3:22 p.m.
Saturday, December 16
Townhouse apartment, Washington, DC
Located on N Street between Seventeenth Street and Eighteenth Street in Washington, DC, are two rows of brick townhouses built in the late nineteenth century. The beautifully renovated town homes include two small hotels, an embassy, medical offices, and condominiums. One of the townhouses—a narrow four-story building painted a light gray—houses the American Society for the Preservation of Typewriters. At the rear of the building, four stories up and hidden from view, is a small, secluded apartment. For the past ten years, Dorchek Palmer has been its sole occupant. No one—not even the members of his team—knew about this apartment. Palmer always kept a hotel room downtown when he was in DC—it was where he would meet with his business partners, his clients, and his team. But the hotel was simply a cover. This small apartment off N Street was where his real work was done.
Palmer sat in front of a wall of flat-screen computer monitors and contemplated his next step.
He had hoped to find Mary Sullivan and the boy at home. The good news was that Sullivan, her daughter, and the boy were, in all likelihood, still somewhere in the city. His team would set up a perimeter and contact Palmer the moment the trio showed up. But that could be hours, and Palmer hated waiting. Fortunately, he was prepared for this type of situation.
Palmer opened up a tracking program he had developed the previous year and typed in Mary Sullivan’s phone number. Within seconds the program had identified her cell phone carrier, her specific type of phone, and a list of every app she had on her phone. He scrolled through the list and tagged her camera app, her maps app, her emails, her social media accounts, and her text messages. His program would monitor her phone in real time and notify him the second she used any of those apps or functions. He would be able to identify where she was instantly.
Palmer checked his watch. It was almost time for Dr. Belette to play his part. Belette understood what was at stake, but that didn’t give Palmer a lot of comfort. Belette was a nervous man, prone to stepping all over himself. Fortunately, Belette was also a greedy man, and Palmer believed that would make all the difference.
Chapter 10
3:42 p.m.
Saturday, December 16
West Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
“Take my picture in front of it!” insisted Camille.
“Let’s just get inside,” said Mary Sullivan. “It’s freezing.”
Camille put her hands on her hips and stood on a small patch of brown grass just outside the National Gallery of Art. The huge banners hung directly behind her.
“Please take my picture,” she said in a demanding yet polite manner.
Mary sighed. She knew it was easier just to take the picture than to continue to argue with her daughter. And to be fair, she also knew that she had a tendency to argue with her daughter for argument’s sake—Camille had that kind of effect on people.
Camille motioned at the boy. “Get over here,” she said.
The boy looked over at Mary, who merely shrugged. “I’d do what she says,” said Mary.
The boy made his way over to Camille and stood next to her. He realized for the first time how much taller he was than her—at least six inches, maybe more.
“Say cheese,” said Mary.
“Elephant poop!” yelled back Camille.
The boy broke into a broad smile.
3:44 p.m.
Saturday, December 16
Townhouse apartment, Washington, DC
Dorchek Palmer’s computer beeped. The Sullivan woman had used the camera app on her phone. The computer showed the image that was taken just seconds ago. There was no need to check the GPS tag on the picture—Palmer instantly recognized where she was.
It had to be a coincidence.
Palmer had plenty of questions, but those questions would have to wait—first things first. Palmer pulled out his phone and typed out a text message to his team. He stared at the message on the small screen of his smartphone. He knew that as soon as he sent the text, things were going to get a lot more complicated—but he had no choice. Palmer pushed Send.
The message read: “Package located. National Gallery of Art. West Building.”
Part 2
“There is hidden in so many a heart a great and vigorous faith. We, too, are in need of this when we think of much that is in store for us.”
—letter from Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, 30 May 1877
Chapter 11
3:55 p.m.
Saturday, December 16
East Building main conference room, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Andrew William Mellon was born in 1855 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mellon made his great fortune—estimated in today’s dollars at around forty billion dollars—as a banker, financier, and investor. He served as the secretary of the treasury to three presidents and as the ambassador to the United Kingdom. Mellon was a controversial political figure—President Franklin D. Roosevelt despised him. But notwithstanding all the accomplishments and controversy that defined much of his life, Mellon has ultimately become best known for the art he collected and a large stone building that now sits along Constitution Avenue between Fourth Street and Seventh Street in Washington, DC.
The West Building of the National Gallery of Art, designed by famed architect John Russell Pope in a neoclassic style, was Mellon’s gift to the country he loved. But Mellon did not live long enough to walk the marble floors of the magnificent building—he died shortly after construction had started. And despite providing the funds for its creation and the artwork to be displayed, Mellon had insisted that the building should not bear his name. The grand building was completed in 1940 and dedicated in March 1941 by, of all people, President Roosevelt, the man who despised Mellon the most. The National Gallery of Art quickly became one of the grandest museums on the planet. Works by Rembrandt, da Vinci, Monet, Vermeer, Rubens, Raphael, and Whistler—to name but a few—quickly filled its walls. In 1978, an East Building—a structure of decidedly modern design connected to the West Building by a short underground concourse—was added to house the National Gallery’s growing collection of contemporary art.
