Priceless Page 6

  He was halfway from the center of Berlin to Potsdam, and if the GPS was to be believed, he was only a few hundred yards from his destination.

  “Nice area,” said the man in the passenger seat.

  “Civilized West Berlin, no hippie cafés, gay clubs, or kebab stalls. Mostly just senior citizens walking their dogs.”

  “Is it still far?”

  “Two blocks.”

  He passed a gas station and an intersection, beyond which Berliner Street became Potsdamer Street. Knowing the Germans, this spot probably marked the exact halfway point between the two cities, measured to the last inch. A little farther, he turned off the main road into a residential district, and after crossing a romantically snow-dusted park, he turned onto cobbled Quer Street. His passenger frowned at the sight of the cobblestones and tenderly stroked the dashboard.

  He drove slowly. Number twenty-four was a splendid villa the likes of which are only found in the ritziest parts of Sopot, Gdańsk, or Wrocław—in other words, prewar Germany—a three-story building of dark-red brick with white trim on the door frames, the semicircular window surrounds, the bosses, and the edges. And a bay window that recalled the octagonal towers in medieval castles. Fine bourgeois architecture, maybe a little too ornate.

  Karol Boznański switched off the engine, got out of the car, adjusted his shirt cuffs, and buttoned his jacket.

  He was ready to do battle.

  3

  Professor Dagobert Frey heard his guests long before he saw them parking outside near the white chestnut tree at the edge of his garden. He’d made some inquiries about the young Polish art dealer, and various people had mentioned his bizarre vehicle. As his cousin Stefan from Dortmund had put it, “That screwball Pole drives the weirdest sports car in the world.” So Frey had discreetly glued himself to the drapes as soon as he heard the rumble of an engine, which sounded like a muffled tank driving through a tunnel. With the car in low gear, the hum of the engine may have been stifled, but it was vibrant enough to make the wine glasses tremble.

  Finally the famous car emerged from behind the neighboring villa and parked in front of Frey’s garden gate. He frowned, because he’d been expecting either a monster or a tiny race car. Instead it looked like an old-model Japanese station wagon. It had a long, large hood, from under which came a hollow, metallic gurgle, as if offended that it wasn’t allowed to roar.

  A tall man got out of the driver’s side; all Frey could see was a black shock of hair and a graphite-colored suit. A man in a black jacket emerged from the passenger side, stout, with a receding hairline.

  The professor smoothed his white hair, adjusted his cashmere cravat, and buttoned his jacket.

  He was ready to do battle.

  4

  Before he could ring the bell, Frey opened the door. Karol gave him the effusive greeting he’d practiced at the hotel the day before. Karol’s German was perfect, and he wanted to be sure to pull off a good High German accent, so he didn’t sound like an immigrant and would show respect for German culture. Still in the doorway, he introduced his companion, Jerzy Majewski, vice president of PKN Orlen, the Polish oil company.

  Frey invited them in. Attuned to the homes of collectors, Karol registered all the typical details. Two cameras on the outside of the building, a solid metal door, motion sensors in the hallway, with a small camera in the corner and an alarm system. He was curious to see what was on the walls in the hallway—in an art lover’s house the hallway was usually the owner’s calling card, which read I don’t keep any treasures here, but this is my taste, and the gateway to my kingdom; decipher it correctly.

  Nobody in the business knew that Karol’s Warsaw apartment housed a bookcase full of thrillers, and nothing on the walls but amateur photographs from the only vacation he’d ever spent with a woman, who’d seemed very important to him at the time. So he never invited anyone over, which had naturally become legendary throughout Europe. One time, someone who didn’t realize who he was had confided in him that apparently there was a dealer in Warsaw who had Japanese miniatures depicting obscenities filthier than anything you’d find on the internet. Oh well, a good legend meant good business.

