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“It’s a perfect match, my boy. You’ve outdone yourself.”

“Who else was on the plane?”

“Four security guards and a little Italian banker with a face like a ferret. Van de Velde did all the talking. If I had to guess, he’s eagerly awaiting my next call.”

“How quickly can you get an offer on the table?”

“That’s entirely up to you.”

“Close of business feels right to me. And make sure you shoot your mouth off at Wiltons tonight.”

“That would be a violation of the nondisclosure agreement.”

“These things happen, Ollie. Especially where you’re concerned.”

He transmitted the bid to Peter van de Velde at four o’clock that afternoon.

His email was appropriately weighty in tone, for the offer was $350 million.

Oliver being Oliver, he let it slip to Nicky Lovegrove at Wiltons, and Nicky quietly resolved to throw his hat in the ring.

At least that was the version of events he imparted into the ear of Julian Isherwood, who was in on the entire charade.

None of which Nicky mentioned to Peter van de Velde when they spoke by telephone.

He claimed to have heard about the new Leonardo from a “highly placed art world source.” This source, whom he refused to further characterize, had informed him that the numbers being thrown around were already stratospheric, which was music to Nicky’s ears.

He represented some of the world’s wealthiest collectors.

The higher the altitude, the higher his commission.

“You would be well advised, Peter, to show me the picture at your earliest convenience.”

“How about tomorrow?”

The viewing took place not in Amsterdam but in a suite at the Hotel Splendide Royal in Lugano.

Twenty-four hours later Nicky Lovegrove submitted a bid of $375 million on behalf of a phantom client.

When informed of the offer, Oliver Dimbleby raised the price of the deal to $390 million.

The Russian oligarch Alexander Prokhorov waited two full days before getting back in the game.

He did so with an astonishing offer of $400 million, equaling the price paid at auction for the Salvator Mundi .

It was at this point that Simon Mendenhall informed Peter van de Velde that Christie’s stood ready to dispose of the painting, either at auction or through a private sale.

Not surprisingly, Jeremy Crabbe of Bonhams got wind of Simon’s gambit and rang Van de Velde with an offer of his own.

Poor Niles Dunham, a mere curator at the National Gallery, had nothing to offer other than his infallible eye and unquestioned integrity.

Like Nicky Lovegrove, he was shown the painting in Lugano, in a suite at the Hotel Splendide. “It’s him,” was all he said.

Niles delivered the same message to Gabriel later that evening—and to the other members of the conspiracy gathered at the bar at Wiltons.

Oliver Dimbleby’s imaginary client, after giving the situation some imaginary thought, immediately raised his offer to $410million.

Not to be outdone, Nicky Lovegrove’s nonexistent client bid $425 million.

Alexander Prokhorov, his manhood on the line, instructed his art adviser Stéphane Tremblay to put an end to the proceedings.

Tremblay transmitted a bid of $450 million to Peter van de Velde.

They had left the stratosphere for the mesosphere.

It was time to close the deal and claim the prize.

***

The headquarters of Executive Jet Services were located in a squat gray building on the eastern fringes of Zurich’s Kloten Airport.

From his office on the fourth floor, Markus Vogel had a fine view of the airfield’s flightline.

At present, though, his eyes were fixed on the resumé lying on his desk.

It had been forwarded to him by a billionaire financier who owned not one but two private aircraft, both of which were maintained and crewed by Executive Jet Services at a cost of several million Swiss francs annually.

This financier, whose name was Martin Landesmann, had asked Markus Vogel to grant him an unusual favor.

Under normal circumstances, Vogel would not have given it a second thought; it was a violation of the company’s pledge to provide its clients absolute privacy.

But Landesmann was a fixture at Davos and Aspen and a renowned global do-gooder, and the owners of the other aircraft were in Vogel’s opinion a rather shady bunch, even by the reduced standards of the Swiss financial services industry.

The head of the firm’s asset management division, an Italian fellow named Franco Tedeschi, had been racking up a lot of miles of late, always with a retinue of armed security men and a flat rectangular case.

According to Erika Schmidt, the plane’s usual cabin attendant, the case contained a painting.

Potential buyers had been viewing the work in flight or on airport tarmacs.

Erika had overheard offers in the hundreds of millions.

It was Martin Landesmann’s wish to replace Erika Schmidt on a future flight, for reasons he declined to disclose.

He had given his solemn word, though, that the substitute cabin attendant would engage in no illicit activity and would perform her prescribed duties with the utmost professionalism.

He had also implied that Vogel, if he were to grant the request, would receive a substantial gratuity in return, something in the neighborhood, say, of a hundred thousand Swiss francs.

Vogel was therefore inclined to do whatever was necessary to keep his famous client happy.

Still, he was troubled by the quality of the resumé lying on his desk.

It was thin gruel, to say the least. The applicant was a thirty-seven-year-old female who spoke Danish, German, and English fluently but had no experience in the hospitality industry.

Indeed, as far as Markus Vogel could tell, the woman had no real work history at all.

There were no references other than Martin Landesmann and no contact information.

Nor was there a photograph, a requirement for those seeking employment as a cabin attendant.

Vogel, for all he knew, was being asked to hire an overweight Scandinavian milkmaid.

He was therefore pleasantly surprised when, late the following morning, the woman in question strode into his office for her interview.

She wore a dark pantsuit and stylish pumps that added a few centimeters to her compact, athletic frame.

Her hair was the color of toffee, her eyes were pale blue.

Vogel asked her the usual sort of questions, and she managed to say next to nothing, all the while sounding witty and engaging.

