Moscow Rules

general terms, but as the date of Elena’s arrival drew nearer, his briefings took on a decidedly more pointed tone. “Remember, Sarah, two people are already dead because of her. You can’t push too hard. You can’t force the issue. Just open the door and let her walk through it. If she does, get as much information as you can about Ivan’s deal and try to arrange a second meeting. Whatever you do, don’t let the first encounter last longer than ten minutes. You can be sure the bodyguards will be watching the clock. And they report every thing to Ivan.”
     
     
    The following morning, Graham Seymour called from Thames House to say that Ivan Kharkov’s plane—a Boeing Business Jet, tail number N7287IK—had just filed a flight plan and was due to arrive at Stansted Airport north of London at 4:30 P.M. After hanging up the phone, Gabriel applied the final touches of paint to his ersatz version of Two Children on a Beach by Mary Cassatt. Three hours later, he removed the canvas from its stretcher and carried it downstairs to the kitchen, where he placed it in a 350-degree oven. Sarah found him there twenty minutes later, leaning nonchalantly against the counter, coffee mug in hand.
     
     
    “What’s that smell?”
     
     
    Gabriel glanced down at the oven. Sarah peered through the window, then looked up in alarm.
     
     
    “Why are you baking the Cassatt?”
     
     
    Just then the kitchen timer chimed softly. Gabriel removed the canvas from the oven and allowed it to cool slightly, then laid it faceup on the table. With Sarah watching, he took hold of the canvas at the top and bottom and pulled it firmly over the edge of the table, downward toward the floor. Then he gave the painting a quarter turn and dragged it hard against the edge of the table a second time. He examined the surface for a moment, then, satisfied, held it up for Sarah to see. Earlier that morning, the paint had been smooth and pristine. Now the combination of heat and pressure had left the surface covered by a fine webbing of fissures and cracks.
     
     
    “Amazing,” she whispered.
     
     
    “It’s not amazing,” he said. “It’s craquelure.”
     
     
    Whistling tunelessly to himself, he carried the canvas upstairs to his studio, placed it back on the original stretcher, and covered the painting with a thin coat of yellow-tinted varnish. When the varnish had dried, he summoned Sarah and John Boothby to the studio and asked them to choose which canvas was the original, and which was the forgery. After several minutes of careful comparison and consultation, both agreed that the painting on the right was the original, and the one on the left was the forgery.
     
     
    “You’re absolutely sure?” Gabriel asked.
     
     
    After another round of consultation, two heads nodded in unison. Gabriel removed the painting on the right from its easel and mounted it in the new frame that had just arrived from Arnold Wiggins & Sons. Sarah and John Boothby, humiliated over being duped, carried the forgery up to the main house and hung it in the nursery. Gabriel climbed into the back of an MI5 car and, with Nigel Whitcombe at his side, headed back to London. The operation was in Alistair Leach’s hands now. But, then, it always had been.
     

 
    33
     
     
    THAMES HOUSE, LONDON
     
     
    Gabriel knew that discretion came naturally to those who work the highlands of the art trade, but even Gabriel was surprised by the extent to which Alistair Leach had remained faithful to his vow of silence. Indeed, after more than a week of relentless digging and observation MI5 had found no trace of evidence to suggest he had broken discipline in any way—nothing in his phone calls, nothing in his e-mail or faxes, and nothing in his personal contacts. He had even allowed things to cool with Rosemary Gibbons, his lady friend from Sotheby’s. Whitcombe, who had been appointed Leach’s guardian and confessor, explained why during a final preoperational dinner. “It’s not that Alistair’s no longer fond of her,” he said. “He’s chivalrous, our Alistair. He knows we’re watching him and he’s trying to protect her. It’s quite possible he’s the last decent man left in the whole of London—present company excluded, of course.” Gabriel gave Whitcombe a check for one hundred thousand pounds and a brief script. “Tell him not to blow his lines, Nigel. Tell him expectations couldn’t be higher.”
     
     
    Leach’s star turn was to occur during