“Frames.” Tam’s head stuck in through the door window.
She nodded. “Ah.” Getting caught snooping was not in the job description. She sidled forward between the seats. “All done?”
“Yep.” He climbed in and did up his seatbelt. “It’s quick. They know me.” He started the engine. “Three modern antiqued picture frames, value twelve hundred dollars each. Sultan does good work. You need a frame, I can get you a good price. Anything else you’d like to know?”
Kyra produced a mock-feeble smile as she fumbled with the seatbelt. “Sorry. Just curious.”
“Must be your profession.” He laughed a little, and drove onto Front Street.
She mentioned the new airline route, so much easier. For him too? Before had he used the regular Nanaimo airport? He dropped her on the circular drive in front of Noel’s condo building. She realized she was looking forward to their drink. But hmm, Tam hadn’t asked which Cameron Island building to drive to.
She thanked him, headed for the outer lobby, and pushed the electronic buttons. No response. But her key from Noel opened the door. She walked up two flights and let herself into his apartment. Was that deadbolt always so loose? A note from Noel: I’m on Gabriola. Dempster’s binocs turned up in the Bourassa shed. New stuff on that Vegas casino. Lyle’s coming for dinner. You are VERY welcome!
Lyle. Interesting. And the binoculars. Intriguing.
She looked in Noel’s study closet on the off-chance she’d left some garment. No, but some other clothes hung there. She flicked through the hangers and paused at a steel-blue shirt. She stroked the sleeve, fine lawn, almost like silk. Yep, it would fit her. Noel wouldn’t mind.
From Noel’s balcony she watched tourists on the embankment. Couples, all ages. For a moment she yearned to walk along that promenade hand in hand with a man who loved her—
She wrote on the bottom of Noel’s note: I should be back before seven. Yes, I’d love dinner, thanks. And I promise to leave you right after. She took a long bath and got dressed. She watched the Gabriola ferry arrive, and depart. She grabbed her jacket. Time to go.
TWELVE
ROSE HAD BEEN thinking about Rab. Rab was Peter, originally Pyotr, Rabinovich, a Russian Jew who’d taken a circuitous path from the old USSR to the USA, stopping in Czechoslovakia as it was then, some years in Panama, then Switzerland and Israel. His most striking feature was an elegant skull, baldness having hit him in his twenties. His face was lean, like the rest of him, with a dominant nose, prominent cheekbones and lips full enough to belie the leanness. His eyes were a pale grey-blue. A scar courtesy of the KGB decorated his left cheek. Why had the KGB arrested him, when had he gotten free? Rab was ever vague on details. His young wife and their little girl had been killed when a suicide bomber had blown up the bus they were on. He had taken merciless private revenge against the faction that had claimed responsibility.
Rose, some years back, was surprised to discover she found bald heads attractive. Artemus had a head of lush silver-grey hair which he’d undoubtedly keep to the grave. His head was attractive too.
They’d all met six years ago, soon after Rab opened The Hermitage, his Las Vegas luxury hotel and casino. He’d insisted on decorating his palace with good European art, his way of reclaiming Jewish-owned art stolen by the Nazis during the Second World War. A consultant had mentioned, among other dealers, Artemus Marchand. Gabriola? A small island? Does it have roads? He was intrigued. Their business association had worked well. Rab and Rose became friends, each someone the other could confide in.
She locked the greenhouse, wheeled in through her bedroom door to the kitchen, wine rack, opener, glass. She took a sip. Oh what the hell. She dialed Rab’s private number.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Rab.”
“Ah! My favorite collaborateur! What wonderful thing have you done now, Rosie-Rosita?” He spoke with perfect English grammar set in what Rose recognized as residual Leningrad nasality layered with light west-Asian gutturals and curlicued Levantine cadences.
“Rab, you’re a caress to a woman’s ego.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, in fact, I have done something wonderful. A new flower. A black Chrysanthemum morifolium, the first of its kind.”
“Amazing!”
“I’m going to show it next weekend.”
“Rosie-Rosita, congratulations. Dumas only created a black flower on paper.”
