The Icon

by Neil Olson

  “The expense is due to your own mistake.”

  “The price is too low,” Karov insisted, losing his smile. No sparring, no shift in reasoning. Advance one argument until it failed, then move to another. Open, simple, crude. The Russian style.

  “Then why did you agree to it?”

  “Because I didn’t know that you had offered three times as much to the Kessler woman.”

  Del Carros sighed and looked to his slouched blond companion. Jan Van Meer was silent. In contrast to Karov’s two fidgety associates, del Carros’ supposed artistic consultant—slender, bespectacled, utterly innocuous—seemed painfully at ease, bored even. The old collector appreciated Jan’s performance but wondered now if a more obvious show of strength wouldn’t have been a wiser decision.

  “A million five,” Karov continued. “That was the price. I am sorry to learn that your opinion of its worth has fallen so far since then.”

  This is what came of dealing with men like Rosenthal.

  “That would have been a legal purchase, Mr. Karov. Without complications. Now, I too may be beset with the sort of expenses you have incurred. There are those who will pursue this work relentlessly. I will have to take precautionary measures, possibly expensive.”

  Van Meer had already informed him that removing Dragoumis would cost 250,000 euros. A bargain, he assured del Carros, because they were friends.

  “We discussed this problem before, you will remember,” said Karov. “You will be happy to know that I have already taken measures myself.”

  Indeed, this was nearly the last thing del Carros wanted to hear.

  “When?”

  Karov consulted the huge silver Rolex on his beefy wrist.

  “Now, more or less.”

  “While he is still in Greece?”

  “Much better in Greece,” the Russian insisted. “He has a hundred enemies there. It will seem the most natural thing in the world.” Which was true, but if they bungled it, and Dragoumis went underground…Nothing to be done about it now. The main thing was the icon.

  “So,” Karov picked up again, “you can simply add whatever sum you had set aside for that business onto the price previously discussed. I ask you, is this not reasonable? After the trouble I have taken on your behalf?”

  “It would be rash to assume success before hearing from your people in Greece. He has survived several such attempts in the past. Indeed, I think the whole undertaking was rash. You were to leave that part to me.”

  “You were unclear on whether you intended to act or not.”

  “I was being considerate.” You ass. “The less you knew, the better.”

  “I am not such a subtle man,” Karov sneered. “I like to be certain of important matters. The Greek is old, but he is still a viper. He knows by now that I crossed him. He will hurt me if he can. I did not hesitate to protect myself, and I offer no apology.”

  “Very well.” Del Carros cleared his dry throat, sorry now that he had refused the water offered him, but he did not trust Russian hospitality. “Let us conclude this.”

  “Excellent. I despise drawn-out negotiations. So, in light of the losses I have suffered, and the efforts taken for our mutual protection, the price is now one million dollars.”

  Which meant he would take less.

  “Jan, what do you think?”

  Van Meer sat up abruptly, like a student caught daydreaming.

  “I don’t pretend to understand this action you are discussing,” he mumbled in his vague Dutch accent, playing the willfully ignorant art expert to perfection, “but it’s quite clear, Mr. Karov, that you have undertaken it for your own purposes, and against my client’s wishes. There can be no reason to expect an increase in the price on these grounds. Half a million U.S. dollars was the figure agreed upon, and I must say it is generous.”

  The Russian looked as if he would snap the little Dutchman in half.

  “I tell you it’s not enough.”

  “More than enough,” Van Meer prodded. “Too much.”

  “Listen to me,” del Carros said, in a soft voice that quieted the room. “You need to understand, Mr. Karov, that market value is not driving this sale. Personal reasons, which are not transferable, support my interest. If I fail to purchase this work, you will have to sell it at a fraction of the price we are discussing. Given your means of acquiring it, you may not be able to sell it at all.”

  “My means of acquiring it! Listen to you. You are the cause of my acquiring it. I stole it for you; you cannot back out of this arrangement.”

  “You stole it at Dragoumis’ instruction.”

