He had been drinking a rare Louis Latour Château Corton Grancey Grand Cru red while admiring his recent acquisition, a Matisse drawing removed from a small private museum on the French Riviera, a remarkable theft and a coup, for which he’d paid extra. His cell phone vibrated and he answered, irritated by interruption.

“What is it?”

“The American was tracked to the Italian’s home.”

“You have already told me that.”

“Did you want me to follow up?”

“In what way?”

“Any way you would like.”

The collector considered this. No, he did not want the American apprehended, not until he got the information he needed. Then he would be expendable. Right now, it was better to do nothing. See what the American discovered and let him lead them to the answer the collector was looking for.

“Continue to watch him,” he said. “Anyone he meets. Anywhere he goes.”

“Yes, of course. Don’t worry.”

This struck the collector as funny. He never worried. And he’d made up his mind: once this job was completed, he would have the American terminated.

He gazed at the small portrait, a Blue Period Picasso, a minor variation of the artist’s more famous work, The Old Guitarist, something he should have given up long ago but had held on to for sentimental reasons. He pictured the painting in the Madison Avenue gallery where he had first seen it and how much he’d admired it. The timing was perfect, having just established his own fund and everyone telling him that a man of his stature should own serious art, about which he knew nothing, his taste adolescent, not yet honed.

It was a surprise though, his immediate love of art. The tug he had felt, this sudden need to own expensive things, the Picasso his first serious buy, just under a million, a lot of money at the time, but he wrote the check without hesitation.

It wasn’t until later that he’d realized there were other, more interesting ways to acquire art.

“Are you there?” The man’s voice a static whine through the cell phone. “Is something wrong?”

“Wrong?” the collector asked, thinking this man knew more than he should, that he too would have to go. “No,” he said again, making his tone as breezy as possible. “Nothing at all.”

40

When I finally saw Chaudron’s Mona Lisa forgeries I had to admit that they were brilliant.

The man had a perverse genius for mimicry that was without equal. He had studied and replicated all the formulas. The ratio of sun-thickened linseed oil to Venice turpentine that Leonardo would have used back in 1503. He had purchased the same kind of wood Leonardo had used. Had cut each panel to size. Sanded and aged them with poppyseed oil. Cooked up rabbit-skin glue and coated the wood to protect it from rot. Then a layer of pure lead white. Then he covered them with damar varnish made from crystals he had purchased at auction from the workshop of a minor sixteenth-century artist. It was the technique used by all artists of the time.