The fact that Elata had been treated differently by the Italian bothered Morgan. His men, of course, would find him, but it raised the possibility—distant but distinct—that this was an elaborate fraud and that Elata was involved in it. It would be foolish to try to cheat Morgan, but men did foolish things all the time.

The Italian was no doubt halfway to Milan by now. He might as well go to Antarctica, for all the good that would do him if the Picassos proved to be fake.

The helicopter pitched its nose downward, passing over the fortress twice. Morgan’s men had already searched it using IR sensors; they’d swept it for booby traps and neutralized the electronic surveillance system. What they hadn’t done was establish a suitable place for a helicopter to land. The castle covered the entire island; while there were two courtyards, neither was particularly large, and the pilot feared he’d damage the rotors on the side wall even of the biggest.

“I can take you back to the shore and meet the speedboat,” suggested the pilot.

“Not viable,” said Morgan. “I’ll climb down.”

“Long way to go, even if we had a ladder,” said the pilot. “Which we do not.”

“The boat landing then.”

“I can’t get in with those rocks.”

Morgan considered waiting for his people to finish with the professors. But every night—and every morning, and every afternoon—since meeting the Italian, he had taken out the photocopies and reexamined them. He had decided beyond question to keep the bull and the infant; he suspected, in fact, that he might eventually decide to keep them all. Fifteen million dollars was a minuscule amount of his fortune. Compared to the true worth of the paintings, it was laughable.

If they were real. Elata and the others had said they were, but he had to see himself.

“Get as close as you can and I’ll jump. Hover over the boat landing.”

When he was younger, Morgan had been a good enough athlete to play first-string soccer through college. He still worked out every day and, largely because of his stomach problems, was not horribly overweight. But the wash from the helicopter blades and the craft’s jittery approach nearly unnerved him as it hovered near the wall. The Sikorsky’s stowed landing gear made it impossible for him to climb down, and while the pilot was able to get closer than he’d thought to the wall, there was still a considerable distance between Morgan’s legs and the stones as he lowered himself out the doorway.

But he remembered the face of the child. Holding his breath, he let go.