The Da Vinci Deception (21 page)

A sound of bells from surrounding churches announced the hour of six. He lifted the phone.

Ellie welcomed the challenge of guiding Jonas through the galleries, the museums, the piazzas and palazzos. She displayed her growing Italian vocabulary and took near-childish delight in taking him to the sanctified Print Room in the Uffizi and stunned him when he was introduced to the complete staff in the rarely visited restoration laboratories in both the Uffizi and the Laurenziana Library. There Jonas held sheets of centuries-old paper and priceless manuscripts. Through the influence of the Gambarellis, doors were opened to private collections and specially conducted tours by
direttores
of the Pitti Palace and Medici Museum. Ellie planned the daily itineraries and, like a conscientious
Girl Scout leader, followed a tight timetable that left Jonas in a state of exhaustion at day's end.

On Sunday a hot September sun shot the temperature above ninety, and by midafternoon Jonas complained that his feet had become too pained to walk another step. They stopped for a sweet at the Trattoria Cantinetta in the Palazzo Antinori. He breathed heavily and wiped perspiration from his reddened brow.

“Tomorrow we'll be in the country,” Ellie said. “It's cooler there and we are prepared to show you how much progress has been made on the paper and inks.” She smiled, anticipating how proudly she would show Jonas her
mezzo villa.

“We? Have you been working with some others?” Jonas asked, alarm in his voice.

“I have an assistant, a student from the university whom I turned loose on researching the chalks.”

“You didn't tell me.”

“It didn't seem worth bothering you about.”

“This is wrong, Eleanor. Your work is highly confidential.”

“But Patzi's just a college girl. In Florence there are many art historians and college people doing research and they all hire young people to run errands or help with the language.”

He forced a weak smile to mask his anger. “You may continue using this Patzi person for another week, then you must dismiss her. Under no circumstance may she spend time in your studio. We cannot have her suspicions aroused.”

“What's to suspect?”

He leaned forward and said in a near whisper, “There's been a critically important change in the nature of our work. The Royal Library has commissioned us to create precise duplicates of Leonardo's anatomical drawings.” Barely a shred of the statement was true, but Jonas uttered it with the sincerity of an angel.

“Why would they want duplicates? They can make reproductions by the thousands.”

“They want to match the drawings as authentically as possible. That's why you are searching for old paper . . . and inks. Several attempts have been made to steal the original drawings when they've been loaned for exhibition. Now the drawings never leave the library.”

“Sounds a little crazy. Next the French will display a copy of the
Mona Lisa.
”

“It hasn't come to that, but great art has become so valuable that drastic steps are being taken. Now you can see that our work must continue in total secrecy.”

Ellie tilted her head and stared through the thick lenses to his squinting eyes. “I'm pretty good at keeping a secret as long as everything is on the up-and-up. I'm not very good on shady deals.”

Jonas's lips formed a small “O” and he said with forced humor, “We're making too much of this. Let's enjoy our day and tomorrow I will see all of your accomplishments.”

Ellie had been surprised by the news that her papers and inks would be used to make copies of Leonardo's drawings. She could not sleep, worried that her ink formulations would be detected if subjected to any modern technique for testing the age of a painting or the page from a manuscript. Yet she put on her happy face when Jonas arrived, and proudly showed him her
mezzo villa.
The tour ended in her studio and Ellie was in turn amused, then concerned that Jonas was struggling for breath after climbing two flights of stairs.

He sat at the long table and took the vials from his pocket. “We were permitted to take one of the anatomical drawings from the library and that allowed us to scratch ink samples from each side of the page. We also snipped out a sliver of the paper. You can match your inks and paper to these.”

Ellie held the tiny bottles up to the light. “There's barely enough in each for a mass spectrometry evaluation and with luck we'll get a chromatography reading as well.” She frowned. “I think we can match the inks exactly, but I'm not sure I can put the ink on paper, dry it, and pass it off as original to Leonardo's time.”

“Why is that?” Jonas asked.

“When ink dries, it is absorbed into the paper. The chemicals in the ink migrate into the paper . . . into the tiny vegetable fibers that make up the paper. That migration forms a pattern that requires many years to become established.”

“I read something about that,” Jonas said. “Can we solve the problem?”

Ellie shrugged. “I didn't think it would be a problem. Why would the Royal Library care, as long as the drawings look exactly like the originals?”

“Can you solve the problem?” Jonas repeated.

“I'm not sure. I'll see if we can accelerate the aging process.” She sat on her stool and ran her hands through her hair. “Damn, it'll take time. And money.”

“You'll have the money,” Jonas assured her.

“I'll see what my new friends at the University of Pisa can do.”

“You must tell them it is a research project . . .”

“Shush! I will be very discreet.” She placed a finger on Jonas's lips and smiled.

Jonas smiled back. He seemed mollified and clapped his hands and said jovially, “Show me what else you've been up to.”

Ellie described her work area. “You can see where I've spent your money, but I promise I haven't been frivolous. I'll have inks tests made at the University of Pisa.”

“Be sure to include a test for a paint sample, anything to draw attention from the inks.”

