But there were no trucks with their antennae pointed toward a satellite on Kate’s second visit, only cracks in the sidewalk messed with small tufts of grass and peeled paint on the window frames.
Chris stood stiffly, as though he’d been sitting too long. Kate couldn’t decide whether to take his hand in hers, kiss him on both cheeks as though she were greeting someone at a line in a funeral, or plunge right into what they needed to discuss.
Chris, at least, spoke up to diffuse the tension. “This may be a rhetorical question, but has the possibility this painting might be worth millions influenced any of the funds you’re talking to? I’ve been running my people flat out with the need to believe I’d be able to replace what little money we had when it dried up. I’m beginning to fear I made the wrong bet. Any chance you came here to tell me the cavalry is riding to the rescue?”
“You know I would have told you if there had been any positive news, Chris. The meter may have moved a small bit, but until we can tell them something definite about both the painting’s authenticity and our ability to monetize it for the deal, everyone is holding back.”
When he removed his glasses, Kate saw the smudge of too little sleep under Chris’s eyes. “I’ve got a building full of people who two months ago were joking about what size boat they were going to buy and now I may have to tell them they could be out of work in a few weeks. What a crazy f-ing world.”
He picked up some papers from his desk. “I’d rather license out these orders and my patents to someone else than watch my business go up in smoke. Damn.” He threw the papers on the table with a smack that startled Kate.
She needed to change the texture of the conversation. They couldn’t stand there for an hour or two inhaling the same noxious vapors.
“May I?” Kate pointed toward the Courbet. “I’ve spent the past four weeks obsessing about this and I never really had anything more than a glance at it.” Chris walked toward the window while Kate examined the painting.
Chris’s description was accurate. There were small cracks on the top of the canvas, the effect of years of weathering. The artist signed his name in red, with a period at the end, as he had on all the paintings in all the books Kate and MK examined. The brush strokes seemed small and almost breathless, as if the man had been rushed, perhaps by the lateness of the hour and the impending darkness. Someone stroked two lines of paint on the frame where the gold leaf had worn away. Kate was never one to find life in inanimate objects the way Sarah fell in love with her cello, but she sensed she was in the presence of an old friend.
She looked at Chris. Her voice was respectful. “I feel uncomfortable going down this path, but we need to talk about how the painting found its way to you if we’re going to try to keep it in the deal. People will ask. If they dig deep enough they’ll find the same newspaper articles we did. There is no place to hide anymore.”
Chris nodded, but said nothing.
Kate moved next to him at the window. He didn’t seem as large as the first time they met. Chris was staring out to the parking lot. Four of his engineers were playing a game of pick-up basketball.
She wanted to touch his shoulder, in a gesture of consolation. She mentioned the papers Leslie uncovered. “Were the newspaper reports accurate?” Chris looked startled by the question. Kate tried to retrieve her words. “We needn’t discuss this if you’d prefer not to.”
He tapped the knuckle of his right index finger against the sill, then used it to gesture toward the painting. “No, you’re right. If we’re going to try to put this picture anywhere near the deal you need to know every sordid detail. Ask me whatever you want.”
“To be honest, I don’t even know where to begin.”
But Chris needed no prompting. It was as though he’d been primed like a pump. He began by naming names Kate recognized from the newspaper articles. J. W. McDowell. Kathleen Murray, the superior officers who forced Chris’s father to help them bundle up stolen goods. The court martial. How they rebuilt their lives. He spoke for only a couple of minutes but it seemed an eternity.
Kate walked to the painting, knelt down, and touched Courbet’s signature. Chris came next to her. She touched a small fragment of a nameplate on the bottom of the frame that once contained the word
Midi
.
“I read every word of the transcript once it became available. There wasn’t a hint at his trial he had anything to do with this painting. And then one day when I was about ten or eleven this crate shows up at my house. My father opened it, saw the painting, and nailed it shut.”
“Paintings by leading French Impressionists just don’t drop out of the sky.”
That, at least, evoked a smile. “The officer who forced my father to pack up those things was dying of cancer. It may have been his way of apologizing to my father. He had to know we were struggling because the court martial kept him out of the union.”
