12 Claridge’s

12 Claridge's

The first raindrops fell as they were strolling along Rotten Row. They took shelter in the café on the Serpentine Lido and

drank tea as the clouds blackened and the gentle shower turned to a downpour.

"Any other brilliant ideas?" asked Sarah.

"I'm sure there's a bright interval just around the corner."

"This is Britain, darling. There are no bright intervals at the moment. Only endless gloom." She held up her mobile phone.

"Have you seen the Telegraph this morning? Your old friend Samantha Cooke got quite the scoop."

Gabriel had read the story during the train ride from Paris. It stated that the treasurer of the Conservative Party, the wealthy

international businessman and investor Lord Michael Radcliff, had personally accepted a heavily laundered million-pound political

contribution from a pro-Kremlin Russian oligarch named Valentin Federov. An internal Party memorandum obtained by the Telegraph indicated that Prime Minister Hillary Edwards had been aware of the contribution. The Downing Street press secretary, however, had issued a swift and blistering denial of the allegation, declaring that Lord Radcliff was solely to blame for the egregious lapse in judgment.

"Do you think poor Hillary can survive?" asked Sarah.

"Not in her current condition. She's too weakened to fight off a challenge."

"But how could Lord Radcliff be so foolish as to accept a contribution from a Russian oligarch in the middle of the war in

Ukraine?"

"It's not the first time the Tories have accepted money from a dubious foreign source. Or a Russian source, for that matter.

Their fundraising apparatus has been a mess for some time."

"The entire Party is a mess. So is the country, I'm afraid."

"Don't worry, the worst is yet to come."

"So much for the new you," said Sarah.

They left the café at half past twelve and headed for Claridge's. Nicholas Lovegrove, in a dark suit and open-necked dress

shirt, occupied a green leather booth in the hotel's famed restaurant. He was contemplating the label of an excellent bottle

of Montrachet, to which he had already done significant damage.

The ma?tre d' showed Sarah and Gabriel to the table, and Lovegrove rose to greet them. He could not hide his disappointment

that he would not be lunching alone with one of the London art world's most alluring and mysterious women. Still, he was quite

obviously intrigued by Gabriel's presence.

"Allon," he blared, turning heads at a nearby table. "What an unexpected surprise."

They all three sat down and the waiter filled their glasses with the Montrachet. Lovegrove ordered another bottle, but Sarah

requested a Belvedere Bloody Mary as well.

"That's the spirit," said Lovegrove.

"Dinner with Oliver and Julian last night," she explained.

"I heard." Lovegrove turned to Gabriel and regarded him warily for a moment. "Shall we discuss the newest exhibit at the Tate Modern, or am I allowed to interrogate you at length about your rather remarkable career?"

"I'm more interested in yours, Nicky."

"I'm afraid the dealings of an art adviser are more classified than those of a professional spy. My clients demand absolute

discretion, and I've never betrayed one."

But Nicholas Lovegrove, one of the art world's most sought-after consultants, made demands of his clients as well, namely,

a percentage of all transactions, be they sales or acquisitions. In return, he vouched for the authenticity of the paintings

in question and, more often than not, their prospects for a profitable resale. He also served as a cutout between seller and

buyer, ensuring that neither knew the other's identity. And if he happened to be representing both parties to a sale, Lovegrove

could expect to double his commission. It was not uncommon for him to earn more than a million dollars on a single deal—or

eight figures if the piece was something stratospheric. It was, as the old jazz standard went, nice work if you could get

it.

"I have no interest in any of your clients," said Gabriel. "I'd just like to ask your opinion of a dealer."

"I've never met an honest one in my life." Lovegrove smiled at Sarah. "Present company excluded, of course. But what's this

scoundrel's name?"

"Edmond Ricard. His gallery is inside the Geneva—"

"I know where it is, Allon."

"You've been, I take it?"

Lovegrove was slow in offering a response. "What is the nature of this inquiry of yours?"

"That's a rather difficult question to answer, actually."

"Try."

"It involves a Picasso."

"A fine start. Please continue."

"A Picasso that belonged to a French businessman who was murdered in the Holocaust."

"A restitution case?"

"More or less."

"Which means there's more to the story."

Gabriel sighed. The negotiations had begun. "Name your price, Nicky."

"The Gentileschi."

"I'll do it for five percent of the hammer price."

"Three percent."

"Highway robbery."

"You would know."

