Anton stopped in front of me and dropped his keys onto my tray. They landed in a glass of champagne with a small splash."Black car by the gate," he said, loud enough for everyone nearby. "Park it carefully, will you? You'll want the practice. Soon you'll be parking cars for a living, without a rich wife to feed you."The guests around us laughed. Rupert laughed the loudest."Careful, Anton," Rupert called. "He might drive off with it. Refugees take whatever isn't nailed down."Beatrice raised her glass. "Don't worry, everyone. The stray will be gone by summer."More laughter. I fished the keys out of the champagne, wiped them on my sleeve and set them back on the tray.Then I walked past Anton, past Rupert, through the crowd that parted around me as if I smelled bad, and stopped in front of my wife."Victoria," I said quietly. "Is this what you want?"For the first time all night, she looked at me. Her green eyes were cold and tired at the same time."What I want has never mattered i

It took Sasha two days.She called me on the evening of the second day, while I was carrying boxes of old picture frames into the basement of Ashworth Fine Art and Auctions on Regent Row. I stepped into the shadow of a storeroom and put the phone to my ear."Found it," she said. "You were right. It's ugly.""Tell me.""Anton's company is sending one painting to the Spring Auction. Only one. It's called Winter Over Kestrograd. The catalog says it's a lost masterpiece by a famous Kestrovian painter, missing for eighty years and found in a private collection.""And?""And Anton is going to buy it back himself." I could hear her typing. "Through a company called Northline Arts. It's hidden behind three other companies, but I traced it. Northline belongs to Rask Energy. He's planning to bid ten million dollars for his own painting."I closed my eyes. I'd grown up around bankers and ministers; I knew this trick. "He's washing money.""Exactly. Dirty money from your uncle's government goes i

The note was only six words long, in plain capital letters.CHECK THE BACK. UNDER PURPLE LIGHT.I printed the three photos on the old machine in the auction house's back office at five in the morning, before anyone else arrived, and folded them inside the note. Then I let myself into Victoria's office with the cleaner's key and laid the envelope in the middle of her desk, on top of the Spring Auction catalog with Anton's painting on the cover.Her office smelled like old paper and coffee. Books about painters filled every wall. On her desk sat a small framed photo of her as a little girl, standing in front of a huge painting in this very building, holding her grandfather's hand.I left and locked the door behind me. My heart was beating faster than it had in a fight. Strange, how a small piece of paper could be harder to carry than a painting.At eight o'clock, Victoria arrived, as she always did, before everyone else. I was in the hallway outside her office, on a ladder, changing a l

"Stop the sale."Her voice wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. In the hush of the showroom, it carried to every corner.The auctioneer froze with his hammer in the air. "Ms. Ashworth?""I'm sorry, Mr. Pell." Victoria walked to the podium and laid her hand gently on his arm. "Please put the hammer down. This painting cannot be sold tonight."Three hundred people stared at her. A murmur ran through the room, rising fast.In the front row, Beatrice's face went white. "Victoria," she hissed. "What are you doing?"Victoria didn't look at her mother. She turned to face the buyers."Ladies and gentlemen, the Ashworth name has stood behind every painting sold in this room for two hundred years. My great-great-grandfather built this house on one promise: that we never sell a lie." She took a deep breath. "Tonight, I have to keep that promise."She nodded to the technician at the side of the stage. He looked confused, then pressed a button.The giant screen behind her changed. The snowy city van

The frame of Winter Over Kestrograd came apart in my hands at two in the morning.After the auction, the fake painting had been put back in its crate in the loading bay of the auction house, waiting for Rask Energy's van to collect it in the morning. Nobody guarded it. Who guards a fake? The only person in the building was the night porter, and the night porter had keys to everything.I knelt beside the crate with Sasha on the phone in my ear and a small screwdriver in my hand. Carefully, I loosened the four corners of the golden frame. The bottom piece was heavier than the others. When I tapped it, it sounded hollow."There," Sasha breathed in my ear. "That's it. Open it."Inside a narrow hollow, sealed with old wax, was a single sheet of thin paper, folded small. I slipped it into my pocket, closed the hollow, tightened the corners and laid the padding back over the painting exactly as it had been.An hour later, in the room beneath the bookbindery, I unfolded the paper under the la