Page 14 of The Collector
“Who’s the owner?”
“A South African named Lukas van Damme.”
“What does he do for a living?”
“Until recently, Signore Van Damme was in the shipping business.”
“I’m obviously in the wrong line of work.”
“That makes two of us.”
Gabriel followed the general through the villa’s grand entrance. A luminous gallery stretched before them, lined on both sides with pedestaled vases and vessels and Greek and Roman statuary. On the whitewashed walls hung a remarkable collection of Old Master paintings of every school and genre. At the opposite end of the gallery, a doorway was open wide to the freshening afternoon breeze. The sun had yet to begin its descent toward the turquoise sea.
Gabriel approached one of the antiquities, an Etruscan terra-cotta amphora, and consulted the Art Squad evidence tag dangling from the handle. “The Paris Painter?”
“So it appears,” said General Ferrari. “That piece belongs in a museum rather than a private residence. Thus far, we’ve been unable to determine where Signore Van Damme acquired it.”
“Where is he now?”
“Naples.”
“In custody?”
“More or less,” said the general with an apathetic shrug.
Adjacent to the amphora was a large Bacchic scene that bore the hallmarks of the French Baroque artist Nicolas Poussin. And next to the Bacchic scene was a landscape that might or might not have been painted by the hand of Claude Lorrain. Both were in immaculate condition, as was the rest of the collection.
“There are paintings and objets d’art of similar quality throughout the property,” said General Ferrari. “Some better than others.”
“Where might we find those?”
The general indicated a pair of ornate lacquered doors. Beyond them lay the spacious, light-filled office of a man who quite obviously held himself in high regard. Two Carabinieri officers were rifling through the contents of the desk, and a third was downloading files from a computer onto a remote storage device. It was this officer, when prompted by General Ferrari, who pressed the concealed button that initiated the motorized outward swinging movement of two solidly built bookcases. Behind them was a stainless-steel door, like the door of a bank vault, and a keypad.
“The better ones?” asked Gabriel.
“I’ll let you be the judge.”
The experts had long called into question his very existence. There was no such thing, they said, as the mysterious wealthy collector who acquires illegally what he cannot purchase legitimately on the open market. He was a fantasy of fertile Hollywood imaginations, they claimed. A myth. They even had a name for him; they called him Dr. No, the cartoonish title character of Ian Fleming’s spy thriller featuring British secret agent James Bond. Gabriel, however, had never fallen victim to such misconceptions. Yes, many art thefts were carried out by common criminals who had no idea how to profitably dispose of a painting once it was in their hands. But therewas also a thriving black market for stolen art that catered to men who were driven to possess the unpossessable. By all outward appearances, Lukas van Damme was such a man.
His vault was approximately three meters by four and decorated in the formal manner of an exhibition room at a commercial art gallery. There was a single Eames chair, which was oriented toward the room’s only painting—Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, oil on canvas, 60 by 49 centimeters, by Vincent van Gogh. Of more interest to Gabriel, however, was the empty frame and stretcher, 70 by 65 centimeters, give or take a centimeter or two, leaning against one wall. Twenty or so copper-plated canvas tacks littered the floor.
He looked to General Ferrari for an explanation.
“We believe it was stolen two nights ago, but we can’t say for certain. It appears as though the thief gained access to the vault by hacking into the villa’s Wi-Fi network. The entire security system was disabled, and all of the video has been erased.”
“What makes you think it was two nights ago?”
“More on that in a moment. The question is,” said Ferrari, “why would a thief stealthatpainting and not one of the most famous works of art in existence?”
“I can think of two possible explanations.”
“The first?”
“The Van Gogh isn’t a Van Gogh.”
“That fact that it’s hidden in a vault would suggest that it is.”
“So stipulated.”