“I accept all laudatory comments.” He was good for her. And, she believed, they were good for each other. An affair of the mind, he described their relationship, far more important than affairs of the flesh. Of which he had many, some sweet young plumlet ever on his arm. “But Rab, I’m worried. About our—arrangement.”
“Should we speak on the phone?”
“I don’t have much to say. Only that— I don’t know if we should continue.”
“You speak of recent global politics?”
“I worry about borders.”
“Yes, we should talk. Oh my dear, I’ve neglected you. My life has been even more horribly full than normal. And yours as well, I imagine.”
“Not really, not on our island.” Should she explain? Why not. “Our biggest event’s been the death—the murder—of our gardener.”
A moment of silence before Rab said, “But that’s awful!”
“Yes. I found his body.”
“How dreadful, Rosie. How horrible for you. Have the police discovered who did it?”
“No, but they’ve been around. Artemus was upset. He hired investigators.”
“Hmm.”
“I agree.”
Their Hmm, and, I agree, caught a full summary of Artemus’ not-thought-through decision and the problems it might bring. “Anyway, they didn’t find anything.”
“Still, that was a damn stupid thing for him to do.”
“Just foolish, I’d say.”
“Did he hire a large agency?”
Strange question. “I don’t think so. A man and a woman.”
“Their names?”
Why does he want to know that? She told him. “They sent a report absolving the Gallery.” She wished she hadn’t mentioned the detectives. “So I didn’t think to bother you.”
“Nothing you do could be a bother to me, my darling.”
She laughed. She’d bet Tam learned flirtation from someone like Rab. Or did the ability just arrive on a male chromosome? “You’re sweet.” They would talk soon about the arrangement. They said goodbye. She finished her wine. The time had come to discuss this with Artemus.
• • •
Kyra, jacket in hand, walked up Bastion Street across the bridge over the old Island Highway. Down to the right used to be the whorehouse district. Up the hill along Fitzwilliam to the old city quarter, slowly becoming a boutique and restaurant area, especially along Wesley Street. The houses up here dated from the late 1800s, homes for Hudson’s Bay Company overseers and foremen, for managers of Nanaimo’s coal industry. The name Nanaimo, she also knew from Noel, comes from Snuneymuxw—she said it aloud. Except for the starting S and the strange X just before the end, it did sound like a mispronunciation of Nanaimo. Rather, the other way around, Nanaimo a corruption of—
Oh, quit maundering! Just do your job. Another interview, another judgment of partial truths told, concealed stories, stances, innuendos. Schools-of paintings and Eaglenest. You’re good at interviews, remember? Selby Street. One block. Three-storey modern Tudor condos. The door to the Mews, the name. The number. She pressed.
A voice from a tinny speaker said, “I’ll buzz. Come up.”
A low whine. She entered and climbed stairs, found the apartment, raised her knuckles, brought them down as the door opened. She caught her balance and her brain said, déjà vu: Tam’s karate move on Dempster, going with the other’s action.
Tam grinned. “Hi.”
“Hello.” She smiled and held out her hand. He took it and they shook, his pressure firm but not dominating. As hard as h
ers.
“Come in.” Golf shirt, khaki shorts. Bare feet.
“Thank you.” She strode to the middle of the room, jacket in hand.
“My home away from home. Well, my studio apartment away from home.”
“Nice.” Small kitchen against the side wall—sink beside stove, fridge beneath, microwave above. A wooden table and two chairs by the sliding glass wall, overlooking downtown and the harbor. A couch. Couple of doors, one closed, the half-open one to a bathroom.
“Every now and then I need to get away from Gabriola.”
“Oh? Is that important for you?”
He looked at her sharply. “If you want to live more lives than you get over there, yes.”
More lives, that’s what she too wanted. “It’s very attractive.”
“I like it. But I like my place on Gabriola too.”
Was he yanking her back and forth? “That’s also pretty.”
“You know why I like it?”
Was she supposed to guess? She was the interviewer here. “Why?”
“See, I start off in some huge place, Bucharest, London, even Toronto, and I take a fast plane to a smaller place, Vancouver. From there it’s a small plane to a smaller place on a big island, Nanaimo. Then a little ferry to a small island, and a slow van on curving roads to a house, Eaglenest. Then a path through woods to a tiny cabin. That’s my kind of island peace.”
