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identify his backers,
despite the fact that during the next few years the bank began to accept large
deposits from unlisted companies across Eastern Europe. Then in 1989 the cash
flow suddenly dried up, the same year as Ceau§escu and his wife Elena fled from
Bucharest following the uprising. Within days they were captured, tried and
executed.
    Jack looked out
of his window over lower Manhattan, and recalled the FBI maxim: never believe
in coincidences, but never dismiss them.
    Following
Ceau§escu’s death, the bank appeared to go through a couple of lean years until
Fenston met up with Karl Leapman, a disbarred lawyer, who had recently been
released from prison for fraud. It was not too long before the bank resumed its
profitable ways.
    Jack stared down
at several photographs of Bryce Fenston, who regularly appeared in the gossip
columns with one of New York’s most fashionable women on his arm. He was
variously described as a brilliant banker, a leading financier, even a generous
benefactor, and with almost every mention of his name there was a reference to
his magnificent art collection. Jack pushed the photographs to one side. He
hadn’t yet come to terms with a man who wore an earring, and he was even more
puzzled why someone who had a full head of hair when he first came to America
would choose to shave himself bald. Who was he hiding from?
    Jack closed the
Munteanu/Fenston personal file, and turned his attention to Pierre de Rochelle,
the first of the victims.
    Rochelle
required seventy million francs to pay for his share in a vineyard. His only
previous experience of die wine industry seemed to have come from draining the
bottles on a regular basis. Even a cursory inspection would have revealed that
his investment plan didn’t appear to fulfil the banking maxim of being ‘sound’.
    However, what
caught Fenston’s attention when he perused the application was that the young
man had recently inherited a chateau in the Dordogne, in which every wall was
graced with fine Impressionist paintings, including a Degas, two Pissarros and
a Monet of Argenteuil.
    The vineyard
failed to show a return for four fruitless years, during which time the chateau
began to render up its assets, leaving only outline shapes where the pictures
had once hung.
    By the time
Fenston had shipped the last painting back to New York to join his private
collection, Pierre’s original loan had, with accumulated interest, more than
doubled. When his chateau was finally placed on the market, Pierre took up
residence in a small flat in Marseille, where each night he would drink himself
into a senseless stupor. That was until a bright young lady, just out of law
school, suggested to Pierre, in one of his sober moments, that were Fenston
Finance to sell his Degas, the Monet and the two Pissarros, he could not only
pay off his debt, but take the chateau off the market and reclaim the rest of his
collection. This suggestion did not fit in with Fenston’s long-term plans.
    A week later,
the drunken body of Pierre de Rochelle was found slumped in a Marseille alley,
his throat sliced open.
    Four years
later, the Marseille police closed the file, with the words ‘NON RESOLU’
stamped on the cover.
    When the estate
was finally settled, Fenston had sold off all the works, with the exception of
the Degas, the Monet and the two Pissarros, and after compound interest, bank
charges and lawyers’ fees, Pierre’s younger brother, Simon de Rochelle,
inherited the flat in Marseille.
    Jack rose from
behind his desk, stretched his cramped limbs and yawned wearily, before he
considered tackling Chris Adams Jr.
    Although
he knew Adams’s case history almost by heart.
    Chris Adams
Senior had operated a highly successful fine art gallery on Melrose Avenue in
Los Angeles. He specialized in the American School, so admired by the Hollywood
glitterati. His untimely death in a car crash left his son Chris Jr with a
collection of Rothkos, Pollocks, Jasper Johnses,