The Icon Thief

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  “All right,” Ilya finally said. “I’ll do it. But I’m going to need a few things—”

  7

  When Maddy entered Reynard’s office, he was on the phone, the shades drawn. As she took a seat, her attention was caught by what he was saying: “Well, the rate of return for dishonesty should be the same everywhere—”

  The door opened again as Ethan came inside, carrying a laptop and a quad pad. Closing the door, he sat down across from Maddy. He seemed tired, although the exhaustion betrayed itself only as an additional level of opacity in his eyes, as if an internal screensaver had engaged.

  On the phone, Reynard’s tone shifted slightly. “Well, yes, we have checks in place to catch bad data. If a gallery enters false information into our database, it’ll stand out like a sore thumb. Our algorithms are designed to flag any anomalies in an artist’s price history. Sometimes it’s an investment opportunity. Sometimes it’s an honest mistake. And sometimes, more rarely, it’s deliberate fraud.”

  A few seconds later, he managed to end the call, thanking the investor effusively for his time. Hanging up, he raised the window shade, allowing a rectangle of sunlight to fall across the Cindy Sherman centerfold above his desk. The photo, which depicted the artist lying on a linoleum floor, a scrap of newspaper in one hand, had always troubled Maddy, although she would have found it hard to explain why. Reynard sat down again. “So what have you got for me?”

  After exchanging looks with Ethan, Maddy took the lead. She had already decided to save her most promising item for last. “A tip from Tel Aviv. The phone bidder at the auction was the Philadelphia Museum of Art. They own the finished version of Étant Donnés, and are planning an anniversary show for next year. Obtaining the study would have been a major coup.”

  “Not bad,” Reynard said. “But it still doesn’t give me the Russian. What else?”

  Ethan held up his laptop. “I’ve compiled a spreadsheet of oligarchs from Russia or its former satellites. Cutoff is a billion dollars. I’ve managed to eliminate roughly half of the names. For example, given the agent’s evident inexperience, it’s possible that the buyer is new to the market—”

  Reynard shook his head. “The agent was clumsy, but that doesn’t mean that the buyer is a virgin.” He gestured at the laptop screen, on which the photo of the Russian was displayed in a smaller window. “Come on. The two of you were hired to make connections like this. Anything else?”

  “There’s another possibility that I should mention,” Maddy said, deciding to show her hand. Her source had been a girl from the client services desk, the one whom the Russian had tipped fifty dollars. After prying her name from the phone clerk, Maddy had taken her out, and the girl had let something slip after her second martini: “I have a source who says he isn’t Russian at all.”

  Reynard seemed struck by this. “Which means that all of our assumptions are wrong. That’s always a useful point of departure—”

  Ethan studied the spreadsheet. “Technically, it could mean that he isn’t a Russian, but comes from a former satellite state. Which leaves Vagit Alekperov from Azerbaijan, German Khan from Ukraine—”

  “—and Anzor Archvadze from Georgia,” Maddy finished. “I’ve looked into them already. Each one is a distinct possibility.”

  “Three names,” Reynard said. “All right, we’re getting closer. But now what?”

  The question was directed at Ethan, who didn’t reply. Maddy saw that he was frowning at her snapshot of the bidder. Sensing an opening, she took it. “I think we need to approach them directly.”

  “We’ve been over this,” Reynard replied. “We can’t act without more information.”

  “Information will only take us so far.” Maddy halfway expected Ethan to object, but instead, he began typing rapidly, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. She turned back to Reynard, determined not to let this opportunity slip away. “We need to leverage our contacts. I know that I’ve said this before, but this business isn’t built on information alone. It’s built on reputation.”

  As she spoke, she watched the fund manager closely, knowing that this argument cut to the heart of why he had entered the art game in the first place. Years of trading derivatives had left him craving something more fundamental, a satisfaction greater than money itself could provide, and she knew that he valued nothing, not even returns, above his own evolving legacy. “So what do you recommend?”

