Read Chapter 10: Trial by Coffee

The café was called Vérène, and it had the tired elegance of a place that had once been fashionable and now merely pretended. Brass fittings dulled by decades of polish, mirrors veined with cracks like old skin, velvet banquettes worn smooth at the elbows. Julien arrived at ten forty-five, early enough to choose his seat—a corner banquette with a clear sightline to both entrances, the front door and the service door leading to the kitchens.

He ordered a coffee he didn't want and watched the morning traffic crawl along the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

Keller arrived exactly at eleven, preceded by his reputation and followed by a man Julien recognized immediately. The bodyguard was tall, broad-shouldered, with the flat, patient face of a man who had learned to wait in places where waiting meant death. Julien had seen his photograph once, in a dossier that had crossed his desk years ago, when he still dealt with legitimate clients and legitimate paperwork. The man's name was Goran Petrović, and he was not merely muscle.

He was a craftsman. Belgrade, Zagreb, a diplomat in Lyon who'd fallen from a window, a dealer in Amsterdam who'd drowned in a canal he had no reason to be near. Four deaths, no charges, no witnesses, no traces. The kind of man who made problems disappear with the same quiet efficiency that Anton applied to canvas.

Keller was smaller than Julien had imagined. A compact man in his sixties, immaculately dressed in a charcoal suit that cost more than Julien's monthly rent, with silver hair swept back from a face that was all sharp angles and careful neutrality. He moved like a man who had never needed to hurry, and his eyes—pale, almost colorless—swept the café with the practiced disinterest of someone who had learned to see everything without appearing to look.

He reached the banquette and extended his hand. "Monsieur Moreau. I'm told you have something extraordinary to show me."

"Eventually," Julien said. "Coffee first."

Keller's smile was thin but genuine. He gestured to Petrović, who took a seat at the bar without a word, positioning himself with a view of the entire room. His hands rested on the counter, perfectly still, and Julien noticed the slight bulge at his jacket's left side.

"Sit," Keller said, sliding into the banquette across from Julien. "I appreciate a man who doesn't rush to commerce. It suggests he has nothing to prove."

The waiter appeared, and Keller ordered a mineral water, no ice, in flawless French. When the waiter left, Keller leaned forward slightly, his voice dropping to a frequency that wouldn't carry beyond the table.

"I've been chasing this painting for seventeen years, Monsieur Moreau. I know every restoration report, every provenance document, every rumor that circulated through the underworld of this trade. I know the dimensions, the pigment composition, the specific craquelure pattern that distinguishes the original from the three known copies."

Julien kept his face neutral. "Then you know what I have."

"I know what you claim to have. There's a difference." Keller's pale eyes fixed on him with unnerving steadiness. "The photograph that circulated in 1978 was taken with a Leica, grainy, poorly lit. It was enough to confirm the painting existed, but not enough to authenticate it. Since then, there have been rumors—a vault in Burgundy, a private collection in Geneva, a restoration studio on the Left Bank."

Each location landed like a small, precise blow. Keller knew more than he should. More than Malraux had suggested.

"Let's not play games," Julien said. "You know what I'm offering. The question is what you're willing to pay."

Keller's smile widened, revealing perfect teeth. "I'm willing to pay a great deal, Monsieur Moreau. For the genuine article, with provenance that withstands scrutiny, I will pay ten million francs. In cash, in a Swiss account, however you prefer. I am a man of simple tastes and considerable resources."

Ten million. Three times what Dupont had promised. Enough to clear every debt, vanish to a country with no extradition treaty, and never think about the Corsicans again.

But Keller wasn't finished. "There is, however, one condition."

Julien waited.

"I want to see the painting myself. Not photographs, not descriptions. I want to examine it with my own hands, in my own laboratory, under my own lighting. If it is genuine, and if the provenance is credible, we have a deal. If it is not—" Keller shrugged, a gesture of continental fatalism. "Then we forget this conversation ever happened, and I will be disappointed but not vengeful."

"Your laboratory?"

"I maintain a private facility in Geneva. Discreet, secure, equipped with everything necessary for scientific authentication. I'm sure you understand." He paused. "Your brother understood."

The phrase hung in the air like smoke.

Julien's coffee cup stopped halfway to his lips. "What did you say?"

"Paul Moreau," Keller said, his tone conversational. "He came to see me in April of 1979. We met in a café very much like this one, in Geneva. He told me he was close to locating the painting— he claimed to have information about its whereabouts, information he was willing to sell. We agreed on a price. I gave him an advance. And then—" Keller spread his hands. "He disappeared. The painting disappeared with him. I never saw either again."

Julien's throat was dry. "You paid him."

"One million francs. Cash, as he requested." Keller studied Julien's face with the same clinical attention he'd given his mineral water. "I've often wondered whether he planned to deliver, or whether he simply took the money and ran. But given the circumstances of his disappearance, I've come to believe he was sincere."

"Circumstances?"

Keller tilted his head. "I would have thought you knew more than I do. He was your brother, after all."

The waiter returned with the mineral water. Julien used the moment to compose himself, watching Keller's hands—clean, manicured, steady—as he twisted the cap and poured.

"Eleven years between you," Paul had said once, in a rare moment of drunken honesty. "I've always wondered what that meant. Whether you were the accident or I was."

They had never been close. But Paul had come to Geneva, had met with this man, had taken his money and disappeared. And now Julien was sitting in the same kind of café, across the same kind of table, being offered a fortune for the same painting that had swallowed his brother.

"I don't know what happened to Paul," Julien said, which was true enough. "But I have the painting. And I need your guarantee that we can do this quietly."

Keller's smile returned, thinner this time. "Of course. Discretion is the foundation of my business." He set down his glass. "Bring the painting to Geneva. I'll have my laboratory prepared. We can finalize everything within the week."

Julien nodded, his mind already racing through the logistics. The painting was in his vault. The provenance was in Anton's studio, still being assembled. And somewhere in between lay the truth about his brother's death.

He stood, extending his hand. Keller shook it—a brief, dry contact—and then Julien walked toward the door, past Petrović, who did not look at him but whose presence seemed to shift the air in the room.

He was three steps from the door when a voice stopped him.

"Monsieur Moreau."

Julien turned. Keller was still seated, his glass of mineral water raised in a toast.

"I look forward to meeting your brother. He spoke of you often."

Julien's blood went cold. "I don't have a brother."

"Of course not," Keller said, and his smile was the smile of a man who knew a lie when he heard one. "That's what Paul said about you."