Prince of Fire

his heels. Never one to fall behind on a restoration-unless, of course, it was due to circumstances beyond his control.

Isherwood straightened his necktie and lowered his narrow shoulders, so that the figure peering back at him had the easy grace and confidence that seemed the birthright of Englishmen of a certain class. He moved in their circles, disposed of their collections, and acquired new ones on their behalf, yet he would never truly be one of them. And how could he? His backbone-of-England surname and lanky English bearing concealed the fact that he was not, at least technically, English at all. English by nationality and passport, yes, but German by birth, French by upbringing, and Jewish by religion. Only a handful of trusted friends knew that Isherwood had staggered into London as a child refugee in 1942 after being carried across the snowbound Pyrenees by a pair of Basque shepherds. Or that his father, the renowned Berlin art dealer Samuel Isakowitz, had ended his days on the edge of a Polish forest, in a place called Sobibor.

There was something else Julian Isherwood kept secret from his competitors in the London art world-and from nearly everyone else, for that matter. Over the years he had done the occasional favor for a certain gentleman from Tel Aviv named Shamron. Isherwood, in the Hebrew-based jargon of Shamron’s irregular outfit, was a sayan, an unpaid volunteer helper, though most of his encounters with Shamron had been closer to blackmail than voluntarism.

Just then Isherwood spotted a flash of leather and denim amid the fluttering mackintoshes of New Bond Street. The figure vanished for a moment, then reappeared suddenly, as though he had stepped through a curtain onto a lighted stage. Isherwood, as always, was taken aback by his unimpressive physical stature-five-eight, perhaps, a hundred and fifty pounds fully clothed. His hands were thrust into the pockets of a car-length black- leather jacket, his shoulders were slumped slightly forward. His walk was smooth and seemingly without effort, and there was a slight outward bend to his legs that Isherwood always associated with men who could run very fast or were good at football. He wore a pair of neat suede brogues with rubber soles and, despite the steady rain, carried no umbrella. The face came into focus-long, high at the forehead, narrow at the chin. The nose looked as though it had been carved from wood, the cheekbones were wide and prominent, and there was a hint of the Russian steppes in the green, restless eyes. The black hair was cropped short and very gray at the temples. It was a face of many possible national origins, and Gabriel had the linguistic gifts to put it to good use. Isherwood never quite knew who to expect when Gabriel walked through the door. He was no one, he lived nowhere. He was the eternal wandering Jew.

Suddenly he was standing at Isherwood’s side. He offered no greeting, and his hands remained jammed in his coat pockets. The manners Gabriel had acquired working for Shamron in the secret world had left him ill-equipped to function in the overt one. Only when he was playing a role did he appear animated. In those rare flashes when an outsider glimpsed the real Gabriel-such as now, thought Isherwood-the man they saw was silent and sullen and clinically shy. Gabriel made people supremely uncomfortable. It was one of his many gifts.

They walked across the lobby toward the registrar’s desk. “Who are we today?” Isherwood asked sotto voce, but Gabriel just leaned over and scrawled something illegible in the logbook. Isherwood had forgotten that he was left-handed. Signed his name with his left hand, held a paintbrush with his right, handled his knife and fork with either. And his Beretta? Thankfully, Isherwood did not know the answer to that.

They climbed the stairs, Gabriel at Isherwood’s shoulder, quiet as a bodyguard. His leather coat did not rustle, his jeans did not whistle, his brogues seemed to float over the carpet. Isherwood had to brush against Gabriel’s shoulder to remind himself he was still there. At the top of the stairs a security guard asked Gabriel to open his leather shoulder bag. He unzipped the flap and showed him the contents: a Binomag visor, an ultraviolet lamp, an infrascope, and a powerful halogen flashlight. The guard, satisfied, waved them forward.

They entered the salesroom. Hanging from the walls and mounted on baize-covered pedestals were a hundred paintings, each bathed in carefully focused light. Scattered amid the works were roving bands of dealers- jackals, thought Isherwood, picking over the bones for a tasty morsel. Some had their faces pressed to the paintings, others preferred the long view. Opinions were being formed. Money was on the table. Calculators were producing estimates of potential profit. It was the unseemly side of the art world, the side Isherwood loved. Gabriel seemed oblivious. He moved like a man accustomed to the chaos of the souk. Isherwood did not have to remind Gabriel to keep a low profile. It came naturally to him.

