The Rembrandt Affair

  Her memories were something from a nightmare. Memories of laughing Schalkhaarders swapping stories about the evening’s hunt. Memories of a young boy who’d attempted to flee and was beaten senseless. Memories of a dozen elderly men and women who had been pulled from their beds at a home for the aged and were seated calmly in their frayed nightgowns as if waiting for the performance to begin. And memories, too, of a tall man dressed entirely in black striding godlike across the stage, a portrait by Rembrandt in one hand, a sack of diamonds in the other.

  “The man was SS?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you ever told his name?”

  She hesitated. “I learned it later, but I will not say it.”

  Gabriel gave a placatory nod. Lena closed her eyes and continued. What she remembered most about him, she said, was the smell of leather rising from his freshly polished boots. His eyes were deep brown, the hair dark and richly oiled, the skin sallow and bloodless. His manner was aristocratic and shockingly courteous.

  “This was no village bumpkin in a nice uniform. This was a man from a good family. A man from the upper reaches of German society. Initially, he spoke to my father in excellent Dutch. Then, after establishing that my father spoke German, he switched.”

  “Did you speak German?”

  “A little.”

  “Were you able to understand what was happening?”

  “Bits and pieces. The SS man scolded my father for having violated the decrees concerning Jewish financial assets and valuables such as jewelry and works of art. He then informed my father that both the diamonds and the Rembrandt would have to be confiscated before our deportation to the labor camps. But there was just one thing he required first. He wanted my father to sign a piece of paper.”

  “A forfeiture document?”

  She shook her head. “A bill of sale, not for the diamonds, only for the Rembrandt. He wanted my father to sell him the painting. The price would be one hundred guilders—payable at a future date, of course. One hundred guilders…less than the Jew hunters earned on a good night of roundups.”

  “You saw the actual contract?”

  She hesitated, then nodded slowly. “The Germans were precise in all things, and paperwork was very important to them. They recorded everything. The number of people murdered each day in the gas chambers. The number of shoes left behind. The weight of the gold wrenched from the dead before they were thrown into the crematoria.”

  Again Lena’s voice trailed off, and for a moment Gabriel feared she was lost to them. But she quickly composed herself and continued. Tonight, Lena Herzfeld had chosen Gabriel and Chiara to hear her testimony. Tonight there was no turning back.

  “Only later did I understand why the SS man required my father’s signature. Stealing a bag of diamonds was one thing. But stealing a painting, especially a Rembrandt, was quite another. Isn’t it ironic? They killed six million people, but he wanted a bill of sale for my father’s Rembrandt—a piece of paper so he could claim he had acquired it legally.”

  “What did your father do?”

  “He refused. Even now, I cannot imagine where he found the courage. He told the SS man that he had no illusions about the fate that awaited us and that under no circumstances would he sign anything. The SS man seemed quite startled. I don’t think a Jew had dared to speak to him like that in a very long time.”

  “Did he threaten your father?”

  “Actually, quite the opposite. For a moment, he seemed stumped. Then he looked down at Rachel and me and smiled. He said the labor camps were no place for children. He said he had a solution. A trade. Two lives for one painting. If my father signed the bill of sale, Rachel and I would be allowed to go free. At first, my father resisted, but my mother convinced him there was no choice. At least they will have each other, she said. Eventually, my father capitulated, and signed the papers. There were two copies, one for him, one for the SS man.”

  Lena’s eyes shone suddenly with tears, and her hands began to tremble, not with sadness but with anger.

  “But once the monster had what he wanted, he changed his mind. He said he had misspoken. He said he could not take two children, only one. Then he pointed at me and said, ‘That one. The one with the blond hair and blue eyes.’ It was my sentence.”

  The SS man instructed the Herzfeld family to say its last good-byes. And be quick about it, he added, his voice full of false cordiality. Lena’s mother and sister wept as they embraced a final time, but her father managed to maintain an outward composure. Holding Lena close, he whispered that he would love her forever and that someday soon they would all be together again. Then Lena felt her father place something in her coat pocket. A few seconds later, the monster was leading her out of the theater. Just keep walking, Miss Herzfeld, he was saying. And whatever you do, don’t look back. If you look back, even once, I’ll put you on the train, too.

  “And what do you think I did?” she asked.

  “You kept walking.”

  “That’s correct. Miss Herzfeld kept walking. And she never looked back. Not once. And she never saw her family again. Within three weeks, they were dead. But not Miss Herzfeld. She was alive because she had blond hair. And her sister had been turned to ashes because hers was dark.”

  21

  AMSTERDAM

  Lena Herzfeld went into hiding a second time. Her odyssey began in the building directly across the street from the theater, at Plantage Middenlaan 31. A former day-care center for working-class families, it had been turned by the Nazis into a second detention center reserved for infants and toddlers. But during the period of the deportations, several hundred small children were smuggled out in crates and potato sacks and turned over to the Dutch Resistance.

