The Icon Thief

by Alec Nevala-Lee

Sharkovsky reached into the open drawer. When his hand reappeared, it was holding a gun. Seeing it, Ilya’s first impulse was to glance at the floor, which was carpeted. If it had been tile, he would have been more concerned.

  The old man leveled the pistol at Ilya. “Carelessness may be an accident, but it may also be intentional. The Chekists have eyes in many places. It would not surprise me if they, too, had a hand in this. And it is not only because you are a zhid. Though I have never found it easy to trust such men, knowing that their loyalties were divided from the beginning—”

  Ilya did not drop his eyes, but the word echoed through his brain, with all of its hateful associations. For a moment, he was no longer the Scythian, but a Jewish boy brawling in a schoolyard, books and papers spilled across the ground. “If you think I’m a Chekist, you should kill me now.”

  “But there is something that I want from you first,” Sharkovsky said. “Something that you need to show me. I won’t tell you what it is. You have one chance. And if you guess wrong—”

  Sharkovsky struck the pistol once against the surface of the desk, making a hard rap.

  Ilya allowed a second to pass. He was aware that this was nothing but theater, but reminded himself not to underestimate this man, who had cleared a space for business in this city through the force of his personality alone.

  Undoing the clasps of his satchel, he removed a sheet of paper and set it on the desk. On the page was the image of a man’s face, downloaded twelve hours ago from an art world website. The man held an auction paddle in one hand, his arm extended, exposing two inches of shirtsleeve.

  “I came here for this man,” Ilya said. “And I know that you can tell me where he is.”

  Sharkovsky regarded the picture for a wordless moment. Then he spoke quietly to the others. “Leave us alone, please.”

  Zhenya and Misha exchanged looks, then filed out of the office. As soon as they were gone, Sharkovsky lowered the pistol. Both it and the photo went into the open drawer of his desk. Taking a bottle from the same drawer, he poured a glass for himself. He did not offer any to Ilya. “When I implied that you were a Chekist, you grew angry. Do you hate them?”

  Ilya knew that the reference to state intelligence was far from an accident. To call a thief a Chekist, even in passing, was to accuse him of the lowest kind of treachery, and it served only as a reminder of how far he had fallen. “Any man who values his freedom must hate the secret services.”

  “Spoken like a true thief.” Sharkovsky stood and went to the corner where the boxes of vodka were stacked. He turned back the rug, revealing a safe, which he opened with a twist of the handle.

  Ilya studied the safe’s contents. Most of the weapons were expensive pistols, plated in nickel and chrome, but he knew better than to trust a pistol that he had not maintained himself. As he examined the guns, he remembered their earlier exchange. Zhid. It had left him with a germ of anger, a seed that might grow unchecked if neglected for too long. He was careful to seem harmless, but he was not. He did not forget. And he did not easily forgive.

  He picked out a revolver. A working gun. He held it up so that Sharkovsky could see.

  “A careful man’s choice,” Sharkovsky said, closing the safe. His eyes flicked again across Ilya’s face, their scrutiny cool and detached. “Good. But we’ll soon find out how careful you really are—”

  5

  “We aren’t trying to beat the market,” Reynard said, his voice audible in the hallway outside the conference room. “If there’s any confusion on that point, we can end this meeting right now.”

  Hearing these words, Maddy smiled as she headed inside, waving at the receptionist in the fund’s pristine lobby. In contrast to the rest of the Fuller Building, which was a monument to Art Deco, the Reynard Art Fund had decorated its leased space in a style meant to evoke the white cube of contemporary galleries, resulting, at least to her eyes, in a sense of timeless sterility.

  Inside the conference room, Reynard was seated at the head of a long steel table, next to Ethan Usher, one of the fund’s quantitative research associates. Reynard’s tieless collar bloomed from his sweater like a hothouse flower, his clothing studiously rumpled, while Ethan was decked out in quant casual, his math camp shirt tucked neatly into a pair of khakis. At the other end of the table sat two pension fund investors in identical pin-striped suits. As Maddy drew closer, something in their wary faces told her that the meeting was not going well.

  When she reached the conference table, Reynard broke off, favoring her with one of his celebrated smiles. “Glad you could join us. Gentlemen, this is Maddy Blume, our associate head of gallery relations.”

