There was much the press would never learn about the recovery of the Rembrandt. Even Ramsay himself was kept in the dark about most aspects of the case. He did not know, for example, that the painting had been quietly left in an alley behind a synagogue one week earlier in the Marais section of Paris. Or that it had been couriered to London by a sweating employee of the Israeli Embassy and turned over to Julian Isherwood, owner and sole proprietor of the sometimes solvent but never boring Isherwood Fine Arts, 7-8 Mason’s Yard, St. James’s. Nor would DI Ramsey ever learn that by the time of his news conference, the painting had already been quietly moved to a cottage atop the cliffs in Cornwall that bore a striking resemblance to the Customs Officer’s Cabin at Pourville by Claude Monet. Only MI5 knew that, and even within the halls of Thames House it was strictly need to know.

IN KEEPING with the spirit of Operation Masterpiece, her restoration would be a whirlwind. Gabriel would have three months to turn the most heavily damaged canvas he had ever seen into the star attraction of the National Gallery of Art’s long-awaited Rembrandt: A Retrospective. Three months to reline her and attach her to a new stretcher. Three months to remove the bloodstains and dirty varnish from her surface. Three months to repair a bullet hole in her forehead and smooth the creases caused by Kurt Voss’s decision to use her as the costliest envelope in history. It was an alarmingly short period of time, even for a restorer used to working under the pressure of a ticking clock.

In his youth, Gabriel had preferred to work in strict isolation, but now that he was older he no longer liked to be alone. So with Chiara’s blessing, he removed the furnishings from the living room and converted it into a makeshift studio. He rose before dawn each morning and worked until early evening, granting himself just one short break each day to walk the cliffs in the bitterly cold January wind. Chiara rarely strayed far from his side. She assisted with the relining and composed a small note to Rachel Herzfeld that Gabriel concealed against the inside of the new stretcher before tapping the last brad into place. She was even present the morning Gabriel undertook the unpleasant task of removing Christopher Liddell’s blood. Rather than drop the soiled swabs onto the floor, Gabriel sealed them in an aluminum canister. And when it came time to remove the dirty varnish, he began on the curve of Hendrickje’s breast, the spot where Liddell had been working the night of his murder.