Jigsaw puzzles are one of those things that occupy the front of your mind so that the back of your mind can work through other things. So while Beattie, Ahmed, and I continued to make progress on our puzzle project, I also listened to the discussion between Boone, Zariyah, and the rest of the team a few feet away.
So far, Zariyah had run them through the known provenance of the painting in question—it had been bought from the artist by a Jewish family named Salzman in 1925. In 1936, it had passed to the family’s son, Josef, but then, during the war, the painting was confiscated and then disappeared. “There’s a period of about forty years when the piece is missing,” Zariyah said, “but then in the early 1980s, it shows up at a private auction in Geneva, and my employer buys it.”
“Did he kn
