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“Why do we have a new computer?”
“Because you bought the old one when the Hapsburgs still ruled Austria.”
“Did I authorize the purchase of a new computer?”
The question was not threatening. The girls managed the office. Papers were placed beneath his nose, and usually he signed them without looking.
“No, Eli, you didn’t approve the purchase. My father paid for the computer.”
Lavon smiled. “Your father is a generous man. Please thank him on my behalf.”
The girls resumed their debate. As usual it resolved in Sarah’s favor. Reveka wrote out the list and threatened to pin it to Lavon’s sleeve. Instead, she stuffed it into his coat pocket for safekeeping and gave him a little shove to send him on his way. “And don’t stop for a coffee,” she said. “We’re starving.”
It was almost as difficult to leave Wartime Claims and Inquiries as it was to enter. Lavon punched a series of numbers into a keypad on the wall next to the entrance. When the buzzer sounded, he pulled open the interior door and stepped into the security chamber. The outer door would not open until the i
On the opposite side of the street, concealed in the shadows at the entrance of a narrow alleyway, stood a heavy-shouldered figure with a fedora hat and mackintosh raincoat. Eli Lavon could not walk the streets of Vie
He sorted through his memory, almost as a librarian would sort through a card index, until he found references to previous sightings. Yes, here it is. The Judenplatz, two days ago. It was you who was following me after I had coffee with that reporter from the States. He returned to the index and found a second reference. The window of a bar along the Sterngasse. Same man, without the fedora hat, gazing casually over his pilsner as Lavon hurried through a biblical deluge after a perfectly wretched day at the office. The third reference took him a bit longer to locate, but he found it nonetheless. The Number Two streetcar, evening rush. Lavon is pi
Lavon turned round and pressed the intercom. No response.Come on, girls. He pressed it again, then looked over his shoulder. The man in the fedora and mackintosh coat was gone.
A voice came over the speaker. Reveka.
“Did you lose the list already, Eli?”
Lavon pressed his thumb against the button.
“Get out! Now! ”
A few seconds later, Lavon could hear the trample of footfalls in the corridor. The girls appeared before him, separated by a wall of glass. Reveka coolly punched in the code. Sarah stood by silently, her eyes locked on Lavon’s, her hand on the glass.
He never remembered hearing the explosion. Reveka and Sarah were engulfed in a ball of fire, then were swept away by the blast wave. The door blew outward. Lavon was lifted like a child’s toy, arms spread wide, back arched like a gymnast. His flight was dreamlike. He felt himself turning over and over again. He had no memory of impact. He knew only that he was lying on his back in snow, in a hailstorm of broken glass. “My girls,” he whispered as he slid slowly into blackness. “My beautiful girls.”
2 VENICE
IT WAS Asmall terra-cotta church, built for a poor parish in thesestière of Ca
The altarpiece was concealed behind a tarpaulin-draped scaffold. The restorer took hold of the aluminum tubing and climbed silently upward. His work platform was as he had left it the previous afternoon: his brushes and his palette, his pigments and his medium. He switched on a bank of fluorescent lamps. The painting, the last of Giova
The restorer stood motionless before the towering panel, like a fourth figure rendered by Bellini’s skilled hand, and allowed his mind to float away into the landscape. After a moment he poured a puddle of Mowolith 20 medium onto his palette, added pigment, then thi
He looked up again at the painting. The warmth and richness of the colors had led the art historian Raimond Van Marle to conclude the hand of Titian was clearly in evidence. The restorer believed Van Marle, with all due respect, was sadly mistaken. He had retouched works by both artists and knew their brushwork like the sun lines around his own eyes. The altarpiece in the Church of San Giova
The restorer slipped on a pair of Binomags and focused on the rose-colored tunic of Saint Christopher. The painting had suffered from decades of neglect, wild temperature swings, and the continuous onslaught of incense and candle smoke. Christopher’s garments had lost much of their original luster and were scarred by the islands ofpentimenti that had pushed their way to the surface. The restorer had been granted authority to carry out an aggressive repair. His mission was to restore the painting to its original glory. His challenge was to do so without making it look as though it had been churned out by a counterfeiter. In short, he wished to come and go leaving no trace of his presence, to make it appear as if the retouching had been performed by Bellini himself.