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precious paintings at the end of six months, put them on planes, and return them to Rome, where they will sit in your depressing airport for twenty-four hours to satisfy some stupid law, and then be flown back to the United States. Transporting those priceless works
once
is dangerous enough. To subject them to unnecessary packing and traveling is idiotic.”
    Giliberti started to speak, but Mason continued. “On top of that, money is to be paid to certain unnamed individuals in your Ministry of Culture—
tangentopoli!
—bribesville—paidto have the rule bent so that the paintings can be placed in greater jeopardy, and—”
    The waiter placed the check in front of Giliberti, who didn’t make a move. Mason dumped an appropriate pile of
lire
on it, stood, and said, “You must excuse my moment of pique, Carlo. It was a very long flight, and an even longer hour with your minister of culture, who, by the way, hardly deserves the title. He bought the position, you say? I believe it. I’ll be in a considerably better mood after I get a good night’s sleep.”
    “Of course, my friend,” Giliberti said, following Mason to the sidewalk. “We will breakfast together?”
    “If you’d like.”
    “I would like very much. We must leave early to allow time for the drive.”
    “All right. Now excuse me, Carlo. I have a dreadful headache,” said Mason, sounding to himself for a second like the classic disaffected wife.
    “By all means. I am just so happy that things went well this morning with his excellency.” Giliberti held open the door of the waiting Mercedes, but Mason shook his head. “It’s only a few blocks to the hotel. A walk might help clear my head. I’ll see you at the hotel at nine for breakfast.”
    “I shall be there. Enjoy your evening in Rome,
amico. Ma sta attento o te ne pentirai!
”
    Luther didn’t have to be reminded that crime was rampant in Rome.
    In retrospect, Luther was sorry that he’d been cross with his friend. He’d been losing his temper with greater frequency lately. But who could blame him? The mounting of the exhibition at Mason’s curatorial home for the past twenty-two years, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., was the most meaningful event of his professional life. It was also proving to be the most difficult of the many exhibitions he’d curated.
    It was hard enough navigating the tricky waters of foreign governments and international art dealers to pull together a show of this magnitude. But now there was the added complication of the new director, Mr. Courtney Whitney III.
    From Mason’s perspective, Whitney’s talent was limited to wooing wealthy patrons of the arts and schmoozing with members of the Board of Trustees at interminable cocktail parties and dinners and weekends in the country. But did he have a genuine appreciation of the art that hung in the Gallery he directed? Hung anywhere for that matter? Not as far as Luther was concerned.
    It had been Mason’s dream that the Gallery one day own a work by Caravaggio as part of its permanent collection, and he considered not owning one a representation of the Gallery’s glaring weakness. The National Gallery possessed a still life that had once been thought to have come from Caravaggio’s hand, but subsequent analysis cast serious doubt on its provenance.
    And years ago, former National Gallery director John Walker had bid seriously for Caravaggio’s
Saint John the Baptist
. But not seriously enough. It went to Kansas City’s Nelson Gallery–Atkins Museum. After stepping down as director, Walker often cited losing that painting as one of his greatest professional disappointments.
    Aside from the intense personal pleasure Mason would take from having many of the petulant genius’s works occupying the walls of the National Gallery for the six months of the exhibition, he also hoped that one of the lenders to the show, possibly a private dealer, would be sufficiently impressed by the Gallery’s