James Bond stood in his office, staring bleakly out of the window. The sun was shining but he felt only the chill of ice in his heart and mind and was not taking in what was happening outside of his own psyche, let alone his office, let alone the world outside. The desk was carelessly strewn with heaps of memoranda, letters, files, none of which he had given more than a very brief glance at and none of which he had any intention of reading, let alone replying to.
His eyes were moist, though he was unaware of it, and simply moving took a serious effort when all he wanted to do was lie down and curl up in a ball. “I’m gonna roll myself up in a big ball and die”, Frank Sinatra had said. The idea sounded good to him.
It took several rings before Bond was aware that his telephone was ringing. He walked slowly over and answered.
“Yes” he said.
Moneypenny felt herself shiver at the sound of his voice. No crisp “007” as he used to answer, just this weak uninterested “Yes”.
“Hello, James?” she said, forcing herself to sound a lot brighter than she really felt. “Come upstairs, M would like to see you”.
“All right”, he said, and hung up. She resisted bursting into tears at the sound of him – he would be there shortly, and she didn’t want to be seen like this.
It only took a few minutes to make the journey between Bond’s office and hers, but it was a full quarter of an hour before her door opened and he walked listlessly in to stand waiting before her.
“I’ll tell him you’re here”, she said, not meeting his eyes as she pressed a button on the intercom. M buzzed back to acknowledge.
“In you go, James”, she said, her smile feeling false even to herself.
Bond walked the several miles up to M’s desk as if he were walking through mud. M lifted his head, deliberately keeping his eyes expressionless.
“Sit down, 007”, he said, “now I believe you don’t have much on at the moment, do you?”
Bond stopped staring at his knees. “No, all quiet, sir”.
“Just as I thought. Now, I’ve had a request from a friend of yours. Rene Mathis of the Deuxieme Bureau. Seems he would like your help with something”.
“I see”, said Bond, managing to keep his lack of interest from going over the borderline into rudeness. It wasn’t M’s fault.
“Now, I know that you have been carrying out a search for Ernst Stavro Blofeld ever since … ever since what happened after your wedding. You know that you’ve had my full support in this, and I have avoided giving you tasks to carry out as I normally would in the course of events. That’s why I’m not giving you an order here. Mathis has asked for your help, he hasn’t told me with what but he doesn’t think it would be dangerous. I’m leaving it entirely up to you whether you want to take this up or not, James”.
Bond looked up at the mention of his name rather than his number. He knew what M was saying and he appreciated his understanding during this difficult time. Well, this looked like it might be something better than staring at the walls waiting for possible information about Blofeld to come in.
“Thank you, sir. Yes, I’d like to help”.
Bond took a taxi from the Aéroport de Paris Nord to Mathis’ place, sparing a few glances out of the window at the sights. He carried his case to the door, aware that he would be on camera, and found himself warmed by the Frenchman’s huge smile.
“James! How glad I am to see you!” said Mathis. Bond didn’t flinch as much as he normally would from being kissed on both cheeks. Mathis stood aside and invited him in.
“Just leave that suitcase here, we’ll worry about it later. I hope you have not reserved yourself a hotel? But you must stay here, you are my guest”.
The string of rapid French accompanied Bond as he walked through the well-decorated apartment with Mathis thrusting a full glass of wine into his hand before he had even sat down.
“I know about your loss, my dear James, and you have my sincere sympathy. If you decide you want to talk about it then I am here and ready to listen, but I won’t bring it up again unless you want to”.
Bond nodded. “Thanks, Rene, I know you mean that but I’d rather not talk about it at the moment. Now, what is all this about?”
Mathis took a sip of his wine. “I had an unexpected visitor two nights ago. He is on his way back here and will arrive soon, and rather than me repeat his story I would like you to hear it from his own lips”.
“Fair enough. Can you give me a clue, though?”
“I suppose I will have to”.
Mathis went behind one of the chairs and produced a flat package. He began to rip off the brown paper.
“I think you might recognise this painting”.
Bond threw back another mouthful of wine.
“Of course I recognise it, almost everyone in the world can recognise that”, he said as he walked over to take a closer look.
“It’s a very good forgery, I have to admit. The paint is cracked just exactly as it is on the real painting”.