  “Only what you’ve always told me,” Maddy said. “Reputation leads to information, so we work the social angle. I don’t care how private these guys are. You don’t buy a painting like this without telling someone about it. I can get into the right events, the right benefits. With the fund’s full support—”

  “Actually, that won’t be necessary,” Ethan said abruptly. “I know who the buyer is.”

  The others turned to stare at him. “What are you talking about?” Reynard asked at last.

  “Anzor Archvadze.” Ethan swung his laptop around. “Georgian industrialist. Made a fortune in auto parts and aluminum. Lived in Moscow, but went into exile after the Rose Revolution. Owns a big estate in the Hamptons.”

  Maddy looked at the headshot that he had opened. It wasn’t the man from the auction. Archvadze was older, a wiry figure with a graying crew cut, his eyes set far apart. “And what makes you so sure it was him?”

  Ethan called up the picture of the bidder. “The symbol on his agent’s cufflinks.”

  “I’ve checked this out already,” Maddy said, assuming that Ethan was simply showing off. “A red circle can mean any number of things.”

  “Except that it isn’t a red circle.” With a tap of the keyboard, Ethan switched to an enhanced copy of the photo, sharpening and enlarging the design on the cufflink. At this level of resolution, it was clear that it was not, in fact, a circle. “It’s a heptagram. A star with seven points.”

  “A heptagram.” Reynard bent forward to study the image. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, let’s see.” Ethan brought up a search engine query. “It’s an occult symbol. It was the seal of the Ordo Templi Orientis, a society associated with Aleister Crowley. It appears on the Navajo flag, and—” He pointed at the screen. “And it’s the roundel of the Georgian Air Force.”

  “Georgia.” Reynard sat back, evidently impressed. “So let’s say that Archvadze is our buyer. He sends an associate to bid in his place, a former member of the air force with a thing for military nostalgia. It’s possible. A little neat, maybe, but possible. Has he been a player in the market before?”

  “Not as far as I know. Now that I have a name, though, I can dig more deeply.”

  “Good.” Reynard picked up his phone. “I want a profile on my desk by tomorrow. Maddy, feel free to run the name by your contacts as well. Ethan, nice job. If it pans out, the bonus is yours.”

  This speech was delivered at a rapid pace. Before Maddy knew it, she and Ethan were standing outside the office door, as Reynard prepared for another investor call. Maddy looked at her colleague. “Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” Ethan said mildly. “I couldn’t have done it without you. Or that picture.”

  She smiled. “Don’t be so sure of yourself. For all we know, he could be a Navajo.”

  Turning aside, she headed back to her desk, feeling something alarmingly close to hatred as she pondered her next move. With her sources in the galleries, which were better than anything Ethan could find online, she could learn about Archvadze’s holdings, his tastes, his intentions—

  Even as she envisioned this, though, she found herself wondering what she was doing here at all. She had joined the firm for mercenary reasons, hoping to emerge with money and insight, but after taxes, her salary was barely enough to meet her repayment schedule, while finance was still a mystery, guarded by Reynard, Ethan, and other devotees of the cult of information.

  But there was one place, she knew, where their expertise did not extend. To them, the fund’s holdings were an abstraction, a series of lines
in a balance sheet, but behind each piece of the portfolio stood something real, the visible evidence of an artist’s life and work.

  She rose from her desk. It was already late in the afternoon, but there was still time, she hoped, for the pilgrimage she had in mind. Gathering her things, she headed up the corridor to ask Reynard for the key.

  8

  “The autopsy will be difficult,” the deputy medical examiner said. He was a South Asian pathologist with a tolerant regard for the British, and although the homicide detective assigned to the case stood only a few feet away, he had latched at once onto Powell. “If we cut her open without treating her first, she will break in half. So we use multislice computed tomography instead.”