  “The SS man personally walked me into the nursery and handed me over to the staff. I’m amazed he kept his word at all, but he had his painting. The war was full of such inexplicable contradictions. One moment, a heartless monster. The next, a man capable of a modicum of human decency.”

  Lena was spirited to Friesland in northwestern Holland in the trunk of a car and surrendered to a childless couple active in the Dutch Resistance. They gave her a new name and told neighbors she had been orphaned in the German bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940. Because they were devout Calvinists, they expected Lena to attend church services on Sunday for the sake of her cover. But inside the security of the home, she was encouraged to maintain her Jewish identity.

  “You might find this difficult to understand, but I consider myself to be one of the lucky ones. Many of the children who were hidden with Christian families had dreadful experiences. But I was treated kindly and with a great deal of warmth and affection.”

  “And when the war ended?”

  “There was no place for me to go. I stayed in Friesland until I was eighteen. Then I attended university and eventually became a teacher. I thought many times about emigrating to Israel or America. But in the end, I decided to stay. I felt it was my duty to remain in Amsterdam with the ghosts of the dead.”

  “Did you ever try to reclaim your family home?”

  “It wasn’t possible. After the war the Dutch government declared that the rights of current owners were equal to those of the prior Jewish owners. It meant that unless I could prove that the man who purchased our home had done so in bad faith, I couldn’t dislodge him. Furthermore, I had no proof my father had ever owned the house or even proof of his death, both of which were required by law.”

  “And the Rembrandt?”

  “I came to regard the woman in that painting as an accomplice in my family’s murder. I never wanted to see her again.”

  “But you kept the receipt,” Gabriel said.

  The child of the attic fixed him with a suspicious stare.

  “Isn’t that what your father placed in your pocket as you were saying good-bye?”

  Still she didn’t answer.

  “And you kept it with you in hiding, didn’t you, Lena? You kept it because it was the only thing of
your father’s you had.” Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Where’s the receipt, Lena?”

  “It’s in the top drawer of my nightstand. I look at it every night before I go to sleep.”

  “Will you let me have it?”

  “Why would you want such a thing?”

  “Your Rembrandt is out there somewhere. And we’re going to find it.”

  “That painting is covered in blood.”

  “I know, Lena. I know.”

  22

  AMSTERDAM

  It was approaching eleven o’clock when they left Lena Herzfeld’s house and a hard rain was hammering on the pavement. Chiara wanted to find a taxi but Gabriel insisted on walking. They stood for a long time outside the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater, now a memorial to those who had been imprisoned there, before making their way to Rembrandt’s old house at the top of Jodenbreestraat. Gabriel could only marvel at the shortness of the distance. A kilometer, no more. He was certain the next link in the chain would be longer.

  They ate with little appetite at a quiet restaurant near their hotel, talking about anything but the horror they had just heard, and climbed into bed shortly after one. Chiara’s sleep was disturbed by nightmares, though much to her surprise she found that Ivan Kharkov had been displaced from his starring role by a man in black attempting to rip a child from her arms. She forced herself awake to find Gabriel seated at the writing desk in their room, the lamp burning brightly, a pen scratching furiously across a sheet of paper.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “I was dreaming about him.”

  “I know.”

  In the morning, while Gabriel was still sleeping, she discovered the product of his nocturnal labors. Attached to the receipt for the painting was a document many pages in length, written on hotel stationery in Gabriel’s distinctive left-handed script. At the top of the first page was the date and the city followed by the words The Testimony of Lena Herzfeld. Chiara leafed rapidly through the pages, astonished by what she was reading. Blessed with a flawless memory, Gabriel had created a verbatim transcript of the entire conversation. And on the final page he had written a short note to himself.

  Sometimes the best way to find a painting is to find where it’s been.

  Find Kurt Voss.

  Find the painting.

  PART TWO

  ATTRIBUTION

  23

  SOUTHWARK, LONDON

  There are few things in the newspaper business more excruciating than a staff meeting that convenes at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Half those present are already thinking about their plans for the weekend while the rest are on deadline and therefore anxious about work still to be done. At the moment, Zoe Reed fell into neither category, though admittedly her mind had begun to wander.

  Like nearly everyone else gathered in the fifth-floor conference room of the Financial Journal, Zoe had heard it all many times before. The once-mighty tablet of global business was now a financial basket case. Circulation and advertising revenue were locked in a downward spiral with no bottom in sight. Not only was the Journal unprofitable, it was hemorrhaging cash at an alarming and unsustainable rate. If trends continued, the paper’s corporate parent, Latham International Media, would have no choice but to immediately seek a buyer—or, more likely, shut the paper down. In the meantime, newsroom expenditures would once again have to be slashed to the bone. No more costly lunches with sources. No more unapproved travel. And no more paid subscriptions to other publications. From this moment forward, Journal reporters could consume their news just like everyone else in the world—on the Internet for free.

