A Deceptive Clarity

by Aaron Elkins

  "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing, the Scotch just tastes a little peculiar. Maybe they put mineral water in it." I laughed nervously. "Or maybe I'm getting paranoid." I took another tentative sip. "I guess they just changed brands, that's all. No taste of bitter almonds or anything like that."

  "Are you serious?"

  "About what?"

  "It's wine, not Scotch. Reisling. That's some educated palate you've got there."

  "Wine? Why did you get me wine?"

  "That's what I thought you were drinking. You had a wineglass."

  "No, they just ran out of highball glasses, that's all. Is this really wine?" I tried it again. "Of course it is. Funny that I'd think it was Scotch."

  "Oh, not really. Other things being equal, you see what you expect to see, hear what you expect to hear, taste what you think you're going to taste. Proven many times over."

  "So that's what you learn in career counseling."

  "That's what you should have learned in Psych 101. It's an elementary principle of perception: expectancy."

  "Expectancy! Yes!" Lorenzo burst out. "Exactly my point! Do you see? It's why you didn't recognize the wine!"

  It wasn't the first time I'd observed his ability to take in other conversations even when he was in the middle of one of his own harangues. Presumably it was due to his being unable to follow what he was saying any better than anyone else could.

  "You see?" He grinned triumphandy at his glassy-eyed audience. "One's expectation overrules the evidence of the senses. You expect whiskey, and although your senses tell you you have wine, your 'inner reality' constructs a complex rationale to protect itself, to convince you that it is right and your senses wrong. 'They put mineral water in it'; 'It's a different brand.' Anything to maintain the integrity of your preconception."

  "Yeah!" one of the somnolent listeners said suddenly. "That makes a lot of sense."

  Lorenzo's button eyes blinked in surprise. It wasn't the sort of thing people generally said to him. "Well," he mumbled gruffly, "I was merely speaking in concrete terms."

  Anne and I seized the opportunity to move on, but after three steps I froze on the spot.

  "Anne . .. ? I just realized—preconceptions—expectations—the integrity of—of—"

  "I think," she said gravely, "you've been talking to Lorenzo too much."

  "No." I shook my head impatiently. "Remember what Peter told me? To look at everything without preconception? Well, I haven't done it. I haven't done it!" I laughed, no doubt a little wildly.

  "Chris—"

  "Come on." I grabbed her wrist and broke toward the neglected alcove where the eleven copies of the missing paintings were.

  "Dr. Norgren, a little decorum, please!" she yelped, tripping after me. "Remember, we represent the dignity and majesty of the government of the United—"

  "Screw decorum! Anne, if I'm right ... if I'm right—!"

  I was right.

  "Chris," Anne said, looking uncertainly up at my face, "you're making me nervous. What's going on?"

  "Nervous?" I said, barely hearing her. "Why?"

  "For one thing, because you're staring at that picture with a look on your face like that orangutan with his banana, only you're sort of chuckling and oinking—"

  "Oinking?" I repeated, not taking my eyes off the painting. "I don't think I'm oinking."

  "Well, you are, and before that you practically yanked me off my feet, which isn't like you. You also said 'screw,' which also isn't like you—"

  "Did I say 'screw'?" I asked dreamily.

  "Yes," she said, "you did. Christopher, what ... is ... going ... on?"

  "Yeah, what?" Harry appeared at the entrance to the alcove. He, too, was in mess dress and looking uncomfortable, as if he longed to stick a finger down his starched collar and tug. "You practically ran me over getting here. What's the big deal?"

  "The deal," I said slowly, relishing this moment so much I didn't want to move on. "The deal is, I've found Peter's fake."

  In real life, people don't do double takes very often, but they both did one now. From vague, uncomprehending stares at the painting, their eyes jumped to me and then leaped again to fasten on the smallish, modestiy framed picture we stood before.

  "This?" Harry said in a squawk of surprise. "This?" He leaned closer to the identifying plaque, a neat white rectangle of cardboard on the brown wall covering, a few inches from the picture's bottom right corner.

