The Heist

He crossed into Dorsoduro, the highest point of the city, and made his way to the Church of San Sebastiano. The front entrance was tightly sealed, and there was an official-looking notice explaining that the building would be closed to the public until the following autumn. The restorer approached a smaller doorway on the right side of the church and opened it with a heavy skeleton key. A breath of cool air from the interior caressed his cheek. Candle smoke, incense, ancient mildew: something about the smell reminded the restorer of death. He locked the door behind him, sidestepped a font filled with holy water, and headed inside.

The nave was in darkness and empty of pews. The restorer trod silently over the smooth timeworn stones and slipped through the open gate of the altar rail. The ornate Eucharistic table had been removed for cleaning; in its place rose thirty feet of aluminum scaffolding. The restorer scaled it with the agility of a house cat and slipped through a tarpaulin shroud onto his work platform. His supplies were precisely as he had left them the previous evening: flasks of chemicals, a wad of cotton wool, a bundle of wooden dowels, a magnifying visor, two powerful halogen lamps, a paint-smudged portable stereo. The altarpiece—Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints by Paolo Veronese—was as he had left it, too. It was just one of several remarkable paintings Veronese had produced for the church between 1556 and 1565. His tomb, with his glowering marble bust, was on the left side of the presbytery. At moments like these, when the church was empty and dark, the restorer could almost feel Veronese’s ghost watching him as he worked.

The restorer switched on the lamps and stood motionless for a long moment before the altarpiece. At the apex were Mary and the Christ Child, seated upon clouds of glory and surrounded by musician angels. Beneath them, gazing upward in rapture, was a group of saints, including the patron saint of the church, Sebastian, whom Veronese depicted in martyrdom. For the past three weeks, the restorer had been painstakingly removing the cracked and yellowed varnish with a carefully calibrated mixture of acetone, methyl proxitol, and mineral spirits. Removing varnish from a Baroque painting, he liked to explain, was not like stripping a piece of furniture; it was more akin to scrubbing the deck of an aircraft carrier with a toothbrush. He first had to fashion a swab with cotton wool and a wooden dowel. After moistening the swab with solvent, he would apply it to the surface of the canvas and twirl, gently, so as not to cause any additional flaking of the paint. Each swab could clean about a square inch of the painting before it became too soiled to use. At night, when he was not dreaming of blood and fire, he was removing yellowed varnish from a canvas the size of the Piazza San Marco.

Another week, he thought, and then he would be ready to move on to the second phase of the restoration, retouching those portions of the canvas where Veronese’s original paint had flaked away. The figures of Mary and the Christ Child were largely free of damage, but the restorer had uncovered extensive losses along the top and bottom portion of the canvas. If everything went according to plan, he would finish the restoration as his wife was entering the final weeks of her pregnancy. If everything went according to plan, he thought again.

He inserted a CD of La Bohème into the stereo, and a moment later the sanctuary was filled with the opening notes of “Non sono in vena.” As Rodolfo and Mimi were falling in love in a tiny garret studio in Paris, the restorer stood alone before the Veronese, meticulously removing the surface grime and yellowed varnish. He worked steadily and with an easy rhythm—dip, twirl, discard … dip, twirl, discard—until the platform was littered with acrid balls of soiled cotton wool. Veronese had perfected formulae for paints that did not fade with age; and as the restorer removed each tiny patch of tobacco-brown varnish, the colors beneath glowed intensely. It was almost as if the master had applied the paint to the canvas only yesterday instead of four and a half centuries ago.

The restorer had the church to himself for another two hours. Then, at ten o’clock, he heard the clatter of boots across the stone floor of the nave. The boots belonged to Adrianna Zinetti, cleaner of altars, seducer of men. After that it was Lorenzo Vasari, a gifted restorer of frescoes who had almost single-handedly brought Leonardo’s Last Supper back from the dead. Then came the conspiratorial shuffle of Antonio Politi, who, much to his annoyance, had been assigned the ceiling panels instead of the main altarpiece. As a result, he spent his days sprawled on his back like a modern-day Michelangelo, glaring resentfully at the restorer’s shrouded platform high above the chancel.