  Through the glass of the observation room, the body of the headless woman resembled a strange sort of cocoon, swathed in yards of tissue and plastic. As Powell watched, a pair of orderlies in white gloves and masks undid the ties that secured the body to the gurney and lifted it gently, foam backboard and all, onto the table of the scanner. “What do we know about her so far?”

  “Based on a preliminary examination?” The medical examiner gave a sideways shrug. “Not much. Young, less than thirty, although it’s hard to say. Judging from her pubis and underarms, she had brown hair. Head and hands were removed after death with a sharp, serrated blade. And although this is only a guess, I would say that more than one person was involved.”

  “More than one?” The homicide detective, a large man in his fifties, had a pink face and a good haircut, his jacket cut to accommodate the sidearm in its hard plastic holster. “What makes you say that?”

  “Varying degrees of skill with the knife. When you examine the right wrist, the removal of the hand is clumsy and ragged, as if the man doing the cutting were elderly or hesitant. The head and left hand, by contrast, were removed more decisively. The cuts are uniform and professional.”

  “Or maybe one guy made all of the cuts, but got better at it as he went along.”

  “Perhaps. But to my eyes, it looks like two different men.” The medical examiner turned back to the observation window. “As for trace evidence, there is a small bandage on her ankle, a possible source of hairs and fibers. We have already found shreds of what appear to be lamb’s wool.”

  As Powell considered this, he watched the orderlies undo the clips that held the outer layers of plastic in place. He and the other observers were crowded before a rack of computer monitors. On the other side of the glass lay an examination room with a scanner at its far end. The scanner resembled a massive doughnut balanced on its side, with an aperture in the center like the door of a washing machine.

  The orderlies removed the rest of the Aclar film and began to peel away the second layer. As the paper was rolled up to either side of the body, Powell got a good look at the mummy for the first time. The flesh of the arms and legs had collapsed against the bone, to the point where his thumb and finger could have encircled any one of them with ease, and the crests of the pelvis stood out like wings.

  The detective leaned forward for a closer look. “What about the date of death?”

  “Difficult to say,” the medical examiner said. “She might have been there for a year, or ten years, or much longer.”

  “It had to be at least two,” the detective said. He glanced at Powell. “We followed up on your idea about the gate. It looks like the newest section of fence, the one that would have kept our killer from dumping the body, was installed two years ago. So that’s our cutoff date.”

  Powell watched through the glass as a warning light came on and the adjoining room was cleared. “And if you can’t identify her?”

  “Morgue keeps her for two weeks. After that, she goes to Hart Island. You ever been there? Potter’s field gets two thousand coffins a year. Not a good place for anyone to end up—”

  As the orderlies filed into the observation room, the scan began, with a radiologist at the computer overseeing the process. The table crept forward, bringing the body through the target ring a fraction of an inch at a time, as a series of discrete slices appeared on the nearest screen. Powell and the detective moved to the back of the room, clearing a gap for the others. “Seen one of these before?”

  The detective kept his eye on the scan. “Not from here. Two years ago, I was the one on that table.” Powell noted the telltale flush on his neck, the sign of a nitroglycerin pill, as the detective leaned back against the countertop. “So what brings a guy like you out here?”

  Powell considered the range of possible replies to this question. An image of his father’s face, once angular, now fat and leonine, appeared unexpectedly in his mind’s eye. In the end, he contented himself with the usual exchange of information: “A man named Vasylenko. London vor. Brotherhood of Russian thieves. A member of the same network as Sharkovsky.”

  The detective grunted. “I’ve heard that story before. With all due respect, there are a lot of ways for a gangster to make money in Brighton Beach without connections to London.”

  “Fair enough,” Powell said. “What do you know about Sharkovsky’s background?”

  “A champion wrestler in Moscow,” the detective said without hesitation. “Started as a roof in the black market, then took over the business himself. Came out here fifteen years ago. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, he runs a nightclub, owns a steam room in Sheepshead Bay, and races trucks on the side. No record. But he’s the number one vor in Brighton Beach.”

