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T he negotiations with Antonio Calvesi were for the most part collegial, but on one point Gabriel refused to budge.

He would carry out the restoration not in the conservation lab of the Vatican Museums but in his studio in Venice.

He was not worried about the prospect of another theft.

Having helped the Italian authorities deliver a devastating blow to the Camorra, he was now under full-time protection, as were his wife and children. The painting wasn’t going anywhere.

The handover took place on the tarmac at Marco Polo Airport on the first Monday in February.

Donatella Ricci had already made repairs to the walnut panel, and a noted Italian provenance researcher had commenced a quiet investigation of the painting’s murky past. It was Calvesi’s ambition to unveil the work in time for the summer tourist season.

Gabriel, who was about to embark on the most important restoration of his career, made no promises.

The first order of business was to determine whether the portrait was in fact an autograph work by Leonardo da Vinci.

It was not an attribution Gabriel could make on his own.

Others more learned than he would have to examine the painting and render their verdicts, and a single dissenting opinion might doom the entire project.

But when to show the painting—and in what condition?

For the sake of transparency, Gabriel decided to allow the world’s top Leonardists to see the painting in a stripped state, with the damage clearly visible.

For now, it was in the condition that Gabriel had found it—hastily but competently restored.

It took him the better part of a week to remove the varnish and the retouching and expose the original painting.

He snapped several photographs of the panel and sent them to Antonio Calvesi at the Vatican via encrypted email.

Chiara examined the painting that evening.

“Are you sure you want them to see it like this?”

“Positive.”

“There’s a considerable amount of damage.”

“What did you expect? It’s more than five hundred years old, and for the last two centuries or so it was covered by another painting.”

“Could be risky.”

“Perhaps. But I want the greatest Leonardo scholars in the world to examine the original brushwork with their own eyes, with no retouching or varnish.”

It was Chiara, in her capacity as the managing director of the most prominent restoration firm in Venice, who placed the calls and issued the invitations.

Ten days later the most respected Leonardo scholars in the world convened in Gabriel’s studio.

There was Santelli from Milan, Barnes from New York, Rolland from the Louvre, Kendall from Oxford, and from Leipzig University the mighty Professor Maximillian Zeller, who had once written that there were no remaining autograph works by Leonardo yet to be discovered.

Absent, of course, was Montefiore of the Uffizi.

Gabriel omitted any reference to the late Leonardist during his presentation.

Nor did he identify the apprentice British conservator who had found the painting slumbering beneath a Madonna and Child attributed to an eighteenth-century imitator of Raphael.

The five experts examined the infrared and X-radiograph images, then took turns before the painting itself.

One by one, they handed down their verdicts.

There were no dissenting opinions or even equivocation.

Gabriel rang Antonio Calvesi at the Vatican and gave him the news. They had their Leonardo.

***

There were plainclothes Carabinieri officers in the streets around the palazzo, and a patrol boat was lashed to the quay.

Gabriel reluctantly took to carrying his Beretta pistol again, even while standing before his easel.

In the afternoons the children did their schoolwork in his studio, Raphael perched atop a stool at the worktable, Irene lying on the floor at Gabriel’s feet.

Bodyguards kept watch over Chiara as she shuttled between the apartment and the offices of the Tiepolo Restoration Company in San Marco.

Gabriel once again assumed Leonardo’s work habits.

Not the procrastinatory Leonardo who couldn’t bear the sight of a paintbrush, but the Leonardo who began work each day before the sun had risen and retired when it had set again.

He took a break each Wednesday afternoon to meet with his fourteen aspiring artists, and on Thursdays he always made certain to escort Raphael to the university for his weekly session with his tutor.

Most nights they ate at home, but once or twice a week they ventured out with their bodyguards for dinner at one of their favorite restaurants.

Afterward they would stop at Venchi in the Rialto for gelati.

Irene always insisted on a supply of butter cookies for the walk home.

The Allon family’s security detail increased in size in early March after the Carabinieri arrested Don Lorenzo Di Falco, leader of the Camorra’s most powerful clan.

French police rounded up camorristi in Lyon and Marseilles, and Spanish authorities arrested a senior member of the Di Falco clan in Barcelona.

SBL PrivatBank, having been abandoned by legitimate investors and depositors, closed its doors, sending shock waves through the global financial markets.

Martin Landesmann snapped up the bank’s elegant headquarters on the Piazza della Riforma at a bargain-basement price.

A week later he took the New Bond Street building off the Holy See’s hands.

The loss on the original investment to Vatican Incorporated was an astonishing three hundred million euros.

Of seemingly lesser note was the story in London’s Telegraph regarding a lawsuit filed by an ex-wife of Alexander Prokhorov, accusing the Russian oligarch of using fine art to conceal marital assets.

As part of the suit, the plaintiff and her British lawyers had demanded a complete inventory of the billionaire’s art collection—a collection that now included a Leonardo that was not a Leonardo.

Gabriel reached the unsettling conclusion that he had no choice but to make the painting go away.

“How?” asked Chiara warily one evening while preparing dinner.

“Another extrajudicial seizure.”

“You’re going to steal it, you mean?”

“I couldn’t possibly do it myself. I have to finish the real Leonardo.”

Ingrid, however, was holed up at her cottage on the North Sea and bored senseless. She readily accepted the assignment but made it clear she would need a partner.

“Have you anyone in mind?” asked Gabriel.

“What about your friend from Marseilles?”

The friend was a professional thief named René Monjean. It was a wise suggestion. Monjean knew the territory and could handle himself if things went sideways.

“He won’t do it pro bono,” Gabriel pointed out .

