MasterStroke (20 page)

Jack was so deep in thought, he didn’t hear Sandrine approaching. As she drew nearer, she cast a glance into the safe. It appeared that the book boxes hadn’t been touched.

“It’s wonderful, isn’t it?” Sandrine asked, almost in Jack’s ear.

“More than wonderful. It’s one of the most exquisite things I’ve ever seen,” he replied in a hushed whisper, standing tall and turning off the desk lamp illuminating it.

“It’s the one piece that’s so different from all the others. It’s on a much heavier paper as well.”

“Not paper,” Jack mused. “It’s vellum, made from calfskin. It would originally have been mounted on a timber panel but it’s survived pretty well without it.”

“Do you know who painted it?”

Jack was still so intent on the gracious woman with the swept back hair, long swan-like neck and soulful eyes that the question appeared to elude him. The silence built up in the room.

“Maybe. It’s a could-be, should-be scenario. What will Marcus know about it?”

Sandrine shook her head.

“Probably not much. It’s not his area of expertise, aside from the obvious that it’s Pre-Raphaelite. Although the owner was a regular client of Marcus’, he wouldn’t have obtained these from us. We just handle books. I have no idea why Marcus would have reserved these art portfolios. He has a number of experts he will call on to authenticate them.”

Jack was distracted, murmuring something she couldn’t quite hear. There was something in his manner that sparked a thought.

“Could it be the art that the Russians are after?”

Jack’s expression was impossible to determine. His face was set like stone, neutral, giving nothing away, his eyes focused on something else entirely.

“Could well be, beautiful girl. Could well be,” he said finally.

“But why? These sketches are valuable but not remarkably so. Mid-nineteenth century.”

Jack shook his head.

“No, earlier.”

Sandrine was confused.

“How so? The Pre-Raphaelite movement lasted a fairly short time from the late 1840s. Although this doesn’t look like any of the others and the model I don’t recognise at all.”

Jack was holding something back, she could feel it.

“Jack, what is it you’re not telling me?”

He gathered himself slowly.

“It’s not Pre-Raphaelite. There are a lot of people who consider this to be a portrait of Bianca, daughter of Ludovico Sforza, Duke of Milan, and it was commissioned around the time of her marriage in the late fifteenth century.”

“It’s Renaissance? That’s remarkable.” She looked closer, noting the pale warm yellow background, so beautiful fashioned to appear neutral yet highlighting the warm skin tones, expressive green eyes, high forehead, narrow shoulders and the khaki and gold of the intricately-detailed dress. It was so alive, so vibrant, that it appeared the young girl with the teasingly demure smile ghosting the corner of her lips may break into a wide grin at any moment.

“That’s not the remarkable part. If the experts are correct, you’re looking at a lost Leonardo da Vinci. Worth somewhere upwards of $150 million.”

For once, Sandrine was speechless. The silence in the room grew to almost claustrophobic proportions.

Chapter Twenty Six

They stood riveted by the quietly intensive gaze of the long-dead noblewoman.

“That’s unbelievable, Jack. It couldn’t possibly be true. It must be a copy or a forgery. Something like this just doesn’t happen.” Sandrine’s head was swimming and she refused to accept something so fantastic.

“I agree. It sounds like the plot of a paperback thriller. But the more I examine it, the more I’m starting to think we have something very special here.”

“How do you know so much about it?” Sandrine asked.

“There’s a similar piece that’s set the art world buzzing over the last few years. Its owner has been engaged in a bloody and bitter battle to get it officially recognised as a da Vinci, so far without luck but it’s most likely only a matter of time. Then the collectors, those with deep enough pockets, will be falling over themselves to acquire it.”

“Similar?”

“The other has been called
La Bella Principessa
and it has this gracious young lady in profile rather than full-face. There’s been a lot of research done on it; the media has covered it quite extensively. It’s a fascinating story so I’ve been keeping track of it.”

“How sure are people that it’s a da Vinci?”