“Why didn’t your father sell it?”
“He didn’t dare. He was too afraid of the consequences. I took it when my mother died.”
Kate took his hand. He didn’t resist. “I’m so sorry to make you go into this. But I’m afraid you’re confirming my worst fears about trying to include it in the deal. That story will confuse investors far more than it will comfort them.”
“Is that what you flew all the way here to tell me? I’m a big boy. I could have taken that news over the phone.”
Kate walked to the conference table. She took a folder out of her briefcase. “No. I came because I want to talk to you about an idea I have. But first I need to know whether you’re prepared to hear what I learned about the painting so far. I don’t want to compromise your ability to move forward with another banker if you choose to do that.”
Chris sat next to her. She handed him a copy of the receipt from the Galerie Marc. “The painting was sold to a man named Karl Hirsch in 1870 by a gallery in Basel.”
Chris was not particularly swayed by the news. The painting’s story, after all, had to begin somewhere. He spoke objectively. “That was a long time ago, Kate. What do your lawyers say about whether this receipt proves the painting even remained in the family up to the time of the war?” Kate found his detachment a bit disappointing, but plowed ahead.
“It’s not proof the painting stayed in any one place, of course, although I found evidence it did for at least twenty years. I also found a possible link to a woman from Barcelona who may be one of Hirsch’s heirs.”
Kate described her time in Linz. She handed Chris the picture she took at the Hirsch factory. He walked to the painting, held the photograph against the portion of the painting visible behind Karl Hirsch and his son, comparing the two.
“If this woman is linked to the original owner and makes a claim she might very well prevail. She’ll certainly get her day in court. Our research suggests families seeking to recover stolen goods have prevailed on a whole lot less proof than what I just handed you. At a minimum, Chris, you could be tied up in litigation for years.”
He took his time to absorb what Kate had told him. “Tell me about the woman.”
“All I know is a woman named Hirsch inquired about Karl Hirsch at the same records office I did in Linz. I presume she’s somehow related.”
“Do you know anything about her or about her family?”
“We weren’t able to find anything other than a few people named Hirsch also living in Spain. It’s not a very common name there, so it’s a relatively small number. A man named Michael Hirsch owns an insurance company in Barcelona, but I have no idea if he’s related to the woman who visited Austria or if there are other members of this family in other parts of the world.”
“You’re making this all too personal, Kate. I don’t want to hurt these people if their claim is legitimate. But I don’t want to hurt my company either. All I want to do is raise enough money so I’m not living from hand to mouth all the time. I want to make games. That’s all.”
Kate put her briefcase on her lap. She hesitated before reaching into it. She felt an acrid taste in the back of her throat.
“Let me show you the proposal I have.”
Kate put a chart on the table made up of a series of boxes, lines and arrows. The question of what to do about this painting seemed binary, right or wrong—treat this family as though it had been swept aside like millions of others and hope no one raised concerns as the offering moved toward closing, or strive for something nobler. No class in B school taught anything about atoning for the sins of history. And yet Kate had the tools to do just that.
“It’s a long shot and I haven’t even had it vetted by the lawyers, but I’m hopeful it can work.” Kate hadn’t bothered sharing her plan with Clive because she didn’t want it to find its way to Ed so she could be reminded she wasn’t in the preacher business.
“Hopeful? Does that hope come from anything other than your desire to wish it into being?” Chris was fidgeting with his glasses. “I want to know what I’m signing on for.”
The first line on the chart showed the names Franklin and Hirsch with an arrow running between them. “I want you to give the painting to the Hirsch family. Acknowledge it belonged to them and was wrongfully taken. You can generate some goodwill and good publicity for Majik by announcing you’re returning it to its lawful owners.”
Chris balked at the idea. Kate had expected that as his first reaction. Creating a PowerPoint chart is one thing; asking anyone to bet the future of his business on an illusion is something else again.
He looked at the next line. Kate had drawn an arrow from Hirsch to Franklin. “This suggests that after I acknowledge their ownership they’re going to turn right around and give me back the painting. Am I reading this correctly?”
