Art of Deception - Renaissance

This story concludes the Art of Deception trilogy. It can be read on its own without any knowledge of the previous entries. That said, reading this chapter first will reveal the major plot points from the other stories. I mention this only because I hate spoilers and would want to know myself if I were the reader.

I've asked for this story to be placed in Loving Wives, the same category as the original, so that those who posted or emailed about sequels will have an easier time finding it. Fair warning: this story doesn't contain the elements of a traditional Loving Wives tale, and it has very little explicit sex. I hope you enjoy it anyway. Thanks for reading.

*******

I glanced once more at the headline from the month-old newspaper I'd saved: "Sister of Faux Van Gogh Stays Mum."

Two large, side-by-side photos occupied the space directly below the headline. One was a photo of Carina I'd provided to the police in New York after the attempted theft of the Renoir. The second photo was of Carina's younger sister, Mila. The resemblance was remarkable.

Another below-the-fold photo showed Mila walking into her home in Richmond, a posh neighborhood along the Thames, with a throng of reporters gathered along the sidewalk. The terraced home in the photo looked identical to the one that stood before me. The address matched, too.

I folded the newspaper under my arm and checked my watch. I'd been standing on the corner for ten minutes, trying to work up the nerve to cross the street. I closed my eyes and drew a deep breath, then picked up my briefcase, walked to the door, and rang the bell.

The door inched open, and a sliver of a woman's face appeared. She had the same piercing blue eyes as her sister.

"Ms. Savchenko?" I smiled and tried to appear relaxed.

"You a reporter?"

"No. I'm ..."

"Good. Police?"

"No. Actually ..."

"Good. Here to ask about my sister?"

I paused. I sensed being direct would end things quickly, so I tried to ease into the conversation. I spoke slowly and tried to sound reassuring.

"My name is Adam Weber. I'm ..."

"Someone who wants my sister arrested. I know who you are. Goodbye."

She swung the door closed, but I jammed my toe into the entryway just before it shut. Her eyes bored into mine.

"Move. Your. Foot. Or you'll be the one arrested."

I removed my shoe and the door slammed in my face.

"Ms. Savchenko. I don't want Carina arrested. If I could just speak to you for a few minutes."

"Fuck off," her voice called from inside the door. "I'm ringing the police. You tried to force entry into my home. Now you're loitering."

Not even a full day in London, and I'd already made a mess of things.

I fumbled for something to say that might delay her and latched onto the first words that popped into my head.

"The Runaway Train ride at Chessington World of Adventures," I said, my mouth pressed close to the door. "Your parents took you and Carina when you were kids. The train car broke down inside one of the tunnels."

I waited for a response. Nothing.

"It gave you nightmares for days."

A prolonged silence from inside, followed by footsteps. The door inched open, and Mila's face reappeared.

"How could you know that?"

"Carina told me. On a picnic in New York."

"You know my sister, the infamous forger, from a picnic?"

"No. Well, kind of. Look, what I'm trying to say is, I'm here to help Carina, not hurt her. You have my word."

She eyed me skeptically. "Didn't rehearse this bit, did you?"

"Not exactly, no."

She jerked her head toward the interior of the room. "Right. Come in, then. We'll have a cup of tea."

Mila's living room was sparsely decorated. The tea she'd brewed sat on a mahogany coffee table. A large bookshelf stood against the far wall, filled with what looked to be a variety of legal reference books. A small, framed painting of a yellow iris sat on the table adjacent to Mila's chair. She followed my gaze.

"She painted it for me. Irises are our favorite. We used to gather them as kids. Carina said she wanted me to have one that was always in bloom."

Mila smiled, lost in thought. "Happier times. Carina was twelve, I think, when she painted that. I would have been eight." She sipped her tea. "Lot's changed since then."

She nodded at the newspaper I'd placed beside me on the sofa. "Papers said she betrayed you. Tried to frame you for nicking a painting. Why would you want to help her?"

"It's complicated."

She laughed. "That sounds like Carina."

"Mila, your sister was swept up by a very bad crowd."

"Oh, just swept up, was she? Not responsible for any of her choices, then? Just wrong place, wrong time, I guess. Such a pity."

"I understand you're angry," I said. "You should know she blames herself for everything. Even things that aren't her fault."

