A dozen voices told me it was okay, to let it out. I wiped my cheeks and tried hard to pull myself together. “I lost someone,” I said. “A friend. Not my fault but—” I stopped. It wasn’t my fault, was it? It had been Smith’s idea to follow me, not mine. But if I hadn’t gone searching for the journal in the first place, he might still be… I had to stop thinking like that. It was no use, no help, and too late.

It’s a disease, like measles or chicken pox. Alex’s words.

I was glad she wasn’t around to see me like this, and though I wanted to see her, I doubted I ever would.

“I feel…” What did I feel? As if I’d lost everything, but all I said was, “I want to be clean and sober again,” and everyone nodded. And later, when people came over to pat me on the back and congratulate me for being there, I felt the tears gathering and fought them so hard because I knew if I started crying again, I might never stop.

79

New York City

The painting sat on the vault’s concrete floor, just below another version of itself. For over an hour, he had been looking from one to the other: two sets of eyes, lips, the same folded hands. The paintings appeared identical down to the cracks in the paint. But how to know if one was real—and which one—the question he had been obsessed with for so long?

He gazed at the portrait, whispered, “Tell me, Lisa.” Of course he knew her story well, had read everything there was to know about Lisa del Giocondo, the silk merchant’s wife: born in 1479 into a minor branch of the distinguished Gherardini family, married at fifteen, five children, outlived her husband, Francesco del Giocondo, who had commissioned the portrait when Leonardo was strapped for cash, a situation soon altered as commissions began to pour in, so that the painting was never finished, never delivered.

“Are you her?” he asked, looking from one set of eyes to the other.

He sat back, dropped heavily into his gold Platner chair.

When he had begun monitoring the American, all he wanted was information, something that would absolutely, finally, tell him whether or not his painting was the original or a forgery, something he had wanted, needed to know for so many years, that he alone owned the world’s most famous painting. And his chances had just doubled. Of course no one could know, or he might lose them both—or worse, get caught—though he would never let that happen.

Another look from one Mona Lisa to the other, cell phone already to his ear.

“That man of yours, I need you to terminate his employment.” Other than sending him this painting, which was, he had to admit, a great gift, the man’s actions had been totally out of control, nothing he had instructed, and way too risky, inviting trouble he did not need.