“That’s what I had in mind. The only way around a possibly competing claim based upon the evidence I’ve uncovered so far is to convince this family to sell the painting to you for what it’s worth and to give you until after you take your first cash out of the public offering to pay them back.”
Chris shook his head. “I understand the logistics, but that’s an awful lot to ask. What if they don’t agree? What if they take the position the painting belongs to them and they’re not going to cooperate? What if they demand more money than the raise generates for the insiders? I don’t mean to sound like I’m being a bastard just for the sake of being a bastard, but haven’t I just given up something they may not have a legitimate right to claim and gotten nothing in return? Shouldn’t I be asking them for some sort of evidence the painting stayed in their family up to the time of the war?”
He looked at Kate and asked one more. “Are you putting this family’s interest ahead of mine? Aren’t I your client?”
Chris’s comment was nothing more than a benign version of what had been plaguing Peter. Had she put her own interests before Ascalon’s? She worked to contain her composure.
“Of course, my first loyalty is to Majik. My only loyalty. But loyalty to a goal doesn’t allow us to toss away the reality of what we’re dealing with. Let me ask you this. If we go down this path and they make that demand will you be any worse off than you are today? I’ve already given you the responses from the funds that reviewed the business plan with the scaled-back balance sheet. They’re all negative. And you know nobody legitimate will lend you anything against the painting. If they would you’d have the money to buy all the chips you need. You know that.” Kate didn’t bother tying those points to their obvious conclusion.
Chris hesitated for a moment. “Have you spoken to the woman from Barcelona?”
“Of course not. It wasn’t my place to reach out to her until you gave your consent to the idea. Once we open the door to acknowledging a possible claim there’s no turning back.”
Kate’s fingertips felt as though she’d been in the cold too long.
Chris walked to his desk. He picked up the memo she’d sent detailing her frustration in finding possible investors. “Drake initially tried to convince me I needed to include the painting in the deal to move it forward and now you’re trying to convince me to risk making sure it can’t be part of the deal to move it forward. Our world seems to have turned itself on its head, Kate.”
Kate smiled at the comment. “I don’t see another way, Chris. Now that we have a name, merely listing some information on the Internet without actually reaching out to Marta Hirsch isn’t enough. Frankly, I presume she will lay claim to the painting, which is why I came up with this proposal.” Kate wanted closure. “What else can I possibly tell you?”
Chris stiffened. “Listen, it’s time to make a hard choice, because time is a far more frightening enemy to me than this family. I’m not terribly sanguine about the prospect of these people simply opening their hearts to the idea of letting me keep the painting, even for a short period of time. I don’t want to sound selfish, but if someone walked in here with a similar story I doubt I’d buy it.”
Kate wished she could be sure enough of the outcome to defend her proposal without hesitation, but on so many levels it was an act of faith. And yet, what else did she have to fall back on?
Chris walked to the painting. He ran his finger across Courbet’s signature as Kate had done a few moments before, and then stood quietly, as if he were finding the right words.
“Tell you what, Kate. I need eleven million by the middle of June to buy chips so I can stay on my production schedule. Talk to your folks at Drake. If you’re prepared to step up with a bridge loan while you’re talking to this family, I’m prepared to follow your lead.”
TWENTY
The first thing Kate saw when she walked into the kitchen was Peter ironing Mack’s nametags onto one of his sweatshirts.
Mack’s trunk was at Peter’s feet. Kate kissed him on his lips. He seemed surprised at first, but then acknowledged her lips on his and allowed her to linger. He’d recently shaved. Kate cupped her right hand against his clean cheek. Peter smiled. He knew what was on her mind.
Peter had grown a beard when Sarah was three and a half. Kate wanted to shave it off. They waited until Sarah was asleep, cleared the kitchen table, opened a bottle of Cos D’Estournel from a vineyard outside of Saint-Estephe, some truffle mousse paté, and a small tin of crackers. Kate wrapped Peter’s face in warm towels, snipped away the hairs with a small scissors, and then played with the lather for what seemed an eternity. Mack was conceived that night. They joked they should have named him Formica.