The Marx Dormoy station was located in the Eighteenth Arrondissement, on the rue de la Chapelle. Keller was parked across the street smoking a cigarette when Sam appeared at the top of the steps. He walked over to the car and slid into the passenger seat without a word.
“Where’s your phone?” asked Keller.
Sam drew it from his coat pocket and held it up for Keller to see.
“Turn it off and remove the SIM card.”
Sam did as he was told. Keller slipped the car into gear and eased into the evening traffic.
He allowed Sam to remain in the passenger seat until they broke free of the northern suburbs. Then, in a stand of trees near the town of Ézanville, he ordered him into the trunk. He took the long way north to Picardy, adding at least an hour to the journey. As a result, it was approaching midnight by the time he turned into the drive of the farmhouse. When Sam emerged from the trunk, he spotted the silhouette of a man standing in the moonlight at the edge of the property.
“I take it that’s your associate.”
Keller didn’t respond. Instead, he led him through the rear door of the farmhouse and down a flight of stairs to the cellar. Propped against one wall, lit by a bare bulb hanging from a wire, was Sunflowers, oil on canvas, 95 by 73 centimeters, by Vincent van Gogh. Sam stood before it for a long moment without speaking. Keller stood next to him.
“Well?” he asked at last.
“In a moment, Mr. Bartholomew. In a moment.”
Finally, he stepped forward, picked up the painting by the vertical stretcher bars, and turned it over to examine the museum markings on the back of the canvas. Then he looked at the edges of the painting and frowned.
“Something wrong?” asked Keller.
“Vincent was notoriously careless in the way he handled his paintings. Look here,” he added, turning the edges of the stretcher toward Keller. “He left his fingerprints all over it.”
Sam smiled, held the painting close to the light, and spent several minutes carefully examining the brushwork. Then he returned it to its original position and stepped back to scrutinize it from a distance. This time, Keller didn’t intrude on his silence.
“Spectacular,” he said after a moment.
“And quite the real thing,” added Keller.
“It could be. Or it could be the work of a highly skilled forger.”
“It isn’t.”
“I’ll need to perform a simple test to make certain, a paint chip analysis. If the paint is genuine, we have a deal. If it isn’t, you will never hear from me again, leaving you free to foist it onto a less sophisticated buyer.”
“How long will it take?”
“Seventy-two hours.”
“You have forty-eight.”
“I won’t be rushed, Mr. Bartholomew. Neither will my client.”
Keller hesitated before nodding his head once. Using a surgical scalpel, Sam expertly removed two tiny flakes of paint from the canvas—one from the bottom right, the other from the bottom left—and placed them into a glass vial. Then he slipped the vial into his coat pocket and, with Keller at his back, headed up the stairs. Outside, the silhouetted figure was still standing at the edge of the farmland.
“Do I ever get to meet your associate?” asked Sam.
“I wouldn’t advise it,” replied Keller.
“Why not?”
“Because his will be the last face you’ll ever see.”
Sam frowned and climbed into the trunk of the Mercedes. Keller slammed the lid and drove him back to Paris.
They were all seasoned operatives, each in their own unique way, but they would later say that the next three days passed with the speed of an icebound river. Gabriel’s usual forbearance abandoned him. He had engineered the theft of one of the world’s most famous paintings as part of a ploy to find another one; and yet it would all come to nothing if the man called Sam walked away from the deal. Only Maurice Durand, perhaps the world’s foremost expert on the illicit art trade, remained confident. In his experience, dirty collectors like Mr. Big rarely walked away from a chance to acquire a van Gogh. Surely, he said, the lure of Sunflowers would be too powerful to resist. Unless Gabriel had shown Sam the forgery by mistake, which he had not, the paint chip analysis would come back positive, and the deal would go forward.
