COUNT ZERO

She sprawled on the couch, the Braun resting on her stomach, and stared into the box. It ached It seemed to her that the construction evoked something perfectly, but it was an emotion that lacked a name. She ran her hands through the bright illusion, tracing the length of the fluted, avian bone.

She was certain that Virek had already assigned an ornithologist the task of identifying the bird from whose wing that bone had come And it would be possible to date each object with the greatest precision, she supposed. Each tab of holofiche also housed an extensive report on the known origin of each piece, but something in her had deliberately avoided these. It was sometimes best, when you came to the mystery that was art, to come as a child. The child saw things that were too evident, too obvious for the trained eye.

She put the Braun down on the low table beside the couch and crossed to Andrea’s phone, intending to check the time. She was meeting Paco at one, to discuss the mechanics of Alain’s payment. Alain had told her he would phone her at Andrea’s at three. When she punched for the time service, an automatic recap of satellite news strobed across the screen: a JAL shuttle had disintegrated during reentry over the Indian Ocean, investigators from the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis had been called in to examine the site of a brutal and apparently pointless bombing in a drab New Jersey residential suburb, militiamen were supervising the evacuation of the southern quadrant of New Bo

Summer had come, the sky hot and blue above Paris, and she smiled at the smell of good bread and black tobacco. Her sense of being observed had receded now, as she walked from the metro to the address Paco had given her. Faubourg St. Honoré. The address seemed vaguely familiar. A gallery, she thought.

Yes. The Roberts. The owner an American who operated three galleries in New York as well. Expensive, but no longer quite chic. Paco was waiting beside an enormous panel on which were layered, beneath a thick and uneven coat of varnish, hundreds of small square photographs, the kind produced by certain very old-fashioned machines in train stations and bus terminals. All of them seemed to be of young girls. Automatically, she noted the name of the artist and the work’s title: Read Us the Book of the Names of the Dead.

“I suppose you understand this sort of thing,” the Spaniard said glumly. He wore an expensive-looking blue suit cut in Parisian business style, a white broadcloth shirt, and a very English-looking tie, probably from Charvet He didn’t look at all like a waiter now. There was an Italian bag of black ribbed rubber slung over his shoulder “What do you mean?” she asked.

“Names of the dead,” and he nodded in the direction of the panel. “You were a dealer in these things.” “What don’t you understand?”

“I sometimes feel as though this, this culture, is entirely a trick. A ruse. All my life I have served Señor, in one guise or another, you understand? And my work has not been without its satisfactions, moments of triumph But never, when he involved me with this business of ah, have I felt any satisfaction. He is wealth itself. The world is filled with objects of great beauty. And yet Señor pursues... He shrugged.

“You know what you like, then “ She smiled at him.

“Why did you choose this gallery for our meeting?” “Señor’s agent purchased one of the boxes here. Haven’t you read the histories we provided you with in Brussels?” “No,” she said. “It might interfere with my intuition.

Herr Virek is paying for my intuition.”

He raised his eyebrows. “I will introduce you to Picard, the manager. Perhaps he can do something for this intuition of yours.”

He led her across the room and through a doorway. A graying, heavyset Frenchman in a rumpled corduroy suit was speaking into the handset of a phone. On the phone’s screen she saw columns of letters and figures. The day’s quotations on the New York market.

“Ah,” the man said, “Estevez. Excuse me. Only a moment. He smiled apologetically and returned to his conversation. Marly studied the quotations Pollock was down again. This, she supposed, was the aspect of art that she had the most difficulty understanding. Picard, if that was the man’s name, was speaking with a broker in New York, arranging the purchase of a certain number of “points” of the work of a particular artist. A “point” might be defined in any number of ways, depending on the medium involved, but it was almost certain that Picard would never see the works he was purchasing. If the artist enjoyed sufficient status, the originals were very likely crated away in some vault, where no one saw them at all. Days or years later, Picard might pick up that same phone and order the broker to sell.

Marly’s gallery had sold originals. There was relatively little money in it, but it had a certain visceral appeal. And, of course, there had been the chance that one would get lucky. She had convinced herself that she’d gotten very lucky indeed when Alain had arranged for the forged Cornell to surface as a wonderful, accidental find. Cornell had his place on the broker’s board, and his “points” were very expensive.

“Picard,” Paco said, as though he were addressing a servant, “this is Many Krushkhova. Señor has brought her into the matter of the anonymous boxes. She may wish to ask you questions.”

“Charmed,” Picard said, and smiled warmly, but she thought she detected a flicker in his brown eyes. Very likely, he was trying to co

“I understand that your gallery handled the transaction, then?”

“Yes,” Picard said “We had displayed the work in our New York rooms, and it had attracted a number of bids. We decided to give it its day in Paris, however,” – he beamed – “and your employer made our decision most worthwhile. How is Herr Virek, Estevez? We have not seen him in several weeks.

Marly glanced quickly at Paco, but his dark face was smooth, utterly controlled “Señor is very well, I would think,” he said. “Excellent,” said Picard, somewhat too enthusiastically. He turned to Marly. “A marvelous man. A legend. A great patron. A great scholar.”

Marly thought she heard Paco sigh.

“Could you tell me, please, where your New York branch obtained the work in question?”

Picard’s face fell. He looked at Paco, then back at Marly.

“You don’t know? They haven’t told you?”

“Could you tell me, please?”

“No,” Picard said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t. You see, we don’t know.”

Marly stared at him “I beg your pardon, but I don’t quite see how that is possible.”

“She hasn’t read the report, Picard. You tell her. It will be good for her intuition, to hear it from your own lips.”

Picard gave Paco an odd look, then regained his composure. “Certainly,” he said. “A pleasure...”

“Do you think it’s true?” she asked Paco as they stepped out into Faubourg St. Honoré and summer sunlight. The crowds were thick with Japanese tourists.

“I went to the Sprawl myself,” Paco said, “and inter-viewed everyone involved. Roberts left no record of the purchase, although ordinarily he was no more secretive than the next art dealer.”

“And his death was accidental?”

He put on a pair of mirrored Porsche glasses. “As accidental as that sort of death ever is,” he said. “We have no way of knowing when or how he obtained the piece We located it, here, eight months ago, and all’ our attempts to work backward end with Roberts, and Roberts has been dead for a year Picard neglected to tell you that they very nearly lost the thing. Roberts kept it in his country house, along with a number of other things that his survivors regarded as mere curiosities. The whole lot came close to being sold at public auction. Sometimes I wish it had been.”