantly. “But Erasmus Quellinus didn’t paint it.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure enough to bet two hundred thousand pounds of your money.”

  “How reassuring.”

  Gabriel reached out and traced his forefinger along the muscular, graceful figure. “He was here, Julian,” he said, “I can feel him.”

  They walked to St. James’s for a celebratory lunch at Green’s, a gathering place for dealers and collectors in Duke Street, a few paces from Isherwood’s gallery. A bottle of chilled white burgundy awaited them in their corner booth. Isherwood filled two glasses and pushed one across the tablecloth toward Gabriel.

  “Mazel tov, Julian.”

  “Are you sure about that?”

  “I won’t be able to make a positive authentication until I get a look beneath the surface with infrared reflectography. But the composition is clearly based on Rubens, and I have no doubt the brushwork is his.”

  “I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time restoring it.”

  “Who said I was going to restore it?”

  “You did.”

  “I said I’d authenticate it, but I said nothing about restoring it. That painting needs at least six months of work. I’m afraid I’m in the middle of something.”

  “There’s one person I trust with that painting,” said Isherwood, “and that’s you.”

  Gabriel accepted the professional compliment with a slight cock of his head, then resumed his apathetic examination of the menu. Isherwood had meant what he said. Gabriel Allon, had he been brought into this world under a different star, might very well have been one of his generation’s finest artists. Isherwood thought of the first time they had met-a brilliant September afternoon in 1978, a bench overlooking the Serpentine in Hyde Park. Gabriel had been little more than a boy then, though his temples, Isherwood remembered, were already shot with gray. The stain of a boy who’d done a man’s job, Shamron had said.

  “He left the Bezalel Academy of Art in seventy-two. In seventy-five, he went to Venice to study restoration under the great Umberto Conti.”

  “Umberto’s the best there is.”

  “So I’m told. It seems our Gabriel made quite an impression on Signore Conti. He says Gabriel’s hands are the most talented he’s ever seen. I would have to concur.”

  Isherwood had made the mistake of asking what exactly Gabriel had been doing between 1972 and 1975. Gabriel had turned to watch a pair of lovers walking hand in hand along the edge of the lake. Shamron had absently picked a splinter from the bench.

  “Think of him as a stolen painting that has been quietly returned to its rightful owner. The owner doesn’t ask questions about where the painting has been. He’s just happy to have it hanging on his wall again.”

  Then Shamron had requested his first “favor.”

  “There’s a certain Palestinian gentleman who’s taken up residence in Oslo. I fear this gentleman’s intentions are less than honorable. I’d like Gabriel to keep an eye on him, and I’d like you to find him some respectable work. A simple restoration, perhaps-something that might take two weeks or so. Can you do that for me, Julian?”

  Isherwood was brought back to the present by the appearance of the waiter. He ordered bisque and a boiled lobster, Gabriel green salad and plain grilled sole with rice. He’d been living in Europe for the better part of the last thirty years, but he still had the simple tastes of a Sabra farm boy from the Jezreel Valley. Food and wine, fine clothing and fast cars-these things were lost on him.

  “I’m surprised you were able to make it today,” Isherwood said.

  “Why is that?”

  “Rome.”

  Gabriel kept his eyes on the menu. “That’s not my portfolio, Julian. Besides, I’m retired. You know that.”

  “Please,” said Isherwood in a confessional murmur. “So what are you working on these days?”

  “I’m finishing the San Giovanni Crisostomo altarpiece.”

  “Another Bellini? You’re going to make quite a name for yourself.”

  “I already have.”

  Gabriel’s last restoration, Bellini’s San Zaccaria altarpiece, had ignited a sensation in the art world and set the standard against which all future Bellini restorations would be judged.

  “Isn’t Tiepolo’s firm handling the Crisostomo project?”

  Gabriel nodded. “I’m working exclusively for Francesco now, more or less.”

  “He can’t afford you.”

  “I like working in Venice, Julian. He pays me enough to make ends meet. Don’t worry, I’m not exactly living the way I did when I was doing my apprenticeship with Umberto.”

  “From what I hear, you’ve been a busy boy lately. According to the rumor mill, they nearly took the San Zaccaria altarpiece away from you because you left Venice on a
personal matter.”

  “You shouldn’t listen to rumors, Julian.”

  “Oh, really. I also hear that you’re shacked up in a palazzo in Cannaregio with a lovely young woman named Chiara.”

