The Color of Night

CHAPTER 44

The rain hammered down on the car in the darkness of Harley Mews. Claude Corsier sat behind the steering wheel of his rental car and looked at Skerlic. The way the Serb’s hair was plastered to his forehead reminded Corsier of a dead dog he had once seen in the rain. Skerlic’s face was wet, and his raincoat crackled as it worked against the leather seats. He smelled rancid, of cigarettes and sweat.

Corsier looked over into the rear seat. The cumbersome picture frames were wrapped in plastic bubble-wrap. He cringed to see the rain droplets on the plastic, the dry forgeries barely visible through the thick layers of clear wrapping.

“You mounted them as I instructed?” Corsier asked, worried.

“Exactly as you said.”

“They weren’t damaged? Even a scratch?”

“I’ll keep the radio equipment with me,” Skerlic said, again ignoring Corsier’s fretting. “Give them to the dealer, work out a time for Schrade to come look at them. Contact me. Then we can work out the rest of it.”

“Okay.” Corsier couldn’t take his eyes off the pictures.

“The moment you put them in the agent’s possession, I want to be in the hotel,” Skerlic said.

Corsier had worried about that. He could not imagine how this odoriferous and coarse creature could stay in the Connaught even for two days without attracting more attention than anyone would want, even if they weren’t planning an assassination.

“Is there a problem with the rooms?” Skerlic asked, his glistening forehead wrinkling in suspicion at Corsier’s silence. Water beaded on his upper lip.

“No… no, I’ve already reserved the suite. It’s ready… You know, collectors, especially someone who is presented with a discovery such as this, will examine the frames closely. Curiosity. Everything about these drawings, even the frame in which they are set, will receive careful scrutiny.”

“Yes, we thought so.” Skerlic nodded quickly. “The job is very well hidden. As a matter of fact, after some concern, we decided to laminate the back of the frame, the part under the paper. We stained it with tea. The paper, too. Damp stain. He would actually have to lift off a rather good layer of laminate-which looks like solid wood-to discover the explosives and the microphones. He would have to take tools to it. It would not be easy.”

Corsier felt a little better.

“But,” Skerlic added, “you must not leave them with him the whole time. He will prowl. He will prod at it. I agree about the curiosity.”

“I won’t leave it,” Corsier said, “but I will have to let him see the drawings, and give him time to peruse them, before he will agree to call Schrade. And, of course, he will have to have them the day before Schrade arrives. Twenty-four hours.”

“That is not a problem. The frames will stand up to that.”

“How… uh, how stable…?” Corsier glanced over into the rear seat again.

“You have to have the electronics.”

“And how easy is it to detonate?”

“Turn a switch. Push a button.”

Corsier nodded. It occurred to him that the pictures were facing out, now, in the rear seat. He made a note to turn them the other way as soon as he got around the corner out of Skerlic’s sight.

“Okay,” Corsier said, turning back to the Serb. “Then that’s it. I will call you about the hotel, about the date.”

“You, of course, will be with me,” Skerlic reminded him. “You have to identify the voice. Once you do that, then it will be up to me to pick the right moment.”

“Then that is that,” Corsier said.

“Yes,” Skerlic said. He was studying Corsier. “Okay.”

He turned quickly, his raincoat creaking loudly against the seats, and opened the car door and got out. The sound of rain swelled, and then the car door slammed. The Serb ran around in front of the car and ducked into the vine-covered doorway.

Corsier started the car and eased around the corner of the mews. He stopped and reached into the back and turned the two pictures facing away from him. God. He released the brake and drove out of the mews.

He drove through the rain with single-minded preoccupation until he arrived at a large house on a small street in South Kensington. He stopped at the curb, cut the motor, and looked at the white Georgian facade elevated several steps above the street and flanked by two great beech trees, whose broad leaves were shedding a thousand steady streamlets onto the stone-paved front garden. The windows of the lower floor glowed cheerily in the gloomy darkness, and Corsier could see someone moving about on the other side of the rain-spattered windows. No London residence ever looked cozier.

