They were the same words the man called Nicolas Carnot had spoken at the art gallery.
“As for calling your lawyer,” the Israeli continued, “that won’t be necessary. At least not yet. You see, Olivia, there are no police officers in this room. We are intelligence officers. We have nothing against the police, mind you. They have their job to do and we have ours. They solve crimes and make arrests, but our trade is information. You have it, we need it. This is your opening, Olivia. This is your one and only chance. If I were your lawyer, I’d advise you to take it. It’s the best deal you’re ever going to get.”
There was another silence, longer than the last.
“I’m sorry,” she said finally, “but I can’t help you.”
“You can’t help us, Olivia, or you won’t?”
“I don’t know anything about Jean-Luc’s business.”
“The forty-eight blank canvases I found in the Geneva Freeport say you do. They were shipped there by Galerie Olivia Watson. Which means you will be the one to face charges, not him. And what do you think your partner will do then? Will he ride to your rescue? Will he step in front of the bullet for you?” He shook his head slowly. “No, Olivia, he won’t. From everything I’ve learned about Jean-Luc Martel, he isn’t that sort of man.”
She made no response.
“So what will it be, Olivia? Will you help us?”
She shook her head.
“Why not?”
“Because if I do,” she said evenly, “Jean-Luc will kill me.”
Again he smiled. This time it appeared genuine.
“Did I say something funny?” she asked.
“No, Olivia, you told me the truth.” The green eyes left her face and settled once more on the blank canvas. “What do you see when you look at it?”
“I see something Jean-Luc made me do in order to keep my gallery.”
“Interesting interpretation. Do you know what I see?”
“What?”
“I see you without Jean-Luc.”
“How do I look?”
“Come here, Olivia.” He stepped away from the canvas. “See for yourself.”
33
Ramatuelle, Provence
The blank canvases were removed from the walls and the easel, and a dark-haired woman of perhaps thirty-five silently served cold drinks. Olivia was invited to sit. In turn, the dapper Englishman and his crumpled French associate were properly introduced. Their names were familiar enough. So was the sharply angled face of the green-eyed Israeli. Olivia was all but certain she had seen it somewhere before, but couldn’t decide where it had been. He introduced himself only as Gideon and paced the perimeter of the room slowly while everyone else sat perspiring in the unremitting heat. A rotating fan beat monotonously and to no effect in the corner; enormous flies moved like buzzards in and out of the open French doors. Suddenly, the Israeli ceased pacing and with a lightning movement of his left hand snatched one from the air. “Did you enjoy it?” he asked.
“What’s that?”
“Seeing your face in magazines and on billboards.”
“It’s not as easy as it looks.”
“It’s not glamorous?”
“Not always.”
“What about the parties and the fashion shows?”
“For me, the fashion shows were work. And the parties,” she said, “got rather boring after a while.”
He flung the corpse of the fly into the glare of the garden and, turning, appraised Olivia at length. “So why did you choose such a life?”
“I didn’t. It chose me.”
“You were discovered?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
“It happened when you were sixteen, did it not?”
“You’ve obviously read my clippings.”
“With great interest,” he admitted. “You auditioned to be an extra in a period film that was being shot along the Norfolk Coast. You didn’t get the part, but someone on the production staff suggested you should consider modeling. And so you decided to forsake your studies and go to New York to pursue a career. By the time you were eighteen, you were one of the hottest models in Europe.” He paused, then asked, “Did I leave anything out?”
“A great deal, actually.”
“Such as?”
“New York.”
“So why don’t you pick up the story there,” he said. “In New York.”
It was hell, she told him. After signing on with a well-known agency, she was put up in an apartment on the West Side of Manhattan with eight other girls who slept in rotating shifts on bunk beds. During the day she was sent out on “go-sees” with potential clients and young photographers who were trying to break into the business. If she was lucky, the photographer would agree to take a few test shots that she could place in her portfolio. If not, she would leave empty-handed and return to the cramped apartment to fend off the roaches and the ants. At night she and the other girls hired themselves out to nightclubs to earn a bit of spending money. Twice Olivia was sexually assaulted. The second attack left her with a black eye that prevented her from working for nearly a month.
“But you persevered,” said the Israeli.
“I suppose I did.”
“What happened after New York?”
“Freddie happened.”
Freddie, she explained, was Freddie Mansur, the hottest agent in the business and one of its most notorious predators. Freddie brought Olivia to Paris and into his bed. He also gave her drugs—weed, cocaine, barbiturates to help her sleep. As her caloric intake fell to near-starvation levels, her weight plummeted. Soon she was skin and bones. When she was hungry, she smoked a cigarette or blew a line. Coke and tobacco: Freddie called it the model diet.
“And the funny thing is, it worked. The thinner I got, the better I looked. Inside I was slowly dying, but the camera loved me. And so did the advertisers.”
“You were a supermodel?”
“Not even close, but I did quite well. And so did Freddie. He took one-third of my earnings. And one-third of the salaries of all the other girls he was handling at the time.”
“And sleeping with?”
“Let’s just say our relationship wasn’t monogamous.”
By the time she was twenty-six, the cadaverous drug-addled look with which she was associated went out of fashion, and her star began to fade. Much of her work took place on the runway, where her tall frame and long limbs remained much in demand. But her thirtieth birthday was a watershed. There was before thirty and after thirty, she explained, and after thirty the work all but dried up. She hung on for three more years until even Freddie advised her it was time to leave the business. He did so gently at first, and when she resisted he severed business and romantic ties with her and threw her into the street. She was thirty-three years old, uneducated, jobless, and washed up.
“But you were rich,” said the Israeli.
“Hardly.”
“What about all the money you made?”
“Money comes and money goes.”
“Drugs?”
“And other things.”
“You liked the drugs?”
“I needed them, there’s a difference. I’m afraid Freddie left me with a few expensive habits.”
“So what did you do?”