Messenger

  “You hover over me? Like Gilah and the doctors? Why can’t you come during the day like a normal person?”

  “I’ve been busy.”

  “The prime minister isn’t too busy to come see me at a reasonable hour.” Shamron, his injured neck immobilized by a heavy plastic brace, gave Gabriel a vindictive sideways glance. “He told me he’s allowing Amos to find his own man for Special Ops so that you can run this fool’s errand for Adrian Carter and the Americans.”

  “I take it you disapprove.”

  “Vehemently.” Shamron closed his eyes for a long moment—long enough for Gabriel to cast a nervous glance at the bank of monitors next to his bed. “Blue and white,” he said finally. “We do things for ourselves. We don’t ask others for help, and we don’t help others with problems of their own making. And we certainly don’t volunteer to serve as a patsy for Adrian Carter.”

  “You’re in this hospital bed instead of at your desk in the Prime Minister’s Office. That makes Zizi al-Bakari and Ahmed bin Shafiq my problem, too. Besides, the world has changed, Ari. We need to work together to survive. The old rules don’t apply.”

  Shamron lifted his heavily veined hand and pointed toward the plastic water cup on his bedside table. Gabriel held it to Shamron’s lips while he sipped water through the straw.

  “At whose request are you undertaking this errand?” Shamron asked. “Is it Adrian Carter, or higher up the chain of command?” Greeted by Gabriel’s silence, Shamron angrily pushed the water cup away. “Is it your intention to treat me as some sort of invalid? I’m still the prime minister’s special adviser on all matters dealing with security and intelligence. I’m still the…” His voice trailed off with a sudden fatigue.

  “You’re still the memuneh,” Gabriel said, finishing the sentence for him. In Hebrew, memuneh meant the one in charge. For many years the title had been reserved for Shamron.

  “You’re not going after some kid from Nablus, Gabriel. You have Ahmed bin Shafiq and Zizi al-Bakari in your sights. If something goes wrong, the world will fall on you from a very great height. And your friend Adrian Carter won’t be there to help scrape you up. You might want to consider taking me into your confidence. I’ve done this sort of thing a time or two.”

  Gabriel poked his head into the corridor and asked the protective agents posted there to make certain any audio or visual surveillance of Shamron was switched off. Then he sat down again in the bedside chair and, with his mouth close to Shamron’s ear, told him everything. Shamron’s gaze, for a moment at least, seemed a little more focused. When he posed his first question it was almost possible for Gabriel to conjure an image of the iron bar of a man who had walked into his life one September afternoon in 1972.

  “You’ve made up your mind about using a woman?”

  Gabriel nodded.

  “You’re going to need someone whose story will withstand the scrutiny of Zizi’s well-paid security staff. You can’t use one of our girls, and you can’t use a non-Israeli Jew. If Zizi even suspects he’s looking at a Jewish girl, he’ll steer clear of her. You need a gentile.”

  “What I need,” said Gabriel, “is an American girl.”

  “Where are you going to get one?”

  Gabriel’s one-word answer caused Shamron to frown. “I don’t like the idea of us being responsible for one of their agents. What if something goes wrong?”

  “What could go wrong?”

  “Everything,” Shamron said. “You know that better than anyone.”

  Shamron seemed suddenly weary. Gabriel lowered the dimmer on the bedside lamp.

  “What are you going to do?” Shamron asked. “Read me a bedtime story?”

  “I’m going to sit with you until you fall asleep.”

  “Gilah can do that. Go home and get some rest. You’re going to need it.”

  “I’ll stay for a while.”

  “Go home,” Shamron insisted. “There’s someone waiting there who’s anxious to see you.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, when Gabriel turned into Narkiss Street, he saw lights burning in his apartment. He parked his Skoda around the corner and stole quietly up the darkened walkway into the building. As he slipped inside the apartment the air was heavy with the scent of vanilla. Chiara was seated cross-legged atop his examination table in the harsh light of his halogen work lamps. She scrutinized Gabriel as he came inside, then turned her gaze once more to what had once been a meticulously decorated living room.

