The Rembrandt Affair

Rembrandt?”
    “I came to regard the woman in that painting as an accomplice in my family’s murder. I never wanted to see her again.”
    “But you kept the receipt,” Gabriel said.
    The child of the attic fixed him with a suspicious stare.
    “Isn’t that what your father placed in your pocket as you were saying good-bye?”
    Still she didn’t answer.
    “And you kept it with you in hiding, didn’t you, Lena? You kept it because it was the only thing of your father’s you had.” Gabriel was silent for a moment. “Where’s the receipt, Lena?”
    “It’s in the top drawer of my nightstand. I look at it every night before I go to sleep.”
    “Will you let me have it?”
    “Why would you want such a thing?”
    “Your Rembrandt is out there somewhere. And we’re going to find it.”
    “That painting is covered in blood.”
    “I know, Lena. I know.”

22
    AMSTERDAM
    I t was approaching eleven o’clock when they left Lena Herzfeld’s house and a hard rain was hammering on the pavement. Chiara wanted to find a taxi but Gabriel insisted on walking. They stood for a long time outside the Hollandsche Schouwburg theater, now a memorial to those who had been imprisoned there, before making their way to Rembrandt’s old house at the top of Jodenbreestraat. Gabriel could only marvel at the shortness of the distance. A kilometer, no more. He was certain the next link in the chain would be longer.
    They ate with little appetite at a quiet restaurant near their hotel, talking about anything but the horror they had just heard, and climbed into bed shortly after one. Chiara’s sleep was disturbed by nightmares, though much to her surprise she found that Ivan Kharkov had been displaced from his starring role by a man in black attempting to rip a child from her arms. She forced herself awake to find Gabriel seated at the writing desk in their room, the lamp burning brightly, a pen scratching furiously across a sheet of paper.
    “What are you doing?”
    “Go back to sleep.”
    “I was dreaming about him.”
    “I know.”
    In the morning, while Gabriel was still sleeping, she discovered the product of his nocturnal labors. Attached to the receipt for the painting was a document many pages in length, written on hotel stationery in Gabriel’s distinctive left-handed script. At the top of the first page was the date and the city followed by the words The Testimony of Lena Herzfeld. Chiara leafed rapidly through the pages, astonished by what she was reading. Blessed with a flawless memory, Gabriel had created a verbatim transcript of the entire conversation. And on the final page he had written a short note to himself.
    Sometimes the best way to find a painting is to find where it’s been.
    Find Kurt Voss.
    Find the painting.

PART TWO
    ATTRIBUTION

23
    SOUTHWARK, LONDON
    T here are few things in the newspaper business more excruciating than a staff meeting that convenes at five o’clock on a Friday afternoon. Half those present are already thinking about their plans for the weekend while the rest are on deadline and therefore anxious about work still to be done. At the moment, Zoe Reed fell into neither category, though admittedly her mind had begun to wander.
    Like nearly everyone else gathered in the fifth-floor conference room of the Financial Journal , Zoe had heard it all many times before. The once-mighty tablet of global business was now a financial basket case. Circulation and advertising revenue were locked in a downward spiral with no bottom in sight. Not only was the Journal unprofitable, it was hemorrhaging cash at an alarming and unsustainable rate. If trends continued, the paper’s corporate parent, Latham International Media, would have no choice but to immediately seek a buyer—or, more likely, shut the paper down. In the meantime, newsroom expenditures would once again have to be slashed to the bone. No more costly lunches with sources. No more unapproved travel. And no more paid subscriptions to other publications. From this moment forward, Journal reporters could consume their news just like everyone else in the world—on the Internet for free.
    The bearer of this gloomy report was Jason Turnbury, the Journal ’s editor in chief. He was prowling the conference room like a matador, his necktie artfully loosened, his face still tanned from a recent Caribbean holiday. Jason was a rocket, a corporate shooting star who possessed an unrivaled ability to sidestep on-coming trouble. If there was