He probed at the hole, then licked the tip of his finger and scrubbed at the surface of the painting until he smeared a small patch of the blood.

“Looks like it will come right off,” Monjean said.

“It should.”

“What about the bullet hole?”

“I know a man in Paris who might be able to repair it.”

“What kind of man?”

“The kind who produces forgeries.”

“You need a restorer, Maurice. A very good one.”

“At the core of every good restorer lies a forger.”

Monjean didn’t appear convinced. “May I give you a piece of advice, Maurice?”

“You just shot a Rembrandt worth forty-five million dollars. But please, René, feel free.”

“This painting is trouble. Burn it and forget about it. Besides, we can always steal another one.”

“I’m tempted.”

“But?”

“I have a client waiting. And my clients expect me to deliver. Besides, René, I didn’t get into this business to destroy paintings. Especially not one as beautiful as this.”

CHAPTER 14

14

AMSTERDAM

In the cutthroat world of the art trade, there was one principle that was supposed to be sacrosanct. Provenance, the written record of a painting’s chain of ownership, was everything. Theoretically, dealers did not sell paintings without a proper provenance, collectors did not buy them, and no decent restorer would ever lay hands on a picture without knowing where it had been and under what conditions it had hung. But after many years of conducting provenance research, Gabriel had learned never to be shocked by the secret lives led by some of the world’s most sought-after works of art. He knew that paintings, like people, sometimes lied about their pasts. And he knew that, often, those lies revealed more than the so-called truths contained in their printed pedigrees. All of which explained his interest in De Vries Fine Arts, purveyors of quality Dutch and Flemish Old Master paintings since 1882.

Occupying a stately if somewhat sullen building overlooking Amsterdam’s Herengracht canal, the gallery had always presented itself as the very picture of stability and good manners, though a brief glimpse into the darkest chambers of its past would tell a markedly different story. Regrettably, none was darker than its conduct during the Second World War. Within weeks of Holland’s capitulation, Amsterdam was inundated by a wave of Germans looking for Dutch paintings. Prices soared so quickly that ordinary citizens were soon scouring their closets for anything that might be regarded as an Old Master. The De Vries gallery welcomed the Germans with open arms. Its best customer was none other than Hermann Göring, who purchased more than a dozen paintings from the gallery between 1940 and 1942. The staff found Göring to be a shrewd negotiator and secretly enjoyed his roguish charm. For his part, Göring would tell colleagues in Berlin that no shopping spree in Amsterdam was complete without a stop at the exquisite gallery along the Herengracht.