Regret No More by Seb Kirby

Author:Seb Kirby
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788636544
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2019-06-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 42

Perhaps it was her age but these days Alessa Lando found herself thinking more often about her family and its past.

The story of how her grandfather, Esteban Lobos Ventura, had gone to Europe and returned home to Buenos Aires with a fortune was one she would have liked to share with the world – how he’d pulled off the perfect crime, right under the noses of those who thought they were much more cultured and sophisticated than him.

It was a stroke of genius to find Vincenzo Peruggia, an undervalued technician at the Louvre, and to convince him he should steal Ui Giaconda for the sake of Italy. Nothing was more certain to succeed than the actions of a patriot, one serving a higher cause with a determination denied to those who acted for money alone. Yet, money had been required.

Grandfather Esteban had gambled everything on this single chance. Before leaving Argentina, he’d sold the family home for less than it was worth to have the cash available now, when he needed it – money he used to bribe Peruggia to carry out the theft. Even the patriot must eat, Peruggia had told Esteban. And he needed money for the forger.

Finding Michel Patron couldn’t have been easy; someone who would not blink at being asked to produce not one but six copies of the Mona Lisa; someone good enough to make those copies so exact and so much like they were painted over four hundred years ago that even an expert might be fooled.

Of course, when Patron was approached, he wasn’t told that the real Mona Lisa was going to be stolen. Here was this South American with money to burn who had somehow learned of the reputation of the greatest forger of his day and wanted to buy not one but six copies of the masterpiece. Who was Patron to ask why? And if the South American was using what anyone could see was a false identity, what did it matter? It was none of Patron’s business. The payment was good and was in cash. Money was scarce in Paris in 1911 with war on the way.

Yes, thought Alessa, this had been the second brilliance of Esteban’s plan – to engage Patron three months ahead of the theft, to give him no indication of the real purpose of having the copies made, to allow time for the ageing process that Patron applied to his work to take hold so the copies would look old. Time to smuggle the copies into the chosen countries around the world before the theft took place when no one would be looking for the painting.

The further brilliance was to not let Peruggia know the full extent of the plan. Since it had cost so much to have it stolen, he’d expected Esteban to come to him within a week to collect the Mona Lisa. Esteban gambled that when he did not make contact Peruggia would assume something had gone wrong and Esteban had been forced to flee.

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