It was not the first time the restorer and the other members of the team had worked together. Several years earlier, they had carried out major restorations of the Church of San Giovanni Crisostomo in Cannaregio and, before that, at the Church of San Zaccaria in Castello. At the time, they had known the restorer as the brilliant but intensely private Mario Delvecchio. Later, they would learn, along with the rest of the world, that he was a legendary Israeli intelligence officer and assassin named Gabriel Allon. Adrianna Zinetti and Lorenzo Vasari had found it in their hearts to forgive Gabriel’s deception, but not Antonio Politi. In his youth, he had once accused Mario Delvecchio of being a terrorist, and he regarded Gabriel Allon as a terrorist, too. Secretly, he suspected it was because of Gabriel that he spent his days in the upper reaches of the nave, supine and contorted, isolated from human contact, with solvent and paint dripping onto his face. The panels depicted the story of Queen Esther. Surely, Politi told anyone who would listen, it was no coincidence.

In truth, Gabriel had had nothing to do with the decision; it had been made by Francesco Tiepolo, owner of the most prominent restoration firm in the Veneto and director of the San Sebastiano project. A bearlike figure with a tangled gray-and-black beard, Tiepolo was a man of enormous appetites and passions, capable of great anger and even greater love. As he strode up the center of the nave, he was dressed, as usual, in a flowing tunic-like shirt with a silk scarf knotted around his neck. The clothing made it seem as though he were overseeing the construction of the church rather than its renovation.

Tiepolo paused briefly to cast an admiring glance at Adrianna Zinetti, with whom he had once had an affair that was among the worst-kept secrets in Venice. Then he scaled Gabriel’s scaffolding and barged through the gap in the tarpaulin shroud. The wooden platform seemed to bow under the strain of his enormous weight.

“Careful, Francesco,” said Gabriel, frowning. “The floor of the altar is made of marble, and it’s a long way down.”

“What are you saying?”

“I’m saying that it might be wise for you to lose a few kilos. You’re starting to develop your own gravitational pull.”

“What good would it do to lose weight? I could shed twenty kilos, and I’d still be fat.” The Italian took a step forward and examined the altarpiece over Gabriel’s shoulder. “Very good,” he said with mock admiration. “If you continue at this pace, you’ll be finished in time for the first birthday of your children.”

“I can do it quickly,” replied Gabriel, “or I can do it right.”

“They’re not mutually exclusive, you know. Here in Italy, our restorers work quickly. But not you,” Tiepolo added. “Even when you were pretending to be one of us, you were always very slow.”

Gabriel fashioned a fresh swab, moistened it with solvent, and twirled it over Sebastian’s arrow-pierced torso. Tiepolo watched intently for a moment; then he fashioned a swab of his own and worked it against the saint’s shoulder. The yellowed varnish dissolved instantly, exposing Veronese’s pristine paint.

“Your solvent mixture is perfect,” said Tiepolo.

“It always is,” replied Gabriel.

“What’s the solution?”

“It’s a secret.”

“Must everything be a secret with you?”

When Gabriel made no reply, Tiepolo glanced down at the flasks of chemicals.

“How much methyl proxitol did you use?”

“Exactly the right amount.”

Tiepolo scowled. “Didn’t I arrange work for you when your wife decided she wanted to spend her pregnancy in Venice?”

“You did, Francesco.”

“And do I not pay you far more than I pay the others,” he whispered, “despite the fact that you’re always running out on me every time your masters require your services?”

“You’ve always been very generous.”

“Then why won’t you tell me the formula for your solvent?”

“Because Veronese had his secret formula, and I have mine.”

Tiepolo gave a dismissive wave of his enormous hand. Then he discarded his soiled swab and fashioned a new one.

“I got a call from the Rome bureau chief of the New York Times last night,” he said, his tone offhand. “She’s interested in doing a piece on the restoration for the Sunday arts section. She wants to come up here on Friday and have a look around.”

“If you don’t mind, Francesco, I think I’ll take Friday off.”

“I thought you’d say that.” Tiepolo gave Gabriel a sidelong glance. “Not even tempted?”

“To what?”

“To show the world the real Gabriel Allon. The Gabriel Allon who cares for the works of the great masters. The Gabriel Allon who can paint like an angel.”

