Gabriel sighed. The negotiations had begun. “Name your price, Nicky.”
“The Gentileschi.”
“I’ll do it for five percent of the hammer price.”
“Three percent.”
“Highway robbery.”
“You would know.”
“All right, Nicky, I will clean your Gentileschi for a lousy three percent of the final sale price, though I will insist on reviewing all the paperwork to make certain you haven’t fleeced me.”
“My good fellow,” muttered Lovegrove.
“In exchange, you will tell me everything you know about Galerie Edmond Ricard.”
“Without divulging the identities of any of my clients.”
“So stipulated.”
“Or any paintings they may have purchased or sold through said gallery.”
“Agreed.”
“In that case,” said Lovegrove, smiling broadly, “we have a deal.”
The waiter placed the Bloody Mary in front of Sarah. She raised it a fraction of an inch in Gabriel’s direction. “How shrewd of you,” she said, and drank.
* * *
The client had a posh double-barreled name that did not accurately reflect the circumstances of his birth. His personal fortune, however, was princely and growing by the day. It was his wish to acquire an art collection that would confer instant sophistication and thus grant him entrée into the upper levels of British and Continental society. With the esteemed Nicholas Lovegrove looking over his shoulder, he filled his stately Belgravia mansion with a dazzling assortment of postwar and contemporary paintings—postwar and contemporary being Lovegrove’s strong suit. The price tag for the yearlong shopping spree was a mere one hundred million pounds, ten million of which flowed directly into Lovegrove’s pocket.
“What sort of work does your client do?”
“I refer you to the terms of our arrangement, Allon.”
“Come on, Nicky. Show a little leg.”
“Suffice to say, he knows little about the paintings hanging on his walls and even less about the wicked ways of the art world. I chose the pieces for the collection and handled the negotiations. All the client did was write the checks.”
Which was why it came as something of a surprise when the client, quite out of the blue, asked Lovegrove to accompany him to Geneva to inspect a painting being offered for sale by Galerie Ricard.
“The artist?” asked Gabriel.
“Let’s say for argument’s sake that it was Rothko. And let us also say that after careful inspection of the canvas and the provenance I had no qualms about its authenticity.”
“Was Galerie Ricard the owner of this work?”
“Heavens no. Ricard calls himself a dealer, but in point of fact he’s a glorified broker. A middleman, pure and simple. The owner of record was a company called OOC Group, Limited.”
“OOC? You’re sure?”
Lovegrove nodded. “Evidently, OOC stands for Oil on Canvas. I assumed it was a shell company of some sort. They’re all the rage, you know.”
“What was the asking price?”
“The equivalent of seventy-five million dollars.”
“Seems a tad high.”
“I thought so, too. But Ricard wouldn’t budge and the client had his heart set on it, so he signed the sales agreement and wired the money from his account at Barclays.”
At which point Lovegrove received a second piece of unexpected news. It seemed his client had no interest in hanging the Rothko in his Belgravia mansion. Instead, he wished to leave it in the Geneva Freeport in the care of Edmond Ricard.
“He controls a large portion of the Freeport’s storage space. For a reasonable fee, he agreed to hold the painting for as long as my client wished.”
“Sounds to me as though your unsophisticated client was getting sophisticated financial advice from another source.”
“The thought crossed my mind,” said Lovegrove. “But I didn’t question the decision at the time. Several of my clients store paintings in that facility. It’s perfectly legal.”
“And your commission on the deal was a perfect seven and a half million.”
“A substantial portion of which I handed over to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.”
A scant six months later, Lovegrove continued, he made a second visit to Galerie Ricard, this time with a client who was in the market for a de Kooning.
“And guess what we saw prominently displayed?”
