When I returned to the house on Santini I saw that the Mercedes was already parked outside and I hurried in. Krebs was there, in the parlor, with Franco and Baldassare and a man I didn’t recognize, a small, stout, olive-skinned guy with dark-rimmed glasses and the air of an academic. They were all standing around drinking Prosecco, and I saw that the drape was still on the painting.
Krebs hailed me as I came in, embraced me warmly, and said that he’d insisted they wait until I came back for the unveiling. He introduced the stranger as Dr. Vicencio de Salinas, a curator from the Palacio de Livia, the private collection of the duchess of Alba, which kind of puzzled me at the time, because I thought, Hey, isn’t this a little premature, showing the thing to an expert before the boss even had a look?
Then Baldassare pulled the drape off with a flourish and there were gasps all around. All three of us-Krebs, Salinas, and me-surged forward to look at it more closely and bumped shoulders, and I kind of pulled back and let them get the best look. They were the customers. But I’d seen enough to understand that Baldassare had worked a wonder. Oil paint takes years to really cure up and dry, and it changes its appearance during that time; even the things I’d done as a kid still looked like the contemporary objects they in fact were. But this son of a bitch looked old, and it had the palpable authority that old things have. It looked cracked and heavy with age, like every painting from the seventeenth century you see in museums, and I had a brief moment of temporal vertigo, as if I’d painted it in the seventeenth century for real.
The Spaniard inspected the painting at various distances for what seemed a long time. At last he turned to Krebs with a small smile, nodding his head-reluctantly, it seemed to me.
“Well? You said it couldn’t be done,” said Krebs. “What do you think now?”
Salinas shrugged and answered, “Frankly, I admit to being astounded. The brushwork, the colors, that glow on the skin are all entirely true to the Rokeby Venus. And the…the preparation is also very fine; the craqueleur seems flawless on initial inspection.”
Krebs clapped Baldassare heartily on the back. “Yes! Bravo Signor Baldassare!”
And Salinas went on, “Subject, as I say, to technical examination, the pigments and so forth, I would have no trouble in passing this as genuine.”
I stood there amid the smiles, and no one looked at me or patted me on the back, and I figured it was something like what went down with Castelli’s faked Tiepolo-they were practicing pretending that it was real. I couldn’t study it closely myself. When I tried to a pain started across my eyes and my vision blurred a little and I had to sit down.
I looked up at Krebs again and he was talking with Salinas, something about the exact dimensions of the painting, and Krebs assured him that it was right to a tenth of a millimeter and told him to get on with taking his samples, because he had to get back to Madrid as soon as possible so as not to be missed at the museum.
Salinas opened a briefcase from which he removed a set of binocular goggles, a high-intensity headlamp, and a small black container about the size of an eyeglass case. He put on the goggles and the lamp, switched it on, turning himself into something like ET on a spelunking expedition. He approached the painting and from his little case drew a shiny small tool.
“He’s taking a core to analyze the paint layers,” Krebs said. “Tiny, and virtually invisible. He’ll check the pigments and the ground for age and anachronism. Which of course he will not find.”
“I hope not. What was all that about exact dimensions?”
“Well, obviously whatever connoisseurship and technical analysis may say, the thing is worthless without an impeccable provenance. Now, with a drawing, or some minor Corot, or even a Rubens, this is easily handled, as I’m sure you know. It’s nothing to prepare a seventeenth-century bill of sale-old Baldassare can do it in his sleep-and there are thousands of dusty garrets in Europe and ancient families who will attest, for a consideration, that their ancestor the count bought the thing in sixteen whatever. But for something like this, such dodges will not do, not at all.”
Salinas seemed to be finished at the painting. He switched off his lamp, removed his goggles, and held up a small vial as if it were the cure for cancer.
“I have it,” he said, and placed the vial into his little box.
“Excellent,” said Krebs. “Franco will drive you to the Ciampino airport; the jet you came on is fueled and waiting and you should be back at your desk in Madrid”-he checked his wristwatch-“no more than four hours after you left. A long siesta, but not unknown in Madrid, I believe.”
Salinas smiled and shook hands with both of us, with the usual assurances of goodwill, not entirely hiding what I saw, close up now, was extreme terror; he packed up his things and departed in something of a rush. I heard the Mercedes start up outside.
“A useful little man, that,” said Krebs reflectively as the sounds of the car receded. “And a bitter man: well trained, but without the flair needed in a museum director nowadays. He was passed over for promotion as director of collections, and this is his revenge. And his prosperous retirement.”
“He’s going to buy the painting for the Livia?”
Krebs gave me an unbelieving look and laughed. “Of course not. His job is to give us a flawless provenance.”
“How?”
“That you will see with your own eyes, perhaps as soon as next week, when we go to Madrid.”
“We?”
“Yes, of course.” He looked at his watch again. “You know, it’s past one. Aren’t you famished? I am.”
With that we left the house and walked down the street and across the Piazza San Cosimato to a little restaurant where they apparently knew Krebs and were very glad to see him. They gave us a table by the window, and when we were settled with a plate of dried anchovies and one of whitebait fritters, and a bottle of Krug, he said, “Wilmot, I realize you are an artist and thus not entirely of this world, but I must press upon you that from now until however long it takes you must keep yourself under almost military discipline. No wandering off and no unauthorized calls. When we return I will ask you to surrender your cellular phone. It’s not me who makes these rules.”
“Who does then?”
“Our friends. My partners in this venture.”
“You mean you’re mobbed up?” I said, or rather the wine said.
“Excuse me?”
“Mobbed up. You’re working for the Mafia.”
He seemed to find this amusing, and while he was chuckling the waiter came and we ordered food. The waiter said the scampi Casino di Venezia was very good and Krebs said we had to have it in honor of the city where we began our association, so I said, okay, I’ll have that too, and he ordered a bottle of Procanico to go with it. When the man had gone he continued, “Mobbed up-I must remember that expression. But let us not confuse things. The Mafia is about whores and drugs and corrupt contracts for poured concrete. We are talking about an entirely different level of enterprise.”
“Criminal enterprise. Whatever happened to letting the experts come to their own conclusions? Whatever happened to Giordano Luca? You’re planning a major fraud.”
He looked at me with what seemed like amused pity. “Ah, Wilmot, did you ever actually think it would be anything else? Really?”
And I had to admit to myself that he was right. I do have a habit of believing my own lies. I took a breath, drank some more wine, and asked, “So when do I get my money? Or was that another thing, like those crummy sketches you raved about, that I should have realized was too good to be true?”
“Good God, do you think I intend to cheat you?” he said, with what seemed to be genuine amazement. “That’s the last thing in the world I would ever do. Wilmot, I have been searching most of my life for someone like you, someone with your incredible facility with the styles of the past. You are, to my present knowledge, unique in the world. I would have to be insane to treat you with anything but the greatest respect.”