  Maddy shook hands with the visitors. “Don’t worry about the title. I’m not sure what it means, either—”

  She sat next to Ethan, who acknowledged her presence with a nod. Although he had been at the fund longer than she had, Ethan was a year younger, with a smooth forehead, green eyes, and sandy hair that always seemed two inches too long. Under the math shirt, his body was fit and trim, but there was a studied quality to his physique, as if it were the product of much solitary exercise. With his pale, impassive face, he struck her as something of an android, as if he were nothing but an extension of the machines that he understood so well.

  Maddy turned her attention to Reynard, who offered a more interesting view. He was an improbably attractive man in his early forties, casually outfitted in sneakers and jeans, as if he were so used to wealth that he no longer felt the need to dress up in its presence. For all its informality, his appearance was carefully calibrated. Because it would be years before the fund could show any returns, its greatest asset, in the meantime, was his ability to sell himself. And at the moment, she thought, he was doing a rather indifferent job of it.

  “Art lags behind other investments because of one fatal flaw,” Reynard was saying. “It’s beautiful. People buy art for reasons that are entirely irrational from the perspective of a disinterested investor. As a result, they’re willing to pay a premium, which reduces their financial return by an average, we’ve found, of one percent per year. So why invest? It isn’t because art provides outsized returns. It’s because it can diversify and reduce risk in a larger portfolio.”

  “But we assume,” the older of the two visitors said, “that you’re looking for ways to increase returns as well.”

  “Of course. When I entered this business, I was an options trader. I didn’t know the first thing about art, but I saw an opportunity to make the market more transparent. Our original intention was to track art transactions, which are notoriously opaque, and sell the data. Along the way, we discovered two things. First, the database was useful only if it was collaborative and free, so instead of keeping it private, we opened it up to the world. Second, we had information here that would give us an edge if we ever wanted to invest for ourselves. The size curve, for example—”

  “It’s a simplified illustration, but it gives you a sense of how we think,” Ethan said. Taking a brochure, he opened it to a diagram of a straight line rising smoothly across the page. “Large paintings are generally worth more than small paintings by the same artist. Size equals prestige. A large Picasso sells for more than a small Picasso, so if you plot a painting’s area against its price, you get a smooth line, with value increasing steadily with size.”

  “Although it falls off,” Reynard interjected, “once the area exceeds the dimensions of a Park Avenue elevator.”

  Ethan pointed to an outlier on the graph. “And sometimes you see kinks in the curve. A Picasso sells for less than its position on the curve would indicate. Why? Maybe it’s a bad painting, or damaged, or a forgery. Maybe the information is faulty. Or maybe it’s a genuine bargain. And that’s where we come in.”

  As the investors studied the graph, Maddy saw that they seemed unconvinced. Glancing again at their pinstripes, which reminded her that these were not imaginative men, she tried to redirect the conversation. “The approach is new, but the principle isn’t.
Pension funds have been investing in art for years. Instead of depending on the opinions of critics, though, we prefer to take a more systematic approach.”

  Reynard, seeing where she was going, quickly took up the thread. “Which only means that we’re applying modern portfolio theory to the oldest asset class of all. Every sale is a source of information. We can identify drivers of investor behavior that no one else has ever noticed. If a painting is stolen, for example, prices for the artist’s other works tend to increase—”

  “Although it’s the opposite, we’ve found, when the artist dies,” Maddy said. “People assume that prices will go up after an artist’s death, but that isn’t true. Death locks in the oeuvre, making it impossible for new works to raise the estimation of existing pieces. As long as an artist is still alive, he has a chance to shape the story. Once he dies, though, the chance is gone.”

  “Except,” Ethan said, deadpan as his eyes briefly lit on her own, “for Duchamp.”

  Maddy smiled, although she knew that the joke had been at her expense. After a few more questions, the visitors stood, saying that they would be in touch before the end of the month. As they walked the investors to the elevator bay, Maddy had trouble reading their expressions, which were more cordial than before, but remote. Reynard, by contrast, seemed assured that the meeting had been a success, and beamed broadly as he sent the visitors downstairs.

  The smile lasted until the elevator doors closed. As soon as they were alone, Reynard turned to the others. “I’ll update the tracker. We can lower the chance of an investment to thirty percent.”

  “Thirty percent,” Ethan said glumly. “That puts us under our target for the quarter.”

  “A year from now, we’ll be turning money away.” Reynard headed for his private office. “As for the Russian, I’m making him a top priority. There are only twenty major buyers in the market at any time. If we can find out who he is and forecast his tastes, we can buy up the art he wants before he even knows it himself. And just so you take it seriously, there’s a bonus involved. Ten thousand in deferred comp to whoever gets me his name first. Spread the word.”

