The Heist (9 page)

The small showroom, like Durand himself, was a model of order and precision. Antique microscopes and barometers stood in neat rows along the shelves, their brass fittings shining like the buttons of a soldier’s dress tunic; cameras and telescopes peered blindly into the past. In the center of the room was a nineteenth-century Italian terrestrial floor globe, price available upon request. Durand’s tiny right hand rested atop Asia Minor. He wore a dark suit, a candy-wrapper gold necktie, and the most insincere smile Gabriel had ever seen. His bald pate shone in the overhead lighting. His small eyes stared straight ahead with the alertness of a terrier.

“How’s business?” asked Gabriel cordially.

Durand moved to the photographic devices and picked up an early-twentieth-century camera with a brass lens by Poulenc of Paris. “I’m shipping this to a collector in Australia,” he said. “Six hundred euros. Not as much as I would have hoped, but he drove a hard bargain.”

“Not that business, Maurice.”

Durand made no reply.

“That was a lovely piece of work you and your men pulled off in Munich last month,” Gabriel said. “An El Greco portrait disappears from the Alte Pinakothek, and no one’s seen or heard of it since. No ransom demands. No hints from the German police that they’re close to cracking the case. Nothing but silence and a blank spot on a museum wall where a masterpiece used to hang.”

“You don’t ask me about my business,” said Durand, “and I don’t ask you about yours. Those are the rules of our relationship.”

“Where’s the El Greco, Maurice?”

“It’s in Buenos Aires, in the hands of one of my best customers. He has a weakness,” Durand added, “an insatiable appetite that only I can satisfy.”

“What’s that?”

“He likes to own the unownable.” Durand returned the camera to the display shelf. “I assume this isn’t a social call.”

Gabriel shook his head.

“What do you want this time?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“A dead Englishman named Jack Bradshaw.”

Durand’s face remained expressionless.

“I assume you knew him?” asked Gabriel.

“Only by reputation.”

“Any idea who cut him to pieces?”

“No,” said Durand, shaking his head slowly. “But I might be able to point you in the right direction.”

Gabriel walked over to the window and turned the sign from
OUVERT
to
FERMÉ
. Durand exhaled heavily and pulled on his overcoat.

They were as unlikely a pairing as one might have found in Paris that chill spring morning, the art thief and the intelligence operative, walking side by side through the streets of the Eighth Arrondissement. Maurice Durand, meticulous in all things, began with a brief primer on the trade in stolen art. Each year thousands of paintings and other objets d’art went missing from museums, galleries, public institutions, and private homes. Estimates of their value ranged as high as $6 billion, making art crime the fourth most lucrative illicit activity in the world, behind only drug trafficking, money laundering, and arms dealing. And Maurice Durand was responsible for much of it. Working with a stable of Marseilles-based professional thieves, he had carried off some of history’s greatest art heists. He no longer thought of himself as a mere art thief. He was a global businessman, a broker of sorts, who specialized in the quiet acquisition of paintings that were not actually for sale.

“In my humble opinion,” he continued without a trace of humility in his voice, “there are four distinct types of art thieves. The first is the thrill seeker, the art lover who steals to attain something he could never possibly afford. Stéphane Breitwieser comes to mind.” He cast a sidelong glance at Gabriel. “Know the name?”

“Breitwieser was the waiter who stole more than a billion dollars’ worth of art for his private collection.”

“Including
Sybille of Cleves
by Lucas Cranach the Elder. After he was arrested, his mother cut the paintings into small pieces and threw them out with her kitchen garbage.” The Frenchman shook his head reproachfully. “I am far from a perfect person, but I have never destroyed a painting.” He cast another glance at Gabriel. “Even when I should have.”

“And the second category?”

“The incompetent loser. He steals a painting, doesn’t know what to do with it, and panics. Sometimes he manages to collect a bit of ransom or reward money. Oftentimes he gets caught. Frankly,” Durand added, “I resent him. He gives people like me a bad name.”

“Professionals who carry out commissioned thefts?”

Durand nodded. They were walking along the avenue Matignon. They passed the Paris offices of Christie’s and then turned into the Champs-Élysées. The limbs of the chestnut trees lay bare against the gray sky.

