by Daniel Silva
The first thing Peel noticed was that the stranger liked old objects. His car was a vintage MG roadster. Peel would watch from his window as the man hunched over the motor for hours at a time, his back poking from beneath the bonnet. A man of great concentration, Peel concluded. A man of great mental endurance.
After a month the stranger vanished. A few days passed, then a week, then a fortnight. Peel feared the stranger had spotted him and taken flight. Bored senseless without the routine of watching, Peel got into trouble. He was caught hurling a rock through the window of a tea shop in the village. Derek sentenced him to a week of solitary confinement in his bedroom.
But that evening Peel managed to slip out with his binoculars. He walked along the quay, past the stranger’s darkened cottage and the oyster farm, and stood at the point where the creek fed into the Helford River, watching the sailboats coming in with the tide. He spotted a ketch heading in under power. He raised the binoculars to his eyes and studied the figure standing at the wheel.
The stranger had come back to Port Navas.
The ketch was old and badly in need of restoration, and the stranger cared for it with the same devotion he had shown his fickle MG. He toiled for several hours each day: sanding, varnishing, painting, polishing brass, changing lines and canvas. When the weather was warm he would strip to the waist. Peel couldn’t help but compare the stranger’s body with Derek’s. Derek was soft and flabby; the stranger was compact and very hard, the kind of man you would quickly regret picking a fight with. By the end of August his skin had turned nearly as dark as the varnish he was so meticulously applying to the deck of the ketch.
He would disappear aboard the boat for days at a time. Peel had no way to follow him. He could only imagine where the stranger was going. Down the Helford to the sea? Around the Lizard to St. Michael’s Mount or Penzance? Maybe around the cape to St. Ives.
Then Peel hit upon another possibility. Cornwall was famous for its pirates; indeed, the region still had its fair share of smugglers. Perhaps the stranger was running the ketch out to sea to meet cargo vessels and ferry contraband to shore.
The next time the stranger returned from one of his voyages, Peel stood a strict watch in his window, hoping to catch him in the act of removing contraband from the boat. But as he leaped from the prow of the ketch onto the quay, he had nothing in his hands but a canvas rucksack and plastic rubbish bag.
The stranger sailed for pleasure, not profit.
Peel took out his notebook and drew a line through the word smuggler.
The large parcel arrived the first week of September, a flat wooden crate, nearly as big as a barn door. It came in a van from London, accompanied by an agitated man in pinstripes. The stranger’s days immediately assumed a reverse rhythm. At night the top floor of the cottage burned with light—not normal light, Peel observed, but a very clear white light. In the mornings, when Peel left home for school, he would see the stranger heading down the creek in the ketch, or working on his MG, or setting off in a pair of battered hiking boots to pound the footpaths of the Helford Passage. Peel supposed he slept afternoons, though he seemed like a man who could go a long time without rest.
Peel wondered what the stranger was doing all night. Late one evening he decided to have a closer look. He pulled on a sweater and coat and slipped out of the cottage without telling his mother. He stood on the quay, looking up at the stranger’s cottage. The windows were open; a sharp odor hung on the air, something between rubbing alcohol and petrol. He could also hear music of some sort—singing, opera perhaps.
He was about to move closer to the house when he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He spun around and saw Derek standing over him, hands on his hips, eyes wide with anger. “What in the bloody hell are you doing out here?” Derek said. “Your mother was worried sick!”
“If she was so worried, why did she send you?”
“Answer my question, boy! Why are you standing out here?”
“None of your business!”
In the darkness Peel did not see the blow coming: open-handed, against the side of his head, hard enough to make his ear ring and bring water instantly to his eyes.
“You’re not my father! You’ve no right!”
“And you’re not my son, but as long as you live in my house you’ll do as I say.”
Peel tried to run, but Derek grabbed him roughly by the collar of his coat and lifted him off the ground.
“Let go!”
“One way or another you’re coming home.”
Derek took a few steps, then froze. Peel twisted his head around to see what was the matter. It was then that he saw the stranger, standing in the center of the lane, arms crossed in front of his chest, head cocked slightly to one side.
“What do you want?” snapped Derek.
“I heard noises. I thought there might be a problem.”
Peel realized this was the first time he had ever heard the stranger speak. His English was perfect, but there was a trace of an accent to it. His diction was like his body: hard, compact, concise, no fat.
“No problem,” Derek said. “Just a boy who’s someplace he shouldn’t be.”
“Maybe you should treat him like a boy and not a dog.”
“And maybe you should mind your own fucking business.”
Derek released Peel and stared hard at the smaller man. For a moment Peel feared Derek was going to try to hit the stranger. He remembered the man’s taut, hard muscles, the impression that he was a man who knew how to fight. Derek seemed to sense it too, for he simply took Peel by the elbow and led him back toward the cottage. Along the way Peel glanced over his shoulder and caught sight of the stranger still standing in the lane, arms crossed like a silent sentinel. But by the time Peel returned to his room and peered out his window, the stranger was gone. Only the light remained, clean and searing white.