Mathis put the painting down carefully on a free chair.
“James”, he said, “this is not a forgery. This is the real Mona Lisa”.
“If you’re playing a joke on me, it’s not a very funny one, Rene. The real Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, everybody knows that. And it is examined regularly by experts from all over the world. That can’t be a forgery. It isn’t possible”.
Mathis looked sadly at the painting. “And yet it is. The forgery hangs in the Louvre, the real Mona Lisa is on this chair in my apartment”.
“I tell you that cannot be. Who in the world would be able to make a forgery of the most famous painting in the world that could fool hundreds of experts year after year?” said Bond, his brow furrowing.
There was a knock on the door.
“Ah, I must answer the door”, said Mathis. He returned with an old man, of perhaps eighty or ninety years. Bond was sure he had seen his face before, perhaps in newspaper photographs.
“Let me introduce you”, said Mathis. “Monsieur, this is my good friend James Bond, and James, this is Pablo Picasso”.
A stunned Bond held out his hand. “An honour to meet you, Señor”, he said.
“Very pleased to meet you, M. Bond” said Picasso in perfectly good French which should not have come as a surprise. Bond knew that the famous artist had spent his younger years right here in Paris. His head was almost hairless and his face a network of fine wrinkles, but his dark brown eyes still shone with the vitality and mischief of a man decades younger.
“Please, everyone, sit down”, said Mathis as he went round with the rapidly emptying wine bottle. “Señor Picasso, I have not told James here what you told me. I thought it would be better coming from you personally”.
“I understand, it is all right. M. Bond, do you perhaps know that the Mona Lisa, this magnificent painting here in front of us, was stolen back in 1911?”
“I had heard or read of it, but I know very few details. It was recovered a year or two later, was it not?”
“She was recovered, not it. This is a lady, Monsieur, and deserves to be addressed as such. But to resume, she was stolen in 1911. Back then I was a young painter – I had not yet made my name, money was tight, and I shared rooms with others in Paris in the same condition – “plight” is the English word, no?”
Bond nodded, not wanting to interrupt.
“A young man in my circle called Pieret had been stealing some of the smaller items from the Louvre, where he was at that time employed. I bought some items from him, such as two Iberian statues. I cannot make the excuse that I did not know what they were or where they had come from. They had “Property Of The Louvre” or something similar marked on their bases. I used them as models for one of my paintings, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
You might perhaps know this one?”
Bond and Mathis nodded as one. “Of course. It’s a famous painting by the world’s most famous living painter”, said Bond.
“Well, except perhaps for Salvador Dali”, Mathis couldn’t resist adding.
“Dali!” barked Picasso, “he is nothing but a showman and a prankster!” before he realised that Mathis had been teasing him.
“Very funny, M. Mathis, very funny. Now, as I was saying, sometime later the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre. The thief was a man called Vincenzo Peruggia. I only knew of him through Pieret, we were not close friends, and like everyone else in France had no idea that he had stolen the painting.
Someone knew, though, and I was approached by an Englishman whose name I never learned although I had heard him spoken of as “The Professor” by others”.
Bond looked at Picasso thoughtfully. “You say “The Professor”? Could you describe him for me, please?”
Picasso laughed. “He was an old man back then, M. Bond, perhaps not as old as I am now but this was sixty years ago when I was young. He would have died between then and now, I am sure”.
“Humour me, please, Señor Picasso, just for my curiosity can you remember what he looked like?” asked Bond.
Picasso stared off through a window. It was the first time he had looked at anything in the room apart from Bond, Mathis, and the painting.
“Very well. He was tall and thin, pale and clean shaven, with a domed forehead, deeply sunken eyes, rounded shoulders and – ”
“ -and his face protruded forward and moved slowly from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion”, finished Bond.
“Eso es!” yelled Picasso. “You know this man? But that cannot be. For one thing, you are far too young.”
“Oh, he is older than he looks, Maestro, I assure you”, said Mathis, rolling his eyes, “but nevertheless James, you’re not serious. This is impossible”.
“No, just very, very improbable”, said Bond. “But as you know if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth. Of course I do not know this man, but I believe I know of him”.
