The Heist (43 page)

The development quickly gave rise to speculation that Jihan Nawaz had been operating on behalf not of the Syrian government but of a Western intelligence service. The theory gained traction as additional biographical information about her missing employer leaked slowly into the press, information that suggested he had been involved in concealing and managing financial assets of the Syrian ruler. Then came a report from a respected computer security firm regarding a series of financial transactions it had detected during routine monitoring of the Internet. It seemed that several billion dollars had been plucked from prominent banks around the world and moved to a single location in an unusually short period of time. The firm was never able to produce an accurate estimate of the amount of money involved, nor was it able to identify those responsible. It did, however, manage to find traces of code scattered around the world. All those who analyzed the code were shocked by its sophistication. It was not the work of ordinary hackers, they said, but of professionals working on behalf of a government. One expert compared it to the Stuxnet computer worm that had been inserted into the computer network of the Iranian nuclear weapons program.

It was at this point that the glare of an unwanted spotlight fell upon the intelligence service headquartered within an anonymous office block in Tel Aviv. The experts saw a smoking gun, a perfect nexus of capability and motive, and for once the experts were right. But none of them would ever link the suspicious movement of money to the recent recovery of several stolen masterworks, or to the man of medium height and build, the sun amid small stars, who returned to a church in Venice on the third Wednesday of August. The wooden platform atop his scaffolding was precisely as he had left it several months earlier: flasks of chemicals, a wad of cotton wool, a bundle of dowels, a magnifying visor, two powerful halogen lamps. He slipped a copy of
La Bohème
into the paint-smudged portable stereo and began to work.
Dip, twirl, discard . . . Dip, twirl, discard
. . .

There were days when he couldn’t wait to finish, and days when he hoped it would never end. His capricious state of mind played out before the canvas. At times, he worked with Veronese’s slowness; at others, with Vincent’s reckless haste, as though he were trying to capture the essence of his subject matter before it wilted and died. Fortunately, there was no one to witness his pendulum-like swings of mood. The other members of the team had all completed their work during his long absence. He was alone in the house of another faith, another people.

The operation rarely left his thoughts for long. He saw it in his mind as a cycle of still lifes, landscapes, and portraits: the fallen spy, the art thief, the assassin for hire, the child of Hama writing his name on the surface of a lake.
The eight-billion-dollar girl
. . . He never once regretted his decision to surrender the money in exchange for her freedom. Money could be made and lost, found and frozen. But Jihan Nawaz, the only surviving member of a murdered family, was irreplaceable. She was an original. She was a masterpiece.

The Church of San Sebastiano was scheduled to reopen to the public on the first day of October, which meant that Gabriel had no choice but to work from dawn until dusk without a break. On most days, Francesco Tiepolo stopped by at midday with a bag of
cornetti
and a flask of fresh coffee. If Gabriel was feeling charitable, he would allow Tiepolo to do a bit of inpainting, but most days the Italian would simply hover over Gabriel’s shoulder and plead with him to work faster. And, invariably, he would gently interrogate Gabriel over his plans for the future.

“We’re about to get a commission for something good,” he said one afternoon as a thunderstorm pelted the city. “Something important.”

“How important?” asked Gabriel.

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Church or
scuola
?”

“Church,” said Tiepolo. “And the altarpiece has your name on it.”

Gabriel smiled and painted in silence.

“Not even tempted?”

“It’s time for me to go home, Francesco.”

“This is your home,” Tiepolo replied. “You should raise your children here in Venice. And when you die, we’ll bury you beneath a cypress tree on San Michele.”

“I’m not that old, Francesco.”

“You’re not so young, either.”

“Don’t you have anything better to do?” asked Gabriel, as he moved the brush from his right hand to his left.

“No,” said Tiepolo, smiling. “What could possibly be better than to watch you paint?”

