“An inventory of the pieces Danner kept for himself—pieces he brought with him to Egypt in 1941.”
“He smuggled piecesin?” Helen stares at the images on the slides that are still changing. “But how?”
“He labeled them furniture and household goods. And nobody has ever been much concerned with what gets into Egypt, only what goes out,” Marilyn tells her. “Once the shipments arrived, they were taken to a storage facility in Cairo. From there, the trail went cold, and every piece was presumed lost. Until now.”
She returns the slides to the image of Fermín Bosque. “Fermín was a small-time player, dealing in the grey margins of Egyptological artifacts.” She glances at Billie. “As you pointed out, Miss Webster, these are not the sort of activities which would have ordinarily drawn our attention. But a fewmonths ago, this painting”—she pauses and brings up a black-and-white slide featuring a painting with a heavily carved frame—“was put up for auction at a small house in Sweden. It had been purchased privately only last year from Fermín Bosque. Our research has confirmed it was one of the paintings his grandfather looted from a family in Stuttgart. It isThe Rape of Atalantaby Rubens, depicting the attempted abduction of the heroine Atalanta by the centaur Hylaeus.”
“And you’re sure it’s authentic?” Mary Alice asks, her tone frankly skeptical.
“As sure as we can be. Everything was tested with the most up-to-date methods—canvas, wooden stretchers, pigments—and it all checks out.”
“How did we get our hands on samples?” Billie asks.
Marilyn hesitates. “We don’t care to divulge specifics of how we work in Provenance, but I can tell you that the purchaser of the piece at auction wished to authenticate it for insurance purposes. He used a firm with whom we have a…relationship.”
Billie smiles. “A relationship? Or do you mean it’s just an arm of the Provenance department masquerading as a legitimate firm?”
Marilyn stiffens noticeably, and when she answers it is with a mouth that is tightly pursed. “It is in the Museum’s best interests to keep a finger on the pulse of whatever is happening in the art world. It has been a long time since we managed to secure a cache of art looted by Nazis.”
“Thirteen years, to be exact,” Billie shoots back. “I know because I was there. We all were.”
“Of course,” Marilyn replies, her mouth relaxing. “The Zanzibar job. That was an extremely important get for us. That’s why you’ve been chosen for this one.”
She returns to her slides, putting up a new one, a landscape so desolate it looks lunar. “The Valley of the Kings. Albrecht Danner’s favorite playground and where we believe he stashed the art he smuggled into Egypt after it left Cairo. Chosen, we assume, for its remoteness as well as its suitability for storing art. The low humidity and darkness mimic the salt mines in Europe where the bulk of the Nazi loot was stored.”
“Why do you think the art was stored in the Valley of the Kings?” Nat asks.
“The condition ofAtalanta. We would have expected a piece squirreled away in a storeroom somewhere for five decades would show traces of where it has been. And there was some wear and tear, but the painting was in remarkably good shape, all things considered. That suggested it had been stored in conditions of low humidity. Coupled with what we knew of Danner’s activities and travels, we formed the hypothesis that the painting had been taken to Egypt and left there for some time. With that in mind, we went looking for anything that might confirm or discount our working theory. It was a tiny blade of grass that proved it,” she adds with a smile, the first she’s offered them. “We found it caught in a bit of the outer wrappings, barely thicker than a thread—a variety of sedge that grows only on the banks of the Nile. In the times of the pharaohs, it was dried to make papyri. For us, it proved that this particular painting had been in Egypt.”
“Damn, Carstairs, you’re a regular Agatha Christie,” Nat says.
Marilyn pinks again and pushes her glasses up her nose. “Well, I don’t know about that, but it was averysatisfactory conclusion to the case.”
“Why did he wait so long to retrieve his grandfather’s stash?” Mary Alice asks.
“We think he only found out about it when his father died two years ago. Fermín inherited his grandfather’s papers and a short while later made a few trips to Paris and Koblenz to do archival research. Following that he made two trips to Cairo with detours to the Valley of the Kings. We think he has thus far only brought back a limited number of artifacts and paintings, using them to test the waters, so to speak, for retrieving the entire cache. If we are correct—and there is no reason to think we aren’t—Atalantawas his first major sale. He has been very, very careful.”
“The Valley of the Kings isn’t exactly off the beaten path,” Helen says thoughtfully. “It might have been remote in Danner’s time, but it’s a tourist attraction now. It must be tricky for him to bring things out.”
“More so after recent terror attacks on the popular tourist sites,” Marilyn agrees. “Egyptian authorities have increased security enormously in order to protect the tourism business they depend on. Eluding the security forces would be just as difficult for Fermín Bosque as evading the terrorists themselves. And even more dangerous for him if he were apprehended.”
Billie flicks through the catalog Provenance has compiled, an entry for each work believed to be in Bosque’s cache. Besides the pages of Egyptological artifacts, there are dozens of European paintings, most of them traditional Old Masters, things chosen not just for their beauty but for their ability to hold their value. Most are small, their dimensions making it simpler to remove them from Germany as well as stash them in Egypt. She thumbs through reproductions of sketches from Leonardo and Dürer, a delicate Van Eyck, a Botticelli engraving.
The others are doing the same, each pausing on a different page.
“My god. What he stole would fill an entire museum,” Helen says, gesturing towards the remaining files. Two dozen folders lie on the table in front of her, each crammed with photographs and notes.
“Not this guy,” Mary Alice reminds her. “His grandfather.”
“His grandfather may have stolen it, but Bosque kept it,” Helen replies. “That makes him just as much of a thief.”
“And he’s the one planning to sell it,” Billie says. She is about to say more when she turns the next page and the words stick in her throat. She is looking at an image she has never seen before, but one she feels she has always known. The setting is a garden, lush with olive trees and a pomegranate in the foreground, bursting with ripe fruit that spill their scarlet seeds to the grass. Beside the pomegranate tree is a woman whose face is familiar, and it takes Billie a minute to place her. She has the smooth dark hair of Ingres’sLa Grande Odalisque, the same luminous skin and cool stare. But there is something more in her gaze, a challenge to the viewer, a sense that the flush rising in her cheeks is due to something that is both shameful and irresistible. At the woman’s side is a swan, an enormous beast with snowy wings outstretched to embrace her, one feather trailing along the bared silken thigh. At their feet is a nest with a clutch of four eggs, the result of their strange coupling.
“Leda and the Swan,” Billie murmurs as she skims the notes.
“What are you looking at?” Mary Alice asks idly.
“Miss Webster has identified the most important item in Bosque’s collection,” Marilyn says, pulling up the corresponding slide. “Raphael’sLeda and the Swan.”