The Same River Twice (26 page)

“It’s nothing,” she said. “I’m stupid.”

“What can I do?”

“Nothing. It’s not about the flags. You know I have exactly zero interest in what the law thinks of me or you or anyone else.”

“Ah, Gabriella. You are a treasure beyond price.”

She gave a small sniff. “Not
completely
beyond price,” she reminded him.

“No, of course not. I didn’t mean that literally.”

She stooped to gather up the galleys and walked across the office to set them on the bench facing Turner’s desk. “By the way,” she said, “I wrote up the appraisal letter for that Giacometti drawing you looked at last week, but it didn’t go out until Friday. You forgot to give me the dimensions. I had to call the client.”

Turner’s stomach pitched. “Really? How was that?”

“No problem. She was quite nice, in fact. Odile Mével, yes?”

“That’s right.”

Gabriella took a step toward him, her arms folded across her chest, her eyes flashing. “Wasn’t she the courier you hired to pick up the flags in Moscow?”

“She was. Her and that other guy.” To his chagrin, Turner found himself loath to pronounce the name of Thierry Colin. “Why do you ask?”

“I hope you’re being careful,” she said.

“Gabriella, please. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She shook her head.

“Are you pregnant?” he asked before he could stop himself. He had no idea why he said it. As far as he knew, she didn’t even have a serious boyfriend.

“Pregnant?” She laughed a little, but looked, Turner thought, rather sad. “No, believe me,” she said, “pregnant would be the easy version of what I am.” Glancing unhappily at her watch, she excused herself and left the room.

That afternoon Turner had lunch with Horst Wieselhoff, the Swiss collector he’d met through Balakian. Wieselhoff had just come from Düsseldorf, where he acquired two massive oil paintings on canvas—twelve by eighteen feet each, with steel and lead elements attached. He’d brought along color transparencies for his friend’s inspection. “What are those rusty
jagged things sticking out?” Turner asked, holding one of the transparencies up to the light. “They look like—”

“Bear traps,” Wieselhoff said with satisfaction. “Forty of them on that one alone. Each painting weighs almost three quarters of a ton. They are companion pieces on the theme of Lilith, and, I have been assured, the last major works the artist intends to sell to a private collector. Future efforts will go only to museums. What do you think?”

“I think you must have paid some heavy coin,” Turner said. “What, two million each?”

The Swiss smiled. “More.”

Much as Turner admired the paintings—and they were frighteningly successful, the best he’d ever seen by this artist—he didn’t covet them. Thus unencumbered, he performed a rough mental review of the man’s probable assets, the contents of his collection, and the likelihood that this newest purchase had left him overextended. But he had always found Wieselhoff hard to read, impenetrably Swiss, so he handed back the transparencies and said, “You bought them for love, which would make them cheap at twice the price.”

“Exactly so,” Wieselhoff said.

“Congratulations, Horst. A coup.”

Their lunch arrived—sliced duck for him, turbot for his guest—and while they ate, exchanging inconsequential news and gossip, Turner’s mind circled back, as it had repeatedly over the last few days, to Odile. Everything that had happened between them at her apartment—the kiss she’d warmed to by degrees, the unconsidered way she’d arched her back to hasten his fingers at the buttons of her blouse, the cool logic with which she’d explained his presence to her husband and, having done so, her obvious impatience as she awaited the scene’s pedestrian conclusion—all this remained perfectly vivid to him, as though it were a joke he was constantly obliged to tell himself, a joke of which he was the butt. He was without illusion and saw himself as she must see him, yet he couldn’t help sensing that, whatever their professed intentions, they each possessed something the other required. The desire to be known by her, known and not despised, encouraged him to imagine a world more forgiving than the one he believed himself to inhabit. Surely he wasn’t alone in his wishes; perhaps, he thought, everyone had them.

“I saw our friend Kukushkin last week,” said Wieselhoff. “He sends his greetings.”

“And I send him mine,” Turner answered. “What was he doing in Düsseldorf?”

“Banking business, something to do with currency exchange.” The Swiss poured himself more wine. “I don’t inquire too closely, you know.”

“Kolya is a man of many talents,” Turner agreed. “Did you show him the paintings?”

