by Eva Hudson
Shevchenko looked down at the images.
“Now, I am sure I have already told you that the Royal Academy here in London is planning a major retrospective of Russian revolutionary art next year,” Ingrid said.
His sneer gave the impression she was wasting his time.
“I think you and I have already had a conversation about the best time to buy a piece by Kazimir Malevich was—”
“Ten years ago. Same for every investment.”
“Quite. But this retrospective leads me to believe whatever you pay for these in 2016 will be considered a bargain in just a few years’ time.” Ingrid was stopped by a knock at the door. A member of the kitchen staff wheeled in a serving trolley with a silver tea samovar and a selection of warm French pastries. The waiter went to pour the tea, but Shevchenko waved him away. When he had left the room, the businessman picked up the samovar—a potent symbol of Russian superiority in the land of the teapot—and started to pour. His face was so smooth he must have had something nipped or tucked.
“As you can see, these paintings are a pair, and it is my opinion it would be a very great shame if they were separated. The good news is I can secure them for you at a very good price.” This, Ingrid had realized early on in her career as Natalya, was what it took to pass as Russian. It wasn’t her accent or her garish eyeshadow, it was that she understood the importance of a bribe. The mention of ‘price’ was what Shevchenko had been waiting for. Saying she could get them for ‘very good price’ piqued his interest sufficiently for a smile to push at the confines of the Botox encasing his mouth.
“For you, the price will not be the problem,” she said. “What you need to consider is where you will hang them. These will, after all, be significant pieces in your collection.”
Ingrid placed her teacup on his desk and stared at him. She still wasn’t sure what an oligarch should look like. How does one wear a billion dollars in one’s demeanor and appearance? Is it in the flawlessly cropped salt-and-pepper hair? The steamed and pressed casual clothes? The light tan in the middle of winter? The manicured nails?
“When it becomes public knowledge these pieces exist, there will be a lot of interest. And with the Royal Academy retrospective of Russian art next year, the prestige of displaying them in London will be immense. Do you know where you would hang them?”
Shevchenko put the printouts down on his desk. “I have not yet decided to buy them.”
Ingrid knew he didn’t care for the Maleviches. For Vitali Shevchenko, buying art was like acquiring any other asset: is it undervalued, will it impress my rivals? “As you know, verified Maleviches are usually subject to a bidding war. But if you are prepared to move decisively, I can arrange for you to buy them for $20 million.” Ingrid leaned forward. “And do you know why I want you to buy them?”
He looked puzzled.
“Because you have the most perfect place in London to hang them.”
“I do?”
“Can I show you?”
“In this house?”
“Yes.”
He glanced at his watch. “Sure.”
Ingrid smiled demurely at him, but inside she was beaming. Her entire spiel had been about gaining access to his drawing room.
They took the elevator from his office up to the second floor and exited into a grand passageway lined with eclectic works. A small bronze sculpture had been won in a poker game, he said, a Klimt sketch had been a gift from a Qatari friend, the Gauguin had been an impulse purchase and one of his first acquisitions, the Jasper Johns was his wife’s choice. A couple of the smaller paintings had been made by a friend’s wife that he had felt obliged to buy. “And this,” he said, pointing to a small oil painting of an industrial scene, “was payment from an associate.”
Ingrid enthused about his excellent instincts and offered suggestions on possible ways to rethink the hanging. She’d spent enough time in the art world to know when she was in the company of someone who loved art: Shevchenko was not one of them. The masterpieces on his walls were stores of value, units of currency, badges of honor.
They made their way along the hallway and came to the balcony above the entrance hall, its checkerboard marble floor stretching out below them. He extended an arm, showing her through the paneled doors into his chandeliered drawing room. She had been there before, but without the well-dressed glitterati, pianist and incessant chat of people on the make, the grandest reception room in London was even more impressive.
