T
HE SHOP OF
Griggs and Wellington, Rare Books and Manuscripts, was just around the corner from the Portobello Road. It was one of those antiques shops that had moved up from Portobello but had not quite achieved the success it was trying very, very hard to reach. As Gideon entered the shop, he noted a veneer of British snobbery not quite covering up a kind of trashy East End hustle. The shop’s proprietor, a young Brit dressed in overdone Savile Row, confirmed Gideon’s suspicions when he arrived, his plummy accent almost but not quite smothering a Cockney origin.
“May I help you, sir?”
Gideon, himself dressed in an expensive Ralph Lauren suit, gave the proprietor a dumb-ass American smile. “Well, I was wondering if I could look at that old manuscript page in the window.” His Texas accent came out despite the effort to control it.
“Naturally,” the proprietor said. “You mean the illuminated book of hours?”
“Yeah.”
The man went to the case, unlocked it, and removed the small page. It was enclosed in stiff plastic. With obvious reverence he placed it on a black velvet tray that he whisked out from under the counter, then set the tray within a pool of light from a spot in the ceiling. It was a page out of the gospel, with an illusionistic border of flowers, its central scene showing the Virgin Mary seated under an arch, with an angel descending from a blue sky. Mary was drawing back in fear. It was exquisite in every detail.
“Very lovely,” the shopkeeper murmured. “You have a good eye, sir.”
“Tell me about it,” Gideon asked.
“It’s from a Flemish book of hours dating to around 1440—a very fine one indeed. Very fine,” the man repeated, his voice hushed with veneration. “It is believed to be by the workshop of the Master of the Privileges of Ghent and Flanders.”
“I see,” said Gideon. “Nice.”
“It depicts the Annunciation, of course,” the dealer added.
“And how much is it?”
“We have a price of four thousand six hundred pounds on that very rare page.” The man’s voice became pinched, as if discussing sums of money were distasteful to him.
“What’s that, about eight grand?” said Gideon. He peered closely at it.
“Would you like to examine it with a loupe?”
“A what? Oh, thank you.”
As Gideon examined it, the dealer went on, hands clasped, his buttery accent filling the small shop. “As you probably know,” he said, his tone implying that Gideon certainly did not know, “the medieval book of hours came from the monastic cycle of prayer, simplified for private devotions. They represent some of the finest works of medieval art in existence. They were incredibly expensive—the cost of a book of hours in the fifteenth century was about the same as buying a good farm, buildings and all. Only royalty, nobility, and the very wealthy could afford one of these books. Just look at the detail! And the color. I especially direct your attention to the blue in the sky—a pigment made with crushed lapis lazuli, which in the Middle Ages was more expensive than gold. The only source of lapis at the time was Afghanistan.”
“I see.”
“Are you a collector?” the dealer asked.
“Oh, no. I’m just looking for an anniversary present for my wife. She’s religious.” Gideon gave an indulgent laugh, signaling that he himself was not.
“May I introduce myself?” the dealer said. “I am Sir Colin Griggs.”
Gideon glanced up at the fellow extending a small white hand, his chin thrust slightly forward, his back straight. He was about as much a “sir” as Gideon was a lord. He took the hand and shook it enthusiastically. “I’m Gideon Crew. From Texas. Sorry, you can’t put any ‘sir’ in front of my name, I’m hardly even a mister.” He gave a belly laugh.
“Ah, Texas, the Lone Star State. You have excellent taste, Mr. Crew. Can I answer any other questions about the item?”
“How do I know it’s real?”
“I can assure you it’s real beyond all doubt. We stand behind everything we sell. You would be welcome to have it examined by an expert after your purchase, and if there were any doubts we’d immediately refund your money.”
“That’s good. But…well, I have to say this four thousand six hundred pounds is a lot of money…how about making it four thousand, even-steven?”
Sir Colin gathered himself up into a ramrod of disapproval. “I’m sorry, Mr. Crew, but at Griggs and Wellington we don’t negotiate.”
Gideon bestowed a genial, Texas smile on the snobby Brit. “Aw, don’t play that game. Everything’s negotiable.” He took out his credit card. “Four thousand or I’m outta here.”
Sir Colin allowed the disapproval on his face to ease somewhat. “I suppose—for someone who appreciates it as much as you do—we could make an exception and lower the price to four thousand four.”
“Four thousand two.”
The expression on Sir Colin’s face indicated that this was a painful and unpleasant discussion. “Four thousand three.”
