Anna punched in the security code and placed her eyes against the scanning device. A few seconds later, a bolt snapped back and the great door slowly fell open. As they entered the room, lights automatically flickered to life.
A LARGE space, about fifty feet by thirty, polished wood floor, cream-colored walls. In the center were two ornate swivel chairs. Anna stood next to one and folded her arms. Gabriel scanned the blank walls.
“What is this?”
“My father had two collections. One that he allowed the world to see and one that used to hang here. It was for private viewing only.”
“What kind of paintings were they?”
“Nineteenth- and twentieth-century French-Impressionist, mainly.”
“Do you have a list of them?”
She nodded.
“Who else knew about this?”
“My mother and my brother, of course, but they’re both dead.”
“That’s all?”
“No, there was Werner Müller.”
“Who’s Werner Müller?”
“He’s an art dealer and my father’s chief adviser. He oversaw the design and construction of this place.”
“Is he Swiss?”
She nodded. “He has two galleries. One in Lucerne and the other in Paris near the rue de Rivoli. He spends most of his time there. Seen enough?”
“For now.”
“There’s something else I want to show you.”
Back up the elevator, another walk through the darkened villa to a windowless chamber of winking electronics and video monitors. Gabriel could see the villa from every angle: the street, the entrance, the gardens front and back.
“In addition to the security cameras, every inch of the property is covered by motion detectors,” Anna said. “The windows and doors all have trip wires and alarms. My father didn’t employ a full-time security guard, but the house was impenetrable and he could summon the police in a matter of seconds in the event of an intruder.”
“So what happened on the night of the murder?”
“The system failed inexplicably.”
“How convenient.”
She sat down in front of a computer terminal. “There’s a separate system for the room downstairs. It’s activated when the outer door opens. The time of entry is automatically logged, and inside the room two digital cameras begin recording still images every three seconds.”
She typed in a few characters on the keyboard, moved the mouse, clicked. “This is when we entered the room, twelve forty-nine a.m., and here we are inside.”
Gabriel leaned over her shoulder and peered into the computer monitor. A grainy color image of their visit appeared on the screen and then dissolved, only to be replaced by another. Anna worked the mouse again. A directory appeared.
“This is the master list of visits to that room for the past three months. As you can see, my father spent a great deal of time with the collection. He came down at least once a day, sometimes twice.” She touched the screen with her forefinger. “Here’s his last visit, shortly after midnight, the morning he was murdered. The security system shows no other entries after that.”
“Did the police give you an estimate of when they thought he was killed?”
“They said around three A.M.”
“So it stands to reason that the same people who killed your father also took the paintings and that it probably happened around three o’clock in the morning, six hours before I arrived at the villa.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
Gabriel pointed to the last entry on the screen. “Let me see that one.”
A MOMENT later, the images flickered onto the monitor. The camera angles did not reveal all the paintings, but Gabriel could see enough to realize that it was a remarkable collection. Manet, Bonnard, Toulouse-Lautrec, Cézanne, Pissarro, Degas, a nude by Renoir, a canal landscape by van Gogh, two street scenes by Monet, a large portrait of a woman painted by Picasso during his blue period. And seated in the center of the room, in a straight-backed wing chair, was an old man, gazing at his collection one last time before his death.
11
FOUR HOURS LATER, Gerhardt Peterson was sitting alone in his office, a grotto of pale Scandinavian wood overlooking the grimy inner courtyard of blackened brick. His computer screen was blank, his morning correspondence unopened, his morning coffee untouched, his outer door uncustomarily locked. A cigarette slowly turned to dust in his ashtray. Peterson did not notice. His gaze was downward, toward the three photographs that lay side by side on his leather blotter. Allon and Anna Rolfe, leaving the villa. Allon and Anna Rolfe, getting into a Mercedes sedan. Allon and Anna Rolfe, driving away. Finally he stirred, as if awakened from an unpleasant daydream, and fed the photographs into his shredder, one by one, watching with particular satisfaction as they turned to confetti. Then he picked up the telephone, dialed a number from memory, and waited for an answer. Twenty minutes later, his appointments for the rest of the day canceled, he climbed into his Mercedes sedan and raced down the shore of the Zürichsee toward Herr Gessler’s mountain chalet.
12
THE OLD signadora lived in a crooked house in the village, not far from the church. She greeted the Englishman as always, with a worried smile and a hand on his cheek. She wore a heavy black dress with an embroidered neck. Her skin was the color of flour, her white hair was pulled back and held in place by metal pins. Funny how the marks of ethnicity and national origin are diminished by time, thought the Englishman. If it wasn’t for her Corsican language and mystical Catholic ways she might have been his old Auntie Beatrice from Ipswich. “The evil has returned, my son,” she whispered, stroking his cheek. “I can see it in your eyes. Sit down. Let me help you.”
The old woman lit a candle as the Englishman sat down at the small, wooden table. In front of him she placed a china plate filled with water and a small bowl of oil. “Three drops,” she said. “Then we will see if my fears are correct.”
The Englishman dipped his forefinger in the oil; then he held it over the plate and allowed three drops to fall onto the water. By the laws of physics the oil should have gathered into a single globule, but instead it shattered into a thousand droplets, and soon there was no trace of it. The old woman sighed heavily and made the sign of the cross. There it was, undeniable proof that the occhju, the Evil Eye, had invaded the Englishman’s soul.
She took hold of the Englishman’s hand and prayed. After a moment she began to cry, a sign the occhju had passed from his body into hers. Then she closed her eyes and appeared to be sleeping. She opened her eyes a moment later and instructed him to repeat the trial of the oil and the water. This time, the oil coalesced into a single drop. The evil had been exorcised.
“Thank you,” he said, taking the old woman’s hand. She held it for a moment, then drew away, as if he had fever. The Englishman asked: “What’s wrong?”
“Are you going to remain in the valley for a time, or are you going away again?”
“I’m afraid I have to go away.”
“In the service of Don Orsati?”
The Englishman nodded. He kept no secrets from the old signadora.