  In Professor Frey’s hallway, Karol winced a little. Either the professor had lousy taste or he sacrificed his taste for his clients by displaying the most blasé works. Karol called paintings like these “Hitlers” because they were perfectly suited to the Führer’s bourgeois taste. Realist, naturalist paintings of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, landscapes or nudes, with no religious themes. They looked good in the reception rooms of villas like this one, with the fire in the hearth glinting in the varnish of a winter’s evening. The hallway was a sort of test, so Karol stopped before the only worthwhile piece: a drawing by Caspar David Friedrich, whom in fact Adolf appreciated, but he wouldn’t have taken any notice of this faded sketch. It showed a lone wayfarer with a telescope, sitting on a dune, staring out to sea, with white cliffs behind him. Highly romantic, typical Friedrich, but so subtle that everything was just faintly outlined in the mist, extremely poetic for that superb but otherwise literal artist. As far as he could remember, the drawing had been sold at Christie’s a year ago for more than three hundred thousand pounds. He’d expected it to have gone to Germany, but he hadn’t expected to see it here.

  “Congratulations, a superb acquisition,” he said. “Are you keeping it in your collection?”

  The German smiled slightly. “I wish, but I’m afraid I can’t afford it. I’ll enjoy it for a while, then look for a good buyer. That’s the fate of a dealer, isn’t it?”

  Karol agreed. Like the rest of the world, Frey didn’t have to know that the renowned dealer Karol Boznański didn’t have a single painting at home. Well, not quite—in his study there was a portrait of the same woman who smiled from a beach blanket in the hallway. By Wojciech Fangor, truly superb.

  They went into the bourgeois sitting room for the obligatory chat over coffee. There were the usual complaints about their clients’ appalling tastes, taxes, auction costs, speculators manipulating market prices, illegal auctions, and media-driven fashions that ruin long-term strategies. In other words, they pretended not to be the avaricious black marketeers they really were. In his smooth German, Karol uttered the obvious remarks while evaluating his host. Approaching seventy, stylish black Chelsea boots, thick gray corduroy pants, a cotton shirt the color of faded denim, a dark cashmere cravat, midlength hair tied in a ponytail, and red-framed glasses. It was strange, but for an art dealer, Frey actually managed to look sympathetic.

  “You’ve got a fine family name, Karol.” The German winked at him, then poured coffee for everyone.

  Jerzy Majewski had only come to Berlin because he spoke German. In the past, he had supervised Orlen’s expansion into former East Germany, but only with mild success. He was clueless about art but had evidently heard of the Polish modernist painter Olga Boznańska and decided to chime in.

  “I was wondering if she might have been your great-grandmother or great-great-aunt? That would explain your interest,” he said.

  “It would be charming, but highly unlikely,” Frey replied for him, shaking cake crumbs from his hands. “Olga Boznańska died at a ripe old age as a spinster. Unfortunately for her but luckily for the art world, she’d dedicated herself entirely to her craft. On the other hand, her only sister, Karol’s potential great-great-aunt, was a childless lunatic and alcoholic who committed suicide.”

  Vice President Majewski nodded and tried to hide behind his cup.

  “Let’s go upstairs and talk business,” said Frey.

  Hidden behind an armored door and a combination lock, the room upstairs was meant to feel like a magical temple of art, though there was nothing better or more valuable in there than the Friedrich in the hallway, with some copies of Old Masters added for effect. Flock wallpaper, discreetly hidden cameras, special lighting, and an atmosphere that promised the poor nouveau-riche sucker that in exchange for a healthy sum, he’d t
ake home an exclusive piece. Along with one of the “Hitlers” that richly occupied the walls in here. Karol surveyed the interior with a professional eye and realized that he’d already won the negotiations before they began.

  “I believe this is what you’ve come for,” said Frey, pointing at an easel that held a painting, bathed in a spotlight.

  It was an oil portrait, roughly eight by ten, and it was quite charming. It showed the bust of a woman with luxuriant black curls casting a coquettish glance at the viewer, as if taunting him to pull away the piece of sheer cloth veiling her breasts. And that she really wouldn’t object to such a gesture. She was seduction incarnate; what’s more, the painter had shaded her eyes to deepen the mystery. A lovely thing—many a man would wish to hold the gaze of this curly-haired beauty.

