Video Nasties

by Ralston, Duncan

  "Huh?" Tremaine said, only now realizing the woman he'd been walking with in silence for the last twenty minutes had finally spoken.

  "Don't you ever worry about the Forger's Curse?" she asked him.

  Tremaine sputtered. "Silly superstition."

  The thief shrugged and carried on down the cobblestone street.

  Wawel Castle, built for Casimir II the Great in the early-1300s, was even more beautiful at dusk, and Ziminski's "technician" stopped in the sidewalk on Dragon Street, gawking up at its lighted walls and turrets. Tourists milled below, snapping blurry evening photos and selfies. One of the largest museums in Kraków, Wawel housed an art gallery in rooms where 700 years of royalty ruled and prayed and fucked and shat, and its armories presented some of the finest examples of warfare, from the earliest broadswords to ship-mounted cannons. Tremaine had been many times, as new exhibits came and went between its walls, but he'd never grown immune to its beauty. Ziminski's technician, who'd just arrived from Sweden (a country not lacking in castles), managed to catch her breath before continuing on toward the front gate.

  She stopped again in front of the bronze dragon. Some teenagers, drunk or high and chattering in Polish, had just sent it a text message that would cause it to breathe fire. When it finally did, the thief startled, her pale oval face blazing orange in the firelight, her choppy bangs as red as a Titian beauty's. Tremaine's initial loathing of her, for the simple fact that her presence required him to rush his work, lifted a little as the kids raised a cheer around them. In the firelight, under the hem of her black hoodie, he saw Vermeer's Girl with the Pearl Earring, Botticelli's Venus, Caravaggio's Salome.

  Tremaine sneered at the fantasy. She reminded him of America, that was all. Her Midwestern accent, rough around the edges, dredged up bittersweet memories of his wasted small town youth. Thinking of home made him remember snippets of his drunken evening spent painting the Dossi. He thought of the incantation he'd painted into the fur collar, and smiled again. No one would be the wiser until he'd gotten his money and left Poland.

  The flames died. "C'mon, Tremaine," she said, calling him by his last name, the only name he or Ziminski had ever given her. He knew her as Archer, which made him think of the dead man and his trumpet. Ziminski had him meet her at the airport in one of his cars, like he wasn't the best fine art forger in the world but a common chauffeur. He'd claimed he wanted the first face Archer saw to be a pleasant one, but really it was to prove how thoroughly he owned Tremaine, so Tremaine drove the living hell out of Ziminski's Bentley like he'd rode Ziminski's estranged wife.

  Holding up a sign he'd hastily penned "ARCHER" in the front seat of the car, he got more than a handful of smartasses miming a bow and arrow at him as they left baggage claim. Tremaine didn't even give her a second glance until she was standing right in front of him, telling him her name--or at least her codename--was Archer. His surprise must have been evident, because she'd said, "You were expecting Hudson Hawk?"

  Tremaine was a regular visitor of the gallery. The technician required time and silence to "case" the building, and with him at her side, her furtive glances at cameras and other security measures would likely go overlooked.

  Tremaine enjoyed traveling to the galleries in other countries, as well. He loved to be steeped in art. But one of the great benefits of his job was being able to touch the works of the masters, not just gawk, once the technicians had swapped them for his forgeries.

  "Imagine touching the Mona Lisa," he told Archer as they entered the castle. "Running your fingers over every brush stroke. Feeling the contours, the impasto, and understanding exactly what brush shape da Vinci used for each stroke, what type of bristle, which pigments he'd mixed to make each color and shade, what organic materials and metals and semi-precious stones were used to derive its natural pigments." He sensed her losing interest, as she gazed at gates and darkened, hidden recesses in the walls. "Knowing the secret in her smile and her eyes, that if she were able to move she would seal it with a finger placed upon her lips. Imagine, for a moment, stepping into the shoes of Munch as he composed The Scream, or van Gogh dotting his Night with stars. Imagine stretching up to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and touching the finger of God as He passes the gift of life to Adam. Imagine standing in front of the rough sketch of Guernica and choosing, with all of the colors in the spectrum at your disposal, to paint it instead in stark black and white monochrome."

  Archer gave him a look then, as if he'd gone mad.

