“It’s hard to take, isn’t it?” said Cesar, laughing softly. “All this time you’ve been playing against a simple computer, a machine with no emotions or feelings. I’m sure you’ll agree with me that it’s a delicious paradox, a perfect symbol of the times we live in. Maelzel’s prodigious player had a man hidden inside, according to Poe. Do you remember? But times change, my friend. Now it’s the automaton that hides inside the man.” He held up the yellowing ivory queen he had in his hand and showed it, mockingly. “And all your talent, imagination and extraordinary capacity for mathematical analysis, dear Senor Munoz, have their equivalent on a simple plastic diskette that fits in the palm of a hand, like the ironic reflection in a mirror that shows us only a caricature of what we are. I’m very much afraid that, like Julia, you will never be the same after this. Although in your case,” he acknowledged with a reflective smile, “I doubt if you will gain much from the change.”

Munoz still said nothing. He merely stood with his hands in his raincoat pockets again, the cigarette hanging from his lips, his inexpressive eyes half closed against the smoke. He looked like a parody of a shabby detective in a black-and-white movie.

“I’m sorry,” said Cesar, and he seemed sincere. He returned the queen to the board with the air of someone about to draw a pleasant evening to a close and looked at Julia.

“To finish,” he said, “I’m going to show you something.”

He went over to a mahogany escritoire, opened one of its drawers and took out a fat sealed envelope and the three porcelain figurines by Bustelli.

“You win the prize, Princess.” He smiled at her with a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Once again you’ve managed to find the buried treasure. Now you can do with it what you like.”

Julia regarded the figurines and the envelope suspiciously.

“I don’t understand.”

“You will in a minute. During these last few weeks I’ve also had time to concern myself with your interests. At this moment, The Game of Chess is in the best possible place: a safe-deposit box in a Swiss bank, rented by a limited company that exists only on paper and has its headquarters in Panama. Swiss lawyers and bankers are rather boring people but very proper, and they ask no questions as long as you respect the laws of their country and pay their fees.” He placed the envelope on the table, near Julia. “You own seventy-five per cent of the shares in that limited company, the deeds of which are in the envelope. Demetrius Ziegler, a Swiss lawyer and an old friend you’ve heard me mention before, has been in charge of this. No one, apart from us and a third person, of whom we will speak later, knows that for some time the Pieter Van Huys painting will remain where it is, out of sight in that safe-deposit box. Meanwhile, the story of The Game of Chess will have become a major event in the art world. The media and specialist magazines will exploit the scandal for all it’s worth. We foresee, at a rough estimate, a value on the international market of several million… dollars, of course.”

Julia looked at the envelope and then at Cesar, perplexed and incredulous.

“It doesn’t matter what value it reaches,” she murmured, pronouncing the words with some difficulty. “You can’t sell a stolen painting, not even abroad.”

“That depends to whom and how,” replied Cesar. “When everything’s ready – let’s say in a few months – the painting will come out of its hiding place in order to appear, not at public auction, but on the black market for works of art. It will end up hanging, in secret, in the luxurious mansion of one of the many millionaire collectors in Brazil, Greece or Japan, who hurl themselves like sharks on such valuable works, either in order to resell them or to satisfy private passions to do with luxury, power and beauty. It’s also a good long-term investment, since in certain countries there’s a twenty-year amnesty on stolen works of art. And you’re still so deliciously young. Isn’t that marvellous? Anyway, you won’t have to worry about that. What matters now is that, in the next few months, while the Van Huys embarks on its secret journey, the bank account of your brand-new Panamanian company, opened two days ago in another worthy Zurich bank, will be richer to the tune of some millions of dollars. You won’t have to do anything, because someone will have taken care of all those worrying transactions for you. I’ve made quite sure of that, Princess, especially as regards the vital loyalty of that person. A loyal mercenary, it must be said. But as good as any other; perhaps even better. Never trust disinterested loyalties.”

“Who is it? Your Swiss friend?”

“No. Ziegler is an efficient, methodical lawyer but he doesn’t know much about art. That’s why I went to someone with the right contacts, with no scruples whatsoever and expert enough to move easily in that complicated subterranean world. Paco Montegrifo.”

“You’re joking.”

“I don’t joke about money. Montegrifo is a strange character, who, it should be said, is a little in love with you, although that has nothing to do with the matter. What counts is that he is simultaneously an utter villain and an extraordinarily gifted individual, and he’ll never do anything to harm you.”

“I don’t see why not. If he’s got the painting, he’ll be off like a shot. Montegrifo would sell his own mother for a watercolour.”

“Undoubtedly, but he can’t do that to you. In the first place, because Demetrius Ziegler and I have made him sign a quantity of documents that have no legal value if made public, since the whole matter constitutes a flagrant breach of the law, but which are enough to show that you have nothing whatsoever to do with all this. They’ll also serve to implicate him if he talks too much or plays dirty, enough for him to have every police force in the world after him for the rest of his life. I’m also in possession of certain secrets whose publication would damage his reputation and create serious problems for him with the law. To my knowledge, Montegrifo has, amongst other things, on at least two occasions undertaken to remove from the country and sell illegally objects that are designated part of our national heritage, objects that came into my hands and which I placed in his as intermediary: a fifteenth-century reredos attributed to Pere Oller and stolen from Santa Maria de Cascalls in 1978 and that famous Juan de Flandes that disappeared four years ago from the Olivares collection. Do you remember?”

“Yes, I do. But I never imagined that you…”

Cesar shrugged indifferently.

“That’s life, Princess. In my business, as in all businesses, unimpeachable honesty is the surest route to death from starvation. But we weren’t talking about me, we were talking about Montegrifo. Of course, he’ll try to keep as much money for himself as he can; that’s inevitable. But he’ll remain within certain limits that won’t impinge upon the minimum profit guaranteed by your Panamanian company, whose interests Ziegler will guard like a Dobermann. Once the business is finished, Ziegler will automatically transfer the money from the limited company’s bank account to another private account, whose number only you will have. He will then close the former in order to cover our tracks, and destroy all other documents apart from those referring to Montegrifo’s murky past. Those he will keep in order to guarantee you the loyalty of our friend the auctioneer. Though I’m sure that, by then, such a precaution will be unnecessary… By the way, Ziegler has express instructions to divert a third of your profits into various types of safe, profitable investments in order both to launder that money and to guarantee you financial security for the rest of your life, even if you decide to go on the most lavish of spending sprees. Take any advice he gives you, because Ziegler is a good man whom I’ve known for more than twenty years: honest, Calvinist and homosexual. He will, of course, be equally scrupulous about deducting his commission plus expenses.”