Chapter 39: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 40: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 41: The Attersee, Austria
Part Four: The Score
Chapter 42: London
Chapter 43: Chelsea, London
Chapter 44: London—Linz, Austria
Chapter 45: Linz, Austria
Chapter 46: Heathrow Airport, London
Chapter 47: Linz, Austria
Chapter 48: King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
Chapter 49: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 50: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 51: The Attersee—Geneva
Chapter 52: Hotel Métropole, Geneva
Chapter 53: Geneva
Chapter 54: Tel Aviv—Haute-Savoie, France
Chapter 55: Haute-Savoie, France
Chapter 56: Annecy, France
Chapter 57: Annecy, France
Part Five: One Last Window
Chapter 58: Venice
Chapter 59: Venice
Chapter 60: Venice
Chapter 61: Lake Como, Italy
Chapter 62: Brienno, Italy
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also Written by Daniel Silva
About the Publisher
ON OCTOBER 18, 1969, CARAVAGGIO’S Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence vanished from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. The Nativity, as it is commonly known, is one of Caravaggio’s last great masterworks, painted in 1609 while he was a fugitive from justice, wanted by papal authorities in Rome for killing a man during a swordfight. For more than four decades, the altarpiece has been the most sought-after stolen painting in the world, and yet its exact whereabouts, even its fate, have remained a mystery. Until now …
IT BEGAN WITH AN ACCIDENT, but then matters involving Julian Isherwood invariably did. In fact, his reputation for folly and misadventure was so indisputably established that London’s art world, had it known of the affair, which it did not, would have expected nothing less. Isherwood, declared one wit from the Old Masters department at Sotheby’s, was the patron saint of lost causes, a high-wire artist with a penchant for carefully planned schemes that ended in ruins, oftentimes through no fault of his own. Consequently, he was both admired and pitied, a rare trait for a man of his position. Julian Isherwood made life a bit less tedious. And for that, London’s smart set adored him.
His gallery stood at the far corner of the cobbled quadrangle known as Mason’s Yard, occupying three floors of a sagging Victorian warehouse once owned by Fortnum & Mason. On one side were the London offices of a minor Greek shipping company; on the other was a pub that catered to pretty office girls who rode motor scooters. Many years earlier, before the successive waves of Arab and Russian money had swamped London’s real estate market, the gallery had been located in stylish New Bond Street, or New Bondstrasse, as it was known in the trade. Then came the likes of Hermès, Burberry, Chanel, and Cartier, leaving Isherwood and others like him—independent dealers specializing in museum-quality Old Master paintings—no choice but to seek sanctuary in St. James’s.
It was not the first time Isherwood had been forced into exile. Born in Paris on the eve of World War II, the only child of the renowned art dealer Samuel Isakowitz, he had been carried over the Pyrenees after the German invasion and smuggled into Britain. His Parisian childhood and Jewish lineage were just two pieces of his tangled past that Isherwood kept secret from the rest of London’s notoriously backbiting art world. As far as anyone knew, he was English to the core—English as high tea and bad teeth, as he was fond of saying. He was the incomparable Julian Isherwood, Julie to his friends, Juicy Julian to his partners in the occasional crime of drink, and His Holiness to the art historians and curators who routinely made use of his infallible eye. He was loyal as the day was long, trusting to a fault, impeccably mannered, and had no real enemies, a singular achievement given that he had spent two lifetimes navigating the treacherous waters of the art world. Mainly, Isherwood was decent—decency being in short supply these days, in London or anywhere else.
Isherwood Fine Arts was a vertical affair: bulging storage rooms on the ground floor, business offices on the second, and a formal exhibition room on the third. The exhibition room, considered by many to be the most glorious in all of London, was an exact replica of Paul Rosenberg’s famous gallery in Paris, where Isherwood had spent many happy hours as a child, oftentimes in the company of Picasso himself. The business office was a Dickensian warren piled high with yellowed catalogues and monographs. To reach it, visitors had to pass through a pair of secure glass doorways, the first off Mason’s Yard, the second at the top of a narrow flight of stairs covered in stained brown carpeting. There they would encounter Maggie, a sleepy-eyed blonde who couldn’t tell a Titian from toilet paper. Isherwood had once made a complete ass of himself trying to seduce her and, having no other recourse, hired her to be his receptionist instead. Presently, she was buffing her nails while the telephone on her desk bleated unanswered.
“Mind getting that, Mags?” Isherwood inquired benevolently.
“Why?” she asked without a trace of irony in her voice.
“Might be important.”
She rolled her eyes before resentfully lifting the receiver to her ear and purring, “Isherwood Fine Arts.” A few seconds later, she rang off without another word and resumed work on her nails.
“Well?” asked Isherwood.
“No one on the line.”
“Be a love, petal, and check the caller ID.”
“He’ll call back.”
Isherwood, frowning, resumed his silent appraisal of the painting propped upon the baize-covered