  Thinking of the curse and his counter-spell, Tremaine believed maybe he had.

  Upstairs in the State Rooms, the galleries, the halls quiet as a tomb, but the walls would not stay quieted. The chorus of a thousand voices followed them through chambers and antechambers, bedrooms and banquet halls, from tapestries and paintings on wood, on canvas, and directly on the wrought leather walls. The forger and the thief slipped silently past a thousand years of art history, and he suspected Archer cared little, if at all, about any of it. This was a job to her, nothing more. He saw it in her eyes, flitting past Madonnas and Sabine women, chubby cherubs, muscular angels and fussy royalty without a second look.

  They moved into the Royal Audience Hall, where stone floors glimmered. Above, eyes met his gaze from Biblical scenes woven into tapestries, and from the coffered ceiling, where carved and painted wooden heads that once watched over Kraków's royalty watched over them, the art thief and the painter. The forger. The fraud. Never had a lick of talent. Never would amount to anything. Their gaze, with hollowed-out irises, full of silent reproach.

  "Tremaine?"

  Archer stood in the next room, a look of curiosity visible under her hood. Tremaine studied the faces above him a moment longer, then followed. She stood before two paintings hung side-by-side: Dossi's Jupiter, Mercury and Virtue and Dürer's Self-Portrait at Twenty-Eight Years Old Wearing a Coat with Fur Collar, on loan from the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. Jupiter was a sort of painters' painting Tremaine had never particularly responded to, though he generally liked Dossi's work. But the Dürer had what art appreciators called "wall power." It drew the eye. It spoke to him, even more so than his own replica. It commanded his attention.

  "Jesus..." Archer muttered. "Those eyes..."

  Tremaine could tell she had no eye for art. Nothing had moved her to waver from her business, not a single painting had spoken to her until just then. If that didn't speak of the power of Dürer's painting, Tremaine thought, then nothing did.

  While Archer stared, open-mouthed, Tremaine noted that aside from a few minor differences in brush strokes and craquelure, his forgery and the original were virtually identical. Even the best experts, the people Sotheby's called when there was a question of authenticity, or the agents who worked fine art forgery cases in the FBI and Scotland Yard, or conspiracy theorists who would spend hours poring over alleged ciphers in Dürer's work--even they would have been hard-pressed to tell the two paintings apart.

  Only Tremaine knew about the flaw, his incantation warding against evil... just two simple words he hoped would protect him long enough to get far away from the painting and his forgery.

  No matter what happened, this would be his last.

  ❚❚

  TWO DAYS LATER, pleased the theft had gone unnoticed--or at least unreported--Ziminski and Tremaine shared a drink in the old man's study. Tremaine peered through the glass of amber liquid at a roaring fire, pleased Ziminski hadn't invited his bodyguard to drink with them. When a knot popped in the fire, he simply shifted in the large leather chair, and sipped his Scotch. With the Russian nearby, he might have flinched, or twisted round to make sure Vladimir wasn't looming over his shoulder, cracking the knuckles of his massive fingers.

  "Na zdrowie," Ziminski said, raising his glass in a toast. Tremaine sat up and clinked his glass against the old man's. Ziminski eyed him queerly over the glass as he drank, as Tremaine settled back into the groaning chair, sipping his Scotch. "Your work's improved these last few months. I've noticed a sense of p
ride not present in previous works, particularly in your Dossi, and of course, the Dürer."

  "Thank you, Mr. Ziminski," Tremaine said. "As much as it's about the money, it really is a labor of love." The old man nodded thoughtfully. "Say, where's Vladimir tonight? You give him the night off?"

  "The Mad Russian? He's making room in the vault. We have a new acquisition, as you know. It requires a place of prominence." Ziminski's thin lips curled in a smirk. "You've... never seen the vault, have you?"

  "No sir," Tremaine lied. Magda had lured him there during a soiree, her breasts heaving as she dragged him through the house, and the both of them out of breath they'd proceeded to fuck on top of Ziminski's large antique safe. Since he hadn't had much of a chance to look at the paintings stored there, he felt the lie was more of a stretching of truth.

  "Let's you and I go have a look at my Dürer, hey?"

  Tremaine swallowed the last of his drink in one gulp. He leaned forward to place the glass on a coaster on Ziminski's black granite table. "I'd like that," he said.

