Bittel shook his head. “And neither was your friend Anna Rolfe.”
“How do you intend to explain the dead art dealer?”
“The Police Cantonale will explore several possible theories, none of them involving a Picasso once owned by a Parisian Jew who was murdered at Auschwitz. You, however, will continue searching for the painting—and for Monsieur Ricard’s killer, of course. And you will report your findings to no one but me.”
“And if I were to decline your generous offer?”
“The Police Cantonale will have no choice but to arrest Anna Rolfe’s assistant. Evidently, she bears more than a passing resemblance to the suspect in a robbery that occurred not long ago at the Hôtel Métropole.”
“With good reason,” said Gabriel.
“They say she’s a top-notch professional thief.”
“You should see her with a keyboard.”
“Do you think she can get inside the computer network of the Geneva Freeport?”
Gabriel smiled. “I was afraid you were never going to ask.”
25
Rue des Alpes
Late that Thursday evening, the Police Cantonale de Genève announced that the prominent art dealer Edmond Ricard had been shot to death inside his gallery at the Geneva Freeport. The brief statement went on to say that nothing had been stolen and that at no point were any of the valuables stored within the vaults of the facility in any danger. Police described the suspected perpetrator only as a German-speaking man in his late thirties. Investigators said they were acting under the assumption that his weapon had been fitted with a sound suppressor, as there were no reports of gunfire. They also assumed that the name the man had given to the security guard in the lobby was false and therefore had no interest in making it public.
Curiously, neither the police nor the Freeport authorities released video or still images of the suspect. Also absent from the initial statement was any mention of how the dealer’s body had been discovered or even the approximate time the murder had taken place. Subsequent attempts by reporters to question the security guard who had been on duty that afternoon proved unsuccessful after he was hastily reassigned to a post deep within the bowels of the facility. The visitor log would vanish without a trace.
Had the document resurfaced, it would have revealed the name of the renowned Swiss violinist who had called on Galerie Ricard at 4:00 p.m. on the day of the murder—and on several other occasions during the weeks preceding it. A blood-soaked sales agreement discovered on the art dealer’s desk would have laid bare the reason for those visits. But the agreement, like the logbook, seemed to disappear into thin air. So thorough was the cover-up that it extended to the headquarters of the Police Cantonale itself, where all evidence of the renowned violinist’s brief visit, including selfies and autographs, was deleted and destroyed. Her departure, at 9:40 p.m., was carried out in a manner befitting a head of state.
Gabriel and Ingrid slipped out of the building a few minutes later. Owing to Ingrid’s past conduct in Geneva, they steered clear of the luxury hotels and settled into a service flat on the rue des Alpes instead. Its amenities included a daily change of linen and bath towels and, more important, unlimited Wi-Fi service. Later, the IT department at the Geneva Freeport would mistake the apartment’s Internet Protocol address for one in Râmnicu Vâlcea, a region of Romania known for the quality of its computer hackers.
Ingrid worked in her bedroom with the door tightly closed and Scandinavian jazz flowing from the speakers of her laptop. Tord Gustavsen, Marcin Wasilewski, Bobo Stenson, the Maciej Obara Quartet—essentially the entire ECM Records catalogue. Gabriel sent her a text message offering assistance and was told that he was clueless when it came to computers and therefore could only impede her progress. A part of him was tempted to remind Ingrid that he had once been the director of one of the most technologically proficient intelligence services in the world—and that he had overseen a number of high-profile hacking operations, including several targeting the nuclear weapons program of the Islamic Republic of Iran. That did not mean, however, that he had fully grasped the digital wizardry involved in the attacks. Indeed, he would have been hard-pressed to explain how the microwave oven in the apartment’s kitchen heated the milk for his coffee.
Ingrid drank hers black with dangerous amounts of sugar. Gabriel left it on a tray outside her door. He left her food as well, but she never touched it. She didn’t sleep, either. She would sleep, she said, when she found the man who had killed Edmond Ricard and stolen the Picasso.
Twenty-four hours after their arrival, she strayed from her room long enough to brief Gabriel on her progress. “I’m inside the Freeport’s network,” she explained. “But I’m having trouble cracking the password for the security system.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Shocking, I know.”
“And when you do?”
“I’ll have a look at the backup folder to make sure the video isn’t sitting there in plain sight.”
“You should assume the hackers deleted the contents of the backup folder on their way out the door.”
“But as you well know, nothing is ever really deleted. They didn’t shut down the system completely, which means the cameras were rolling and the hard drive was recording. That missing video is there somewhere. I just have to find it and bring it back from the dead.”
“How much longer will it take?”
“Would you like me to give you the precise time that I will find and retrieve six months’ worth of surveillance video from one of the world’s most secure storage facilities?”
And with that, the door closed and the music started up again—an album of contemplative solo compositions by the French jazz pianist Benjamin Moussay. “How about Schubert or Chopin instead?” asked Gabriel, but he received no reply other than the clatter of Ingrid’s keyboard.
He saw her again at one the following afternoon, when she announced that she had finally cracked the password and gained access to the Freeport’s security system. Another two hours would elapse before she was able to confirm that the hacker had drained the backup folder as well, at which point her search became forensic in nature. Her keystrokes became more intense, her choice of jazz more traditional. “Kind of Blue” by Miles Davis. “A Love Supreme” by John Coltrane. A beautiful album of standards by Keith Jarrett and the bassist Charlie Haden.
Shortly after 8:00 p.m., both the music and her keyboard fell silent. Gabriel allowed another hour to pass before entering her room. He found her stretched out on the bed, eyes closed, twitching with nightmares. In her hand was a flash drive.
Gabriel gently removed the device from her grasp and slid it into the USB port of his own computer. A request for a password appeared on his screen. He tried several combinations of letters and numerals without success. Then he entered the word Aurora, the code name of the secret Russian plan that Ingrid had stolen in Moscow, and a folder appeared. Inside were several hundred still images and a single video thirteen minutes in length.
“Gotcha,” whispered Gabriel, and clicked the play icon.
* * *
The video commenced at 2:17 p.m. when the subject, a well-dressed man with pale blond hair, alighted from a Peugeot 508 sedan that paused briefly on the Route du Grand-Lancy. He removed a rectangular art transport case from the car’s boot, then made his way toward the entrance of the stubby office block. Three different cameras observed his brief interaction with the security guard, and a fourth recorded his fifteen-second elevator ride to the third floor. He pressed the call button at Galerie Ricard at 2:21 p.m. and was admitted at once. Clearly, thought Gabriel, he was expected.
He remained inside the gallery for eight minutes, long enough to shoot Ricard three times and to remove the Picasso from its frame. He placed a brief phone call during the ride down to the lobby and breezed past the security desk without a word or glance. The same Peugeot was waiting in the Route du Grand-Lancy when he emerged from the building. He placed the art transport case in the boot and dropped into the passenger seat. The car shot forward, and at 2:33 p.m. it disappeared from view.
Its most likely destination was France. The nearest border crossing was at Bardonnex, a drive of approximately twenty minutes. Gabriel rang Christoph Bittel and gave him the make and model and registration number of the car. The Swiss intelligence chief got back to him in less than an hour.
“They crossed into France at two forty-nine. And by the way, the man in the passenger seat had black hair.”
“And a Picasso worth a hundred million dollars.”
“There was no Picasso, Allon.”
“Never was,” he agreed, and killed the connection.