“I can do that,” she replied. Jonas's concern for security was obsessing him, she thought, but perhaps it was all part of the assignment.

“The test will tell me exactly what ingredients were used in making the inks used on the original manuscript. After formulating matching inks, I'll apply them to the papers, dry them, then scratch off samples just as you did with the original drawing. Then I'll run new mass spectrometry tests and compare the new to the old. I can't predict how the inks will be absorbed by the paper, but I'm aware of the problem and will find a solution.”

“Won't that depend on the paper itself? What tests will you run on the paper?”

“There are several to test the fiber content, but I won't have to ageproof it. After all, every sheet is dated to the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century. Some have beautiful watermarks verifiable to a period from about 1460 to 1510. No one knows exactly when the marks were first or last used. Each sheet is a minimum of thirty-by-twenty centimeters . . . just as you specified.”

Jonas leafed through the assorted sheets. “Nothing more than pieces of paper,” he said with mild amazement. He brought each close to his squinting eyes. “Yet they are exquisite.”

“This was a gift.” Ellie held up an old piece of paper. “And I paid four hundred dollars for this one,” she said, pointing to another. “That's almost three quarters of a million lire! But look at the watermark.” She held it in front of a strong light. Then she held others to the light.

Jonas leaned close to see the distinctive thin lines running in one direction, more widely spaced and thicker lines running in the opposite. Near the center of the sheets was the outline of an animal or flower. The designs were crude, but identifiable, whether of a turtle, a bull's head, or a religious symbol.

“Watermarks on the paper of fifteenth-century drawings in the Uffizi are similar to these,” Ellie said in a scholarly tone.

“What luck with the chalks?” Jonas asked.

“Not good news. I have red but no black.”

“Strange. Why not black?”

“Black chalk used during the Renaissance was quarried somewhere in Italy, but no one seems to know where. Naturally black chalk hasn't been available for three hundred years. We can't compound it either, not so it couldn't be detected.”

“That is bad news. You feel that black chalk could be detected as something made in the last three hundred years?”

“There would be that risk.”

Jonas heard the word “risk” and shuddered. Would the skeptics be suspicious if none of the drawings contained black chalk? That would be a problem for Giorgio.

Neither he nor Ellie had seen Patzi enter the studio from the patio. She stood by her desk waiting to be acknowledged by Ellie. She wore jeans and a cotton blouse. She stepped noiselessly in her white Nikes. Her brown hair was cut short, the whites of her eyes contrasted with a deeply tanned and rather pretty face. Ellie looked past Jonas and saw her.

Jonas turned, surprised they were not alone. He stared at the girl, who had quietly returned Ellie's greeting.

“How long have you been standing there?” he demanded.

“A minute, signore,” Patzi responded, intimidated by the huge man's thunderous question.

Ellie stepped between them. “Patzi, this is Mr. Kalem. You've heard me speak of him. He has paid us a visit and wanted to see my studio and the work I've been doing. I thought you would be in classes today.”

“I forgot some books, Ellie. I . . . I did not know I would disturb anyone.” She gathered the books and dashed for the door. “
Scusi,
I am sorry.”

Ellie watched Patzi scurry down the terrace to her car and laughed nervously. “You scared the hell out of her.”

“What did she overhear?”

“Nothing she and I haven't discussed before.”

“You talked to her about making black chalk and five-hundred-year-old inks?”

Ellie smiled. “In the scheme of things, chalk really isn't very important to Patzi. Her biggest concern these days is a young man named Amedeo.”

Jonas returned to the Excelsior. His mood was mixed; Ellie was making excellent progress in spite of the problem with the black chalk. But she had brought an outsider into her confidence. Perhaps he made too much of it but a curious student could talk to friends, and however innocently spoken, her words would be remembered at a later time when news of the newly discovered Leonardos would be on the lips of everyone in Florence. Ellie must tell Patzi she was no longer needed. A week was too long to wait.

It was nearly seven o'clock. Stiehl had had several days to study Giorgio's drawings. Jonas placed a call to New York and was greeted by Stiehl's angry voice demanding to know why he had been “dealt a stack of Xerox copies.”

“They're crisp and clean, all right. That's the damned trouble,” Stiehl continued. “I have no feel for the original material . . . there's no depth or character to the shadowed areas.

“Giorgio insisted on retaining the originals. When you execute the final drawings, you'll have both the originals and Giorgio to guide you. Your instructions were clearly spelled out and I'm sure Tony can answer any additional questions you—”

“Screw Tony. I should have been with you when Professor Burri turned over the drawings. The same goes for the paper and inks. And the quills. It will take months to learn how to use them without dropping blobs of ink. If Leonardo were alive today, he wouldn't use a goddamned goose quill.”

“You agreed to use authentic instruments.”

“And I will. A quill is a crude device to carry ink and draw a line. I have to constantly dip the damned thing into an inkpot. Leonardo devised pens that held ink. I know that's true. Besides, it's the result that counts and I doubt there's a person in the world who could detect whether I used a quill or a pen I made myself. And, incidentally, that's what I'm doing.”