“Sold.”
A
FTER A QUICK
trip back to his hotel room for a change of clothes, Gideon set off with the precious page for the London offices of Sotheby’s, where the final test of his scheme would take place. It was a stiff three-mile walk that took Gideon through some fascinating byways, as well as Hyde Park. It was a splendid late-summer day, and in the park the ancient trees were in full leaf, cumulus clouds drifting overhead like sailing ships, the greensward alive with people. London was an extraordinary city, and he told himself he really should spend more time there—maybe even live there.
And then he remembered his terminal medical condition, and such thoughts were quickly forced from his head.
The Sotheby’s building was an unpretentious, nineteenth-century edifice of four stories, newly whitewashed. The staff were most solicitous when they saw the little illuminated manuscript page he wanted to place with them at auction, and he was ushered into a neat little office on the third floor, where he was greeted by a charming, roly-poly man with gold-rimmed spectacles and a huge shock of Einsteinian hair, dressed in an old-fashioned tweed suit with a vest and gold watch chain, looking like a man out of a Dickens novel. He was considered to be—Gideon had done the research—one of the world’s greatest experts on illuminated manuscripts.
“Well, well!” the man said, smelling of tobacco and perhaps even a hint of whiskey. “What have we here, eh?” He held out a fat hand. “Brian MacKilda, at your service!” He spoke as if always out of breath, punctuating his phrases with a
huff-huff
as if catching his wind.
“I’ve got an illuminated manuscript I’d like to place in auction.” Gideon held out the small leather portfolio.
“Excellent! Let’s take a look.” MacKilda came around the desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a loupe, which he pressed into one voluminous, winking eye. Adjusting a special lamp—which threw a pool of white light onto a smooth black tray—he picked up the portfolio, took out the plastic-covered page Gideon had just purchased, slipped it out, and stared at it with a few nods, which set his fluffy hair a-wagging, accompanied by grunts of approval.
He then put it under the light. Several minutes went by while he examined it with the loupe, making more animal noises, all of which sounded positive. After that, MacKilda switched off the bright light, reached down into his desk, and removed a small, peculiar-looking flashlight with a square face. He held it close to the page and turned it on. It cast a deep ultraviolet light. MacKilda shone it here and there, lingering only briefly, and then switched off the light. The noises suddenly turned into negative snorts.
“Oh, dear,” the man said finally. “Dear, dear, dear.” This was followed by some huffing and puffing.
“Is there a problem?”
MacKilda shook his head sorrowfully. “Fake.”
“
What?
How can it be? I paid four thousand pounds for it!”
The man turned a pair of sad eyes on him. “Our business, sir, is sadly rife with fakes. Rife!” He rolled the
r
with particular emphasis.
“But how can shining a light on it for five seconds be definitive? Don’t you have other tests?”
A long sigh. “We have many tests, many,
many
tests. Raman spectroscopy, X-ray fluorescence, carbon 14. But in this case there’s no need to do other tests.”
“I don’t get it. One five-second test?”
“Allow me to explain.” MacKilda took a deep breath, followed by several
huff-huff
s and a general throat clearing. “The illuminators of yore used mostly mineral pigments in their inks. The blues are from ground lapis lazuli, the vermilion from cinnabar and sulfur. Green came from ground malachite or copper verdigris. And the whites were usually made from lead, often in combination with gypsum or calcite.”
He paused for more stentorian breathing.
“Now, the point is that some of these minerals fluoresce strongly under ultraviolet light, while others change color in certain ways.” He paused, breathing hard. “But look at this.”
He shined the black light once again on the manuscript page. The surface remained dark, dull, unchanged. “There, you see? Nothing!”
He snapped it off. “These pigments are therefore cheap aniline dyes, none of which react to UV light.”
“But it looks so real!” Gideon said, almost pleading. “Please take a look at it again,
please
. It’s got to be real!”
With another long-suffering sigh, MacKilda turned to it again and in fact did look at it for more than five seconds. “I admit the work is quite good. I was fooled at first. And the vellum looks original. Why a forger with such evident talent would go to the trouble to create an artistic fake like this—and then use aniline dyes—is beyond me. My guess is that it’s Chinese. It used to be most of the fakes came out of Russia, but now we’re starting to see some out of the Far East. The Chinese are a bit naive—hence the aniline dyes—but they’ll catch on, unfortunately.”