"Good."

We sat in silence and finished our tea.

My instinct was to defend Carina, to explain to Mila that her sister was just a child when a man she trusted took advantage of her artistic talent and naïveté to ensnare her in the life she now led. But I knew Mila had only recently learned of Carina's criminal ties through the news. She likely felt betrayed and hurt by the revelation that her sister was a forger, just as I had. She needed space to vent.

"She left our family when I was thirteen," Mila said, "to study art abroad. Or so she claimed. She came back to help for a bit after our parents died. I begged her to stay, but she said she had to go again. I felt so alone.

"After that, I decided that if she didn't need me, then I didn't need her." She shrugged. "We lost touch. We've hardly seen each other since."

"She thinks you hate her," I said.

"Rubbish. I don't hate her. I just miss her."

"She's stayed away in part to protect you. You mean the world to her. The people she works for ... they've threatened to kill you if she doesn't do as she's told."

Mila stiffened in her chair. "Kill me?"

"Yes. I know that must be upsetting."

She stared out the window for a long time, then nodded. "It is. But also comforting, in a way. All this time, I thought she just didn't care. Any reason is better than not caring." She leaned forward. "Who are these people?"

"I don't know who they are. I just know what they've done."

I told Mila everything. That Carina had first come to me in New York, claiming to need my expertise as a forensic art detective to determine if a painting she purchased was fake. That we began a relationship that ended when I discovered she was only using me to further her scheme to auction a forged Modigliani. A plan I managed to foil.

I went on to explain that she had mailed a forged Renoir to me a year later, claiming it was a peace offering. It was actually part of a plot—devised by the criminal organization for which she worked—to help a private detective named Monica steal the genuine Renoir and frame me for the crime, all in retaliation for my having ruined the Modigliani auction.

I described how Carina had tried to save me from the plot, and how she helped me coordinate the sting that brought down Monica and her accomplices. I told Mila I had to expose Carina to the police and appear committed to her capture so that her employers wouldn't suspect she had saved me.

Lastly, I confessed to Mila that Carina and I had fallen in love, and that we'd agreed to lie low until the heat died down and we could figure out our next steps.

She shook her head. "You should forget about my sister and find yourself a nice American girl. Someone who isn't wanted in two countries."

"I did. Married her, too. Then I caught her fucking her coworker."

Mila nodded. "They think they'll never get caught. I kicked out my ex-husband almost two years ago this month."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"I'm not. He was a twat."

I smiled, but Mila's face remained expressionless.

"If you and Carina agreed to lie low, what are you doing in London?"

I reached into my briefcase and removed a wooden Orthodox icon.

"St. Phanourios," Mila said. "Patron saint of the lost."

I nodded. "Carina sent this to me last month."

"What does it mean? Do you think she's in trouble?"

"I don't know. That's why I have to find her."

Mila took the icon and turned it over, examining both front and back. "This is all she sent?"

"That's it."

"Not much to go on, is it?"

"More than you might think, actually."

I removed two large prints from my bag and handed one to her. "This is a photo of the icon under normal light." I handed the second to her. "And this is the icon under ultraviolet light."

Mila's eyes widened. "Letters. Hidden in his red cloak."

"She used a simple UV-reactive pigment. It's a crude technique, especially for her, but maybe all she had time for."

I stood and pointed to different spots on the image that Mila was holding. "Four Xs, here, here, here, and here. One V, here. And a long, squiggly line here that follows the interior fold of his cloak in some places but diverges in others."

"What do they mean?"

"That's why I came. I'm hoping you can tell me. Do they mean anything to you? Something from your childhood, perhaps?"

She studied the image. "Nothing I remember, no. They seem to be scattered in random places. Could it be some sort of code? Like when you substitute letters?"

"Unlikely," I said. "There's no key, and even if there were, we'd still only have two letters to work with."

"Maybe they're not letters," she said. "Roman numerals?"

"I considered that, too. Does the number forty-five have any special meaning to you or your family?"

"Not that I can think of. Could it represent a year? 1945?"

"Maybe. Anything significant happen that year? Birth of your parents, maybe?"

"No. Mum was born in 1942 and Dad in 1941."

We fell into silence. I paced the living room, eyes fixed on the hardwood floor. I always found that pacing helped me to think more clearly.