By the late autumn Peel was frustrated. He had not learned even the most basic facts about the stranger. He still had no name—oh, he had heard a couple of possible names whispered around the village, both vaguely Latin—nor had he discovered the nature of his nocturnal work. He decided a crash operation was in order.
The following morning, when the stranger climbed into his MG and sped toward the center of the village, Peel hurried along the quay and slipped into the cottage through an open garden window.
The first thing he noticed was that the stranger was using the drawing room as a bedroom.
He quickly climbed the stairs. A chill ran over him.
Most of the walls had been knocked down to create a spacious open room. In the center was a large white table. Mounted on the side was a microscope with a long retractable arm. On another table were clear flasks of chemicals, which Peel reckoned were the source of the strange odor, and two strange visors with powerful magnifying glasses built into them. Atop a tall, adjustable stand was a bank of fluorescent lights, the source of the cottage’s peculiar glow.
There were other instruments Peel could not identify, but these things were not the source of his alarm. Mounted on a pair of heavy wooden easels were two paintings. One was large, very old-looking, a religious scene of some sort. Parts had flaked away. On the second easel was a painting of an old man, a young woman, and a child. Peel examined the signature in the bottom righthand corner: Rembrandt.
He turned to leave and found himself face-to-face with the stranger.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m s-s-sorry,” Peel stammered. “I thought you were here.”
“No you didn’t. You knew I was away, because you were watching me from your bedroom window when I left. In fact, you’ve been watching me since the summer.”
“I thought you might be a smuggler.”
“Whatever gave you that idea?”
“The boat,” Peel lied.
The stranger smiled briefly. “Now you know the truth.”
“Not really,” said Peel.
“I’m an art restorer. Paintings are old objects. Some
times they need a little fixing up, like a cottage, for example.”
“Or a boat,” said Peel.
“Exactly. Some paintings, like these, are very valuable.”
“More than a sailboat?”
“Much more. But now that you know what’s in here, we have a problem.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Peel pleaded. “Honest.”
The stranger ran a hand over his short, brittle hair. “I could use a helper,” he said softly. “Someone to keep an eye on the place while I’m away. Would you like a job like that?”
“Yes.”
“I’m going sailing. Would you like to join me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you need to ask your parents?”
“He’s not my father, and my mum won’t care.”
“You sure about that?”
“Positive.”
“What’s your name?”
“I’m Peel. What’s yours?”
But the stranger just looked around the room to make certain Peel hadn’t disturbed any of his things.
2
PARIS
The stranger’s restless Cornish quarantine might have gone undisturbed if Emily Parker had not met a man called René at a drunken dinner party, which was thrown by a Jordanian student named Leila Khalifa on a wet night in late October. Like the stranger, Emily Parker was living in self-imposed exile: she had moved to Paris after graduation in the hope that it would help mend a broken heart. She possessed none of his physical attributes. Her gait was loose-limbed and chaotic. Her legs were too long, her hips too wide, her breasts too heavy, so that when she moved, each part of her anatomy seemed in conflict with the rest. Her wardrobe varied little: faded jeans, fashionably ripped at the knees, a quilted jacket that made her look rather like a large throw pillow. And then there was the face—the face of a Polish peasant, her mother had always said: rounded cheeks, a thick mouth, a heavy jaw, dull brown eyes set too closely together. “I’m afraid you have your father’s face,” her mother had said. “Your father’s face and your father’s fragile heart.”
Emily met Leila in mid-October at the Musée de Montmartre. She was a student at the Sorbonne, a stunningly attractive woman with lustrous black hair and wide brown eyes. She had been raised in Amman, Rome, and London, and spoke a half-dozen languages fluently. She was everything that Emily was not: beautiful, confident, cosmopolitan. Gradually, Emily unburdened all her secrets to Leila: the way her mother had made her feel so terribly ugly; the pain she felt over being abandoned by her fiancé; her deep-rooted fear that no one would ever love her again. Leila promised to fix everything. Leila promised to introduce Emily to a man who would make her forget all about the boy she had foolishly fallen for in college.
It happened at Leila’s dinner party. She had invited twenty guests to her cramped little flat in Montparnasse. They ate wherever they could find space: on the couch, on the floor, on the bed. All very Parisian bohemian: roast chicken from the corner rotisserie, a heaping salade verte, cheese, and entirely too much inexpensive Bordeaux. There were other students from the Sorbonne: an artist, a young German essayist of note, the son of an Italian count, a pretty Englishman with flowing blond hair called Lord Reggie, and a jazz musician who played the guitar like Al DiMeola. The room sounded like the Tower of Babel. The conversation moved from French to English, then from English to Italian, then from Italian to Spanish. Emily watched Leila moving about the flat, kissing cheeks, lighting cigarettes. She marveled at the ease with which Leila made friends and brought them together.
“He’s here, you know, Emily—the man you’re going to fall in love with.”
