The Icon

by Neil Olson

  “So, you would say its value is more spiritual than artistic?”

  “Not necessarily. I mean, value to whom?”

  “Precisely.” The older man paused before taking on a long, sloping incline in the path. “Will you recommend purchasing the work to your superiors?”

  “My department chief needs to see it, probably the director. The decision will get made at a higher level.”

  “Come now, you have no influence at all?”

  “I am the Byzantine specialist, I’m sure they’ll give me a voice. For its age alone we should buy it, and it’s also a great work of art. It could be the crown jewel of the new galleries.”

  “Certainly.”

  “But there are so many agendas. The museum can’t buy everything it should.”

  “You would like for them to acquire it.”

  “Speaking selfishly, I’d like to have it around, to be able to study it whenever I wanted. We don’t have a lot of icons, none like this one.”

  “There are none like it, I would guess. But will it go on a wall for all to see, or will it sit in a case in your wonderful temperature-controlled basement, for only scholars’ eyes?”

  “That’s a concern, I confess.”

  “I sensed as much. You’re a very conscientious boy. Now,” he took Matthew’s arm and began walking again, “tell me about the icon itself.”

  Matthew described the work while they proceeded, past a lush slope of yellow daffodils and white narcissi, through a small field of fruit trees, fat with just-splitting buds. He attempted to keep his language technical, yet feared that too much of his emotional response to the image showed through. It seemed impossible to use the academic voice, to keep that professional distance when speaking or even thinking of this particular piece, and he had yet to address with himself what that might mean. The older man listened quietly, his face neutral, until they paused at the Seventy-second Street crosswalk.

  “Marvelous. I would very much like to see it again one day.”

  “I’m sure that can be arranged, wherever it ends up.”

  Fotis looked at him with damp eyes, which may just have been from the wind.

  “I knew you were the right one to look at that icon.”

  “I should thank you for putting in a word with their lawyer. It was a nice coincidence that you knew him.”

  “We are in the same club, but it’s nonsense to thank me. The museum would have sent you in any case.”

  “Maybe the family wouldn’t have thought of the museum if you hadn’t mentioned it. Whatever happens now, I’ve been able to see it, so I’m satisfied.”

  “I am told that you made a very favorable impression upon Ms. Kessler.”

  “The lawyer told you that?”

  “Why should it be a secret? In fact, she may want you to come back and do a second examination. For herself this time.”

  Matthew shrugged uncomfortably.

  “That really wouldn’t be kosher while the museum is considering.”

  They crossed the road and started down the steep, looping path to the boat pond.

  “Unless I am mistaken, it is she and not the museum who will decide the work’s fate.”

  “Of course.”

  “And she will need help with that decision. She trusts you already.”

  “It’s awkward.”

  “You are assuming that you will be placed in a position contrary to your conscience. There is another way to look at the matter. Ms. Kessler may need to be told what to do.”

  “I don’t know that I understand you.”

  “You do not, yet.”

  They said no more before they reached the bottom of the path. Fotis gripped his arm more tightly, and Matthew realized that his godfather had a pained look on his face, physical pain, possibly quite acute. The jaw clenched and the eyes closed, and Fotis swayed a moment, breathing deeply through his nose.

  “Theio, are you OK?”

  Equanimity returned to the old man’s face after several moments.

  “The air is lovely today, is it not, my boy?”

  “Do you want to sit?”

  “A few minutes, perhaps.”

  They shuffled to a bench set back from the water’s edge, a little past where the hawk watchers huddled about their telescopes. Fotis sat heavily. Concerned as he was, Matthew said nothing more. This was not the first time he’d seen these symptoms, and questions would only make the old man retreat. His pain was his own, as jealously guarded as his other secrets. The pond’s surface was a dark glass, reflecting a shadowland version of the brick boathouse across the way. Behind that, tall trees, just touched with lime green, soared up well past the level of the street behind them, and above the trees the square stone towers of Fifth Avenue were bathed in yellow-white light.

  “Can I get you anything?” Matthew asked, but Fotis waved him off.

  “Fate is a peculiar thing. We believe that we command our own lives, but events will occur, again and again, which lead us in a certain direction. Do you not find this to be true? We can resist. We can go along, pretending we are still in control. Or, we can try to determine what fate wants of us, and help to make it happen.”

  “I’m not much of a believer in fate.”

  “That is because you are young. One must believe in one’s own power at your age. In another time, however, the young sought advice from the old. The old were understood to hold wisdom from experience. This is no longer the way.”

  Matthew took the hint and shut up.

  “You have said some interesting things today,” Fotis went on. “It is possible that your unconscious already perceives a dilemma which your conscious mind has not grasped, because a choice has not yet been put before you. So. I was contacted a few days ago by a highly placed official of the Greek church. Regarding the icon. They are very much determined to acquire the work, and they want help from me in the matter.”

  A rush of anxiety coursed through the younger man. He sat forward on the bench, both disbelieving and struck by a strange sense that he had expected something very like this.

  “Why would the church contact you? How do they even know about the icon?”

  “The church has many resources, and I have many friends within the church. They place a high value upon recovering stolen art treasures, especially those of great religious significance and power. Kessler’s ownership of the icon was not a secret.”