  “And crossed him to sell it to you. We have a deal.”

  “Which you are attempting to breach by raising the price. I understand, you are a businessman. Very well. In this briefcase there is exactly six hundred thousand dollars. One hundred thousand more than the agreed price. Jan will object, but I am willing to go this far to meet your concerns. This far and no further. If I leave this room without the icon you will not see me again. My final word, Mr. Karov.”

  The Russian looked as if he would speak several times, but quieted himself, his black leather coat creaking about him as he shifted restlessly in his chair. Calculating. No doubt he felt he could simply take the case and keep the icon. Two bodies to dispose of, no big deal. Del Carros knew well that if he tried it there would be three bodies, and they would be the Russians, but Karov did not comprehend how dangerous Van Meer was. However, del Carros had previously hinted at future transactions, a new market in South America, drugs, emeralds, Incan artifacts. All smoke, but that was another thing Karov didn’t know, and he clearly preferred the role of businessman to that of thug. At last his big, watery eyes focused on the briefcase and a thin smile returned.

  “Who will say that Vasili Karov is not a reasonable man? I accept your offer. You,” he snapped at Van Meer, “take a lesson from your employer. This is how reasonable men do business. Compromise. Anton, get the brandy.”

  “The icon,” Jan interrupted, enjoying his role as spoiler. Was he disappointed that the deal was working itself out, that he would not be allowed to use his special talents? Surely he was too smart for that. “We have not seen the icon.”

  “Anton.” Karov waved his arm and the blackbeard changed direction midway to the liquor cabinet, went to the easel, and unceremoniously dragged off the drop cloth.

  Gold leaf, faded yet still brilliant. The graceful, oval curve of the Virgin’s half-turned head. Large, expressive eyes, underlined with dark patches, a downturned mouth. A sad Mary. The deep blue of her robes was almost black, tinged green here and there by age or damage. The fingers were unnaturally long, pressed together in prayer, yet also pointing outside the frame to where the inevitable accompanying Christ would have hung. The traditional Hagiasoritissa. Skilled work, not masterful perhaps, but painted with feeling. And in remarkably good condition. The room was silent for many moments.

  “Beautiful,” breathed Karov.

  “Yes,” del Carros agreed, disappointment crushing the anger out of his voice. “It’s the wrong work.”

  The Russian did not appear to understand him at first.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You must call off the action on Dragoumis.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Look at it,” del Carros insisted, but that was pointless, like asking a dog to look at it. An icon was an icon to this fool. The Greek had chosen his mark well. “It’s all wrong. The style is wrong. It’s late work, fifteenth or sixteenth century, probably Russian. The icon we’re seeking is eighth century or older, and damaged. I specified that it was damaged.”

  “You prefer it to be damaged?”

  It was intolerable. He would kill the idiot, he would strangle the life out of that fat, baffled face.

  “I prefer it to be the right one, the only one I am looking for. This is not it.”

  “This was the one on his easel,” Anton now spoke. “He was showing
it to his godson the day before. It was right where he told me to find it.”

  “Then he switched it for another. Did you ever actually see it before you took it?”

  “No. It stayed locked in his study.”

  “Why would he switch it?” Karov demanded.

  “Because he knew you would betray him,” del Carros replied, the matter becoming clear. Dragoumis knew that stealing the icon from himself would not be sufficient. The Russians would know he had it, and others would guess, so he needed a second feint. Give the Russians the wrong painting to steal. If Karov keeps the replacement, he has no idea what he possesses. If he sells it, the buyer will probably not have seen the original, and del Carros knew that most people—even collectors—could not easily place the age and origin of Orthodox icons. Either way, the replacement vanishes, and who can say that it was not the original? It was a clever plan, if flawed, one flaw being that the Greek had not anticipated a buyer who knew the real work very well. Still, he had bought himself time, and who knew where the icon was now? “You must call off the action.”

  “Why? Goddamn that Greek to hell, I’ll hang him by his balls.”

  “If you kill him before we determine the location of the real icon, we may never find it.”

