The Vintage Caper

Sixteen

They decided to forgo the pleasures of the sushi bar, which turned out to be a dim, crowded room on a side street, for sunshine and a sandwich on the terrace of La Samaritaine, across the road from the port. By the time a carafe of rosé and two jambons beurres had arrived, they were beginning to feel warm again after their subterranean morning among the bottles.

It had been an interesting visit. Vial, although rather too much of the showman for Sophie’s conservative, Bordeaux-bred taste, ran a first-class cellar, beautifully organized and cobweb-free. And he couldn’t have been more helpful. But, as they agreed, he had shown signs of being a little too helpful. Like an oversolicitous waiter, he had never left them alone. He’d been looking over their shoulders, going into raptures about this vineyard or that vintage, and generally being a well-intentioned distraction. It was a problem that needed to be dealt with. Identifying five hundred bottles among many thousands could take several hours and considerable concentration. An afternoon might do it, and they had the map to guide them. Even so, it wouldn’t be easy, and Vial’s hovering presence wouldn’t help.

Sam poured two glasses of wine. A deeper color than the pale rosés that were currently fashionable in L.A., it almost matched the pink of the smoked ham in his sandwich. He raised his glass to the sun, took a sip, and held the wine in his mouth. A taste of summer. After a morning spent mingling with the wine aristocracy, it made a refreshing change to drink something simple, humble, but good-no long pedigree, no historic vintage, no complications, and no wildly inflated price tag. No wonder it was the favorite tipple of Provence.

“You know what?” he said. “When we go back this afternoon, it might be a good idea if we separated. One of us can stay on the white side, the other can check the reds. Vial can’t be in two places at once. What do you think?”

Sophie thought for a moment, then nodded. “Let me take the whites.”

“Sure. Any particular reason?”

“Most of the wines you’re looking for are red. You don’t want Vial watching while you make notes or take pictures. Another thing-I’m from Bordeaux. I know about reds. Champagne and white Burgundy, not so much. So it is normal for me to ask Vial to explain them. He likes to talk, to show what he knows. You saw that this morning. I’m sure I only need to give him this much encouragement”-she held up her finger and thumb, a fraction of an inch apart-“and he’ll talk to me all afternoon. C’est certain.” She was smiling as she looked at Sam over the top of her sunglasses.

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“In one way, very much. It’s a lot more amusing than insurance. Just like a game.” She shrugged. “But I’m not sure I want us to win. Do you know what I mean?”

Sam knew exactly. Two or three times in the past, he’d been involved in cases where, for one reason or another, his sympathies lay with the criminal. “Yes, I know what you mean. Reboul and Vial seem like good guys.” He grinned. “But then, good guys can be crooks. Look at me. I used to be one.”

Sophie took in this revelation with no more surprise than if Sam had just told her he once played pro football. He was, after all, American, and anything was possible. “Do you miss it-being a crook?”

“Sometimes.” Sam sat back in his chair and watched an old man as he shuffled slowly across the road, threatening the oncoming traffic with his stick. “When you’re on a caper, you’re very aware of being alive. Intensely alive. I guess that’s the risk, and the adrenaline. And I used to love the planning side of it, putting together a nice clean job: organized down to the last second, properly carried out. No guns, no violence, nobody gets hurt.”

“Except the poor insurance company.”

“Yeah, right. Show me a poor insurance company, and I’ll show you proof that Santa Claus is alive and well and living in Florida. But I get what you’re saying. There’s always a victim.” He thought of Danny Roth, but failed to summon up even a twinge of pity.

Sophie called Philippe to bring him up to date, and then they lingered over the last of the wine and some ferocious jolts of coffee until it was time to head back to the Palais du Pharo. This was it. By the end of the afternoon, they would know that they’d either been wasting their time or that they might be on their way to solving a classic long-distance crime, robbery sans frontières. Not only neat, but endearingly old-fashioned, a throwback to simpler times, before theft was conducted using the marvels of electronics or the twisted talents of lawyers. As they stood in the sun waiting for a taxi, Sam checked his pockets: map, camera, spare battery, notebook, and the list of stolen wines. Five minutes to three. They were all set.

