The Rembrandt Affair

painting concealed beneath his smock, Peruggia walked past an unmanned guard post and struck out across the Louvre's vast center courtyard. And with that the world's most famous work of art vanished into the Paris morning.

Even more remarkable, twenty-four hours would elapse before anyone noticed the picture was missing. When the alert finally went out, the French police launched a massive if somewhat farcical search. Among their first suspects was an avant-garde painter named Pablo Picasso, who was arrested at his Montmartre apartment despite the fact he had been hundreds of miles from Paris at the time of the actual theft.

Eventually, the gendarmes managed to track down Peruggia but quickly cleared him of any suspicion. Had they bothered to look inside the large trunk in his bedroom, the search for the Mona Lisa would have ended. Instead, the painting remained hidden there for two years, until Peruggia foolishly tried to sell it to a well-known dealer in Florence. Peruggia was arrested but spent just seven months in jail. Years later, he was actually permitted to return to France. Oddly enough, the man who carried out the greatest art crime in history then opened a paint store in the Haute-Savoie and lived there quietly until his death.

Maurice Durand learned several important lessons from the strange case of Peruggia. He learned that stealing great paintings was not as difficult as one might think, that the authorities were largely indifferent to art crime, and that the penalties generally were light. But the story of Peruggia also whet Durand's appetite. Antique scientific instruments were his birthright—the shop had belonged to his father, and his grandfather before that— but art had always been his great passion. And while it was true there were worse places to spend one's day than the first arrondissement of Paris, the shop was not a particularly exciting way to earn a living. There were times when Durand felt a bit like the trinkets lining his little display window—polished and reasonably attractive but ultimately good for little more than gathering dust.

It was this combination of factors, twenty-five years earlier, that had compelled Durand to steal his first painting from the Musee des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg—a small still life by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin that hung in a corner rarely visited by guards or patrons. Using an old-fashioned razor, Durand sliced the painting from its frame and slipped it into his attache case. Later, during the train ride back to Paris, he attempted to recall his emotions at the moment of the crime and realized he had felt nothing other than contentment. It was then that Maurice Durand knew he possessed the qualities of a perfect thief.

Like Peruggia before him, Durand kept his trophy in his Paris apartment, not for two years but for two days. Unlike the Italian, Durand already had a buyer waiting, a disreputable collector who happened to be in the market for a Chardin and wasn't worried about messy details like provenance. Durand was well paid, the client was happy, and a career was born.

It was a career characterized by discipline. Durand never stole paintings to acquire ransom or reward money, only to provide inventory. At first he left the masterpieces to the dreamers and fools, focusing instead on midlevel paintings by quality artists or works that might reasonably be confused for pictures with no problem of provenance. And while Durand occasionally stole from small museums and galleries, he did most of his hunting in private villas and chateaux, which were poorly protected and filled to the roof with valuables.

From his base of operations in Paris he built a far-flung network of contacts, selling to dealers as far away as Hong Kong, New York, Dubai, and Tokyo. Gradually, he set his sights on bigger game—the museum-quality masterpieces valued at tens of millions, or in some cases hundreds of millions, of dollars. But he always operated by a simple rule. No painting was ever stolen unless a buyer was waiting, and he only did business with people he knew. Van Gogh's Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear was now hanging in the palace of a Saudi sheikh who had a penchant for violence involving knives. The Caravaggio had found its way to a factory owner in Shanghai while the Picasso was in the hands of a Mexican billionaire with uncomfortably close ties to the country's drug cartels. All three paintings had one thing in common. They would never be seen again by the public.

Needless to say, it had been many years since Maurice Durand had personally stolen a painting. It was a young man's profession, and he had retired after a skylight assault on a small gallery in Austria resulted in a back injury that left him in constant pain. Ever since then he had been forced to utilize the services of hired professionals. The arrangement was less than ideal for all the obvious reasons, but Durand treated his fieldmen fairly and paid them exceedingly well. As a result, he had never had a single unpleasant complication. Until now.

It was the south that produced the finest wines in France and, in Durand's estimation, its best thieves as well. Nowhere was that more true than the ancient port of Marseilles. Stepping from the Gare de Marseille Saint- Charles, Durand was pleased to find the temperature several degrees warmer than it had been in Paris. He walked quickly through the brilliant sunshine along the Boulevard d'Athenes, then turned to the right and headed down to the Old Port. It was approaching midday. The fishing boats had returned from their morning runs and atop the steel tables lining the port's eastern flank were arrayed all manner of hideous-looking sea creatures, soon to be turned into bouillabaisse by the city's chefs. Normally, Durand would have stopped to survey the contents of each with an appreciation only a Frenchman could manage, but today he headed straight for the table of a gray-haired man dressed in a tattered wool sweater and a rubber apron. By all appearances, he was a fisherman who scrounged a respectable living from a sea now empty of fish. But Pascal Rameau was anything but respectable. And he didn't seem surprised to see Maurice Durand.

'How was the catch, Pascal?'

'Merde,' Rameau muttered. 'It seems like we get a little less every day. Soon...' He pulled his lips downward into a Gallic expression of disgust. 'There'll be nothing left but garbage.'

'It's the Italians' fault,' said Durand.

'Everything is the Italians' fault,' Rameau said. 'How's your back?'

Durand frowned. 'As ever, Pascal.'

Rameau made an empathetic face. 'Mine, too. I'm not sure how much longer I can work the boat.'

'You're the richest man in Marseilles. Why do you still go to sea every morning?'

'I'm one of the richest. And I go out for the same reason you go to your shop.' Rameau smiled and looked at Durand's attache case. 'You brought the money?'

Durand nodded.

'It's not wise to carry large amounts of cash in Marseilles. Haven't you heard, Maurice? This town is full of thieves.'

'Very good thieves,' Durand agreed. 'At least, they used to be.'

'A business like ours can be unpredictable.'

'Weren't you the one who always told me that blood is bad for business, Pascal?'

'That's true. But sometimes it's unavoidable.'

'Where is he?'

Rameau tilted his head to the right. Durand walked along the Quai de Rive Neuve toward the mouth of the harbor. About halfway down the marina was a motor yacht called Mistral. Seated on the aft deck, feet propped on the gunwale, eyes concealed by dark glasses, was a man with shoulder-length dark hair pulled into a stubby ponytail. His name was Rene Monjean, among the most gifted of Durand's thieves and usually the most dependable.

'What happened in England, Rene?'

'There were complications.'

'What kind of complications?'

Monjean removed the sunglasses and stared at Durand with a pair of bloodred eyes.

'Where's my painting?'

'Where's my money?'

Durand held up the attache case. Monjean put on the glasses and got to his feet.

13 MARSEILLES

'You really should see a doctor, Rene. Acetone can cause permanent damage to the