Jeremy Crabbe, the tweedy director of Bonhams’ Old Master department, was waiting near a French school landscape, an unlit pipe wedged between his yellowed incisors. He shook Isherwood’s hand joylessly and looked at the younger man in leather at his side. “Mario Delvecchio,” Gabriel said, and as always, Isherwood was astonished by the pitch-perfect Venetian accent.

“Ahhh,” breathed Crabbe. “The mysterious Signore Delvecchio. Know you by reputation, of course, but we’ve never actually met.” Crabbe shot Isherwood a conspiratorial glance. “Something up your sleeve, Julian? Something you’re not telling me?”

“He cleans for me, Jeremy. It pays to have him look before I leap.”

“This way,” Crabbe said skeptically, and led them into a small, windowless chamber just off the main saleroom floor. The exigencies of the operation had required Isherwood to express a modicum of interest in other works-otherwise Crabbe might be tempted to let it slip to one of the others that Isherwood had his eye on a particular piece. Most of the pieces were mediocre-a lackluster Madonna and child by Andrea del Sarto, a still life by Carlo Magini, a Forge of Vulcan by Paolo Pagani-but in the far corner, propped against the wall, was a large canvas without a frame. Isherwood noticed that Gabriel’s well-trained eye was immediately drawn to it. He also noticed that Gabriel, the consummate professional, immediately looked the other way.

He started with the others first and spent precisely two minutes on each canvas. His face was a mask, betraying neither enthusiasm nor displeasure. Crabbe gave up trying to read his intentions and passed the time chewing his pipe stem instead.

Finally he turned his attention to Lot No. 43, Daniel in the Lions’ Den, Erasmus Quellinus, 86 inches by 128 inches, oil on canvas, abraded and extremely dirty. So dirty, in fact, that the cats at the edge of the image seemed entirely concealed by shadow. He crouched and tilted his head in order to view the canvas with raked lighting. Then he licked three fingers and scrubbed at the figure of Daniel, which caused Crabbe to cluck and roll his bloodshot eyes. Ignoring him, Gabriel placed his face a few inches from the canvas and examined the manner in which Daniel’s hands were folded and the way one leg was crossed over the other.

“Where did this come from?”

Crabbe removed his pipe and looked into the bowl. “A drafty Georgian pile in the Cotswolds.”

“When was it last cleaned?”

“We’re not quite sure, but by the looks of it, Disraeli was prime minister.”

Gabriel looked up at Isherwood, who in turn looked at Crabbe. “Give us a moment, Jeremy.”

Crabbe slipped from the room. Gabriel opened his bag and removed the ultraviolet lamp. Isherwood doused the lights, casting the room into pitch darkness. Gabriel switched on the lamp and shone the bluish beam toward the painting.

“Well?” asked Isherwood.

“The last restoration was so long ago it doesn’t show up in ultraviolet.”

Gabriel removed the infrascope from his bag. It bore an uncanny resemblance to a pistol, and Isherwood felt a sudden chill as Gabriel wrapped his hand around the grip and switched on the luminescent green light. An archipelago of dark blotches appeared on the canvas, the retouching of the last restoration. The painting, though extremely dirty, had suffered only moderate losses.

He switched off the infrascope, then slipped on his magnifying visor and studied the figure of Daniel in the searing white glow of the halogen flashlight.

“What do you think?” asked Isherwood, squinting.

“Magnificent,” Gabriel replied distantly. “But Erasmus Quellinus didn’t paint it.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure enough to bet two hundred thousand pounds of your money.”

“How reassuring.”

Gabriel reached out and traced his forefinger along the muscular, graceful figure. “He was here, Julian,” he said, “I can feel him.”

THEY WALKED TO St. James’s for a celebratory lunch at Green’s, a gathering place for dealers and collectors in Duke Street, a few paces from Isherwood’s gallery. A bottle of chilled white burgundy awaited them in their