  “I like what you’ve done with the place, Gabriel. Please tell me you didn’t give away our bed, too.”

  Gabriel shook his head, then kissed her.

  “How long are you in town?” she asked.

  “I leave tomorrow morning.”

  “As usual, my timing is perfect. How long will you be gone?”

  “Hard to say.”

  “Can you take me with you?”

  “Not this time.”

  “Where are you going?”

  Gabriel eased her off the examination table and switched off the lights.

  London

  I NEED A VAN Gogh, Julian.”

  “Don’t we all, petal.”

  Isherwood pushed back his coat sleeve and glanced at his wristwatch. It was ten in the morning. He was usually in his gallery by now, not strolling along the lakeshore in St. James’s Park. He paused for a moment to watch a flotilla of ducks slicing through the calm water toward the island. Gabriel used the opportunity to cast his eyes around the park to see if they were being followed. Then he hooked Isherwood by the inside of the elbow and towed him toward the Horse Guards Road.

  They were a mismatched pair, figures from different paintings. Gabriel wore dark jeans and suede brogues that made no sound as he walked. His hands were thrust into the pockets of his leather jacket, his shoulders were slouched forward, and his green eyes were flickering restlessly about the park. Isherwood, fifteen years older than Gabriel and several inches taller, wore a chalk-striped suit and woolen overcoat. His gray locks hung over the back of his coat collar and floated up and down with each lanky, loose-limbed stride. There was something precarious about Julian Isherwood. Gabriel, as always, had to resist an urge to reach out and steady him.

  They had known each other for thirty years. Isherwood’s backbone-of-England surname and English scale concealed the fact that he was not, at least technically, English at all. British by nationality and passport, yes, but German by birth, French by upbringing, and Jewish by religion. Only a handful of trusted friends knew that Isherwood had staggered into London as a child refugee in 1942 after being carried across the snowbound Pyrenees by a pair of Basque shepherds. Or that his father, the renowned Paris art dealer Samuel Isakowitz, had been murdered at the Sobibor death camp along with Isherwood’s mother. There was something else Isherwood kept secret from his competitors in the London art world—and from nearly everyone else, for that matter. In the lexicon of the Office, Julian Isherwood was a sayan, a volunteer Jewish helper. He had been recruited by Ari Shamron for a single purpose: to help build and maintain the cover of a single very special agent.

  “How’s my friend Mario Delvecchio?” Isherwood asked.

  “Vanished without a trace,” said Gabriel. “I hope my unveiling didn’t cause you any problems.”

  “None whatsoever.”

  “No rumors on the street? No awkward questions at the auctions? No visits from the men of MI5?”

  “Are you asking me whether people in London regard me as a poisonous Israeli spy?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m asking you.”

  “All quiet on this front, but then we were never very flashy about our relationship, were we? That’s not your way. You’re not flashy about anything. One of the two or three best art restorers in the world, and no one really knows who you are. It’s a shame, that.”

  They came to the corner of Great George Street. Gabriel led them to the right, into Birdcage Walk.

  “Who knows about us in London, Julian? Who knows that you had a p
rofessional relationship with Mario?”

  Isherwood looked up at the dripping trees along the pavement. “Very few people, really. There’s Jeremy Crabbe over at Bonhams, of course. He’s still miffed at you for stealing that Rubens from under his nose.” Isherwood placed a long, bony hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “I have a buyer for it. All I need now is the painting.”

  “I put the varnish on yesterday before I left Jerusalem,” Gabriel said. “I’ll use one of our front shippers to get it here as quickly as possible. You could have it by the end of the week. By the way, you owe me a hundred and fifty thousand pounds.”

  “Check’s in the mail, petal.”

  “Who else?” Gabriel asked. “Who else knows about us?”

  Isherwood made a show of thought. “The wretched Oliver Dimbleby,” he said. “You remember Oliver. I introduced you to him at Green’s one afternoon when we were having lunch. Tubby little dealer from King Street. Tried to buy my gallery out from under me one time.”

  Gabriel remembered. Somewhere he still had the showy gold-plated business card Oliver had pressed upon him. Oliver had barely looked in Gabriel’s direction. Oliver was that way.

