“Were all those paintings stolen from Jews?” asked Peel.
“Most of them,” said Gabriel. “They were brought to the Jeu de Paume for sorting and appraisal. Those works the Nazis found desirable were immediately crated and sent by train to Germany.”
“And the rest?”
“The Nazis disposed of thousands of paintings on the French art market, thus giving dealers and collectors an unprecedented opportunity to enlarge their holdings at the expense of their Jewish countrymen.”
“Where are those paintings today?”
“Some have been returned to the heirs of the rightful owners,” said Gabriel. “But many are still circulating through the bloodstream of the art world or hanging on the walls of museums. Which is why a conscientious dealer, collector, or curator might retain the services of a renowned provenance researcher like Charlotte Blake before acquiring a painting with a murky past.”
“He would want her seal of approval?”
“Correct.”
“Is there another reason why someone might hire her?”
“Yes, of course, Timothy. To find a missing painting.”
Smiling, Peel pointed toward the yellow legal pad lying on the corner of the desk. “Have a look. Tell me if you see anything interesting.”
Gabriel adjusted the beam of the lamp and scrutinized the first page. “Sorry, but I’m afraid Sanskrit isn’t one of my languages.”
“It seems that penmanship wasn’t the professor’s strong suit.”
Gabriel flipped to the following page, which was no more legible. The notation at the top of the succeeding page, however, was carefully rendered.
Peel read it aloud. “Untitled portrait of a woman in the surrealist style, oil on canvas, ninety-four by sixty-six centimeters, 1937.”
“Picasso painted numerous such works that same year.”
“How much would one be worth today?”
“A great deal.”
Peel pointed out the next notation.
Galerie Paul Rosenberg . . .
“He was Picasso’s dealer at the time,” explained Gabriel. “His gallery was on the rue la Boétie in Paris. Picasso lived and worked in an apartment next door.”
“Should we assume the painting was purchased there?”
“For now.”
Peel’s gloved fingertip moved down the page. “By this man?”
Bernard Lévy . . .
“Why not?” said Gabriel.
Peel’s fingertip inched downward. “He doesn’t seem to have kept it long.”
Private sale Paris 1944 . . .
“Not a good year for someone named Bernard Lévy to part with a Picasso,” said Gabriel.
Peel pointed out the final entry on the page. “But what could this mean?”
OOC . . .
Gabriel drew his phone. The three letters, when entered into the white box of his search engine, produced twenty-seven million pages of Internet mush. Adding the words Picasso and Untitled was of no help.
He snapped a photograph of the page, then looked at the slumbering computer.
Peel read his thoughts. “I’ll let you know if it contains anything of value the minute we get authorization.”
“If you like . . .”
Peel switched off the computer. “Don’t even think about it, Mr. Allon.”
Gabriel picked up the copy of Charlotte Blake’s Picasso: The War Years and opened it to the acknowledgments. They were as spare and dry as a typical provenance. No expressions of heartfelt gratitude,
no enormous debts due. One name managed to achieve an elevated prominence by dint of the fact that it was the last one mentioned.
It was Naomi Wallach, the world’s foremost expert on the wartime French art market.
8
Victoria Embankment
It occurred to Samantha Cooke, while huddled on a frigid bench on Victoria Embankment, her hands numb with cold, that perhaps she had chosen the wrong line of work. She had been summoned to this spot by an anonymous text message. Polite in tone and precise in syntax, it promised documents of a politically explosive nature. The sender wanted Samantha to reveal the contents of these documents in her newspaper, which was the Tory-leaning Telegraph. Because she was the paper’s chief political correspondent, and one of the most respected members of the Westminster press corps, she was accustomed to stories arriving over her transom—especially stories that could prove damaging to the opposition or, better yet, to a rival within one’s own party. Most of the stuff was trivial and petty, but this approach felt different. It was something significant. Samantha was certain of it.
