The jacket was already in his hand when the phone rang.
Maes looked at the screen — a number he recognised, she could tell, not from relief but from the particular stillness that crossed his face. He held the phone out to her without answering it.
"She's calling," he said.
Mara took it.
"Mr. Maes." The voice was measured and precise, the German-accented English of someone who had learned to speak with institutional authority in a second language. "I'm calling because I became aware this evening that there may be some confusion about our arrangement."
"This isn't Mr. Maes," Mara said. "My name is Mara Selles. I'm an authentication specialist working in proximity to this investigation. Mr. Maes is in the room. Who am I speaking with?"
A short pause. "Dr. Hanna Voss. European Cultural Heritage Commission, provenance liaison." Another pause — the kind used to calibrate. "I'd like to understand how you came to be in possession of Mr. Maes's phone."
"He handed it to me." Mara moved to the window. Below, the canal was black and still. "Dr. Voss — when did you last contact Mr. Maes directly?"
"By letter, six weeks ago. By email, ten days after that. I sent both to his registered address in Antwerp and received no reply to either." Her voice was careful now — careful in the way of someone building a record as they speak. "I had a formal meeting scheduled in Brussels, at the commission offices, for next Tuesday. I had made no other arrangements and confirmed no other location."
Mara was already looking at the note on the desk.
"Someone contacted him yesterday," she said. "A handwritten note, pushed under his hotel room door. It carries your name — or what presents as your name. It named this hotel. It named his room number. It set a meeting tonight, after nine."
The silence from Dr. Voss had a different quality than the pauses before it. "I don't have his hotel address. I didn't know he was in Venice. I sent correspondence to Antwerp." A beat, dry and controlled. "Someone used my name."
"Yes. Dr. Voss — who else has access to Mr. Maes's commission file within the commission?"
"The file is restricted." The pause that followed was the pause of someone deciding how much transparency served an institution and how much served an investigation. "However, fourteen days ago we received a formal legal request for access from an external party. A cultural inheritance claim. A law firm in Brussels filing on behalf of a Belgian national with documented provenance interest in the Vantricht estate."
Mara said nothing.
"I'm not in a position to confirm the name without a formal disclosure request," Dr. Voss said. "But I can tell you the access was granted under our standard inheritance inquiry protocol, and the request was specific — it named the Maes commission file explicitly."
"Thank you," Mara said. "I'll contact you through the commission's formal channel before tomorrow morning." She ended the call.
Maes was watching her from across the room.
"Pieter Vantricht," she said, "has legal representation in Brussels. His representative filed for access to your commission file two weeks ago." She lifted the handwritten note from the desk. Room seven. Tuesday night after nine. Bring the Hendrick correspondence if you have it. We are close. "The handwriting is careful. Slightly formal. Someone writing in a second language."
Maes looked at the note for a long moment without taking it. "His father wrote exactly like this," he said quietly. "Three lines. Nothing wasted. The family retained a copyist for estate correspondence — formal, deliberate. The habit passed down." He looked up. "He has known I was in Venice before you did. Before I contacted the commission to confirm."
She let that settle. The water moved against the building below. Somewhere in the calle, nothing moved.
"He sent the note to find out what you'd do," she said. "Not to arrange a meeting — to observe whether you'd keep it. And who would come with you."
