The Rembrandt Affair

changed the following morning when the all-powerful Paris art critics had their say. Yes, they acknowledged, young Morel was a remarkable technician. But his work lacked boldness, imagination, and, perhaps most important, originality. Within hours, every collector had withdrawn his offer, and a career that seemed destined for the stratosphere came crashing ignominiously to the ground.

At first, Yves Morel was angry. Angry at the critics who had savaged him. Angry at the gallery owners who then refused to show his work. But most of his rage was reserved for the craven, deep-pocketed collectors who had been so easily swayed. 'They're sheep,' Morel declared to anyone who would listen. 'Moneyed phonies who probably couldn't tell a fake from the real thing.' Eventually, the remarkable technician whose work supposedly lacked originality decided to prove his point by becoming an art forger. His paintings now hung on the walls of mansions around the world and even in a couple of small museums. They had made Morel rich—richer than some of the fools who bought them.

Though Morel no longer sold his forgeries on the open market, he occasionally did work for friends from the naughty end of the art trade. One such friend was Maurice Durand. In most cases, Durand utilized Morel's talents for replacement jobs—robberies in which a copy of the stolen painting was left behind to deceive the owner into believing his beloved masterpiece was safe and sound. Indeed, as Durand entered Morel's studio, the forger was putting the finishing touches on a Manet that would soon be hanging in a small Belgian museum. Durand inspected the canvas admiringly before coaxing the Rembrandt from a long cardboard tube and placing it gently on Morel's worktable. Morel whistled between his teeth and said, 'Merde.'

'I couldn't agree more.'

'I assume that's a real Rembrandt?'

Durand nodded. 'And unfortunately so is the bullet hole.'

'What about the stain?'

'Use your imagination, Yves.'

Morel leaned close to the canvas and rubbed gently at the surface. 'The blood is no problem.'

'And the bullet hole?'

'I'll have to adhere a new patch of canvas to the original, then retouch a portion of the forehead. When I'm finished, I'll cover it with a coat of tinted varnish to match the rest of the painting.' Morel shrugged. 'Dutch Old Masters aren't exactly my strong suit, but I think I can pull it off.'

'How long will it take?'

'A couple of weeks. Maybe longer.'

'A client is waiting.'

'You wouldn't want your client to see this.' Morel probed at the bullet hole with his fingertip. 'I'm afraid I'm also going to have to reline it. Looks to me as if the last restorer used a technique called a blind canvas.'

'What's the difference?'

'In a traditional relining, the glue is spread across the entire back of the painting. In a blind canvas, it's only placed along the edges.'

'Why would he have done that?'

'Hard to say. It's a bit easier and much quicker.' Morel looked up and shrugged. 'Maybe he was in a hurry.'

'Can you do that sort of thing?'

'Reline a picture?' Morel appeared mildly offended. 'I reline all my forgeries to make them appear older than they really are. For the record, it's not without risk. I once ruined a fake Cezanne.'

'What happened?'

'Too much glue. It bled through the canvas.'

'Try not to put too much glue on this one, Yves. She has enough problems already.'

'I'll say,' Morel said with a frown. 'If it would make you feel better, I'll remove the blind canvas right now. It won't take long. Make yourself comfortable.'

'I haven't been comfortable in twelve years.'

'The back?'

Durand nodded and eased himself into a paint-smudged wing chair while Morel laid the painting facedown on the worktable. Using the tip of a utility knife, he carefully detached the top left corner of the blind canvas from the original, then worked his way slowly around the entire perimeter. Ten minutes later, the separation was complete.

'Mon Dieu!'

'What have you done to my Rembrandt, Yves?'

'I didn't do anything, but someone else did. Come here, Maurice. You'd better have a look.'

Durand walked over to the worktable. The two men stood side by side, staring silently down at the back of the painting.

'Do me a favor, Yves.'

'What's that?'

'Put it back in the tube and forget it was ever here.'

'Are you sure, Maurice?'

Durand nodded and said, 'I'm sure.'

30 MENDOZA, ARGENTINA

LAN Airlines flight 4286 sank slowly from the cloudless Argentine sky toward Mendoza city and the distant saw-toothed peaks of the Andes. Even from twenty thousand feet, Gabriel could see the vineyards stretching in an endless green sash along the far edge of the high desert valley. He looked at Chiara. She was reclined in her first-class seat, her beautiful face in repose. She had been in the same position, with only slight variations, throughout most of the thirty-hour journey from Amsterdam. Gabriel was envious. Like most Office agents, his career had been marked by near-constant travel, yet he had never mastered the ability to sleep on airplanes. He had passed the long transatlantic flight reading about Kurt Voss in a dossier hastily prepared by Eli Lavon. It included the only known photograph of Voss in his SS uniform—a snapshot taken not long after his arrival in Vienna—along with a posed portrait that appeared in Der Spiegel not long before his death. If Voss had been troubled by a guilty conscience late in life, he had managed to conceal it from the camera lens. He appeared to be a man at peace with his past. A man who slept well at night.

A flight attendant woke Chiara and instructed her to raise her seat back. Within a few seconds, she was once again sleeping soundly and remained so even after the aircraft thudded onto the runway of Mendoza's airport. Ten minutes later, as they entered the terminal, she was brimming with energy. Gabriel walked next to her, legs heavy, ears ringing from lack of sleep.

They had cleared passport control earlier that morning upon their arrival in Buenos Aires, and there were no formalities to see to other than the acquisition of a rental car. In Europe, such indignities were usually handled by couriers and other Office field operatives. But here in distant Mendoza, Gabriel had no choice but to join the long queue at the counter. Despite his printed confirmation, his request for a car seemed to come as something of a surprise to the clerk, for try as she might she could find no record of Gabriel's reservation in the computer. Locating something suitable turned into a thirty-minute Sisyphean ordeal requiring multiple phone calls and much scowling at the computer screen. A car finally materialized, a Subaru Outback that had been involved in an unfortunate mishap during a recent trip into the mountains. Without apology, the clerk handed over the paperwork, then delivered a stern lecture about what the insurance did and did not cover. Gabriel signed the contract, all the while wondering what sort of unfortunate mishap he could inflict on the car before returning it.

Keys and luggage in hand, Gabriel and Chiara stepped into the tinder-dry air. It had been the depths of winter in Europe, but here in the Southern Hemisphere it was high summer. Gabriel located the car in the rental lot; then, after searching it for explosives, they climbed inside and headed into town. Their hotel was located in the Plaza Italia, named for the many Italian immigrants who had settled in the region in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Entering the room, Gabriel was tempted to climb into the freshly turned-down bed. Instead, he