Moscow Rules

forgery.
     
     
    “It was the hands.”
     
     
    “What about the hands?”
     
     
    “The brushstrokes were too impasto.”
     
     
    “Sarah told me the same thing.”
     
     
    “You should have listened to her.”
     
     
    Just then the phone rang. Gabriel handed it to Elena.
     
     
    “Da?” she said, then: “ Da, da. ”
     
     
    She looked at Gabriel.
     
     
    “Flash the lights, Gabriel. She wants you to flash the headlights.”
     
     
    Gabriel flicked the headlamps twice. Elena spoke a few more words in Russian. The eleventh-floor window went dark.
     

 
    PART FOUR
     
     
    THE HARVEST
     

 
    71
     
     
    VILLADEIFIORI, UMBRIA
     
     
    The vendemmia, the annual harvest of the wine grapes, commenced at the Villa dei Fiori on the final Saturday in September. It coincided with the unwelcome news that the restorer was planning to return to Umbria. Count Gasparri briefly considered making the drive from Rome to inform the staff in person. In the end, he decided a quick telephone call to Margherita would suffice.
     
     
    “When is he scheduled to arrive?” she asked, her voice heavy with dread.
     
     
    “This is unclear.”
     
     
    “But of course. Will he be alone or accompanied by Francesca?”
     
     
    “This is also unclear.”
     
     
    “Should we assume he’ll be working again?”
     
     
    “That is the hope,” Gasparri said. “But my friends at the Vatican tell me he’s been in some sort of accident. I wouldn’t expect him to be in a terribly good mood.”
     
     
    “How will we tell the difference?”
     
     
    “Be kind to him, Margherita. Apparently, the poor man’s been through quite an ordeal.”
     
     
    And with that the line went dead. Margherita hung up the phone and headed out to the vineyards.
     
     
    The poor man’s been through quite an ordeal . . .
     
     
    Yes, she thought. And now he’s going to take it out on us.
     
     
    The ‟return,” as it became known to the staff, occurred late that same evening. Carlos, who lived in a stone cottage on a hill above the pasture, spotted the little Passat wagon as it turned through the gate and started down the gravel road toward the villa with its headlamps doused. He quickly telephoned Isabella, who was standing on the veranda of her residence near the stables as the blacked-out car flashed by in a cloud of dust. Her observation, though brief, yielded two critical pieces of information: the car definitely contained not one but two people—the restorer and the woman they knew as Francesca—and the woman was driving. Strong circumstantial evidence, she told Carlos, that the restorer had indeed suffered an accident of some sort.
     
     
    The last member of the staff to see the couple that night was Margherita, who watched them cross the courtyard from her static post above the chapel. Like all housekeepers, Margherita was a natural watcher—and, like any good watcher, she took note of small details. She found it odd, to say the least, that the woman was leading the way. She also thought she could detect something different about the restorer’s movements. Something vaguely hesitant in his step. She saw him once more, when he appeared in the upstairs window and gazed in her direction over the courtyard. There was no soldierly nod this time; in fact, he gave no indication that he was even aware of her presence. He just peered into the gloom, as if searching for an adversary that he knew was there but could not see.
     
     
    The shutters closed with a thump and the restorer disappeared from sight. Margherita remained frozen in her window for a long time after, haunted by the image she had just seen. A man in a moonlit window with a heavy bandage over his right eye.
     
     
    Unfortunately, Count Gasparri’s predictions about the restorer’s mood turned out to be accurate. Unlike in summer, when he had been predictably aloof, his moods now fluctuated between chilling silences and flashes of alarming temper. Francesca, while apologetic, offered few clues about how he had sustained the injury, stating only that he had suffered “a mishap” while working abroad. Naturally, the staff was left to speculate as to what had actually happened. Their theories ranged from the absurd to the mundane. They were certain of one thing: the injury had left the restorer dangerously on edge, as Anna discovered one morning when she approached him from behind while he was struggling to read the newspaper. His sudden movement gave her such