“Perhaps, sir,” she said. “As for the authentication, we have determined the work is unquestionably Vincent’s and, of course, we are prepared to stand behind that authentication.”
“I’d be happy to examine the reports of your authenticators, Miss Bancroft, but quite frankly I don’t need to see them. You see, it’s quite obvious to me that this painting is truly the work of van Gogh.” He placed his hand on her shoulder. “Come here,” he said paternally. “Let me show you something.”
Sarah took a step closer to the canvas. Zizi pointed to the upper right corner.
“Do you see that slight mark on the surface? If I’m not mistaken, that’s Vincent’s thumbprint. You see, Vincent was notoriously cavalier in the way he handled his work. When he finished this one, he probably picked it up by the corner and carried it through the streets of Auvers to his room above Café Ravoux. At any given time there were dozens of paintings in his room there. He used to lean them against the wall, one atop the next. He was working so quickly that the previous paintings were never quite dry when he laid the new ones on top. If you look carefully at this one, you can see the crosshatched impression of canvas on the surface of the paint.”
His hand was still resting on her shoulder. “Very impressive, Mr. al-Bakari. But I’m not surprised, sir. Your reputation precedes you.”
“I learned a long time ago that a man in my position cannot rely on the promises of others. He must be constantly on guard against deceptive schemes and clever forgeries. I’m quite confident no one could ever slip a forgery past me, in business or in art.”
“One would be foolish even to try, Mr. al-Bakari.”
Zizi looked at Isherwood. “You have quite a knack for finding undiscovered work. Didn’t I read something the other day about a Rubens of yours?”
“You did, sir.”
“And now a van Gogh.” Zizi’s gaze moved back to the painting. “Andrew tells me you have a price in mind.”
“We do, Mr. al-Bakari. We think it’s quite reasonable.”
“So do I.” He looked over his shoulder at Herr Wehrli, the banker. “Do you think you can find eighty-five million somewhere in the accounts, Manfred?”
“I think it’s quite possible, Zizi.”
“Then we have a deal, Mr. Isherwood.” He looked at Sarah and said, “I’ll take her.”
AT 4:53 the neviot team sent word to Gabriel that the proceedings had moved to the lower offices and that Isherwood was now in discussions with Herr Wehrli and Abdul amp; Abdul over matters of payment and transfer of custody. Said discussions lasted slightly more than an hour, and at 6:05 came the flash that Mr. Baker and his party were traipsing across the darkened yard toward the motorcade parked in Duke Street. Eli Lavon handled the pursuit. For a few minutes it seemed the mansion in Mayfair was their destination, but by 6:15 it was clear that Mr. Baker and party were headed back to Heathrow and destinations unknown. Gabriel ordered Lavon to break off the chase. He didn’t care where Mr. Baker was going now. He knew they would all meet again soon.
The video recording arrived at 7:45. It had been shot by the security camera mounted in the far corner of the exhibition room above the Claude landscape. Gabriel, as he watched it, felt as though he were seated in a box high above the stage.
“…This is Sarah Bancroft, our assistant director. It’s because of Sarah we’re all here tonight…”
“…Then, we have a deal, Mr. Isherwood. I’ll take her…”
Gabriel stopped the recording and looked at Dina.
“You’ve sold him one girl,” she said. “Now you just have to sell him the other.”
Gabriel opened the audio file of Isherwood’s meeting with Andrew Malone and clicked Play.
“It’s not Zizi’s money. It’s my money. And what Zizi doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“And if he finds out? He’ll drop you in the Empty Quarter and let the vultures pick over your bones.”
21.
THE DENUNCIATION of Andrew Malone arrived at the headquarters of AAB Holdings in Geneva at 10:22 A.M. the following Thursday. It was addressed to “Mr. Abdul Aziz al-Bakari, Esq.” and hand-delivered by a motorcycle courier wearing the uniform of a local Geneva messenger service. The sender’s name was a Miss Rebecca Goodheart, Earl’s Court, London, but inspection by an AAB security underling determined that Miss Goodheart was merely a pseudonym for an anonymous snitch. After finding no evidence of radiological, biological, or explosive material, the underling forwarded the parcel to the office of Wazir bin Talal. There it remained until late Friday afternoon, when bin Talal returned to Geneva after a one-day trip to Riyadh.
He had other more pressing matters to attend to, and so it was nearly eight o’clock before he got around to opening the envelope. He immediately regretted the delay, for the allegations were quite serious in nature. On no fewer than nine occasions, according to Miss Goodheart, Andrew Malone had taken cash payments in violation of his personal services contract with Abdul Aziz al-Bakari. The allegations were supported by a packet of corroborating evidence, including bank deposit receipts, faxes, and personal e-mails taken from Malone’s home computer. Bin Talal immediately placed a call to his superior’s lakeside Geneva mansion and by nine that evening he was placing the documents on the desk of an irate Zizi al-Bakari.
That same evening, at eleven London time, bin Talal placed a call to Malone’s Knightsbridge residence and ordered him to come to Geneva on the first available flight. When Malone protested that he had a prior commitment-and that it was a weekend, for heaven’s sake-bin Talal made it clear that the summons was mandatory and failure to appear would be regarded as a grave offense. The call was recorded by a neviot team and forwarded immediately to Gabriel at the Surrey safe house, along with the rather shaky call Malone placed to British Airways ten minutes later, reserving a seat on the 8:30 A.M. flight to Geneva.
Eli Lavon booked a seat on the flight as well. Upon arrival in Geneva the two men were met by a pair of incongruous cars, Malone by a black S-Class Mercedes driven by one of Zizi’s chauffeurs, and Lavon by a mud-spattered Opel piloted by a courier from Geneva Station. Lavon ordered the bodel to give the Mercedes wide berth. As a result they arrived at Zizi’s mansion several minutes after Malone. They found a secluded parking space farther down the street but did not have to wait long, because twenty minutes later Malone emerged from the house, looking more ashen than usual.
He proceeded directly back to the airport and booked a seat on the earliest flight back to London, which was at five o’clock. Lavon did the same. At Heathrow the two men went their separate ways, Lavon to Surrey and Malone to Knightsbridge, where he informed his wife that unless he could come up with four million pounds in extremely short order, Zizi al-Bakari was going to personally throw him off an extremely high bridge.
That was Saturday night. By the following Wednesday it was clear to Gabriel and the rest of his team that Zizi was in the market for a new exclusive art consultant. It was also clear he had his eye on someone in particular, because Sarah Bancroft, assistant director of Isherwood Fine Arts of Mason’s Yard, St. James’s, was under surveillance.
SHE BEGAN to think of them as friends. They rode with her in the Tube. They strolled in Mason’s Yard and loitered in Duke Street. They followed her to lunch and there was always one waiting in Green’s each evening when she stopped at the bar for a quick one with Oliver and the boys. They went with her to an auction at Sotheby’s and watched her pick over the dreary contents of a saleroom in Hull. They even made a long trip with her down to Devon, where she sweet-talked a dusty minor aristocrat into parting with a lovely Venetian Madonna and Child that Isherwood had coveted for years. “Zizi’s coming for you,” Gabriel told her in a brief telephone call on the Monday afternoon. “It’s only a matter of time. And don’t be alarmed if your things seem a bit out of place when you go home tonight. Sharuki broke into your flat and searched it this morning.”