  “I’ve done many a favor for Crabbe over the years,” Isherwood said. “The sorts of favors we don’t like to talk about in our line of work. As for Oliver Dimbleby, I helped him clean up a terrible mess he made with a girl who worked in his gallery. I took the poor waif in. Gave her a job. She left me for another dealer. Always do, my girls. What is it about me that drives women away? I’m an easy mark, that’s it. Women see that. So did your little outfit. Herr Heller certainly did.”

  Herr Rudolf Heller, venture capitalist from Zurich, was one of Shamron’s favorite aliases. It was the one he had used when recruiting Isherwood.

  “How is he, by the way?”

  “He sends his best.”

  Gabriel lowered his eyes to the damp pavement of Birdcage Walk. A breath of cold wind rose from the park. Dead leaves rattled across their path.

  “I need a van Gogh,” Gabriel said again.

  “Yes, I heard you the first time. The problem is, I don’t have a van Gogh. In case you’ve forgotten, Isherwood Fine Arts specializes in Old Masters. If you want Impressionists, you’ll have to look elsewhere.”

  “But you know where I can get one.”

  “Unless you’re planning on stealing one, there’s nothing on the market right now—at least not that I’m aware of.”

  “But that’s not true, is it, Julian? You do know about a van Gogh. You told me about it once a hundred years ago—a story about a previously unknown painting your father had seen in Paris between the wars.”

  “Not just my father,” Isherwood said. “I’ve seen it, too. Vincent painted it in Auvers, during the final days of his life. There’s a rumor it might have been his undoing. The problem is, the painting isn’t for sale, and it probably never will be. The family has made it clear to me they’ll never part with it. They’re also bound and determined to keep its very existence a secret.”

  “Tell me the story again.”

  “I don’t have time now, Gabriel. I have a ten-thirty appointment at the gallery.”

  “Cancel your appointment, Julian. Tell me about that painting.”

  ISHERWOOD CROSSED the footbridge over the lake and headed toward his gallery in St. James’s. Gabriel shoved his hands a little deeper into his coat pockets and followed after him.

  “Ever cleaned him?” Isherwood asked.

  “Vincent? Never.”

  “How much do you know about his final days?”

  “About what everyone knows, I suppose.”

  “Bollocks, Gabriel. Don’t try to play the fool with me. Your brain is like the Grove Dictionary of Art.”

  “It was the summer of 1890, wasn’t it?”

  Isherwood gave a professorial nod of his head. “Please continue.”

  “After Vincent left the asylum in Saint-Rémy, he came to Paris to see Theo and Johanna. He visited several galleries and exhibits, and stopped at Père Tanguy’s artists’ supply store to check on some canvases he had in storage there. After three days he began to get restless, so he boarded a train for Auvers-sur-Oise, about twenty miles outside Paris. He thought Auvers would be ideal, a quiet country setting for his work but still close to Theo, his financial and emotional lifeline. He took a room above Café Ravoux and placed himself in the care of Dr. Paul Gachet.”

  Gabriel took Isherwood’s arm and together they darted through an opening in the traffic on the Mall and entered the Marlborough Road.

  “He started painting immediately. His style, like his mood, was calmer and more subdued. The agitation and violence that characterized much of his work at Saint-Rémy and Arles was gone. He was also incredibly prolific. In the two months Vincent stayed in Auvers he produced more than eighty paintings. A painting a day. Some days two.”

  They turned into King Street. Gabriel stopped suddenly. Ahead of them, waddling along the pavement toward the entrance of Christie’s auction house, was Oliver Dimbleby. Isherwood turned suddenly into Bury Street and picked up where Gabriel had left off.

  “When Vincent wasn’t at his easel, he could usually be found in his room above Café Ravoux or at the home of Gachet. Gachet was a widower with two children, a boy of fifteen and a daughter who turned twenty-one during Vincent’s stay in Auvers.”

  “Marguerite.”

  Isherwood nodded. “She was a pretty girl and she was also deeply infatuated with Vincent. She agreed to pose for him—unfortunately with out her father’s permission. He painted her in the garden of the family home, dressed in a white gown.”

