“I can’t do it. A dubious video from an anonymous source. If we had more time to investigate…” The New Hampshire primary was in four days, he might have said but didn’t. Instead, Julian took the contract and stood up. “Goodbye, Simon,” he said as he left the office. “And good luck.” He walked quickly to the elevators and had just pressed the down button when Simon appeared.
“You’re positive you have no idea where the video came from.”
“Absolutely.”
“Can we at least have a few days to verify that it’s authentic?”
“It must run tonight, on the evening news, in every one of our stations. You’ll want to check out the identity of the other man. Kobe Ruben, from Saint Louis.”
“You mentioned equity participation,” he said. “Will those be restricted shares, and what about the lockup period?”
Julian handed him the contract. “I’ll look for the story on the news tonight.” He stepped into the elevator but held open the door with one hand. “It has occurred to me that we need to beef up our foreign coverage.”
Avery blinked as he took this in. What little foreign news his stations ran came from pickups of wire service stories.
“We have no budget for foreign news, you must know that.”
“I think we can find a few dollars for important stories. The situation in Kamalia, for example. We should have a reporter there.”
“Kamalia? But that’s—”
“I’ll look for your recommendations early next week on how you want to proceed with the Kamalia story,” he said, and let the elevator close.
Chapter 32
“What happened?”
Sarah crossed the living room to the windows, where the red drapes lay in a heap on the floor.
“Jessica called me about this,” Zach said. “She said they were fine when she left to walk Guinevere. When she got back they were on the floor.”
“But I had them professionally installed.”
“The plaster must have given out.”
He had almost screamed when he first saw the drapes after returning from a long, cold ride up the Hudson to Nyack. All that red fabric heaped on the floor had at first looked like a body, and it still had a sinister, portentous appearance.
“I’ll call the place that installed them tomorrow,” Sarah said. She went to the bedroom but returned a moment later to stare at the drapes, as if they were evidence of a crime, or an omen. He could see that she was upset. The apartment was very much her creation, an extension of herself, a zone of comfort and familiarity in a tense world of noisy, demanding children and anxious, demanding parents. He hugged her for a few moments. She felt rigid, her arms at her side.
“Any progress today?” she asked.
“Not much,” he removed his arms from her. She seemed about to pursue this, then took a sip and went to the bedroom.
He made pasta that evening with tomato sauce from a jar that he enhanced with whatever vegetables and herbs he could find in their refrigerator. While waiting for the water to boil he turned on the television with the remote in time to catch the beginning of the local news.
“Our top story this evening concerns the campaign of Senator Stephen Delsiner, the designated running mate of Gabe Rooney, who is seeking the Republican nomination for president. Accu-News has obtained an exclusive look at a video in which Senator Delsiner appears to be purchasing drugs from a man who law enforcement contacts have confirmed is alleged to have ties to the drug world in Saint Louis…”
Zach walked over to the TV and watched the short, grainy video. It certainly looked like Senator Delsiner was buying something. If the other man could be confirmed as a drug dealer, Delsiner was finished. He’d easily survived the incident involving the package of cocaine sent to the Russell Office Building. But there was no way he could explain two incidents, both involving drugs. And if he went down, so would the man who had chosen him, Gabe Rooney, leaving Harry Lightstone the likely winner in New Hampshire next week.
Harry Lightstone. Once a dark horse, now the likely frontrunner. A passenger on Julian Mellow’s private jet, someone connected to the murder in San Francisco, perhaps through a former inmate whose daughter’s long-term care bills were being handled by Julian Mellow. Everything came back to Julian Mellow.
He glanced at the fallen drapes, then walked quickly to his desk. All of his files were still there. Zach decided to go online for more information about the latest turn of events in the campaign, but when he turned on his computer he got a message indicating that, because the machine had been improperly turned off, it would perform a routine check of backup systems.
Zach glanced back and forth between the drapes and his computer. Had someone broken into the apartment? Then he heard the pasta pot boiling over and ran to the kitchen to turn down the heat.
“It’s ready,” he called out later. Sarah joined him in the kitchen.
“I’m not hungry.”
“But you haven’t—”
“This isn’t working,” she said.
He glanced at the bowl of pasta, stupidly hopeful that she meant the meal.
“I’ll fix the curtains tomorrow,” he said, though he knew it wasn’t the curtains either.
“I can’t live with you anymore. I can’t watch you destroy yourself with your stupid obsession with Julian Mellow. With the past. You’re pulling me down with you. I won’t let that happen.”
“I’ll make some calls tomorrow.”
She shook her head. “It won’t make a difference because you don’t want to move on. When I saw the curtains on the floor, it felt like everything we built together is wrecked. We can’t help each other. I’ve tried, but I can’t.” Her voice was flat, but tears were spilling down her cheeks. “I want you to leave, Zach. As soon as you find a place of your own.”
“But I—”
“By the end of February. Please tell me you’ll be gone by then. I need to feel that there’s movement, some sort of progress.”
“I’ll get a job, anything to contribute. Bike messenger, waiter.”
