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55
Pierre Hotel
They went through it once from the beginning. And then they went through it a second time, just to make certain of the relevant facts and dates. Magdalena’s childhood in Seville. Her formal training as an artist in Barcelona. The years she spent dealing cocaine in New York. Her introduction to Phillip Somerset at Le Cirque. Her role in building and maintaining the most lucrative and sophisticated art-and-financial fraud scheme in history. There were no discrepancies between the version of the story she revealed under interrogation in Umbria and the one she recounted for Evelyn Buchanan ofVanity Fair. If anything, thought Gabriel, the Pierre Hotel edition was even more captivating. So, too, was the subject herself. She came across as cosmopolitan and sophisticated and, most important, credible. Never once did she lose her composure, even when the questions turned personal.
“Why would someone with your talent become a drug dealer?”
“At first, I did it because I needed the money. And then I discovered that I enjoyed it.”
“You were good at it?”
“Very.”
“Are there similarities between selling drugs and forgeries?”
“More than you realize. For some people, art is like a drug. Theyhaveto have it. Phillip and I simply catered to their addiction.”
There was a gaping hole in Magdalena’s account—namely, the precise set of circumstances by which she had ended up in Italian custody. Evelyn pressed Gabriel for details, but he refused to budge from his original statement. Magdalena had been arrested after purchasing a forged Gentileschi in Florence. The painting was now in an art storage warehouse on East Ninety-First Street. In the morning it would be moved to the gallery of Phillip Somerset’s town house on East Seventy-Fourth Street. And at 1:00 p.m. it would be the subject of a conversation that would provide Evelyn with all the ammunition she needed to expose Masterpiece Art Ventures as a fraud.
“Will Magdalena be wearing a wire?”
“Her phone will be acting as a transmitter. Phillip’s phone is also compromised.”
“I don’t suppose he gave his consent to being hacked.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
At nine o’clock they took a break for dinner. Sarah arranged for a round of martinis to be sent up from the bar while Magdalena ordered room service from Perrine, the hotel’s acclaimed restaurant. At Gabriel’s suggestion, Evelyn invited her husband to join them. He arrived as the waiters were rolling the table into the suite. Tom Buchanan was affable and erudite, the very opposite of the wellborn polo player who had lived grandly on the shoreline of East Egg and fretted about the decline of the white race.
Evelyn swore her husband to secrecy, then gave him a detailed briefing on the remarkable story that had landed in her lap earlier that afternoon. Tom Buchanan took out his anger on his Caesar salad.
“Leave it to Phillip Somerset to come up with something like this. Still, one has to admire his ingenuity. He spotted a weakness and cleverly took advantage of it.”
“What weakness is that?” asked Gabriel.
“The art market is totally unregulated. Prices are arbitrary, quality control is virtually nonexistent, and most paintings change hands under conditions of total secrecy. All of which makes it the perfect environment for fraud. Phillip took it to the extreme, of course.”
“How is it possible that no one noticed?”
“For the same reason no one noticed that mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations were about to take down the global economy.”
“Everyone is making too much money?”
Tom nodded. “And not just Phillip’s investors. His bankers, too. And they’re all going to suffer enormous losses when Evelyn’s story appears. Nevertheless, I approve of your methods. Waiting for the Feds to act isn’t an option. That said, I wish you could give my wife an incriminating document or two.”
“You mean the inner-office memo in which Phillip spells out his plan to create and maintain the largest art fraud in history?”
“Point taken, Mr. Allon. But what about the documents stored in that warehouse on East Ninety-First Street?”
“Phillip’s current inventory?”
“Exactly. If Magdalena can say with absolute certainty that he has forged paintings on his book, it would be devastating.”
“Is the former federal prosecutor suggesting that I clandestinely acquire a comprehensive list of paintings contained in that property?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But if you do, you should definitely give it to my wife.”
Gabriel smiled. “Any other advice, counselor?”
“If I were you, I’d think about putting a bit of pressure on Phillip’s finances.”
“By encouraging a handful of his important investors to take redemptions, you mean?”
“It sounds to me as though you already have a plan in place,” said Tom.
“There’s a man in London named Nicholas Lovegrove. Nicky’s one of the most sought-after art advisers in the world. Several of his clients are invested with Phillip.”
“We hedge fund types get very suspicious when investors pull their money. Therefore, it needs to be handled with discretion.”
“Don’t worry,” said Sarah. “We art dealer types are nothing if not discreet.”