"The 45 is a bus route in London," Mila offered, "but I've never used it."

"What about a postal code?" I asked.

She paused. "I doubt it. No postal codes use XV or VX. Closest thing would be OX for Oxfordshire or IV for Inverness."

"Let's set aside the letters for now," I said. "What do you make of the squiggly line along the fold in his cloak? It has to tie in somehow."

Mila traced the line with her finger. "There's definitely something familiar about it. I just can't place it."

She raised the image of the icon and turned it in her hands, viewing it sideways, then upside down, then returning it to its original position.

She slumped back in her chair for a moment, then suddenly sat bolt upright and snapped the image sideways again. "Wait. I do know this line," she said.

"Really? What is it?"

She ran to another room. I heard drawers being yanked open and hands rifling through their contents.

"What is it?" I called to her more loudly.

She came back to the room, tossed me a roll of tape, and pointed to a bare spot on the wall. "Tape that image of the icon to the wall. There."

I gave up asking her to explain and did as I was told.

"No, orient it sideways," she corrected when she saw how I was placing the image. "His head to your left."

When I finished and turned around, she had set up a small projector with her phone. She shone the projector image on the wall so that it overlapped the icon. Mila tapped her phone and navigated to a map of London.

"Hold on a tick. Just need to get the size and scale right." She moved the projector closer to the wall to shrink the image, then adjusted it to the left.

"That line isn't a fold in his cloak. Or a random squiggle," she said. "It's a river."

I stared at the map of London that now rested atop the image of the icon on the wall. The line Carina had painted perfectly followed every bend and curve of one section of the Thames.

I smiled and walked to the wall. "The Xs are just marks to help us orient the map. Make sure we have it lined up properly." I touched each one with my finger. "Buckingham Palace. Hyde Park. Tower of London. Battersea Park."

"Exactly," Mila said, joining me at the wall. "And the V isn't a V. It's a sideways arrow. Pointing right here." She pressed her finger to the wall.

"Where's here?" I asked.

"I have an idea, but it's hard to tell at this scale." She pinched and zoomed on her phone so we could see the names of the buildings in the area. "That's what I thought."

I nodded. "Tate Britain. The National Gallery of British Art. Where four of J.M.W. Turner's paintings were stolen last year."

I grinned and shook my head. "How on earth did you figure out that line was the Thames?"

"In primary school, most of my teachers also had Carina as a student. They all raved about her. I always worried they'd be disappointed that I wasn't as talented. One of our assignments in Year Five was to draw a map of London. I wanted so badly, just once, for my drawing to be better than Carina's. I spent ages on every curve of that stupid river."

"Thank God for sibling rivalry."

For the first time since I'd arrived, Mila's face brightened into a smile. "Okay, Mr. Detective," she said. "What's the plan?"

*******

Mila and I agreed that I should go alone. It would look suspicious if anyone saw Carina's ex-lover and her estranged sister strolling together through the galleries of the Tate. Neither of us wanted the attention, especially Mila, whose life had finally returned to some degree of normalcy now that her unwavering silence had caused the tabloids to lose interest in Carina. The last thing we needed was to give them a new angle.

I gave Mila the number of a burner phone I'd purchased in London and told her I would keep her posted on my progress. I suggested she get one too, just to be on the safe side.

By the time I left Mila's home, the Tate was closed for the day, and I was suffering from some serious jet lag. I took an Uber to my hotel, grabbed a quick bite downstairs, then crashed in my room for the night.

I awoke the next morning to loud knocking. "Mr. Weber?" a voice called. "Mr. Weber, are you there?"

I threw on a pair of pants, stumbled to the door, and checked the peephole. A uniformed police officer with a neatly trimmed gray beard stood ramrod straight, arm outstretched. He rapped crisply three more times on the door.

My stomach lurched. I opened the door. "Can I help you, officer?"

"Sorry to disturb you, Mr. Weber. I'm Detective Constable Palmer, Metropolitan Police. Do you have a moment?"

"Of course. Is something wrong?"

"No, sir. Not exactly." He flashed a badge. "I'm with the Art and Antiques Unit, a division of the Specialist, Organized & Economic Crime Command. We've been surveilling Ms. Savchenko's residence, hoping her sister might try to make contact. She hasn't, but yesterday someone else close to the case did. You. Detective Sergeant Ratliff would like a chat."