"All right, Nicky, I will clean your Gentileschi for a lousy three percent of the final sale price, though I will insist on

reviewing all the paperwork to make certain you haven't fleeced me."

"My good fellow," muttered Lovegrove.

"In exchange, you will tell me everything you know about Galerie Edmond Ricard."

"Without divulging the identities of any of my clients."

"So stipulated."

"Or any paintings they may have purchased or sold through said gallery."

"Agreed."

"In that case," said Lovegrove, smiling broadly, "we have a deal."

The waiter placed the Bloody Mary in front of Sarah. She raised it a fraction of an inch in Gabriel's direction. "How shrewd

of you," she said, and drank.

***

The client had a posh double-barreled name that did not accurately reflect the circumstances of his birth. His personal fortune,

however, was princely and growing by the day. It was his wish to acquire an art collection that would confer instant sophistication

and thus grant him entrée into the upper levels of British and Continental society. With the esteemed Nicholas Lovegrove looking

over his shoulder, he filled his stately Belgravia mansion with a dazzling assortment of postwar and contemporary paintings—postwar

and contemporary being Lovegrove's strong suit. The price tag for the yearlong shopping spree was a mere one hundred million

pounds, ten million of which flowed directly into Lovegrove's pocket.

"What sort of work does your client do?"

"I refer you to the terms of our arrangement, Allon."

"Come on, Nicky. Show a little leg."

"Suffice to say, he knows little about the paintings hanging on his walls and even less about the wicked ways of the art world.

I chose the pieces for the collection and handled the negotiations. All the client did was write the checks."

Which was why it came as something of a surprise when the client, quite out of the blue, asked Lovegrove to accompany him

to Geneva to inspect a painting being offered for sale by Galerie Ricard.

"The artist?" asked Gabriel.

"Let's say for argument's sake that it was Rothko. And let us also say that after careful inspection of the canvas and the

provenance I had no qualms about its authenticity."

"Was Galerie Ricard the owner of this work?"

"Heavens no. Ricard calls himself a dealer, but in point of fact he's a glorified broker. A middleman, pure and simple. The

owner of record was a company called OOC Group, Limited."

"OOC? You're sure?"

Lovegrove nodded. "Evidently, OOC stands for Oil on Canvas. I assumed it was a shell company of some sort. They're all the

rage, you know."

"What was the asking price?"

"The equivalent of seventy-five million dollars."

"Seems a tad high."

"I thought so, too. But Ricard wouldn't budge and the client had his heart set on it, so he signed the sales agreement and

wired the money from his account at Barclays."

At which point Lovegrove received a second piece of unexpected news. It seemed his client had no interest in hanging the Rothko

in his Belgravia mansion. Instead, he wished to leave it in the Geneva Freeport in the care of Edmond Ricard.

"He controls a large portion of the Freeport's storage space. For a reasonable fee, he agreed to hold the painting for as

long as my client wished."

"Sounds to me as though your unsophisticated client was getting sophisticated financial advice from another source."

"The thought crossed my mind," said Lovegrove. "But I didn't question the decision at the time. Several of my clients store

paintings in that facility. It's perfectly legal."

"And your commission on the deal was a perfect seven and a half million."

"A substantial portion of which I handed over to His Majesty's Revenue and Customs."

A scant six months later, Lovegrove continued, he made a second visit to Galerie Ricard, this time with a client who was in

the market for a de Kooning.

"And guess what we saw prominently displayed?"

"The Rothko?"

Lovegrove nodded.

"You're sure it was your client's Rothko?"

"Oh yes. And it was being offered for sale."

"By whom?"

"I didn't ask."

Lovegrove did, however, raise the matter with his client upon his return to London. And the client admitted that he had sold

the painting to another party within the tax-free zone of the Freeport just two months after the original purchase.

"A rather short turnaround," said Gabriel.

"Not by today's standards, especially in the Geneva Freeport. But certainly suspicious. More important, it was a violation

of our arrangement. If he in fact sold that painting, I was owed ten percent of the sale price."

"Did your client agree to pay up?"

"Immediately."

"How much?"

"He wrote me a check for six point two million pounds."

"The equivalent of seven and a half million dollars," said Gabriel. "Which means your client sold the painting for the exact

same price he paid for it."

"He did indeed. The question is, why on earth would he do such a thing?"

"Perhaps you should ask him."

"Can't," said Lovegrove. "He dropped me the next day."