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“No man in your life?” asked Gabriel.
“Only Phillip, I’m afraid.”
“Are you in love with him?”
“God, no.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because it is my intention to leave you alone in his presence for several hours in New York next week. And I want to know whether you intend to live up to our agreement or run away with him.”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Allon. I’ll get you everything you need to take Phillip down.”
He asked where the meeting would take place.
“That’s up to Phillip,” said Magdalena. “Sometimes we meet at Masterpiece’s office on East Fifty-Third Street. But usually we get together at the town house on East Seventy-Fourth. It doubles as Masterpiece’s gallery. That’s where Phillip receives potential investors and buyers.”
“How does he handle the sales?”
“He prefers to deal directly with clients to avoid scrutiny and commissions. But if the client insists on an intermediary, he routes the sales through another dealer or one of the auction houses.”
“How many other people work for the firm?”
“Three young female art experts and Kenny Vaughan. Kenny used to work with Phillip at Lehman Brothers. He’s in it up to his eyeballs.”
“What about the women?”
“They think the sun rises and sets on Phillip and that I’m a broker who buys and sells paintings on his behalf in Europe.”
“General Ferrari is convinced that you’re the forger.”
“Me?” She laughed. “A Picasso, maybe. But not an Old Master. I don’t have talent like yours.”
Gabriel read late into the night and was relieved to find Magdalena still in her bed when he rose the following morning. After loading theautomaticowith Illy and San Benedetto, he unleased Proteus on Phillip’s personal smartphone, and within minutes the device was under his control. A scalable map depicted its current location and elevation: the eastern shore of an egg-shaped peninsula, twelve feet above sea level.
Gabriel downloaded Phillip’s data onto his laptop and spent the remainder of the morning wandering the digital debris of one of the greatest scam artists in history. It was half past twelve when Magdalena finally appeared. She wandered into the kitchen and emerged a moment later with a bowl of milky coffee. She drank it in silence, her eyes unblinking.
“Not a morning person?” asked Gabriel.
“Opposite of a morning person. A night stalker.”
“Is the night stalker ready to do some work?”
“If you insist,” she said, and carried her coffee to the pool.
Gabriel followed her outside with the laptop. “What were the first six paintings you sold through your father’s gallery?”
“It was a thousand years ago,” she groaned.
“The exact amount of time you’ll spend in an Italian prison if you don’t start talking.”
She recited the artist, tableau, and dimensions of each work, along with the name of the buyer and the price it had fetched. Next she listed the particulars of more than one hundred paintings that had passed through her brokerage in Madrid during the first year of the scheme. Most of the paintings she had simply sold back to Masterpiece Art Ventures. Phillip had then inflated their value with additional phantom sales before unloading the paintings onto unsuspecting buyers and cashing in on his investment. He also used the works as collateral to secure massive art-backed loans, money he used to acquire legitimate art and pay handsome returns to his investors.
“The loans,” said Magdalena, “are the key to everything. Without leverage, Phillip and Kenny Vaughan wouldn’t be able to make it work.”
“So in addition to selling forged paintings, Phillip is committing bank fraud?”
