“Jan Klee.” He put out his hand, which she took. A soft, European handshake. “I work with Mr. del Carros. Who is awaiting you, this way, if you would come along please?”

She followed him, trying to identify the accent. Must be Dutch, with that name. He walked with a casual stroll, yet covered ground with deceptive speed. Ana strode quickly to keep pace.

“I hope I haven’t kept him waiting long. I believe I was on time.”

“You are perfectly punctual, not to worry. Mr. del Carros is always early. And very patient.”

“How good of him. I’m always late, and impatient.”

Jan chuckled agreeably.

“I am also that way. Patience comes with age, I am told. Though you might expect the reverse to be true.”

“What do you do for Mr. del Carros?”

“Many things. Mostly I help him get around. He’s quite old, you know.”

“Right, of course.”

They passed through the broad crossing. Far above was the immense inverted bowl of the dome. Rust-colored and unornamented. Both of them stopped and stared a moment.

“One hundred and sixty-two feet,” Jan pronounced, “from floor to dome.”

“Wow,” Ana said, stupidly. “I couldn’t have told you that. You must know a lot about this place.”

“No. I just read it in that brochure.” He started off again. She was starting to like this guy. Anyway, she was pleased that del Carros had a studious assistant; it made all this feel more normal.

The name had troubled her from the moment it left Emil Rosenthal’s mouth, and she had racked her brain to think why. Her grandfather did not keep a diary, as far as she knew, but his calendars were large, leather-cased volumes in which he recorded a good deal of information. She had found the long line of black books a few days after his death, on a shelf in his study, fifty of them, numbered and dated. She’d meant to look through them then, but there had not been time, until yesterday. On impulse, she had turned to 1984, and found what she was looking for instantly. June 16 was circled, with departure and arrival times for a Pan Am flight to Caracas, a flight her grandfather never took, because of illness. Her father went instead, in his own jet, and presumably met with the man whose name was written below: Roberto del Karos. Two days later her father’s jet crashed in the mountains. The names were close, but close enough? And how common a name was either?

They went up a few steps into the south ambulatory, part of the semicircular corridor surrounding the choir and altar, and opening onto seven chapels. Jan stopped before an entry in the stone wall to their right. Unlike those further on, fronted by decorative iron gates that made them fully visible to the passage, St. James’ chapel was hidden away. Ana glanced at Jan and thought she found something challenging in his smile, saw an unnerving flatness in his eyes that was visible only close up, and he stood very close to her now. She was breathing too quickly; her pulse throbbed in her neck. This was ridiculous, the collector was only being careful.

“Just inside here,” Jan instructed, pleasantly.

Ana stepped through the archway. The chapel was deceptively large, big enough to be a small church, spare in its adornments, except for the highly detailed windows and a carved stone altar, four saints flanking a cross. A shrunken old man sat several chairs into one aisle, draped in a black raincoat with a gray hat in his lap. He was round-faced with a head of pure white hair and watery blue eyes, and his gaze never shifted from the altar, even as Ana slid into the aisle beside him. She left one chair between them. Jan had vanished.

“Thank you for coming, my dear.”

He looked at her now, one shy glance before shifting his eyes downward.

“Thank you. This was my idea.”

“But I’ve taken you out of your way.”

“It’s fine. I love this place.”

“Do you? It’s rather freakish, but I like it too. And it has these discreet corners.”

“Are you hiding from someone?”

“Oh, yes.” He grinned mischievously. “Many people. Does that surprise you?”

“Not at all. I know a bit about the complications that afflict collectors’ lives.”

“Of course, you are one yourself. And a dealer too, yes?”

Had she told him that? Anyway, Rosenthal could have; it wasn’t a secret.

“Strictly an amateur, on both counts.”

“But your grandfather was a great collector.”

“You knew my grandfather.”

“Not well. We did some business a long time ago.”

“Would it be too rude to ask what that business was?”

“Not too rude.” He was looking down again, shifting the hat about in his lap with his long, withered hands. “It’s simply that business is so boring. Especially old business, and I’ve forgotten the details. If I’m not mistaken, we are here to speak of more recent business. True?”

What was the accent? Certainly there was a Spanish lilt, but it overlaid something else. He didn’t look Spanish. She was getting distracted.

“You know, I sort of had a deal in mind,” she answered. “An exchange of information. I don’t want to sound mercenary. I’d like this to stay friendly.”

“No need to apologize. I understood the conditions. I was to explain my willingness to pay so much for your fine icon. You were to give me your best guess at its present location. I imagined that trading stories about your grandpa was something extra, just friendly conversation. Have I misunderstood?”

He was not a doddering old man, she must get rid of that idea at once. He had thought this through more carefully than she had.

“Let’s make this simple,” he continued, leaning in her direction. “We shall each take turns speaking, until we run out of things to say. I’ll go first.” He faced the altar once more. “There is no good reason I should have offered so much for the icon. It is a personal matter. My father was also a collector, and an art historian. Byzantine art was his special love. He had heard and read what little there was on the Holy Mother of Katarini, and then, between the wars, he went to Greece to see it. It was not easy. The icon had moved over the years, and there were several villages which claimed theirs as the true one. Maybe they believed it. The Greeks are not a people careful about history. My father bribed a priest, and was able to see the real icon, the genuine Mother of Katarini. And he became so entranced by it that he made the priest an offer to buy it. A generous offer, I believe, but it was no use. The Greek would not part with it for any price.”

“What was your father’s name?”

“William. It would have been William in English. In any case, years later, I went to see the icon myself. I was trying to be a collector also, though I had to do other things to live. My family was not rich, despite my father’s indulgence in art. I too fell in love with the work. It was…well, I need not describe it to you. You have had years to admire it. I envy you that.”

“I seem to have been less affected than others. Maybe I didn’t spend enough time looking closely.”

“Perhaps, but the effect is usually immediate, in my experience. Can I ask you, do you believe that Jesus Christ is your savior?”

“My goodness, there’s a question. I’m not sure that I do, to tell you the truth. Is that necessary to the proper appreciation of the work?”

“We are not speaking of appreciation, but something deeper. The work’s ability to move one, yes? To heal, to comfort, to teach, even. Is belief necessary? No, probably not. Not as a precondition, in any case, but one is unlikely to feel that caress of the spirit and be unchanged. Conversion goes hand in hand with the healing.”

He had a schoolteacher’s manner, this del Carros. There was no evangelical thunder in his speech, yet a certain quality of hushed awe had crept into these last words. Ana felt alien, isolated, denied something that all these men around her had been able to access.