Portrait of an unknown w.., p.26
Portrait of an Unknown Woman, page 26
“I thought I made it clear that you were to come alone.”
Evelyn turned with a start. Then, regaining her composure, she stared straight ahead. “Who was the blonde?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“The woman you brought to Carl Bernstein’s book party.”
“She used to work at MoMA. Now she’s an art dealer in London. I was helping her with a problem.”
“What sort of problem?”
“The Great Somerset.”
“You obviously read my article,” said Evelyn.
“Several times.”
“Why?”
“As you might imagine, the ability to read between the lines is an essential skill for an intelligence officer. Is the information accurate, or is my adversary trying to deceive me? Is my agent overstating his case, or is he playing it too safe? Has my source, for one reason or another, left critical information out of his report?”
“And when you finished reading my story about Phillip?”
“I had the nagging sense that you knew more about him than you shared with your readers.”
“Much more,” she admitted.
“Why wasn’t the material included in the piece?”
“You first, Mr. Allon. Why Phillip Somerset, of all people?”
“Masterpiece Art Ventures is a fraud. And I’d like you to be the one to break the story.”
“What have you got for me?”
“A whistleblower.”
“An employee of the company?”
“Close enough.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m going to impose some rather strict ground rules in order to protect the whistleblower’s identity and to conceal my role in this matter.”
“And if I refuse to accept those ground rules?”
“I’ll find someone who will. And you and your magazine will be playing catch-up when Masterpiece crashes and burns.”
“In that case, I’ll listen to what you and your whistleblower have to say.” She paused. “But only if you tell me where you got the number for my cell phone.”
“I found it in Phillip’s contacts.”
Evelyn Buchanan smiled. “Ask a silly question.”
54
Central Park
“How did you find her?”
“She was arrested in Italy last weekend after purchasing a forged Gentileschi from an undercover Carabinieri officer. I was a consultant to the Italian investigation.”
“A consultant?” asked Evelyn dubiously.
“It’s possible I might have painted the Gentileschi for them.”
“A fake forgery painted by Gabriel Allon? This story is getting better by the minute.”
They were moving at an unhurried pace along the footpaths of Central Park. For the moment, Evelyn’s notepad was tucked safely into her Chanel handbag. She was a petite woman of perhaps fifty, with short, dark hair and oversize tortoiseshell glasses. They were her trademark, the spectacles, like her razor-sharp prose, acerbic wit, and ruthless competitive streak.
“Where’s the painting now?” she asked.
“A warehouse on East Ninety-First Street.”
“Chelsea Fine Arts Storage?”
“That’s the one.”
“I remember when Phillip acquired it. I have to say, it made no sense to me at the time. Why would a tycoon like Phillip Somerset want to own a small-time art services company like Chelsea?”
“Because the tycoon needed the ability to ship and store forged paintings, no questions asked. He’s flooded the art market with hundreds of fake paintings, including four that have ended up in the Louvre. But the best part of the story is that—”
“Phillip is using forged paintings as collateral to obtain massive bank loans.”
“How did you know?”
“An educated guess.” Evelyn smiled. “Did I mention that my husband works for Millennium Management. It’s one of the world’s largest hedge funds. Before that, he was a prosecutor in the US attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York. When I was working on the profile of Phillip, Tom took a hard look at—”
“Your husband is named Tom Buchanan?”
“Do you want to hear the rest of the story or not?”
“Please.”
“When Tom analyzed Masterpiece’s annual returns, he was quite impressed. Envious, actually.”
“Because Masterpiece had outperformed Millennium?”
“Easily. Tom being Tom, he started doing some digging.”
“And?”
“He was convinced that Phillip was using borrowed money and money from new investors to pay off his old investors. In short, Tom believes that Phillip Somerset is the Bernie Madoff of the art world.”
“He’s running a Ponzi scheme?”
“Correct.”
“How close did you get to proving it?”
“Not close enough for my editors. But Phillip definitely knew that I was on to him.”
“How?”
“He employs a man named Leonard Silk to watch his back. Silk is retired CIA. When he left the Agency, he opened a one-man private security firm here in New York. He called me when I was working on my profile and threatened legal action if the piece alleged wrongdoing of any kind. I also received messages from a man who somehow knew that I liked to take long walks in the park. He warned me to be careful. He said bad things happen to women who walk alone in New York City.”
“How subtle.”
“Leonard Silk doesn’t waste time on subtlety. That’s Phillip’s department. He was incredibly charming during our interviews. It’s no wonder your whistleblower agreed to work for him.”
“Actually, she saw through Phillip from the beginning.”
“What was the original connection?”
“Drugs. When she couldn’t sell any of her paintings here in New York, she earned a living dealing cocaine. Many of her clients were Wall Street types.”
“Phillip snorted a mountain of blow back when he was at Lehman Brothers,” said Evelyn. “It was just one of the reasons why they fired him. Even by Wall Street standards, he was out of control.”
“Your article said he left Lehman on good terms.”
