"Greg Egan - Our Lady of Chernobyl" - читать интересную книгу автора (Egan Greg)

Afternoon light filled the room; the window faced east, away from the sun, but the sky itself was
dazzling. I suffered a moment of strange clarity, a compelling sense of having just shaken off a lingering
drowsiness, as if I'd begun the conversation half asleep and only now fully woken. Masini let the copper
orrery on the wall behind me beat twice, each tick a soft, complicated meshing of a thousand tiny gears.
Then he said, “She was found in a hotel room in Vienna, three days ago. She'd been shot in the head at
close range. And no, she was not meant to take any such detour.”

“What was in the package?”

“A small icon.” He indicated a height of some thirty centimeters. “An eighteenth-century depiction of the
Madonna. Originally from the Ukraine.”

“The Ukraine? Do you know how it came to be in Zürich?” I'd heard that the Ukrainian government had
recently launched a renewed campaign to persuade certain countries to get serious about the return of
stolen artwork. Crateloads had been smuggled out during the turmoil and corruption of the eighties and
nineties.

“It was part of the estate of a well-known collector, a man with an impeccable reputation. My own art
dealer examined all the paperwork, the bills of sale, the export licenses, before giving his blessing to the
deal.”

“Paperwork can be forged.”

Masini struggled visibly to control his impatience. “Anything can beforged . What do you want me to
say? I have no reason to suspect that this was stolen property. I'm not a criminal, Signor Fabrizio.”
“I'm not suggesting that you are. So ... money and goods changed hands in Zürich? The icon was yours
when it was stolen?”

“Yes.”

“May I ask how much you paid for it?”

“Five million Swiss francs.”

I let that pass without comment, although for a moment I wondered if I'd heard correctly. I was no
expert, but I did know that Orthodox icons were usually painted by anonymous artists, and were
intended to be as far from unique as individual copies of the Bible. There were exceptions, of course—a
few treasured, definitive examples of each type—but they were a great deal older than
eighteenth-century . However fine the craftsmanship, however well-preserved, five million sounded far
too high.

I said, “Surely you insured—?”

“Of course! And in a year or two, I may even get my money back. But I'd much prefer to have the icon.
That's why I purchased it in the first place.”

“And your insurers will agree. They'll be doing their best to find it.” If another investigator had a head
start on me, I didn't want to waste my time—least of all if I'd be competing against a Swiss insurance firm
on their home ground.