by Damien Love
As soon as they disappeared, Alex made a woozy run through the door after his grandfather, then halted. The space beyond lay in complete darkness. Crouching, he felt cautiously along the floor until he touched a warm hand.
“Grandad?” He explored the arm, a shoulder, a jaw. There was a groan. “They’ve gone,” Alex panted. “Are you all right?”
“I’m okay, Alex. Give us a hand up, though, eh?”
Alex helped him back through into the dim, wavering light of Harry’s showroom. The hissing, static sound still popped in his ears.
“They do seem to have it in for Harry’s place.” Alex’s grandfather gestured sadly around. “He’s still not had a chance to finish clearing up after—” He broke off, squinted, and stood frowning at something in the gloom beyond Alex’s head. “Ah, Alex?”
Alex turned to look. The room was a mess, but he could see nothing out of the ordinary. “What is it?”
His grandfather’s eyes widened. He furrowed his brow, stood rubbing his chin, then held out a hand. “Ah. Take my arm again, would you?”
Alex did. “Are you okay?”
“Uh-huh. Now, back this way.” They walked through the unlit corridor, into a darkened room beyond. As light flickered on, Alex took in a snug combination of library and office. Two walls were lined with wooden shelves that would have been filled with books, were it not that most of the books were scattered around the floor, amid a blizzard of papers. The place looked as if a tornado had been trapped there. Behind one exposed section of shelf, a small safe hung open. Inside sat two chunky crystal tumblers and a bottle of amber liquid.
A desk by the open window held a lamp with a green shade, a computer keyboard, and the old man’s Gladstone. An expensive-looking computer screen lay on the carpet where it had been knocked over. Automatically, Alex picked it up and set it back on the desk.
“Just keep hold of my arm another second, if you don’t mind,” Alex’s grandfather said, watching him move the screen with great interest. As Alex took his wrist again, his grandfather softly kicked the office door shut. A full-length mirror hung attached to the back.
“Now. See that?” Alex’s grandfather lifted the arm Alex held up and down. Alex watched the old man’s reflection, the moving arm. There was something wrong about the picture, but he couldn’t get hold of it. He stepped closer to the door. It took another second for him to realize he couldn’t see himself in the mirror.
The instant the fact registered, he saw himself appear in the glass. The hissing sound was gone. The light grew steady.
“W—” he tried.
“Oh, Harry’s single malt,” the old man said happily, reaching into the safe. “Twenty-four-year-old. Saves it for special occasions. I think the circumstances qualify.” He poured a measure and stood savoring it.
“Wha—” Alex managed. He looked down at himself, then at the pale boy staring dumbly out from the mirror.
His grandfather shrugged. “Golem stuff, Alex. You know. The force you’re carrying. According to the legends, the creature had many strange powers. Invisibility, for example. Well, you saw that yourself in Prague. Or, rather, didn’t see it, ha.”
“What?” Alex would never forget watching the golem fading in and out of sight before his eyes. “But I—I don’t know how I did that. I didn’t even know I had done it.”
“No. Gathered that.” The old man took another sip and beamed. “Still, it’s an encouraging sign, eh?”
Alex had no words. His mind was racing so fast that thoughts were lapping one another, waving as they went past. He suddenly grinned wildly, clicked his fingers, and spun to his grandfather.
“Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if I can work out how to—” He paused, skin tingling as the possibilities hit him in a rush. He pictured himself slipping unseen past armies of opponents, creeping undetected into the most guarded strongholds, and he stiffened in alarm as another thought came crashing in. “But what if I can’t work it out and it happens again? What if I can’t . . . get back? What if I get stuck being invisible?”
“Alex.” The old man tutted. “I don’t see the need to dwell on the negative side.”
Alex scowled, then turned to check he was still there in the mirror. He rolled his head on his neck. The woman’s slap was still fading on his skin. “She almost knocked me out,” he muttered, more to himself, then paused. Almost knocked me out. There was something there, a dim idea trying to form.
Once before when the tablet’s power had suddenly protected him, Alex recalled, he had been nearly unconscious: dozing almost passed out from exhaustion on a train, when bullies had targeted him. Similarly, when he had finally managed to communicate with the golem itself, he had meditated on the problem so long and hard he finally reached a near-hypnotized point where he had stopped thinking altogether. In fact, the very first time he’d noticed anything strange about the old toy robot at all was when he’d woken in his bedroom to discover homework he’d been struggling with had been finished while he slept.
He turned to tell his grandfather, but stopped. The old man stood with his back to him, pressing his whisky glass against his forehead as if to cool a fever. His shoulders were slumped. Everything about his sagging posture looked achingly weary.
“Are you okay?” Alex said.
“Hmm?” His grandfather straightened and looked around, smiling. “Oh, yes. The woman jumped at me as I was coming in the window.” He gestured with the glass. “I was out on the ledge, peeking in. She was in here, ransacking Harry’s things, then she went running toward the front. Figured I’d take my chance and sneak in, when she came tearing back and caught me. She’s an incredible fencer.
“We ended up stuck fighting in the corridor between here and the showroom quite a while. Her companion eventually joined in. Couldn’t see who was who, pitch-black. All got rather hectic. But I suspect it was her who got me: got me rather nicely.”
