A Glancing Light

out, others would guess the reason, something that would do his business no good. Al-Ghazali had accepted the condition, and they had shaken hands on it over the souffle au Grand Marnier.

But later the Omani began to have second thoughts. He was new to collecting and unsure of himself, and the hard sell hadn't sat well with him. Nor had the secrecy, the emphasis on discretion. The following evening, at another party, he had chatted with a South Korean newspaper publisher who, like al-Ghazali, was in New York for his first major auction. The Korean had astonished him by saying that Blusher had offered him the Terbrugghen over lunch. The Korean, in fact, was under the impression that his own conditional offer of $330,000 had been accepted.

Stung by this evidence of bad faith (and very likely by the lower price the Korean had gotten), al-Ghazali went to the police. He was referred to an art-squad detective who in turn contacted the FBI's white-collar crime squad, which had already been following Blusher's much-publicized art adventures with skepticism if not outright suspicion.

'Ha,' I said on hearing this.

'What?'

'I said ha. They weren't the only ones. Didn't I say all along he was pulling something?'

'Did you?' Calvin said. 'I don't remember that.'

'Go ahead, Calvin.'

The FBI had quickly gone into action. A few days after Blusher returned to Seattle, he was approached by a Portland art dealer claiming to be an intermediary for a rich Uruguayan interested in making some, ah, discreet art purchase, preferably without the usual bothersome and time-consuming forms and declarations.

Blusher had leaped slavering for the bait. The mysterious Uruguayan had been shown the Terbrugghen, with the over-painted 'van Eyck' now removed, and a price of $400,000 had been agreed upon. The Uruguayan, who preferred to deal in cash (Blusher had cheerfully agreed to this), would return with the money the next day.

Instead, a team of FBI agents and Seattle Police Department detectives had arrived at Venezia with both a search warrant and an arrest warrant. In a closet next to Blusher's office they had found the Terbrugghen. Within an hour they'd uncovered three identical copies. 'Exact duplicates, front and back,' was the way they put it in their report.

At first, Blusher had claimed that they were all part of his legitimate authentic-simulated-masterpiece business. Then he had changed his mind and gone to a modified version of his mistaken-shipment-from-Italy story. Then he had decided that he wanted to talk to a lawyer, after all, and had said no more.

I sighed with satisfaction. It was just as I'd thought. The panel on which Blusher's Terbrugghen was painted had, of course, come from Ugo's picture, the back of which had been sawed off and replaced with an imitation. The Terbrugghen had then been forged directly on the genuine panel, which would have been a little thinner than before, but so what? Old panels were hardly uniform in thickness. Then, to spice up the eventual 'discovery,' the Terbrugghen had been painted over with the van Eyck.

Blusher, after gulling me into suggesting that he have it X-rayed, had taken it to the university. There, Eleanor Freeman had been startled to see (in a shadowy radiographic exposure) what looked very much like a Hendrik Terbrugghen painting underneath the fake van Eyck. Who could blame her for leaping to the conclusion that she'd found a lost masterpiece? As Tony had said: 'Why the hell would anyone paint a first-class forgery, then cover it up with another one so nobody could see it? That's crazy.'

Not so crazy, it seemed.

'So he had three copies of the original made,' I said slowly, 'maybe even more, and he was selling them off as the original at three or four hundred thousand dollars apiece. He makes over a million dollars, and the joke is that even the original was a fake to begin with.'

'Some joke,' Calvin said.

After he hung up I kicked off my shoes, lay back on the bed with my hands clasped behind my neck, and closed my eyes. I was beat, too, but my mind was buzzing.

'Sounded interesting,' Anne called from the bathroom. I could hear her brushing her hair.

'The Terbrugghen's a fake,' I said dreamily.

'I heard.'

'A fake seventeenth-century Dutch painting on a real panel.'

'Uh-huh. Chris, you can talk normal-speed. I think I'm capable of following this.'

'And the Uytewael is a real seventeenth-century Dutch painting on a fake panel.'

I heard her come out of the bathroom, still brushing. 'So I gathered. Quite a plot.'

'Damn, I should have figured it out long ago. I knew Ugo's picture'd been tampered with the minute I looked at it, but I got going in the wrong direction and I couldn't get turned around. I couldn't get off the idea of a forged painting. I hardly looked at the back. It never occurred to me the panel was forged.'

'Well, of course not,' she said supportively. 'It wouldn't occur to anyone.' She brushed without speaking for a few seconds. 'Chris, do you think that's why they tried to kill you? To keep you from finding out?'

'I guess so. I just wasn't as smart as they gave me credit for.'

More brushing, slow and silky. What a lovely sound, I thought.

'Anne, I'm starting to think I might know who 'they' are. But I still haven't put all the pieces together. I need a little more information. And I think I can get that tomorrow.'

The brushing stopped. 'Chris ... shouldn't you just tell Antuono and let him handle it?'

'Not quite yet, I think. Don't worry, I'm not going to do anything dangerous. I just need to stop by the hospital first thing in the morning and get one more piece from Max. Then I'll go straight to Antuono, I promise. And then we'll be off to Lake Maggiore. Noon at the latest.'

'Well ... all right,' she said doubtfully. The sound of hair being brushed resumed. I opened my eyes. She was standing at the mirror in a pale-green shift, her bare arms upraised, brushing rhythmically.

I watched her with simple, mindless pleasure. 'Is that what they're wearing in the Air Force these days?'

And as I said it I realized that I could put to rest another one of the San Francisco-based worries that had been nagging at me all day. My hormones were functioning just fine, busily—even eagerly—performing their appointed tasks.

'You bet.' Her reflection smiled at me from the mirror. 'Standard government issue. Like it?'

'Not too bad,' I said. 'Why don't you come over here so I can see it better?'

Chapter 20

One more piece from Max. With it, unless I was way off track, I'd be able to fit most of the rest of it together. I'd have a why and I'd have a when, and I could stop looking over my shoulder. The trouble, I thought, was going to be getting it out of him. But as it turned out, I needn't have worried.

Clearly, he was well on the way to mending. With his bed cranked to a sitting position he looked comfortable, even cheerful. His face had lost its pallor and begun to plump out, and his mustache was sprouting again, as exuberant as ever, if a little grayer. The metal contraptions on his legs were still in place, bulky and awkward under the sheet, but the ropeand-pulley arrangement had been removed, so the place didn't look like a torture chamber anymore.

He was reading a magazine, propping it on a tray attached to the bed. He was, I saw with surprise, smoking a small black cigar; somewhat gingerly but with obvious relish. As I pushed the door quietly open he was putting the cigar down on a saucer to take a sip from the spout of a covered plastic cup, all the time continuing to read.

'Hi, Max,' I said.