Portrait of a Spy

Chapter 34 St. James’s, London

GABRIEL’S ACCOMPLICE WAS NOT YET aware of his plans—hardly surprising, since he was none other than Julian Isherwood, owner and sole proprietor of Isherwood Fine Arts, 7–8 Mason’s Yard. Among the many hundreds of paintings controlled by Isherwood’s gallery was Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene, formerly attributed to the Venetian master Palma Vecchio, now tentatively attributed to none other than the great and mighty Titian himself. For the moment, however, the painting remained locked away in Isherwood’s underground storage room, its image hidden by a protective layer of tissue paper. Isherwood had come to loathe the painting almost as much as the man who had defaced it. Indeed, in Isherwood’s troubled mind, the glorious swath of canvas had come to symbolize all that was wrong with his life.

As far as Isherwood was concerned, it had been an autumn to forget. He had sold just one picture—a minor Italian devotional piece to a minor collector from Houston—and had acquired nothing more than a chronic barking cough that could empty a room quicker than a bomb threat. Word on the street was that he was in the throes of yet another late-life crisis, his seventh or eighth, depending on whether one counted the prolonged Blue Period he endured after being dumped by the girl who worked the coffee machine at the Costa in Piccadilly. Jeremy Crabbe, the tweedy director of the Old Master department at Bonhams, thought a surprise party might lift Isherwood’s sagging spirits, an idea that Oliver Dimbleby, Isherwood’s tubby nemesis from Bury Street, dismissed as the dumbest he’d heard all year. “Given Julie’s precarious health at the moment,” said Oliver, “a surprise party might kill him.” He suggested fixing Isherwood up with a talented tart instead, but then that was Oliver’s solution to every problem, personal or professional.

On the afternoon of Gabriel’s return to London, Isherwood closed his gallery early and, having nothing better to do, headed over to Duke Street through a pelting rain to have a drink at Green’s. Aided by Roddy Hutchinson, universally regarded as the most unscrupulous dealer in all of St. James’s, Isherwood quickly consumed a bottle of white Burgundy, followed by a dose of brandy for his health. Shortly after six, he teetered into the street again to find a taxi, but when one finally approached, he was overcome by a retching coughing fit that left him incapable of lifting his arm. “Bloody hell!” snapped Isherwood as the car swept past, soaking his trousers. “Bloody, bloody, bloody hell!”

His outburst brought on another round of staccato barking. When finally it subsided, he noticed a figure leaning against the brickwork of the passageway leading to Mason’s Yard. He wore a Barbour raincoat and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. The right foot was crossed over the left, and the eyes were sweeping back and forth along the street. He gazed at Isherwood for a moment with a mixture of bemusement and pity. Then, without word or sound, he turned and started across the cobbles of the old yard. Against all better judgment, Isherwood followed after him, hacking his lungs out like a consumption patient on the way to the sanatorium.

“Let me see if I understand this correctly,” said Isherwood. “First you cover my Titian in rabbit-skin glue and tissue paper. Then you deposit it in my storage room and disappear to parts unknown. Now you reappear unannounced, looking, as usual, like something the cat dragged in, and tell me that you need the aforementioned Titian for one of your little extracurricular projects. Have I left anything out?”

“In order for this scheme to work, Julian, I’ll need you to deceive the art world and to conduct yourself in a way that some of your colleagues might consider unethical.”

“Just another day at the office, petal,” said Isherwood with a shrug. “But what’s in it for moi?”

“If it works, there will be no more attacks like the one in Covent Garden.”

“Until the next jihadi loon comes along. Then we’ll be back at square one again, won’t we? Heaven knows I’m no expert, but it seems to me the terrorism game is a bit like the art trade. It has its peaks and valleys, its good seasons and bad, but it never goes away.”

In the upper exhibition room of Isherwood’s gallery, the overhead lamps glowed with the softness of votive candles. Rain pattered on the skylight and dripped from the hem of Isherwood’s sodden overcoat, which he had yet to remove. Isherwood frowned at the puddle on his parquet floor and then looked at the wounded painting propped upon the baize-covered pedestal.

“Do you know how much that thing is worth?”

“In a fair auction, ten million in the shade. But in the auction I have in mind . . .”

“Naughty boy,” said Isherwood. “Naughty, naughty boy.”

“Have you mentioned it to anyone, Julian?”

“The painting?” Isherwood shook his head. “Not a peep.”

“You’re sure about that? No moment of indiscretion at the bar at Green’s? No pillow talk with that preposterously young woman from the Tate?”

“Her name’s Penelope,” Isherwood said.

“Does she know about the picture, Julian?”

“ ’Course not. That’s not the way it works when one has a coup, petal. One doesn’t brag about such things. One keeps it very quiet until the moment is just right. Then one announces it to the world with all the usual fanfare. One also expects to be compensated for one’s cleverness. But under your scenario, I’ll be expected to actually take a loss—for the good of God’s children, of course.”

“Your loss will be temporary.”

“How temporary?”

“The CIA is handling all operational expenses.”

“That’s not a line one hears every day in an art gallery.”

“One way or another, Julian, you’ll be compensated.”

“Of course I will,” Isherwood said with mock confidence. “This reminds me of the time my Penelope told me her husband wouldn’t be home for another hour. I’m rather too old to be leaping over garden walls.”

“Still seeing her?”

“Penelope? Left me,” Isherwood said, shaking his head. “They all leave me eventually. But not you, petal. And not this damn cough. I’m starting to think of it as an old friend.”

“Have you seen a doctor?”

“Couldn’t get an appointment. The National Health Service is so bad these days, I’m thinking about becoming a Christian Scientist.”

“I thought you were a hypochondriac.”

“Orthodox, actually.” Isherwood picked at the tissue paper in the upper-right portion of the canvas.

“Every flake of paint you dislodge I have to put back.”

“Sorry,” said Isherwood, slipping his hand into his coat pocket. “There’s precedent for it, you know. A couple of years ago, Christie’s sold a painting attributed to the School of Titian for the paltry sum of eight thousand quid. But the painting wasn’t a School of Titian. It was a Titian Titian. As you might imagine, the owners weren’t terribly pleased. They accused Christie’s of malpractice. The lawyers got involved. There were ugly stories in the press. Bad feelings all round.”

“Perhaps we should give Christie’s a chance to redeem itself.”

“They might actually like that. There’s just one problem.”

“Just one?”

“We’ve already missed the big Old Master sales.”

“That’s true,” Gabriel acknowledged, “but you’re forgetting about the special Venetian School auction planned for the first week of February. A newly discovered Titian might be just the thing to gin up a bit of extra excitement.”

“Naughty boy. Naughty, naughty boy.”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Considering my past connection to certain unsavory elements of this operation, it might be wise to put some distance between the gallery and the final sale. That means we’ll need to enlist the services of another