Morgan put off the question of the main course to review the salad choices once more, hoping the diversion would take his mind off America. Switzerland was not a horrible prison, certainly, and he suspected that his fondness for the U.S. was rather like that of the fox for the unreachable grapes. His family had made its fortune here. While he had lived abroad most of his adult life, Morgan had been raised in Zurich not far from this very restaurant. His childhood had not been unpleasant, but it had been constrained; his parents were not rigid so much as antiseptic, if one excepted his father’s activities to enhance the family fortune. The feeling of constraint came over him like a cloud every time he returned to the city or even the country. He felt it in his mouth every time he formed a word in his native Swiss German — one reason he tried to avoid the language whenever possible.
But really, Zurich, with its tidy streets and marvelous guildhalls, its medieval facades and peerless banks, was the perfect setting for the family businesses. The Morgans had been dealers in art and antiquities for many generations, both in Europe and in America. While it was true that the World War and its aftermath had given the family incredible wealth, it was equally true that they had been both well off and well respected at the turn of the last century. It was then that the Morgans (their name at the time Molerrageneau) had first branched into things other than art and real estate — trains specifically, and from there electric generation and commercial transport.
Different forebears placed different emphasis on the parts of the empire, which itself waxed and waned, metamorphosing with the times. Morgan’s great-grandfather had taken the boldest leap when a packet of small Renoirs had come his way via South America; obviously authentic and obviously pilfered by the Nazis, the paintings had been placed at considerable profit with a client known to be outstandingly discreet and willing to pay in gold bars. From there, as his father liked to say, it was but a matter of addition, though a more objective viewer might have likened it to multiplication. Money from the art side of the family empire helped fund the purchase, and in one or two cases the establishment, of concerns that diversified the family holdings even further. Such business were, by necessity, prejudiced toward the future, balancing the necessary prejudice toward the past that the art dealings betrayed. Those prejudices were among the key principles the family had adhered to since they were Molerrageneaus, principles that included direct personal involvement by one and only one Morgan at the helm, discretion, and above all, boldness.
Which led the family’s present overseer to throw caution and the prospect of diarrhea to the winds when the waiter appeared — choosing the rabbit and ostrich ragout in a morel mustard sauce, along with the Potatoes Daphne and the vegetable of the night, which happened to be Peruvian asparagus in a caviar coulis.
Morgan ordered for the twins, who nodded gratefully. He felt his stomach rumble, and had regrets as he handed the menu back to the waiter. But he was a Morgan; he would not turn back. As a final stubbornness — and a gesture at least as provocative to discerning neighbors as hosting the twins — he asked for a bottle of 1985 Latour, a Bourdeaux wine that though still comparatively young, would decidedly not go with any of the dishes.
“Ladies, I’ve got to take care of some business, but go right ahead and enjoy,” he said, leaning to accept light pecks and a squeeze of the thigh from Minz before heading toward the room beyond the bar where the lavatory was. En route he stopped to greet Frau Leber, who was looking particularly potted tonight. He did not know her dinner mate, introduced as a retired French general; Morgan nodded attentively and memorized the name — Ambrose Xavier — in case it might become of use.
In the men’s room, he locked the door, then leaned against it before removing the small alpha pager from his pocket. Morgan thumbed a hot-button combination on the miniature keyboard, activating the modem; within thirty seconds he had signed onto a wireless message network and initiated a transmission that launched him as an anonymous, encrypted user on the system — not an easy feat actually, and one that required a rather large program on not one but two different servers. Fortunately, placing the programs on the servers had been assisted greatly by Morgan’s ownership of the company. Morgan cared little for the exact mechanics of the program, though he had a rudimentary notion of how it worked. In every area but art he tended to focus exclusively on results. Even in art, it took a great deal to interest him.
The matter he had come to the rest room to check on, for example, interested him a great deal.
A line of messages to a Yahoo e-mail account appeared on his screen. Most were products of list-serves, purposely cluttering the account. Several were dummies posted at random to make things difficult for anyone who might be trying to pry into his business. (There were several candidates who might undertake such despicable activities, including three different agencies of the United States government and one international firm that was a continual source of difficulty.) He opened each message, lingering as if actually reading them. Finally, he reached the one he actually wanted.
“Hemingway was a jerk.”
Silly and innocuous certainly, and nothing to do with anything.
Except that it meant his man, Elata, the painter, the forger par excellence whom he had turned into a detector of forgeries par excellence, had gotten the document he needed and was en route to Zurich.
Danke, Herr Elata. Ausgezeichnet.
He had expected the message. He had also expected the e-mail three arrows later, though this one he had hoped not to receive.
“The eyes are the gateway to the soul. But sometimes even the soul gets lost.”
This had been sent by one of his deputies in Paris. It meant that Interpol — the eyes — had spotted Elata and trailed him, but had lost the scent along the way.
He had feared this contingency, since he wasn’t entirely sure of the woman at the museum. That had been the major reason he’d consolidated his exposure and used the painter to pick up the letter. He had planned to burn the painter at the end of the operation anyway — he had long planned, as his American acquaintance in New York delicately put it, to clip him.
Still, it pained him to consider the many works that would now by necessity be lost, the imitation Giotos, Bosches, Donatellos, and countless lesser-knowns, all of whose work could be conjured as if by magic from the talented hands of moody Herr Elata.
His people would transport the painter safely to Switzerland and keep him hidden for now; there would be no chance of his being followed or discovered. They were used to dealing with Interpol and had several well-tested methods of throwing the agents off the trail.
Morgan flipped down through the rest of his messages, disposing of them quickly. He had deleted four or five when his eyes stuck on an unexpected note:
“A twist. He had a girlfriend.”
The message did not indicate where it had come from and was not signed, but Morgan knew immediately who had sent it and what it meant. It was disappointing, for it meant that a complication in Scotland — a complication that was actually owned by Miss Constance Burns, not himself — remained unresolved.
A girlfriend privy to secrets she shouldn’t be privy to; she would have to be eliminated.