The Da Vinci Deception (34 page)

But the Lancia was turning right
off
the highway, though the left-turn signal still flashed. Deats followed and pulled to a stop behind her. She bolted from the car, hands on hips, her expression angry and confused.

She ran toward his car.
“Parla Inglese?”

“Much better than Italian.”

“It quit!” She pointed at her car. “No warning, no red lights, no buzzers . . . damned thing just died.”

“I saw you turn off just as I was looking to get my bearings. Can I help?”

She noticed his bandaged hand. “All help gratefully received, but shouldn't I flag down one of the local
polizia
? ”

“Let me check the engine. Italian cars are notoriously like the people who make them. Very emotional.” His smile reassured her.

“I don't want to delay you.”

“Come now, pull on the hood release.”

She jumped back into the car and pulled the lever. Deats yanked the wire free from the ignition coil, unclamped the other end, and pocketed the device.

“Are you going into Milan?” he called out.

“No,” she shouted over the highway noise.

“Heading south?” he persisted.

“No again. North.”

Deats walked back to her and placed his hand on the roof of the car. “Delightful coincidence. So am I. Switzerland?”

She looked up. “Find anything wrong under there?”

“I think so. If you get going again, I can follow along. That might prove a bit of relief.”

“It would make me feel better. I'm going to Como. It's not far.”

With the mention of Como, Deats recalled the photographs in Jonas's gallery. “Give the engine a try. Let's see if I spotted the trouble.”

She turned the key and the engine came alive. “Hey, what did you do?”

“The fuel line was pinched up. I straightened it out.” He might have said the manifold had “lobulated.” All that mattered to Eleanor was that the engine was running.

It was an hour's drive to Como. At the last toll plaza she pulled to the side and signaled Deats to come alongside. “I'm going to the Villa d'Este, which is in the first town north of Como. It's not far and I want you to follow me. I owe you a drink for all your help.”

“That's not necessary,” he said without much conviction. “Will you be staying there?”

“Don't I wish! I'm meeting a boat that takes me across the lake.”

“To another hotel?”

“No . . . I'm visiting friends. Please join me for that drink?”

“Thanks, but I'm running behind schedule. I'll follow you to the hotel.”

“Okay, but if you change your mind, the offer stands.”

The town immediately north of Como was Cernobbio.

At the north end of the town, Eleanor turned into the grounds of the gracious hotel. She gave several blasts on her horn and waved briskly. Deats slowed, but did not go through the gates when the maroon car was out of sight. He parked in front of a shop near the gate and walked
toward the hotel. Two boats were tied to the dock, a small fishing skiff and a white speedboat. Deats sat on a low stone wall that ran beside the shoreline.

A porter scurried from the hotel. He put a suitcase and several boxes in the speedboat. He made another trip with more packages and this time Eleanor was behind him. Holding her arm was a man dressed in white ducks and a blue polo shirt. Deats tensed. A hundred yards away was Anthony Waters.

The road he had followed to the hotel gate continued behind the hotel, then rose sharply to a point overlooking the lake. Deats raced back to his car and drove up to the bluff. He arrived to see the speedboat pull away from the dock. As it gained speed, the bow lifted and the sounds from the engine reached him several seconds later. The boat made a wide, white wake, throwing a rooster's tail high in the air. It sped across the lake, aimed at a mass of gray stone at the water's edge.

T
wo drawings were on Stiehl's drawing board. The mellowed colors, to the professional eye, showed their age. He had seen Ellie return and wanted badly to show her the results of more than six months' hard work. He was proud of what he had accomplished and wanted to impress her with his skill. Was that being childish? Perhaps tomorrow, on Saturday, he would bring her to the studio. But Jonas might send her off. Eleanor was not to know. No, she must not see the drawings.