  Ziminski buzzed down the hall, turning left toward the east wing where the gallery lay, and beyond it, the vault. Inside, paintings much too valuable, not to mention illegally procured, to display to the general public lay. Tremaine had gotten a fleeting glance during his stolen moment with Magda, enough to know much of what lay inside had been painted long before he'd met the old man. There were paintings and statuettes long thought lost to looting and war. There were portions of frescos chipped and pulled from church walls, ornate capitals from the columns and pilasters of unprotected ruins, portraits of wealthy families thought stolen by jealous relatives excised from their wills.

  Ziminski zipped into the gallery. Tremaine heard grunting up ahead--only Vladimir hauling sculptures and display cases to make room for the Dürer, he knew, but it still unnerved him. He'd been feeling mellow, certain he'd gotten away with painting his little flaw into the forgery. As they approached the far room, the certainty dwindled.

  "Do you mind if I use the loo before we...?"

  "It can wait," Ziminski said over his shoulder, his wheels rumbling over bare wood buffed to a high sheen.

  "I'd rather not," Tremaine said, lagging a bit. "My back teeth are floating."

  Ahead of them, Vladimir stepped into the doorway. He wore a t-shirt and his shoulder holster, his hard muscles gleaming with sweat, his wide chest pounding from exhaustion. His brow furrowed as he looked up at Tremaine. The painter had no doubts even though Vladimir had tired himself, the Russian would outrun him before he could reach the stairs. Either that, or put a bullet between the shoulder blades.

  Ziminski zipped around to face him. "If it hadn't been for Archer, I might never have noticed. She's got a good eye, that one."

  "Noticed?" Tremaine tried hard to swallow. He'd misjudged Archer: she'd had an eye for art, after all.

  "Don't play games, Tremaine. I always knew your ego would be your undoing. You couldn't just let it be. It's just like with Magda. You couldn't stand that an old man like me had a woman like her, and so you had to have her for yourself."

  "I would never do that, Mr. Ziminski--"

  "Oh, tosh. She told me everything." He smirked. "You're a scoundrel, Tremaine. I knew you couldn't keep it in your pants, but I had hoped you'd had enough pride of purpose to not fuck with my painting!"

  Ziminski's words resounded off the silent walls. Vladimir cracked his knuckles, stepping out of the gallery and into the hall.

  Tremaine threw up his hands, backing away. "Mr. Ziminski, Milo, please--"

  "Oh, Milo nothing." The old man's face twisted into an approximation of disappointment. "You've failed me, boy. But worse than that, you betrayed me."

  Much too late, Tremaine turned to run. Vladimir grabbed him fiercely by the shoulders and spun him round. Tremaine saw the old man look away in disgust as Vladimir slammed a fist into his face and painted the world black.

  ❚❚

  THUNDER ROARED IN Tremaine's skull.

  He knew where he was from the smell before his eyes grew accustomed to the harsh light. Oil paint, dust, canvas, parchment. Tremaine blinked away a crust of blood and peered blearily at the empty insides of Miłogost Ziminski's vault.

  Ziminski sat in the doorway. Vladimir stood over his shoulder, smiling darkly.

  "You know, this vault is air-tight," Ziminski said. "I've thought a lot about what I would do with you when Archer pointed out your folly, and the solution was simple. What better place to kill you, than in the very place you first betrayed me."

  "Milo, just listen to me," Tremaine groaned.

  "Oh I think I've listened to you long enough. It's all bullshit, Tremaine. You're a fraud. Everything you do, everything you say, none of it means anything."

  Tremaine said nothing.

  "Funny thing." The old man licked spittle from the corner of his lips. "Magda gave me the same look you're fixing me with now, when she was where you are. It didn't take her quite as long to die as I suspect it will take you. You want to know why, Tremaine?"

  Tremaine only looked at him.

  "It's because you're full of hot air," Ziminski blurted with a laugh. "How long did it take, Vladimir? For Magda to die. Half an hour?"

  "Forty-three minutes," the large man said.

  "You see, after Magda told me about your little sexcapades, I installed a hidden camera in the vault."

  Tremaine glanced at the bare steel walls.

