PRAISE FOR
THE ICON THIEF
“Alec Nevala-Lee comes roaring out of the gate with a novel that’s as thrilling as it is thought-provoking, as unexpected as it is erudite. The Icon Thief is a wild ride through a fascinating and morally complex world, a puzzle Duchamp himself would have applauded. Bravo.”
—national bestselling author Jesse Kellerman
“Alec Nevala-Lee is no debut author; he must have been a thriller writer in some past life. This one has everything: great writing, great characters, great story, great bad guy, and a religious conspiracy to boot. The Icon Thief is smart, sophisticated, and has enough fast-paced action to keep anyone up past midnight. I’m jealous.”
—New York Times bestselling author Paul Christopher
“Twists and turns aplenty lift this thriller above the rest. From the brutal thugs of the Russian mafia to the affected inhabitants of the American art world, this book introduces a cast of believable and intriguing characters. Add a story line where almost nothing is as it first appears, and where the plot turns around on itself to reveal startling contradictions, and the result is a book that grips and holds the reader like a vise. I devoured it in a single sitting.”
—national bestselling author James Becker
THE
ICON
THIEF
ALEC NEVALA-LEE
A SIGNET BOOK
SIGNET
Published by New American Library, a division of
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First published by Signet, an imprint of New American Library,
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First Printing, March 2012
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Alec Nevala-Lee, 2012
All rights reserved
ISBN: 978-1-101-57724-0
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Printed in the United States of America
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CONTENTS
Prologue
I
II
III
Epilogue
Glossary of Foreign Words
Acknowledgments
There is no solution because there is no problem.
—Marcel Duchamp
PROLOGUE
In Russia, the outlaw is the only true revolutionary…. The outlaws of the forests, towns, and villages … together with the outlaws confined in the innumerable prisons of the empire… constitute a single, indivisible, tight-knit world…. In this world, and in it alone, there has always been revolutionary conspiracy. Anyone in Russia who seriously wants to conspire, anyone who wants a people’s revolution, must go into this world.
—Mikhail Bakunin
Andrey was nearly at the border when he ran into the thieves. By then, he had been on the road for three days. As a rule, he was a careful driver, but at some point in the past hour, his mind had wandered, and as he was coming over a low rise, he almost collided with two cars that were parked in the road ahead.
He braked sharply. The cars were set bumper to bumper, blocking the way. One was empty; the other had been steamed up by the heat of the men inside, who were no more than shadows on the glass. A yellow field stretched to either side of the asphalt, flecked with mounds of debris.
Andrey waited for what he knew was coming, barely aware of the music still pouring from his cassette deck. As he watched, the door of one car opened, disclosing a figure in a fur cap and greatcoat. It was a boy of twelve or so. His rifle, with its wooden buttstock, seemed at least twice as old as he was.
As the boy approached, Andrey reached into a bag on the floor of the van, removing a fifth of vodka and a carton of Bond Street Specials. He rolled down his window, allowing a knife’s edge of cold to squeeze through the gap. As he handed over the tribute, something in the boy’s eyes, which were liquescent and widely spaced, made him think of his own son.
The boy accepted the offering without a word. He was about to turn away, rifle slung across one shoulder, when he seemed to notice the music. With the neck of the bottle, he gestured at the cassette deck. “What band?”
Andrey did his best to smile, painfully aware of the time he was losing. “Dip Pepl.”
The boy nodded gravely. Andrey watched as he carried the vodka and cigarettes over to the other car, speaking inaudibly with the man inside. Then the boy turned and headed back to the van again.
Andrey slid a hand into his pocket, already dreading what the thieves might do if they asked to search the vehicle. Withdrawing a wad of bills, he peeled off a pair of twenties and held them out the window. When the boy returned, however, he waved the cash away and pointed to the stereo, which was singing of a fire on the shore of Lake Geneva: We all came out to Montreux—
“Cassette tape,” the boy said with a grin. “Dip Pepl. You give it to me, okay?”
Andrey’s face grew warm, but in the end, he knew that he had no choice. Smiling as gamely as he could, he ejected the cassette, silencing the music, and handed it to the boy, who pocketed the tape and went back to his own car. A second later, the thieves pulled over to the road’s scalloped edge, clearing a space just wide enough for Andrey’s van to slip through.
