The Mona Lisa.
Maggie frowns at him. “Let me guess,” she says. “The Mona Lisa in the Louvre is a forgery. One of these is the real one.”
Oleg can’t stop smiling. “You find that so hard to believe?”
“Pretty much.”
“You know, of course, that the Mona Lisa was stolen from the Louvre in 1911.”
She nods. “By Vincenzo Peruggia. It was also returned in 1913.”
“Very good, Doctor McCabe, and yes, that’s the official story.”
“Official story.” She again tries to keep the sarcasm from her tone. “But, uh, you know better?”
“Better, worse, who’s to say? But here is what we both know: The Mona Lisa was stolen from the Salon Carré at the Louvre on August 21, 1911, by Vincenzo Peruggia. For the next two years, there wasn’t a clue what happened to the Mona Lisa, despite an obviously thorough police investigation. You know all this, correct?”
“Correct.”
“So how does Peruggia, who had been so so careful, get caught? The official story, I mean: Two years after stealing it, Vincenzo Peruggia travels with the Mona Lisa from France to Italy, where he contacts an art dealer named Alfredo Geri. Peruggia says to Geri, ‘Oh, I have the Mona Lisa.’ Just like that. Out of the blue. After being so careful for two years, Peruggia just up and tells someone he stole it. And what happens next — after Peruggia shows Geri the Mona Lisa? Alfredo Geri asks permission to contact the director of the Uffizi Gallery, a man named Giovanni Poggi, to authenticate the stolen painting. Can you imagine this conversation? ‘Hi, I stole the world’s most famous painting, what do you think?’ ‘Oh, is it okay if I show it to the director of the famous art gallery in Firenze?’ The utter stupidity.”
Oleg shakes his head. Then he asks her, “Do you know what happened next?”
“They call the police,” Maggie says. “Peruggia is arrested. The Mona Lisa is returned.”
“Precisely.” Oleg tilts his head. “Does that sound plausible to you, Doctor McCabe?”
“So you don’t buy the official explanation,” Maggie says.
“I don’t, no.”
“You think Peruggia made a perfect forgery and gave that back instead — and now the original is hanging in your home.”
“No.” Oleg grins, rubs his hands together as though warming up for his tale. “Again, let’s stick to facts. In 1932, Karl Decker wrote an article for The Saturday Evening Post after speaking to an Argentinian con man named Eduardo de Valfierno. Valfierno claims that he was the mastermind behind the theft. He hired Vincenzo Peruggia to steal the painting and then he commissioned an art forger named Yves Chaudron to make six identical copies of the Mona Lisa. The genius here is that with the real painting gone, potential buyers had no original to compare with it. According to Decker’s article, Valfierno sold the forgeries to über-rich collectors who believed it was the stolen masterpiece for a total of ninety million US dollars. It was the perfect crime.”
“I know the Decker article,” Maggie says. “It’s a conspiracy theory. Decker has long been discredited.”
“Correction,” Oleg says, raising a finger. “Decker was ‘discredited’ because none of the six forgeries has ever been found. The logic went that if six forgeries were out there, surely one of them would have surfaced in the twenty years between the time of the robbery and the time of Decker’s exposé. But now...”
His eyes slowly move back to the far wall.
“You’re saying these are three of the six Chaudron forgeries?”
Oleg nods. “One of these was in the hands of a Saudi prince. He kept it on a yacht. Another was kept in a safe by an American oil magnate’s grandfather living in Tulsa. I had both paintings examined with modern technology. It’s been confirmed that despite attempts to make them appear older, they were both very good forgeries painted in the early twentieth century.”
“What happened to the other three?”
Oleg shrugs. “I haven’t found them yet, but I have a theory. Once Vincenzo Peruggia was arrested and the ‘real’” — Oleg makes quote marks with his fingers — “Mona Lisa was returned and those superrich buyers realized they’d been easily swindled, they either destroyed the paintings or hid them out of embarrassment.”
Maggie steps closer. She stares at the three paintings, looking for differences. She can’t see any. She notices the familiar craquelure in all three paintings. These forgeries are indeed well done. “So if Decker’s theory is true,” Maggie says, “you have three excellent and perhaps famous forgeries.”
Oleg could not look more pleased with himself. “No,” he says.
She turns to him. “No?”
“According to Decker’s article, the forger Yves Chaudron took his massive share for the crime, changed his name, and vanished into the French countryside, where he lived out his days in quiet luxury.”
“Okay,” she says.
Oleg gestures toward the paintings with his chin. “One of these three Mona Lisas was found in a château near Chamonix. According to what I learned, a sketchy French art restorer named Philippe Canet hung it over his fireplace for years. When Canet died, his daughter took it down, finding it tacky to be hanging up what she thought was just a normal reproduction of the old masterpiece. She sold it to my dealer. But you see, in 1913, when the Mona Lisa was returned to the Louvre, the science behind authentication was far more primitive, especially in terms of the aging process. Now we have pigment analysis, X-ray fluorescence, Raman spectroscopy, ultraviolet lights, chemical analysis, carbon dating, all that. I was able to test all three of these Mona Lisas. Two of them, as I mentioned before, date back to the early twentieth century, which fits Decker’s time period for when the forgeries were being created.”
He takes a step closer to the wall.
“But one of the three, the Mona Lisa hung above art restorer Philippe Canet’s fireplace, dates back to the early sixteenth century — the time that Leonardo da Vinci painted the Mona Lisa.”
He turns and looks back for Maggie’s reaction. She tries to keep her expression neutral.
“So what’s the most likely theory on what really happened? Vincenzo Peruggia stole the Mona Lisa. How he did it has been well documented. He brought the stolen masterpiece, per Valfierno’s plan, to Yves Chaudron, so Chaudron could use it to make the best possible forgeries. But instead of giving Peruggia back the original, Chaudron gave him one of his forgeries and kept the original for himself. Who would know? Then he changed his name to Philippe Canet, moved to a humble château outside Chamonix — and hung the original Mona Lisa above his fireplace, where it remained for the rest of his days.” He grins and shakes his head in awe. “Think about it. How marvelous that must have been for a master forger like Chaudron.” He turns and meets Maggie’s eye. “Every day, Chaudron stared up at the original Mona Lisa in his own den while the world clamored and still queues up for hours to glimpse — not a da Vinci but an Yves Chaudron forgery. That, my dear doctor, is magnificent. That, my dear doctor, is immortality.”
Maggie’s eyes move back to the wall. She steps closer, seeing whether her very amateur eye can spot any differences. She doesn’t buy his story, but she also can’t deny that she feels a deep chill being in this otherwise barren room.
Still staring at the wall, with her back to him, Maggie asks, “Which one?”