Once she’d cleared immigration at Charles de Gaulle airport, Helena took the train to Gare du Nord, transferred to the métro, and came up to bright, crisp sunshine at Odéon. She could have got off at a station closer to her office on Cherche-Midi, but she loved walking in Paris.
Her father’s favourite arrondissement had been the sixth. He told her he always stayed on the Left Bank and never failed to make pilgrimages to Saint-Germain-des-Pré and to Les Deux Magots. Although the service there had declined over the years, it was good to sit in the café once frequented by Simone de Beauvoir, Pablo Picasso, and James Joyce. Now, Les Deux Magots reminded Helena only of her father; she avoided it. Even on sunny mornings, when the smell of coffee wafted by her, she crossed to the other side of the street.
She stopped for an espresso on Rue du Four, bought flowers for Louise from the vendor at Saint-Sulpice, discarded her cell phone in the garbage bin meant for junk and dog turds, and picked up a couple of new phones with SIM cards at Bon Marché.
Paris was now her city. Simon, the fake art trader, the occasional thief, the man suspected of both the Gardner and the Stockholm museum heists (he had not done either of them, but he was guilty of others), still sought by Interpol and profiled (quite inaccurately) in “Art Theft,” had been dead for more than five years. There had been no announcements, no obituaries, not even Interpol had noted Simon’s death. The doctor who had signed the death certificate asserted that he had died of natural causes, despite the bullet wounds in his back. The doctor, “an old family friend,” according to her mother, had called Annelise to report that Simon was dead. He had also arranged for the pick-up and cremation of his body. That is how Helena learned that Simon had been living not far from the house on Roxborough where she grew up.
Annelise, who had predicted Simon’s demise and even guessed who would pay to have him killed, did not arrange for a funeral. “If there was a funeral, or even a private service, you couldn’t be there. Any connection with him at this stage in your career would destroy your credibility,” Annelise had told her daughter.
Afterward, they had argued over who would fly to Paris with the ashes. Neither of them was keen to follow Simon’s final instructions to scatter them on the Seine.
“His presence in the city will spoil it for me,” Helena said.
“Well, he won’t exactly be present,” Annelise said. “You dump him into the Seine, and God knows where the ashes will drift. I, on the other hand, will have to live here with all of this so-called art until I have disposed of it, one by one, so as not to arouse suspicion.”
In the end, her mother stayed in Toronto and Helena flew to Paris. She quickly found out that Simon had not tarnished the city for her at all.
Annelise sold what was left of Simon’s paintings as good fakes or skillful forgeries. She had no desire for, as she put it, “a criminal inheritance.”
“You chose him, I didn’t,” Helena said.
Annelise agreed that that was so, but Simon had been young and gorgeous then. Long hair, tanned skin, lovely slender fingers. He had earned his degree, he was a painter, a water colourist, an enthusiastic traveller, a guide to all the best museums in Europe. His excessive admiration for the early Impressionists was the only sign of what he would later become.
“Besides,” Annelise said, “we have both benefitted from turning a blind eye.”
There was some truth in that, although Annelise had benefitted more and would continue to enjoy the house in Toronto and the airy New York apartment on the Upper East Side, as well as the pleasure of travelling first class, the welcome she had come to expect in both cities’ best restaurants, and invitations to gala fundraisers. Helena, on the other hand, had rejected all the comforts her father had offered. Still, she knew that without his loot, she could not have had the privileged education and training she now relied upon. Could not have become a Titian expert or have curated the much-admired 1998 Titian retrospective at Vienna’s Alte Pinakothek. Nor would she have been as aware of the fakes and forgeries that had invaded galleries and museums worldwide. Being Simon’s daughter offered her a unique view of how easy it was to fool everyone.
Her father may have been serving his own purposes when he made sure she had the right credentials in the art world, but once she discovered what had funded her education, she stopped taking his money. The question she asked herself sometimes was whether she had severed her relations with Simon as soon as she realized what he did or had she waited until she was ready to make it on her own. When her mother insisted she continue the self-defence classes and learn to fire a handgun, was that training only for her stint in Moscow? Or was her mother already thinking about where the career she had chosen might lead?
She now knew how dangerous it could be to obtain certain paintings for galleries and wealthy collectors. Her work for the Commission for Looted Art in Europe had offered fine tests of her martial-arts training. She had been followed and attacked in Vienna right after the 2013 profiles of the Commission’s work appeared in Harper’s and Tagesspiegel. Even in Paris, she was always checking whether someone was following her and always careful when entering a building, even a café.
Louise was delighted with the bouquet. She was a plain woman in her fifties and, judging from her reaction, she rarely received flowers. Helena knew that in her previous job at the Orangerie she had rarely been praised for her work. Today was the fifth anniversary of her working for Helena, and she deserved both the praise and the flowers. She was efficient, always unruffled, usually pleasant to callers, and never late for work.
Louise had the map of the arrondissement of Saint-Denis spread out on Helena’s architect’s desk. She had marked the route Helena should take to where the Corot was awaiting her judgement, but at the last moment, she decided to go along on the journey. It’s a perilous part of the city, she said, easy to get lost and even easier to be robbed at knifepoint.
Helena grinned at the idea of this rather prim woman discouraging a robber or a pickpocket, but Louise hadn’t been out of the office for the past two weeks and deserved a break.
As for the Corot, it was so close to the genuine article that Helena thought it could pass at the next auction and make the house a tidy sum, but wisdom prevailed. She would not risk either her own reputation or Christie’s on a well-executed fake.
What she would do, instead, was buy it for the newest Mrs. Grigoriev, if he didn’t like Gertrude’s garish painting, after Helena had taken possession of the Titian.
She called Attila on the way to the airport and listened to his tale about Bratislava and Bika.
“Your client, Márton,” Attila asked, “has he ever mentioned that Gertrude’s son may not be Krestin’s?”
“No. But I am sure he has travelled to Hungary and Slovakia more often than he told me. And it doesn’t take much to make a child.”
“Was he there in 1977?”
“He and his wife visited Budapest then.”
“Any idea what time of year?”
“Since he lit candles and put flowers on his father’s grave, I would guess around All Saints, November 1 or 2.”
“Jenci was born in July 1978.”
Neither of them mentioned the extraordinary talent of the woman who had thrown a knife into Bika’s thigh.