“I only talk to journalists as a last resort. And I would never dream of talking to one about myself.”

“You’ve lived an interesting life.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

“Perhaps it’s time for you to come out from behind the shroud.”

“And then what?”

“You can spend the rest of your days here in Venice with us. You always were a Venetian at heart, Gabriel.”

“It’s tempting.”

“But?”

With his expression, Gabriel made it clear he wished to discuss the matter no further. Then, turning to the canvas, he asked, “Have you received any other phone calls I should know about?”

“Just one,” answered Tiepolo. “General Ferrari of the Carabinieri is coming into town later this morning. He’d like a word with you in private.”

Gabriel turned sharply and looked at Tiepolo. “About what?”

“He didn’t say. The general is far better at asking questions than answering them.” Tiepolo scrutinized Gabriel for a moment. “I never knew that you and the general were friends.”

“We’re not.”

“How do you know him?”

“He once asked me for a favor, and I had no choice but to agree.”

Tiepolo made a show of thought. “It must have been that business at the Vatican a couple of years ago, that girl who fell from the dome of the Basilica. As I recall, you were restoring their Caravaggio at the time it happened.”

“Was I?”

“That was the rumor.”

“You shouldn’t listen to rumors, Francesco. They’re almost always wrong.”

“Unless they involve you,” Tiepolo responded with a smile.

Gabriel allowed the remark to echo unanswered into the heights of the chancel. Then he resumed his work. A moment earlier, he had been using his right hand. Now he was using his left, with equal dexterity.

“You’re like Titian,” Tiepolo said, watching him. “You are a sun amidst small stars.”

“If you don’t leave me in peace, the sun is never going to finish this painting.”

Tiepolo didn’t move. “Are you sure you’re not him?” he asked after a moment.

“Who?”

“Mario Delvecchio.”

“Mario is dead, Francesco. Mario never was.”

3

VENICE

THE REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS OF THE Carabinieri, Italy’s national military police force, was located in the sestiere of Castello, not far from the Campo San Zaccaria. General Cesare Ferrari emerged from the building promptly at one. He had forsaken his blue uniform with its many medals and insignia and was wearing a business suit instead. One hand clutched a stainless steel attaché case; the other, the one missing two fingers, was thrust into the pocket of a well-cut overcoat. He removed the hand long enough to offer it to Gabriel. His smile was brief and formal. As usual, it had no influence upon his prosthetic right eye. Even Gabriel found its lifeless, unyielding gaze difficult to bear. It was like being studied by the all-seeing eye of an unforgiving God.

“You’re looking well,” said General Ferrari. “Being back in Venice obviously agrees with you.”

“How did you know I was here?”

The general’s second smile lasted scarcely longer than his first. “There isn’t much that happens in Italy that I don’t know about, especially when it concerns you.”

“How did you know?” Gabriel asked again.

“When you requested permission from our intelligence services to return to Venice, they forwarded that information to all relevant ministries and divisions of law enforcement. One of those places was the palazzo.”

The palazzo to which the general was referring overlooked the Piazza di Sant’Ignazio in the ancient center of Rome. It housed the Division for the Defense of Cultural Patrimony, which was better known as the Art Squad. General Ferrari was its chief. And he was right about one thing, thought Gabriel. There wasn’t much that happened in Italy the general didn’t know about.

The son of schoolteachers from the impoverished Campania region, Ferrari had long been regarded as one of Italy’s most competent and accomplished law enforcement officials. During the 1970s, a time of terrorist bombings in Italy, he helped to neutralize the Communist Red Brigades. Then, during the Mafia wars of the 1980s, he served as a commander in the Camorra-infested Naples division. The assignment was so dangerous that Ferrari’s wife and three daughters were forced to live under twenty-four-hour guard. Ferrari himself was the target of numerous assassination attempts, including the letter-bomb attack that claimed his eye and two fingers.