“Of course. In fact he came with me to the artist’s studio. Very cultivated, Kolya. Not like the so-called New Russians one meets everywhere these days, with their designer labels and vulgar habits. True, he is an entrepreneur, but that doesn’t prevent him from seeing more than most men. Can one accurately describe him as a visionary? I wouldn’t too soon say no.”

“Who calls him a visionary?” asked Turner.

The Swiss shrugged, as though deferring to an absent third party. “We talked quite a lot about you, by the way. I didn’t realize you two were so close.”

“Oh,” Turner said. “Yes, Kolya and I go back a ways.” He cut the last slice of duck in two. “What was on his mind?”

Wieselhoff hesitated, then laid down his knife and fork. “If I may speak frankly?”

“Please.”

“He worries for your safety. He didn’t go into detail, but rumor has reached him that someone claiming connection to you is involved in a cross-border crime, possibly kidnapping.” Wieselhoff raised a placatory hand. “Understand: Kolya knows you could never be involved in such a thing—as do I, of course, as do I. But still he worries.”

Turner nodded affably. “Sure, I see. And who am I supposed to have kidnapped?”

“Not you. No one thinks that.”

Turner waited.

“It could be one person,” Wieselhoff allowed, choosing his words carefully. “It could be possibly a truckful. This is the rumor.”

“Aha.” Recalling what the Russians had told Odile about people being smuggled out of Belarus, Turner grew momentarily despondent, though he did his best to conceal it. “Really, Horst, I’m just no good at these things. Did Kolya say what I should do?”

“No, no. He only wanted to be sure you knew, so you could take precautions.”

“Okay, then. Thanks for the heads-up.” But Turner harbored no illusions about Kukushkin’s message, its purpose was plain, and though he was quick to steer the conversation to other topics as the waiter cleared the dishes and brought coffee, though he listened attentively to Wieselhoff’s plans to
exhibit his recent acquisitions at a well-regarded
Kunsthalle
in Basel later that month, he knew that if he really proposed to save himself—let alone Odile, who as yet had small interest in his help, or anyone else’s, if he read her correctly—he would have to do some very inventive market positioning indeed, starting at once.

“Horst,” he said, “you asked to be informed if more of those Soviet May Day flags turned up. I have a small group coming to auction—this will be the last of them—but I’m prepared to let you have one now at the same price Balakian’s buyers paid, with a single proviso.”

The collector brightened. “Tell me.”

“If I sell the flag to you, I’d like you to show it with the rest of your new acquisitions in Basel, giving it equal prominence. This would be mutually beneficial, as I’m sure you can appreciate.”

Wieselhoff’s eyes grew moist with emotion. “When can I see them?” he said.

Turner called for the check.

Back at the auction house, he allowed Wieselhoff to choose his favorite of four medium-sized flags, and in return Wieselhoff wrote him a personal check for 210,000 francs. Then, after Gabriella had rolled the flag into a cylinder, wrapped it twice in butcher paper, and tied it up with twine, Turner sent this satisfied customer out into the afternoon with his purchase—even though Turner knew that no collector, however fortunate, however Swiss, could truthfully be described as satisfied.

“What do you bet he’ll be back for the auction?” he asked Gabriella.

But she just shook her head and busied herself with other things.

Turner spent the rest of the afternoon consolidating his gains. He drafted a press release announcing the flags’ impending sale, placed a few discreet calls to his best media contacts, letting them know what to expect, and wrote a private memo on the subject to the director of the auction house. The thing was coming together. He’d taken risks, yes, but with a steady hand and a willingness to improvise he would soon see a handsome return on his investment—as much as five million francs, after the house commission. And yet Wieselhoff’s message from Kukushkin—or what Turner understood the message to be—weighed unpleasantly on his mind. It occurred to him that a prudent man in his position might do well to acquire the means to defend himself. A small handgun, for instance. He’d never use it, of course, but using it was not the issue. Morale was the issue.

He waited until Gabriella had departed for the day before calling the
brothers Battini, the Corsican pair he’d sent to ransack Odile’s apartment, and to Marco, the elder and marginally less excitable of the two, he described his needs. After some back and forth in which Marco tried to persuade him to place his safety in the hands of contract professionals, experienced individuals such as himself and his brother Pasquale, he finally agreed to meet Turner at Parc des Buttes Chaumont in two hours’ time, near the top of the steps inside the park’s west entrance.

