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Next morning he carried his ten-thousand-euro plank of walnut to the mainland woodworking shop of one Marco Amato.

He instructed Marco to shave two centimeters off the panel’s height and four from its width—and to do it in a way that the alterations were not visible.

He then informed Marco that he required still another panel, of oak rather than walnut, and provided the woodworker with a high-resolution photograph of how he wanted it to look.

“The same size?”

“The same everything. I want you to make an exact duplicate of that supporting panel.”

“May I ask why, Maestro Allon?”

“No, you may not. And if you call me maestro one more time I’m going to shave two or three centimeters off you.”

Gabriel returned to San Polo and spent the remainder of the day in his studio working on a preparatory study of a nameless young girl who had lived in Milan more than five hundred years ago.

He based his composition on two sources—Leonardo’s original silverpoint sketch and the Zurich Insurance Group photograph of the painting in its current condition.

He made four sketches in all, then, with Chiara looking over his shoulder, chose one.

With a steel-tipped scratch awl, he pierced the sketch with hundreds of tiny holes, or spolveri . The three remaining sketches he burned.

He returned to Marco Amato’s workshop late the following morning to collect his costly piece of walnut, which was now 78 by 56 centimeters.

Back in his studio, he prepared the panel as Leonardo’s studio assistants would have prepared his—with layers of wood oil and lead white paint mixed with finely ground soda-lime glass.

Three days later, when the preparation was sufficiently dry, he laid the sketch atop it and sprinkled the paper with powdery wood ash he had gathered from the hearth in the sitting room.

The ash seeped through the tiny spolveri , leaving a dotted outline of the sketch on the surface of the panel.

Using a Winsor & Newton Series 7 brush loaded with pale gray paint, he connected the dots and commenced work on a complete monochromatic version of the painting.

It was long past sunset by the time he finished. He had eaten nothing all day.

***

Ingrid took a place of her own, a charming one-bedroom overlooking the Rio de la Frescada for a hundred and fifty a night.

Her cyberactivity now included full-time surveillance of a Swiss bank, a Dutch art dealer, and a Dassault Falcon 900LX owned by the offshore shell company Eiger Air Transport.

Nevertheless she collected Irene and Raphael from school each afternoon and, after a visit to the pasticceria or gelateria of their choice, delivered them to the Allon family apartment.

Invariably she slipped into Gabriel’s studio and briefed him on any developments, such as an overnight flight by the Dassault from Lugano to Singapore, home of a billionaire shipping magnate who was in the market for a newly discovered masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci.

Most afternoons, though, she sat silently atop a stool and watched Gabriel work.

By the end of the first week he had laid down the first earth-toned base layers of paint.

Next he began building color and contour with thin glazes.

There were no discernible lines anywhere in the image, for Leonardo insisted they did not exist in nature.

There were only scarcely perceptible transitions, the technique he called sfumato .

This, Gabriel explained to Ingrid one afternoon, was how they were going to steal the painting.

They would make it disappear in the manner of smoke losing itself on the air.

The sfumato stratagem, as Gabriel referred to it, required a perfect copy of the painting.

The hand of the master clearly had to be in evidence, thus Gabriel’s decision to make the entire picture using only his left.

It could not be rushed, this copy. There could be no cutting of corners, no forcing of the issue.

Layer by layer, no discernible lines, smoke vanishing into thin air.

The finely ground glass that Gabriel added to his preparation not only brightened the painting but helped to speed the drying as well.

Still, each new layer of paint and glaze had to dry thoroughly before he could add the next, a process that typically took several hours.

On days when the sun was shining he would place the painting on the loggia and expose it to the southern sky.

But when the weather was cloudy and damp he had no recourse other than a powerful fan.

During one daily intermission he took Ingrid sailing aboard his Bavaria 42.

Franco Tedeschi and Peter van de Velde spent that same afternoon aboard the Dassault Falcon, bound for Abu Dhabi.

The viewing took place late that evening on an airport tarmac.

The prospective buyer was a hotheaded young sheikh with more money than sense.

He offered a hundred million for the painting. Franco turned him down flat.

On Wednesdays, Gabriel made certain to schedule the drying period so that he could keep his weekly appointment with his fourteen young art students.

During one lesson they made simple still lifes using no lines, only faint edges and subtle gradations of shading.

The week after that they produced their first drapery studies—again without lines.

Each Thursday, Gabriel escorted Raphael to the university for his weekly session with his mathematics tutor.

While walking home one evening, the boy asked Gabriel why his friend Ingrid was staying in Venice—and why he was spending so much time working on the painting in his studio.

The explanation Gabriel concocted might have worked once, but not that evening.

His son was far too intelligent to be deceived by a half-baked cover story spun by his father.

“It’s a Leonardo, isn’t it?”

“Since I’m the one painting it, it cannot possibly be a Leonardo.”

“Of course it can.”

Gabriel smiled. “You’re a very sophisticated young man, Raffi. But what makes you think I’m painting a Leonardo?”

“The sketch,” answered the boy.

“What sketch?”

“The one I saw in the book lying on your worktable. It’s called Head of a Woman or Study for an Angel . Leonardo drew it when he was working on a painting called Virgin of the Rocks .”

Gabriel received this revelation with mixed emotions. He was encouraged that Raphael had shown an interest in something other than advanced mathematics. He was less pleased to hear that the boy had flouted his father’s long-standing edict that no one enter his studio when he was not present.

“How many times have I told you—”

“Mama said it was all right.”

“Did she?”

The child nodded his head vigorously.

“And what do you do when you visit my studio, Raffi?”

“Sometimes I do my schoolwork. It’s very quiet.”

“And when you’re not doing your schoolwork?”

“I draw.”

That would explain the missing pages in Gabriel’s sketchpad and the foreshortened pencils. He had suspected that someone had been using his supplies without authorization but had not wished to sound like a mentally unbalanced madman by confronting his wife and young children.

“What sort of drawings?” he asked.

“Still lifes, mainly. Mama arranges them for me.”

The plot thickens. “How many still lifes have you made, Raffi? ”

He shrugged in reply.

“Anything else?”

“I drew a copy of the Leonardo sketch. The one of the girl.”

“Where is it now?”

All of Raphael’s drawings, Gabriel discovered when they returned home, were carefully dated and stored in a handsome leather art portfolio, a gift from the child’s mother.

The still lifes were far more advanced than anything made by Gabriel’s students.

The copy of Head of a Young Woman , also known as Study for an Angel , was near photographic.

Gabriel asked his son whether he had traced the picture. The boy swore he had not.

Unconvinced, Gabriel led Raphael into his studio and asked him to draw a copy of his copy. The boy scarcely glanced at his source material. The young woman, it seemed, had been culled from his prodigious memory.

Gabriel dated the sketch and placed it in Raphael’s portfolio. “Will you come to my class next Wednesday?” he asked.

“No,” replied the child, and walked out.