  “What do I care about that? Shit on your icon. If you are telling the truth, I want the bastard dead. Besides, it’s too late.”

  The old man felt his eighty-six years like a weight on his shoulders, pressing down upon him. He had been young and strong when this chase began, but it had dragged on far too long, and he was tired. With all his other successes, why did he continue with this losing struggle? Because his spirit knew nothing else at this point. Once possessed, the icon lived within him, and he felt as though a part of his body were missing. More than fifty years now. There was really no choice. The tiredness was good, he decided. It hid his desperation.

  “What must I do to convince you?”

  Karov gazed at him carefully, trying to determine if this was a threat or opportunity. Van Meer was paying close attention also. They were beyond the possibilities they had mapped before the meeting, into tangled, dangerous territory. The Dutchman was freshly energized.

  “You could give me that briefcase,” the Russian answered after a long pause. Jan had a good laugh at that.

  “I think not,” del Carros responded.

  “You owe me something for my trouble, damn it.”

  “I owe you nothing. Dragoumis was toying with you. You were never in a position to deliver what I wanted, but I am willing to make some effort to maintain our cooperation.”

  “What do you suggest?”

  The Russian was an ass, but he would have to be given something or this would end badly. And he must be persuaded to call off the action.

  “This isn’t the icon I wanted,” the old man mused, “but it is good work, and I am feeling generous. I’ll give you a hundred thousand for it.”

  “That doesn’t even cover my expenses.”

  “And fifty more when I know that Dragoumis is safe. A hundred more if you can deliver him to me, alive.”

  Karov’s agitation had settled somewhat. He kept eye contact with del Carros as he slipped a bulky international cell phone from his jacket.

  “If I can take him alive, we’ll talk then about what he’s worth. Let’s see your money.”

  “Make the call. Time is precious.”

  17

  M atthew had been awake most of the night, and the few hours of sleep he’d stolen before dawn were troubled.

  Shreds of dreams still floated past his mind’s eye: a darkened city, that other New York of his sleep, full of narrow, poorly lit streets, twisting unexpectedly, a dangerous encounter around every corner. He knew the place, had visited its docks, parks, and alleys across a hundred nights, always pursued, always seeking the safe corridor, the straight way home. This night he had been the pursuer, chasing the Holy Mother down dark passages, around treacherous corners, without hesitation or fear, fearing only the loss of it. Logic dictated that someone carried the icon, but he saw just the image itself, a face more like the Mona Lisa than a Greek saint, smiling at his desperation as it vanished through doorways, up staircases, into shadow. In the end, the black eyes alone bore through the total darkness around him, close enough to touch, but he could not grasp her, never would.

  Half a day later, an unsettled feeling still enveloped him. He wandered through the great church of Saint Demetrios like a ghost, cut off from the other souls around him, mourning the Mother while they mourned the Son and looked forward to his resurrection. Huge chandeliers illuminated the place. The gold base painting of the rear wall and domed ceiling of the sanctuary, richly spotted with saints and angels, dazzled the eye, contrasting with the cool gray-white stone and marble of the interior colon-nades. Matthew visited Ephthimious’ chapel, with its red-haloed saints and ghostly, hooded figures. Time had not been kind to the frescoes, but their washed-out quality lent an air of mystery that appealed to him at the moment. He lingered, the cold leaching out sleepiness, forcing his blood and muscle to motion, his mind to consciousness. He had an hour or so before Fotis was to meet him, but he intended to be on watch before that. Who knew what surprises the old man had in mind tonight?

  A service—the latest in an endless procession this Holy Week—had begun in the main body of the church, so Matthew took the side aisles around to the saint’s tomb, a tomb only in name. The body was supposed to have been stolen by the Crusaders. Something had been returned from Italy twenty years before and now resided in a silver reliquary in the nave. The so-called tomb was merely an empty marble coffin with an icon placed on top. He didn’t know why he always came here, except that the room was peaceful and contemplative. The fact that it was older than the earliest Christian construction, part of the Roman baths, and that the saint’s remains had rested here for 900 years gave the chamber a gravity missing from the rest of the church, reconstructed in the 1920s after a great fire. Matthew didn’t think that Demetrios would like his new digs; surely he would prefer to be back in this quiet place.