He shook his head, the hair waggling, and held the page back out to Gideon. “It’s most certainly, most definitely, without a doubt, a forgery.” And he punctuated this with a final jiggle of hair and a loud
huff-huff
.
J
ULIA THRUM MURPHY,
thirty-two years old, had driven all the way from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, where she was an assistant professor of romance languages, to see the Book of Kells on its last weekend in the States. It was a glorious Sunday afternoon, if a bit warm in the city, and what she had feared turned out to be true: the exhibition was jam-packed.
At the ticket desk, she was informed by a harried attendant that the wait just to get into the East Room was about forty-five minutes. And then there was a long, slow-moving line within the room itself, which might take another thirty minutes or more.
An hour and fifteen minutes. Hearing this, Julia almost decided to skip it and head up to the Cloisters to see the unicorn tapestries instead. But then she decided to wait. This, she knew, would be her only chance to see the Book of Kells outside of Ireland.
So she bought the twenty-five-dollar ticket, checked her handbag and camera, went through the metal detectors, and got in line. As people exited the East Room, more were let in, and the line moved slowly. Finally, after forty minutes, she reached the head of the initial line and was given the nod to enter the East Room.
Inside the room it was almost worse. The crowd moved snake-like between sets of stanchions and velvet ropes that would have done an airport security gate proud. Viewers were given less than a minute to ogle the book before guards began polite murmurings for them to keep moving, keep moving.
An hour-and-fifteen-minute wait for one minute of pleasure. This was a bit like sex, she thought, feeling disgruntled as she moved along through the serpentine line.
Just then, a fellow about her age, a bit ahead of her, passed going the other way in the queue and gave her a smile, a little warmer than mere politeness would dictate. She was startled by his roguish good looks and the combination of jet-black hair and blue eyes: a type her mother would call “Black Irish.” As his smile lingered, Julia looked away. She was used to this; it was her good fortune to be born not only with brains but also with a certain willowy beauty, which she maintained with a regimen of Pilates, yoga, and jogging. Even though she was a professor, she was not at all attracted to the crop of flabby, self-important, and often pretentious men who were her peers at Bryn Mawr. Not that there was anything seriously wrong with them: the type, frankly, didn’t turn her on. At the same time, it was hard to find a man who was her intellectual equal outside of academia. She could imagine herself marrying a poor man, or even an ugly man—but never, ever, would she marry a man who was less intelligent than she was.
As she thought about this, the line shuffled forward, and the man who had smiled at her approached again. When they drew side by side, he leaned over and spoke to her, sotto voce: “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”
While the line was hardly original, she laughed. He didn’t look stupid, at least.
He moved on as the parallel lines inched forward. She found herself anticipating his next pass, her heartbeat even accelerating a little. She glanced around the dense but orderly crowd in the East Room, looking for him. Where was he? This was crazy, her getting all a-flutter about some random stranger. She had been celibate way too long.
And then, quite suddenly, it happened. A flash of light, followed by a terrific
bang
, so loud it made her heart leap in terror, and she threw herself to the floor amid a chorus of shrieking and screaming. Immediately, she thought
terrorist attack
, and even as this went through her mind the alarms went off and the room abruptly filled with a thick smoke, totally opaque, that transformed her world into a hellish brown twilight in which she could see nothing, only hear the useless hysterical screams and cries of her fellow museum-goers.
Then came the hollow boom of what sounded like steel meeting steel, immediately followed by the
crump
of another, muffled explosion.
She lay on the ground, cheek by jowl with a dozen others, maintaining a defensive fetal position, protecting her head, as the hysterical screaming continued. She remained silent and, somewhat to her surprise, collected. After a few moments she could hear some shouted orders—security, trying to calm people down—along with sirens and the sudden roar of forced air.
Rapidly the fog thinned out and the light came back up. Almost by magic, the smoke was gone, sucked into forced-air grates now exposed in the ceiling by the withdrawal of painted panels.
The screaming began to subside, and she sat up, looking around to see what was happening. The first thing she noticed was that the glass cube holding the Book of Kells had been cleaved, a corner of the cube dirtied by what must have been a detonation of some kind. The book was not in the cube—it had been stolen. But no, not stolen, because there it was, on the floor next to the cube, open and in disarray.
And then she realized they were locked in: the only door into the East Room was now a slab of stainless steel.
The next thought that came to her mind, with some relief, was that this whole thing was nothing more than a botched robbery.