It appealed. “Active downsizing.”
He laughed lightly. “But I need Nanaimo, too. And Vancouver. And London.”
She nodded.
“Now. We can go out for a drink.” An inferior option, his tone declared. “Or I have almost everything you might want,” he gestured, “right here. We can sit on the balcony. I think it’s still warm enough.”
“Yes.” He was smooth.
He walked past her to the sliding glass door, half-open, and gestured for her to go out, assuming his preferred option had been accepted. “What may I give you?”
“A glass of white wine?” As she passed him her sleeve brushed his arm. The fine lawn of her shirt pressed on her skin. Part of her said, Be careful, Rachel, and another part insisted, If it takes flirtation to get him chatty, two have to play the game. She sat on one of the rattan deck chairs, a table between them, and set the jacket on the arm. Had he edged his shoulder forward as she passed? She faced out toward the harbor but paid more attention to the beat of her pulse. Did it show at her temples? She touched her hair, slid her fingers down the side of her brow. No.
He brought glasses, cut crystal, and a bottle of cold wine, a Caterina Sauvignon Blanc 2006 from Washington State. He displayed it like a good sommelier. She nodded, he uncorked.
An expensive wine. The very wine she’d bought Sam, a case, for their second anniversary—an earlier vintage, of course. A wine Sam loved.
Tam set both glasses on the table, filled them to half, handed her one, raised his, found her glance, no words. The glasses clinked lightly. Excellent crystal. Nineteenth-century Bohemian? She sipped. Lovely. Tam was saying, “ . . . can’t keep much wine around. Your choice was limited.”
“Delicious.”
He sat and smiled. “Yes.”
She couldn’t keep from smiling back. The silence, not more than four or five seconds, for Kyra was a twist down to a pleasant place, a weakness in her thighs, an instant sweet ping at her temples— To be disregarded. “I need some information.” She sat up straight. “For another case.”
“I’ll do my best.” He sat back, his eyes still on hers. “And then I’ll ask you something.” His lip corners turned up, just a touch. “Okay?”
Kyra said, “You can always ask,” but felt as if she’d signed her name to a pact she’d not read. Quick, her close-to-the-truth story. “We’re acting as agents for a consortium of antique dealers. They know you’ve found a good many schools-of in the last few years.”
“Mmm,” said Tam.
She speeded her delivery. “They’d like to buy up to three between them.” She took another sip. Superior wine. She sat back. “Will Artemus have paintings soon?” She raised her eyebrows, she hoped innocently. Another sip. What, nearly empty?
He too sipped. “Can you tell me who your consortium is?”
She shook her head. “Afraid not.” And only then saw where he was headed.
He nodded. “I understand.” His tone, all business. “And as you must understand, I can’t tell you anything about the paintings.” He shook his head. “If I did, Artemus would have my ass.”
It took her half a second but she blurted a laugh.
He laughed too. “It’s true, he would.” He picked up the bottle and poured her more wine.
She reached over, let the lovely fluid flow, with one finger stayed his hand, “Thank you. So I can’t learn anything from you.” This time she found his eye.
He smiled.
“I went to see that Sienese school-of painting in Bellingham, the one you told me about.”
“Oh good.” A pleased smile. “It’s a pretty good one.”
“Yes. But that poor Madonna, forever sliding off her chair.”
A laugh. “A gift to the museum. Probably lost for hundreds of years.”
“How do they get lost like that?” She gave him a naive little smile, awaiting his wisdom.
“Sometimes people don’t know what they have in their attics. Sometimes they’re hanging on the wall, been there so long nobody looks at them anymore.”
“And how come they get found?”
“People track them down.”
“Oh? Is that difficult?”
“Not if you know the scene. Not if you’re smart.”
She nodded as he spoke, appreciating his insight. “But how do you know which attic or wall? There must be millions of eighteenth-century attics in Europe.”
“No, it’s easier than that.” He sat back, stretched out his long bare legs thick with dark hair. “We have a team.”
“Ah.”
