The Black Widow

His appearance at the museum, on a black and wet Wednesday in December a few days after the birth of his children, had come as a shock, and a profound relief, to the rest of the conservation staff. They had been warned he did not like to be observed while working. Still, they routinely poked their heads into his little curtained grotto merely to glimpse the altarpiece with their own eyes. Truth be told, he couldn’t blame them. The painting, Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence, was arguably the world’s most famous missing work of art. Stolen from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo in October 1969, it was now formally in the possession of the Vatican. The Holy See had wisely decided to withhold news of the painting’s recovery until the restoration was complete. Like many Vatican pronouncements, the official version of events would bear little resemblance to the truth. It would not mention the fact that a legendary Israeli intelligence officer named Gabriel Allon had found the missing painting hanging in a church in the northern Italian town of Brienno. Nor would it mention that the same legendary intelligence officer had been entrusted with the task of restoring it.

During his long career he had carried out several unusual restorations — he had once repaired a Rembrandt portrait that had been pierced by a bullet — but the Caravaggio altarpiece propped upon Gabriel’s easels was without question the most damaged canvas he had ever seen. Little was known of its long journey from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo to the church where he had found it. The stories, however, were legion. It had been kept by a Mafia don as a prize and brought out for important meetings of his henchmen. It had been chewed by rats, damaged in a flood, and burned in a fire. Gabriel was certain of only one thing: the painting’s wounds, while grievous, were not fatal. But Ephraim Cohen, the museum’s chief of conservation, was dubious. Upon seeing the painting for the first time, he advised Gabriel to administer last rites and return the altarpiece to the Vatican in the same wooden coffin in which it had arrived.

“Ye of little faith,” Gabriel had said.

“No,” replied Cohen. “Me of limited talent.”

Cohen, like the other members of the staff, had heard the stories — the stories of deadlines missed, of commissions abandoned, of church reopenings delayed. The snail-like pace of Gabriel’s work habits was legendary, almost as legendary as his exploits on the secret battlefields of Europe and the Middle East. But they soon discovered that his slowness was voluntary rather than instinctive. The craft of restoration, he explained to Cohen one evening while swiftly repairing the tattered face of Saint Francis, was a bit like making love. It was best done slowly and with painstaking attention to detail, with occasional breaks for rest and refreshment. But in a pinch, if the craftsman and his subject matter were adequately acquainted, a restoration could be done at extraordinary speed, with more or less the same result.

“You and Caravaggio are old friends?” asked Cohen.

“We’ve collaborated in the past.”

“So the rumors are true then?”

Gabriel had been painting with his right hand. Now he moved the brush to his left and worked with equal dexterity.

“What rumors are those?” he asked after a moment.

“That you were the one who restored the Deposition for the Vatican Museums a few years ago.”

“You should never listen to rumors, Ephraim, especially when they concern me.”

“Or the news,” said Cohen darkly.

His hours were erratic and unpredictable. An entire day might pass with no sign of him. Then Cohen would arrive at the museum to find a large portion of the canvas miraculously restored. Surely, he thought, he had a secret helper. Or perhaps Caravaggio himself was stealing into the museum at night, a sword in one hand, a brush in the other, to assist with the work. After one nocturnal session — a particularly productive visit during which the Virgin was returned to her former glory — Cohen actually checked the security footage. He found that Gabriel had entered the lab at half past ten in the evening and had departed at seven twenty the next morning. Not even the fawn-eyed bodyguard had been with him. Perhaps it was true, thought Cohen, as he watched the ghostly figure moving at one frame per second along a half-lit hall. Perhaps he was an archangel after all.