  " 'A Woman Peeling Apples,' " he read, " 'Jan Vermeer, sixteen—' "

  "I don't understand," Anne interrupted. "How can this be a fake? I mean, it already is a fake." She gestured at the other ten copies in the alcove. "These are all fakes. That's what they're supposed to be."

  "Yes," I said, "but this is a fake fake." I know I chortled; maybe I even oinked.

  "Listen, Chris," Harry said evenly, "it's real nice to see you having such a good time, but I think maybe you better let the rest of us in—"

  "It's real."

  Silence.

  "It's a genuine Vermeer," I said.

  Silence.

  I finally looked away from the painting and at the two of them. "This is Peter's 'forgery.' That's why he was so funny about it. It's not a fake that everyone thought was an original, it's an original that everyone thought was a fake."

  "Are you sure?" Anne said in a bewildered whisper.

  "Absolutely. Look at the pointilles, look at the wall texture with all those incredibly tiny color variations; who else ever understood enough to do that? No question about it. It's obvious." I shook my head, not sure if I were more pleased with how clever I was or distressed with how slow I'd been to get here.

  "Well, what the hell are you looking so smug about?" Harry asked almost angrily. "And if it's so obvious, what in the goddamn hell took you so long to find it?"

  "What took so long was that I wasn't looking for it. Not here, anyway, among the copies. They were supposed to be fakes, so I saw them as fakes, and I didn't pay any attention to them. Damn, I should have figured this out weeks ago, but I didn't do what Peter said—I didn't start without preconceptions. My inner reality—"

  "Inner reality!" Harry exploded, and looked at Anne. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

  "Sure. Expectancy. The imposition of our values and expectations on the supposedly objective exterior world. Kant. Kafka. Heidegger. Ask Lorenzo; he'll explain it to you."

  "You're getting weird, too," Harry muttered. "All right, it's real. I'll take your word for it." He folded his arms, pulled at the side of his beard, and stared hard at the simple homely scene on the canvas; a seated, house-jacketed woman peeling apples from a basket on her lap, with a little girl standing at her side, both figures bathed in Vermeer's wonderful, clean light pouring in through the window on their left.

  "A Woman Peeling Apples," he said musingly. "This is why van Cortlandt got killed? Because he figured out what you just figured out?"

  So much for chortling and oinking. In the excitement of discovery, I'd actually forgotten the point. "It's got to be that," I said, sobered. "And I think that's why somebody's been trying to do me in, too, before I figured it out as well. I'm supposed to be a Vermeer expert, remember?" I shook my head ruefully again. "Down my alley, Peter said. Right smack down the middle of my alley."

  "No, wait a minute," Anne said. "Why you and only you? If it's so obvious, couldn't someone else have found it, too? What about Earl, for instance? He's also an art expert. Why hasn't someone been trying to kill him before he—" Her eyes widened. "You don't—do you really think he might be the ... Heinrich Schliemann … might be Earl?"

  "No, I don't. What motive could he possibly have? Even if he believes that junk he wrote in those letters, how would substituting a genuine painting for a copy help him?"

  "All right, forget the letters," Harry said. "What about simple greed? Maybe he stole the real one—the real fake, I mean—and switched ... No, what kind of sense would that make?"

  "None," I agreed. "Stealin
g an original to sell it off and substituting a copy for it is one thing, but stealing a fake and substituting a genuine three-million-dollar masterpiece for it—why would he want to do that?"

  "Why would anybody want to do it?" Anne asked sensibly. "It doesn't sound tike a very good business proposition. Harry, what do you think?"

  "I think we better get back to the other room. Somebody's going to notice we've been in here a long time, and they're liable to figure out what we've been talking about."

  "You're right," I said. "Let's go." But I didn't go, I stood there looking at the picture, chewing on my lip. "Come to think of it, where did this come from? It's been missing since 1944. That's why it's here in this alcove. I mean that's why the copy's supposed to be here in this room."

  "It just doesn't make sense," Anne murmured. "No sense at all."

  But it was starting to make sense to me. Just a glimmer of sense, a hazy vision of the threads that bound it all together; the hoax, the murder, everything. Even the storage-room break-in.

  "No," I said slowly, "I think maybe it does make sense ... but we're going to have a hell of a time proving it."

  "Proving what?" they said together.

