The Heist (45 page)

“This is Father Marco,” he said. “How can I help you?”

T
HE
C
HURCH OF
S
AN
G
IOVANNI
E
VANGELISTA
was small and white and set hard against the street. To the right stretched a wrought-iron fence, behind which was the small garden of the rectory. Father Marco was waiting at the gate when Gabriel and Chiara arrived. He was young, thirty-five at most, with a full head of neatly combed dark hair and a face that seemed eager to forgive all sins. “Welcome,” he said, shaking their hands in turn. “Please follow me.”

He led them along the garden walk and into the kitchen of the rectory. It was a tidy space with whitewashed walls, a rough-hewn wooden table, and tins of food arrayed upon open shelving. The one luxury was an automatic espresso machine, which Father Marco used to produce three cups of coffee. “I remember the day you telephoned me,” he said, as he placed a coffee before Gabriel. “It was two days after Signor Bradshaw was killed, was it not?”

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “And for some reason, you hung up on me twice before taking my call.”

“Have you ever received a phone call from a man who was just brutally murdered, Signor Allon?” The priest sat down opposite Gabriel and spooned sugar into his coffee. “It was an unsettling experience, to say the least.”

“It seemed you were in contact with him a great deal around the time of his death.”

“Yes.”

“Before and after.”

“Judging from what I read in the newspapers,” the priest said, “I probably called the villa while he was hanging dead from the chandelier. It is a terrible image.”

“Was he a parishioner here?”

“Jack Bradshaw wasn’t a Catholic,” said the priest. “He was raised in the Church of England, but I’m not at all sure he was actually a believer.”

“You were friends?”

“I suppose we were. But mainly I acted as his confessor. Not in the true sense of the word,” the priest added quickly. “I couldn’t actually grant him absolution for his sins.”

“He was troubled at the time of his death?”

“Deeply.”

“Did he tell you why?”

“He said it had something to do with his business. He was a consultant of some sort.” The priest gave an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, Signor Allon, but I’m not terribly sophisticated when it comes to matters of business and finance.”

“That makes two of us.”

The priest smiled again and stirred his coffee. “He used to sit where you’re seated now. He would bring a hamper of food and wine, and we would talk.”

“About what?”

“His past.”

“How much did he tell you?”

“Enough to know he was involved in secret work of some sort for his government. Something happened many years ago when he was in the Middle East. A woman was killed. I believe she was French.”

“Her name was Nicole Devereaux.”

The priest looked up sharply. “Did Signor Bradshaw tell you that?”

Gabriel was tempted to answer in the affirmative but had no desire to lie to a man in a Roman collar and a cassock.

“No,” he said. “I never met him.”

“I think you would have liked him. He was very smart, worldly, funny. But he also carried a heavy burden of guilt about what happened to Nicole Devereaux.”

“He told you about the affair?”

The priest hesitated, then nodded. “Apparently, he loved her very much, and he never forgave himself for her death. He never married, never had children. In a way, he lived the life of a priest.” Father Marco glanced around the spare room and added, “But in much grander fashion, of course.”

“You’ve been to the villa?”

“Many times. It was very beautiful. But it didn’t say much about what Signor Bradshaw was really like.”

“And what was he really like?”

“Generous to a fault. He single-handedly kept this church going. He also gave freely to our schools, hospitals, and programs to feed and clothe the poor.” The priest smiled sadly. “And then there was our altarpiece.”

Gabriel glanced at Chiara, who was picking absently at the surface of the table as though she weren’t listening. Then he looked at the young priest again and asked, “What about the altarpiece?”

“It was stolen about a year ago. Signor Bradshaw spent a great deal of time trying to get it back for us. More time than the police,” the priest added. “I’m afraid our altarpiece had little artistic or monetary value.”

“Was he ever able to find it?”

“No,” said the priest. “So he replaced it with one from his personal collection.”

“When did this happen?” asked Gabriel.

“Sadly, it was a few days before his death.”

“Where’s the altarpiece now?”

“There,” said the priest, inclining his head to the right. “In the church.”