“That was the public version of the story, but it isn’t true. Phillip was practically frog-marched out of the building, and a do-not-resuscitate order went out on the street. When no one else would hire him, he started a hedge fund called Somerset Asset Management. And when the hedge fund collapsed, he hit upon a novel idea.”
“He gravitated to the art world,” said Gabriel. “Because that’s where the money was.”
Evelyn nodded. “Phillip started turning up at gallery openings and museum fundraisers, always with a beautiful woman on his arm and a pocketful of business cards. You have to hand it to him. The art-based hedge fund was an intriguing idea. Prices for blue-chip art were rising faster than equities or any other asset class. How could he possibly go wrong?”
“It never worked. That’s why he started loading up his book with forged paintings.”
They had arrived at Grand Army Plaza. “You never mentioned your whistleblower’s name,” said Evelyn.
“Magdalena Navarro.”
“Where is she now?”
Gabriel glanced toward the Pierre Hotel. “It’s her New York address. She has fifty-six million dollars invested in Masterpiece Art Ventures, all of which she earned selling forgeries for Phillip.”
“So she says. But I can’t accuse Phillip Somerset of the greatest art fraud in history based solely on the word of a former drug dealer. I need proof that he’s knowingly selling forged paintings.”
“What if you were able to hear it directly from Phillip’s mouth?”
“Do you have a recording?”
“The conversation hasn’t happened yet.”
“When will it?”
“Tomorrow afternoon at one o’clock.”
“What’s on the agenda?”
“Me.”
They threaded their way through the gridlocked traffic along Fifth Avenue and came whirling through the Pierre’s revolving door, into the refrigerated cool of the lobby. Upstairs, Gabriel knocked softly on the door of Magdalena’s suite. Sarah confirmed his identity before opening the door.
“How’s the prisoner?” he asked.
“The prisoner is resting in her room.” Sarah offered Evelyn her hand, then turned to Gabriel. “Do we need to clarify the ground rules before we begin?”
“Ms. Buchanan has agreed that your name and the name of your highly regarded gallery in London will not appear in her copy. She will describe you only as an art world insider.” Gabriel glanced at Evelyn. “Isn’t that correct, Ms. Buchanan?”
“And how will I describe you?”
“This story isn’t about me. It’s about Phillip Somerset and Masterpiece Art Ventures. Any information that I provide is for background purposes only. You may not quote me directly. Nor are you to say where this interview is taking place.”
“An undisclosed location?”
“I’ll let you choose the words, Ms. Buchanan. I’m not the writer.”
“You’re just the consultant to the Italian police who painted a fake forgery?”
“Exactly.”
“In that case, perhaps it’s time for me to meet the prisoner.”
Gabriel knocked on the door of the bedroom, and a moment later out stepped Magdalena.
“My goodness,” said Evelyn Buchanan. “This story is getting better by the minute.”
55
Pierre Hotel
They went through it once from the beginning. And then they went through it a second time, just to make certain of the relevant facts and dates. Magdalena’s childhood in Seville. Her formal training as an artist in Barcelona. The years she spent dealing cocaine in New York. Her introduction to Phillip Somerset at Le Cirque. Her role in building and maintaining the most lucrative and sophisticated art-and-financial fraud scheme in history. There were no discrepancies between the version of the story she revealed under interrogation in Umbria and the one she recounted for Evelyn Buchanan of Vanity Fair. If anything, thought Gabriel, the Pierre Hotel edition was even more captivating. So, too, was the subject herself. She came across as cosmopolitan and sophisticated and, most important, credible. Never once did she lose her composure, even when the questions turned personal.
“Why would someone with your talent become a drug dealer?”
“At first, I did it because I needed the money. And then I discovered that I enjoyed it.”
“You were good at it?”
“Very.”
“Are there similarities between selling drugs and forgeries?”
“More than you realize. For some people, art is like a drug. They have to have it. Phillip and I simply catered to their addiction.”
There was a gaping hole in Magdalena’s account—namely, the precise set of circumstances by which she had ended up in Italian custody. Evelyn pressed Gabriel for details, but he refused to budge from his original statement. Magdalena had been arrested after purchasing a forged Gentileschi in Florence. The painting was now in an art storage warehouse on East Ninety-First Street. In the morning it would be moved to the gallery of Phillip Somerset’s town house on East Seventy-Fourth Street. And at 1:00 p.m. it would be the subject of a conversation that would provide Evelyn with all the ammunition she needed to expose Masterpiece Art Ventures as a fraud.
“Will Magdalena be wearing a wire?”
“Her phone will be acting as a transmitter. Phillip’s phone is also compromised.”
“I don’t suppose he gave his consent to being hacked.”
“I didn’t ask for it.”
At nine o’clock they took a break for dinner. Sarah arranged for a round of martinis to be sent up from the bar while Magdalena ordered room service from Perrine, the hotel’s acclaimed restaurant. At Gabriel’s suggestion, Evelyn invited her husband to join them. He arrived as the waiters were rolling the table into the suite. Tom Buchanan was affable and erudite, the very opposite of the wellborn polo player who had lived grandly on the shoreline of East Egg and fretted about the decline of the white race.
