Julian Isherwood was a man of many faults, but parsimony was not among them. Indeed, in his business dealings, as in his private life, he had always been rather too free with his wallet. He had acquired a good many paintings when he should have passed—his personal and professional collection was said to rival that of the Queen herself—and invariably it was his credit card that ended up on the collection plate each evening in the bar at Wilton’s. Not surprisingly, his finances were in a state of perpetual disrepair. Of late, the situation had grown dire. His cheerless accountant, the appropriately named Blunt, had suggested a fire sale of available assets, coupled with a sharp reduction in outlays. Isherwood had balked. Most of his professional inventory was of little or no value. It was dead as a doornail, as they said in the trade. Burned to a crisp. Toast. And as for the idea of trimming his expenditures, well, that was simply out of the question. One had to live one’s life, especially at his age. Besides, his actions on the night of the attack had imbued him with a sense of personal optimism. If Juicy Julian Isherwood could risk his life to save others, anything was possible.
It was this belief that brighter days were just over the horizon that compelled Isherwood to admit Brady Boswell, the director of a small but respected museum in the American Midwest, into his gallery in Mason’s Yard late that afternoon. Boswell had a well-deserved reputation as a looker, not a buyer. He spent the better part of two hours pawing Isherwood’s inventory before finally confessing that his acquisition budget was in worse condition than Isherwood’s bank account, and that he was in no position to buy new carpeting for his museum, let alone a new painting to hang on its walls. Isherwood was tempted to tell Boswell that the next time he wanted to see Old Masters in London, he should try the National Gallery. Instead, he accepted the American’s invitation to dinner, if only because he couldn’t bear the thought of spending yet another evening listening to tubby Oliver Dimbleby describing his latest sexual conquest.
Boswell suggested Alain Ducasse at the Dorchester, and Isherwood, having no alternative at the tip of his tongue, agreed. They dined on Dorset crab and Dover sole and between them drank two bottles of Domaine Billaud-Simon Les Clos grand cru Chablis. Boswell spent much of the evening lamenting his country’s dreadful politics. Isherwood listened attentively. Inwardly, however, he wondered why it was that enlightened Americans always found it necessary to bash their country whenever they set foot in the mother ship.
“I’m thinking about leaving.” Boswell was sputtering with indignation. “Everyone is.”
“Everyone?”
“Well, not everyone. Only people like me.”
Only the crashing bores. America, thought Isherwood, would soon be a much more interesting place.
“Where would you go?”
“I’m eligible for Irish citizenship.”
“Ireland? Good grief.”
“Or I might get a little place here in England until things blow over.”
“We have problems of our own. You’re better off staying put.”
The notion that modern England might not be a cultural paradise appeared to come as a shock to Brady Boswell. He was one of those Americans who formed their impressions of life in the United Kingdom by watching reruns of Masterpiece Theater.
“A shame about the terrorist attacks,” said Boswell.
“Yes,” said Isherwood vaguely.
“I was hoping to see something in the West End while I was here, but I’m not sure it’s safe.”
“Nonsense.”
“Cognac?”
“Why not?”
Boswell ordered the most expensive on the list, and when the check arrived he adopted Oliver Dimbleby’s favorite pose, that of a bewildered survivor of a natural disaster.
“Whom are you seeing tomorrow?” asked Isherwood as he discreetly slipped his credit card into the little leather coffin, the card he hoped wouldn’t automatically self-destruct when inserted into the reader.
“I have Jeremy Crabbe in the morning and Roddy Hutchinson in the afternoon. I trust you won’t tell them about my little funding issues. I wouldn’t want them to think I’m not playing it straight.”
“Your secret is safe with me.”
It wasn’t, actually. In fact, Isherwood planned to call Roddy first thing in the morning and advise him to come down with a sudden case of malaria. Otherwise, Roddy would be the one footing the bill for Brady Boswell’s next meal.
Outside, Isherwood thanked Boswell for what had been the least enjoyable night out since his heroics at the Ivy. Then he placed the American in a cab—he was staying at some fleabag in Russell Square—and sent him on his way. Another taxi was waiting. Isherwood gave the driver the address for his house in Kensington and ducked into the back. But as the cab turned into Park Lane he felt the pulse of his mobile phone against his heart. He assumed it was the obligatory thank-you from Boswell and for an instant considered ignoring it. Instead, he withdrew the phone and squinted at the screen. The message was terse, a command rather than a request, and appeared to have no point of origin. Therefore, it could have come from only one person. Isherwood smiled. His evening, he thought, was about to get much more interesting.
“Change in plan,” he informed the driver. “Take me to Mason’s Yard.”
Isherwood’s gallery occupied three floors of a sagging Victorian warehouse once owned by Fortnum & Mason. On one side were the offices of a minor Greek shipping company, on the other a pub that catered to pretty office girls who rode motor scooters. The door was fashioned of shatterproof glass and protected by three state-of-the-art locks. It yielded to Isherwood’s gentle touch.
“Bloody hell,” he whispered.
The limited space of the gallery had compelled Isherwood to arrange his empire vertically—storerooms on the ground floor, business offices on the second, and on the third a glorious formal exhibition room modeled on Paul Rosenberg’s famous gallery in Paris, where Isherwood had spent many happy hours as a child. Entering, he reached for the light switch.
“Don’t,” said a voice from the opposite end of the room. “Leave them off.”
Isherwood crept forward, sidestepping a museum-style ottoman, and joined the man who appeared to be contemplating a large landscape by Claude. The man, like the painting, was shrouded in darkness. But his green eyes, when fixed on Isherwood, seemed to glow as if from an inner source of heat.
“I was beginning to wonder,” said Gabriel, “if your dinner would ever end.”
“So was I,” answered Isherwood glumly. “Mind telling me how you got in here?”
“You’ll recall that we were the ones who installed your security system.”
Isherwood did indeed. He also recalled that the system received a serious upgrade after an operation involving a Russian arms dealer named Ivan Kharkov.