  Powell, noting the detective’s intelligence, adjusted himself accordingly. “But there’s more to it than that. He spent eight years in Vladimir Prison in Russia, but was freed after serving less than half his sentence. It’s my understanding that he was sent here to organize criminal activities throughout the city, with the unspoken support of Russian intelligence. Of course, the mob claims to be opposed to the secret services, but at the highest level, there’s no distinction between the two.”

  The detective, smiling, shook his head. “Listen, you’re new in town, so let me give you a word of advice. The feds love to push the international angle internally. It helps them get warrants, wires, funding. But when a case actually goes to trial, their interest in the foreign connection dries up real quick. They don’t like to get other agencies involved. Believe me, I’ve seen it before.”

  Powell sensed the detective testing his reactions, wondering if he had struck a nerve, which, in fact, he had. The day before, Powell had been deposed in the application for a federal wiretap, his statement taken by a lawyer who had seemed interested solely in the mob’s ties to terrorism. Although Powell privately believed that the terrorism angle was a dead end, he had gone along with the charade, knowing that it was the only way to move forward on the overseas connection. A few days earlier, a confidential informant had told them to be on the lookout for an arrival from London. He had turned out to be a modest figure with an accountant’s face, unmarked by a vor’s tattoos, but Powell knew you could never trust a man who clearly had nothing to hide.

  In the other room, the scan came to an end. Powell and the detective watched as the radiologist scrolled through the images, then pointed to a shadowy region in one of the cross sections. “Some foreign material here.”

  Powell, going forward for a better look, recognized it immediately. “Breast implants.”

  “That’s something,” the detective said. “If the serial numbers are intact, we can trace her from patient records. What else?”

  “Take a look at her feet.” The medical examiner asked the radiologist to call up the relevant scan, then pointed at the screen. “My eye was caught by this. The metatarsals are widened and flattened. She spent much of her time standing. A waitress, perhaps. Or she ran marathons—”

  As he studied the image, something clicked in Powell’s head, leaving him with a sudden impression of light and music. “The bandage on her ankle. You said you found traces of wool?”

  “Yes,” the medical examiner said, his dark eyes brightening. “Lamb’s wool—�
�

  “Which is used to make ballet shoes fit securely.” Powell looked into the examination room, where the dead girl was emerging from the aperture, as if she were being reborn. Then he turned to the others. “It might be too soon to know either way, but I believe that your girl was a dancer.”

  9

  As Maddy entered the storeroom, a row of fluorescent lights stuttered into brightness, illuminating the area one row at a time. This storage space occupied the fourteenth floor of a warehouse on Third Avenue, a fireproof tower of limestone and brick. On both sides of a central aisle stood twenty mesh racks, each of which could be rolled out to reveal the strange portfolio of the Reynard Art Fund.

  She moved down the aisle, her skin prickling as she passed into a constant climate of sixty degrees. It struck her again that this was a portfolio no human collector would have assembled. On one rack, for example, a synchromist canvas by Mark Russell had been set alongside pastoral scenes by Millet and Greuze. Across the aisle hung a mythological study by Van Loo, not far from a crate that contained eight bronzes from the Momoyama period, still unpacked after a year in storage.

  The next few racks were empty, with bar codes indicating that they were reserved for absent works. Here, for example, was the space for an early Monet, currently pledged as security for a collateralized loan. Some paintings were out for restoration or provenance analysis, while others had been lent to museums to augment their public profile, or were hanging in corporate lobbies for a monthly fee.

  There was nothing new about any of this, except, perhaps, the fund’s intention to manage the art historical process in the most deliberate way possible. As Maddy regarded the works in the storeroom, she found herself wishing, as she often did, that a similar model existed to guide her own life. She was closing in on a painful anniversary. It was nearly a year since the failure of her gallery, which had closed, like most such businesses, in the dead months of summer.