  The sharp look, delivered over the rim of a wineglass, confirmed for Isherwood that the rumors of Gabriel’s romantic entanglement were true.

  “Does the child have a last name?”

  “Her family name is Zolli, and she’s not a child.”

  “Is it true her father is the chief rabbi of Venice?”

  “He’s the only rabbi in Venice. It’s not exactly a thriving community. The war ended that.”

  “Does she know about your other line of work?”

  “She’s Office, Julian.”

  “Just promise me you’re not going to break this girl’s heart like all the others,” Isherwood said. “My God, the women you’ve let slip through your fingers. I still have the most marvelous fantasies about that creature Jacqueline Delacroix.”

  Gabriel leaned forward across the table, his face suddenly quite serious. “I’m going to marry her, Julian.”

  “And Leah?” Isherwood asked gently. “What are you planning to do about Leah?”

  “I have to tell her. I’m going to see her tomorrow morning.”

  “Will she understand?”

  “To be honest, I’m not sure, but I owe it to her.”

  “God forgive me for saying this, but you owe it to yourself. It’s time you got on with your life. I don’t need to remind you that you’re not a boy of twenty-five anymore.”

  “You’re not the one who has to look her in the eye and tell her that you’re in love with another woman.”

  “Forgive my impertinence. It’s the burgundy talking-and the Rubens. Want some company? I’ll drive you down.”

  “No,” said Gabriel. “I need to go alone.”

  The first course arrived. Isherwood tucked into his bisque. Gabriel speared a piece of lettuce.

  “What kind of fee did you have in mind for the Rubens cleaning?”

  “Off the top of my head? Somewhere in the neighborhood of a hundred thousand pounds.”

  “Too bad,” Gabriel said. “For two hundred, I’d consider taking it on.”

  “All right, two hundred, you bastard.”

  “I’ll call you next week and let you know.”

  “What’s stopping you from making a commitment now? The Bellini?”

  No, thought Gabriel. It wasn’t the Bellini. It was Rome.

  The Stratford Clinic, one of the most prestigious and private psychiatric hospitals in Europe, was located an hour’s drive from the center of London on a rambling old Victorian estate in the hills of Surrey. The patient population included a distant member of the British royal family and the second cousin of the current prime minister, and so the staff were accustomed to unusual demands by visitors. Gabriel passed through the front security gate after identifying himself as “Mr. Browne.”

  He parked his rented Opel in the visitors’ carpark in the forecourt of the old redbrick manor house. Leonard Avery, Leah’s physician, greeted him in the entrance hall, a windblown figure dressed in a Barbour coat and Wellington boots. “Once a week I lead a select group of patients on a nature walk in the surrounding countryside,” he said, explaining his appearance. “It’s extremely therapeutic.” He shook Gabriel’s hand without removing his glove and inquired about the drive from London as if he did not truly wish to know the answer. “She’s waiting for you in the solarium. She still likes the solarium the best.”

  They set out down a corridor with a pale linoleum floor, Avery as though he were still pounding along a Surrey footpath. He was the only one at the hospital who knew the truth about the patient named Lee Martinson-or at least part of the truth. He knew that her true family name was Allon and that her terrible burns and near-catatonic state were not the result of a motor accident-the explanation that appeared in Leah’s hospital records-but of a car bombing in Vienna. He also knew that the bombing had claimed the life of her young son. He believed Gabriel was an Israeli diplomat and did not like him.

  As they walked, he provided Gabriel with a terse update on Leah’s condition. There had been no change to speak of-Avery did not seem overly concerned by this. He was never one for false optimism and had always maintained low expectations about Leah’s prognosis. He had been proven correct. In the thirteen years since the bombing, she had never once uttered a word to Gabriel.

  At the end of the corridor was a set of double doors, with round porthole-like windows clouded by moisture. Avery opened one and led Gabriel into the solarium. Gabriel, greeted by the oppressive humidity, immediately removed his coat. A gardener was watering the potted orange trees and chatting with a nurse, an attractive dark-haired woman whom Gabriel had never before seen.

  “You can go now, Amira,” Dr. Avery said.

  The nurse went out, followed by the gardener.

  “Who’s that?” Gabriel asked.

  “She’s a graduate of the King’s College school of nursing and a specialist in the care of the acutely mentally ill. Very accomplished at what she does. Your wife is quite fond of her.”