Evelyn swore her husband to secrecy, then gave him a detailed briefing on the remarkable story that had landed in her lap earlier that afternoon. Tom Buchanan took out his anger on his Caesar salad.
“Leave it to Phillip Somerset to come up with something like this. Still, one has to admire his ingenuity. He spotted a weakness and cleverly took advantage of it.”
“What weakness is that?” asked Gabriel.
“The art market is totally unregulated. Prices are arbitrary, quality control is virtually nonexistent, and most paintings change hands under conditions of total secrecy. All of which makes it the perfect environment for fraud. Phillip took it to the extreme, of course.”
“How is it possible that no one noticed?”
“For the same reason no one noticed that mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations were about to take down the global economy.”
“Everyone is making too much money?”
Tom nodded. “And not just Phillip’s investors. His bankers, too. And they’re all going to suffer enormous losses when Evelyn’s story appears. Nevertheless, I approve of your methods. Waiting for the Feds to act isn’t an option. That said, I wish you could give my wife an incriminating document or two.”
“You mean the inner-office memo in which Phillip spells out his plan to create and maintain the largest art fraud in history?”
“Point taken, Mr. Allon. But what about the documents stored in that warehouse on East Ninety-First Street?”
“Phillip’s current inventory?”
“Exactly. If Magdalena can say with absolute certainty that he has forged paintings on his book, it would be devastating.”
“Is the former federal prosecutor suggesting that I clandestinely acquire a comprehensive list of paintings contained in that property?”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. But if you do, you should definitely give it to my wife.”
Gabriel smiled. “Any other advice, counselor?”
“If I were you, I’d think about putting a bit of pressure on Phillip’s finances.”
“By encouraging a handful of his important investors to take redemptions, you mean?”
“It sounds to me as though you already have a plan in place,” said Tom.
“There’s a man in London named Nicholas Lovegrove. Nicky’s one of the most sought-after art advisers in the world. Several of his clients are invested with Phillip.”
“We hedge fund types get very suspicious when investors pull their money. Therefore, it needs to be handled with discretion.”
“Don’t worry,” said Sarah. “We art dealer types are nothing if not discreet.”
56
Galerie Watson
The destruction of Masterpiece Art Ventures commenced the following morning at 10:45 a.m. London time—5:45 a.m. in New York—when Christopher Keller presented himself at Galerie Olivia Watson in King Street. The small placard in the window read by appointment only. Christopher hadn’t made one, wagering that a surprise attack would prove more successful. He pressed the call button and, wincing, awaited a response.
“Well, well,” breathed a sultry female voice. “Look what the cat left on my doorstep. If it isn’t my dear friend Mr. Bancroft.”
“It’s Marlowe, remember? Now open the door.”
“Sorry, but I’m all tied up at the moment.”
“Untie yourself and let me in.”
“I do love it when you beg, darling. Hold on, I can’t quite seem to reach the button for the damn lock.”
Several additional seconds elapsed before the deadbolt thumped and the door yielded to Christopher’s touch. Inside, he found Olivia seated at a sleek black writing table in the gallery’s main exhibition room. She had arranged herself with care, as though posing for an invisible camera. As usual, her chin was turned slightly to the left, the right side of her face being the one that the photographers and advertisers had preferred. Christopher had never had a favorite. Olivia was a work of art, regardless of the vantage point.
Rising, she stepped from behind the table, crossed one ankle over the other, and placed a hand on her hip. She was clad in a fashionably cut jacket and matching slim-fitting trousers, suitably summer in color and weight.
“Marks and Spencer?” asked Christopher.
“It’s a little something that Giorgio threw together for me.” She lifted her chin a few degrees and stared at Christopher down the straight lines of her nose. “What brings you to my corner of the neighborhood?”
“A mutual friend needs a favor.”
“Which friend is that?”
“The one who cleaned up your dreadful past and allowed you to open a respectable gallery here in St. James’s.” Christopher paused. “A gallery filled with paintings that were purchased with your boyfriend’s drug money.”
“Our mutual friend performed a similar service for you, as I recall.” Olivia folded her arms. “Does your adorable American wife know what you used to do for a living?”
“My adorable American wife is none of your concern.”
“Is it true she used to work for the CIA?”
“Wherever did you hear a thing like that?”
“Neighborhood gossip. There’s also a nasty rumor going round that I’m involved in a flaming shag-fest with Simon Mendenhall.”
“I thought you were dating a pop star.”
“Colin is an actor,” said Olivia. “And he’s currently starring in the hottest play in the West End.”
“Are you two serious?”
“Quite.”
“So why are you shagging sleazy Simon on the side?”
“The rumor was started by your wife,” said Olivia evenly.
“I find that difficult to believe.”
“She also whispers the word bitch every time she sees me in Wiltons.”
Christopher smiled in spite of himself.
“I’m glad you think it’s funny.” Olivia scrutinized his clothing. “Who’s dressing you these days?”