“This is amazing!” said Picasso.
“Elementary”, said Bond, “but please continue, Señor, and forgive my interrupting you. You were approached by this man?”
“Indeed I was, M. Bond. He knew, I do not know how, that I had purchased those two figurines and was aware that they had been stolen from the Louvre. He said that he would inform the gendarmes about this unless I agreed to do what he asked of me”.
His eyes stared at the painting. “He said he had been told of my talent. He wanted me to paint twelve exact, and he stressed exact, copies of the Mona Lisa over the next two years. They had to be perfect copies, perfect enough to pass examination by experts not once but many times. In short, they had to be indistinguishable from the real thing. He would provide me with all the correct materials including frames and paints of the correct vintage”.
“And tell M. Bond what you said, please”, said Mathis.
“I told him that what he asked was simply not possible within such a limited time. It could not be carried out to the standards he was demanding. He could threaten me all he liked but it could not be done. He merely smiled, then said he had expected that I would say that. If I had agreed to paint twelve copies, he would know that I was lying. So six it would be. I would not be exposed to the police, and he would reward me handsomely later. I was, of course, to say nothing to anybody about what he called “our little arrangement”. And then he opened the package he had with him, and in it was what you see in front of you now in that chair”.
“And you went ahead with this?” asked Bond.
“Most certainly I did. I worked by day on my own paintings, and at night recreating the work of Leonardo da Vinci. It was long, hard work but there was a degree of satisfaction to it in finding myself capable of painting such a beauty within such strict guidelines. The materials and paints were very old, older than I was used to, but I managed. Over the next two years I created six identical copies of La Gioconda. At first I thought about making some tiny mark on each of them in case I had to identify them later, but I was afraid that The Professor would notice so I abandoned that idea. He had given me the impression that he noticed everything. After each one had been finished and dried, he took it away and I never saw it again”.
“He would have been selling them to millionaires, mainly in America”, said Bond. “They knew that she had been stolen and would pay almost any price to have her for themselves. It did not matter that they could display her to nobody else. Possession was all that mattered, all that they craved”.
“It was foolproof”, said Mathis, “even if they later found out that they had been duped, what could they do? They could hardly go to their police and complain”.
“Yes, I believe that was what was happening”, said the old master. “Then one day he did not come for his usual painting. It was the last one, as it happened. I hid both my copy and the original and waited, but he never appeared. He still hasn’t. So I passed my final copy on to Vincenzo Peruggia, who tried to sell it as the original in Italy and was caught by the police and jailed. That copy has hung in the Louvre ever since and no-one has ever suspected. She has been examined many, many times and none of the experts have noticed that it is the work of Picasso, not Leonardo”.
“And now?” asked Mathis. “Why have you decided to reveal all this now, to us?”
Picasso looked levelly at them both. “I will soon be ninety years old, my friends. I wish to go to my grave with a clear conscience. There is nobody who would believe, or perhaps I should say nobody who is prepared to believe, that this is the real Mona Lisa and the one in the Louvre is a fake. Reputations would be ruined. So-called “experts” would become laughing stocks. What I would like is for you to very discreetly exchange this lady here for her sister in the Louvre, without anyone being any the wiser. The real lady will be where she belongs, and old Pablo can die in peace”.
Mathis and Bond exchanged looks. Mathis had a look of horror at being asked to clandestinely infiltrate one of the most revered, if not the most revered, buildings in France where his privileged status in the intelligence world would not protect him in the slightest if they were caught.
“Cheer up, Rene”, said Bond smilingly, “it’s only the Mona Lisa. It could have been the Venus de Milo”.
Comments
Illustration by Sonero
ARE YOU WARM? ARE YOU REAL?
1969
Chapter One
James Bond stood in his office, staring bleakly out of the window. The sun was shining but he felt only the chill of ice in his heart and mind and was not taking in what was happening outside of his own psyche, let alone his office, let alone the world outside. The desk was carelessly strewn with heaps of memoranda, letters, files, none of which he had given more than a very brief glance at and none of which he had any intention of reading, let alone replying to.
His eyes were moist, though he was unaware of it, and simply moving took a serious effort when all he wanted to do was lie down and curl up in a ball. “I’m gonna roll myself up in a big ball and die”, Frank Sinatra had said. The idea sounded good to him.