  “Allow me to express my appreciation,” said Frey to Majewski. “Large corporations are generally famous for squirreling away every pfennig, I mean euro cent, for making investments, paying out dividends, and transferring their cash to tax havens. The fact that your firm wants to buy this fabulous portrait and donate it to a museum is praiseworthy.”

  Majewski bowed slightly.

  “However, it’s rather humiliating for us to have to buy back from a German dealer a work of art that was stolen from a Polish museum during the war,” said Karol as he sat on a sofa. “Mr. Majewski, I’m not sure how well you know the story of this painting. At the start of the Nazi occupation of Poland, it ended up in the National Museum in Warsaw, like many other Polish works of art. The poor guys thought the collections would be safe there. Of course, the tastier morsels were soon picked out of the museum, and the rest, like this portrait, was plundered. The worst was near the end of the war. The Germans went nuts, treating the museum like a free-for-all. This little beauty has Semitic features, but at that point it no longer bothered them.”

  Professor Frey stood frozen by the portrait.

  “Yes, the war was terrible for art,” he said, apparently taking no notice of Karol’s provocative tone. “The Nazis stole from the defeated nations, the Allies from the defeated Germans, the Russians from everyone, plus there was looting on an unprecedented scale, and in the middle of it all the French dealers decided to take advantage of the confusion to sell whatever they could. A strange time; thank God it’s behind us. And thank God not everything was destroyed, paintings are coming to light and being returned to their rightful owners.”

  “As long as the owners pay fifty thousand euros.”

  “To a dealer who did not steal or inherit the paintings but bought them legally at auction.”

  “Taking advantage of the fact that the Polish government had no chance to make a claim because the painting was auctioned off in some obscure place, once the museum stamp and painter’s signature had been very carefully erased from it, of course.”

  “I’m a dealer, not an expert. I bought this painting as the portrait of a young woman by an unknown artist, certainly nineteenth century. And I stress that I could have sold it to anyone; meanwhile I’ve agreed to give priority to a deal that will enable the return of the painting to the museum.”

  “Earning yourself thirty-five thousand euros in the process.”

  “Well, I never said I was acting out of charity. Besides, you know perfectly well that if I’d put it up for auction in Poland, I probably would have gotten far more for it, and it would have gone to a private collection. Do you have any questions, or should I draw up the papers?”

  “One question.” Karol made himself comfortable and folded his arms across his chest, revealing an Audemars Piguet watch from the Royal Oak collection, which Frey recognized. Despite the intensifying atmosphere, Karol spotted the appreciation in the dealer’s eyes. “What did your father do in the war?”

  “He was lucky enough not to be sent to the front. He served in a Wehrmacht reserve company just outside Hanover. In the kitchen.”

  “Like everyone,” said Karol.

  “It was an extremely big kitchen for an extremely large company.”

  “Yes, all these years I’ve been traveling around Germany, and I’ve never met the relatives of any of the SS men who served in Warsaw and murdered two hundred thousand people in the first few weeks, then burned the city to the ground, before taking paintings like this as souvenirs so that in fifty-odd years their grandsons could erase the signature and, with the help of professionals like you, earn some extra cash for a nice vacation in Thailand.”

  Vice President Majewski stood pale and motionless.

  Professor Frey went up to a desk by the window and took some papers from a drawer.

  “I’ve left a few boxes empty, the price, for example. I thought we’d negotiate. I’d like to inform you that, assuming you don’t wish to leave empty-handed, the price has risen to seventy-five thousand euros.”

  Majewski sighed as Frey tossed the papers onto an ornate side table in front of the sofa.

  “You’re wrong,” said Karol, with a bored look on his face. “The price has fallen, to a symbolic one euro. Please get the painting ready for transportation and give us an invoice. Vice President Majewski will make sure PKN Orlen settles this as soon as possible.”

  Frey snorted with laughter. “You’re out of your mind.”

  “Not in the least. The fact that you’re dealing in Polish art stolen by the Nazis is enough for the European media to brand you as a middleman for the SS. But of course you couldn’t care less about that—all of us in this business are more or less doing the same. And what do you know about this little table? Where you so casually dropped the contract.”

