The Color of Night

CHAPTER 39

By midafternoon of the next day they had rented a new car and were on the road again. Picking up Autoroute A1 outside Paris, they drove three hours to Calais, where they caught one of the numerous Sealink ferries to Dover.

They could have taken the Channel tunnel train from Paris and been in London in just over three hours, but Strand had grown increasingly edgy about evading Schrade’s intelligence. Now that he knew Schrade had probably had continuous access to their whereabouts through Howard, via Mara’s signal pen, up until they left Bellagio, his determination to remain hidden from all of them was reinvigorated, and his anxiety at the absence of any signs of surveillance whatsoever was heightened. The Channel tunnel train was too popular and its traffic too easy to monitor, whereas the multiplicity of ferry routes and timetables was more in their favor.

The drive from Paris had been quiet. Once they had driven onto the ferry and started across the Channel, Strand decided to broach with Mara the subject of his plans.

They made their way up the interior stairs of the ferry and walked out on the second-level observation deck on the stern. The coast of Calais was already drifting away, and the seagulls that would follow the ferry most of the way across the Channel were shrilling and hovering above them, diving now and then into the foam and the wake created by the huge propellers. The breeze was warm and salty, but there was a feel of hopefulness in it, too.

They leaned their forearms on the railing and stood there a moment, feeling the throb of the powerful engines and the gentle buoyancy of the ferry.

“I’m going to have to talk to Schrade,” he said. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Mara’s head jerk around. She was staring at him from behind her sunglasses. “But I want to catch him off guard, and that’s important. I need to meet with him in a way that the meeting will be a surprise. I don’t want him to know he’s going to encounter me until the last moment. There’s a dealer in London who’s been selling art to Schrade for nearly fifteen years. Schrade trusts him. When Carrington Knight says he’s got something worth seeing, Schrade listens. The thing of it is, if you want to buy art from Carrington, you have to go to Carrington. He rarely buys, and never sells, except in his own gallery.”

Strand spent several minutes telling Mara about Knight’s peculiar personality and habits, making it clear how he worked with his clients and why it was important to have him making the offer to Schrade. It would mean that Schrade would come to a certain place at a certain time to see what Knight had to offer.

“So it can be done,” Strand said. “Schrade can be summoned.” He watched a seagull plunge into the ferry’s foamy wake and come up again with something churned up by the propellers. Three or four other gulls followed him into the water, with varying success.

“What I need, however, is something to offer.”

“You mean art,” Mara said.

“I had pieces he would’ve wanted, but they’re gone now. Besides, he would have known where they were coming from.”

Mara was staring straight out across the water. The ferry was fast, and France was rapidly becoming the horizon rather than the coast, the haze from the Channel turning it into a slate blue ribbon.

“Maillol. Klimt. Delvaux. Ingres. Balthus,” she said.

“They are your drawings?”

“Yes, they’re mine.”

“What about Howard?”

“He doesn’t know anything about them. I mean, the specifics of the art. I ‘had art,’ that’s all he knew.”

Strand waited.

“Would I lose them?” she asked.

“I can’t guarantee that you wouldn’t,” he said.

“I wasn’t asking for guarantees,” she said, not looking at him.

It seemed that in no time at all they were disembarking at Dover, and by early evening they had made their way into London and checked into another small hotel, this one in Mayfair, not far from Berkeley Square.

The evening was mild. Strollers drifted through the small streets of Mayfair, and the large houses that were usually closed against the chill were thrown open to summer’s tranquility. Occasionally, on a corner or in a mews, Strand and Mara came upon a pub so crowded that its patrons spilled out into the street, knots of young people sitting at wooden tables or simply standing in the street, nursing pint glasses of stout or lager or ale as they talked, laughing, smoking, their voices lingering in the evening air.

On the west side of Berkeley Square, they turned up Hill Street and continued to South Audley, where they ate a light dinner at a cafe before starting back to the hotel. On the way back Strand took them onto Mount Street, an elegant stretch of Georgian residences and smart shops, and headed toward the sedate Connaught Hotel. They paused at an occasional shop window to peer in a moment before moving on. Until now their conversation had, by tacit mutual avoidance, steered clear of the business at hand. It was almost as if they had agreed to pretend, for an hour, at least, that the harrowing events of the last few days hadn’t happened at all. It was Mara who brought them back to reality.

She looked at her watch. “When we get back to the hotel I’ll call the bank in Houston. They can arrange for the drawings to be shipped here.”

“Not here,” Strand said. “I know a dealer in Paris who will receive them for us. I’ll call him, make the arrangements. We can take the tunnel train to Paris to pick them up. There and back in half a day.”

“Do we have to offer all the drawings?”

“He’s more likely to come immediately to see a collection like this, rather than just one or two drawings. A collection, a jewel like this one, that comes on the market suddenly usually is sold quietly by a few well-placed telephone calls. The serious dealers and collectors know it will be sold quickly, never even come to the public’s attention. This will happen fast.”

“How do we handle the dealer?”

Strand noted the use of the plural pronoun.

Long afterward, in thinking about the whole complex affair again, as he would often do, Strand would be stunned anew at what had been decided between them that night. More precisely, he was stunned at his own behavior. Mara had decided to cast her lot with him, and she had done it calmly and deliberately. It was a decision of considerable courage. But what Strand had done in response to her commitment was far less admirable and unquestionably selfish: he did not try to talk her out of it.