Easing the van forward, Andrey drove through the gap, keeping an eye on the thieves as he passed. Once they were out of sight, he exhaled and took his hands from the wheel, flexing them ag
ainst the cold. Reaching up, he lowered the sun visor, glancing at the picture of the woman and child that had been taped to the inside. After a moment, he raised the visor again and turned his eyes back to the road.
The following morning, unwashed and weary, he arrived at a town on the river Tisza. Studying the ranks of buses preparing to cross over to Hungary, he saw a familiar face. The driver seemed pleased to see him, and was especially glad to load a cardboard box from Andrey’s van into the back of his bus.
Andrey followed the bus across the border. At the customs checkpoint, he said that he was a businessman looking for deals in Hungary, which was true enough. Sometimes the officers wanted to chat, but today, after a cursory search, they waved him through without a second glance.
Driving slowly through the countryside, he caught sight of the bus parked at a roadside restaurant. The driver was leaning against the wheel well, smoking a cigar, which he ground out at the van’s approach. The package in the rear was untouched. Handing the driver a carton of cigarettes, Andrey loaded the box into the van again. Back on the road, his mood brightened, and it grew positively sunny when, in the distance, he saw the city of Budapest.
He drove to a hotel on Rákóczi Road. In his room, he locked the door and set the box on the bed. The lid was secured with tape, which he sliced open. On top, there lay a loaded pistol, which he set aside, and ten rectangular objects wrapped in newspaper. Nine were icons taken from churches and monasteries throughout Russia, depicting the saints of a tradition in which he no longer believed.
The last painting was different. Andrey unwrapped it gently. It was no larger than the icons, perhaps twelve by eighteen inches, but it was painted on canvas, not wood. It depicted a nude woman lying in a field, her head gone, as if the artist had left it deliberately unfinished. Her legs were spread wide, displaying a hairless gash. In one hand, upraised, she held a lamp of tapered glass.
Andrey studied the painting for a long moment, stirred by feelings that he could not fully explain, then wrapped it up again. Casting about for a hiding place, he finally slid it under the bed, in the narrow gap behind the frame, which was just wide enough to accommodate the slender package. He put the gun back in the box, along with the icons, and went, at last, into the bathroom.
The shower stall was no larger than a phone booth, and the water took three minutes to grow warm, but by the time he climbed beneath the spray, it was steaming. Closing his eyes, he allowed his thoughts to wander. After the exchange, he would replace his lost cassette and buy ten kilos of the best coffee, five to sell, the rest to bring home. Even his son could have a taste.
He was still thinking about coffee when he emerged from the shower, naked except for the towel cinched around his waist, and saw the man who was waiting for him in the next room.
Andrey froze in the doorway, drops of water falling onto the rug. The man, a stranger in a corduroy suit, was seated before the louvered window. He was very thin. Although his age was hard to determine, he seemed to be in his early thirties. Behind his glasses, which gave him a bureaucratic air, his eyes were black, like those of a nomad from a cold and arid land.
“My name is Ilya Severin,” the stranger said, not rising from his chair. His legs were crossed, the tip of one polished shoe pointing in Andrey’s direction. “Vasylenko wants to know why you’re here so early.”
Andrey felt beads of condensation rolling down his back. “How did you find me?”
“We have eyes on the road.” Ilya hummed a few bars of music. Smoke on the water, fire in the sky—
Andrey thought of the gun in the cardboard box, which lay on a table across the room. “I was going to make the delivery. But—”
“But someone else wanted to see the icons.” It was not a question, but a statement.
“Only to look. Not to buy. I was told that I could bring them to you as arranged.” As he spoke, Andrey was intensely aware of his heart, which felt exposed in his bare chest. “He’s from New York. I was never told his name.”
Ilya’s expression remained fixed. If this information was new to him, he did not show it. “All right,” Ilya said, his voice affectless, as if he were reading off a column of figures. “Show it to me.”
Unable to believe his luck, Andrey crossed the room, the grit of the carpet adhering to the damp soles of his feet. As he approached the box, he forced himself to concentrate. He had never shot a man in his life, but had no doubt that he could do it. He only had to think of how much he had to lose.
He reached the table. Deliberately blocking it from view, he undid the flaps. The gun was at the top of the carton. Andrey reached inside, picking up an icon with one hand and the pistol with the other.
With his back to Ilya, Andrey said, “If you see Vasylenko, tell him that I am sorry.” He turned around, the icon hiding the pistol from sight. “I meant no disrespect to the brotherhood—”
There was a muffled pop, as if a truck had backfired in the street. Andrey felt something heavy strike his chest. At first, he thought that the stranger had punched him, which made no sense, because Ilya was still seated. Then he saw the gun in the other man’s hand. Looking down, he observed that a hole the size of a small coin had been drilled into the icon that he was holding.
