The Color of Night

CHAPTER 47

When Strand woke to the gray morning light, his limbs were leaden, his mind unrested. He had awakened repeatedly during the night and had lain awake, staring at the luminous London night sky. He had worried about everything all at once, each concern leading into the next one, forming a long chain of solicitude. He had resolved nothing.

Outside the bay window the rain had stopped, but the day was thick with mist. He looked at Mara. She was sleeping on her stomach, the covers pulled down to her hips, her long hair fanned out across her bare skin in a filigree of black.

Carefully laying back the covers, he got up stiffly from the bed. He picked up the two towels and walked out of the room, past the kitchen to the next room, where Mara had put their clothes in a closet. He dressed and went into the bathroom and washed up, deciding not to shave just then. Then he went into the kitchen and started the coffee.

Folding his arms, he leaned against the countertop and watched the nut brown coffee dribbling into the glass pot. The town house was quiet, but in an odd auditory deceit its empty rooms seemed to echo the silence.

“How much do you think you slept?” Mara was in the doorway, still in her underwear, holding her dress.

“Did I keep you awake?”

“You helped, but I managed to be restless all on my own. I’m going to bathe. There are pastries in that paper bag over there,” she said, and went into the bathroom to shower.

Strand walked back into the main room and got the two tea mugs off the floor, then took them back to the kitchen and washed them. When the coffee was finished, he poured a cup and went over to the scaffold table. He sat on a paint bucket in front of the computer and clicked it on. There was e-mail from Howard.

HS… FYI

The new arrangements are acceptable. And firm. No changes. He said: “Impress upon him the gravity of the consequences that will quickly follow should he fail to make this meeting.”

There it is. Take it seriously.

BH

Strand stared at the monitor: “the gravity of the consequences that will quickly follow.” He had no doubt in his mind that the grave consequences were his ineluctable future regardless of whether or not Schrade got his money. If Schrade thought for a second that Strand believed he could avoid Schrade’s wrath by handing over the money, there was no end to the self-delusion that plagued all of them. Schrade’s menace blurred all other influences affecting Strand’s motivation.

He flipped off the switch and stood up.

It was difficult not to feel paralyzed by the knowledge that Schrade’s intelligence apparatus was as good as those of most governments. On the other hand, Strand had been in intelligence work all his life, and he knew that no intelligence organization was ever as good as it needed to be. He reminded himself of all the times he had not been able to find his targets, of all the times they had evaporated when he was most sure of their whereabouts, of all the times they had maneuvered themselves away from his agents and disappeared into an oblivion from which they had never again returned.

Remembering these old failures brought back into realistic focus the truth of Schrade’s reach, a truth that was all too easily thrown out of focus by the swelling fear that one felt in the face of his rampant violence. No one, however, not even Wolfram Schrade, was omniscient. If you had enough money and reasonable good luck, you could evade the surveillance of even the best organizations. Sometimes for a long time. Strand’s professional experience gave him an edge. He just had to keep reminding himself.

He took a sip of coffee. It was time to start working out the procedures that would propel them into Schrade’s orbit.

“You’re going to have to take the drawings to Carrington Knight yourself,” Strand said. They were sitting on paint buckets, facing each other from either side of the makeshift table. Mara had finished bathing and was still wearing a white dressing gown, her wet hair wrapped tightly in a towel. Her coffee mug sat next to her half-eaten croissant.

“I obviously can’t do it,” he said. “You can use the identity on one of the passports I got from Darras. Carrington will be thrilled with the collection. And with you.”

Mara flicked her eyes at him.

“There won’t be any problem with Carrington,” Strand added. “He can smell the real thing all the way across Mayfair.”

“And what’s the odor of the real thing?”

“Carrington knows. It’s as distinctive as a pheromone to him.”

“A pheromone.”

“Do you have any problem with this?” Strand asked. “We could think of other ways to do it. But this would be best.”

“No, I don’t think I have any problem. It’s just a straightforward offer to sell, right?”

“More or less.”

“Oh. Well, let’s talk about that.”

“There will be two difficulties,” Strand said. “One, to make sure that the offer for the drawings will be made first to Wolf Schrade. We want Schrade to come to London to look at them. Period. Other collectors would quickly buy them as a lot. We don’t want Carrington to do the easy thing and offer them to the first available client. The second thing: You have to convince Carrington to keep you, the seller, anonymous. If he makes the mistake of describing you to Schrade…”

Mara nodded. “Okay.” She thought a moment. “Maybe we can resolve both of these problems by the way I present myself to Knight.” She stared off toward the bay window, toward the ashen light. Then she turned back to him. “Let me think about it. We don’t have to decide right this moment, do we?”

“No, of course not. But there’s another problem. All your documentation for the provenance of the drawings was still at my place.”

“Oh, God.”

“Yeah. I’ve got to come up with some forgeries to replace them. Carrington’s not going to offer these to Schrade without documentation. I would’ve had to do this anyway, even if they hadn’t been destroyed, because we’ve got to make sure the paper trail is obscure enough that Carrington can’t easily confirm any of it. If the time is short, if the sale is dependent on a quick negotiation, he’ll forgo his own provenance check and just rely on the documentation rather than risk losing the sale. Also, this way it won’t lead back to you. We have to come up with a new owner for the drawings.”

Mara sipped her coffee. Then she put down the mug and stood and took the towel off her head. Bending over, she fluffed her hair with the towel, then quickly straightened up, flinging her hair back out of her face. Preoccupied, she walked toward the bed, folding the damp towel, matching the corners precisely.

Strand said nothing. She had a lot to think about. He had no doubt she could play the role, run the scam. After all, she had already proven her abilities in that regard. Nearly their entire relationship had revolved around a scenario in which she had expertly demonstrated how capable she was at deception. Her thoughtfulness now was interesting. He guessed that after Mara had been pressed into service by the FIS, she’d been surprised to discover that she had a considerable ability-and liking-for undercover work. He also guessed that, in her innermost being, she must be confused by this. Maybe she had been more insightful than either of them had realized last night when she’d said that this was a strange business and they were strange people to be in it.

She came back to the scaffolding table and sat down. “We have a lot to do and not much time,” she said.

“That’s right.”

“Can you get the forgeries done, if we come up with the right background? I mean, do you have time?”

“Yes. I know the people here in London who can do it. If I pay enough money, I can probably get it done in two days.”

“Okay, then I have some ideas for the woman who’s going to see Carrington Knight. If we get that settled this morning, can you get started?”

Strand nodded.

“I’ll go to Paris for the drawings,” she said. “Is that what you’re thinking?”

“It is, yes.”

“There’s not going to be a problem with Leon Gautier releasing them to me?”

“None.”

“Okay. While I’m there I’m going to have to buy some clothes. I don’t have the kind of clothes in my suitcase that this woman wears.”

“There’s another consideration that we might as well address right now,” Strand said. “We want all of this to happen as quickly as possible. I think we ought to put that kind of constraint on the sale if we can, press Carrington to make this happen fast. The point being to get Schrade to London immediately.”

“Knight’s going to want to keep the drawings.”

“That’s right. I would too in his situation. Any dealer at this level would. He’s going to have to examine them closely. He can’t offer them to Schrade-arguably his best client-on a cursory examination. They’ll be safe there. He has the best facilities.”

Mara nodded.

“But,” Strand went on, “we don’t want to leave the forged documentation with him. We can’t risk the possibility that he’ll discover they’re not authentic.”

“Then why have the forgeries worked up?”

“If he asks to see them, you’d better have them. You just can’t leave them with him.” He paused. “You’ll have to play it by ear. See what feels right and play it out.”