“Scouts. I told you about this when we had coffee, remember? Throughout Europe. And we may expand into western Asia.”
Her smile must say his words were full of meaning. It wasn’t hard. She enjoyed his voice.
“They find paintings shut away in storerooms or warehouses or sheds, forgotten for lifetimes. Literally. Or buried away during World War Two to hide them from the Nazis, only coming out now. Sometimes bedding for rats and spiders, sometimes in strangely good shape. Our scouts are clever. You can’t imagine how many unemployed art historians there are in Eastern Europe. One-time university professors. They know their territory.”
She continued to nod. “And?”
“We get a report. Sometimes they contact Artemus, sometimes me directly. If the report sounds good I go to examine the painting. I’m a fair historian myself. I evaluate the quality of the work and the state it’s in. And I decide whether to buy. I set up authentication tests, that’s a necessary part. Each scout gets a finder’s fee.”
“Is authentication hard?”
“We work with several experts. So, no.”
“You buy most of what you hear about?”
“Oh, about half.” He sat forward again. “I used to love it, seeing remarkable parts of the world, finding a hidden treasure. A real adventure.” He leaned toward her. “But you know, something’s new in me recently. More and more, all that feels like part of my past.” Even as he nodded he held her gaze. “I’ve got to change myself.”
He sees inside me. Danger. “Yes.” She placed her again empty glass on the table.
Tam picked up the bottle and reached over to pour.
She covered her glass. “I think I’ve had enough.” Time to go.
“A little more won’t hurt.”
She smiled. “Actually, it might.” She stood. “I know so little about history. But this has been fascinating. And the wine was delicious.
Thank you.”
“Do you really have to leave?”
“I think so. Yes.”
H
e stood, never looking away, not for a flicker. She slid through the door, looked back, saw her jacket on her chair. To retrieve it she had to brush by Tam twice. He did not move out of her way.
At the hall door he stopped her. “I had a question, too.”
“Yes?”
He reached out his hand and took hers. He stroked her knuckles with his thumb. Brassy danger bells clanged. “May I kiss you?”
May I kiss you? he’d really said that? Kiss reverberated among the bells. She felt the blush rising up from the silky collar of her shirt. He was standing close, smelled so tantalizingly male, something piney, soap or after-shave, his dark eyes— Leaning toward her, starting to pull her to him— Kyra shook her head, though her head wanted to nod— “No,” she managed to squeak. She smiled so he wouldn’t feel too rejected, so he’d realize her no was a reluctant one. But now having said no did she wish she’d said yes? She took a deep breath. Her neck burned with blush.
With a last caress of her knuckles, he released her hand and shifted his weight away. “No means no,” he cited, smiling—how had she missed that dimple in his cheek? “It doesn’t mean don’t ask the question again.”
She smiled back, then turned the doorknob, “Bye,” and escaped. If she’d stayed, she’d have melted in his arms. Kyra the cliché.
THIRTEEN
IN LATE SEPTEMBER 1996, a Mossad agent acting under the alias Lev Sten—one of four working covers for his rarely used birth name, Llewellyn Katz—broke into the Jerusalem condo of Pyotr Rabinovich. From his agency control Katz had received a sweeping enter-and-investigate order. The Russian Desk, Immigrant Section, of Mossad needed to divine just where Rabinovich fitted into the panoply of newly arrived exiles under its vigil; or, if he didn’t fit, why not. Katz’s agency control did know, from three months of surveillance, that six days a week, from sunset Saturday to late Thursday, Rabinovich spent much of his time at the Wet Negev, a bar he’d bought the year before with cash brought into Israel via unknown routes and from undetermined sources, possibly the St. Petersburg black market. When Rabinovich first acquired the Negev he kept it open for business seven nights a week—to accommodate, he liked to say, his Arab, Christian and heathen customers—but after three weeks of warnings from a yeshiva around the corner, eighteen baseball-bat wielding thin-bearded rabbinical students, their prayer-shawls fluttering, invaded the Negev on a Friday two hours before sunset and laid its furniture, mirrors and spirits to waste. Thereafter Pyotr Rabinovich closed the Negev on the Sabbath.
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