“There are some in law enforcement who insist I don’t exist,” Durand resumed. “They think I’m a fantasy, that I’m wishful thinking. They don’t understand that there are extremely wealthy people in the world who lust after great works of art and don’t care whether they’re stolen or not. In fact, there are some people who want a masterpiece
because
it’s stolen.”

“What’s the fourth category?”

“Organized crime. They’re very good at stealing paintings but not so good at bringing them to market.” Durand paused, then added, “That’s where Jack Bradshaw entered the picture. He was a middleman between the thieves and the buyers—a high-end fence, if you will. And he was good at his job.”

“What sort of buyers?”

“Occasionally, he sold directly to collectors,” Durand replied. “But most of the time he funneled the stolen works into a network of dealers here in Europe.”

“Where?”

“Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam are excellent dumping grounds for stolen art. But Switzerland’s property and privacy laws still make it a mecca for bringing hot property to market.”

They made their way across the Place de la Concorde and entered the Jardin des Tuileries. On their left was the Jeu de Paume, the small museum that the Nazis had used as a sorting facility when they were looting France of its art. Durand appeared to be making a conscious effort not to look at it.

“Your friend Jack Bradshaw was in a dangerous line of work,” he was saying. “He had to deal with the sort of people who are quick to resort to violence when they don’t get their way. The Serbian gangs are particularly active in Western Europe. The Russians, too. It’s possible Bradshaw was killed as a result of a deal gone bad. Or . . .” Durand’s voice trailed off.

“Or what?”

Durand hesitated before answering. “There were rumors,” he said finally. “Nothing concrete, mind you. Just informed speculation.”

“What sort of speculation?”

“That Bradshaw was involved in acquiring a large number of paintings on the black market for a single individual.”

“Do you know the individual’s name?”

“No.”

“Are you telling me the truth, Maurice?”

“This might surprise you,” Durand replied, “but when one is acquiring a collection of stolen paintings, one tends not to advertise what one is doing.”

“Go on.”

“There were rumors of another sort swirling around Bradshaw, rumors he was brokering a deal for a masterpiece.” Durand made an almost imperceptible check of his surroundings before continuing. It was a move, thought Gabriel, worthy of a professional spy. “A masterpiece that has been missing for several decades.”

“Do you know which painting it was?”

“Of course. And so do you.” Durand stopped walking and turned to face Gabriel. “It was a nativity painted by a Baroque artist at the end of his career. His name was Michelangelo Merisi, but most people know him by the name of his family’s village near Milan.”

Gabriel thought of the three letters he had found on Bradshaw’s message pad:
C
. . .
V
. . .
O
. . .

The letters weren’t random.

They were Caravaggio.

T
WO CENTURIES AFTER HIS DEATH
, he was all but forgotten. His paintings gathered dust in the storerooms of galleries and museums, many misattributed, their dramatically illuminated figures receding slowly into the emptiness of their distinctive black backgrounds. Finally, in 1951, the noted Italian art historian Roberto Longhi assembled his known works and displayed them for the world at the Palazzo Reale in Milan. Many of those who visited the remarkable exhibit had never heard the name Caravaggio.

The details of his early life are sketchy at best, faint lines of charcoal on an otherwise blank canvas. He was born on the twenty-ninth day of September in 1571, probably in Milan, where his father was a successful mason and architect. In the summer of 1576, plague returned to the city. By the time it finally abated, one-fifth of the Milan diocese had perished, including young Caravaggio’s father, grandfather, and uncle. In 1584, at the age of thirteen, he entered the workshop of Simone Peterzano, a dull but competent Mannerist who claimed to be a pupil of Titian. The contract, which survives, obligated Caravaggio to train “night and day” for a period of four years. It is not known whether he lived up to its terms, or even if he completed his apprenticeship. Clearly, Peterzano’s limp, lifeless work had little influence on him.