He took one of the drawings to the window and studied it in the late-afternoon light. It was intended as a preliminary drawing of the
Mona Lisa.
Leonardo's brief notes described the clothes he wanted the model to wear and humorously rebuked her for failing to bring his favorite cheese. The ink, applied as black, was now the color of a soft brown
bistre,
faded to barely perceptible lines where a delicately fine stroke was laid to define the strands of hair. He was pleased with the way he rendered the veil, where the seeming transparency of lace laid over lace had been captured with great precision.

Giorgio insisted that Folio 4 appear to have been pulled from old bindings and so instructed Stiehl to create tiny notches at intervals where threads had once held the sheets together and were, in turn, sewn to a leather cover. It was a minor authenticating touch but importance would be attached to the fact the sheet was part of a bound volume, suggesting other pages existed. In the same sheet, Stiehl created a minuscule tear. Again, the detail seemed unimportant, yet Stiehl practiced with scraps of paper time after time before making the imperceptible rip in the actual page.

It all took precision, patience, and, not the least, professional hands.

Folio 9 was to have straight edges except for subtle defects at the bottom. Eleanor's notes had mentioned—and Giorgio concurred—that a straight edge was rare, that handmade papers of the period were imprecise,
not standard in thickness or size, and were often marred by imperfections.

Giorgio also wanted to show stains, probably those of carelessly spilled drops of wine. A fragment of a fly's wing was impressed onto the verso, and several tiny holes were drilled as evidence a worm happened on the paper at about the time, so Giorgio conjectured, Napoleon was claiming works of art in the name of France. Minute creases and folds were made at the corners.

Distressing the pages was a plodding effort. It was important that the paper be made supple, as that, too, was a manifestation of age. Handmade paper stored under reasonably good conditions might have indefinite life, Eleanor reported. Many sheets she found had never been printed on. These were often the end papers in large books and ledgers. Some of the papers had rarely been touched, much less handled by an artist or writer. Stiehl wore thin cotton gloves when he was drawing or writing, but at times he wanted his skin oils to soften the paper.

The spectrographic analysis of the papers, chalk, and ink compared favorably to the results Eleanor obtained on the samples from the sheet Tony had taken from the Royal Library. Her detailed report ran to sixty pages and described each of nineteen tests, including certified copies of the methodology and results from the laboratory at the University of Pisa. Eleanor included results of a new process that tested for the molecular migration or absorption of ink on paper. In old documents the ink gradually dried and set into the paper. Recently applied ink, and even inks as authentic as Eleanor had produced, would give off a telltale flaking. Eleanor had designed a way to eliminate flaking. The samples Stiehl prepared had been processed and were now under evaluation at the university.

During dinner, from which Giorgio was absent, Jonas reported on their progress. “Curtis has been more productive than I thought possible. I've made arrangements to take the first of the reproductions to Windsor. All of us, and that particularly includes you, Eleanor, can be very proud of our accomplishments.”

Eleanor felt uncomfortable and, like Stiehl, did not respond to Jonas's enthusiasm. Missing was the warmth of that first sparkling evening when Jonas had orchestrated a lively dinner party. Now the only sounds were the clicking of knives and forks.

Eleanor finally broke through. “I might still be stranded near the Linate Airport if one of Tony's countrymen hadn't saved me.” Her experience
seemed hardly worth retelling but it interrupted Jonas's monologue.

“What was that about?” Tony asked.

She gamely related how her engine had failed and how a gallant Englishman had come off the road to help. “He found the trouble right away... all with a bandaged hand I thought was useless. Then he followed me as far as the Villa d'Este in case I broke down again.”

“Describe him,” Tony asked warily.

“Oh, I'd say average height . . . mustache . . . mid-forties perhaps.”

“Wore glasses?” Tony asked again.

“Funny, I don't remember.”

“Lucky for you he could make repairs with one hand,” Jonas chimed in.

“Apparently something simple,” Eleanor replied. “A pinched fuel line? Does that sound right?”

“Which hand was bandaged?” Jonas was too far away to notice the concern in Tony's eyes.