  He crouched down next to the marble box, unwilling to place his knees on the cold floor, to assume the position of supplication. Prayer, for him, could never be so intentional or so self-surrendering. He closed his eyes and remembered the basilica from a child’s perspective, remembered the seeming vastness of it, and the grand old man, his Papou, tall as a god, showing him everything. The tale of each saint was recounted with a skeptical smile. Andreas had no use for religion, but he wanted Matthew to understand the culture from which he sprang, and his admiration for and explanation of the extraordinary, painstaking work of inserting thousands of tesserae to create a mosaic, of how certain pigments in the frescoes were achieved, even of the warped perspective necessary to make a curved dome painting look natural, was mesmerizing for a child. It would take years for Matthew to understand half of what he’d been told, but the seed was planted in early youth, and he had never escaped the intense fascination of this art.

  Yet it was not the same. His memory of standing before these images twenty years earlier carried more emotional power than actually standing before them now. Something had changed within him. Why, and when? It could have been his father’s illness; so much had gone astray since then, his interest in his work, his relationship with Robin, his faith in the old men who had taught him so much. But blaming the illness seemed a poor excuse, and not even convincing, because two strong passions had come upon him in the meantime: Ana, and the damn icon. Crouching in the cold, Matthew felt it more likely that those new passions had blotted out the old, had become everything to him, and this sickness of the soul came from being separated from both. He did not know where the icon was; he could not go back to Ana without finding it. Yet the odds of that were very remote. Opening his eyes to make sure he was alone, Matthew began to quietly recite some words of Greek, a prayer perhaps, to the saint, the Son, the Mother, whoever was on duty at the moment. Let the icon be found. L
et it be returned to its rightful place, wherever that was. Let troubled spirits, including his own, be at rest. The Greek served him as he imagined Latin did others, giving the words mystery and power, and creating a sense of ritual that removed the individual from the process. Using such words, one stepped into the ever-running river of the holy, and was submerged.

  After some minutes he rose, went up the worn marble steps through heavy red draperies to the narthex and out into the cool dusk. The church’s facade stood in shadow, but sunset touched the square tower with orange light, bringing out the red of the roof tiles and making the tall cross glow. The chanting of the priest and psáltees within was audible. The congregants were few in number so far, exhausted no doubt from the emotional exertions of the last two nights. On Thursday, the plaster Christ nailed to the cross. On Friday, taken down, draped in cloth, and carried about the church three times under a hail of carnations and the weeping of the old women. Tonight, they would stagger in by twos and threes until midnight, when a vast horde would be gathered on the broad plaza before the church. Come, receive the light, and candles would ignite in every hand. Christos Anesti, the priest would call, Christ is risen, and the crowd would echo it back. Stirring stuff. The mass hysteria of the Easter service was not Matthew’s preferred time of worship, but when participating it was easy to get sucked in, to feel one with the blind, passionate spiritual community. Reason was chased off for a few hours; faith and brotherhood ruled.

  Of course, the congregants then rushed home or to some restaurant to gorge themselves. But that was natural enough as well: celebrating after grief; food and drink as physical symbols of rebirth. Back in New York, he rarely partook of the whole ritual, but tonight Matthew wished he could feel part of it, wished that some table of food and candlelight and friends awaited him, wanted it in a way that only one certain of his alienation from the human tribe could want such a thing. He jammed his hands into his jacket pockets and patrolled the church doors like a sentry, ready to bring down a curse on his whole clan, damning their treachery and arrogance, their rationalism and cold, analytical worldview. Damning himself for being a product of his lineage and not his own man, not the engaged, spontaneous, alive creature he wished to be. The curse died on his tongue. Actions, not words, were required. He needed to remember why he was here.