He got out of the car, locked it, and went to the door and rang the shiny black bell. It was opened immediately, and Corsier was let into a small foyer and then into the front room he had seen from the street. A tall, thin man was waiting for him.

“Ah, Claude, you’ve grown whiskers,” the man said, reaching out to shake Corsier’s hand.

Cory Fain was six and a half feet tall, with narrow shoulders, a long face with deep-set eyes, bushy eyebrows, a hawk nose, and a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache. He was a handsome man in a severe kind of way, with a distinguished bearing and a manner of moving and speaking that conveyed a genuine kindness of character. He was, and had been for the twenty-six years Corsier had known him, an actor, though he had never appeared an hour on a stage or a minute in front of a camera. He was completely unknown in the world of actors and directors, but he enjoyed a fame of another kind in a much smaller arena, where obscurity was held in far greater esteem than celebrity.

They sat in comfortably worn armchairs in slight need of cleaning and exchanged a few minutes of polite conversation, each carefully taking the other’s measure to make sure there had been no dramatic changes in profession or position or loyalties.

Corsier paused and asked, “Cory, do you still have an office?”

Fain nodded. “Several, actually. Whatever suits.”

“I find myself in need of a barrister.”

Fain listened carefully with sober concern, as if Corsier were consulting, well, a barrister.

“This barrister represents a client who is selling several pieces of art anonymously, ‘the Property of a Gentleman.’ Normally, this is not a problem in the art world, as you may remember. This time, however, I suspect that the buyer will want to verify the identity of the seller. Just to make sure that someone other, namely myself, is not behind the sale.”

Fain understood.

“Though you would be representing the gentleman in question, when pushed for an identity-I suspect the buyer will not buy unless he ‘knows’ that I am not behind the sale-you will be forced to reveal that the seller is, in fact, a woman, not a man. You know her personally, have been representing her family for twenty years or more, and you most certainly will not reveal her identity. Damn the sale. These are discreet people. The tradition of anonymity in art dealings is a long tradition and a tradition you and the lady in question take seriously and honor.”

“I see,” Fain said. “Exactly.”

“Along those lines,” Corsier said, “this buyer knows as well as we do that none of this can be ascertained without a reasonable doubt, but what he will be doing is sending a representative to get a feel for the authenticity of the situation. To assess the genuineness of the enterprise.”

“Yes,” Fain said.

“I would think,” Corsier went on, “that the whole exchange would take less than an hour, but it has to be convincing. You’ll need to read the reaction. They must be convinced. I would think that an adamant refusal at first, followed by the revelation that the seller is a lady rather than a gentleman, followed by a grudging capitulation, would do the job. And, of course, the agreement to draw up any legal documents required.”

“Of course.”

“Do you think this could be of interest to you?”

Fain studied the pattern in the rug for a moment, his bushy, brooding eyebrows obscuring the exact direction of his gaze. He looked up. “Is this government related?”

“No.”

“Ah, private.”

“Yes.”

“Well, a barrister… that’s a serious role, a criminal offense if this isn’t government related.”

“I understand.”

“Expensive.”

Corsier did not comment.

“Because… well, you know.”

“I do.”

Cory Fain brooded on the carpet design a little longer. “Would I be expected to produce the woman?” he asked.

“The buyer, or more probably his representative, has to be convinced, so whatever it takes…”

Fain raised his head slowly, looking at Corsier down the bridge of his nose. “I’ll give you an estimate,” he said at last. “Then you give me the details, your exact expectations. Then I’ll give you a specific price. Then you decide.”

“Very well,” Corsier said.

They sat in the cozy front room of Fain’s home and talked for another hour. Outside, the rain continued to drench the beeches, whose leaves spilled onto the old paving stones countless rivulets that disappeared into their aging joints.