It was a half-hour drive from the hotel to New Scotland Yard. When we arrived, Detective Palmer led me to a small office on the fifth floor. I took a seat and waited a good ten minutes for the detective sergeant to arrive. I was certain the wait time was a ploy designed to make me anxious. It was working.

"Mr. Weber!" he boomed when he arrived. "We've spoken before on the phone, but it's a pleasure to finally meet you."

I'd provided a statement to the detective sergeant and answered some questions after I'd foiled the Renoir theft in New York and been forced to expose Carina. I remembered his questioning as polite but impatient, as though the information I offered never came quickly enough or with the right details.

Ratliff was tall and thin, much different from what I'd pictured, given his baritone voice. He looked to be in his mid-50s with close-cropped black hair that had gone gray around his temples.

I rose to greet him and extended my hand. He gripped it a little too hard and gave me a tight-lipped smile that felt more menacing than welcoming.

"Nice to meet you, too, Detective Sergeant," I said.

He gestured to my chair, and I sat down as he rounded his desk.

"I respect your time, Mr. Weber, so I'll come right to the point. What were you doing at Mila Savchenko's house yesterday?"

"Trying to get information that might help me find Carina."

"Ah, yes. Because you want to see her arrested."

"She tried to frame me," I said.

"Yet you somehow uncovered the plot before she succeeded and managed to turn the tables on every criminal involved, save for one.

"Somehow, Carina slipped your grasp," he continued. "So you've come to London to track her down."

"That's right," I said.

"And you think you have a better chance of finding her than the detectives of Scotland Yard?"

"Frankly, yes," I said.

He leaned back in his chair and considered me for a long moment before replying. "I agree."

He stood and walked to the far wall to face a map of London. The map was dotted with red, green, and blue pins.

"Mr. Weber," he continued, "do you know how many stolen and forged works of art my unit tracks in our database?"

"No."

"More than 54,000. A not insignificant portion of these I attribute to the organization that employs Carina Savchenko.

"You have now foiled not one, but two multimillion-pound schemes planned by this organization. A lesser man, perhaps one more preoccupied with his own well-being, might fear for his life given such a track record."

He turned to face me and smiled again.

"Yet here you are! Striding nobly into the lion's den in search of justice! With seemingly no thought of your own health and safety. What could motivate a man to do such a thing, I wonder? Are you that hell-bent on revenge? That committed to hunting your white whale?"

I stared at him, trying hard to mask my growing irritation.

"No, you don't strike me as the vengeful type," he continued. "But love ... well, love sometimes makes fools of us all, doesn't it, Mr. Weber?"

"I've never denied that Carina and I were romantically involved," I said.

"True. But I suspect you've downplayed your feelings for her. To a very great degree. I think you're searching for her not to see her thrown in jail, but to save her. Am I near the mark?"

He waited until I opened my mouth to respond, then cut me off.

"You don't need to answer. But, for argument's sake, let's suppose I'm right. If that were the case, you would be interested in finding a way to protect her, would you not? What if I could offer you such a thing? What if we could help each other?"

"You want me to lead you to her," I said. "Forget it."

Ratliff ignored me and sat back down in his chair. "Last year, four Turners were stolen from the Tate in one of the costliest art thefts in our country's history. The man I believe to be responsible is named Dominic Fletcher. He's the head of the criminal organization that employs Carina Savchenko, and I would give just about anything to take him down.

"Recently, we had two major breaks in the case. The first happened four weeks ago, when we recovered two of the stolen paintings."

Carina's icon suddenly became even more intriguing. Maybe it was more than just a map of how to find her. Maybe she was trying to tell me something about the theft.

"I don't believe you," I said. "Why haven't I read anything about the recovered paintings? Or seen them on the news?"

Ratliff was unbearably smug. Maybe I could get him to divulge some important details by challenging him and giving him an opportunity to prove me wrong.

"It's not been made public yet," he said, "both to protect the ongoing investigation and to allow us time to authenticate the paintings."

"How did you find them?"

"Through good detective work that I'm not about to share with someone so closely associated with the thieves."

I started to ask another question, but he raised his palm to silence me.