  Confused, Frey stared at the ornate inlaid side table.

  “I don’t know its origins; I bought it at an antique store several years ago,” he said. He wasn’t sure where the Pole was going with this.

  Karol carefully adjusted his cuffs so they stuck out of his sleeves at the same length.

  “Pushkin described Tsarskoye Selo as the Russian fatherland. And you’re sure to know that the Russians are obsessed with Tsarskoye Selo. It’s their holy of holies, holier than the Kremlin, holier than Lenin’s mausoleum. They reconstructed the famous Amber Room stolen from there by the Nazis, and they’re constantly rebuilding the palaces, their rooms and exhibits, so of course recovering works of art swiped from Tsarskoye Selo by those forebears of yours who just slipped out of the kitchen near Hanover for a moment is the number-one priority for their government’s art historians.”

  Judging from the uncertain look on Frey’s face, he was and wasn’t curious about how this story would unfold.

  “This little table, in the style of Louis XVI, is a late eighteenth-century original, made in Russia according to a design by Charles Cameron, court architect to the Empress Catherine II, and one of the chief designers of the palaces at Tsarskoye Selo. Until 1941 it was in the Catherine Palace, in the Blue Room, if my memory serves.”

  “You know Russia that well?” asked Majewski in amazement.

  “No, but I do know the catalogue issued by the Russian Ministry of Culture featuring their most important war losses. A curious fact that isn’t in the catalogue is that these days Russia’s greatest admirer of Cameron and his works in Saint Petersburg is Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister.”

  Majewski and Frey gazed at Karol in silence, waiting for the clincher.

  “Who, the day after tomorrow, will be arriving in Berlin to strengthen relations between your two countries—in other words, he’s likely to promise the most senior politicians lucrative pensions at gas companies. And this is where you come in, Professor. You, who can earn one euro selling this portrait by Leon Wyczółkowski while also securing yourself the undying gratitude of the federal authorities by giving them the chance to make a gift to Lavrov. Or you can earn seventy-five thousand selling the Wyczółkowski—for us that’s really nothing, but when Lavrov lands here, he’ll read in all the papers about the receiver of stolen goods who here in Berlin, a few miles from the Reichstag, has locked up Russian antiques that were st
olen by the Nazis, not the least of which is his beloved Cameron from sacred Tsarskoye Selo.”

  Frey was rapidly sinking.

  “Don’t behave like an amateur,” he said. “Pull a trick like that and you’ll lose all credibility.”

  Karol laughed. “As long as I have decent goods to sell, no trick will do me any harm.”

  5

  The car that Professor Dagobert Frey—now richer by one euro—had mistaken for an old Japanese model zipped along autobahn number 12 toward the Polish border. In front sat Karol Boznański and the extremely satisfied vice president of PKN Orlen, Jerzy Majewski; in the back, in a special box strapped to the back seat, protected by bubble wrap and Styrofoam, rode the beauty with luxuriant curls and Semitic features. Surely regretting the fact that she couldn’t peek out of the window and see how greatly the world had changed since 1884.

  “Would you toss this in the glove compartment?” asked Karol, rubbing his wrist; he couldn’t stand driving with his watch on.

  “Is it a real Audemars?”

  “Yes. Art isn’t like politics, where you can parade around in fakes. Style matters.”

  Majewski opened the glove compartment and out spilled some CDs, screwdrivers, and mint wrappers. He dug around.

  “There’s no box for the watch,” he said.

  “I know, just shove it in somewhere.”

  “But . . . but it’s a real Audemars.”

  Karol nodded, and Majewski put the watch in the compartment, making a face as if having to throw a Fabergé egg into a cesspool.

  They passed a sign announcing that they were entering the Polish Republic. They began their return to the homeland with a speeding ticket—110 miles per hour crossing over the Oder River.

  “How about some lunch?” asked Karol. “I know a great place just past Torzym.”

  “I’d be happy to go any place you recommend. It might sound weird, but I’ve never met anyone with such . . . how can I put it? . . . class before. Truly.”

  Karol nodded in thanks.