  "She never knew it was there, but Vladimir and I had a wonderful time watching her die. Gulping like a goldfish out of its bowl." The old man smiled at Tremaine. "We shared a bottle and toasted to the little slut's death."

  Tremaine cleared his throat to speak.

  "How long do you wager Tremaine will take to die? An hour?"

  Vladimir shrugged. "Maybe less. If he's lucky."

  Ziminski's smile grew wider. "'If he's lucky.' I rather like that." The old man backed up his wheelchair. His bodyguard grabbed the thick steel door. Behind them, the Dürer stood leaning against the wall. Tremaine locked eyes with the Master and chuckled morosely.

  "Goodbye, Yannick," Ziminski said, as Vladimir slammed the door shut.

  The painter threw himself to his feet, scouring the walls for indents, for loose screws, for seams. He fell to his knees and slid his palms along the floor, feeling for grooves, rivets, knocking and listening for hollow spots. The metal had bent in a small place on the edge of the door. He tore his fingernails on it, cursing, shouting at it, goading himself on through the pain, all to no avail. Exasperated, his raw fingers left a smear of blood on the door and he returned to where he'd started to begin again, his breath short, heart beating hard. After what felt like hours, he plopped down on the floor and wept with exhaustion. Nothing. All seams smoothed down. All rivets firmly in place. The vault solid and thick all the way through.

  The air felt thick. Soupy. Difficult to breathe.

  He thought of the trumpeter, bleating out his final note as the arrow pierced his throat. Dying doing what he did best. Not locked in a vault, breathing his own dead air, left with nothing to paint with and no canvas in sight.

  Tremaine regarded his quivering hands, soiled black with grease from the floor and red with blood from his fingertips. Hands that had forged so many masterpieces. Fingers that had spread and smeared and scraped. A thought occurred to him. He pushed himself raggedly to his feet, his head swimming, on the verge of unconsciousness. Not much time left, really. He vaguely wondered who would win the bet: Ziminski or Vladimir.

  The painter staggered to the door.

  Peeling the skin of his fingers on the sharp curl of metal. Carving into the pads of flesh. His hands dripped crimson as he turned to the wide, blank wall.

  He began to paint, laughing wildly.

  Drunk on creativity, Tremaine stepped back to admire his final masterpiece, his coda, his dying words. He'd painted a hand flipping the camera the middle finger and signed it with his name, a counter-spell painted in bold, bloody capitals:r />
  YANNICK TREMAINE

  Yannick stumbled out of the way, falling back against the door, hoping Ziminski and his bodyguard had an unimpeded view of his pièce de résistance.

  Outside the vault, something toppled. Glass shattered.

  Tremaine perked up, pressing his ear against the cold metal. Breathing shallow. Another great crash startled him, the sound of concrete or plaster crumbling. Heavy footsteps. Canvas tearing, wood splintering. For a moment, the painter thought he might be hallucinating the sounds. Wishful thinking, as the air grew thin and the last colors of his life bled away to white.

  A horrific BOOM pierced the silence. Another. And again. Vladimir's Desert Eagle, firing at--what?

  The man himself let out a blood-curdling shriek, cut off as it reached its crescendo like the final note of the trumpeter of St. Mary's.

  Muffled, he heard Ziminski cry out, "No! No, this can't be--" before he was silenced, too.

  In the quiet that followed, the world around Tremaine began to wash gray.

  A squall of metal on metal drew him from soupy oblivion. Gears clattered, the door fell open, and Tremaine spilled out into the gallery. Sprawling face-first with his blood-smeared hands spread on the cool wood floor, he gasped for air. Slowly his vision returned, color bleeding back into the world. Blurry white snowflakes fell around him. He saw Ziminski's chair toppled, the man himself curled into a fetal ball, his head smashed on the floorboards like an overripe melon. What he'd thought was snow came into focus, shreds of parchment and canvas falling delicately around them.

  Shakily, Tremaine rose on his hands and knees.

  Behind Ziminski and his fallen wheelchair, the rest of the gallery was in ruin. Vladimir lay twisted and broken against the far wall. Paintings shredded, frames snapped into kindling, sculptures and idols smashed to sharp bits of gray and white and clay brown, display cases shattered into jagged, shimmering glints, wallpaper torn, floorboards splintered.