reminds us strongly of it, then we would market this work here as a preparatory sketch by the artist. Seventy thousand euros, minus handling expenses and assuming a good outcome after examination by experts. That works out at maybe twenty thousand for you, thirty for me. And that’s just this one. Of course, maybe it won’t work out so well.”
“You just said it was on modern paper and not salable.”
“Quite right. This one here is worth almost nothing. But then he did another just like it. On proper paper. My men removed it earlier. And there are eight more forgeries. I would need to look at them closely to make sure they are marketable, but at first glance I was impressed. More than you, obviously, since you left them here with an aggressive and none-too-bright junior officer guarding the scene.”
The Colonel pulled a fat aluminum cigar case from his breast pocket. He unsheathed the cigar, sliced the end with a silver cutter, then, with plenty of cheek-puffing and grunts, got it alight. When he had surrounded himself in sweet blue smoke, he said: “Well, are we working together or not?”
Blume decided to allow the question to hang in the air with the cigar smoke while he worked out a strategy.
“Well?” insisted the Colonel.
Blume parried with a question of his own. “What about Treacy’s partner, John Nightingale? He must know about the paintings in here.”
“A good practical question,” said the Colonel, lowering himself back into the seat. “But Nightingale almost certainly knows nothing about these. They did not get on very well. Clash of personalities or nationalities or something along those lines. One reason they had the gallery was to maintain a neutral space where they could meet. Treacy told me that once. I don’t think Nightingale was ever in this house.”
“You know a lot, Colonel. So you must also know how they worked together. Logic suggests that Nightingale must have known what Treacy was preparing. To organize things ahead of time.”
“Logic maybe,” said the Colonel. “But that is not how it worked at all. Like so many Anglo-Saxon fraudsters, they considered themselves essentially upright men forced to compromise with Mediterranean reality. Not only did Treacy not say what he was preparing, I know for a fact that he never even told Nightingale he was making fakes. I had this from both of them, and though I struggled to believe it at first, I think it was true. They liked to pretend that Treacy had somehow come across a valuable painting or, as an alternative, that he had created a pastiche on period canvas and then forgotten to mention this incidental detail to Nightingale. Nightingale always said he could pass a lie-detector test if he had to. It was always possible that Treacy was finding genuine old masters and passing them on.”
“Really?” said Blume.
The Colonel smiled behind the swirls of smoke. “Of course not. But good liars tell themselves lies over and over until they believe them. Treacy specialized in ‘finding’ the plausibly overlooked. Nightingale built up provenance stories.”
“Wouldn’t Treacy have wanted some real works to copy from and study now and again?”
“I imagine so. It is possible one of these is real. It’s a world of bluff and double-bluff, and almost nobody ever gets caught. It’s also as close to victimless crime as it’s possible to get.”
“Aren’t the people who buy forgeries victims?” asked Blume.
The Colonel looked slowly to the left, to the right, and then to the left again. He did this a few more times until Blume finally realized that he was shaking his head in ponderous disagreement.
“Do you feel…” the Colonel hesitated, looking for a term, “ sympathy for someone who spends a few million on a painting, which they never even learn is false?”
He allowed himself a silent pause as he continued smoking his cigar, making the occasional appreciative popping sound with his lips. He let the ash fall on the arm of the chair, and when the cigar was finally down to a glowing stub, he started on the elaborate sequence of grunts and movements that indicated he was preparing to stand up again. When he finally succeeded, he seemed to fill the room with bulk and smoke as he moved around in search of an ashtray.
“Over there,” said Blume, pointing to a lump of heavy crystal on the mantelpiece, but the Colonel allowed the cigar to drop onto the stone flagging on the floor and trod on it.
“Too far,” he said.
The smell of the stubbed cigar was like bad breath. The Colonel picked up an orange from the fruit bowl and began peeling it, dropping the thick skin in slabs on the floor beside the cigar. He divided the orange into four segments and ate three before finally saying, “Let me tell you about a clever trick Treacy and Nightingale liked to work. Treacy would do a damned fine work, usually a small portrait, that looked like it might be a-oh, say a Colberti portrait from his period in Italy, then overpaint it with a poor-quality forgery, usually copied directly from an existing work by someone pretty well known-Van Dyck, say.”
“I’ve never heard of Colberti,” said Blume.
“That’s because I just made up the name,” said the Colonel, and popped the quarter orange into his mouth. “Interesting you should spot that.” He winced slightly as if the orange was bitter. “It means you know more about art than you are letting on.”
“All I said was I had never heard of him,” said Blume.
“You were puzzled by an invented name, Commissioner.” The Colonel wiped some juice from his lips with the back of his hand. “Now let me finish. Let’s say Dosso Dossi instead of the non-existent Colberti. Better?”
“Stop testing and get back to telling, Colonel.”
“Well said, Commissioner. Nightingale would place the easily-spotted Van Dyck fake on the market. When a buyer came forward, he would ask him if he was absolutely sure he wanted the work. Affecting great probity, he would sometimes confidentially reveal to the buyer that he had some suspicions about the authenticity of the work. This served three purposes. The first was to cover himself from liability or any possible setup by us. The second was to insure the buyer examined the painting carefully, including what was under it. Once the buyer looked below the surface and found what he thought was an original by an old master hidden beneath, then he would buy the painting at whatever the asking price was and would usually insist that it had passed all his tests for authenticity. Clever, eh?”
“You said three purposes,” said Blume. “Coverage from liability, persuading the buyer to look below the surface to get to the ‘real’ fake below, and the third?”
“Amusement. Delight,” said the Colonel. “The glee of watching people get trapped by their own greed.”
“And are you immune from the same risk?”
“No. Are you?”
Blume was saved from replying by his phone ringing. He answered it without looking at who was calling, and felt a slight lift as he heard Kristin’s voice.
“Alec, that was an interesting name you gave us. Are you alone?”
“No. I’m sitting right in front of him now.”
The Colonel nodded approvingly. “Getting some background on me? Good work.”
“And now he knows I’m talking about him,” Blume said.
Kristin hesitated, then said, “I’ll call you back.”
“No, tell me now. There must be something interesting that made you call back so soon.”
“He’s ex-secret service. SISDE as it was then. One of the bad apples from the barrels and barrels of bad apples Italy has been producing for years,” said Kristin. “ Deviato as the press likes to say. He’s supposed to be retired. Also he was involved in an interesting way in the investigations into the Moro murder. In a way that involved this embassy. But that’s all I’m telling you on the phone.”
“Is that your romantic way of confirming dinner this evening?”
Kristin paused before replying. “Yes. We need to talk. You were joking when you said he was sitting in front of you, weren’t you?”
“Of course I was,” said Blume.
“Alec, you need to be careful of this guy. He used to be at the center of a lot of stuff.”
“Used to, but isn’t now?”
“Not now, but he’ll still have connections. Don’t let him know you’re on to him.”
Blume hung up, danced his fingers back and forth on the armrest as he considered Kristin’s warning, then said to the Colonel, “So I hear you were in SISDE.”