The days were still warm and thick with humidity, but in the evening a breeze from the lagoon made the city tolerable. Gabriel would collect Chiara at her office and take her to dinner. By mid-September, she was six months along, past the point where it was possible to keep her pregnancy a secret from the rest of Venice’s small but talkative Jewish community. Gabriel thought she had never looked so beautiful. Her skin glowed, her eyes sparkled like gold dust, and even when she was uncomfortable, she seemed incapable of any expression other than a wide smile. She was a planner by nature, a maker of lists, and at dinner each night she talked incessantly of all the things they needed to do. They had decided to remain in Venice until the last week of October, the first week of November at the latest. Then they would return to Jerusalem to prepare the apartment in Narkiss Street for the birth of the children.

“They’ll need names, you know,” Gabriel said one evening as they were strolling along the Zattere at dusk.

“Your mother had a beautiful name.”

“She did,” replied Gabriel. “But Irene isn’t really a proper name for a boy.”

“So maybe we should call the girl Irene instead.”

“Good idea.”

“And the boy?”

Gabriel was silent. It was too soon to start choosing a name for the boy.

“I spoke to Ari this morning,” Chiara said after a moment. “As you might expect, he’s a bit anxious for us to come home.”

“Did you tell him I have to finish the Veronese first?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“He doesn’t understand why an altarpiece should keep the two of you apart at a time like this.”

“Because the altarpiece might be the last one I ever get to restore.”

“Maybe,” said Chiara.

They walked in silence for a moment. Then Gabriel asked, “How did he sound?”

“Ari?”

He nodded.

“Not good, actually.” She looked at him seriously and asked, “Do you know something I don’t know?”

“The
signadora
told me he doesn’t have long.”

“Did she tell you anything else I should know?”

“Yes,” he said. “She told me it was close.”

By then, it was late September, and Gabriel was running hopelessly behind schedule. Tiepolo graciously offered him a brief extension, but Gabriel stubbornly refused it; he did not want the last restoration in his beloved city of water and paintings to be remembered only for the fact that he had failed to complete it in the time allotted. And so he barricaded himself in the church with no distractions and worked with a stamina and speed he would not have thought possible. He retouched the Virgin and the Christ Child in a single day, and on the final afternoon he repaired the face of a curly-haired boy angel who was peering over a heavenly cloud, toward the earthly suffering below. The boy looked too much like Dani, and Gabriel, as he worked, wept softly. When he was finished, he dried his brushes and his face, and stood motionless before the towering canvas, a hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side.

“Is it finished?” asked Francesco Tiepolo, who was watching him from the base of the scaffolding.

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “I think it is.”

I
N THE NORTHWEST CORNER OF
the Campo di Ghetto Nuovo is a small, stark memorial to the Jews of Venice who, in December 1943, were rounded up, interned in concentration camps, and murdered at Auschwitz. General Cesare Ferrari was standing before it when Gabriel entered the square at half past six that evening. His ruined right hand was stuffed into the pocket of his trousers. His harsh gaze seemed more judgmental than usual.

“I never knew it happened here in Venice,” he said after Gabriel had joined him. “The Rome roundup was different. Rome was far too big to ever be forgotten. But here . . .” He looked around the tranquil square. “It doesn’t seem possible.”

Gabriel was silent. The general stepped slowly forward and ran his damaged hand over one of the seven bas-relief plaques. “From where were they taken?” he asked.

“There,” said Gabriel.

He pointed toward the three-story building to their right. The sign above the door read
CASA ISRAELITICA DI RIPOSO.
It was a rest home for aged members of the community.

“By the time the roundup finally took place,” Gabriel said after a moment, “most of the remaining Jews of Venice had gone into hiding. The only ones left in the city were the old and sick. They were dragged from their beds by the Germans and their Italian helpers.”

“How many live there now?” the general asked.

“Ten or so.”

“Not many.”

“There aren’t many left.”

The general looked at the memorial again. “I don’t know why you live in a place like this.”

“I don’t,” said Gabriel. Then he asked the general why he was back in Venice.