  “You only conjecture that it’s stolen.”

  “No,” the old man countered instantly, then seemed to restrain himself. “You must have seen documents from the lawyer. What do they say of its provenance?”

  “It’s more or less in line with the work you and I have discussed.”

  “The Holy Mother of Katarini.”

  “They don’t use that name, but it’s an obvious match. Preiconoclastic, original source unknown. The last few centuries in a church in Epiros.”

  “And how did it come to be in Kessler’s possession?”

  “He claimed to have purchased it from a fellow Swiss businessman.”

  “So that fellow is the thief. Or the one before him. What does it matter? Somewhere along the line it was stolen. What Greek would have willingly parted with it?”

  “Maybe one who needed money after the war.”

  “It was taken during the war, I tell you. The Germans took it with them when they left.”

  Now we’ve arrived at it, Matthew thought. His godfather had been hinting about something for weeks.

  “How do you know that?”

  Fotis sighed, smoothing his hands out across his gray pleated pants.

  “Very well. Very well, I told you I had seen the work before.”

  “Yes. That’s how we got talking about it in the first place.”

  “I didn’t tell you everything. It was during the war that I saw it, in that church in your grandfather’s village. It was your Papou, in fact, who arranged for me to see it. I have never forgotten that time. Less than an hour, but I was completely po
ssessed by its beauty, by the power emanating from within it. You know I was with the guerrillas. I was in charge of the resistance in that area, and I sent a man to get the icon from that church. Before the Germans took it, or burned the place without knowing what it was. They burned so many villages, churches and all.”

  The old man paused, lost in a vision of houses aflame. Matthew watched the men who watched the birds. He sensed that this story would end up troubling him, and not just because the museum would never touch stolen work. The information, which he was hungry to learn, would come at the price of his neutrality. Every word got him deeper into whatever it was his godfather had planned. Yet how could he resist? These old guys gave up their secrets so infrequently.

  “What happened?”

  “Yes, what. I’m still not sure. The man I sent was my best man. To Fithee we called him. We all went by different names, so the Germans could not get information about our brothers, or our families. It must sound foolish to you now.”

  “To Fithee. The serpent.”

  “The Snake, if you like. Because he was so good at slipping into and out of places. And for other reasons. He had his own ideas of how best to do things, but I trusted him.”

  “And he failed.”

  “No, he succeeded. Too well. He understood the icon’s value even better than I did, and he decided to take it at all costs.” Fotis wet his lips with his tongue. “He killed a priest.”

  Matthew sat back on the bench. This was uglier than he would have guessed.

  “Why?”

  “I speak too quickly. I do not know for certain that he did it. The priest intervened somehow, and he died.”

  “What happened to the icon?”

  “The church was burned, by the Germans, I think, though he might have done that also. At the time, I assumed the icon burned with it. Later I learned that my man had given it to a German officer.”

  “Given it?”

  “Traded it, for guns and ammunition. To fight the communists. Once we knew the Germans were beaten, that became the priority. So you see, he was not being a thief, but a patriot. For all I know, he was under orders from someone above me.”

  Matthew tapped his feet to drive out the chill, as well as quell his agitation. The icon was suddenly marred, as if blood had been flicked across its surface. He would not be able to see it in the same way. Fotis seemed to read his thoughts.

  “Many have killed for this work, and others like it, over the years. It should not surprise you, my boy. Or are you shocked to find blood on your godfather’s hands?”

  “You didn’t send him to kill the priest.”

  “No. But I commanded him, controlled him, I thought. He had his own game; everyone did. It’s a sad story. I am sorry to upset you. You would like to see the work in a purely artistic way, but since you are a kind of historian, I thought you should know.”

  “This wasn’t a history lesson. You were talking about the Greek church, remember?”

  “Indeed. My only point was this. We’ve discussed the minor importance the work would have to your museum. You know, or you should know, the value the icon had, not only as a source of faith, but as a source of healing, in the old country. This would seem to me sufficient reason to return it there. If not, well, then you have my sorry tale of its theft, and at what cost in blood. Can there be any doubt after that as to what the correct course should be?”

  “So you want me to tell Ms. Kessler to donate the work to the Greek church?”

  Fotis’ eyes widened. “I see, you are afraid of defrauding her. No, the church is quite willing to pay. Of course, they might win the work in a lawsuit, but proving the theft and tracing the crooked path of ownership could take years, and cost as much in lawyers as it would take to buy the piece in the first place. They will make her an offer, perhaps not as much as she wants, but a fair offer, I have no doubt. And she is rich, so I would not be overly concerned about that.”

  “But you want me to talk her into it.”

  “To advise her, let her know your own heart on the matter. The rest will follow.”

  Matthew rose slowly, resisting the urge to swear, kick the bench, simply walk away. Instead he just stood there beside the shrunken old man.

  “What are you up to?”

  “What have I to do with it, my child? The situation is what it is. Fate chooses her own weapons.”

  Weapons, not tools, Matthew mused. He tried to think of himself as a weapon of fate. What a joke.

  “Fate didn’t bring me into this. You did.”