He raised his arm to display a bloody slash from knuckles to wrist. With a wince, he splashed whisky over the wound.
“It might not have been her,” Alex said with a start. “I saw him.”
“Hmm?” The old man began tying a handkerchief around the hand, wriggling his fingers as if to stimulate feeling.
“The tall man. Didn’t you see him?”
His grandfather’s head snapped up. “You saw him? Where?”
“Here. Well, outside. But he came out the front window. Then he . . . jumped away. He had a knife and—”
His grandfather was already gone, dashing toward the main room. Alex found him poised halfway through the open window, one foot on the outside ledge.
“Something’s not right,” the old man said, leaning into the rain, searching the night. “I haven’t actually seen him since Prague, Alex. Harry and I, we’d been trying to track them. But I never caught a glimpse of him. We saw his machines, tangled with his bald goon and Willy von Sudenfeld—although those two tonight were new. Hard to tell about the chap, what with the mask, but I’m sure I’ve never encountered the woman before. New recruits, I suppose. He picks disciples up and throws them away. But I haven’t laid eyes on him, y’see. I had begun to suspect he might still be badly injured after—after what happened in Prague. When he was burned. How was he looking?”
“Just the same. . . .” As the memory of the shadowy figure tingled over Alex like static electricity, he shuddered to recall the reckless moment he’d been seized by the mad desire to call out to him. “I hardly saw him, but his face wasn’t bandaged anymore. Though he seemed stiff when he moved. There was something about the way he moved. It was, I dunno. Weird. Weirder than normal. It happened fast, I didn’t really take it in. He’s even taller than I remembered.”
“Coast seems clear for now.” Alex’s grandfather scanned the road again, then stepped back in. “But there’s something. I’m missing something.” The old man ran a bloody knuckle over his lips, lost in thou
ght, then absently turned for the light switch on the wall. Nothing happened when he flicked it. Looking up, they saw the bulbs in all the overhead lamps had been smashed.
“Somebody wanted to make sure it was dark,” Alex said.
“All the better to hide in,” the old man said grimly. “Hide and wait.” He clapped his hands. “Still: not as good as turning invisible. Come back through, Alex. We have to get moving, but there are things I need to show you first.” He disappeared toward Harry’s inner rooms.
Alex reached to close the window, then paused. He thought he’d heard something. The whoop of a police or ambulance siren sounded from a distance, cutting sharply across the night. Just trouble for someone out there. He locked the window and followed his grandfather, turning away too soon to see a small shadow drop from above and settle weakly on the ledge.
VIII.
NIGHT GALLERY
Alex found the old man in Harry’s office-library, replacing his bloodied jacket with one from two duplicate suits hanging in a cupboard.
“I always get several made at once,” his grandfather said, pulling it on and appraising the cut. “Saves wasting time thinking what to wear.” He nodded at Harry’s computer. “Reckon you can fire that thing up, Alex? I’m all thumbs with them.”
“Uh, think so.” Alex hit a key. The sleeping screen lit. He touched the hard drive. Warm. But anyone trying to use it hadn’t got far. “It’s password protected.”
“Ah. Oh, I know: try The Irons. Harry always uses that.”
Alex tried it a few ways. The third—one word, all lowercase—worked. The desktop was littered with dozens of folders. His grandfather leaned closer.
“There.” He jabbed a finger that set the screen trembling. The fingerprint left behind marked a folder labeled ALTE PINAKOTHEK.
“What’s that mean?” Alex asked, clicking it open.
“Name of a museum. In Munich. We should go there sometime, Alex, highly educational. Now. One of these is a film clip; Harry taped it from the, you know. The websnet. Can you tell which it is?”
Of the five files, only one was a video. Setting it playing revealed a TV news show. A well-groomed man and woman sat talking animatedly in German to a female correspondent on the big screen by their side, reporting from a street somewhere.
“I don’t know what they’re saying,” Alex said.
“Doesn’t matter. They don’t know what they’re talking about. This is from last week. Keep watching, it’s coming up.”
The reporter stood in drizzling morning rain outside a large, imposing building, its long facade lined with stern rows of tall arched windows. She pointed excitedly to her left. The camera followed the movement until it found an area cordoned by tape, and zoomed in. Between two vans marked POLIZEI, a group of people, some in uniform, stood inspecting the gaping hole where another window should have been. Rubble and glass lay strewn over the ground where the wall had been ripped away.
“Here it comes,” Alex’s grandfather said.
The picture changed again. This time it was a silent, static, strangely angled black-and-white shot, staring down into a large dim room from a high corner. Huge paintings hung on the walls.
“CCTV,” Alex said.
“Inside the gallery. Night before.”
The image shook, then settled, as if something had rocked the lens. Stark light fell across the floor. Seconds later, two enormous figures entered, backs to the camera: hulking men in long black coats and black hats. They went straight to the largest painting—Alex estimated it to be around twenty feet in height, maybe fifteen across, but couldn’t tell what it depicted in the murky light—grabbed a corner of the frame each, and began to pull it away from the wall.