  Avery gave Gabriel an avuncular pat on the shoulder, then saw himself out as well. Gabriel turned around. Leah was seated in a straight-backed wrought-iron chair, her eyes lifted toward the dripping windows of the solarium. She wore white trousers made from flimsy institutional cotton and a high-necked sweater that helped conceal her frail body. Her hands, scarred and twisted, held a sprig of blossom. Her hair, once long and black as a raven’s wing, was cropped short and nearly all gray. Gabriel leaned down and kissed her cheek. His lips fell upon cool, firm scar tissue. Leah seemed not to sense his touch.

  He sat down and took hold of what remained of Leah’s left hand. He felt no life within. Her head swiveled slowly round until her eyes found his. He searched for some sign of recognition, but saw nothing. Her memory had been stolen. In Leah’s mind only the bombing remained. It played ceaselessly, like a loop of videotape. All else had been erased or pushed to some inaccessible corner of her brain. To Leah, Gabriel was no more important than the nurse who had brought her here or the gardener who cared for the plants. Leah had been punished for his sins. Leah was the price a decent man had paid for climbing into the sewer with murderers and terrorists. For Gabriel, a man blessed with the ability to heal beautiful things, Leah’s situation was doubly painful. He longed to strip away the scars and restore her glory. But Leah was beyond repair. Too little remained of the original.

  He spoke to her. He reminded her that he was living in Venice these days, working for a firm that restored churches. He did not tell her that, occasionally, he still ran the odd errand for Ari Shamron, or that two months previously he had engineered the capture of an Austrian war criminal named Erich Radek and returned him to Israel to face justice. When finally he screwed up the nerve to tell her that he was in love with another woman and wished to dissolve their marriage so he could marry her, he could not go through with it. Talking to Leah was like talking to a gravestone. There seemed no point.

  When a half hour had elapsed, he left Leah’s side and poked his head into the corridor. The nurse was waiting there, leaning against the wall with her arms folded across the front of her tunic.

  “Are you finished?” she asked.

  Gabriel nodded. The woman brushed past and went wordlessly inside.

  It was late afternoon when the flight from Heathrow Airport touched down in Venice. Gabriel, riding into town in a water taxi, stood in the cockpit with the driver, his back to the cabin door, watching the channel markers of the lagoon rising out of the mist like columns of defeated soldiers returning home from the front. Soon the edges of Cannaregio appeared. Gabriel felt a fleeting sense of tranquillity. Venice, crumbling, sagging, sodden Venice, always had that effect on him. She’s an entire city in need of restoration, Umberto Conti had said to him. Use her. Heal Venice, and she’ll heal you.

  The taxi dropped him a
t the Palazzo Lezze. Gabriel walked westward across Cannaregio along the banks of a broad canal called the Rio della Misericordia. He came to an iron bridge, the only one in all of Venice. In the Middle Ages there had been a gate in the center of the bridge, and at night a Christian watchman had stood guard so that those imprisoned on the other side could not escape. Gabriel crossed the bridge and entered an underground sottoportego. At the other end of the passageway a broad square opened before him: the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo, the center of the ancient ghetto of Venice. At its height it had been the cramped home to more than five thousand Jews. Now only twenty of the city’s four hundred Jews lived in the old ghetto, and most of those were elderly who resided in the Casa Israelitica di Riposo.

  Gabriel made for the modern glass doorway at the opposite side of the square and went inside. To his right was the entrance to a small bookstore that specialized in books dealing with Jewish history and the Jews of Venice. It was warm and brightly lit, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the canal that encircled the ghetto. Behind the counter, seated atop a wooden stool in a cone of halogen light, was a girl with short blond hair. She smiled at him as he entered and greeted him by his work name.

  “She left about an hour ago.”

  “Really? Where is she?”

  The girl shrugged elaborately. “Didn’t say.”

  Gabriel looked at his wristwatch. Four-fifteen. He decided to put in a few hours on the Bellini before dinner.

  “If you see her, tell her I’m at the church.”

  “No problem. Ciao, Mario.”

  He walked to the Rialto Bridge. One street over from the canal he turned to the left and headed for a small terra-cotta church. He paused. Standing at the entrance of the church, in the shelter of the lunette, was a man Gabriel recognized, an Office security agent named Rami. His presence in Venice could mean but one thing. He caught Gabriel’s eye and glanced toward the doorway. Gabriel slipped past and went inside.