“True. That’s what makes your product unique—if you’re okay with my calling your art a product. Just in the business sense, of course. Your Marilyn on an owner’s wall will be the statement piece he shows off to his guests. ‘I’ve had this hanging here for a decade now,’ he’ll say. ‘What?’ his friends will respond. ‘Impossible!’ Then he’ll go on to tell them just how smart he is to have invested in it. It’s an ego thing, and if there’s one word that describes a mega yacht owner, it’s ego.”

“That’s true. I’ve met enough yacht owners. But mega yachts are a limited market. Only so many exist or will ever exist. Getting to yacht owners isn’t too difficult, but breaking through to mega yacht owners is impossible.”

Nir leaned forward, causing the jewelers loupe hanging around his neck to clink against the glass desktop. “That’s why you need to emphasize the unique nature of your niche. You can work harder and sell ten €5,000 pieces to ten yacht owners, or you can sell two €50,000 pieces to one mega yacht owner.”

Alicia laughed. “Why would anyone pay €50,000 for one of my pieces?”

“Because you would ask them to. Again, it’s about ego. Would the yacht owners you’ve met rather show their friends the €5,000 painting on their wall or the €50,000 artistic masterpiece? To these guys, your art is worth whatever your price.”

Nir could tell Alicia was getting it, and from his peripheral vision, he saw Nicole wink at him.

“So if we were to do this, how would we start?”

“Well, you know the old adage that it takes money to make money. I need something from you.”

He watched her expression change as her guard went up.

“Don’t worry, I’m not asking you to give me $20,000 so I can release the $4 million I have tied up in the Nigerian courts. You said it’s impossible to break into the mega yacht world, but I can get you there. What I need from you is three paintings. I want to give them away to three friends of mine to seed the field.”

Nir already had the three who would receive the paintings in mind, and none of them were actually friends. But they were men with connections, and that’s what was important.

One would go to Anatoly Kvashnin, a Russian oligarch who made his money in fertilizer after the fall of the Soviet Union. He’d been funding a Chechen militia that had made its way into Azerbaijan and was stirring up trouble at the behest of the Russian government. In return for intelligence and special forces access into the country, Israel had promised the Azerbaijani government they’d cut off the funding for the militia. Nir and Yaron had staged a tenachesh mi on Kvashnin’s yacht while it was moored off Cyprus.