Andrey fell to the floor, the towel around his waist coming loose. He tried to raise his pistol. When he found that he could no longer move, it seemed deeply unfair. He made an effort to picture his son, feeling dimly that it was only right, but could think of nothing but the painting under the bed, the headless woman lying in the grass. It was the last thing that he remembered.
As soon as Andrey was dead, Ilya, whose other name was the Scythian, rose from the chair by the window. Kneeling, he pried the icon out of the courier’s hands, looking with displeasure at the damage to the wood. He put the icon back into the box, then left his gun next to the body.
Ilya sealed the carton and tucked it under his arm. He glanced around the room, asking himself if he had forgotten anything, and concluded that he had not. Leaving through the door, he was gone at once. Under the bed, the headless woman lay, unseen, at the level of the dead man’s eyes.
I
JUNE 19–28, 2008
The most intelligent man of the twentieth century.
—André Breton, on Marcel Duchamp
The strangest work of art in any museum.
—Jasper Johns, on Étant Donnés
1
The voice in her earpiece, with its soothing drone of encouragement, reminded Maddy of nothing so much as the sound of her own conscience. “Talk to me,” Reynard said. “What do you see?”
“It’s packed,” Maddy Blume said, seating herself in the last row of the salesroom. Across the open floor, which was half the length of a soccer field, a temporary wall had been erected, with fifty rows of chairs set before the auctioneer’s rostrum. The seat that she had been assigned was less prestigious than those in front, but it offered the best view of the crowd. “Our friends from Gagosian are here. And that girl who works for Steve Cohen.”
“How about the skybox?” John Reynard asked through the earpiece. “Who’s there?”
Maddy looked up at the balcony. “The curtain is drawn aside. Someone’s there, but I can’t see who.”
She turned back to the crowd on the seventh floor of Sotheby’s, where the chairs were rapidly filling. At the rear of the room, specialists from Christie’s, the other great auction house in New York, were standing to observe the proceedings, while in a far corner, roped off from the rest of the audience, news crews trained their lenses on the ranks of attendees.
Across from her sat a trim Israeli, a cord running from one ear to the cell phone in his hands. She knew that he was buying on behalf of an investor in Tel Aviv, but at the moment, he seemed more interested in her legs. Maddy, who had blossomed only in her late twenties and, at thirty, sometimes feared that her face had been marked by recent disappointments, took a certain pleasure in this. She was a tall young woman with striking, almost
sibylline features, and she always dressed carefully for these events, knowing that she was here to represent the fund.
As Maddy scanned the crowd, her eye was caught by a man in a navy blazer who was seated near the back of the room. His hair was short, emphasizing the blocky lines of his face, and his build was that of a boxer. “There’s one guy who seems out of place. Cheap suit, bad shoes. He’s on the phone. Maybe it’s nothing, but it sounds like he’s talking in Russian—”
“I’ll make a note of it,” Reynard said. As she watched the auctioneer mount the rostrum, Maddy knew that there was no need to spell out the rest. Russian money had been a primary driver of the art market for years, so any attendee with a Slavic appearance was automatically a person of interest.
“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” the auctioneer said, dapper as always, placing a cup of water next to his hourglass gavel. “Welcome to the final auction of the summer season. Before we begin—”
As the auctioneer ran smoothly through the conditions of sale, Maddy wound up her call with Reynard. “They’re about to get started. I’ll call you back as soon as our lot is announced.”
“Fine,” Reynard said. “I’ll have Ethan standing by in case there are any surprises.”
He hung up. Maddy removed the earpiece and turned to a fresh page in her notepad, checking to make sure that her phone was charged. Only then did she look at the canvas hanging at the front of the room. It was a painting of a headless woman lying in a field of grass, a glowing lamp in one raised hand.
A slide of the first lot of the evening, a nocturnal street scene by Magritte, appeared on a pair of screens. “Lot number one,” the auctioneer said. “And I can start here with the absentee bidders. Two hundred and eighty thousand, two hundred and ninety, three hundred thousand. Do I have three hundred and ten?”
One of the clerks seated behind the counter raised his hand. He was one of only a few men stationed by the phones, with the rest consisting of the young women known as auction babes. Maddy, who had spent an uneasy year working these phones herself, knew the type well.
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