Ingrid stepped gingerly over the polished parquet floor toward the floor-to-ceiling windows opposite that opened onto a balcony running the entire length of the back of the house. At either end of the grand room were two carved sandstone fireplaces, and in front of each window was a plinth bearing a sculpture. She could have been in the Uffizi or the Hermitage. Ingrid scanned the room, trying to take everything in. Above one of the fireplaces was what she presumed was a Leonardo sketch. Hanging above the fireplace at the other end was something that made her jaw drop open.
“What do you think?” Shevchenko asked.
“It’s stunning,” she managed. She was looking at a neon sign that said, in English, Only Love, Death And Art Are Immortal. It was so out of place in a Georgian drawing room.
“This is what I want when people see my art. Just that look. That amazement.”
Ingrid couldn’t stop staring at it. Not because it was either brutal or beautiful or bold, but because it was where she had expected to see Les Prêteurs d’Argent, the world’s most expensive painting by the planet’s most famous artist, Pablo Picasso. Her heart skipped a beat.
“Where is your Picasso, Vitali Shevchenko?” A little piece of her hoped he had moved it to his house in Switzerland or ranch in South Africa; that way the Bureau would have to think again.
He was too deep in thought to answer her. “You know, I think the Gauguin was a mistake.”
Ingrid tried to concentrate on what he was saying, but all she could think was that the Picasso was missing.
“I think you should sell it for me. It will pay for the Maleviches.”
“Yes, yes, of course. It would be my pleasure to assist in any way I can.” She blinked hard and pressed her finger into her thumb. “May I take a closer look at it?”
He gestured for her to go back out onto the balcony. It was not one of Gauguin’s famous Tahiti paintings, instead it was a portrait of a woman thought to be his mother. She peered at it. It was not pretty and would probably only sell because of the signature in the bottom right-hand corner.
“It is quite ugly, isn’t it?” he said.
She considered her response. “I think your tastes have developed. The Maleviches will be a much better addition to your collection. They have been sent, did I tell you? I expect to take delivery in a day or two. May I?”
Shevchenko showed her an open palm. “Be my guest.”
Ingrid carefully removed the Gauguin from its hook and suggested they move into the drawing room, where she could photograph it. She placed the Gauguin delicately on a brocaded couch and got out her phone. “Obviously I will get it professionally photographed,” she said, “this is just for my notes.”
He leaned against a bookcase, one hand plunged deep into his pockets, the other holding his phone.
“Did you hear about Yelena Rybkina’s lawyer?” she asked casually, hoping to gauge his reaction. Next to the bookcase, she was relieved to see, was the Picasso.
“Yes. In the Evening News.” He scrolled through messages, sucking his teeth audibly as he did so.
Ingrid kneeled down and took a closer look at the painting. “I wasn’t sure if you would buy that paper. Some Russians in London refuse to read it because of, well, because of who owns it.”
“Karlos Ivanov is a friend of mine.” He was distracted by his messages.
“They say he was murdered.” She wanted to tease out any gossip he had.
“Huh, yes. Probably.”
“It is scary, do you not think? All these Russians dying mys
terious deaths in London.”
He looked up from his screen. “Some people still think it is the twentieth century. They like the old ways.”
Shevchenko’s diplomacy, his ability to resist the bait, was one of the qualities that had helped him avoid being pushed out a window or having his brakes tampered with.
“I heard he took several minutes to die,” Ingrid said. She gently turned the painting over and photographed the old timber stretchers on the reverse.
He didn’t respond.
“Do you think it is related to Yelena Rybkina?” She scrutinized a scrawled note on the back of the canvas. It appeared to be a calculation, possibly jotted by the cashier in the art shop where the canvas was originally purchased. She photographed it, confident it would match the records.
He pushed his phone into his pants pocket. “Only if it is suicide. Will this take long?”
“Why only if it is suicide?”
He shrugged. “The man had spent hundreds of billable hours suing a man who is either dead or broke. He was never going to get a settlement from that God-bothering idiot Rybkin.” The tone of his voice altered as he said his rival’s name, the way one might make fun of a classmate in middle school, with an added inflection of disgust.