“And how was the sushi?” Vial didn’t wait for an answer to his question before bustling them into his office. “I have arranged to liberate myself for the entire afternoon. Je suis à vous.” He cocked his head expectantly, and Sophie saw her chance.

“There’s so much to see,” she said, “so very much to see, that we thought it would be best if we each looked at half the cellar. I chose the whites, but with one condition.” She gazed at Vial, and for one long moment Sam thought she was actually going to flutter her eyelashes. “Coming from Bordeaux, I am quite familiar with the great reds. However, the great champagnes, the great whites of Burgundy and Sauternes-although I know them by name, of course-are, how can I say, a gap in my education. And so I was hoping that you would…” Her voice tailed off, and her eyes remained fixed on Vial, who instinctively straightened his shoulders and raised a hand to stroke his moustache.

“My dear madame, nothing gives me greater pleasure than sharing what few scraps of knowledge I have with a fellow enthusiast.” He started to move toward the door, a man with a mission. “I propose that we start with champagne and end with Yquem, as one would at a civilized dinner.” Sam had the feeling that this was a line Professor Vial had used on his guided tours many times before.

They were passing through the doorway when Vial stopped suddenly, and turned to Sam. “But I forget my other guest. You will not be lonely? You will not lose yourself? You are sure?”

“I have your excellent map, I’ll have some pretty good bottles to keep me company, and I don’t mind working alone. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”

Vial needed no persuading. “Bon. Now, dear madame, if you’d like to follow me, we will plunge at once into the champagnes. You will have heard, I’m sure, that champagne was invented by the monk Dom Pérignon, who said when he tasted his divine invention, ‘I am drinking stars.’ Never has there been a better description. He lived to a good age-seventy-seven, I believe, which is a testament to the medicinal qualities of champagne. What is less well known is the unusual relationship of the good monk with one of the neighboring nuns…” As he led Sophie away, his voice rose and fell, but never ceased. She had been right: Vial loved to talk, and he loved a pretty audience.

In the end, Sam’s search was accomplished with far less time and difficulty than he had anticipated. The map of the cellar, an enormously helpful shortcut, led him first to the Rue des Merveilles: ’53 Lafite, ’61 Latour, ’83 Margaux. All these vintages were present in impressive quantities, the years marked in chalk on the small slate tickets that identified each bin, or storage compartment. Vial was safely out of the way; Sam could barely hear his voice in the distance. He took a bottle of Lafite from its resting place and laid it carefully on the gravel floor, label uppermost. Crouching over the bottle, he photographed it, checking the shot to make sure that both name and date were legible before he replaced the bottle. He did the same again with the Latour, and again with the Margaux. So far so good.

He consulted the map, looking for the Rue Saint-Emilion. There it was, next to Pomerol, reflecting the actual geography of the vineyards. There was plenty of the ’82 Figeac. Indeed, there was plenty of everything, wherever he looked, and he wondered how anyone could possibly drink it all before departing for the great cellar in the sky. Perhaps there were some thirsty little Rebouls lining up to inherit. Sam hoped so. It would be sad to see this magnificent collection broken up and consigned to the auction rooms.

He moved next door, to the Pomerols. One of the lower bins was devoted to magnums of the 1970 Château Pétrus. He counted them: twenty, a relatively modest number by Reboul standards. Using both hands, one on the capsule and one on the base, Sam took a magnum and laid it on the gravel, admiring as he did so the ornate design that occupied the top of the label. The artist had among the vine tendrils nestled a small portrait of Saint Peter with his key-the key to heaven. Or, as some like to say, the key to the château’s cellar.