They had one other option in the event Sam backed out; they could follow him and attempt to establish the identity of his client, the man of great wealth, who was ready to pay 25 million euros for a stolen work of art. It was just one of the reasons why Gabriel and Keller, two of the most experienced man-trackers in the world, monitored Sam’s every move during the three days of waiting. They watched him in the morning while he walked the footpaths of the Tuileries, and in the afternoon while he visited the tourist sights for the sake of his cover, and in the evening when he dined, always alone, along the Champs-Élysées. The impression he left was one of discipline. At some point in his life, Keller and Gabriel agreed, Sam had been a member of the secret brotherhood of spies. Or perhaps, they thought, he still was.
On the morning of the third day, he gave them a small fright when he failed to appear for his usual walk. Their alarm increased at four that afternoon when they saw him emerge from the Crillon with two large suitcases and climb into the back of a limousine. But their concern quickly dissolved when the car took him to the HSBC Private Bank on the boulevard Haussmann. Thirty minutes later, he was back in his room. There were only two possibilities, said Keller. Sam had either carried out the quietest bank robbery in history, or he had just withdrawn a large sum of cash from a safe-deposit box. Keller suspected it was the latter. So, too, did Gabriel. Therefore, there was little suspense when the time finally came to ring Sam for his answer. Keller did the honors. When the call was over, he looked at Gabriel and smiled. “We may never find the Caravaggio,” he said, “but we’re about to get twenty-five million euros of Mr. Big’s money.”
24
CHELLES, FRANCE
BUT THERE WAS ONE CONDITION: Sam reserved the right to choose the time and place of the exchange of money and merchandise. The time, he said, would be half past eleven the following evening. The place would be a warehouse in Chelles, a drab commune east of Paris. Keller drove there the next morning while the rest of northern France was streaming toward the city center. The warehouse was where Sam had said it would be, on the avenue François Mitterrand, directly across the street from a Renault dealership. A faded sign read EUROTRANZ, though there was no indication of precisely the sort of services the company provided. Pigeons flew in and out of the broken windows; a savanna of weeds flourished behind the bars of the iron fence. Keller climbed out of his car and inspected the automatic gate. It had been a long time since anyone had opened it.
He spent an hour carrying out a routine reconnaissance assessment of the streets surrounding the warehouse and then drove north to the farmhouse at Andeville. When he arrived, he found Gabriel and Chiara relaxing in the sunlit garden. The two van Goghs were propped against the wall in the living room.
“I still don’t know how you can tell them apart,” Keller said.
“It’s rather obvious, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t.”
Gabriel inclined his head toward the painting on the right. “You’re sure?”
“Those are my fingerprints on the sides of the stretcher bars, not Vincent’s. And then there’s this.”
Gabriel powered on his Office-issued BlackBerry and held it near the top right corner of the canvas. The screen flashed red, indicating the presence of a concealed transmitter.
“You’re sure about the range?” asked Keller.
“I tested it again this morning. It’s rock solid at ten kilometers.”
Keller looked at the genuine van Gogh. “Too bad no one thought to put a tracker in that one.”
“Yes,” said Gabriel distantly.
“How long do you intend to keep it?”
“Not a day longer than necessary.”
&nb
sp; “Who’s going to hold on to it while we chase the forgery?”
“I was hoping to leave it in the Paris embassy,” said Gabriel, “but the station chief won’t touch it. So I had to make other arrangements.”
“What sort of arrangements?”
When Gabriel answered, Keller shook his head slowly.
“It’s a bit odd, don’t you think?”
“Life is complicated, Christopher.”
Keller smiled. “Tell me about it.”
They left the quaint farmhouse for the last time at eight that evening. The copy of Sunflowers was in the trunk of Keller’s Mercedes; the authentic van Gogh was in Gabriel’s. He delivered it to Maurice Durand at his shop on the rue de Miromesnil. Then he dropped Chiara at the safe flat overlooking the Pont Marie and set out for the commune of Chelles.
