AllFreeNovel
Share Us
12
Bordeaux—Paris
Gabriel slept poorly, awakened early, and set out for Bordeaux before it was properly light. A kilometer north of the village of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont, his headlamps picked out the gray-white stain of a spent safety flare. The tire marks appeared a few seconds later, two black slashes across the opposing lane.
He eased onto the grassy verge and surveyed his surroundings. On the right side of the road, columns of vines marched down the slope of a steep hill. On the left, nearer the river, there were vineyards as well, but the land was tabletop flat. And largely treeless, observed Gabriel, with the exception of a coppice of white-barked poplar toward which the tire marks led.
He fished an LED torch from the glove box and waited for a cargo truck to pass before climbing out and crossing to the opposite side of the road. He didn’t venture much beyond the broken white line at the edge of the tarmac; it wasn’t necessary. From his vantage point, the damage was plain to see.
Two of the poplars had been snapped by the force of the collision, and the sodden earth was strewn with cubes of shattered safety glass. Gabriel reckoned that Valerie Bérrangar must have been killedinstantly by the force of the impact. Or perhaps she had remained conscious long enough to notice the gloved hand reaching through the broken window. Not to render assistance but to seize her phone. Gabriel dialed the number, hoping he might hear a death rattle from amid the trees, but once again the call went straight to voice mail.
Killing the connection, he turned and examined the parallel tire marks. They crossed the southbound lane at roughly a forty-five-degree angle. Yes, he thought, it was possible that Valerie Bérrangar had been distracted somehow and unwittingly swerved to the left, directly toward the only stand of trees in sight. But the more likely explanation was that her car had been forced off the road by the vehicle behind her.
A car approached from the north, slowed briefly, and continued on toward Sainte-Croix-du-Mont. Two minutes elapsed before another appeared, this time from the south. It was not a busy stretch of road. At three fifteen on a Monday afternoon, it would have been quiet as well. Even so, the associates of the man who had forced Valerie Bérrangar’s car into the trees had probably taken steps to contain the traffic in both directions so there would be no witnesses. General Ferrari was right; inducing a fatal accident was not easily done. But the men who murdered Valerie Bérrangar knew what they were doing. After all, thought Gabriel, they were professionals. Of that, he was certain.
He crossed the road and slid behind the wheel of his rental car. The drive to the airport was thirty minutes. His flight to Paris departed promptly at nine, and at half past eleven, having entrusted his bag to the bell staff of the Bristol Hotel, he was walking up the rue de Miromesnil in the Eighth Arrondissement.
At the northern end of the street was a small shop called Antiquités Scientifiques. The sign in the window readouvert. The buzzer, when pressed, emitted an inhospitable howl. Several seconds elapsed with no invitation to enter. Finally the deadbolt snapped open with a thud, and Gabriel slipped inside.
Onthe morning of August 22, 1911, Louis Béroud arrived at the Musée du Louvre to resume work on a copy of a portrait of an Italian noblewoman, 77 by 53 centimeters, oil on poplar panel, that hung in the Salon Carré. The Louvre did not discourage the work of artists such as Béroud. In fact, it permitted them to store their paints and easels at the museum overnight. They were forbidden, however, to produce copies with the exact dimensions of the originals, as the European art market was awash with forgeries of Old Master paintings.
Formally attired in a black frock coat and striped trousers, Béroud strode into the Salon Carré that Tuesday morning only to discover that the portrait, Leonardo da Vinci’sMona Lisa, had been removed from its protective wood-and-glass case. He was disappointed but not unduly alarmed. Neither, for that matter, was Maximilien Alphonse Paupardin, the guard who kept watch over the Salon Carré and its priceless treasures, usually from atop a stool in the doorway. The Louvre was in the process of photographing its entire inventory of paintings and other objets d’art. Brigadier Paupardin was confident that Mona Lisa was merely having her picture taken.
But later that morning, after visiting the photography studio, a frantic Paupardin informed the Louvre’s acting president that theMona Lisawas missing. The gendarmes arrived at one o’clock and immediately sealed the museum. It would remain closed for the next week as the police scoured Paris for clues. Their investigation, such as it was, was a comedy of errors. Among the initial suspects were a brash young Spanish painter named Pablo Picasso and his friend, the poet and writer Guillaume Apollinaire.
Another was Vincenzo Peruggia, the Italian-born carpenter whohad helped to construct theMona Lisa’s protective case. But police cleared Peruggia of suspicion after a brief interview conducted in his Paris apartment. Which is where theMona Lisaremained, hidden in a trunk in the bedroom, until 1913, when the humble woodworker attempted to sell the painting to a prominent art dealer in Florence. The dealer took it to the Uffizi Gallery, and Peruggia was promptly arrested. Convicted in an Italian courtroom of the greatest art crime in history, he received a one-year prison sentence but was set free after spending only seven months behind bars.
It was the remarkable tale of theMona Lisa’s theft that inspired a restless Paris shopkeeper named Maurice Durand, in the drab winter of 1985, to steal his first painting—a small still life by Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin that hung in a rarely visited corner of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg. Unlike Vincenzo Peruggia, Durand already had a buyer waiting, a disreputable collector who was in the market for a Chardin and wasn’t worried about messy details such as provenance. Durand was well paid, the client was happy, and a lucrative career was born.
Two decades later, a fall through a skylight ended Durand’s career as a professional art thief. He now operated solely as a broker in the process known as commissioned theft. Or, as Durand liked to describe it, he managed the acquisition of paintings that were not technically for sale. Working with a stable of Marseilles-based professional thieves, he was the hidden hand behind some of the most spectacular art heists of the twenty-first century. During the summer of 2010 alone, his men stole works by Rembrandt, Picasso, Caravaggio, and Van Gogh. With the exception of the Rembrandt, which hung in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, none of the paintings had resurfaced.
Durand ruled his global empire of art theft from Antiquités Scientifiques, which had been in his family for three generations. Itstastefully lit shelves were lined with antique microscopes, cameras, spectacles, barometers, surveyors, and globes, all meticulously arranged. So, too, was Maurice Durand. He wore a tailored suit, dark blue, and a striped dress shirt. His necktie was the color of gold leaf. His bald head was polished to a high gloss.
“I suppose it’s true, after all,” he said by way of greeting.
“What’s that?” asked Gabriel.
“That men in your line of work never truly retire.”
“Or yours, apparently.”
Smiling, Durand lifted the lid of a varnished rectangular case. “Perhaps this might be of interest to you. An optician’s trial lens kit. Turn of the century. Quite rare.”
“Almost as rare as that watercolor you stole from the Musée Matisse a few months back. Or the lovely genre piece by Jan Steen you pinched from the Musée Fabre.”
“I had nothing to do with the disappearance of either of those works.”
“What about the sale?”
Durand closed the lid, soundlessly. “My associates and I acquired a number of valuable objects for you and your service over the years, including a remarkable terra-cotta hydria by the Amykos Painter. And then, of course, there was the job in Amsterdam. We caused quite a stir with that one, didn’t we?”
“Which is why I have refrained from giving your name to the French authorities.”
“What about General Cyclops, your friend from the Carabinieri?”
“He remains unaware of your identity. Or the identities of your associates in Marseilles.”
“And what must I do to preserve this state of affairs?”