  “Am I not also an instrument? You were meant to be involved.”

  “That’s a simple formula for justifying any damn thing you like, isn’t it? That must make life very easy.”

  In fact, Fotis’ life had been anything but easy, and Matthew did not hope to either understand or undermine his philosophy. Yet his godfather seemed unperturbed, serene; infuriatingly so.

  “It is called faith, and it is available to anyone. You need not be your father’s son.”

  “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Nothing, my boy. It was a foolish thing to say. I apologize.”

  They had both misspoken, and silence followed. Matthew walked the pond’s edge. The water was clear, springtime-fresh, with no dead leaves or debris. He could see the worn concrete shelf, then the bottom. This was Matthew’s backyard, this whole section of park south of the museum to Seventy-second Street, the place he came to walk off stress, absorb a loss, get his head together. This was the very spot he would have chosen to contemplate the troubling revelation now before him. Yet here he was, and there was no comfort. He watched the still water and the vibrant spring light, smelled the damp earth, without emotion, without any reaction at all. An invisible screen seemed to have gone up between himself and the world. He would like to blame it on the conversation with Fotis, but that wasn’t right. Had the feeling not been with him for the last two days, only now crystallizing? Could he not place it almost to the moment he stood before the icon, the dark eyes holding him, Ana Kessler’s words, her breath, in his ear? And since then work, conversation, the necessary chores of life hummed like one long, dull interruption until he could think about the icon again, talk about it, see it. He wandered back to Fotis. The older man seemed far away in thought until Matthew began to sit.

  “No, time to walk again. I have kept you too long. Help me up.”

  They continued north along the narrow path to the bridge below Cedar Hill, at ease once more in their manner, if not their minds. Matthew waited for a continued assault, but his companion was quiet, attention directed inward. Suppressing new pain, perhaps, or focusing his energy to finish the walk. Bright strips on the ceiling lit the short tunnel. A heap of clothing against the wall became, on closer inspection, a homeless man, sleeping or expired.

  “If the church were to get it,” Matthew began in mid-thought,

  “where would they put it?”

  “We have not spoken in that sort of detail. I cannot ask them such things unless I am ready to support them if the answer is agreeable. And I cannot support them at all without you. So tell me what answer would make you happy.”

  “I’d just want to be sure it wasn’t going to end up in a vault, or on some bishop’s wall. That it would be somewhere the public could see it.”

  “Then we make that a condition of our involvement.”

  “I don’t see how we can set conditions. I don’t intend to talk Ms. Kessler into anything.”

  “But if she asks your advice, you will give it?”

  “I have to think about all this.”

  “That is the wise course.”

  Dogs frolicked with their masters on the wide, sloping hillside above. To the north, through trees and across the Seventy-ninth Street transverse rose the massive concrete and glass south wall of the museum. A path bisected the one they were on, running up Cedar Hill to their left and out to Fifth Avenue on their right. Fotis would take this path to where his driver—one of the Russi
ans, Anton or Nicholas—waited on the avenue. Obeying some unspoken rule, Matthew never accompanied him to the car, but did watch to see that he made it safely to the street.

  “I will leave you to your work.” Fotis took both of the younger man’s hands in his own. “Do not let your thoughts be troubled. The correct decision will come to you if your mind is at peace. God keep you, my boy.”

  “Take care, Theio.”

  A squeeze of fingers and the old man was off, slow but steady in his gait, never looking back. Matthew stood fixed in that little intersection until long after his godfather was out sight.

  Jan placed the guidebook, open to the section on Central Park, facedown on the bench and waited for the old man to pass by. The younger one still stood there, fifty meters away, looking in his direction. Unlikely that he had noticed anything, Jan decided, merely making sure the old fellow was all right. He reached into his pocket and put his hand around the cool metal object, slipped it out carefully. One shot would do it, but two or three were protocol, in the back of the skull and between and just below the shoulder blades. That is, if this were a gun and not a cell phone.

  Of course this was a terrible spot, far too many people and no cover. One of the three short tunnels they had passed through would be a better choice, especially if it were a rainy or cloudy day, a good bet in April in New York. But he might have to take out the younger one as well. Better still would be between the car and the house out in Queens. Well, best to have several options. He could inform del Carros that it would be no problem. The dealer would assume he was being nonchalant, having already pronounced the Greek a difficult target, but in truth Jan anticipated little trouble, even with the Russian bodyguards. He wouldn’t mind adding them in; he hated Russians.

  No messages. He put the phone away and picked up the guidebook again. Over 300 species of birds seen in the park every year, including the green heron and scarlet tanager. Amazing. Jan shook his head in wonder at the natural world.

  6

  D ust motes hung in the white shafts of light between the stacks, and Matthew had to work hard not to become hypnotized, not to let his imagination run wild with the strange reports on the pages before him. Down the hall in his office the red message light blinked on his telephone—the idiot lawyer for that potential donor in Chicago, no doubt. Memos from Nevins, the chief curator, from Carol and the planning committee, the director, Legal, all crowded his e-mail inbox, but Matthew was ignoring them. He was holed up instead in the department library, with the old volumes that held the few fragments of available knowledge on the Kessler icon.