The Heist
Gabriel Allon, master art restorer and assassin, returns in a spellbinding new thriller from No.1 bestselling author Daniel Silva. For all fans of Robert Ludlum.
Gabriel Allon art restorer and legendary spy is in Venice when he receives an urgent call from the Italian police. The art dealer Justin Isherwood has stumbled upon a chilling murder scene, and is being held as a suspect.
The dead man is a fallen spy with a secret a trafficker in stolen artwork, sold to a mysterious collector. To save his friend, Gabriel must track down the world’s most iconic missing painting: Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.
Gabriel’s mission takes him on exhilarating hunt from Marseilles and Corsica, to Paris and Geneva, and, finally, to a private bank in Austria, where a dangerous man stands guard over the ill-gotten wealth of one of the world’s most brutal dictators…
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The Heist
Daniel Silva
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Daniel Silva 2014
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover photographs © Nik Keevil/Arcangel Images (man); Lorenzo Montezemolo/Getty Images (Venice scene); Joe Beynon/Plain Picture (staircase); Shutterstock.com (sky)
Daniel Silva asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Designed by Leah Carlson-Stanisic
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007552276
Version: 2015-01-07
Most stolen art is gone forever … The lone bit of good news is that the better the painting, the better the odds it will someday be found.
— EDWARD DOLNICK, THE RESCUE ARTIST
He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and who so breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.
— ECCLESIASTES 10:8
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Preface
Part One: Chiaroscuro
Chapter 1: St. James’s, London
Chapter 2: Venice
Chapter 3: Venice
Chapter 4: Venice
Chapter 5: Venice
Chapter 6: Lake Como, Italy
Chapter 7: Lake Como, Italy
Chapter 8: Stockwell, London
Chapter 9: Stockwell, London
Chapter 10: Rue De Miromesnil, Paris
Chapter 11: Jardin Des Tuileries, Paris
Chapter 12: Montmartre, Paris
Part Two: Sunflowers
Chapter 13: San Remo, Italy
Chapter 14: Corsica
Chapter 15: Corsica
Chapter 16: Corsica
Chapter 17: Rue De Miromesnil, Paris
Chapter 18: Hyde Park, London
Chapter 19: Amsterdam
Chapter 20: Geneva
Chapter 21: Rue De Miromesnil, Paris
Chapter 22: ÎLe Saint-Louis, Paris
Chapter 23: Boulevard Saint-Germain, Paris
Chapter 24: Chelles, France
Chapter 25: Geneva
Part Three: The Open Window
Chapter 26: King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
Chapter 27: King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
Chapter 28: Petah Tikva, Israel
Chapter 29: Jerusalem
Chapter 30: Narkiss Street, Jerusalem
Chapter 31: Jerusalem
Chapter 32: King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
Chapter 33: Linz, Austria
Chapter 34: King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
Chapter 35: Munich, Germany
Chapter 36: Linz, Austria
Chapter 37: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 38: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 39: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 40: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 41: The Attersee, Austria
Part Four: The Score
Chapter 42: London
Chapter 43: Chelsea, London
Chapter 44: London—Linz, Austria
Chapter 45: Linz, Austria
Chapter 46: Heathrow Airport, London
Chapter 47: Linz, Austria
Chapter 48: King Saul Boulevard, Tel Aviv
Chapter 49: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 50: The Attersee, Austria
Chapter 51: The Attersee—Geneva
Chapter 52: Hotel Métropole, Geneva
Chapter 53: Geneva
Chapter 54: Tel Aviv—Haute-Savoie, France
Chapter 55: Haute-Savoie, France
Chapter 56: Annecy, France
Chapter 57: Annecy, France
Part Five: One Last Window
Chapter 58: Venice
Chapter 59: Venice
Chapter 60: Venice
Chapter 61: Lake Como, Italy
Chapter 62: Brienno, Italy
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also Written by Daniel Silva
About the Publisher
ON OCTOBER 18, 1969, CARAVAGGIO’S Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence vanished from the Oratorio di San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. The Nativity, as it is commonly known, is one of Caravaggio’s last great masterworks, painted in 1609 while he was a fugitive from justice, wanted by papal authorities in Rome for killing a man during a swordfight. For more than four decades, the altarpiece has been the most sought-after stolen painting in the world, and yet its exact whereabouts, even its fate, have remained a mystery. Until now …