René. René from the south somewhere, a village Emily had never heard of, somewhere in the hills above Nice. René who had a bit of family money and had never had the time, or the inclination, to work. René who traveled. René who read many books. René who disdained politics—“Politics is an exercise for the feebleminded, Emily. Politics has nothing to do with real life.” René who had a face you might pass in a crowd and never notice, but if you looked carefully was rather good-looking. René whose eyes were lit by some secret source of heat that Emily could not fathom. René who took her to bed the night of Leila’s dinner party and made her feel things she had never thought possible. René who said he wanted to remain in Paris for a few weeks—“Would it be possible for me to crash at your place, Emily? Leila has no room for me. You know Leila. Too many clothes, too many things. Too many men.” René who had made her happy again. René who was eventually going to break the heart he had healed.
He was already slipping away; she could feel him growing slightly more distant every day. He was spending more time on his own, disappearing for several hours each day, reappearing with no warning. When she asked him where he had been, his answers were vague. She feared he was seeing another woman. A skinny French girl, she imagined. A girl who didn’t have to be taught how to make love.
That afternoon Emily wound her way through the narrow streets of Montmartre to the rue Norvins. She stood beneath the crimson awning of a bistro and peered through the window. René was seated at a table near the door. Funny how he always insisted on sitting near the doorway. There was a man with him: dark hair, a few years younger. When Emily entered the bistro, the man stood and quickly walked out. Emily removed her coat and sat down. René poured wine for her.
She asked, “Who was that man?”
“Just someone I used to know.”
“What’s his name?”
“Jean,” he said. “Would you like—”
“Your friend left his backpack.”
“It’s mine,” René said, putting a hand on it.
“Really? I’ve never seen you carry it before.”
“Trust me, Emily. It’s mine. Are you hungry?”
And you’re changing the subject again. She said, “I’m famished, actually. I’ve been walking around in the cold all afternoon.”
“Have you really? Whatever for?”
“Just doing some thinking. Nothing serious.”
He removed the backpack from the chair and placed it on the floor at his feet. “What have you been thinking about?”
“Really, René—it was nothing important.”
“You used to tell me all your secrets.”
“Yes, but you’ve never really told me yours.”
“Are you still upset about this bag?”
“I’m not upset about it. Just curious, that’s all.”
“All right, if you must know, it’s a surprise.”
“For who?”
“For you!” He smiled. “I was going to give it to you later.”
“You bought me a backpack? How very thoughtful, René. How romantic.”
“The surprise is inside the backpack.”
“I don’t like surprises.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s been my experience that the surprise itself never quite lives up to the anticipation of the surprise. I’ve been let down too many times. I don’t want to be let down again.”
“Emily, I’ll never let you down. I love you too much.”
“Oh, René, I wish you hadn’t said that.”
“It happens to be the truth. Let’s eat something, shall we? Then we’ll take a walk.”
Ambassador Zev Eliyahu stood in the grand center hall of the Musée d’Orsay, using every diplomatic skill he possessed to hide the fact that he was bored to tears. Trim, athletic, deeply tanned in spite of the dreary Parisian fall, he crackled with a brash energy. Gatherings like this annoyed him. Eliyahu had nothing against art; he simply didn’t have time for it. He still had the work ethic of a kibbutznik, and between ambassadorial postings he had made millions in investment banking.
He had been talked into attending the reception tonight for one reason: it would give him an opportunity to have an unofficial moment or two with the French foreign minister. Relations between France and Israel were icy at the moment. The French were angry because a pair of Isra
eli intelligence officers had been caught trying to recruit an official from the Defense Ministry. The Israelis were angry because the French had recently agreed to sell jet fighters and nuclear reactor technology to one of Israel’s Arab enemies. But when Eliyahu approached the French foreign minister for a word, the minister virtually ignored him, then pointedly engaged the Egyptian ambassador in a lively conversation about the Middle East peace process.
Eliyahu was angry—angry and bored silly. He was leaving for Israel the following night. Ostensibly, it was for a meeting at the Foreign Ministry, but he also planned to spend a few days in Eilat on the Red Sea. He was looking forward to the trip. He missed Israel, the cacophony of it, the hustle, the scent of pine and dust on the road to Jerusalem, the winter rains over the Galilee.
A waiter in a white tunic offered him champagne. Eliyahu shook his head. “Bring me some coffee, please.” He looked over the heads of the shimmering crowd for his wife, Hannah, and spotted her standing next to the chargé d’affaires from the embassy, Moshe Savir. Savir was a professional diplomat: supercilious, arrogant, the perfect temperament for the posting in Paris.
The waiter returned, bearing a silver tray with a single cup of black coffee on it.
“Never mind,” Eliyahu said, and he sliced his way through the crowd.
Savir asked, “How did it go with the foreign minister?”
“He turned his back on me.”
“Bastard.”
The ambassador reached out his hand for his wife. “Let’s go. I’ve had enough of this nonsense.”
“Don’t forget tomorrow morning,” Savir said. “Breakfast with the editorial staff of Le Monde at eight o’clock.”
“I’d rather have a tooth pulled.”