Portrait of a Spy

boy.”
    “Guilty as charged.”
    “Considering my past connection to certain unsavory elements of this operation, it might be wise to put some distance between the gallery and the final sale. That means we’ll need to enlist the services of another dealer. Given the circumstances, he’ll have to be greedy, sneaky, cunning, and a first-class shit.”
    “I know what you’re thinking,” said Gabriel, “but are you sure he can handle it?”
    “He’s perfect,” Isherwood said. “All you need now is a Titian that actually looks like one.”
    “I think I can manage that.”
    “Where do you intend to work?”
    Gabriel looked around the room and said, “This will do quite nicely.”
    “Is there anything else you require?”
    Gabriel handed him a list. Isherwood slipped on his reading glasses and frowned. “One bolt of Italian linen, one professional-grade iron, one pair of magnifying visors, one liter of acetone, one liter of methyl proxitol, one liter of mineral spirits, one dozen Winsor & Newton Series 7 brushes, one pair of standing halogen work lamps, one copy of La Bohème by Giacomo Puccini . . .” He glared at Gabriel over his glasses. “Do you know how much this is going to cost me?”
    But Gabriel seemed not to hear. He was standing before the canvas, one hand resting against his chin, his head tilted meditatively to one side.
    Gabriel believed the craft of restoration was a bit like making love. It was best done slowly and with painstaking attention to detail, with occasional breaks for rest and refreshment. But in a pinch, if the craftsman and his subject matter were adequately acquainted, a restoration could be done at extraordinary speed, with more or less the same result.
    Of the subsequent ten days Gabriel would later be able to recall very little, for they were a near-sleepless blur of linen, solvent, medium, and pigment, set to the music of Puccini and lit by the harsh white glare of his halogen work lamps. His initial fears about the condition of the canvas thankfully proved overblown. Indeed, once he had completed the relining and removed the yellowed varnish, he found Titian’s original work to be largely intact except for a chain of bare spots across the body of the Virgin and four lines of abrasion where the canvas had sloughed against the old stretcher. Having restored several Titians in the past, he was able to repair the painting almost as swiftly as the master himself had been able to paint it. His palette was Titian’s palette, as were his brushstrokes. Only the conditions of his studio were different. Titian had no doubt worked with a team of gifted apprentices and journeymen while Gabriel had no assistant other than Julian Isherwood, which meant he had no help at all.
    He wore no wristwatch so that he would have only the vaguest idea of time, and when he slept, which was seldom, he did so on a camp bed in the corner of the room, beneath a luminous landscape by Claude. He drank coffee by the bucket from Costa and subsisted largely on butter cookies and tea biscuits that Isherwood smuggled into the gallery from Fortnum & Mason. Having no time to waste on shaving, he allowed his beard to grow. Much to his dismay it came in even grayer than the last time. Isherwood said the beard made it look as though Titian himself were standing before the canvas. Given Gabriel’s uncanny skill with a brush, it wasn’t far from the truth.
    On his final evening in London, Gabriel stopped at Thames House, the riverfront headquarters of MI5, where, as promised, he informed Graham Seymour that the operation had in fact washed ashore in the British Isles. Seymour’s mood was foul and his thoughts clearly elsewhere. The son of the future king had decided to marry in late spring, and it was up to Seymour and his colleagues at the Metropolitan Police Service to see that nothing spoiled the occasion. Listening to Seymour bemoan his plight, Gabriel couldn’t help but think of the words Sarah had spoken in the garden of the café in Georgetown. London is low-hanging fruit. London can be attacked at will.
    As if to illustrate the point, Gabriel emerged from Thames House to find the Jubilee Line of the Underground had been shut down at the height of the evening rush due to a suspicious package. He headed back to Mason’s Yard on foot and, with Isherwood peering over his shoulder, applied a coat of varnish to the newly restored Titian. The next morning, he instructed Nadia to deposit two hundred million