At six o’clock Turner left the auction house, withdrew four thousand francs from a cash machine on rue la Boétie, and walked east on boulevard Haussmann. Passing the Opéra, he picked up rue Lafayette and continued east at a businesslike clip, periodically switching from one side of the street to the other in an attempt to discover if he was being followed. As far as he could tell, he wasn’t.

Arriving early at Buttes Chaumont, he decided to take a short turn around the grounds, a former quarry and garbage dump that Baron Haussmann had transformed into a hilltop arcadia complete with an artificial grotto, a lake, and a classical pavilion. There were a fair number of people about—the park stayed open until eleven—and Turner found their presence reassuring and worrisome in equal measure. He crossed the Pont des Suicidés, ninety feet above the lake, and found an empty bench near the appointed spot. Sacré-Coeur glowed white in the distance. Overhead, storm clouds gathered.

Marco Battini arrived some twenty minutes late, carrying a black nylon gym bag and a rolled-up newspaper. As the sky continued to darken, people left the park in a steady stream, filing past the bench Turner had chosen, and Battini indicated with a toss of his head that they should seek a more secluded spot. When they were sheltered under two large gingko trees, he unzipped the gym bag and extracted an object wrapped in red cloth. “Go ahead,” he said, offering him the bundle. “See if you like it.”

Turner gingerly unwrapped the object, careful not to touch it directly. He knew little about handguns—the only other he’d actually seen was the revolver pressed to his temple some years ago by the unhappy buyer in TriBeCa—but he was relieved to see that this one looked nothing like that.

“Nine-millimeter semiautomatic German-make,” Battini informed him. “Top of the line.” He took the gun and released the magazine catch to show that it was loaded. “Fifteen rounds, sixteen if you keep one chambered.” He pushed the clip neatly home. “Never jams. Cost to you: thirty-five hundred.”

“Is it clean?” Turner asked.

“Clean and sterile.” Battini turned the gun over slowly to demonstrate that its exterior serial numbers had been obliterated. “Same on the inside. Want to try it out?”

“Here?”

Battini laughed. “Suit yourself. But this weapon’s going to make you very happy, I guarantee it.” He handed the gun to Turner, then reached again into the gym bag and brought out a small cardboard box. “And because we’ve done business before, I’ll throw in some extra ammo.” He shoved the box at him impatiently. “So that’s thirty-five hundred cash. You brought it, right?”

Turner laid the gun and ammunition on the bench beside him and produced the money, which Battini flip-counted before stuffing it into his jacket pocket. “Good,” he said.

Both men rose, and as they shook hands Turner thought he saw a glint of genuine curiosity in the Corsican’s eyes. Other people’s troubles, he supposed.

“Use it in good health, Monsieur,” said Battini, not unkindly. Then, seizing the gym bag and newspaper, he padded off down the darkening path.

Turner hadn’t anticipated the problem of transporting the weapon—somehow he’d imagined it would come in its own carrying case—but after fumbling with it for a few panicky seconds he jammed it into the waistband of his trousers, in back where his jacket would cover it. Then he picked up the box of cartridges and, feeling curiously lightheaded, set out for the park’s east gate. The sky had grown very dark, and there were glimmers of lightning.

Once on the street, he flagged down a taxi, which delivered him to his building in Bastille just as the heavens opened. In the short dash to the entrance he was drenched. He punched in the access code, rode the elevator to his floor, and let himself into his apartment.

Leaving the gun and cartridges on the kitchen table, he changed into dry clothes, then poured a glass of scotch and took it into the living room. Forked lightning sundered the skies, sending tremendous thunderclaps through the ozone-charged air and rattling the apartment windows until he feared they’d shatter. He left the lights off and pulled up a chair to watch.

Years ago, hiking with friends in the White Mountains, he’d seen someone nearly electrocuted in a lightning storm. Having been caught more or less in the open, on a meadow plateau between two rocky rises, the man had sought shelter in a slight depression in the ground, thinking to present
less of a target there. But he’d been mistaken. The current already running through the ground used his body to bridge the depression, and for two or three seconds he was encased in a crackling blue suit of light that was as terrible as anything Turner ever expected to see. The man had survived, but barely. The story had no moral, and Turner disliked being reminded of it.