It took several rings before Bond was aware that his telephone was ringing. He walked slowly over and answered.
“Yes” he said.
Moneypenny felt herself shiver at the sound of his voice. No crisp “007” as he used to answer, just this weak uninterested “Yes”.
“Hello, James?” she said, forcing herself to sound a lot brighter than she really felt. “Come upstairs, M would like to see you”.
“All right”, he said, and hung up. She resisted bursting into tears at the sound of him – he would be there shortly, and she didn’t want to be seen like this.
It only took a few minutes to make the journey between Bond’s office and hers, but it was a full quarter of an hour before her door opened and he walked listlessly in to stand waiting before her.
“I’ll tell him you’re here”, she said, not meeting his eyes as she pressed a button on the intercom. M buzzed back to acknowledge.
“In you go, James”, she said, her smile feeling false even to herself.
Bond walked the several miles up to M’s desk as if he were walking through mud. M lifted his head, deliberately keeping his eyes expressionless.
“Sit down, 007”, he said, “now I believe you don’t have much on at the moment, do you?”
Bond stopped staring at his knees. “No, all quiet, sir”.
“Just as I thought. Now, I’ve had a request from a friend of yours. Rene Mathis of the Deuxieme Bureau. Seems he would like your help with something”.
“I see”, said Bond, managing to keep his lack of interest from going over the borderline into rudeness. It wasn’t M’s fault.
“Now, I know that you have been carrying out a search for Ernst Stavro Blofeld ever since … ever since what happened after your wedding. You know that you’ve had my full support in this, and I have avoided giving you tasks to carry out as I normally would in the course of events. That’s why I’m not giving you an order here. Mathis has asked for your help, he hasn’t told me with what but he doesn’t think it would be dangerous. I’m leaving it entirely up to you whether you want to take this up or not, James”.
Bond looked up at the mention of his name rather than his number. He knew what M was saying and he appreciated his understanding during this difficult time. Well, this looked like it might be something better than staring at the walls waiting for possible information about Blofeld to come in.
“Thank you, sir. Yes, I’d like to help”.
Bond took a taxi from the Aéroport de Paris Nord to Mathis’ place, sparing a few glances out of the window at the sights. He carried his case to the door, aware that he would be on camera, and found himself warmed by the Frenchman’s huge smile.
“James! How glad I am to see you!” said Mathis. Bond didn’t flinch as much as he normally would from being kissed on both cheeks. Mathis stood aside and invited him in.
“Just leave that suitcase here, we’ll worry about it later. I hope you have not reserved yourself a hotel? But you must stay here, you are my guest”.
The string of rapid French accompanied Bond as he walked through the well-decorated apartment with Mathis thrusting a full glass of wine into his hand before he had even sat down.
“I know about your loss, my dear James, and you have my sincere sympathy. If you decide you want to talk about it then I am here and ready to listen, but I won’t bring it up again unless you want to”.
Bond nodded. “Thanks, Rene, I know you mean that but I’d rather not talk about it at the moment. Now, what is all this about?”
Mathis took a sip of his wine. “I had an unexpected visitor two nights ago. He is on his way back here and will arrive soon, and rather than me repeat his story I would like you to hear it from his own lips”.
“Fair enough. Can you give me a clue, though?”
“I suppose I will have to”.
Mathis went behind one of the chairs and produced a flat package. He began to rip off the brown paper.
“I think you might recognise this painting”.
Bond threw back another mouthful of wine.
“Of course I recognise it, almost everyone in the world can recognise that”, he said as he walked over to take a closer look.
“It’s a very good forgery, I have to admit. The paint is cracked just exactly as it is on the real painting”.
Mathis put the painting down carefully on a free chair.
“James”, he said, “this is not a forgery. This is the real Mona Lisa”.
“If you’re playing a joke on me, it’s not a very funny one, Rene. The real Mona Lisa is in the Louvre, everybody knows that. And it is examined regularly by experts from all over the world. That can’t be a forgery. It isn’t possible”.
Mathis looked sadly at the painting. “And yet it is. The forgery hangs in the Louvre, the real Mona Lisa is on this chair in my apartment”.
