The Van Gogh Deception

by Deron R. Hicks

  Why would someone need to see the sides of a frame? he wondered.

  Art gave the frame one last push to the left, and the painting rotated completely around on the screen so that the back of the canvas was visible to them.

  “No way,” Camille said. “Is that . . . ?”

  Art was at a loss for words. He immediately reached for his backpack and retrieved the leather journal from its hiding place. He opened it to the tabbed page and held out the drawing so that both of them could see it.

  The back of the painting on the monitor—​the verso—​was identical to the verso image in the journal. The spider had made its appearance once again.

  “Art?” Camille asked. “What does this mean?”

  He did not immediately respond, but the pieces fell together instantly—​the leather journal, the newly discovered van Gogh at the National Gallery of Art, their mysterious pursuers, the strange room in which they now stood, and the image floating on the screen in front of them.

  He turned to Camille.

  “The National Gallery of Art,” the boy said, “is about to pay one hundred and eighty-three million dollars for a fake painting.”

  Chapter 38

  8:30 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  GWU Department of Fine Arts studio building, Washington, DC

  “A fake painting!” Camille exclaimed. “But how? Why?”

  Art held up the journal. “This is how,” he said. “There are tons of old paintings by artists who never became famous. Art forgers buy those paintings from art dealers and use the old canvases when they fake a painting.”

  He pointed to the drawing in the journal. “According to the journal, this artist—​Guillou—​painted at the same time as van Gogh. They would have used the same kinds of art supplies—​the same paints, the same brushes, the same types of canvases. The fake van Gogh was painted on Guillou’s canvas, the one with the girl and her basket on the front and the spider on the back.”

  “So someone just painted a van Gogh painting over the picture of the girl?” Camille asked. “It can’t be that easy, can it?”

  “No,” replied Art. “It’s a lot more complicated than that. The canvas is just the start. You have to get rid of the old painting or it will show up on x-rays. Sometimes a forger will sand off the old painting or strip it off with chemicals. And then you have to make sure you use the right materials when you actually paint the new picture—​oil paints that would have been around back then, nothing modern. Heck, sometimes forgers will even buy old brushes and use them.”

  Camille paused.

  “Is that why these people are after us?” she finally asked. “They want the journal?”

  Art nodded. “The spider proves that the so-called van Gogh canvas was not really used by van Gogh—​it was originally used for another painting, Guillou’s. It’s probably the only proof that the long-lost van Gogh at the National Gallery is a fake.”

  “Wow,” said Camille. She started to ask another question and then paused. She turned and looked around the room.

  “What’s the matter?” Art asked.

  “It’s sorta strange, isn’t it?” she finally said.

  “What’s strange?”

  “That you have a key to this room,” she said. “And that you also have the only clue that could prove the painting’s a fake.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Art.

  “Think about it,” the girl said. “This room’s filled with art supplies that would have been used back when van Gogh was alive—​you said so yourself.”

  Art nodded. She was right, but he didn’t like where the conversation was headed.

  “And how would you have gotten that journal?” she asked. “You said it probably came from an art collector or an art dealer, right?”

  Art didn’t respond.

  Camille swallowed. “How do you know so much about art and how to fake a painting? We painted flowers in art class with paint that came in little plastic bottles—​we didn’t learn how to grind up mummies for paint. How do you know all that stuff? What if . . . and I’m just saying . . . but what if you have something to do with the fake painting?”

  Camille was right. How does a twelve-year-old boy know so much about art? Art didn’t have an explanation—​it was all just there, in his head.

  “I’m not an art forger!” he insisted. “I’m just a kid.”

  “I know you’re just a kid,” Camille replied. “But remember when you were telling me and my mom about seeing the Monet painting on my mug?”

  “Yes.”

  “You had been with someone, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “A man.”

  “Yes.”

  “What if that man is the art forger?” Camille suggested. “Maybe you’re his son—​or brother, or nephew, or whatever—​I don’t know. But what if the men at the museum really were police officers? What if the people at the hotel were police officers also? What if they are trying to get the journal to prove the painting is a fake?”

  What Camille was saying made sense. And something in Art’s head told him that she was far closer to the truth than he could imagine—​and that scared him. What if he really was part of a plan to sell a fake painting to the National Gallery of Art for millions and millions of dollars?

  There was a long silence.

  “Are you mad at me?” Camille asked.

  Art shook his head. “No. You might be right. I need to know the truth.”

  “So what’s next?”

  “We keep looking,” he replied.

  “No matter where it leads?” she asked.

  “No matter where it leads.”

  Chapter 39

  8:34 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  GWU Department of Fine Arts studio building, Washington, DC

  “So where do we start?” asked Camille.

  Art pointed at the screen. “It’s a computer,” he said. “We need to see what else is on it.”

  Camille made her way over to the keyboard. “Easy enough,” she said as she pushed the Escape button.

