Portrait of a Spy

you told your wife?”
    “I tell my wife everything, and my wife tells me nothing. It’s part of the deal.”
    “You’re a lucky man,” Lavon said. “All the more reason why you shouldn’t go making promises you can’t keep.”
    “I always keep my promises, Eli.”
    “That’s what I’m afraid of.” Lavon looked at Gabriel. “Are you sure about her?”
    “As sure as I am about you.”
    “Go,” said Lavon after a moment. “I wouldn’t want you to miss your train. And if you happen to see a suicide bomber in there, do me a favor and just tell a gendarme. The last thing we need right now is for you to blow up another French train station.”
    Gabriel handed Lavon his Beretta 9mm pistol, then climbed out of the car and headed into the ticket hall of the station. By some miracle, his train departed on time, and by five that evening he was once again walking along the pavements of St. James’s. Adrian Carter would later find much symbolism in Gabriel’s return to London, since it was where his journey had begun. In truth, his motives for coming back were hardly so lofty. His plan to destroy Rashid’s network from the inside would entail a criminal act of fraud. And what better place to carry it out than the art world.

Chapter 34
St. James’s, London

    G ABRIEL’S ACCOMPLICE WAS NOT YET aware of his plans—hardly surprising, since he was none other than Julian Isherwood, owner and sole proprietor of Isherwood Fine Arts, 7–8 Mason’s Yard. Among the many hundreds of paintings controlled by Isherwood’s gallery was Madonna and Child with Mary Magdalene , formerly attributed to the Venetian master Palma Vecchio, now tentatively attributed to none other than the great and mighty Titian himself. For the moment, however, the painting remained locked away in Isherwood’s underground storage room, its image hidden by a protective layer of tissue paper. Isherwood had come to loathe the painting almost as much as the man who had defaced it. Indeed, in Isherwood’s troubled mind, the glorious swath of canvas had come to symbolize all that was wrong with his life.
    As far as Isherwood was concerned, it had been an autumn to forget. He had sold just one picture—a minor Italian devotional piece to a minor collector from Houston—and had acquired nothing more than a chronic barking cough that could empty a room quicker than a bomb threat. Word on the street was that he was in the throes of yet another late-life crisis, his seventh or eighth, depending on whether one counted the prolonged Blue Period he endured after being dumped by the girl who worked the coffee machine at the Costa in Piccadilly. Jeremy Crabbe, the tweedy director of the Old Master department at Bonhams, thought a surprise party might lift Isherwood’s sagging spirits, an idea that Oliver Dimbleby, Isherwood’s tubby nemesis from Bury Street, dismissed as the dumbest he’d heard all year. “Given Julie’s precarious health at the moment,” said Oliver, “a surprise party might kill him.” He suggested fixing Isherwood up with a talented tart instead, but then that was Oliver’s solution to every problem, personal or professional.
    On the afternoon of Gabriel’s return to London, Isherwood closed his gallery early and, having nothing better to do, headed over to Duke Street through a pelting rain to have a drink at Green’s. Aided by Roddy Hutchinson, universally regarded as the most unscrupulous dealer in all of St. James’s, Isherwood quickly consumed a bottle of white Burgundy, followed by a dose of brandy for his health. Shortly after six, he teetered into the street again to find a taxi, but when one finally approached, he was overcome by a retching coughing fit that left him incapable of lifting his arm. “Bloody hell!” snapped Isherwood as the car swept past, soaking his trousers. “Bloody, bloody, bloody hell !”
    His outburst brought on another round of staccato barking. When finally it subsided, he noticed a figure leaning against the brickwork of the passageway leading to Mason’s Yard. He wore a Barbour raincoat and a flat cap pulled low over his brow. The right foot was crossed over the left, and the eyes were sweeping back and forth along the street. He gazed at Isherwood for a moment with a mixture of bemusement and pity. Then, without word or sound, he turned and started across the cobbles of the old yard. Against all better judgment, Isherwood followed after him, hacking his lungs out like a consumption