  “Marguerite Gachet in the Garden,” Gabriel said.

  “And when her father found out, he was furious.”

  “But she posed for him again.”

  “Correct,” Isherwood said. “The second painting is Marguerite Gachet at the Piano. She also appears in Undergrowth with Two Figures, a deeply symbolic work that some art historians saw as a prophecy of Vincent’s own death. But I believe it’s Vincent and Marguerite walking down the aisle—Vincent’s premonition of marriage.”

  “But there was a fourth painting of Marguerite?”

  “Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table,” said Isherwood. “It’s the best of the lot by far. Only a handful of people have ever seen it or even know it exists. Vincent painted it a few days before his death. And then it disappeared.”

  THEY WALKED TO Duke Street, then slipped through a narrow passageway, into a brick quadrangle called Mason’s Yard. Isherwood’s gallery occupied an old Victorian warehouse in the far corner, wedged between the offices of a minor Greek shipping company and a pub that was inevitably filled with pretty office girls who rode motor scooters. Isherwood started across the yard toward the gallery, but Gabriel snared his lapel and pulled him in the opposite direction. As they strolled the perimeter through the cold shadows, Isherwood talked of Vincent’s death.

  “On the evening of July 27, Vincent returned to Café Ravoux in obvious pain and struggled up the stairs to his room. Madame Ravoux followed after him and discovered he’d been shot. She sent for a doctor. The doctor, of course, was Gachet himself. He decided to leave the bullet in Vincent’s abdomen and summoned Theo to Auvers. When Theo arrived the following morning, he found Vincent sitting up in bed smoking his pipe. He died later that day.”

  They came into a patch of brilliant sunshine. Isherwood shaded his eyes with his long hand.

  “There are many unanswered questions about Vincent’s suicide. It’s not clear where he got the gun or the precise place where he shot himself. There are questions, too, about his motivation. Was his suicide the culmination of his long struggle with madness? Was he distraught over a letter he’d just received from Theo suggesting that Theo could no longer afford to support Vincent along with his own wife and child? Did Vincent take his own life as part of a plan to make his work relevant and commercially viable? I’ve never been satisfied with any of those theories. I belie
ve it has to do with Gachet. More to the point, with Dr. Gachet’s daughter.”

  They slipped into the shadows of the yard once more. Isherwood lowered his hand.

  “The day before Vincent shot himself, he came to Gachet’s house. The two quarreled violently, and Vincent threatened Gachet with a gun. What was the reason for the argument? Gachet later claimed that it had something to do with a picture frame, of all things. I believe it was over Marguerite. I think it’s possible it had something to do with Marguerite Gachet at Her Dressing Table. It’s an exquisite work, one of Vincent’s better portraits. The pose and the setting are clearly representative of a bride on her wedding night. Its significance would not have been lost on a man like Paul Gachet. If he’d seen the painting—and there’s no reason to believe he didn’t—he would have been incensed. Perhaps Gachet told Vincent that marriage to his daughter was out of the question. Perhaps he forbade Vincent ever to paint Marguerite again. Perhaps he forbade Vincent ever to see Marguerite again. What we do know is that Marguerite Gachet wasn’t present at Vincent’s funeral, though she was spotted the next day tearfully placing sunflowers on his grave. She never married, and lived as something of a recluse in Auvers until her death in 1949.”

  They passed the entrance to Isherwood’s gallery and kept walking.

  “After Vincent’s death his paintings became the property of Theo. He arranged for a shipment of the works Vincent had produced at Auvers and stored them at Père Tanguy’s in Paris. Theo, of course, died not long after Vincent, and the paintings became the property of Johanna. None of Vincent’s other relatives wanted any of his work. Johanna’s brother thought them worthless and suggested they be burned.” Isherwood stopped walking. “Can you imagine?” He propelled himself forward again with a long stride. “Johanna catalogued the inventory and worked tirelessly to establish Vincent’s reputation. It’s because of Johanna that Vincent van Gogh is regarded as a great artist. But there’s a glaring omission in her list of Vincent’s known works.”