Ingrid saw something out of the corner of her eye, looked up and gasped. A man in black combat fatigues appeared from a doorway. Ingrid reached for her Glock, forgetting for a millisecond who she was pretending to be. “The alarm went off,” he said. Another guard appeared at the far end of the room. Ingrid’s chest rose and fell visibly as she tried to control her breathing.
“She is with me. You can go.”
The two men slunk away with the slouch of disappointment in their postures. Tucked into each of their waistbands was the grip of a semiautomatic handgun. Beretta M9s.
The man nodded at Shevchenko then retreated.
She exhaled. “You have very good security,” she said, trying to disguise her panic.
“It is necessary,” was all he said. “The paintings have trackers,” Shevchenko said, still preoccupied with his phone. “You so much as straighten one and an alarm goes off in the control room.”
“They gave me a fright.” Ingrid tried to sound composed as her heart fought a boxing match inside her chest. Nervously, she examined the back of the Gauguin. Stuck to the wooden frame was a small metal disk: the tracker. She swallowed; that meant the Picasso would have one too.
How the hell were they going to get any painting, let alone a two hundred-million-dollar Picasso, out of one of the most heavily guarded residences in the world when it had a tracker on it? It was impossible. She hadn’t been aware of holding her breath until she exhaled heavily.
“There is a problem?” Shevchenko asked, looking up from his phone.
“No, no problem.”
It was just about the biggest lie she’d ever told.
15
Ingrid heaved her bike into the front yard of a mock-Tudor semidetached house on a four-lane highway in the north London suburb of Golders Green. Also parked on the litter-strewn forecourt was a beaten-up Ford station wagon and a brand-new Mini Cooper. If this is where—according to Aslan Demir—the world’s greatest living art thief lived, then it was abundantly clear there weren’t vast riches to be had from peddling stolen loot. David Rennie’s taxi was stuck in traffic, so she got out her phone and reflexively opened Tinder.
It was becoming a habit. A horrible one. But Tinder was addictive. And flattering. Whenever she swiped right on a guy, it was always a match. She knew how the algorithms worked and had googled papers on the psychology of Tinder. Men generally swipe right five times more often than women. Some men always swipe right, desperate not to miss out on the woman who’s too drunk to think clearly about whether the man with face tattoos and a limited range of football shirts is either an attentive lover or a good long-term bet.
She’d only been using the app for three days and already she’d had seventeen matches. She needed to be more selective because it was taking up too much of her time to message them all. She’d set the search distance limit to two miles, and whenever she moved around London, she checked to see who was near. At home in Maida Vale the dating app offered her an interesting mix of professions and ethnicities, and when she was in the financial district, there was a preponderance of men wearing ties. Out in the suburbs the men Tinder served up seemed to be a bit more redneck, a little heavier, and more interested in posing with sports cars that may or may not be their own. She swiped left on all of them.
“Are you sure this is the right place?”
Ingrid looked up to see a frowning David Rennie. She’d been so engrossed in Tinder she hadn’t noticed his taxi pull up.
Ingrid put her phone away. “Yep, this is it.”
“This is not what I was expecting,” he said. “Shall we?”
Before she rang the bell, Ingrid turned to Rennie and lowered her voice. “I’m sure I don’t need to remind you, but whoever is on the other side of that door must never hear the name Natalya Vesnina, okay?”
“Absolutely.”
“Let’s not explain anything we don’t have to. My cover has to stay intact.”
“Understood.”
Ingrid rang the bell, and an imitation of Big Ben’s bongs emanated from behind the paneled 1930s door. Classy. She ran her fingers through her hair, attempting to unflatten it.
“Oh, good afternoon. Have you come all the way from the eff bee eye?” he said, theatrically impersonating Hannibal Lecter. “I am Barry Jones, and I am your host. Do come in.” He swooped his arm to indicate they should enter. He was about sixty-five, wiry and sported the kind of haircut cartoon characters achieve by sticking their fingers in a socket. Jones was five feet five, wore a silk house coat and carried an unlit cigarette in a carved ebony holder.