  "Harry, I've got an idea. It'd involve using one of the security guards and—well—staging a sort of incident. Entrapment, some might even say. Would you be game to go along with it?"

  "Let me hear the idea first," Harry said warily, but I saw his dark eyes glint.

  Chapter 20

  After the reception about a dozen of us sat tiredly in a closed-off section of the Columbia House dining room awaiting a private dinner, courtesy of the Defense Department. The exhibition's senior staff was there, and the Bolzanos, and Emanuel Traben from the Frankfurt Kunstmuseum. There were some others too: a youngish air-force one-star general, somebody from the American ambassador's office, and a Bundestag member. An uneasy-looking Conrad Jessick was crimped into a corner chair, trying to look inconspicuous among all the brass.

  Each of us- held a half-filled cordial glass. Robey had somehow acquired a bottle of brandy from recently discovered stores laid down by General Rommel forty-five years before, and he thought this would be a good time to open it.

  "First of all," he smiled drowsily, "I want to offer a toast to the man whose generosity has made this magnificent exhibition a reality." He nodded in Bolzano's direction. I could tell that he hadn't yet gotten around to breaking yesterday's news. Maybe this was the final phase of the softening-up process. Robey raised his glass. "To il signor Claudio Marcello Bolzano."

  He heard Flittner mumble "Hooray" as he lifted his glass. He had been as sullen and unsociable as ever during the reception, but I'd been surprised to see him there at all, since he had only three more days to put in.

  The brandy was watery, but all of us made the silly faces people make to each other to show they've just tasted something special.

  "I'd also like to express our appreciation," Robey continued, "to the German government for its extraordinary—"

  He was interrupted by the noisy busting in of a guard who came galumping breathlessly over the hardwood floor in his heavy combat boots. It was quite dramatic. Anne, Harry, and I exchanged quick glances and settled back to watch.

  "Sir!"

  Robey turned, frowning. "What is it, airman?" His glass was still raised. He was the only one at the table who was standing.

  "Sir, there's been a—we've had a problem. In the Clipper Room—one of the paintings—it's ..."

  It was as if we were all in a movie and the projectionist had pressed the stop-frame button. All the little sounds and movements of people seated around a table stopped. No squeaking chairs, no scraping feet, no breathing, as far as I could tell.

  "All right, airman," Robey said with pointed calm, "what's wrong? Nothing to be afraid of."

  The guard glanced nervously around the table, as if he didn't know whether he ought to speak in front of us. Harry had picked a good actor. "One of the paintings, sir— somebody got in there—I don't know how—the C-system was alarmed as soon as the reception was over—"

  "God damn it, airman!" Robey shouted, surprising all of us. "What the hell happened? Spit it out!"

  "Somebody's slashed one of the paintings, sir. It's in shreds—"

  I leaned forward and tried to watch everyone at once.

  Lorenzo cried "No!" and stood gawkily up in uncoordinated segments, like a camel, his hands on the table bunching the cloth, his Adam's apple going crazy. His father sat deathly still with his eyes closed. Gadney's mouth opened and shut, but I don't think anything came out. Flittner's mouth just opened and stayed open. Next to me, I saw Robey grope behind himself for a steadying grasp on his chair. Jessick shrank more invisibly into his corner. Traben I couldn't see, but I heard a soft hiccup followed by a distressed burp.

  "And, sir, they scrawled something on the wall—in blood, I think—some kind of political message."

  "Political message?" Flittner croaked. "What message?" He shot a furious, frightened glare at me, filled with outraged innocence. Not me! his eyes shouted.

  I was as interested in the guard's answer as he was. There wasn't any bloody message in the script; it appeared that our airman was indulging a flair for improvisation.

  "Sic semper tyrannis," he said, deepening his baritone. Not bad. "I think—"

  "Never mind," Robey interrupted with a panicky glance at Bolzano. "Which painting was it, for God's sake?"

  "I—well, I don't know. It's the second one from the door, in the little room at the back. You know—"

  "The little room?" Lorenzo repeated, his voice cracking with strained laughter. "The little room? You mean it's one of the copies?" I thought he was going to faint with relief. He sank back down. "Only a copy," he said shakily to his father.

