The New Girl (Gabriel Allon #19)(4)

Boswell smiled.

“And what was the topic of this rumor?”

“That you’ve been doing a bit of moonlighting.”

Trained in the art of deception, Sarah easily concealed her discomfort. “Really? What sort of moonlighting?”

Boswell leaned forward and lowered his voice to a confiding whisper. “That you’re KBM’s secret art adviser.” KBM were the internationally recognized initials of Saudi Arabia’s future king. “That you were the one who let him spend a half billion dollars on that questionable Leonardo.”

“It’s not a questionable Leonardo.”

“So it’s true!”

“Don’t be ridiculous, Brady.”

“A non-denial denial,” he replied with justifiable suspicion.

Sarah raised her right hand as though swearing a solemn oath. “I am not now, nor have I ever been, an art adviser to one Khalid bin Mohammed.”

Boswell was clearly dubious. Over antipasti he finally broached the topic of the loan. Sarah feigned dispassion before informing Boswell that under no circumstances would she be lending him a single painting from the al-Bakari Collection.

“What about a Monet or two? Or one of the Cézannes?”

“Sorry, but it’s out of the question.”

“A Rothko? You have so many, you wouldn’t miss it.”

“Brady, please.”

They finished their lunch agreeably and parted on the pavements of Park Avenue. Sarah decided to walk back to the museum. Winter had finally arrived in Manhattan after one of the warmest autumns in memory. Heaven only knew what the new year might bring. The planet seemed to be lurching between extremes. Sarah, too. Secret soldier in the global war on terror one day, caretaker of one of the world’s grandest art collections the next. Her life knew no middle ground.

But as Sarah turned onto East Fifty-Third Street, she realized quite suddenly she was terminally bored. She was the envy of the museum world, it was true. But the Nadia al-Bakari Collection, for all its glamour and the initial buzz of its opening, largely saw to itself. Sarah was little more than its attractive public face. Lately, she had been having too many lunches with men like Brady Boswell.

In the meantime her private life had languished. Somehow, despite a busy schedule of fund-raisers and receptions, she had failed to meet a man of appropriate age or professional accomplishment. Oh, she met many men in their early forties, but they had no interest in a long-term relationship—God, how she hated the phrase—with a woman of commensurate age. Men in their early forties wanted a nubile nymphet of twenty-three, one of those languorous creatures who paraded around Manhattan with their leggings and their yoga mats. Sarah feared she was entering the realm of a second wifedom. In her darkest moments she saw herself on the arm of a wealthy man of sixty-three who dyed his hair and received regular injections of Botox and testosterone. The children from his first marriage would cast Sarah as a home-wrecker and despise her. After prolonged fertility treatments, she and her aging husband would manage to have a single child, which Sarah, after her husband’s tragic death while making his fourth attempt to scale Everest, would raise alone.

The hum of the crowds in MoMA’s atrium temporarily lifted Sarah’s spirits. The Nadia al-Bakari Collection was on the second floor; Sarah’s office, the fourth. Her telephone log showed twelve missed calls. It was the usual fare—press inquiries, invitations to cocktail parties and gallery openings, a reporter from a scandal sheet looking for gossip.

The last message was from someone called Alistair Macmillan. It seemed Mr. Macmillan wanted a private after-hours tour of the collection. He had left no contact information. It was no matter; Sarah was one of the few people in the world who had his private number. She hesitated before dialing. They had not spoken since Istanbul.

“I was afraid you were never going to return my call.” The accent was a combination of Arabia and Oxford. The tone was calm, with a trace of exhaustion.

“I was at lunch,” said Sarah evenly.

“At an Italian restaurant on Park Avenue with a creature named Brady Boswell.”

“How did you know?”

“Two of my men were sitting a few tables away.”

Sarah hadn’t noticed them. Obviously, her countersurveillance skills had deteriorated in the eight years since she had left the CIA.

“Can you arrange it?” he asked.

“What’s that?”

“A private tour of the al-Bakari Collection, of course.”

“Bad idea, Khalid.”

“That’s the same thing my father said when I told him I wanted to give the women of my country the right to drive.”

“The museum closes at five thirty.”

“In that case,” he said, “you should expect me at six.”





3

New York


It was Tranquillity, reputedly the second-largest motor yacht in the world, that gave even his staunchest defenders in the West pause for thought. The future king saw it for the first time, or so the story went, from the terrace of his father’s holiday villa on Majorca. Captivated by the vessel’s sleek lines and distinctive neon-blue running lights, he immediately dispatched an emissary to make inquiries as to its availability. The owner, a billionaire Russian oligarch named Konstantin Dragunov, knew an opportunity when he saw one, and demanded five hundred million euros. The future king agreed, provided the Russian and his large party leave the yacht at once. They did so by the ship’s helicopter, which was included in the sale price. The future king, a ruthless businessman in his own right, billed the Russian exorbitantly for the fuel.