Provenance_ How a Con Man and a Forger Rewrote the History of Modern Art - Laney Salisbury [23]
“John was able, almost at will, to drop in important parts of the history of physics from memory,” Carroll recalled, “and in doing so to convey the impression of a much greater understanding of the subject area in which he purported to be expert.”
Drewe created an entire informational universe from other people’s lives, storing potentially useful morsels and retaining details of the quirks and professional habits of each of his acquaintances. He would look them straight in the eye with his flat, unwavering stare, listen intently, and come away with flakes of character and personality, pieces so small his marks hardly knew anything was gone.
“He was like a shark that doesn’t bite but rubs up against you and takes away little bits of your skin,” said one such acquaintance.
Drewe often boasted to Terry Carroll that he had a pilot’s license, that he loved flying helicopters, and that he was an accomplished hang glider. Carroll thought it would be nice to surprise his friend with a private visit to the Concorde, and on a clear day the two men drove out to Heathrow in Drewe’s Bentley. On the giant airliner, at the pilot’s invitation, Drewe took the controls in his hands. He looked as excited as a four-year-old with a lollipop, and asked a variety of technical questions. (Interestingly, Goudsmid would later tell police that Drewe had a mortal fear of flying.) On the way home he expounded on various theories of unmanned flight and drone weaponry, and Carroll noted again that he had a sophisticated understanding of physics. Years later Carroll realized that Drewe had simply memorized basic concepts from physics textbooks.
Drewe quickly added Terry Carroll to his collection of unwitting accomplices. The soft-spoken lecturer was developing powerful intelligence-gathering software that could be applied to various disciplines. Drewe told Carroll he was sure the Home Office would be interested in the software for a newly proposed national computerized fingerprint identification system, as would the auction houses for an international database for art. Drewe said that he could broker both potential deals. Soon he was bringing an assortment of interesting characters to Carroll’s office: a group of MI6 and Scotland Yard acquisition officers; a handful of Russian and South African officials; a Chinese military attaché and his computer specialist. Carroll couldn’t help but be impressed.
Another candidate for Drewe’s crew was Peter Harris, the larger-than-life armed forces veteran who had introduced him to Carroll. Harris was well into his fifties, a hard drinker and smoker who had already lost a lung, and whose appointment with oblivion was neatly stamped on his forehead. A retired commercial artist, Harris supplemented his income by working an early morning paper route and subletting his flat, most recently to Carroll.
Harris’s friends would probably have pitied him if he hadn’t been such a great raconteur. He claimed that in the late 1960s, while fighting in Aden in the British Army’s last colonial counterinsurgency campaign, he had stood his ground after a sniper shot one of his mates dead. Wearing the Tartan kilt of the Argyle Highlanders, he had picked up his bagpipes and marched down a bullet-pocked street playing “Scotland the Brave” and daring the bastards to finish him off. Or so the story went.
It was questionable whether Harris had ever seen combat, but the Catch-22 was a perfect venue for such yarns, with its collection of armchair warriors and tin soldiers who enjoyed the camaraderie of real fighters. Britain was filled with