Another figure came running in, a smaller man, wearing the uniform of a museum guard. He stopped, looked wildly from the pair to some spot out of shot beneath the camera, then started shouting in that direction.
“Someone else there, off-screen,” Alex murmured.
“The security guard really shouldn’t have tried to stop them.” His grandfather sighed. “If anyone breaks in, they’re just supposed to wait until police arrive in response to the alarms. Poor chap.”
On-screen, the guard sprinted at the figures at the painting. Without turning, one lashed out an arm in a savage blow. Alex felt a sickening twinge of recognition as the gloved fist smashed the man’s throat. Lifted off his feet, he landed limp and motionless in the shadows, his head at an odd angle.
The painting was down. Chunks of plaster had been ripped out as they pulled it clear. Each hoisting an end, the thieves began to walk mechanically out of view with their massive prize.
“Do you know how to pause it?” the old man said.
“Uh-huh.”
“So . . . now.”
Alex froze the scene just as a shaft of light fell across the rear figure. The image was blurred, but he knew what he was looking at. Beneath the hat, an unfinished metal face.
“Life-sizers,” he breathed.
“Reporters are talking about men in plastic masks,” his grandfather said. “The police and newspapers across Europe have tied them to the thefts of two paintings in the past couple of months. But they’ve missed a trick. As far as Harry and I have been able to work out, they’ve stolen eight paintings now. Most recent was in Britain. Cambridge, just last week.”
“I saw something about that.” Alex nodded. “From the university, wasn’t it?”
“That’s right. But, thing is,” the old man continued, scratching at an ear, “that’s about as much as I can tell you. Clearly, they’re stealing these paintings for a reason. But there’s just no rhyme nor reason to it I can see.
“The pieces they’ve taken have no connection I can spot. They’re all by different artists of different eras, from the fifteenth century to the eighteen hundreds. Different sizes, different subject matter: religious themes, portraits, landscapes. All of wildly different value and renown. I mean, take that.” He gestured at the screen. “That’s easily the most famous of the lot. Rubens’s Great Last Judgment. Caused quite the commotion. Hang on.”
He glanced around the books on the floor, selected a large green volume, and rifled the pages. “Here we are,” he said, laying it before Alex to display a vibrant reproduction of the enormous painting the robots carried.
The Great Last Judgment
Peter Paul Rubens, circa 1615
The dead have risen and assemble awaiting judgment.
To the left, the blessed ascend heavenward, hoping to be saved. To the right, the damned fall helplessly downward, tormented by demons in the shadows.
“A little garish for my tastes,” the old man went on. “Now. That picture has hung in pride of place since the Alte Pinakothek opened in the 1830s. They actually designed the gallery around it, because it’s so big. So you can imagine the fuss. But then, on the other hand, you have something like this . . .”
Turning to his Gladstone, he produced a rolled canvas and spread it out: a hazy oil painting of a lonely mountain pass, desolate beneath a threatening sky.
“See? Utterly different. This one was taken from a private collection in Italy. On the Way to Beziers, it’s called. From around 1880, painted by an unknown artist.”
“Wait,” Alex said, struggling to keep track. “That’s— You’ve got one of the stolen paintings?”
“Oh, ah . . . Yes. Yes, Harry managed to snatch it back off them and hide it. Just before they got him.”
“But shouldn’t you give it back? I mean, tell the police . . .” Alex felt the words draining away even as he said them.
“Tell the police?” His grandfather frowned.
“Forget I said anything.”
“Tell the police,” the old man repeated, tutting. “Honestly, Alex. Whatever’s going on here is not something the police would understand. Harry . . . Harry risked e
verything getting this. No. We have to get Harry back, and we can’t waste time trying to explain the situation to people who have no interest in trying to understand it. And we can’t just go giving it back until we work out why they wanted it. With a bit of luck, as long as we have this painting and they don’t, they can’t . . . Well . . . do whatever it is they’re up to.
“I can venture a couple of loose theories. One is that they’re after one particular painting and don’t yet know which, but they know it’s one of the bunch they’ve been stealing. The other possibility is they need all the paintings. The pictures add up to something, or reveal something together. There’s some connection, some hidden code or . . . I don’t know. I mean, look, take me back to all those folders again.” The old man squinted at the screen, then: “That one.”
Alex opened a folder marked CAMBRIDGE, then a picture labeled SCHALCKEN. Another painting: a young woman, blonde and pale, sitting in a dark room, holding out a plate containing what looked surprisingly like a waffle.
“Is that a waffle?” Alex asked.
“Well, quite.” His grandfather waved an exasperated hand. “This is the one from Cambridge University. Lady Holding a Plate is the title. Sums it up, I suppose. By the Dutch artist Godfried Schalcken. So: you’ve got your Rubens, a religious scene by a Flemish painter from 1615-ish; an anonymous painting made around 1880; and this, a painting by a Dutch artist in 1680, of a woman holding, as you so rightly say, a waffle. I’m stumped as to what the connection might be. Don’t suppose there’s anything screaming out at you, is there? I mean, even shapes, colors, anything.”
Alex sat chin in hand, looking from one to the other. “How many did you say they’d stolen, eight?”
The old man nodded.