  The image of the fake van Gogh painting blinked out of existence. In its place appeared a normal-looking desktop screen—​several app icons and assorted document and image files. The desktop photo, however, stopped the kids in their tracks: a tall man with blond hair standing next to a shaggy-haired and equally blond boy. The man’s arm was around the boy’s shoulder. They stood in front of the Eiffel Tower. They both had huge smiles on their faces.

  The boy in the photograph was Art.

  He stared at the image on the computer screen.

  In that instant, the dam broke.

  The memories, all of them, flooded his head—​and the boy remembered everything. It was as if a light had been turned on in a dark room. There was no transition. One moment the boy was an empty shell, and the next moment he was there—​a full person.

  He knew that the Yankees were his favorite baseball team, that he always rooted against the Jets football team, and that he loved playing soccer. He knew that his favorite movie was the original Star Wars and that he despised Jar Jar Binks. He had once lived in Paris and had spent an entire summer in Egypt. He spoke French fluently and could read some Latin and Italian. He loved red velvet cake and hamburgers and couldn’t stand olives. He was right-handed, had taken piano lessons for years, and once had had a gerbil named Sir Murphy. He knew that his favorite artist was Vincent van Gogh and that he had a giant poster of van Gogh’s painting The Starry Night above his bed.

  And he remembered standing beside his father in front of a painting at a small museum in Paris—​Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet. It was the first time he had seen the painting in person, and it was spectacular. How could he have forgotten?

  The boy remembered everything—​and it was overwhelming.

  “Art?” Camille asked. “The man in the picture. Is that . . . your dad?”

  The boy couldn’t find the words to
answer. He couldn’t take his eyes off the screen.

  “Art?” the girl said again. “Are you okay? Do you remember anything?”

  The words finally came. “I remember everything.”

  “The man?” asked Camille. “Is that . . . ?”

  Art nodded. “My father,” he said. “Arthur Hamilton Sr.”

  Suddenly, everything made sense—​but the sudden rush of memories didn’t make anything better.

  “Senior!” exclaimed Camille excitedly. “So you’re a junior—​Arthur Hamilton Jr.! Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  Camille paused. She could see that Art was still struggling to absorb all the new information, but she had to ask the next question. Art had said they needed to keep looking for the truth—​no matter where it led them.

  She took a deep breath. “Did your dad make the fake van Gogh?” she asked.

  Art didn’t respond. He continued to stare at the computer monitor.

  The girl felt terrible, but she had no choice. “Did your dad make the fake van Gogh?” she asked again.

  Art shook his head. “No.”

  Camille let out a deep sigh of relief.

  “My father’s an expert on art forgeries,” Art explained. “He had been asked by the National Gallery to verify that the van Gogh painting was real. We’ve been living in DC for the last couple of months while he worked at the museum. We have a small apartment in Georgetown, but its only a place to sleep. The real work was done in here. He ran all the tests he normally runs, and everything seemed fine. But my dad knew something was wrong with the painting. He never said that directly to me, but I could tell it just didn’t feel right to him.”

  “That’s great!” Camille exclaimed. “You have the proof that the painting is fake. Now all we need to do is find your father and stop the museum from buying the fake painting.”

  “We can’t find him,” Art replied flatly.

  “Why not?” said Camille.

  “Because he’s dead.”

  The room went silent.

  Art stood in front of the computer screen as tears started rolling down his cheeks.

  Camille tried to think of something—​anything—​to say. But what? Art had just told her that his father was dead. But for how long? And what did his death have to do with the fake van Gogh? Had the kids’ pursuers killed him? She had so many questions, but one jumped out at her above all the rest.

  “What about your mom?” she asked. “Maybe we could call her?”

  Art wiped the tears from his face. “She died when I was four,” he replied softly. “It’s just been me and my dad ever since.”

  Camille suddenly felt ill. She wanted to kick herself for asking the question about his mother.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “That was a long time ago.”

  “But your dad?” Camille asked. “What happened? Did it have something to do with the painting?”

  Art made his way over to the wire shelf and grabbed a small jar. He placed it on the table in front of Camille. The label on the container read COPPER ACETOARSENITE.

  “Van Gogh would sometimes use an oil paint called Emerald Green,” he said. “The stuff in this bottle is what was used to make that paint. It’s a beautiful color, but nobody uses Emerald Green anymore.”

  Camille bent down and examined the small brown canister. “Why not?”

  “Because it’s poisonous,” said Art. “It’s made of arsenic, and it’ll kill you.”

  Camille jumped back from the jar. “Poison!” she exclaimed. “Why on earth would anyone use poison to make paints?”

  “A lot of oil paints contained poisons back then,” explained Art. “Sometimes they knew the stuff was poisonous, but the colors the poisons produced were great. Sometimes the artists just didn’t know the stuff would kill them. But that makes it easy to spot a fake—​just check to see if the painting contains arsenic, lead, mercury, or all sorts of other poisonous stuff. If it doesn’t, it’s probably new—​and a fake.”

  “But the long-lost van Gogh at the museum?” asked Camille.

