The Rembrandt Affair

didn’t you?” asked Chiara.
    “Voss?” Gabriel nodded slowly. “More than I wanted to.”
    “The question is, do you believe him?”
    “It’s a remarkable story,” said Gabriel. “And I believe every word of it. Kurt Voss was an easy mark. He was a notorious war criminal, a wanted man. For more than twenty years, the fortune was sitting in Landesmann’s bank growing by the day. At some point, Landesmann decided Voss was never coming back, and he convinced himself the money was his for the taking. So he closed out the accounts and destroyed the records.”
    “And a fortune of looted Holocaust assets vanished into thin air,” Chiara said bitterly.
    “Just like the people it once belonged to.”
    “And the painting?”
    “If Landesmann had had any sense, he would have burned it. But he didn’t. He was a greedy bastard. And even in 1964, before art prices skyrocketed, the painting was worth a great deal. I suspect he entrusted it to the Hoffmann Gallery of Lucerne and arranged for a quiet sale.”
    “Did he know about the list?”
    “In order to find it, he would have had to pull apart the two canvases and look inside. But he had no reason to do that.”
    “So it was still inside the painting at the time of the 1964 sale?”
    “Without question.”
    “There’s one thing I don’t understand,” Chiara said after a silence. “Why kill Carlos Weber? After all, Landesmann had quietly turned away Voss’s wife when she came looking for the money. Why didn’t he do the same when Weber appeared in Zurich?”
    “Perhaps it was because Weber’s visit was quasi-official. Remember, he was representing not just Voss but the government of Argentina. That made him dangerous.” Gabriel paused. “But I suspect there was something else that made Weber even more dangerous. He knew about the Rembrandt and the list of account numbers hidden inside it. And he made that clear to Landesmann during their meeting.”
    “And Landesmann realized that he had a serious problem,” Chiara said. “Because whoever was in possession of the Rembrandt also had proof that Kurt Voss’s fortune had been hidden in Landesmann’s bank.”
    Gabriel nodded. “Obviously, Landesmann said something encouraging to Weber to keep him in Zurich long enough to arrange his death. Then, after Weber’s unfortunate fall into Lake Zurich, he no doubt undertook a frantic search for the painting.”
    “Why didn’t he just go back to the Hoffmann Gallery and ask for the name of the person who bought it in 1964?”
    “Because in Switzerland, a private sale means a private sale, even for the likes of Walter Landesmann. Besides, given Landesmann’s precarious situation, he would have been very reluctant to call attention to himself like that.”
    “And Martin?”
    “I suspect that, at some point, the father confessed his sins to his son, and Martin took up the search. That Rembrandt has been floating around out there like a ticking time bomb for more than forty years. If it were ever to come to light…”
    “Then Martin’s world would be shattered in an instant.”
    Gabriel nodded. “At the very least, he would find himself swamped by a tidal wave of litigation. In the worst-case scenario, he might be forced to surrender hundreds of millions, even billions, of dollars in compensation and damages.”
    “Sounds to me like a rather strong motive to steal a painting,” Chiara said. “But what do we do now? Walter Landesmann is long dead. And we can’t exactly go knocking on his son’s door.”
    “Maybe Carlos Weber can help us.”
    “Carlos Weber was murdered in Zurich in 1967.”
    “A fortunate occurrence from our point of view. You see, when diplomats die, their governments tend to get annoyed. They conduct investigations. And invariably they write reports.”
    “There’s no way the Argentine government is going to give us a copy of the inquiry into Weber’s death.”
    “That’s true,” said Gabriel. “But I know someone who might be able to get it for us.”
    “Does this someone have a name?”
    Gabriel smiled and said, “Alfonso Ramirez.”

    A T THE conclusion of the meal, as the subjects were strolling hand in hand across the darkened plaza toward their hotel, a digitized audio file was dispatched to the headquarters of Zentrum Security in Zurich along with several surveillance photographs. One hour later, headquarters sent a reply. It contained a set of terse instructions, the address of an apartment house in the