The National Gallery of Art is governed by a nine-member board of trustees that meets in a conference room in the East Building. Five of the trustees are appointed. They are men and women of the highest repute who have achieved great success in their chosen fields. Their ranks have included wealthy industrialists, Wall Street tycoons, philanthropists, educators, and Nobel laureates. The remaining four trustees are ex officio—that is, they serve as trustees because of the public offices they hold. The chief justice of the United States Supreme Court, the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, and the secretary of the Smithsonian Institution all serve as ex officio members of the board of trustees. Needless to say, a meeting of the board of trustees is no small matter. And that is exactly what had Kim Yoon so nervous.
Yoon had served as executive assistant to the National Gallery’s deputy director for less than six months. Previously, she had worked at the National Gallery in various capacities while attending Georgetown University and had met celebrities, politicians, and wealthy socialites. She had grown accustomed to people with big egos and felt comfortable in almost any social setting. But nothing could have prepared her for one of her new duties as executive assistant: organizing a meeting of the board of trustees. She had to coordinate nine different schedules, security requirements (two of the trustees—the secretary of state and secretary of the treasury—stood fourth and fifth in the line of succession to the presidency of the United States), seating arrangements, the agenda, dietary demands, and numerous other miscellaneous details that had to be handled exactly right.
Yoon checked her list. The meeting was set to start at 4:00 p.m., and everything seemed to be moving along on schedule. Eight of the board members, the directo
r of the National Gallery, and various administrative personnel milled around the room. The only board member who had yet to show up was the secretary of state. To be fair, Yoon had been warned. The secretary of state was a man known for his punctuality and precision—arriving exactly on time, demanding a strict adherence to a predetermined agenda, and concluding the meeting exactly on schedule. He was not, Yoon had been told, a man given over to frivolous and irrelevant discussion.
Yoon stepped into the hallway and glanced nervously at her watch. Three minutes to go.
She could hear the director inside the room calling the other board members to the large conference table. She could hear the shuffle of chairs as everyone settled into place.
Two minutes to go.
She glanced back inside the room. The board members—sans the secretary of state—had all taken their seats.
One minute to go.
A million thoughts rushed through Yoon’s mind. Her heart pounded in her chest. Had she forgotten to confirm the meeting with, of all people, the United States secretary of state? Had he canceled at the last moment? Had she given his office the wrong time? The wrong date? What had gone wrong?
And that’s when the door at the end of the hallway burst open and in strode the secretary of state of the United States of America. He was followed close behind by a small security detail and his assistant.
“Mr. Secretary,” said Yoon. “My name is Kim—”
The secretary of state brushed past her without even acknowledging her presence, entered the conference room, and assumed his seat at the far end of the table.
“Let’s get this meeting under way,” said Damon Sacks, the United States secretary of state.
The time was exactly 4:00 p.m.
4:00 p.m.
Saturday, December 16
West Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Mary Sullivan, Camille, and Art made their way through a pair of massive bronze doors on the front of the museum, past the security desk, and over to the information booth, where they retrieved a map of the museum. Mary took a quick glance at the floor plan. “This way,” she said as she headed toward a wide set of marble steps near the entrance.
Camille and the boy followed Mary up the winding staircase and into the rotunda of the National Gallery. The museum was filled with visitors, and the sounds of thousands of footsteps and whispered conversations echoed through the cavernous building. The rotunda, a large round room capped high above with a dome, was encircled with thick dark-marble columns. Between each column stood a tall Scotch pine adorned with simple white Christmas lights. In the center of the rotunda was a fountain, in the middle of which stood a bronze sculpture of Mercury, the Roman god of travelers and thieves. The fountain had been drained of water and filled with mounds of red poinsettias. Art looked up at the domed ceiling of the rotunda. Through the skylight in the center of the roof, he could see dark clouds outside. The clouds seemed to sit directly on top of the museum.
He turned to Mary. “So where do we start?” he asked. “Do we go to the room where they found me?”
Mary shook her head. “I think we should take it slow,” she said. “Just treat this like a normal tour—give yourself a chance to get used to the museum. You ended up in that room, but there may be other reasons why you were in the museum. Let’s walk around a bit and see if anything looks familiar.”
The boy could tell she was nervous.
“See anything you recognize?” asked Camille.
The boy merely shrugged. “Don’t think so,” he replied. But that wasn’t true. He recognized everything—the thick bronze doors that had greeted them as they entered the museum, the wide marble staircase, the rotunda and its circle of dark columns, and the image of Mercury pointing the way to some uncertain path. Why and how all of this was familiar to the boy remained lost to him.
He wondered if it had been a mistake coming back to the museum.
Chapter 12
4:05 p.m.
