“You purchased a bottle of Jack Daniel’s?” D’Artagnan Moore would sooner drink an ice-cold German Gewürztraminer than American sour mash whiskey.
D’Art hesitated. “Not me personally. I asked my assistant. Can’t be seen to be lowering my standards.”
“God forbid.”
“Testy, aren’t we?”
“Watch it, D’Art. Today isn’t the day.”
D’Artagnan Moore walked to his drinks trolley and opened the bottle of Jack. He poured two fingers into a glass, saw Simon motioning for more, and added another two. For himself, he chose a crystal decanter, single-malt scotch with an unpronounceable name, and matched Simon drop for drop.
“Health,” said Moore, raising his glass. He was a big man by any standard, six feet five inches tall, three hundred pounds, a huntsman’s untamed beard touching his chest, dressed as always in a three-piece suit of Harris Tweed, a calico pocket square waving from his jacket.
“Health,” said Simon, finishing half the glass. He dropped into a quilted club chair, wincing only a little. “Well…does the Monet check out?”
“Ninety-nine percent. Looks very bonny.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means we were right to recognize the work as the Rouen façade stolen from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. The first experts are inclined to confirm that it is the original.”
“How many experts are there?”
“The museum received fifteen million dollars as compensation when it was stolen. Before they hand back the money, they want to be damned sure it’s the real thing. The answer to your question, I imagine, is ‘as many as necessary.’”
“Any word in the press?”
Moore shook his head. “A bit difficult to report the theft of a theft.”
“And my fee?” asked Simon.
Moore cleared his throat. He might as well have sent up a distress flare. “Pending.”
“Pending?”
“Forensics in progress. Testing the paint and canvas to confirm that they date from the era and match the artist’s other works.”
“If you sent me to steal a forgery, I will wrap my hands around your neck and strangle every last drop of life from your body.”
“You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Moore. “Since when is there anything like a sure thing? The watch you stole from Boris Blatt a while back could have been a counterfeit. We had no way of knowing beforehand. I know you’re worried about Lucy, and I’d move heaven and earth to change things. But I can’t. Neither can I change the nature of our work.”
Simon stared out the window, down the Thames, to Tower Bridge, the HMSBelfast,the river coursing with maritime traffic. The world went on.
Earlier in the day he’d paid a deposit of two hundred thousand pounds for Lucy’s care and rehabilitation, enough to cover a thirty-day stay. He wasn’t a greedy man, far from it, but he didn’t care to go bankrupt while Lloyd’s took their own sweet time authenticating the painting. His fee was six percent of the paid claim, nearly a million dollars. As far as he was concerned, the money was Lucy’s.
“Twenty-four years old,” he said wearily. “What am I going to tell her family?”
“They don’t know?”
“Lucy doesn’t speak with them. I only found out where they live this morning.”
“Tell them the truth, or a modified version thereof. She was injured while working.” D’Art stretched a long arm for a dossier on his desk and deposited it on the table in front of Simon. “What do you Yanks say? If you get kicked off, it’s best to get right back on.”
Simon looked at the dossier. “I wasn’t kicked off. I brought back the painting. There were just…complications.”
“Ready to tell me what happened?”
“The thing was we had it. We were done.” Simon ran a hand across his mouth, seeing the events of the evening play out in his mind. He’d given Moore the briefest of explanations from the hospital in Nice. Now he related in detail all that had happened, from the moment they’d boarded theYasminato the seconds before the car crash.
