The Fallen Angel

Besides, Durand had always preferred his tidy little life at the quiet end of the arrondissement. There was a good brasserie across the street where he took his coffee in the morning and drank his wine at night. And then there was Angélique Brossard, a seller of glass figurines who was always willing to change the sign in her window from OUVERT to FERMÉ whenever Durand came calling.
    But there was another reason why Maurice Durand had resisted the lure of Paris’s busier streets. Antiquités Scientifiques, while reasonably profitable, operated largely as a front for his primary occupation. Durand specialized in conveying paintings and other objets d’art from homes, galleries, and museums into the hands of collectors who did not care about meddlesome details such as a clean provenance. There were some in law enforcement who might have described Durand as an art thief, though he would have quibbled with that characterization, for it had been many years since he had actually stolen a painting himself. He now operated solely as a broker in the process known as commissioned theft—or, as Durand liked to describe it, he managed the acquisition of paintings that were not technically for sale. His clients tended to be the sort of men who did not like to be disappointed, and Durand rarely failed them. Working with a stable of Marseille-based professional thieves, he had been the linchpin in some of history’s greatest art heists. Topping his list of achievements, at least in monetary terms, was Van Gogh’s Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear . Stolen from the Courtauld Gallery in London, it was now hanging in the palace of a Saudi sheikh who had a penchant for violence involving knives.
    But it was Maurice Durand’s link to a lesser-known work— Portrait of a Young Woman , oil on canvas, by Rembrandt van Rijn—that had led to his unlikely alliance with the secret intelligence service of the State of Israel. After accepting a commission to steal the painting, Durand had discovered that hidden within it was a list of numbered Swiss bank accounts filled with looted assets from the Holocaust. The list had allowed Gabriel to blackmail a Swiss billionaire named Martin Landesmann into sending a shipment of sabotaged industrial centrifuges to his steady customers in the Islamic Republic of Iran. At the conclusion of the operation, Gabriel had decided to take no action against Durand lest the Office ever require the services of a professional thief.
    All of which goes some way to explaining why, twenty-four hours after arriving in Paris, Eli Lavon presented himself at the entrance of the little shop at 106 rue de Miromesnil. The buzzer, when pressed, emitted an inhospitable howl. Then the deadbolts snapped open with a thud, and Lavon, shaking the rain from his sodden overcoat, slipped inside.
     
     
    “Stolen anything lately, Monsieur Durand?”
    “Not even a kiss, Monsieur Lavon.”
    The two men appraised each other for a moment without speaking. They were roughly equals in height and build, but the similarities ended there. While Lavon wore an outfit he called Left Bank revolutionary chic, Durand was impeccably attired in a somber chalk-stripe suit and lavender necktie. His bald head shone like polished glass in the restrained overhead lighting. His dark eyes were expressionless and unblinking.
    “How can I assist you?” he asked, as though helping Lavon was the last thing in the world he wished to do.
    “I’m looking for something special,” Lavon replied.
    “Well, then, you’ve certainly come to the right place.” Durand walked over to a display case filled with microscopes. “This just arrived,” he said, running his hand over one of the instruments. “It was made by Nachet & Sons of Paris in 1890. The optics and mechanics are all in good condition. So is the walnut case.”
    “Not that kind of something, Monsieur Durand.”
    Durand’s hand had yet to move from the oxidized surface of the microscope. “It seems my debt has come due,” he said.
    “You make us sound like blackmailers,” Lavon said, hoisting his most benevolent smile. “But I assure you that’s not the case.”
    “What do you want?”
    “Your expertise.”
    “It’s expensive.”
    “Don’t worry, Maurice. Money isn’t the problem.”
     
     
    The rain chased them across the Place de la Concorde and along the Seine embankments. It was not the pleasing Parisian rain of songwriters and poets but a frigid torrent that clawed its way