Saturday, December 16
East Building main conference room, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
Damon Sacks was not a patient man, and he did not suffer fools gladly. And although he understood the need for the hastily called meeting of the board of trustees, it did not please him. At the far end of the room, the director of the museum, Elizabeth Downing, was excitedly discussing the details of the museum’s latest planned acquisition—a long-lost painting by Vincent van Gogh, The Park at Arles with the Entrance Seen Through the Trees. The museum had agreed to purchase the painting for the sum of one hundred and eighty-three million dollars, a purchase made possible through a private charitable trust. And although the amount the museum was paying may have seemed outrageous, Sacks knew it was a wise investment.
The museum was so excited about the painting that it had already arranged a major exhibition to begin in less than two months. The exhibit, which had initially been scheduled to last for only a month, had already been extended into midsummer because of the huge public interest.
The story behind the painting was almost unbelievable. Long rumored to have been destroyed by fire during World War II, the painting—and reportedly several other lost works that had yet to be identified—had recently been found in a bank vault in Berlin. According to the art dealer who brokered the acquisition, the family who had owned the vault had barely escaped Germany with their lives at the outset of World War II and immigrated to the United States. The patriarch of the family—and the only member of the family who knew of the existence of the vault, where he stashed their valuable art collection before they left—died shortly after arriving in New York City. The family had settled into life in the United States, apparently under the belief that their amazing collection of artwork had either been captured by the Nazis or destroyed by fire. More than sixty years later, a representative from the German bank had appeared at the doorstep of the patriarch’s grandson with some rather amazing news.
The family, although they had settled into a comfortable middle-class existence in their adopted country, had neither the desire nor the means to house and maintain the type of art collection left to them by their ancestor. Wishing to remain anonymous, they secured the services of a discreet art dealer from Switzerland to sell the collection. Their only request was that the United States—the country that had provided them safety from the Nazis—be provided the first opportunity to purchase the van Gogh painting, with promises of more paintings to come.
It was a unique opportunity for the National Gallery of Art. But Sacks also knew that buying a painting under these circumstances would not be easy—and not a matter to be taken lightly. The museum first had to comply with guidelines established by the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors to ensure that the painting had not been stolen by the Nazis during World War II. Paintings and other artwork identified as stolen by the Nazis would be returned to their rightful owners. The museum also had to establish the painting’s provenance—that is, where it came from. The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam traced the painting’s history from Theo van Gogh, Vincent’s brother, to a family in Berlin in 1928. The paperwork provided by the bank and the art dealer filled in the rest of the story. The stringent museum guidelines had been more than satisfied.
The museum next had to establish the authenticity of the painting itself. Was it, in fact, a real van Gogh? Fake paintings abounded, and more than one museum had been fooled over the years. With a hundred and eighty-three million dollars on the line, Sacks did not intend to take anything for granted. He had insisted on the highest level of proof that the painting was authentic. And so the museum had retained the services of one of the world’s foremost authorities to authenticate the painting. This man had been given unlimited access to the canvas; any resource or support he requested was provided to him. His only mission was to determine whether the painting was a real van Gogh, and the man’s report was set to be delivered the fo
llowing morning. Upon receipt of the summary, and assuming the painting was authentic, the transaction would likely be consummated and one hundred and eighty-three million dollars would be wired to an account in Switzerland.
“And now,” said Director Downing, “I would like to introduce the man who has led the museum’s effort to obtain the van Gogh—our director of acquisitions, Dr. Roger Belette.”
4:07 p.m.
Saturday, December 16
West Building, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
They made their way out of the rotunda and down the West Sculpture Hall. The boy knew they were heading in the opposite direction from the room in which he had been found. Camille talked the whole way, pointing to one sculpture after another. She had something to say about everything, but that was fine by him. Camille did a great job of keeping her mom occupied. Still, every now and then, the boy would catch Mary glancing over at him. He tried to keep his emotions off his face, but it was difficult—his heart was racing in his chest. He didn’t recognize just some of the sculptures in the hall—he recognized them all.
They made their way into the maze of galleries that surrounded the West Sculpture Hall. The cold marble floors of the sculpture hall gave way to the wide oak planks of the galleries. The rooms were small, and the wood floors infused the galleries with a warm and intimate feel. The trio continued to make their way around and through the west wing—past the dark, moody retreats of Rembrandt van Rijn and the lively portraits of Frans Hals, into the formal elegance of Rubens, through a room filled with the colorful Madonnas of Raphael, and finally for a quick peek at a Botticelli or two.
“Anything?” asked Mary Sullivan as they reentered the rotunda.
“No,” replied Art. He felt bad that he continued to lie to Mary. Everything was so familiar. He could have told her about any of the paintings that they had just walked past or the artists that had created them. He could have described how the painting Girl with the Red Hat by the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer showed his mastery of light, or how the elongated figures in the painting Saint Martin and the Beggar were a telltale sign of the painter El Greco. The boy felt completely at home in the museum, but he remained lost to himself. It was a strange feeling.
The Van Gogh Deception Page 6