Leet appeared at the Quai des Orfevres in two days carrying papers.

Popil arranged for him to be seated in the corridor near the room marked Audition 2, where the noisy interrogation of a rape suspect was under way punctuated by thumps and cries. Popil allowed Leet to marinate in this atmosphere for fifteen minutes before admitting him to the private office.

The art dealer handed over a receipt. It showed Kopnik bought the Guardi from one Emppu Makinen for eight thousand English pounds.

"Do you find this convincing?" Popil asked. "I do not."

Leet cleared his throat and looked at the floor. A full twenty seconds passed.

"The public prosecutor is eager to initiate criminal proceedings against you, Monsieur Leet. He is a Calvinist of the severest stripe, did you know that?"

"The painting was-"

Popil held up his hand, shushing Leet. "For the moment, I want you to forget about your problem. Assume I could intervene for you if I chose.

I want you to help me. I want you to look at this." He handed Leet a sheaf of legal-length onionskin pages close-typed. "This is the list of items the Arts Commission is bringing to Paris from the Munich Collection Point. All stolen art."

"To display at the Jeu de Paume."

"Yes, claimants can view it there. Second page, halfway down. I circled it."

"'The Bridge of Sighs,' Bernardo Bellotto, thirty-six by thirty centimeters, oil on board."

"Do you know this painting?" Popil said.

"I have heard of it, of course."

"If it is genuine, it was taken from Lecter Castle. You know it is famously paired with another painting of the Bridge of Sighs."

"By Canaletto, yes, painted the same day."

"Also taken from Lecter Castle, probably stolen at the same time by the same person," Popil said. "How much more money would you make selling the pair together than if you sold them separately?"

"Four times. No rational person would separate them."

"Then they were separated through ignorance or by accident. Two paintings of the Bridge of Sighs. If the person who stole them still has one of them, wouldn't he want to get the other back?" Popil said.

"Very much."

"There will be publicity about this painting when it hangs in the Jeu de Paume. You are going to the display with me and we will see who comes sniffing around it."

LADY MURASAKI'S invitation got her into the Jeu de Paume Museum ahead of the big crowd that buzzed in the Tuileries, impatient to see more than five hundred stolen artworks brought from the Munich Collection Point by the Allied Commission on Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives in an attempt to find their rightful owners.

A few of the pieces were making their third trip between France and Germany, having been stolen first by Napoleon in Germany and brought back to France, then stolen by the Germans and taken home, then brought back to France once more by the Allies.

Lady Murasaki found in the ground floor of the Jeu de Paume an amazing jumble of Western images. Bloody religion pictures filled one end of the hall, a meathouse of hanging Christs.

For relief she turned to the "Meat Lunch," a cheerful painting of a sumptuous buffet, unattended except for a springer spaniel who was about to help herself to the ham. Beyond it were big canvases attributed to " School of Rubens," featuring rosy women of vast acreage surrounded by plump babies with wings.

And that is where Inspector Popil first caught sight of Lady Murasaki in her counterfeit Chanel, slender and elegant against the pink nudes of Rubens.

Popil soon spotted Hannibal coming up the stairs from the floor below.

The inspector did not show himself, but watched.

Ah, now they see each other, the beautiful Japanese lady and her ward.

Popil was interested to see their greeting; they stopped a few feet from each other and, while they did not bow, they each acknowledged the other's presence with a smile. Then they came together in a hug. She kissed Hannibal 's forehead and touched his cheek, and at once they were in conversation.

Hanging over their warm greeting was a good copy of Caravaggio's "Judith Beheading Holofernes." Popil might have been amused, before the war. Now the back of his neck prickled.

Popil caught Hannibal 's eye and nodded toward a small office near the entrance, where Leet was waiting.

"Munich Collection Point says the painting was seized from a smuggler at the Polish border a year and a half ago," Popil said.

"Did he roll over? Did he tell his source?" Leet said.

Popil shook his head. "The smuggler was strangled in the U.S. Military Prison at Munich by a German trusty. The trusty disappeared that night, into the Dragunovic ratline, we think. It was a dead end.

"The painting is hanging in position eighty-eight near the corner.

Monsieur Leet says it looks real. Hannibal, you can tell if it is the painting from your home?"

"Yes."

"If it is your painting, Hannibal, touch your chin. If you are approached, you are just so happy to see it, you have only passing curiosity about who stole it. You are greedy, you want to get it back and sell it as soon as possible, but you want the mate to it as well.

"Be difficult, Hannibal, selfish and spoiled," Popil said, with unbecoming relish. "Do you think you can manage that? Have some friction with your guardian. The person will want a way to contact you, not the other way around. He'll feel safer if the two of you are at odds. Insist on a way to contact him. Leet and I will go out, give us a couple of minutes before you come into the show.

"Come," Popil said to Leet beside him. "We're on legitimate business, man, you don't have to slink."

Hannibal and Lady Murasaki looking, looking along a row of small paintings.

There, at eye level, "The Bridge of Sighs." The sight of it affected Hannibal more than finding the Guardi; with this picture he saw his mother's face.

Other people were streaming in now, lists of artworks in their hands, documentation of ownership in sheaves beneath their arms. Among them was a tall man in a suit so English the jacket appeared to have ailerons.

Holding his list in front of his face, he stood close enough to Hannibal to listen.

"This painting was one of two in my mother's sewing room," Hannibal said. "When we left the castle for the last time, she handed it to me and told me to take it to Cook. She told me not to smudge the back."

Hannibal took the painting off the wall and turned it over. Sparks snapped in his eyes. There, on the back of the painting, was the chalk outline of a baby's hand, mostly worn away, just the thumb and forefinger remaining. The tracing was protected with a sheet of glassine.

Hannibal looked at it for a long time. In this heady moment he thought the finger and thumb moved, a fragment of a wave.

With an effort he remembered Popil's instructions. If it is your painting, touch your chin.

He took a deep breath at last and gave the signal.

"This is Mischa's hand," he told Lady Murasaki. "When I was eight they were whitewashing upstairs. This painting and its partner were moved to a divan in my mother's room and draped with a sheet. Mischa and I got under the sheet with the paintings; it was our tent, we were nomads in the desert. I took a chalk from my pocket and traced around her hand to keep away the evil eye. My parents were angry, but the painting wasn't hurt, and finally they were amused, I think."

A man in a homburg hat was coming, hurrying, identification swinging from a string around his neck.

The Monuments man will take a tone with you, quickly be at odds with him, Popil had instructed.

"Please don't do that. Please don't touch," the official said.

"I wouldn't touch it if it didn't belong to me," Hannibal said.