“Just be out of here by the end of next month.” Her voice had weakened to a whisper, but her expression was resolute. “Promise me you’ll be out of here, Zach. Please?”
He felt his throat constrict. Words were impossible, so he nodded, almost imperceptibly. She turned, walked to the bedroom, and shut the door.
SATURDAY, JANUARY 31
Chapter 33
The Galérie Saint-Estèphe, on the rue de Lisbonne in the 8th Arrondissement, was an unprepossessing establishment that catered to wealthy tourists and snobbish arrivistes eager to hang something “original” over their sofas and mantles. It sold near-worthless prints churned out by brand-name artists and sloppy oils by deservedly obscure, long-dead painters. Julian Mellow always spent a few minutes with these dreadful pictures before heading for the back room where his real business was conducted. It was useful to be reminded of the difference between talent and genius.
“Monsieur Mellow, how delightful to see you.” Claude Suisse crossed the large gallery with an outstretched hand. He was a small, elegant man whose impeccable dress and manners and facility with multiple languages were very reassuring to the culture vultures who strolled over from the nearby George V looking for something authentic to complement their living room décor back home in Chicago or Tokyo or Bahrain. “You look well, my friend.”
Julian doubted that he looked any such thing, having just landed at Charles de Gaulle after an overnight flight. Even on his own jet, with a comfortable double bed in the rear cabin, he found it hard to sleep while hurtling through the ozone at five hundred miles per hour. The two scotches he had taken to induce sleep had only succeeded in making him woozy upon arrival the next morning. But he had changed into a fresh suit, a silky pinstriped Brioni, and put on a crisp white shirt and tie, both from Sulka, so perhaps he did present an acceptable appearance, although it wasn’t Suisse he had come to Paris to impress.
“Would you like a coff
ee, perhaps?”
Julian nodded and an assistant was summoned from across the gallery with a snap of Suisse’s fingers. She was a head taller than her employer—her slender, miniskirted legs alone seemed longer than his entire figure—and unselfconsciously chic in the way of even homely French women. She was far from homely.
“Un espresso pour Monsieur Mellow. Rien pour moi.”
She disappeared through a door behind the receptionist desk.
“Allons, enough of this wallpaper,” he said, casting a dismissive hand at the artwork surrounding them. “Let us visit the true purpose of your journey.”
He led Julian to his office, a small, windowless room behind the gallery cluttered with stacked canvases and piles of paperwork. He waited until Julian was seated, then picked up a small oil painting of a harbor scene in an elaborate gold-leaf frame.
“A beautiful Monet,” he said. “N’est-ce pas?”
“Only if Monet had a blind younger brother.”
Suisse laughed warmly. “Do you know, I could get ten thousand euros for this travesty, even in a new frame. It is old, after all, and the red sky from the sunset, it will match perfectly the leather settee.” As he spoke he pressed his fingers into the canvas, pushing it out of the frame by its edges, gradually working his way from one side to the next. There was a quiet knock at the door and he quickly put the painting facedown on the desk in front of him.
“Entrée.”
The leggy assistant entered and placed a tiny cup of espresso before Julian, then retreated under the close scrutiny of her employer.
“Monique has been very good for business. She intimidates the clientele with her long legs and long nose, and that makes them eager to please her, especially the Japanese. They will pay handsomely to win her approval.”
“You were in the middle of something,” Julian reminded him.
“Eh bien.” He picked up the frame and within a few minutes had loosened the entire canvas.
“It is good you are sitting down,” he said, then pulled away the offending landscape. “Voilá.”
Julian rose to his feet, an involuntary movement. As his eyes took in the canvas, every muscle in his body tensed. After a long silence he forced himself to take a deep breath, sat down, and nodded at Suisse—authorization to speak.
“Hans Holbein…the Younger, of course. The Lady Ratliffe. Late 1520s. She was lady-in-waiting to Jane Seymour, the third wife of Henri the Eighth.”
“I’ve seen the drawing in the British Museum, but I assumed…”
“Yes, the preparatory drawing in chalk for the portrait, which everyone assumed was missing forever.”
“Where did you find it?”
“Ah, that I cannot reveal. The seller is from one of those very old and very aristocratic and, alas, very poor English families, and he is not eager to pay taxes. He wants only a private sale, funds deposited in a Swiss account, and, of course, a significant discount if the buyer does not publicly display or reveal the source of the picture.”
“How much?”
“Ten million US dollars.”
“That doesn’t sound like much of a discount.”
“At an auction this would bring in at least fifteen, perhaps twenty million. There has not been a Holbein English portrait on the market for two decades.”
She stared forthrightly from the canvas, her head swathed in an elaborate Tudor headdress, an unusual pose for a Holbein subject, who more typically were depicted in profile, or three-quarters view. Her eyes were slightly too far apart, which gave her unsmiling expression an uncomfortable hint of omniscience, and her thin lips were neither disapproving nor sensual, just disturbingly noncommittal. She had a thin neck, well suited for the Henrician chopping block, though that had not been her fate, and a tiny, birdlike torso that looked not quite up to the task of supporting a head so intelligent and unwavering. Julian leaned forward and gently touched the Lady Ratliffe’s forehead with a finger, half expecting her to flinch at his inappropriate gesture.
