headquarters and the Gymnasium. That, he reasoned, was the only place for Israeli spies.
That same day, February 16, Gidi Barzilai was in Paris, showing his painting to Michel Levy. The old antiquarian sayan was delighted to help. Only once had he been asked before, and that was to lend some furniture to a katsa trying
to gain entry to a certain house, posing as an antique dealer.
For Michel Levy it was a pleasure and an excitement, something to enliven the existence of an old man, to be consulted by the Mossad, to be able to help in some way.
“Boulle,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Barzilai, who thought he was being rude.
“Boulle,” repeated the old man. “Also spelled B-u-h-l. The great French cabinetmaker. His style, you see, definitely. Mind you, this isn’t by him. The period is too late for him.”
“Then who is it by?”
Monsieur Levy was over eighty, with thin white hair plastered on a wrinkled scalp, but he had pink apple cheeks and bright eyes that sparkled with the pleasure of being alive. He had said kaddish for so many of his own generation.
“Well, Boulle when he died handed over his workshop to his protégé, the German Oeben. He in turn handed the tradition over to another German, Riesener. I would think this is from the Riesener period.
Certainly by a pupil, perhaps by the master himself. Are you going to buy it?”
He was teasing, of course. He knew the Mossad did not buy works of art. His eyes danced with merriment.
“Let’s just say I am interested in it,” said Barzilai.
Levy was delighted. They were up to their naughty tricks again. He would never know what, but it was fun anyway.
“Do these desks—”
“Bureaux,” said Levy, “it’s a bureau .”
“All right, do these bureaux ever have secret compartments in them?”
Better and better—delightful! Oh, the excitement!
“Ah, you mean a cachette . Of course. You know, young man, many years ago, when a man could be called out and killed in a duel over a matter of honor, a lady having an affair had to be very discreet. No telephones, then, no fax, no videos. All her lover’s naughty thoughts had to be put on paper. Then where should she hide them from her husband?
“Not in a wall safe—there weren’t any. Nor an iron box—her husband would demand the key. So the society people of those days commissioned pieces of furniture with a cachette . Not all the time, but sometimes. Had to be good workmanship, mind, or it would be too visible.”
“How would one know if a piece one was ... thinking of buying had such a cachette .
Oh, this was wonderful. The man from the Mossad was not going to buy a Riesener bureau , he was going to break into one.
“Would you like to see one?” asked Levy.
He made several phone calls, and at length they left his shop and took a cab. It was another dealer.
Levy had a whispered conversation, and the man nodded and left them alone. Levy had said if he could secure a sale, there’d be a small finder’s fee, nothing more. The dealer was satisfied; it is often thus in the antique world.
The desk they examined was remarkably like the one in Vienna.
“Now,” said Levy, “the cachette will not be large, or it would be detectable in the measurements, external as opposed to internal. So it will be slim, vertical or horizontal. Probably no more than two centimeters thick, hiding in a panel that appears to be solid, three centimeters thick, but is in fact two wafers of wood with the cachette between them. The clue is the release knob.”
He took out one of the top drawers.
“Feel in there,” he said.
Barzilai reached in until his fingertips touched the back.