The exact circumstances surrounding Caravaggio’s departure from Milan are, like almost everything else about him, lost to time and shrouded in mystery. Records indicate his mother died in 1590 and that, from her modest estate, he claimed an inheritance equal to six hundred gold scudi. Within a year the money was gone. There is no suggestion, anywhere, that the volatile young man who had trained to be an artist ever placed a brush to canvas during his final years in Milan. It seems he was too busy with other pursuits. Giovanni Pietro Bellori, author of an early biography, suggests Caravaggio had to flee the city, perhaps after an incident involving a prostitute and a razor, perhaps after the murder of a friend. He traveled eastward to Venice, wrote Bellori, where he fell under the spell of Giorgione’s palette. Then, in the autumn of 1592, he set out for Rome.

Here Caravaggio’s life comes into sharper relief. He entered the city, like all migrants from the north, through the gates of the Porto del Popolo and made his way to the artists’ quarter, a warren of filthy streets around the Campo Marzio. According to the painter Baglione, he shared rooms with an artist from Sicily, though another early biographer, a physician who knew Caravaggio in Rome, records that he found lodgings in the home of a priest who forced him to do household chores and gave him only greens to eat. Caravaggio referred to the priest as Monsignor Insalata and left his home after a few months. He lived in as many as ten different places during his first years in Rome, including the workshop of Giuseppe Cesari, where he slept on a straw mattress. He walked the streets in tattered black stockings and a threadbare black cloak. His black hair was an unruly mess.

Cesari allowed Caravaggio to paint only flowers and fruit, the lowliest assignment for a workshop apprentice. Bored, convinced of his superior talent, he began to produce paintings of his own. Some he sold in the alleyways around the Piazza Navona. But one painting, a luminous image of a well-to-do Roman boy being cheated by a pair of cardsharps, he sold to a dealer whose shop was located across the street from the palazzo occupied by Cardinal Francesco del Monte. The transaction would dramatically alter the course of Caravaggio’s life, for the cardinal, a connoisseur and patron of the arts, admired the painting greatly and purchased it for a few scudi. Soon after, he acquired a second painting by Caravaggio depicting a smiling fortune-teller stealing a Roman boy’s ring as she reads his palm. At some point, the two men met, though at whose initiative remains unclear. The cardinal offered the young artist food, clothing, lodgings, and a studio in his palazzo. All he asked of Caravaggio was that he paint. Caravaggio, then twenty-four, accepted the cardinal’s proposal. It was one of the few wise decisions he ever made.

After settling in to his rooms at the palazzo, Caravaggio produced several works for the cardinal and his circle of wealthy friends, including
The Lute Player, The Musicians, Bacchus, Martha and Mary Magdalene
, and
St. Francis of Assisi in Ecstasy.
Then, in 1599, he was awarded his first public commission: two canvases depicting scenes from the life of Saint Matthew for the Contarelli Chapel in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The paintings, while controversial, instantly established Caravaggio as the most sought-after artist in Rome. Other commissions soon followed, including
The Crucifixion of St. Peter
and
The Conversion of St. Paul
for the Cerasi Chapel of the Church of Santa Maria del Popolo,
The Supper at Emmaus, John the Baptist, The Betrayal of Christ, Doubting Thomas
, and
The Sacrifice of Isaac.
Not all his works met with approval upon delivery.
Madonna and Child with St. Anne
was removed from St. Peter’s Basilica because the church hierarchy apparently did not approve of Mary’s ample cleavage. Her bare-legged portrayal in
Death of the Virgin
was considered so offensive that the church for which it was commissioned, Santa Maria della Scala in Trastevere, refused to accept it. Rubens called it one of Caravaggio’s finest works and helped him to find a buyer.

Success as a painter did not bring calm to Caravaggio’s personal life—indeed, it remained as chaotic and violent as ever. He was arrested for carrying a sword without a license in the Campo Marzio. He smashed a plate of artichokes against a waiter’s face at the Osteria del Moro. He was jailed for throwing stones at the
sbirri
, the papal police, in the Via dei Greci. The stone-throwing incident occurred at half past nine on an October evening in 1604. By then, Caravaggio was living alone in a rented house with only Cecco, his apprentice and occasional model, for company. His physical appearance had deteriorated; he was once again the unkempt figure in tattered black clothing who used to sell his paintings on the street. Though he had many commissions, he worked fitfully. Somehow he managed to deliver a monumental altarpiece called
The Deposition of Christ
. It was widely regarded as his finest painting.