The photograph taken, Sam returned the magnum to its bin with some reluctance; mixed, however, with satisfaction. He had found-and had proof of finding-all the reds on his list. The one wine that remained was the ’75 Yquem, which would be on the opposite side of the cellar.

He made his way back to the central boulevard and tried to establish how far Sophie and Vial had traveled from their first stop among the champagnes. As far as he could judge from the volume of Vial’s dissertation, they were still somewhere in the rolling hills between Corton-Charlemagne and Chablis. Yquem would be last on the list. He had time.

Feeling an irrational sense that he was trespassing, he crossed over to the Impasse d’Yquem, the final section of the cellar before Vial’s office.

As Sam had discovered when doing his homework, Château d’Yquem is often described as the world’s most expensive wine. During its long history, it has attracted admirers as varied as Thomas Jefferson, Napoléon, the czars of Russia, Stalin, Ronald Reagan, and Prince Charles, all of them drawn to the wine’s luminous golden complexion and its luscious, creamy taste. Fewer than eighty thousand bottles are produced each year, no more than a fraction of a drop of Bordeaux’s annual production. And it keeps well. A bottle of the 1784 vintage was opened, drunk, and pronounced by a group of fortunate connoisseurs to be perfect two hundred years later.

Reboul’s collection of Yquems was perhaps the most impressive part of a dazzling cellar-not for its size, which was no more than a hundred bottles, but for the range of vintages. Some of the great years were there, starting with the 1937 and moving on to the ’45, the ’49, the ’55, and the ’67 before ending with the youngest, the ’75. Sam selected a bottle, photographed it, and had just put it back with the other ’75s when he froze. Vial’s voice sounded uncomfortably close.

“Chablis, of course, is one of the best-known white wines in the world. But there is Chablis and there is Chablis.”

“Ah bon?” said Sophie, who managed to imbue those two syllables with fascinated surprise.

“Mais oui. Now what we have here are the best, the grands crus, the wines that come from the hills to the north of the town. For instance, this Les Preuses.” Sam could hear the sound of a bottle being slid out of its bin. “In the glass, this has the most ravishing color, gold, with perhaps the most delicate soupçon of green.” The bottle slid back into its bin. Another was taken out. Holding his breath, Sam tiptoed out of the Impasse d’Yquem and returned to the other side of the boulevard, to the safety of the reds. And there he was discovered by Vial and Sophie fifteen minutes later, studying the bins of Pomerol, camera back in his pocket and notebook in hand.

“Aha!” said Vial. “There he is, your colleague, hard at work. A busy bee, non? I hope he has found something to interest him?”

“Fabulous,” said Sam. “Absolutely fabulous. A quite extraordinary collection.”

“But you should see the whites,” said Sophie. “The Burgundies! The Yquem! Monsieur Vial has given me the education of a lifetime.”

Vial preened.

“I can’t wait to see them,” said Sam. “But I feel we’ve taken up too much of Monsieur Vial’s time already today. Can I ask a big favor? Can we come back?”

“Of course.” Vial fished in his pocket and brought out a card. “Here is the number of my portable. Oh, I remind myself-Monsieur Reboul called from Corsica to make sure you have everything you need.”

After a prolonged exchange of effusive thanks from Sophie and Sam and charmingly modest disclaimers from Vial, they left the twilight of the cellar and emerged blinking into the late-afternoon sun.

They said little on their way back to the hotel, both digesting what they had seen during the past two and a half hours.

“Philippe said he’d meet us here,” Sophie said as they came to the hotel driveway. “He can’t wait to hear what we found. He says it’s like a roman policier-you know, a police story.”

Sam stopped abruptly. “Does he have any contacts with the police down here? Solid contacts? Cops he meets for a drink now and then?”

“I’m sure. They all do, the journalists. Look, he’s here already.” She pointed to Philippe’s black scooter, half-hidden in the shrubbery that lined the drive. “Why do you ask about the police?”

“It’s just a thought, but I’m beginning to feel we may need them.”