“We’ll be in touch. Don’t worry,” Wallace said.
* * *
Tess
The car ride back to my apartment in St. Petersburgwas far quieter than our trip to Sasha’s house. We made small talk so as not to seem suspicious to the driver, but we clearly both had a lot on our minds.
As we neared our destination, I asked our driver to drop us off at Pokrovsky Park. I still wasn’t one-hundred percent sure that I wasn’t being spied on in my St. Petersburg apartment and Officer Wallace, and I had a lot to talk about.
“I’d like to take a walk in the night air, before bed,” I said. “It’s near my apartment and we can walk home from there.”
“V eto vremya sutok ne stoit khodit' v park.,” he warned. (You don’t want to go to the park at this hour.)
Wallace leaned forward and gave the driver a pat on the shoulder. “Ne volnuytes'. YA smogu zashchitit' etu damu.,” he said in almost flawless Russian. (Assuring him that he could protect me.)
The driver gave a ‘suit yourselves’ sort of shrug before dropping us off at the park’s entrance. The place hardly looked menacing. Outside of three teenagers playing basketball on the distant courts, we appeared to be the only living souls around.
“This is fine, thank you,” I said before climbing out of the back seat.
It was early spring in Russia and the night air felt wonderful against my burning hot skin. My head was spinning a million miles an hour, and I needed to regain my bearings, right now.
The moment the car was out of sight I laid into Wallace. “What the hell was that all about?”
“Which part exactly are you referring to?” he asked, in a tone far too calm and casual for myliking. I swear, this man’s stupid face was as punchable as it was handsome.
“Don’t you dare get cute with me,Noah. You went way off book tonight. You’re making unilateral decisions that impact this mission and I want to know why.”
He frowned. “To save both our lives, that’s why. You’re welcome, by the way.”
“I told you not to get cute.”
“You seem angry,” he said with a sigh.
“I swear on my mother’s eyes, I will choke you to death if you don’t tell me what the hell was going on between you and Sasha tonight? Why did you willingly expose the forged Matisse and who the fuck is the fucking man from fucking Brussels?”
“I didn’t expose us. Sasha already knew it was a fake,” he replied.
“Well, obviously, but you’d already figured out he knew.” I threw my hands in the air. “How?”
“As we were walking through Sasha’s gallery, I happened to notice a power supply belonging to a Yoshino-Tech V25 model multispectral scanner. I didn’t see the scanner itself, but I recognized the power supply.”
“You recognized thepower supply?” I fisted my hands at my sides in an effort not to scratch his baby blues out. “How is that even a thing?”
“You probably know as much or more about art than most legitimate brokers, so I’ll assume you know who Dr. Daniel Forsythe is.”
I nodded. “He’s a forgery expert, right?”
“He’s the world’sleadingexpert in the field, andwhen I was at school studying for my degree in Art History, Dr. Forsythe served as a guest lecturer for an entire week. While he was visiting, he brought in a Yoshino-Tech V25 Multispectral Scanner and showed us how he used it in identifying forged paintings. The V25 is an amazing piece of equipment with the ability to perform X-Radiography, IR reflectography, UV imaging, as well as radiocarbon dating. I was so impressed by the demonstration, I asked Dr. Forsythe if I could borrow the V25’s technical manual for the night so I could understand how it worked a bit better.”
I cocked my head. “You read the instruction manual overnight and that’s how you knew about the power supply?”
“Each scanning component within the V25 has its own unique power needs and the custom designed power supply was built to accommodate each one. The unit was also designed to handle power from both 110 and 220-volt sources via an internal attenuator as YT wanted to create a scanner that could be used around the globe without fear of one of their scanners damaging a priceless work of art due to improper light source calibration.”
I sighed. “My God. Even the nerds at school must have beat you up.”
Wallace shot me a look I’d later come to call “Snake Eyes.”
“So, when you saw the power supply,” I continued. “You knew Sasha had one of these V25 multiwhatsits…”