  The bearer of this gloomy report was Jason Turnbury, the Journal’s editor in chief. He was prowling the conference room like a matador, his necktie artfully loosened, his face still tanned from a recent Caribbean holiday. Jason was a rocket, a corporate shooting star who possessed an unrivaled ability to sidestep on-coming trouble. If there was blood to be shed over the Journal’s declining fortunes, it wasn’t going to be his. Zoe knew for a fact Jason was being groomed for a corner office at Latham headquarters. She knew this because, against all better judgment, they had once had a brief affair. Though they were no longer lovers, he still confided in her and regularly sought her advice and approval. Therefore it came as no surprise to Zoe when, five minutes after the meeting broke up, he phoned her at her desk.

  “How was I?”

  “A bit maudlin for my taste. Surely it’s not as bad as all that.”

  “Worse. Think Titanic.”

  “You don’t really expect me to do my job without a proper travel and entertainment budget.”

  “The new rules apply to all editorial personnel. Even you.”

  “Then I quit.”

  “Good. That makes one fewer person I’ll have to sack. Actually, two. My God, but we pay you an outrageous amount of money.”

  “That’s because I’m special. It even says so in my title, Special Investigative Correspondent. You gave it to me yourself.”

  “Biggest mistake of my career.”

  “For the record, it was your second biggest, Jason.”

  The line had been delivered with Zoe’s trademark acid wit. Low and sultry, Zoe’s voice was one of the most dreaded sounds within the London financial world. It regularly reduced arrogant CEOs to mush and transformed even the most combative lawyers into blabbering idiots. Among the most respected and feared investigative journalists in Britain, Zoe and her small team of reporters and researchers had left a trail of broken companies and careers in their wake. She had exposed crooked accounting schemes, insider-trading practices, crimes against the environment, and countless cases involving bribery and kickbacks. And though most of her work involved British firms, she routinely reported on corporate shenanigans in other European countries and in America. Indeed, during the chaotic autumn of 2008, Zoe had spent several weeks trying to prove that an American wealth-management firm run by a highly respected strategist was actually a giant Ponzi scheme. She had been within forty-eight hours of confirming the story when Bernard Madoff was arrested by FBI agents and charged with securities fraud. Zoe’s previous reporting gave the Journal a distinct advantage over its competitors as the scandal unfolded, though privately she never forgave herself for not getting Madoff before the authorities. Fiercely competitive and disdainful of those who broke rules of any sort, Zoe Reed had vowed to never let another corrupt, thieving businessman slip through her grasp.

  At the moment, she was plugging the final holes in an upcoming exposé about a rising Labor MP who had accepted at least one hundred thousand pounds in illicit payments from Empire Aerospace Systems, a leading British defense contractor. The Journal’s publicity department had tipped off the broadcast news networks that Zoe had an important piece in the works, and appearances had already been quietly scheduled on the BBC, CNBC, Sky News, and CNN International. Unlike most print reporters, Zoe was a fluid television performer who had the rare ability to forget she was sitting in front of a camera. What’s more, she invariably was the most attractive person on the set. The BBC had been trying to lure Zoe away from the Journal for years, and she had recently flown to New York to meet with executives at CNBC. Zoe now possessed the power to quadruple her salary simply by picking up the telephone. Which meant she was in no mood to listen to a lecture from Jason Turnbury about budget cuts.

  “May I explain why your new cost-cutting measures will make it impossible to do my job?”

  “If you must.”

  “As you well know, Jason, my sources come from the inside, and they have to be seduced into giving me information. Do you really expect me to convince a senior executive to betray his company over an egg-and-dill sandwich at Pret A Manger?”

  “Did you look at your expense form last month before you signed it? I could have employed two junior editors for the amount of money you spent in the Grill Room of the Dorchester alone.”

  “Some conversations can’t be done
over the telephone.”

  “I agree. So why don’t you meet me at Café Rouge for a drink so we can continue this in person?”

  “You know that’s not a good idea, Jason.”

  “I’m suggesting a cordial drink between two professionals.”

  “That’s bollocks, and you know it.”

  Jason made light of her rejection and quickly changed the subject.

  “Are you watching television?”

  “Are we still allowed to watch television or is that now considered a waste of expensive corporate electricity?”

  “Turn to Sky News.”

  Zoe switched the channel and saw three men standing before a gathering of reporters at the United Nations complex in Geneva. One was the UN secretary-general, the second was an Irish rock star who had worked tirelessly to eradicate poverty in Africa, and the third was Martin Landesmann. A fabulously wealthy Geneva-based financier, Landesmann had just announced he was donating one hundred million dollars to improve Third World food production. It was not the first time Landesmann had made such a gesture. Referred to as “Saint Martin” by detractors and supporters alike, Landesmann reportedly had given away at least a billion dollars of his own money to various charitable enterprises. His enormous wealth and generosity were matched only by his reclusiveness and scorn for the press. Landesmann had granted just one interview in his entire life. And Zoe had been the reporter.

  “When was this?”

  “Earlier this afternoon. He refused to take questions.”

  “I’m surprised they were able to convince Martin to even come.”

  “I didn’t realize you two were on a first-name basis.”

  “Actually, I haven’t spoken to him in months.”