7

The FBI field office is run from the fourth floor, which was designed so that you see nothing but hallways and doors unless you walk through one of the doors. A few of the doors are open, and as I walk past them, I sense people watching me. At a door marked “Patrick Bowles, Special Agent in Charge,” Kaiser gives me a look of encouragement.

“Don’t be shy. Just say what you think.”

“I usually do.”

He nods and ushers me into a large L-shaped room with a broad window overlooking Lake Pontchartrain. There’s a desk in the dogleg of the L, and sitting behind it is a florid man with quick green eyes and silver hair. On the way over, Kaiser told me that SAC Bowles is the senior FBI official in the state of Louisiana, in charge of 150 field agents and 100 support personnel. Trained as an attorney, Bowles has served in six other field offices and has supervised several major investigations. Fashion-wise, the SAC is the antithesis of John Kaiser: he’s wearing a three-piece suit that never hung on any department store rack, silver links on his French cuffs, and a silk tie. When he gets up to greet me, I see that his shoes are Johnston amp; Murphy, at the least.

“Ms. Glass?” he says, offering his hand. “Patrick Bowles.”

A little Irish in his voice. It makes me think of the Irish Channel, but of course the Channel is now home to black and Cuban families, not Irish immigrants. To avoid awkwardness I shake his hand and give him a guarded smile.

“Take a seat here,” he says, motioning toward a leather chair in a group.

Glancing to my left, I see Arthur Lenz on a sofa in a private seating area in the deep leg of the L. The good doctor doesn’t look happy, but he stands and walks over to us. He and Kaiser do not exchange greetings. Kaiser sits in a chair opposite mine, and Lenz claims the sofa against the wall to my right. SAC Bowles retakes his place behind his desk. He looks like a no-nonsense kind of guy, which is fine with me.

“Have you learned something about my sister?” I ask.

“You’ve met Daniel Baxter?” asks the SAC, ignoring my question. “Of the Investigative Support Unit?”

“You know I have.”

He glances at his watch. “Mr. Baxter wants to discuss something with the four of us. We’ll have a satellite video link in about thirty seconds.”

Bowles pushes a button on his desk, and a three-foot section of wall above Dr. Lenz slides back, revealing a large flat-panel LCD screen.

“Just like James Bond,” I say softly.

Lenz gets up with an irritated sigh and leans against the long window to the right of Bowles’s desk. I glance over at Kaiser, who gives no indication of his feelings. I guess there’s a lot of hurry-up-and-wait in the FBI. There’s a lot of it in photojournalism, too. After a moment, the LCD screen goes blue and numbers begin flickering in the bottom right corner.

“There’s a camera above the screen,” says Bowles. “Baxter can see us all in a wide-angle shot.”

Suddenly, Daniel Baxter’s face fills the screen, and his voice emanates from hidden speakers.

“Hello, Patrick. Hello, Ms. Glass. John. Arthur.”

The video feed isn’t jerky like some home-computer hookup. It has the seamless resolution of corporate America’s tete-a-tetes. The ISU chief looks directly at me as he speaks, which gives me the feeling that he’s actually standing in the room.

“Ms. Glass, from the moment you called me from your return flight from Hong Kong, we’ve been using the combined weight of the Departments of Justice and State to gather the Sleeping Women paintings for forensic analysis. Negotiations like these usually take weeks, but the exigencies of this situation allowed us to apply unprecedented pressure. We now have six paintings in our possession. We’ve already begun our analysis, using both our own technicians and outside consultants. The bad news is, we’ve found no fingerprints preserved in the paint.”

“Damn,” curses Bowles.

“There are hundreds of prints on the frames, of course, but they’re probably meaningless. We have found traces of talc in the paint, which suggests that the artist wore surgical gloves while doing his work. We have what we believe to be the first painting, and it tests positive for talc, which means the UNSUB was intent on protecting his identity from the start. This guy doesn’t learn as he goes. He’s a savant. We’re X-raying the paintings to find out if there are any hidden messages or ghosts, but we-”

“What’s that?” asks Bowles. “A ghost?”

“A painting beneath a painting,” says Lenz, speaking for the first time.

“X rays might also detect fingerprints on the canvas beneath the paint,” Baxter continues. “Our UNSUB may not have been so careful as he made sketches, knowing that the surface would soon be covered with paint.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Kaiser says. “Artists know about X-ray analysis.”

“I’m glad you’re letting me in on all this,” I say to the screen. “But what’s it leading to? What’s the urgency?”

“Bear with me,” says Baxter. “We’ve made arrangements for eight paintings to be shipped to us in Washington. The owners of six more – all in Asia – have given us permission to send forensic teams to their homes or galleries to make the necessary studies. Those teams are en route now.”

“That leaves five,” says Kaiser. “Nineteen total, right?”

Baxter nods. “The remaining five are owned by a man named Marcel de Becque.”

“A Frenchman?” asks Bowles.

Something ticks in my brain, something Christopher Wingate said.

“It’s more complicated than that,” says Baxter. “De Becque was born in Algeria in 1930, but reared in Vietnam. His father was a French colonial businessman who put his money into tea plantations.”

“And he lives in the Cayman Islands,” I finish.

“How did you know that?” Baxter asks sharply.

“Wingate mentioned him.”

“De Becque won’t send us his paintings? ”asks Kaiser.

“He’s not only refused to ship his paintings to us, but also refused to allow our forensic teams to go to his estate on Grand Cayman to study them.”

Kaiser and Lenz share a look.

“What reason did he give?” asks the psychiatrist.

“He said it was inconvenient.”

“Frog son of a bitch,” growls Bowles. “What’s he doing in the Caymans? Probably running from something.”

“He is,” Baxter confirms. “In 1975, while we scraped the last Americans off the Saigon Embassy roof by helicopter, de Becque was slipping out in a private plane. He’d sold his plantations just before the Tet offensive, which is suspicious in and of itself. He was tied to intelligence people on both sides, and he undoubtedly played both ends against the middle when he could. Word is, he was heavily involved in the unofficial war economy throughout the conflict.”

“Black marketeer,” Kaiser says with obvious distaste.

“Four years ago,” says Baxter, “Marcel de Becque was implicated in a stock-fraud scheme on the Paris Bourse. The scam involved a fraudulent platinum discovery in Africa. He had to flee, but he netted close to fifty million from the deal.”

Bowles whistles from his desk.

“The French can’t extradite him from Cayman, because at some point he established residency in Quebec and obtained Canadian citizenship. Canada and the Caymans have no extradition treaty. We can extradite from Cayman, but de Becque has committed no crime on U.S. soil. He’s immune to pressure from us.”

“As far as we know,” says Bowles, “if we got enough evidence to issue an arrest warrant on conspiracy, we could go in and bring him back under the new laws.”

“That’s not an option at this time, Pat,” says Baxter.

Kaiser unexpectedly voices my thought for me. “What does all this have to do with Jordan Glass?”

Baxter turns to me again. “Monsieur de Becque has made a very unusual proposition. He personally told me that he would allow his Sleeping Women – that’s how he refers to them, as though they’re real women – he would allow them to be photographed – not forensically examined, mind you – but only if the photographer was Jordan Glass.”