They entered through a side door and hurried across the nave to the chancel. A stand of votive candles threw a flickering red light upon the niche containing a statue of Saint John, but the altarpiece was invisible in the gloom. Even so, Gabriel could see the dimensions were approximately correct. Then he heard the snap of a light switch, and in the sudden burst of illumination he saw a crucifixion in the manner of Guido Reni, competently executed but rather uninspired, not quite worth the seller’s premium. His heart gave a sideways lurch. Then, calmly, he looked at the priest and asked, “Do you have a ladder?”

At a chemical supply company in an industrial quarter of Como, Gabriel purchased acetone, alcohol, distilled water, goggles, a glass beaker, and a protective mask. Next he stopped at an arts-and-crafts shop in the center of town where he picked up wooden dowels and a packet of cotton wool. By the time he returned to the church, Father Marco had located a twenty-foot ladder and had erected it in front of the painting. Gabriel quickly mixed a basic solution of solvent and, clutching a dowel and a wad of cotton wool, scaled the ladder. With Chiara and the priest watching from below, he opened a window at the center of the painting and saw an angel’s hand, heavily damaged, clutching a ribbon of white silk. Next he opened a second window, approximately a foot lower on the canvas and a few inches to the right, and saw the face of a woman exhausted by childbirth. The third window revealed yet another face—the face of a newborn child, a boy, illuminated by a heavenly light. Gabriel placed his fingertips gently to the canvas and, much to his surprise, began to weep uncontrollably. Then he closed his eyes tightly and gave a shout of joy that echoed through the empty church.

The hand of an angel, a mother, a child
. . .

It was the Caravaggio.

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T
he Heist
is a work of entertainment and should be read as nothing more. The names, characters, places, and incidents portrayed in the story are the product of the author’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

There is indeed a Church of San Sebastiano in the
sestiere
of Dorsoduro—it was consecrated in 1562 and is considered one of the five great plague churches of Venice—and Veronese’s main altarpiece,
Virgin Assumed with Saints
, is accurately described. Visitors to the city will search in vain for the restoration firm owned by Francesco Tiepolo, nor will they find a certain Rabbi Zolli in the ancient Jewish ghetto. There are several small limestone apartment houses on Narkiss Street in Jerusalem, but to the best of my knowledge no one by the name of Gabriel Allon lives in any of them. The headquarters of the Israeli secret service is no longer located on King Saul Boulevard in Tel Aviv. I have chosen to keep the headquarters of my fictitious service there, in part, because I have always liked the name of the street.

There are many fine antique shops and art galleries on rue de Miromesnil in Paris, but Antiquités Scientifiques is not one of them. Maurice Durand has now appeared in three of the Gabriel Allon novels, and yet he still does not exist. Neither does Pascal Rameau, his accomplice from the criminal underworld of Marseilles. The Carabinieri’s Division for the Defense of Cultural Patrimony, better known as the Art Squad, is in fact headquartered in a graceful palazzo on Rome’s Piazza di Sant’Ignazio. Its chief is the able Mariano Mossa, not the one-eyed Cesare Ferrari. Deepest apologies to the Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh in Amsterdam for borrowing
Sunflowers
from its magnificent collection, but sometimes the best way to find a stolen masterpiece is to steal another one.

There is no Church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Brienno, Italy. Therefore, Caravaggio’s glorious
Nativity
, stolen from Palermo’s Oratorio di San Lorenzo in October 1969, could not have been discovered hanging above its altar, disguised as a crucifixion in the manner of Guido Reni. The account of Caravaggio’s turbulent life contained in
The Heist
is wholly factual, though some may disagree with choices I made regarding the dates and details of certain events, as they occurred four centuries ago and, as a result, are open to interpretation. Even now, the exact circumstances of Caravaggio’s death are shrouded in mystery. So, too, are the whereabouts of the
Nativity
. With each passing year, the chances of finding the large canvas intact grow more remote. The impact of its loss cannot be overstated. Caravaggio lived just thirty-nine years and left behind fewer than a hundred works that can be firmly attributed to his hand. The disappearance of even a single painting would leave a hole in the Western canon that can never be refilled.