She was highly intelligent, he thought, and dangerously manipulative.

If he didn’t know better, he might have suspected that Martin Landesmann had fallen under the spell of a beautiful confidence artist.

It was not a real job interview, for the outcome was a foregone conclusion.

Vogel handed her over to Frau Huber, supervisor of the cabin staff, and for the next three days Frau Huber put her through her paces.

The training covered everything from food and beverage preparation to personal etiquette and the unique challenges of tending to the needs of those of unlimited wealth.

She proved to be a quick study, though at times she could scarcely hide her boredom, especially during Frau Huber’s lecture on what was expected of her in the unlikely event of a water landing.

She seemed to know her way around a wine list and mixed a mean Manhattan.

Even in her pumps, she moved without a sound.

The last act of her training was a written test, which she passed with a perfect score.

With her new uniform in hand, she headed across the tarmac and up the airstair of a waiting Gulfstream G550, managed and maintained by Executive Jet Services.

The plane departed Zurich thirty minutes later, bound for Venice.

Markus Vogel consulted the aircraft’s flight logs and saw that it had made a brief stop in the Italian city ten days earlier.

On that occasion there had been two passengers on board.

One was the plane’s owner, Martin Landesmann.

The other was someone named Gabriel Allon.

***

It was Sarah Bancroft who whispered it into the ear of Amelia March, intrepid reporter from ARTnews magazine.

Nothing specific, mind you, just a bit of gossip she had overheard about a fight among several London art world figures over a major new piece that had come onto the market.

Nicky Lovegrove, when asked for a comment that evening at Wiltons, called the rumor “pure rubbish,” a sentiment shared, interestingly enough, by Simon Mendenhall, Jeremy Crabbe, Oliver Dimbleby, and Niles Dunham.

Still, it was more than enough in Amelia’s estimation to justify a short item on her social media feed.

It appeared at nine fifteen that evening, and by morning it was the talk of the art world.

A representative of the hotheaded young sheikh from Abu Dhabi informed Peter van de Velde that His Highness wished to submit a new bid for the painting.

So, too, did the third-richest man in China and the billionaire shipping magnate from Singapore.

By day’s end, the offer on the table was a head-spinning $475 million.

The sharp increase in price, while a welcome development, was not without its potential complications, for it appeared that Alexander Prokhorov was, in the lexicon of the auction trade, all done.

Finally, after forty-eight hours of deafening silence, the Russian oligarch weighed in with an offer of $500 million.

The Singaporean shipping magnate reluctantly bowed out of the contest, followed soon after by the third-richest man in China.

The hotheaded sheikh waited twenty-four hours before folding his tent.

Peter van de Velde offered Nicky Lovegrove’s imaginary client a chance to get back into the game, but the imaginary client tossed his cards upon the table.

When Oliver Dimbleby’s imaginary client followed suit a few hours later, the deal was done.

At $500 million, it shattered the record price paid for the Salvator Mundi .

And yet, with few exceptions, no one in the art world was aware that history had been made.

For now, at least, the existence of the painting remained a closely guarded secret, as did the identities of both the seller and the buyer.

It just so happened that Alexander Prokhorov had yet to lay eyes on the painting for which he had agreed to pay a record-setting sum of money.

He insisted on seeing the picture for himself, preferably at his villa in Antibes, before committing to the purchase.

Stéphane Tremblay put the demand to Peter van de Velde, and the Dutch art dealer, after first consulting with Franco Tedeschi in Lugano, agreed to the terms without delay.

He suggested the viewing take place on Friday at 2:00 p.m., but the Russian oligarch requested Wednesday at two instead.

If the painting met with his approval, he would sign the sales agreement and transmit the $500 million to the seller’s account.

Which left Gabriel forty-eight hours to put the final pieces of his operation in place.

He did so with a rapid series of four telephone calls.

The first was to General Cesare Ferrari, chief of the Art Squad, and the second was to his French counterpart, Jacques Ménard of the Police Nationale.

He caught Sarah Bancroft as she was walking along Duke Street toward Wiltons and reached Martin Landesmann at his villa on Lake Geneva.

Martin quickly placed a call of his own, to Markus Vogel of Executive Jet Services, and Vogel informed Frau Huber, supervisor of the cabin staff, of a crew change for a forthcoming flight between Lugano and Nice.

Frau Huber found this intriguing for any number of reasons, not least because there was nothing in the computer to indicate that such a flight had been scheduled.

She penciled in the change nevertheless and informed Ingrid, via a text message to a burner phone, that she would be making her maiden voyage on Wednesday morning.

Unbeknownst to Frau Huber, her new employee spent Tuesday afternoon plotting to steal a lost masterpiece by Leonardo da Vinci from the very men upon whom she would soon be waiting.

Her partner in crime, for his part, informed Dottoressa Elenora Saviano that, owing to a scheduling conflict, he would not be able to keep his appointment that week with his fourteen art students.

That evening Ingrid joined the Allon family for dinner at Vini da Arturo, and at six the following morning, dressed in her new uniform and a navy blue raincoat, she boarded a train bound for Lugano.

Gabriel had booked two seats on the nine o’clock flight to Nice, one for himself and the other for the solander museum case.

Two plainclothes French policemen met him as he stepped from the jetway at C?te d’Azur Airport and escorted him to a windowless room near passport control where Jacques Ménard, in a sleek dark suit and tie, sat at a spotless white table.

He looked at the museum case. “What have you got there?”

“Nothing at all, Jacques.”

Ménard smiled. “ Contrapposto ?”

“Poof,” said Gabriel. “Like smoke losing itself on the air.”