The posting to the Art Squad was supposed to be a reward for a long and distinguished career. It was assumed Ferrari would merely follow in the footsteps of his lackluster predecessor, that he would shuffle papers, take long Roman lunches, and, occasionally, find one or two of the museum’s worth of paintings that were stolen in Italy each year. Instead, he immediately set about modernizing a once-effective unit that had been allowed to atrophy with age and neglect. Within days of his arrival, he fired half the staff and quickly replenished the ranks with aggressive young officers who actually knew something about art. He gave them a simple mandate. He wasn’t much interested in the street-level hoods who dabbled in art theft; he wanted the big fish, the bosses who brought the stolen goods to market. It didn’t take long for Ferrari’s new approach to pay dividends. More than a dozen important thieves were now behind bars, and statistics for art theft, while still astonishingly high, were beginning to show improvement.

“So what brings you to Venice?” Gabriel asked as he led the general between the temporary ponds in the Campo San Zaccaria.

“I had business in the north—Lake Como, to be specific.”

“Something got stolen?”

“No,” replied the general. “Someone got murdered.”

“Since when are dead bodies the business of the Art Squad?”

“When the decedent has a connection to the art world.”

Gabriel stopped walking and turned to face the general. “You still haven’t answered my question,” he said. “Why are you in Venice?”

“I’m here because of you, of course.”

“What does a dead body in Como have to do with me?”

“The person who found it.”

The general was smiling again, but the prosthetic eye was staring blankly into the middle distance. It was the eye of a man who knew everything, thought Gabriel. A man who was not about to take no for an answer.

They entered the church through the main doorway off the campo and made their way to Bellini’s famed San Zaccaria altarpiece. A tour group stood before it while a guide lectured sonorously on the subject of the painting’s most recent restoration, unaware that the man who had performed it was among his audience. Even General Ferrari seemed to find it amusing, though after a moment his monocular gaze began to wander. The Bellini was San Zaccaria’s most important piece, but the church contained several other notable paintings as well, including works by Tintoretto, Palma the Elder, and Van Dyke. It was just one example of why the Carabinieri maintained a dedicated unit of art detectives. Italy had been blessed with two things in abundance: art and professional criminals. Much of the art, like the art in the church, was poorly protected. And many of the criminals were bent on stealing every last bit of it.

On the opposite side of the nave was a small chapel that contained the crypt of its patron and a canvas by a minor Venetian painter that no one had bothered to clean in more than a century. General Ferrari lowered himself onto one of the pews, opened his metal attaché case, and removed a file folder. Then, from the folder, he drew a single eight-by-ten photograph, which he handed to Gabriel. It showed a man of late middle age hanging by his wrists from a chandelier. The cause of death was not clear from the image, though it was obvious the man had been tortured savagely. The face was a bloody, swollen mess, and several swaths of skin and flesh had been carved away from the torso.

“Who was he?” asked Gabriel.

“His name was James Bradshaw, better known as Jack. He was a British subject, but he spent most of his time in Como, along with several thousand of his countrymen.” The general paused thoughtfully. “The British don’t seem to like living in their own country much these days, do they?”

“No, they don’t.”

“Why is that?”

“You’d have to ask them.” Gabriel looked down at the photograph and winced. “Was he married?”

“No.”

“Divorced?”

“No.”

“Significant other?”

“Apparently not.”

Gabriel returned the photograph to the general and asked what Jack Bradshaw had done for a living.

“He described himself as a consultant.”

“What sort?”

“He worked in the Middle East for several years as a diplomat. Then he retired early and went into business for himself. Apparently, he dispensed advice to British firms wishing to do business in the Arab world. He must have been quite good at his job,” the general added, “because his villa was among the most expensive on that part of the lake. It also contained a rather impressive collection of Italian art and antiquities.”

“Which explains the Art Squad’s interest in his death.”

“Partly,” said the general. “After all, having a nice collection is no crime.”

“Unless the collection is acquired in a way that skirts Italian law.”

“You’re always one step ahead of everyone else, aren’t you, Allon?” The general looked up at the darkened painting hanging on the wall of the chapel. “Why wasn’t this cleaned in the last restoration?”

“There wasn’t enough money.”

“The varnish is almost entirely opaque.” The general paused, then added, “Just like Jack Bradshaw.”

“May he rest in peace.”

“That’s not likely, not after a death like that.” Ferrari looked at Gabriel and asked, “Have you ever had occasion to contemplate your own demise?”