“I tell you that cannot be. Who in the world would be able to make a forgery of the most famous painting in the world that could fool hundreds of experts year after year?” said Bond, his brow furrowing.
There was a knock on the door.
“Ah, I must answer the door”, said Mathis. He returned with an old man, of perhaps eighty or ninety years. Bond was sure he had seen his face before, perhaps in newspaper photographs.
“Let me introduce you”, said Mathis. “Monsieur, this is my good friend James Bond, and James, this is Pablo Picasso”.
To Be Continued
Don’t worry, Sir Miles, your secret is safe with me 😂
Intriguing. And the illustration is excellent @Sonero
Thank you for the kind words @CoolHandBond .
Excellent writing as usual @Barbel 👏🏻
Thank you all, everyone. Next Chapter coming up ... now.
Illustration by Sonero
Chapter Two
A stunned Bond held out his hand. “An honour to meet you, Señor”, he said.
“Very pleased to meet you, M. Bond” said Picasso in perfectly good French which should not have come as a surprise. Bond knew that the famous artist had spent his younger years right here in Paris. His head was almost hairless and his face a network of fine wrinkles, but his dark brown eyes still shone with the vitality and mischief of a man decades younger.
“Please, everyone, sit down”, said Mathis as he went round with the rapidly emptying wine bottle. “Señor Picasso, I have not told James here what you told me. I thought it would be better coming from you personally”.
“I understand, it is all right. M. Bond, do you perhaps know that the Mona Lisa, this magnificent painting here in front of us, was stolen back in 1911?”
“I had heard or read of it, but I know very few details. It was recovered a year or two later, was it not?”
“She was recovered, not it. This is a lady, Monsieur, and deserves to be addressed as such. But to resume, she was stolen in 1911. Back then I was a young painter – I had not yet made my name, money was tight, and I shared rooms with others in Paris in the same condition – “plight” is the English word, no?”
Bond nodded, not wanting to interrupt.
“A young man in my circle called Pieret had been stealing some of the smaller items from the Louvre, where he was at that time employed. I bought some items from him, such as two Iberian statues. I cannot make the excuse that I did not know what they were or where they had come from. They had “Property Of The Louvre” or something similar marked on their bases. I used them as models for one of my paintings, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.
You might perhaps know this one?”
Bond and Mathis nodded as one. “Of course. It’s a famous painting by the world’s most famous living painter”, said Bond.
“Well, except perhaps for Salvador Dali”, Mathis couldn’t resist adding.
“Dali!” barked Picasso, “he is nothing but a showman and a prankster!” before he realised that Mathis had been teasing him.
“Very funny, M. Mathis, very funny. Now, as I was saying, sometime later the Mona Lisa disappeared from the Louvre. The thief was a man called Vincenzo Peruggia. I only knew of him through Pieret, we were not close friends, and like everyone else in France had no idea that he had stolen the painting.
Someone knew, though, and I was approached by an Englishman whose name I never learned although I had heard him spoken of as “The Professor” by others”.
Bond looked at Picasso thoughtfully. “You say “The Professor”? Could you describe him for me, please?”
Picasso laughed. “He was an old man back then, M. Bond, perhaps not as old as I am now but this was sixty years ago when I was young. He would have died between then and now, I am sure”.
“Humour me, please, Señor Picasso, just for my curiosity can you remember what he looked like?” asked Bond.
Picasso stared off through a window. It was the first time he had looked at anything in the room apart from Bond, Mathis, and the painting.
“Very well. He was tall and thin, pale and clean shaven, with a domed forehead, deeply sunken eyes, rounded shoulders and – ”
“ -and his face protruded forward and moved slowly from side to side in a curiously reptilian fashion”, finished Bond.
“Eso es!” yelled Picasso. “You know this man? But that cannot be. For one thing, you are far too young.”
“Oh, he is older than he looks, Maestro, I assure you”, said Mathis, rolling his eyes, “but nevertheless James, you’re not serious. This is impossible”.
“No, just very, very improbable”, said Bond. “But as you know if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth. Of course I do not know this man, but I believe I know of him”.
“This is amazing!” said Picasso.