They took the staircase up to the second floor, where Jones’s apartment was. Jones lived in half of a semi; Ingrid wondered what the math genius behind her would make of it. The stairwell was lined with art, mostly dark oil paintings in even darker frames. The pale gray carpet beneath their feet might have once been cream. The place smelled of a prison kitchen: fried meat and stewed vegetables.
Ingrid made it to the landing and looked around. This shabby apartment on a main road in a drab suburb was hung like a Paris salon from the 1920s. From the skirting board to the cornice, the walls were crammed with art.
“They’re all fakes, darling,” Jones said, clutching the banister. He walked with a limp and wore one built-up shoe. “But they’re bloody good ones. Do go through.”
He nodded toward the living room, which was home to the most elaborately patterned wallpaper Ingrid had seen since the 1980s, two filthy couches and a crystal chandelier that belonged in a hotel lobby. Every surface was embellished with ceramics and curios, none of which had been dusted in Ingrid’s lifetime. Her bladder was a little uncomfortable, but she really did not want to ask to use Jones’s bathroom. She didn’t even want to sit on his couch but did so reluctantly. Rennie stayed standing, making a point of looking at the art.
“Well, you certainly do have a lovely ecaf, that Aslan wasn’t lying. And look at those lallies, would you?”
Ingrid had no idea what he was saying. Was it cockney rhyming slang?
“Thank you for seeing us,” Rennie said. “I understand you’re in a hurry?”
Jones sat his boney behind down gently on the other couch. “They need me at the hospital at five. Apparently they’ve not had their fill of arseholes, so they’ve asked to have a look at mine.”
Ingrid was taken aback. She detected a mean smile when he realized he’d unnerved her.
“Well, then we’re even more grateful you’re seeing us,” Ingrid said.
“Darling, I didn’t have a choice. Your lovely Aslan is very persuasive. And as I’m sure he will have pointed out to you, I owe him.” He arched an eyebrow. “If it wasn’t for that dear man, I’d still be in Sing Sing. And yes, that is why I’m off to see the pr
octologist later. Prison isn’t a place for one as beautiful as me.”
Ingrid had done a bit of research on Jones, who had done time in New Zealand and the US for theft, fraud and impersonation. He had been caught twice, but was suspected of being behind the disappearance of over three hundred artworks from museums, galleries and luxury homes.
“You know, Aslan, the old devil, was right. You’d be the perfect decoy,” he said, waving a finger at Ingrid like a magician invoking a spell. “You’d need to scrub up a bit, obviously, but—” he inhaled deeply, taking a drag on his unlit cigarette “—my game is all about misdirection. And there ain’t nothing in the history of the world more distracting than beauty, believe me.”
Ingrid guessed she wasn’t going to get many words in edgeways. Her phone vibrated in her right pocket. Rennie’s simultaneously dinged.
“So, I hear you need me to steal a painting, is that what this is about, then?”
Ingrid’s phone buzzed again. Rennie’s dinged. And dinged. They looked at each other, then checked their screens.
Rennie exhaled slowly. Ingrid’s head dropped with despair.
“This can’t be true,” Rennie said.
Barry Jones looked at both of them. “Well, tell me! Come on.”
Ingrid stared at her screen. What an idiot. What a goddamn idiot.
“Oh, do come on! You can’t both just sit there looking like your mother’s told you you’ve got sprouts for tea. Come on!”
Ingrid looked at Rennie, who was shaking his head.
“Our boss,” she said to Jones, “the director of the whole goddamn FBI, probably just handed the election to Pryce.”
Barry’s eyes widened and mouth narrowed. “Oooh, do tell.”
Rennie read from a news report. “Edward Leery, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has announced he has reactivated enquiries into candidate Marilyn Banner’s campaign finances…” His words trailed off.