He arrived a few minutes before eleven and made his way to the warehouse on the avenue François Mitterrand. It was in a section of town where there was little life on the streets after dark. He circled the property twice, looking for evidence of surveillance or anything that suggested Keller was about to walk into a trap. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, he went in search of a suitable observation post where a man sitting alone wouldn’t attract the attention of the gendarmes. The only option was a brown park where a dozen local skateboard toughs were drinking beer. On one side of the park was a row of benches lit by yellow streetlamps. Gabriel parked his car on the street and sat on the bench closest to the entrance of Eurotranz. The toughs looked at him quizzically for a moment before resuming their discussion of the day’s pressing affairs. Gabriel glanced at his wristwatch. It was five minutes past eleven. Then he consulted his BlackBerry. The beacon was not yet in range.
Looking up again, he saw the headlamps of a car on the avenue. A small red Citröen, it shot past the entrance of Eurotranz and sped along the edge of the park, leaving in its wake the throb of French hip-hop. Behind it was another car, a black BMW, so clean it looked newly washed for the occasion. It stopped at the gate and the driver climbed out. In the darkness it was impossible to see his face, but in build and movement he was Sam’s doppelganger.
He jabbed his forefinger at the keypad a few times with the confidence of a man who had known the combination for a long time. Then he climbed behind the wheel again, waited for the gate to open, and drove onto the property. He paused while the gate closed behind him and then approached the entrance of the warehouse. Again, he emerged from the car and stabbed at the security keypad with a speed that suggested familiarity. When the door rolled open, he eased the car inside and disappeared from sight.
In the little brown park, the arrival of a luxury automobile at the disused warehouse on the avenue François Mitterrand went unnoticed by everyone except for the man of late middle age sitting alone. The man glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was 11:08. Then he looked at his BlackBerry. The red light was blinking and heading his way.
Keller arrived promptly at eleven thirty. He rang Sam’s mobile and the gate swung open. A patch of cracked asphalt stretched before him, empty, darkened. He drove across it slowly and, following Sam’s instructions, nosed the car into the warehouse. At the opposite end of a football-pitch-size space glowed the parking lamps of a BMW. Keller could make out the figure of a man leaning against the hood, a phone to his ear, two large suitcases at his feet. There was no one else visible.
“Stop there,” said Sam.
Keller put a foot on the brake.
“Turn off the engine and switch off your headlamps.”
Keller did as instructed.
“Get out of the car and stand where I can see you.”
Keller climbed out slowly and stood in front of the hood. Sam reached inside his BMW and switched on the headlamps.
“Take off your coat.”
“Is this really necessary?”
“Do you want the money or not?”
Keller removed his coat and tossed it on the hood of his car.
“Turn around and face the car.”
Keller hesitated, then turned his back to Sam.
“Very good.”
Keller rotated slowly to face Sam again.
“Where’s the painting?”
“In the trunk.”
“Take it out and put it on the ground twenty feet in front of the car.”
Keller opened the trunk using the inside latch release and removed the painting. It was sheathed in a protective layer of glassine paper and concealed by a contractor-grade rubbish bag. He placed it on the concrete floor of the warehouse twenty paces in front of the Mercedes and waited for Sam’s next instruction.
“Walk back to your car,” came the voice from the opposite end of the space.
“Not a chance,” Keller replied into the glare of Sam’s headlamps.
A brief impasse occurred. Then Sam came forward through the light. He stopped a few feet away from Keller, looked down, and frowned.
“I need to see it one more time.”
“Then I suggest you remove the plastic wrapper. But do it carefully, Sam. If anything happens to that painting, I’m going to hold you responsible.”
Sam crouched and removed the canvas from the bag. Then he turned the image toward the headlamps of his car and squinted at the brushwork and the signature.
“Well?” asked Keller.
Sam looked at the fingerprints along the sides of the stretcher bars, then at the museum markings on the back. “In a moment,” he said quietly. “In a moment.”
