propel him effortlessly across Duke Street to Green’s Restaurant, where Isherwood had booked a table for lunch. As they sat down, Gabriel’s eyes flickered about the room like searchlights. They were almond-shaped, unnaturally green, and very quick. The cheekbones were broad and square, the lips dark, and the sharp-edged nose looked as though it had been carved from wood. It was a timeless face, thought Isherwood. It could be a face on the cover of a glossy men’s fashion magazine or a face from a dour Rembrandt portrait. It was also a face of many possible origins. It had been a superb professional asset.
Isherwood ordered stuffed sole and Sancerre, Gabriel black tea and a bowl of consomme. He reminded Isherwood of an Orthodox hermit who subsisted on rancid feta and concrete flatbread, only Gabriel lived in a pleasant cottage on a remote tidal creek in Cornwall instead of a monastery. Isherwood had never seen him eat a rich meal, had never seen him smile or admire an attractive pair of hips. He never lusted after material objects. He had only two toys, an old MG motorcar and a wooden ketch, both of which he had restored himself. He listened to his opera on a dreadful little portable CD player stained with paint and varnish. He spent money only on his supplies. He had more high-tech toys in his little Cornish studio than there were in the conservation department of the Tate.
How little Gabriel had changed in the twenty-five years since they had first met. A few more wrinkles around those watchful eyes, a few more pounds on his spare frame. He’d been little more than a boy that day, quiet as a church mouse. Even then, his hair was streaked with gray, the stain of a boy who’d done a man’s job. “Julian Isherwood, meet Gabriel,” Shamron had said. “Gabriel is a man of enormous talent, I assure you.”
Enormous talent, indeed, but there had been gaps in the young man’s provenance-like the missing three years between his graduation from the prestigious Betsal’el School of Art in Jerusalem and his apprenticeship in Venice with the master restorer Umberto Conti. “Gabriel spent time traveling in Europe,” Shamron had said curtly. That was the last time the subject of Gabriel’s European adventures was ever raised. Julian Isherwood didn’t talk about what had happened to his father, and Gabriel didn’t talk about the things he had done for Ari Shamron, alias Rudolf Heller, from approximately 1972 to 1975. Secretly, Isherwood referred to them as the Lost Years.
Isherwood reached into the breast pocket of his jacket and withdrew a check. “Your share from the sale of the Vecellio. One hundred thousand pounds.”
Gabriel scooped up the check and pocketed it with a smooth movement of his hand. He had magician’s hands and a magician’s sense of misdirection. The check was there, the check was gone.
“How much was your share?”
“I’ll tell you, but you must first promise me that you won’t divulge the figure to any of these vultures,” Isherwood said, sweeping his hand across the dining room of Green’s.
Gabriel said nothing, which Isherwood interpreted as a blood oath of everlasting silence.
“One million.”
“Dollars?”
“Pounds, petal. Pounds.”
“Who bought it?”
“A very nice gallery in the American Midwest. Tastefully displayed, I assure you. Can you imagine? I picked it up for sixteen thousand from a dusty sale room in Hull on the hunch-the wild bloody hunch-that it was the missing altarpiece from the church of San Salvatore in Venice. And I was right! A coup like this comes along once in a career, twice if you’re lucky. Cheers.”
They toasted each other, stemmed wineglass to bone-china teacup. Just then a tubby man with a pink shirt and pink cheeks to match presented himself breathlessly at their table.
“Julie!” he sang.
“Hullo, Oliver.”
“Word on Duke Street is you picked up a cool million for your Vecellio.”
“Where the bloody hell did you hear that?”
“There are no secrets down here, love. Just tell me if it’s the truth or a dirty, seditious lie.” He turned to Gabriel, as if noticing him for the first time, and thrust out a fleshy paw with a gold-embossed business card wedged between the thick fingers. “Oliver Dimbleby. Dimbleby Fine Arts.”
Gabriel took the card silently.
“Why don’t you join us for a drink, Oliver?” said Isherwood.
Beneath the table Gabriel put his foot on Isherwood’s toe and pressed hard.
“Can’t now, love. That leggy creature in the booth over there has promised to whisper filth into my ear if I buy her another glass of champagne.”
“Thank God!” blurted Isherwood through clenched teeth.
Oliver Dimbleby waddled off. Gabriel released the pressure on Isherwood’s foot.
“So much for your secrets.”
“Vultures,” Isherwood repeated. “I’m up now, but the moment I stumble they’ll be hovering again, waiting for me to die so they can pick over the bones.”
“Maybe this time you should watch your money a little more carefully.”
“I’m afraid I’m a hopeless case. In fact-”
“Oh, God.”
“-I’m traveling to Amsterdam to have a look at a painting next week. It’s the centerpiece of a triptych, classified as artist unknown, but I have another one of my hunches. I think it may have come from the workshop of Rogier van der Weyden. In fact, I may be willing to bet a great deal of money on it.”
“Van der Weydens are notoriously difficult to authenticate. There are only a handful of works firmly attributed to him, and he never signed or dated any of them.”
“If it came from his workshop, his fingerprints will be on it. And if there’s anyone who can find them, it’s you.”
“I’ll be happy to take a look at it for you.”
“Are you working on anything now?”
“I just finished a Modigliani.”
“I have a job for you.”
“What kind of job?”
“I received a call from a lawyer a few days ago. Said his client has a painting that requires cleaning. Said his client wanted
“What’s the client’s name?”
“Didn’t say.”
“What’s the painting?”
“Didn’t say.”
“So how is it supposed to work?”
“You go to the villa, you work on the painting. The owner pays for your hotel and expenses.”
“Where?”
“ Zurich.”
Something flashed behind Gabriel’s green eyes, a vision, a memory. Isherwood frantically rifled through the file drawers of his own less reliable memory.