“I don't think I looked that carefully.” She put both hands up, then waved one. “This one, I suppose.” She continued holding up her right hand.

“Hardly matters.” Jonas reached to pat Eleanor's arm. “You were saved and you're here . . . safe and beautiful as ever.” He glanced at the others. “Let's have coffee and brandy in the solarium.”

The informality of the new surroundings proved no more relaxing. Jonas repeated his pleasure at having reached the point when he could present the results of their work to the Royal Librarian. Eleanor sipped her coffee, then abruptly rose and went to the door leading to the patio. “I'm going for some air, then to bed. Please don't think I'm rude, but I'm very tired.”

“I'll join you,” Stiehl said. He opened the door and followed her.

Tony watched them leave. When they reached the outer enclosure, he turned to Jonas. “New trouble. Eleanor's savior was no casual tourist. She described the damned police superintendent who was snooping about in the library.”

“How could that be possible?” Jonas's voice turned shrill.

“The description fits . . . I did in his hand. And isn't it a quaint coincidence that his car was stuck tight on her ass when she pulled off the highway?”

“That's improbable. How could he know that on this day and at that
hour Eleanor Shepard would be on the highway outside of Milan with engine trouble?”

“I can't say
how
he did it but he did. In some way he learned she was in Italy, then in Florence, and then—”

“It's three o'clock in New York.” Jonas lifted the phone and commanded the operator to speed a call through to his office. The connection cleared quickly and he asked for Edna Braymore.

“I want you to get the logs for all visitors to the gallery for the past two weeks. Read the names and notes that were taken for each.” Jonas drained the sweet Mantonico, then motioned for Tony to refill his glass.

Edna Braymore began reading the list of daily visitors. She reached Thursday, September 28. Two visitors. Neither name prompted a reaction from Jonas.

“Friday, September 29. A busy day with two sales,” she reported. “A Houston dealer named Karle bought the Felix Ziem for eighty-six thousand. Then a Mr. Goldensen and Geoffrey—”

“Wait! Goldensen. Why was he in the gallery?”

“He had come to pick up books for Miss Shepard. I assumed you knew him. I remember how we had a terrible time locating the books—”

“Who else on that day?”

“Geoffrey Beal, a London dealer. He was very complimentary about the exhibit, but was interested only in buying the photographs we'd put up to fill the empty space created when the Ziem was sold.”

“Pull the videotape and give me a description of Beal.”

“That will take time, Mr. Kalem.”

“Of course it will. I'll wait, it's very important.”

The phone was cordless and Jonas walked a few steps onto the patio. Eleanor and Stiehl were silhouetted against a violet sky. “Put the PM on them and patch into the recorder. I want everything they're saying on tape.”

The PM was a parabolic microphone, a disk some thirty inches in diameter with a highly sensitive microphone at its center. Tony powered the unit, then slipped a short-range transmitter over his shoulder and went out to a position approximately a hundred feet from Eleanor and Stiehl. He listened through earphones to capture a clear signal.

“I'm sorry it's taking so long, Mr. Kalem. I'm in the control room and watching that day's tape on the screen. We've run it ahead to when Mr. Beal was in the gallery. Yes, there he is . . . he's wearing a tweed jacket and he has a mustache. I can't see his face too clearly. . . . He seems to be
holding a small radio—no, it's a tape recorder. His right hand is bandaged. He's by the photographs of the lake scenes. . . . He's talking into the recorder.”

“I want you to pay close attention. Rewind the tape to when Goldensen and Beal were together. Listen to their conversation and tell me if Goldensen refers to Miss Shepard by name and says he's meeting her in Florence.” Jonas returned to his console, dialed up the conversation between Eleanor and Stiehl, and heard Eleanor talking about lights on the lake. Edna Braymore was back on the line.

“Yes, Mr. Kalem. He mentioned both Miss Shepard and the fact he would see her in Florence.”