  "Second from the door … " Flittner said. "The Vermeer."

  Claudio Bolzano jumped up so abrupdy that his chair clattered over backwards. "The Vermeer? The Vermeer is slashed?"

  "No, no, Father," Lorenzo soothed, "only the copy."

  And that did it.

  "Only the copy, only the copy," Bolzano hissed, his black eyes snapping, his head waving from side to side like a cornered wolf's. I half-expected a lolling red tongue to slide out between his jaws.

  "Yes, only the copy, signore," I said. "Why get so excited over a copy?"

  "You ... fool!" He glared at me, choking on his emotion.

  "Father," the mortified Lorenzo whispered, "please. You don't understand...." He reached a hand upward toward his father, but Bolzano easily swatted his gangling arm out of the way, and then, in a surge of sudden rage, backhanded him in the face with his closed fist. The sound of his blocky gold ring against his son's soft mouth was shocking and embarrassing, and Lorenzo's tall forehead blushed a brilliant pink almost before the blow struck.

  "Idiota!" Bolzano snarled. "You don't know the difference—"

  He spun and took three quick strides toward the door, then stopped as violently as if someone had jerked a leash.

  He turned, staring directly at me, breathing heavily, saying nothing. His tongue emerged, not like a wolf's, but quickly, like a lizard's, twice darting in and out over his hps.

  "A trick."

  "Yes," I said, "a trick."

  "And the picture is really all right?"

  I nodded.

  "I'd sure like to know what's going on," Robey said mildly. "I'd really like to know what's going on."

  Harry stood up, scraping his chair back along the floor. "Mr. Bolzano, I'm going to have to ask you to come with me."

  Bolzano looked at him. "I'm not coming with you."

  "Yes, sir, you are," Harry said. "By entering these premises you place yourself within the jurisdiction of United States military authority. I think we'd better go now, please."

  "It was a cruel trick, signore," Bolzano said to me. "Of all people, you should have realized how cruel."

  I pressed my lips together and said nothing, fighting the urge to pity this small
man with the big, hurt eyes, who was aging and shrinking in front of us. You tried to kill me twice, I said silently. You didn't hesitate over blowing up innocent guards. And you murdered Peter van Cortlandt, snuffing out that good man's life in the most vile, repellent way imaginable.

  "I realized," I said.

  Harry took Bolzano's arm. "Chris, I'm gonna need you too. You mind coming along?"

  The last words I heard as the door swung closed behind us were Robey's.

  "Will somebody please tell me what the hell is going on?"

  Chapter 21

  "All right, I understand most of it," Anne said, shaking her tea bag up and down over her cup to discharge the last droplets, "but—damn!" The paper tag at the end of the string had come loose and the bag had plopped into the cup. She fished it out with a pencil and dumped it into an ashtray. "I understand that Bolzano had Peter killed because Peter found out about the Vermeer, and he was trying to do the same to you, and I sort of understand why, but there's a lot that still doesn't make sense, Chris."

  "All right, shoot. I think I've got it all straight."

  I should have. I'd just spent six hours in police offices, first at Tempelhof Security, then at Polizei headquarters, giving and gathering information while a numbed Bolzano went through the dismal process of interrogation and detainment.

  The high point of the evening had come when I was asked if I could identify two muttering, arrogant hoods who had just been herded in by a squad of grim, efficient Polizei. I could, with ease and with pleasure. Skull-face was just as ugly and mean-looking as I remembered, No-neck just as awesomely houselike. Simply looking, at them brought a dull ache to the kink in my nose.

  Finding them had been a personal coup for Harry. In looking through Bolzano's things he had seen the brief notation 10 in that day's space in a pocket calendar. He had suggested that the Polizei send men to the Inter-Continental, Bolzano's Berlin address, to see if anything turned up at 10:00 p.m., and the two thugs had walked in, finally justifying Harry's obsession with calendars and nicely wrapping matters up. In the nick of time, too; Harry was sure the subject of the meeting was to have been my overdue demise, which Bolzano had come to Berlin to oversee personally. When the two men were shoved into his presence, Bolzano, who had been contemptuously defiant until then, gave up, and it was all over.