“I need you to do something,” Strand said. “I need to get Bill Howard to London. I think he’s completely sold out to Schrade, keeping him abreast of everything that’s developing here. I’m guessing he’ll be a direct line to Schrade. I need you to e-mail him and tell him I want to talk. I’ll give you the details for arranging the meeting.”

“Tonight?”

“As soon as we get back to the hotel. It’s important that you make him believe that I have to have time to get to London. He’s got to believe we’re somewhere in Europe.”

“Why?”

“Axioms for countersurveillance.”

“Keep moving. Multiple identities, multiple addresses.”

“That’s what they’re going to be expecting us to do, and that’s what I want them to think we’re doing. The FIS and Schrade’s people are going to be all over the travel connections, air, train, rentals, buses. So we’re not going to travel. We’re going to become London residents. Tomorrow, first thing, I want you to go to the estate agents here in Mayfair and lease a town house. Six months, a year, two years, I don’t care. Stay in Mayfair. Keep it close to everything we’re doing. I want this to be all ‘wrong’ as far as intelligence expectations are concerned.”

Strand paused on the sidewalk across the street from the Connaught Hotel. The clean gray and black cars that seemed always to be waiting at the curb in front of the hotel and along the Mount Street side glinted in the dull glow of the street lamps, adding a luster of the modern to a famous old landmark that still maintained the staid and subdued manner of British propriety.

In front of the hotel was a triangular traffic island where Carlos Place forked and went in opposite directions onto Mount Street. The near side of the island was usually lined with black cabs quietly biding their time until a Connaught guest emerged from the old residence. There was a cluster of plane trees on the island as well as a few stone benches and, in its very center, a dark bronze statue of a nude woman in a shrugging, crouching posture.

On the other side of the island was a five-storied Victorian building of terraced row houses made of bright red orange brick and having bay window facades with white stone and wood trim. The front of the building swept in a gentle arc from Carlos Place to Mount Street.

“He lives there,” Strand said, lifting his chin toward the row houses. “Number Four.”

“You’re kidding.”

“No. A discreet brass plate beside the front door says ‘Carrington, Hartwell and Knight. Private Dealers in Fine Art.’”

“There’s a light,” Mara said. “Second floor.”

Strand took a few steps to get a better line of sight through the trees.

“That’s where he does most of his work,” he said. “There’s a large room with an ornately carved library table near the windows. Opposite that, there’s a walk-in vault with narrow vertical bays for storing canvases. The drawings are kept in stacked rows of shallow drawers. There are bookcases along the walls below which are cabinets with countertops about waist high. He uses the countertops to display his canvases and drawings. Where there are no bookcases, the walls are covered in crimson silk. There’s a sitting area furnished with rosewood and ebony antiques.”

They crossed Mount Street to the island and stood under the plane trees, looking up at Carlos Place, Number Four.

“The first floor,” Strand continued, leaning against one of the trees, “is a reception area. There’s a gallery to the right to exhibit drawings. Here the walls are done in indigo silk. Usually some small, first-rate sculpture scattered about. All the woodwork is mahogany. Down a short hall there’s a generous bathroom for clients. Marble. Linen washcloths. Complimentary flacons of cologne and perfume. There are little silver boxes with handmade tortoiseshell combs with a tissue band around them. Complimentary.”

“Good Lord,” Mara said.

“It’s intended to convey a sense of elegant wealth. A client understands that the very best art is traded here. They can expect to be treated like royalty-and to pay royal prices.” He went on with the description. “The stairs leading from this first floor to the second are wide and turn slowly back upon themselves. Mahogany banister and railing. A truly stunning Persian carpet covers the treads all the way up.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

“Carrington is going to play a very big role in our plans,” Strand said. “You need to know what he’s like, and what to expect from him. A young man usually stays at a desk in the foyer. He’s a sort of security person, doorman, factotum. He takes care of the electric lock on the door and monitors people who come in to browse around the downstairs gallery.”

“What does Knight look like?”

“He’s just shy of six feet. Stocky, a little puffy. His hair is prematurely gray, white really. He wears it longish, like an artiste. Very stylish. He likes to wear black clothes to offset his hair. Sometimes he wears thin black wire-rimmed eyeglasses.”

“Sounds foppish.”

“Yeah, it sounds that way, but he’s thoroughly masculine. Somehow it all balances out.”

“What about his education?”

“Oxbridge.”

“Really? What else about him?” She drew closer to him, putting her arm through his, lacing their fingers together.

“He understands Wolfram Schrade.”

“Understands him?”

“The only thing that fascinates Carrington more than the art that he buys and sells are the people from whom he buys it and the people to whom he sells it. He’s a collector of psychological minutiae.”

“What do you mean?”

“Carrington believes that people who buy art, who care enough about it to want to own it, are an anomaly in the general scheme of modern life. In today’s world, which so values speed and the quick result, the immediate feedback, the quick payback, the person who turns to art-something that requires a meditative discipline to create and to appreciate-is a rower against the tide. Everything modern militates against it.” Strand paused. “Nothing fascinates Carrington more than a rower against the tide.”

“Even if he’s Wolf Schrade.”

“It doesn’t have anything to do with morality. Besides, Carrington doesn’t know anything about Schrade’s criminal side. The connection is purely an artistic one. Carrington simply recognizes a fellow rower.”