“No,” agreed Ingrid. “We’ll need some cash.”

“How much?”

“A half million, at least. A million to be on the safe side.”

Gabriel killed the call, then rang Martin Landesmann in Geneva.

“Absolutely not,” declared the Swiss financier.

“Thanks, Martin. I’ll make it up to you somehow.”

***

General Ferrari popped into Venice the following week.

Over Bellinis at Harry’s Bar, he briefed Gabriel on the escalating war against the Camorra.

More than three hundred members of the Di Falco clan had been arrested, and billions in cash and other assets had been seized or frozen.

The supply of cocaine on the streets of Europe had fallen precipitously. Prices had risen sharply as a result.

“All because of you and your friend the Holy Father.”

“How long will I need protection?” asked Gabriel.

“Hard to say. For the moment, at least, they seem far more interested in killing one another. They’re also starting to talk.

One of the men in custody admitted to helping Salvatore Alvaro kidnap and murder a young British woman in Venice last September.

He claimed not to know anything about her or why his superiors in the Camorra wanted her dead. ”

“But how did they know she was trying to make contact with Amelia March of ARTnews ?”

“I’m not sure they did. But when Signorina Radcliff discovered that the painting was no longer in the storeroom at the Vatican Museums, she went to Florence and confronted Giorgio Montefiore.”

“Says who?”

“Montefiore’s secretary at the Uffizi. Apparently they had a blazing row. Montefiore told her that she had just ruined her career and threw her out of his office. Then, in all likelihood, he called his friend Cardinal Bertoli.”

“And Bertoli told his investment adviser, Nico Ambrosi, that they had a problem.”

General Ferrari nodded gravely. “Ambrosi and his associates in the Camorra had a solution, though. An Italian solution.”

“But why was Montefiore killed?”

“It was Montefiore who oversaw the restoration of the Leonardo. When Salvatore Alvaro came to Florence to collect it, Montefiore refused to tell him where it was unless he was paid an additional five million euros. Not surprisingly, Alvaro agreed to the terms. And when he had the painting in hand...”

“Giorgio got three bullets in the head.”

General Ferrari shrugged. “ C’est la vie .”

“When will the Carabinieri make their findings public?”

“We are prepared to leave the two murders unsolved for the time being.”

“It is essential that Penelope Radcliff receive credit for discovering the Leonardo.”

“That would require us to tell the truth.”

“Or a version of the truth,” suggested Gabriel. “One that reveals the Art Squad’s role in recovering a lost painting by Leonardo da Vinci.”

“And where, exactly, did we find it?”

“I’m sure you’ll think of something, Cesare.”

He gave the matter a moment of thought. “There’s one serious problem, you know.”

“The copy of the painting I sold to Alexander Prokhorov?”

“Yes.”

“I have a solution.”

“Not an Italian solution, I hope. ”

“Danish, actually.”

“In that case,” said the general, “problem solved.”

***

For nearly a month, Gabriel didn’t hear from her.

Then she rang one day, out of the blue, from the satellite phone on René Monjean’s motor yacht.

Luca Rossetti met the boat the following afternoon in the Italian resort of Ventimiglia, and by that evening both the painting and Ingrid were back in the Allon family apartment in San Polo.

Somehow she had managed to spend only half of Martin’s million dollars.

The rest was zipped into a nylon duffel, which she returned to Gabriel—thus proving there was honor among thieves, after all.

“Any problems?” he asked.

“Candy from a baby, Mr. Allon.”

“How did you pull it off?”

“It was an inside job.”

“They always are.”

“So they say.”

“Was it one of the security guards?” asked Gabriel.

“The girlfriend, actually.”

“Not the lovely Yuliana?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“How much did you pay her?”

Ingrid smiled. “Nothing at all.”

***

At the request of the children, Ingrid stayed in Venice for a few days before jetting off to her villa on Mykonos.

By then it was late April and Antonio Calvesi, despite regular progress reports, was growing anxious.

Gabriel assured his patron that he was hard at work, though Chiara would later attest that on some days her husband sat staring at the portrait for hours on end without so much as preparing his palette.

Other days he might apply a brushstroke or two of paint and hastily depart, only to return to his studio an hour or so later and commence staring again.

Chiara, having endured countless restorations, recognized the symptoms. Secretly she informed Antonio Calvesi that the Leonardo was nearly finished.

Convincing Gabriel of that fact proved far more difficult, for he was suffering from an uncharacteristic case of nerves and indecision.

Chiara could scarcely blame him. The painting on his easel would soon be one of the most famous in the world, and his restoration would come under intense scrutiny.

It was inevitable that not everyone in the conservation and curatorial community would agree with the choices he made.

When Chiara suggested showing the painting to the five Leonardists, he refused.

The five Leonardists, he said, would undoubtedly give him five different opinions.

The only judgment that mattered now was his own.

And so for the rest of April he remained a prisoner of his studio.

Some days he worked for twelve hours without a break, some days he applied only a brushstroke or two, some days he merely sat and stared.

The beautiful young girl from Milan stared back at him over her left shoulder, with her mismatched pupils.

They were, he thought, her most alluring feature.

Each Wednesday afternoon, though, he kept his appointment with his fourteen students.

On the final Wednesday of the month, Dottoressa Saviano asked whether he would be willing to take on an additional student—a young boy of exceptional artistic promise.

Gabriel readily agreed, despite the fact there were only a few weeks remaining in the school year.

He paid the child no inordinate attention during the hourlong session but extolled the astonishing quality of his work while walking him home.

The boy seemed not to hear him. His rebellious twin sister, having broken free of her Carabinieri bodyguard, was leaping in puddles left by an afternoon rain.