The Rembrandt Affair

his back pocket.

44
    THE MARAIS, PARIS
    M any years earlier, Maurice Durand had stumbled across a newspaper article about the case of Christoph Meili, a private security guard who had the misfortune of being assigned to work at the Union Bank of Switzerland’s headquarters on the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich. While making his rounds on a January afternoon in 1997, the devoutly Christian father of two entered the bank’s shredding room and discovered a pair of large rolling bins filled with old documents, including several ledgers detailing transactions conducted between UBS and Hitler’s Germany. Meili found the presence of the material in the shredding room more than a little suspicious, since weeks earlier Swiss banks had been prohibited by federal law from destroying wartime documents. Sensing something was amiss, he stuffed two of the ledgers under his shirt and smuggled them to his modest home outside Zurich. The next morning, he handed the documents over to the Israeli Cultural Center, at which point his problems began.
    The head of the center quickly called a press conference to denounce UBS for its wanton destruction of records. UBS dismissed the shredding as a regrettable mistake and promptly laid blame at the feet of the bank’s archivist. As for Christoph Meili, he was summarily fired from his job and soon became the target of a criminal investigation into whether he had violated Swiss bank-secrecy laws by stealing the wartime records. Meili was hailed around the world as a “document hero,” but in his native land he was hounded by public denunciations and death threats. Much to Switzerland’s shame, the security guard who acted on his conscience had to be granted political asylum by the U.S. Senate and was quietly resettled with his family in New York.
    At the time, Maurice Durand concluded that Meili’s actions, while admirable and courageous, were ultimately foolhardy. Which made it all the more strange that Durand had now decided he had no choice but to embark on a similar path. Ironically, his motivations were identical to Meili’s. Though Monsieur Durand was a career criminal who habitually violated two of God’s most sacred commandments, he regarded himself as a deeply spiritual and honorable man who tried to operate by a certain code. That code would not allow him to ever accept payment for a painting stained in blood. Nor would it permit him to suppress the document he had discovered hidden inside. To do so would not only be a crime against history but make him an accessory after the fact to a mortal sin.
    There were, however, two aspects of the Meili affair Maurice Durand was determined not to repeat—public exposure and the threat of prosecution. Meili’s lapse, he concluded, had been to place his trust in a stranger. Which explained why, late that afternoon, Durand decided to close his shop early and personally deliver a pair of eighteenth-century lorgnette opera glasses to one of his most valued clients, Hannah Weinberg.
    Fifty years of age and childless, Madame Weinberg had two passions: her impressive collection of antique French eyewear and her tireless campaign to rid the world of racial and religious hatred in all its forms. Hannah’s first passion had caused her to form an attachment to Antiquités Scientifiques. Her second had compelled her to found the Isaac Weinberg Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism in France, named for her paternal grandfather who was arrested during Jeudi noir, Black Thursday, the roundup of Jews in Paris, on July 16, 1942, and subsequently murdered at Auschwitz. Hannah Weinberg was now regarded as the most prominent so-called memory militant in France. Her fight against anti-Semitism had earned her a legion of admirers—including the current French president—but many determined enemies as well. The Weinberg Center was the target of constant threats, as was Hannah Weinberg herself. As a result, Maurice Durand was one of the few people who knew that she lived in her grandfather’s old apartment at 24 rue Pavée, in the fourth arrondissement.
    She was waiting for him on the landing outside her apartment, dressed in a dark sweater, a pleated wool skirt, and heavy stockings. Her dark hair was streaked with gray; her nose was narrow and aquiline. She greeted Durand warmly with kisses on each cheek and invited him inside. It was a large apartment, with a formal entrance hall and a library adjoining the sitting room. Antique furniture covered in faded