“Now that’s the stumbling block. Quite a few experts have come out in favour of it and the scientific tests conducted on it have backed it as Renaissance. Interestingly, when it first appeared at auction in the late 1990s, it was catalogued as early 19
^th
century German, linking it to a neo-Renaissance movement called the Nazarene. On the other hand, much of the established art world, particularly museum and art gallery curators, have denounced it as a fake.”

“Wouldn’t they know?” Sandrine was already as fascinated with the story as the artwork itself.

“There’s an element amongst the naysayers who are extremely cautious, even closed-minded. They’ve dealt with art all their lives and often aren’t willing to admit there are things they don’t know. It’s threatening to their way of thinking and the very basis of their careers and something as revolutionary as an undiscovered da Vinci represents something they don’t want to acknowledge.

“When it comes to someone who is so little known, like da Vinci, it’s like chasing shadows. Conjecture informed by guesswork amplified by whoever has the noisiest publicity machine,” Jack continued.

“The da Vinci supporters have identified it as a portrait of Bianca Sforza, the illegitimate daughter of the Duke’s mistress, Bernadina de Corradis. In 1496, at the time Bianca would have been thirteen years old, she was married to Galeazzo Sanseverino, commander of the Duke’s armies. Regrettably, she died four months later; the cause of death is unknown although it may have been in childbirth.

“Da Vinci was working under the patronage of Ludovico Sforza, the all-powerful Duke of Milan, at that time. He arrived in Milan in 1482 and stayed for seventeen years. Although he was undoubtedly a genius, he was known to begin projects then abandon them unfinished when something else took his interest. He did enjoy painting beautiful women and the Duke allowed him time out from his other endeavours to paint ladies of the court. Of all his known portraits, only one or two are of men.

“It was a tradition at the time to commission portraits for special occasions, such as marriages which is when this may well have been executed. It could also have been as a memorial tribute following her death. These portraits were often bound into tribute books; quires, as the pages or leaves of a manuscript are called, were often added to established books, as the family’s fortunes progressed and notable events occurred.

“
La Bella Principessa
is considered to have come from one of four surviving versions of the Sforziada, a tribute book to Francesco Sforza, father of Ludovico. It’s notable for one reason. The critics say it can’t be a da Vinci because it is a work on vellum and he was not known to have worked with vellum. But vellum was widely used for codexes and manuscripts.

“The critics also say that it was only a work by one of da Vinci’s students. If you closely examine the background, you can see the parallel cross-hatching made by a pen. It runs from upper left to lower right, which indicates the work of someone who was left-handed. Da Vinci was left-handed but all his known students were right-handed.”

“That all sounds pretty definitive,” mused Sandrine. With the desk lamp extinguished and in the indirect lighting of the stock room, the portrait still glowed with a golden burnish. It was unimaginable to her that this work could be fake. There was an almost supernatural quality to it that readily suggested genius. She had seen other works of the master in her travels and, although she knew she was no judge, it seemed entirely feasible, although no less fantastic, that this may be a da Vinci.

“But despite all this, it’s not enough for
La Bella Principessa
to be officially recognised. There are precedents for re-discovered da Vincis. In 2011, a portrait of Christ, known as the
Salvator Mundi
, painted for Louis XII of France between 1506 and 1513, was officially attributed to da Vinci. Before that, it was
Benois Madonna
, which had long been considered lost but turned up in a private collection in Russia in the first decade of the 20
^th
century and is now in the Hermitage.

“However, if and when
La Bella Principessa
is recognised, then it would naturally follow that this is from the same sitting; amongst his many talents, da Vinci was known for his playful way of exploring and re-imagining the traditions of portraiture. He was a rebel in so many ways. It’s entirely possible that he did two portraits, one in profile like the
Principessa
and the other full-face like this one.”

“And it would be worth $150 million? That’s a lot of money,” marvelled Sandrine.

“People have been killed for a lot less. Now we have an idea of what the Russians are after, we have to be very careful. And the $150 million figure itself is fairly arbitrary. How can you put an estimate on a da Vinci?