  “Filled with poisonous stuff,” the boy replied. “And everything else checked out also. The canvas was old, the wooden stretchers were old. The painting has tiny little cracks all over it—​just like an old painting would. And it passed the fingernail test.”

  “The fingernail test?”

  “Van Gogh used oil paints,” explained Art. “They’re basically just a color and linseed oil, or some other oil, mixed together. Oil paints produce great colors and can be glopped on thick like van Gogh liked, but they take a long time—​sometimes centuries—​to dry completely. Artists use the same type of paints today. One way to tell if a painting is really old is to run the edge of your fingernail across it. If it leaves a mark, then you know it’s not very old.”

  “But we know the van Gogh is fake,” Camille said. “So how did the forger do all that stuff—​the old paint, the cracks, the fingernail test?”

  “You said this room looks like Frankenstein’s lab, and you’re right. It is a lab. There are thousands of people who could paint a perfect copy of a van Gogh—​or a Rembrandt, da Vinci, or Renoir. That’s actually the easy part. It’s science that makes the painting look old—​and it’s science that finds the fakes.”

  Art pulled another jar off the shelf. “Potassium chlorate,” he said. “Mix a little with hydrochloric acid and it will instantly rust a nail or a tack. And you can make wood look ancient with a mixture of vinegar and steel wool. You can literally take a brand-new frame and make it look hundreds of years old in less than an hour—​but it leaves a chemical signal. The van Gogh didn’t have any of the signs of a forgery—​no unusual chemicals, no fake cracks, nothing.”

  “But if everything checked out, then why did your dad think something was wrong?”

  “My father spent years looking at van Gogh paintings,” Art said. “He just had the sense that something wasn't right. But he couldn’t tell the National Gallery not to purchase the painting because of a hunch. He needed proof.”

  “And he got it,” said Camille.

  Art nodded and pointed to the large pile of papers, books, and ledgers on the far end of the table. “Records from auction houses and galleries from across Europe,” he said. “My father collected them and read them constantly—​the journal must have been one of those records. I remember sitting in this room—​just a couple of days ago—​when he got all excited. I remember that he was holding the journal, but he didn’t tell me what was going on. It was late—​around ten o’clock. He called this guy at the museum, the director of acquisitions. My father told him that they needed to meet right away. The next thing I know, we’re headed over to the National Gallery. I fell asleep in the back seat on the way. I remember my father waking me up—​we were parked in the underground garage at the museum. He told me to just keep sleeping—​that he would be right back.”

  Art turned and looked out the window at the night sky. The snow swirled in the wind. His voice seemed distant and disconnected—​as if he were on autopilot.

  “I don’t know how much later, but I remember him waking me up again. He told me to stay down and be quiet. He handed me my backpack and told me to hold on to it. He was whispering, which was strange—​and that scared me. He told me that he would knock once on the back of the car. That would be the signal, he said. Once I heard that, I was supposed to count to twenty, get out of the car, and run toward the exit. He told me not to look back—​just run. He didn’t say why.”

  Art turned around and looked at Camille.

  “It happened so fast,” the boy said. “I had no idea what was going on. The next thing I remember is the knock on the back of the car. I was expecting it, but it still surprised me. I started counting. I heard a voice—​a loud voice yelling at my father—​but I kept counting. The voice seemed to move away. I could hear a big car engine. I kept counting. When I hit twe
nty, I opened the door, grabbed my backpack, and just started running as fast as I could toward the exit. And that’s when I heard the gunshot.”

  Camille had no words. She wanted to tell the boy to stop. But she said nothing.

  “He told me to keep running,” Art continued. “He told me not to look back. But I did. I saw a man carrying my father over his shoulder. I could see blood on the side of my father’s face. And he wasn’t moving. The man threw him in the back of a . . .”

  Art paused. He shook his head in disgust.

  “They threw him in the back of a large black SUV,” he said. “How could I have forgotten about the SUV? It was the same type of SUV that we were in when we were kidnapped from the museum. It was the same type of SUV as the one at the hotel.”

  The boy seemed once again to be on the verge of tears.

  Camille could tell that Art was blaming himself for what had happened to his father. She needed to keep him talking.

  “How did you get away?” she asked.

  Art looked at her. He seemed to be processing the question.

  “I ran,” he finally replied. “I did what my dad told me to do. I ran up the exit ramp as fast as I could. They must have seen me. I could hear the SUV somewhere behind me. It seemed so loud. So close. I could see the lights coming around the turn in the ramp. I dove into these thick bushes along the driveway going into the garage. I kept crawling and pushing through the bushes. It was dark—​I was trying to be as quiet as I could. I finally hit the outside wall of the museum, behind the bushes, and kept moving until I found a door. I tried to open it but it was locked. The voices—​they were loud. They seemed so close. I just knew they were going to find me. I backed up against the wall—​trying to hide—​when I heard this beeping sound and the door clicked open. I got inside as fast as I could, shut the door, and just sat there. All I could think about was my dad—​that he was gone.”