“Eight million,” he said.
“My client is quite determined to—”
“There are perhaps a hundred collectors in the world who can afford this. Fewer than a dozen of them are drawn to Renaissance portraits. Of those, I can think of just one other person who has no need to display his acquisitions for the world to see and admire and covet. Two collectors. This is not what economists call a liquid or efficient market.” He stood up and started for the door. “I have an appointment.”
“Monsieur Mellow.”
He turned back and was almost astonished that the Lady Ratliffe had not moved.
“I may be able to persuade the seller to accept your offer.”
Julian suspected that Suisse had already bought the picture from the impoverished aristocrat, and for substantially less than eight million dollars.
“My plane leaves Charles de Gaulle at noon.”
“If the purchase comes through, and I think it will, I will have our lady friend on that plane, with the proper paperwork, of course.”
The proper paperwork would indicate a near-worthless landscape with a value of perhaps ten thousand euros. While US customs inspectors always trudged out to his plane when he arrived from overseas, they never had the temerity to inspect his luggage. Perhaps there was some sort of list or database of large contributors to the president’s reelection campaign—he didn’t know and didn’t care. He only knew that the proper paperwork would not, more than likely, be necessary.
“Excellent,” he said, and actually smiled at her, the lady-in-waiting, confident that she would cross the Atlantic with him that afternoon, to take a place of honor in his private gallery, his first Holbein lady, his new favorite.
• • •
Julian saw Sophie DuVal the moment he entered the Hotel George V. Tall, black, possessed of an aloof, forbidding beauty, she would stand out anywhere. But in the near-empty lobby of the George V, all gilt and crystal and intricately patterned rugs and drapes, she looked like a work of art from a different century, a time that valued simplicity and clean lines rather than rococo excess.
She recognized him immediately, too, and stood up. He saw her expression darken as he approached. He too felt a heavy curtain of sadness fall over him as he took in her white T-shirt, dark slacks, and heeled sandals, an unexceptional ensemble that, on her, looked impossibly chic. He thought: This should be Matthew, not me, crossing the lobby of the best hotel in Paris to meet the most beautiful woman in France.
He kissed her cheek and momentarily lost his bearings when she presented her other cheek, which he eventually kissed as well. When they stepped apart he saw that she was crying.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot…I…”
He nodded as she reached into her purse for a tissue. She’d forgotten how much he looked like Matthew.
“Do you want coffee or some breakfast?”
“Yes, but not here,” she said, waving an arm to take in the preposterous excess of the George V. They left the hotel and turned right on the Avenue George V.
“It’s hard enough to be in Paris, after Kamalia. Somehow you never quite remember how beautiful it is. It seems wrong, so much beauty and contentment.”
Her accent was French, with a subtle lilt that he assumed was Kamalian.
“Is it terrible?”
“Some days it’s the poverty that infuriates me. We were never a rich country, but we were on our way, and now it’s gotten much worse than it ever was. People’s diets have gotten so bad, you see it in their faces, drawn and drained of health. Other days it’s the political repression, the lies in the newspaper, the friends and comrades who disappear one day and are never heard from. Other days it’s the apathy of the Kamalian people, who seem to feel that there is nothing they can do because in some way they think they deserve everything that has happened to them.”
She was his height almost exactly, but her legs were longer and she walked the way she talked, fast and with an angry resolve.
&n
bsp; “And we had come so far,” she said, her voice faltering. “What Matthew did with Amalgamated, it was a model for all of Kamalia. Employees treated with dignity who delivered higher productivity. Although never enough productivity to satisfy you.”
“No, I…” He saw that she was smiling, softening her face, opening it up. On magazine covers and cosmetics ads she had glowered and pouted like an insulted high priestess. Her smile rendered her accessible, which was perhaps why it had rarely made it into print.
“Matthew never minded,” she said. “Everyone thought he was this raging reformer, some sort of dangerous radical, but he understood business very well, he always knew that we had to do well to do good. He was your son, after all.”
Julian had tolerated Matthew’s African adventure, but never approved of it. Amalgamated Cobalt had come to Mellow Partners as part of a much larger acquisition; he had never wanted to get into the mining business and certainly not in Africa. But by then Matthew had met Sophie, and the opportunity to use Amalgamated to transform the homeland of the woman he loved had fired his romantic imagination.
At the corner of rue François 1er they turned to the left and found a small café, where they sat outside on rattan chairs, facing each other over a small, pink marble table.
“I should have been more supportive,” he said.
“Amalgamated was doing fine, we—”
“No, I mean of you and Matthew, your relationship.”
“Oh.” She bowed her head as a waiter appeared. “Do you want an espresso?” she asked. He nodded. “A croissant?” She turned to the waiter and ordered in French, then looked back at him. “I never resented you. In your eyes I took Matthew away from the life you had built for him, I took him to a terrible, uncivilized place. I was black…”
“No, no, that—”
“Don’t defend yourself. All parents want an easy life for their children. Mixing the races is never easy. It’s complicated at best.”
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