Portrait of an Unknown Woman (Gabriel Allon #22) (83)
“General Ferrari is convinced that you’re the forger.”
“Me?” She laughed. “A Picasso, maybe. But not an Old Master. I don’t have talent like yours.”
Gabriel read late into the night and was relieved to find Magdalena still in her bed when he rose the following morning. After loading the automatico with Illy and San Benedetto, he unleased Proteus on Phillip’s personal smartphone, and within minutes the device was under his control. A scalable map depicted its current location and elevation: the eastern shore of an egg-shaped peninsula, twelve feet above sea level.
Gabriel downloaded Phillip’s data onto his laptop and spent the remainder of the morning wandering the digital debris of one of the greatest scam artists in history. It was half past twelve when Magdalena finally appeared. She wandered into the kitchen and emerged a moment later with a bowl of milky coffee. She drank it in silence, her eyes unblinking.
“Not a morning person?” asked Gabriel.
“Opposite of a morning person. A night stalker.”
“Is the night stalker ready to do some work?”
“If you insist,” she said, and carried her coffee to the pool.
Gabriel followed her outside with the laptop. “What were the first six paintings you sold through your father’s gallery?”
“It was a thousand years ago,” she groaned.
“The exact amount of time you’ll spend in an Italian prison if you don’t start talking.”
She recited the artist, tableau, and dimensions of each work, along with the name of the buyer and the price it had fetched. Next she listed the particulars of more than one hundred paintings that had passed through her brokerage in Madrid during the first year of the scheme. Most of the paintings she had simply sold back to Masterpiece Art Ventures. Phillip had then inflated their value with additional phantom sales before unloading the paintings onto unsuspecting buyers and cashing in on his investment. He also used the works as collateral to secure massive art-backed loans, money he used to acquire legitimate art and pay handsome returns to his investors.
“The loans,” said Magdalena, “are the key to everything. Without leverage, Phillip and Kenny Vaughan wouldn’t be able to make it work.”
“So in addition to selling forged paintings, Phillip is committing bank fraud?”
“On a daily basis.”
“Where does he do his banking?”
“Mainly, he deals with Ellis Gray at JPMorgan Chase. But he also has a relationship with Bank of America.”
“How much debt is he carrying?”
“I’m not sure even Phillip knows the answer to that.”
“Who does?”
“Kenny Vaughan.”
The next ground they covered was Magdalena’s expansion into bricks-and-mortar retailing, beginning with her partnership with Galerie Georges Fleury of Paris and concluding with the recent acquisition by Masterpiece Art Ventures of galleries in Hong Kong, Tokyo, and Dubai. The total number of forged paintings the network had unleashed on the art market exceeded five hundred, with a paper valuation of more than $1.7 billion—far too many works for Magdalena to recall accurately. She was certain, however, that a significant percentage had passed through Masterpiece’s opaque portfolio.
“How many does he currently control?”
“That’s impossible to say. Phillip doesn’t even reveal the genuine paintings in his possession, let alone the forgeries. His most valuable pictures are in his Manhattan and Long Island homes. The rest are in the warehouse on East Ninety-First Street. It’s the equivalent of his trading book.”
“Can you get inside?”
“Not without Phillip’s approval. But a directory of the warehouse’s current contents would tell you everything you need to know.”
Over lunch, Gabriel logged into Magdalena’s ProtonMail account and forwarded several years’ worth of encrypted emails to his own address. Next they reviewed her personal finances, including her account at Masterpiece Art Ventures. Her balance was $56,245,539.
“Don’t even think about trying to make a withdrawal,” Gabriel warned her.
“My next redemption window isn’t until September. I couldn’t if I tried.”
“I’m sure Phillip would make an exception in your case.”
“Actually, he’s quite strict when it comes to redemptions. He and Kenny fly rather close to the sun. If a handful of major investors were to simultaneously withdraw their funds, he would have to sell some of his inventory or secure another loan.”
“Using a painting as collateral?”
“The art-backed loans,” repeated Magdalena, “are the key to everything.”
Gabriel downloaded Magdalena’s account statements, then checked the tracking information for Dana? and the Shower of Gold. The painting was currently westbound over the Atlantic. It would spend the night in the air cargo center at Kennedy International and was scheduled to reach its final destination, Chelsea Fine Arts Storage, no later than noon on Monday.
A search of the flights from Rome to New York produced several options. “How do you feel about the ten a.m. Delta into JFK?” asked Gabriel.
“That would require awakening several hours before noon.”
“You can sleep on the plane.”