“I had to do a bit of housekeeping at the Art Squad’s field office here. I also wanted to attend the reopening of the Church of San Sebastiano.” The general paused, then added, “I hear the main altarpiece looks quite amazing. You obviously managed to finish it.”

“With a few hours to spare.”

“Mazel tov.”

“Grazie.”

“And now?” asked the general. “What are your plans?”

“I’m going to spend the next month trying to be the best husband I can. And then I’m going to go home again.”

“The children are coming soon, yes?”

“Soon,” said Gabriel.

“As the father of five, I can assure you that your life will never be the same.”

In the far corner of the square, the door of the community office swung open and Chiara emerged into the shadows. She glanced at Gabriel and then disappeared again into the entrance of the ghetto museum. The general seemed not to have noticed her; he was frowning at the green metal structure next to the memorial where a uniformed Carabinieri man sat behind bulletproof glass.

“It’s a shame we have to put a security post in the middle of this beautiful place.”

“I’m afraid it comes with the territory.”

“Why this eternal hatred?” the general asked, shaking his head slowly. “Why does it never end?”

“You tell me.”

Greeted by silence, Gabriel again asked the general why he had come back to Venice.

“I’ve been looking for something for a long time,” the Italian said, “and I was hoping you could help me find it.”

“I tried,” said Gabriel. “But it seems to have slipped through my fingers.”

“I hear you actually came close.” The general lowered his voice and added, “Closer than you realized.”

“How did you hear that?”

“The usual ways.” The general looked at Gabriel seriously and asked, “Is there any chance you would agree to a debriefing before you leave the country?”

“What do you want to know?”

“Everything that happened after you stole
Sunflowers
.”

“I didn’t
steal
it. I borrowed it at the suggestion of the commander of the Art Squad. And so the answer is no,” Gabriel added, shaking his head. “I won’t be sitting for any debriefings, now or at any time in the future.”

“Then perhaps we can quietly compare notes instead.”

“I’m afraid my notes are classified.”

“That’s good,” said the general, smiling. “Because mine are, too.”

They headed across the square to the kosher café next to the community center and shared a bottle of pinot grigio as the darkness gathered around them. Gabriel began by swearing the general to an omertà and threatening him with reprisals if the oath of silence were ever broken. Then he told him everything that had transpired since their last meeting, beginning with the death of Samir Basara in Stuttgart and ending with the discovery, and eventual surrender, of $8 billion in assets belonging to the president of Syria.

“I suppose this has something to do with those two Syrian bankers who went missing in Austria,” the general said when Gabriel had finished.

“What Syrian bankers?”

“I’ll take that as a yes.” The general drank some of his wine. “So Jack Bradshaw refused to deliver the Caravaggio because the Syrians killed the only woman he ever loved? Is that what you’re telling me?”

Gabriel nodded slowly and watched a pair of black-coated yeshiva students making their way across the square.

“Now I know why you made me swear not to mention Bradshaw’s name during my press conference,” the general was saying. “You didn’t want me to posthumously drag his name through the mud.” He paused, then added, “You wanted him to rest in peace.”

“He deserves it.”

“Why?”

“Because they tortured him mercilessly, and he didn’t tell them what he did with the painting.”

“Do you believe in redemption, Allon?”

“I’m a restorer,” said Gabriel.

The general smiled. “And the paintings you discovered in the Geneva Freeport?” he asked. “How did you get them out of Switzerland so quietly?”

“With the help of a friend.”

“A Swiss friend?”

Gabriel nodded.

“I didn’t know such a thing was possible.”

This time, it was Gabriel who smiled. The yeshiva students entered a
sottoportego
and disappeared from sight. The square was now empty except for two young children, a boy and girl, who were bouncing a ball back and forth under the watchful gaze of their parents.

“The question is,” said the general, peering into his wineglass, “what did Jack Bradshaw do with the Caravaggio?”

“I suppose he put it somewhere he thought no one would ever find it.”

“Maybe,” replied the general. “But that’s not the talk on the street.”