“The most expensive work of art so far is Munch’s
The Scream
. That sold a few years back for nearly $120 million. Below that are a couple of Picassos at around $105 million each. These are fairly common artists from the recent past. Da Vinci’s work is more than 500 years old and there’s no definitive idea of his output. That which is known is mainly in museums and art galleries. Almost nothing is in private hands.

“Bill Gates bought the Codex, which is essentially a 72-page notebook of Da Vinci’s ideas and sketches for $30 million in 1994 and it’s now valued at around $100 million. There’s been talk of the
Salvator Mundi
being sought by a Texas art gallery for around $200 million, so
La Bella Principessa
and, by implication, this one being estimated at $150 million seems fairly conservative.”

Even Jack’s natural reserve seemed shaken by the realisation of what potentially was resting on the workbench.

“I’m not sure what we should be doing now,” he said, an admission that came as quite a shock to Sandrine. “But we have to take good care of it. And that means moving it out of here.”

“How could the Russians know about it?”

“That’s just it. They don’t know for sure. They only suspect we have something of value. If they had the same suspicions we have, they would have come on a lot more aggressively than they have.”

“Not even Marcus would have had any inkling,” Sandrine agreed. “If he did, it’d be sitting in a bank vault in Zurich rather than sending it across the world with DHL.”

“Agreed but whatever it turns out to be, we still have to be extremely careful.” He looked around the room. “I’m not even sure what we should pack it in.”

The packing room contained all manner of envelopes, boxes and cartons but, understandably enough, nothing that should be holding an item worth more than the GDP of many small nations. Eventually, he snorted his frustration and gathered the sketch up and sandwiched it between the leaves of the Pre-Raphaelite artworks.

“Oh well, it’s lasted this long in the portfolio. It can slum it for another couple of days.”

The portfolios were soon stacked on a bench closest to the loading dock door.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes with the car. Keep an eye on the street out front and call me if anything happens.” Jack kissed Sandrine quickly and then left. She spent some minutes at the front counter, rearranging books and trying, with only moderate success, to appear casual. The dark Mercedes was still across the street, parked in a No Stopping zone.
Where’s the parking police when you need them?
she murmured irritably under her breath.

Jack returned after ten minutes. While his dark SUV with the tinted windows idled at the rear loading dock, he hurriedly loaded the portfolios.

“By the way, what have you told the other woman who works here?”

“Marcella? Nothing,” she admitted cautiously. She hadn’t been entirely sure that keeping the elderly woman in the dark was a good strategy but it was all she could think of. “She’s been taking some time off work and we haven’t spoken in a week or two. I thought of calling but didn’t want to worry her.”

“Better let her know what’s going on.”

“Jack, she might be as small as a bird but she’s feisty and more than likely to just march across the street and tell those Russians off.”

He laughed, obviously amused by the image she painted.

“That would probably serve them right. I’m sure they’ve never run into that sort of resistance before.”

He pulled her close and kissed her again, this time with a passion that set her insides alight. Sandrine squirmed against him, trying to feel every part of his body.

“Can I see you tonight?” he asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“I’ll call you later and we’ll set something up. In the meantime, better let Marcella know what’s happening.”

She waited until Jack’s car had turned out of the alley before returning to the store, careful to lock the door after her. She dialled Marcella’s number from memory. As they talked, and Sandrine was careful to couch the events of the last few weeks in very general terms so as not to frighten the old woman, an idea popped into her head.

“Marcella, could I ask a favour? Are you doing anything tonight?”

Chapter Twenty Seven

At precisely seven o’clock that evening, Sandrine opened the door of her apartment to a huddled figure with long unkempt grey hair frizzing out of a wide-brimmed red hat, a bright red knee-length puffer jacket bearing the over-sized logo of a local football team and pulling a battered shopping basket behind her. The woman was almost bent double and all Sandrine could see was the crown of the red hat.

It wasn’t her intention but she burst out laughing. In return, the figure stood tall, and took off the hat. The gray hair came with it, revealing a black pixie cut which perfectly suited the angular face with its sharp cheekbones and wide blue eyes.