“Elementary”, said Bond, “but please continue, Señor, and forgive my interrupting you. You were approached by this man?”
“Indeed I was, M. Bond. He knew, I do not know how, that I had purchased those two figurines and was aware that they had been stolen from the Louvre. He said that he would inform the gendarmes about this unless I agreed to do what he asked of me”.
His eyes stared at the painting. “He said he had been told of my talent. He wanted me to paint twelve exact, and he stressed exact, copies of the Mona Lisa over the next two years. They had to be perfect copies, perfect enough to pass examination by experts not once but many times. In short, they had to be indistinguishable from the real thing. He would provide me with all the correct materials including frames and paints of the correct vintage”.
“And tell M. Bond what you said, please”, said Mathis.
“I told him that what he asked was simply not possible within such a limited time. It could not be carried out to the standards he was demanding. He could threaten me all he liked but it could not be done. He merely smiled, then said he had expected that I would say that. If I had agreed to paint twelve copies, he would know that I was lying. So six it would be. I would not be exposed to the police, and he would reward me handsomely later. I was, of course, to say nothing to anybody about what he called “our little arrangement”. And then he opened the package he had with him, and in it was what you see in front of you now in that chair”.
“And you went ahead with this?” asked Bond.
“Most certainly I did. I worked by day on my own paintings, and at night recreating the work of Leonardo da Vinci. It was long, hard work but there was a degree of satisfaction to it in finding myself capable of painting such a beauty within such strict guidelines. The materials and paints were very old, older than I was used to, but I managed. Over the next two years I created six identical copies of La Gioconda. At first I thought about making some tiny mark on each of them in case I had to identify them later, but I was afraid that The Professor would notice so I abandoned that idea. He had given me the impression that he noticed everything. After each one had been finished and dried, he took it away and I never saw it again”.
“He would have been selling them to millionaires, mainly in America”, said Bond. “They knew that she had been stolen and would pay almost any price to have her for themselves. It did not matter that they could display her to nobody else. Possession was all that mattered, all that they craved”.
“It was foolproof”, said Mathis, “even if they later found out that they had been duped, what could they do? They could hardly go to their police and complain”.
“Yes, I believe that was what was happening”, said the old master. “Then one day he did not come for his usual painting. It was the last one, as it happened. I hid both my copy and the original and waited, but he never appeared. He still hasn’t. So I passed my final copy on to Vincenzo Peruggia, who tried to sell it as the original in Italy and was caught by the police and jailed. That copy has hung in the Louvre ever since and no-one has ever suspected. She has been examined many, many times and none of the experts have noticed that it is the work of Picasso, not Leonardo”.
“And now?” asked Mathis. “Why have you decided to reveal all this now, to us?”
Picasso looked levelly at them both. “I will soon be ninety years old, my friends. I wish to go to my grave with a clear conscience. There is nobody who would believe, or perhaps I should say nobody who is prepared to believe, that this is the real Mona Lisa and the one in the Louvre is a fake. Reputations would be ruined. So-called “experts” would become laughing stocks. What I would like is for you to very discreetly exchange this lady here for her sister in the Louvre, without anyone being any the wiser. The real lady will be where she belongs, and old Pablo can die in peace”.
Mathis and Bond exchanged looks. Mathis had a look of horror at being asked to clandestinely infiltrate one of the most revered, if not the most revered, buildings in France where his privileged status in the intelligence world would not protect him in the slightest if they were caught.
“Cheer up, Rene”, said Bond smilingly, “it’s only the Mona Lisa. It could have been the Venus de Milo”.
To Be Continued
Fascinating story Barbel.👍
This is turning into a very intriguing adventure.
------
Barbel, I agree with Mathis's opinion.
Dali was an extremely gifted painter.
The first time I saw Dali's 'The Sacrament of the Last Supper' at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., I was completely taken aback.
An absolute masterpiece.
Bond meets Hustle, I’m loving it! 👏
The games afoot, you mean 😁
You know my methods, Watson. Glad you spotted that little reference!
Thank you, everyone, glad this is going down well.
Sonero, the only Dali I've seen in the flesh (so to speak) is the one which resides in Glasgow:
And very impressive it is, too!