“Unfortunately, I’ve had several. But if you don’t mind, I’d rather talk about the collecting habits of Jack Bradshaw.”

“The late Mr. Bradshaw had a reputation for acquiring paintings that were not actually for sale.”

“Stolen paintings?”

“Those are your words, my friend. Not mine.”

“You were watching him?”

“Let us say that the Art Squad monitored his activities to the best of our ability.”

“How?”

“The usual ways,” answered the general evasively.

“I assume your men are doing a complete and thorough inventory of his collection.”

“As we speak.”

“And?”

“Thus far they’ve found nothing from our database of missing or stolen works.”

“Then I suppose you’ll have to take back all the nasty things you said about Jack Bradshaw.”

“Just because there’s no evidence doesn’t mean it isn’t so.”

“Spoken like a true Italian policeman.”

It was clear from General Ferrari’s expression that he interpreted Gabriel’s remark as a compliment. Then, after a moment, he said, “One heard other things about the late Jack Bradshaw.”

“What sort of things?”

“That he wasn’t just a private collector, that he was involved in the illegal export of paintings and other works of art from Italian soil.” The general lowered his voice and added, “Which explains why your friend Julian Isherwood is in a great deal of trouble.”

“Julian Isherwood doesn’t trade in smuggled art.”

The general didn’t bother to respond. In his eyes, all art dealers were guilty of something.

“Where is he?” asked Gabriel.

“In my custody.”

“Has he been charged with anything?”

“Not yet.”

“Under Italian law, you can’t hold him for more than forty-eight hours without bringing him before a judge.”

“He was found standing over a dead body. I’ll think of something.”

“You know Julian had nothing to do with Bradshaw’s murder.”

“Don’t worry,” the general replied, “I have no plans to recommend charges at this time. But if it were to become public that your friend was meeting with a known smuggler, his career would be over. You see, Allon, in the art world, perception is reality.”

“What do I have to do to keep Julian’s name out of the papers?”

The general didn’t respond immediately; he was scrutinizing the photograph of Jack Bradshaw’s body.

“Why do you suppose they tortured him before killing him?” he asked at last.

“Maybe he owed them money.”

“Maybe,” agreed the general. “Or maybe he had something the killers wanted, something more valuable.”

“You were about to tell me what I have to do to save my friend.”

“Find out who killed Jack Bradshaw. And find out what they were looking for.”

“And if I refuse?”

“The London art world will be abuzz with nasty rumors.”

“You’re a cheap blackmailer, General Ferrari.”

“Blackmail is an ugly word.”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “But in the art world, perception is reality.”

4

VENICE

GABRIEL KNEW A GOOD RESTAURANT not far from the church, in a quiet corner of Castello where tourists rarely ventured. General Ferrari ordered lavishly; Gabriel moved food around his plate and sipped at a glass of mineral water with lemon.

“You’re not hungry?” inquired the general.

“I was hoping to spend a few more hours with my Veronese this afternoon.”

“Then you should eat something. You need your strength.”

“It doesn’t work that way.”

“You don’t eat when you’re restoring?”

“Coffee and a bit of bread.”

“What kind of diet is that?”

“The kind that allows me to concentrate.”

“No wonder you’re so thin.”

General Ferrari went to the antipasti trolley and filled his plate a second time. There was no one else in the restaurant, no one but the owner and his daughter, a pretty dark-haired girl of twelve or thirteen. The child bore an uncanny resemblance to the daughter of Abu Jihad, the second-in-command of the PLO whom Gabriel, on a warm spring evening in 1988, had assassinated at his villa in Tunis. The killing had been carried out in Abu Jihad’s second-floor study, where he had been watching videos of the Palestinian intifada. The girl had seen everything: two immobilizing shots to the chest, two fatal shots to the head, all set to the music of Arab rebellion. Gabriel could no longer recall the death mask of Abu Jihad, but the young girl’s portrait, serene but seething with rage, hung prominently in the exhibition rooms of his memory. As the general retook his seat, Gabriel concealed her face beneath a layer of obliterating paint. Then he leaned forward across the table and asked, “Why me?”