False Impression Read online

  Jack’s eyes moved across to the switchboard. One lever was up, illuminating a flickering orange light, indicating that the line was busy. He must have cut Leapman off from any hope of contacting the outside world. Jack looked down at the desk where Fenston would have been sitting when he planned the whole operation. He’d even written out a list to make sure he didn’t make a mistake. All the clues were there for the NYPD to gather and evaluate. If this had been a Columbo investigation, the switch, the handwritten list left on the desk, and the timing of the alarm going off would have been quite enough for the great detective to secure a conviction, with Fenston breaking down and confessing following the last commercial break. Unfortunately, this wasn’t a made-for-TV movie, and one thing was certain: Fenston wasn’t going to break down and would never consider confessing. Jack grimaced. The only thing he had in common with Columbo was the crumpled raincoat.

  Jack heard the elevator doors open and the words, “Follow me.” He knew it had to be the cops. He turned his attention back to the screen on the desk as two uniformed officers marched into Fenston’s office and began to question the four witnesses. The plainclothes men wouldn’t be far behind. Jack walked out of the adjoining office and headed silently toward the elevator. He’d reached the doors when one of the cops came out of Fenston’s office and shouted, “Hey, you.” Jack jabbed at the down button and turned sideways, so the officer couldn’t see his face. The moment the doors opened, he quickly slipped inside. He kept his finger pressed on the button marked L and the doors immediately closed. When they opened on the ground floor thirty seconds later, he jogged past reception, out of the building, down the steps, and headed in the direction of his car.

  Jack jumped in and started the engine, just as a cop came running around the corner. He swung the car in a circle, mounted the sidewalk, drove back onto the road, and headed for St. Vincent’s Hospital.

  “Good afternoon, Sotheby’s.”

  “Lord Poltimore, please.”

  “Who shall I say is calling, madam?”

  “Lady Wentworth.” Arabella didn’t have to wait long before Mark came on the line.

  “How nice to hear from you, Arabella,” said Mark. “Dare I ask,” he teased, “are you a buyer or a seller?”

  “A seeker after advice,” replied Arabella. “But if I were to be a seller . . .”

  Mark began to make notes as he listened to a series of questions that Arabella had obviously prepared carefully.

  “In the days when I was a dealer,” Mark replied, “before I joined Sotheby’s, the standard commission was 10 percent up to the first million. If the painting was likely to fetch more than a million, I used to negotiate a fee with the seller.”

  “And what fee would you have negotiated, had I asked you to sell the Wentworth Van Gogh?”

  Mark was glad Arabella couldn’t see the expression on his face. Once he’d recovered, he took his time before suggesting a figure, but quickly added, “If you were to allow Sotheby’s to put the picture up for auction, we would charge you nothing, Arabella, guaranteeing you the full hammer price.”

  “So how do you make a profit?” asked Arabella.

  “We charge a buyer’s premium,” explained Mark.

  “I already have a buyer,” said Arabella, “but thank you for the advice.”

  9/25

  50

  KRANTZ TURNED THE corner of the street, relieved to find the pavement so crowded. She walked for about another hundred yards before stopping outside a small hotel. She glanced up and down the road, confident that she was not being followed.

  She pulled open the swing doors that led into the hotel and, looking straight ahead, walked past reception, ignoring the concierge, who was talking to a tourist who sounded as if he might come from New York. Her gaze remained focused on a wall of deposit boxes to the left of the reception desk. Krantz waited until all three receptionists were fully occupied before she moved.

  She glanced behind her to make sure no one had the same purpose in mind. Satisfied, she moved quickly, extracting a key from her hip pocket as she reached box 19. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door. Everything was exactly as she had left it. Krantz removed all the notes and two passports, and stuffed them in a pocket. She then locked the door, walked out of the hotel and was back on Herzen Street without having spoken to anyone.

  She hailed a taxi, something she couldn’t have done in the days when the communists were teaching her her trade. She gave the driver the name of a bank in Cheryomushki, sat in the back, and thought about Colonel Sergei Slatinaru—but only for a moment. Her one regret was that she hadn’t succeeded in cutting off his left ear. Krantz would like to have sent Petrescu a little memento of her visit to Romania. Still, what she had in mind for Petrescu would more than make up for the disappointment.

  But first she had to concentrate on getting out of Russia. It might have been easy to escape from those amateurs in Bucharest, but it was going to be far more difficult finding a safe route into England. Islands always cause a problem; mountains are so much easier to cross than water. She’d arrived in the Russian capital earlier that morning exhausted, having been constantly on the move since discharging herself from the hospital.

  Krantz had reached the highway by the time the siren went off. She turned to see the hospital grounds bathed in light. A truck driver who made love to her twice and didn’t deserve to die, smuggled her across the border. It took a train, a plane, another three hundred dollars, and seventeen hours before she eventually made it to Moscow. She immediately headed for the Isla Hotel with no intention of staying overnight. Her only interest was in a safety deposit box that contained two passports and a few hundred rubles.

  While she was marooned in Moscow, Krantz had planned to earn a little cash, moonlighting while she waited until it was safe to return to America. The cost of living was so much cheaper in the Russian capital than New York, and that included the cost of death: $5,000 for a wife, $10,000 for a husband. The Russians hadn’t yet come to terms with equal rights. A KGB colonel could fetch as much as $50,000, while Krantz could charge $100,000 for a mafia boss. But if Fenston had transferred the promised two million dollars, tiresome wives and husbands would have to wait for her return. In fact, now that Russia had embraced free enterprise, she might even attach herself to one of the new oligarchs and offer him a comprehensive service.

  She felt sure one of them could make use of the three million dollars stashed away in a safety deposit box in Queens, in which case she would never need to return to the States.

  The taxi drew up outside the discreet entrance of a bank that prided itself on having few customers. The letters G and Z were chiseled in the white marble cornice. Krantz stepped out of the cab, paid the fare, and waited until the taxi was out of sight before she entered the building.

  The Geneva and Zurich Bank was an establishment that specialized in catering to the needs of a new breed of Russians, who had reinvented themselves following the demise of communism. Politicians, mafia bosses (businessmen), footballers, and pop stars were all small change compared to the latest superstars, the oligarchs. Although everybody knew their names, they were a breed that could afford the anonymity of a number when it came to finding out the details of what they were worth.

  Krantz walked up to an old-fashioned wooden counter, no lines, no grilles, where a row of smartly dressed men in gray suits, white shirts, and plain silk ties waited to serve. They wouldn’t have looked out of place in either Geneva or Zurich.

  “How may I assist you?” asked the clerk Krantz had selected. He wondered which category she fell into—the wife of a mafia boss, or the daughter of an oligarch. She didn’t look like a pop star.

  “One zero seven two zero nine five nine,” she said.

  He tapped the code into his computer, and when the figures flashed up on the screen he showed a little more interest.

  “May I see your passport?” was his next question.

  Krantz handed over one of the passp