Keller’s car emerged from the warehouse at 11:40. The gate was open by the time he arrived. He turned to the right and sped past the bench where Gabriel sat. Gabriel ignored him; he was watching the taillights of a BMW moving off along the avenue François Mitterrand. He looked down at his BlackBerry and smiled. They were on, he thought. They were definitely on.
The red light of the beacon blinked with the regularity of a heartbeat. It floated through the remaining Paris suburbs and then raced eastward along the A4 toward Reims. Gabriel followed a kilometer behind, and Keller followed a kilometer behind Gabriel. They spoke on the phone only once, a brief conversation during which Keller confirmed that the deal had gone through without a hitch. Sam had the painting; Keller had Sam’s money. It was hidden in the trunk of the car, inside the trash bag that Gabriel had placed around the copy of Sunflowers. All except for a single bundle of hundred-euro notes, which was tucked into the pocket of Keller’s coat.
“Why is it in your pocket?” asked Gabriel.
“Gas money,” replied Keller.
One hundred and twenty kilometers separated the eastern suburbs of Paris from Reims, a distance that Sam covered in little more than an hour. Just beyond the city, the red light came suddenly to a stop along the A4. Gabriel quickly closed the gap and saw Sam filling his car with gas at a roadside service station. He immediately rang Keller and told him to pull over; then he waited until Sam was once again on the road. Within a few moments, the three cars had resumed their original formation: Sam in the lead, Gabriel following a kilometer behind Sam, and Keller following a kilometer behind Gabriel.
From Reims, they pushed farther eastward, through Verdun and Metz. Then the A4 bent to the south and carried them to Strasbourg, the capital of the Alsace region of France and the seat of the European Parliament. At the edge of the city flowed the gray-green waters of the Rhine. A few minutes after sunrise, 25 million euros in cash and a copy of a stolen masterpiece by Vincent van Gogh crossed undetected into Germany.
The first city on the German side of the border was Kehl, and beyond Kehl was the A5 autobahn. Sam followed it as far as Karlsruhe; then he turned onto the A8 and headed toward Stuttgart. By the time he reached the southeastern suburbs, the morning rush was at its worst. He crawled into the city along the Hauptstätterstrasse and made his way to Stuttgart-Mitte, a pleasant district of offices and shops at the heart of the sprawling metropolis. Gabriel sensed that Sam was nearing his final destination, so he closed to within a few hundred meters.
And then the one thing happened that he expected least.
The blinking red light vanished from his screen.
According to Gabriel’s BlackBerry, the beacon transmitted its dying electronic impulse at Böheimstrasse 8. The address corresponded to a gray stucco hotel that looked as though it had been imported from East Berlin during the darkest days of the Cold War. At the back of the hotel, reached by an alleyway, was a public parking garage. The BMW was on the lowest level, in a corner where the overhead light had been smashed. Sam was slumped over the wheel, eyes frozen open, blood and brain tissue spattered across the inside of the windshield. And Sunflowers, oil on canvas, 95 by 73 centimeters, by Gabriel Allon, was gone.
25
GENEVA
THEY LEFT STUTTGART BY THE same route they had entered it and crossed back into France at Strasbourg. Keller headed for Corsica; Gabriel, for Geneva. He arrived in midafternoon and immediately rang Christoph Bittel from a public phone along the lakeshore. The secret policeman didn’t sound pleased to hear from him again so soon. He was even less pleased when Gabriel explained why he was back in town.
“Out of the question,” he said.
“Then I suppose I’ll have to tell the world about all those stolen paintings I found in that vault.”
“So much for the new Gabriel Allon.”
“What time should I expect you, Bittel?”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
It took Bittel an hour to clear his desk at NDB headquarters and another two hours to make the drive from Bern down to Geneva. Gabriel was waiting for him on a busy street corner along the rue du Rhône. It was a few minutes after six. Tidy Swiss moneymen were spilling from the handsome office blocks; pretty girls and slick foreigners were streaming into the glittering cafés. It was all very orderly. Even mass murderers minded their manners when they came to Geneva.