  Maddy’s face did not move, but on the inside, she felt a subtle tectonic shift. A year ago, after the failure of her gallery, a wave of debt had entered her life. Ten thousand dollars, while not enough to cancel her liabilities entirely, would buy her the time she needed to pay them off for good. “I’m on it.”

  Reynard paused at his office door. “One last thing. We need to fix our pricing model. We went in with a maximum of five million, and it sold for eleven. That’s way outside the margin of error.”

  “I thought we agreed,” Ethan said. “The buyer overpaid. It isn’t the model’s fault.”

  “It takes two to overpay. If he paid eleven, someone else bid ten million nine hundred. The model is wrong. I want to know why.”

  Reynard disappeared into the office. Parting ways with Ethan, who drifted off without a word, Maddy headed back to her own desk. As she sat down at her computer, she was tempted to open her personal balance sheet, but instead, she called up the picture that she had taken of the Russian. Enlarging it, she focused on the symbol on his cufflink, which had caught her eye earlier as a possible clue. According to Tanya, however, a red circle could mean anything or nothing.

  Closing the file, it occurred to her that there was one possible source whom she had yet to call. After a moment’s hesitation, she picked up the phone and dialed a number from memory. At the sixth digit, she paused, knowing that this amounted to a confession that she had run out of options.

  In the end, she replaced the receiver in its cradle and got back to work. She would not call Lermontov yet. Later, if the situation became more desperate, she could swallow her pride. But not today.

  6

  Looking out at the hedge, Ilya was astonished. The hedge was eight feet tall and perfectly maintained, its sides so smooth that they seemed permanent, like a geographical feature that had been sculpted by the elements. When he thought of the effort required to grow this infinite hedge and keep it from wandering even an inch out of line, he was awed and angered by the wealth it implied.

  Ilya glanced at Zhenya, who was slumped in the driver’s seat, a toothpick wedged in the corner of his mouth. He had exchanged the tight shirt and silver medallion of the day before for a velvet tracksuit. Beneath the show of thug fashion, Ilya sensed that Zhenya was deeply uncomfortable in this Southampton neighborhood, ninety miles and a world away from Brighton Beach.

  During the drive, he had been less subdued. “We all know about Budapest,” Zhenya had said, shouting to be heard over the music. “Tonight, when we meet the Armenians, I’ll have my eye on you, keelyer—”

  Ilya had said nothing, knowing that any response would only be turned against him. Now, without warning, he got out of the parked car. “I’m going for a walk. Go around the house once and meet me at the beach.”

  Closing the door, he headed for the wall of green. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Zhenya toss his toothpick aside and pull away from the curb. He waited as the station wagon, a concession to a low profile, eased itself into the deserted street. A moment later, it rounded the bend and was gone.

  Once he was alone, Ilya went up to the hedge. Looking at the ground, he could see a flattened strip where the sidewalk had been. At some point, however, it had been torn up, allowing the lawn to run to the edge of the road. When he looked up, examining the places where the hedge grew less thickly, he found that he could make out what lay beyond. Aside from a few clumps of topiary and the white hexagon of a gazebo, he saw nothing but acre after acre of perfect grass.

  Ilya headed for the main entrance, passing a sign that said GIN LANE. There was no gate, only a gravel driveway that curved sharply past the hedge, blocking his line of sight. He crossed to the other side of the street, hoping to get a better sense of the layout. As he reached the opposite curb, there was a splash of gravel, and a yellow jeep appeared on the driveway. Two men sat inside, wearing white polo shirts with red roundels embroidered on the left breast.

  As the guards drove past, Ilya moved on. After thirty yards, the road curved and the shade trees vanished. To his left, the hedge continued as before. On his right, the houses disappeared, replaced by a pond trimmed with reeds and pitch pines. Ospreys floated on the calm surface of the water.

  He arrived at the beach. At the end of the road, there was a small parking lot, but no sign of the station wagon. Up ahead, the ocean was a pale expanse merging with the sky. The estate continued to the edge of the beach, and it was only here, he saw, that the hedge came to an end.

  Ilya removed his shoes and stepped onto the sand, the grains warm between his toes. The sensation reminded him vaguely of something from his boyhood, a time when he had gone with his family to a place by the sea. He tried to cling to the memory, but it ran like water between his fingers and was lost.

  Walking down the beach, he turned to regard the estate from the ocean side. Here, for the first time, he could see the house, which was twenty thousand square feet, its roof and siding shingled in cedar. It rambled as if its construction had been a huge improvisation, with many levels of gables and eaves.

  He sat down in the sand, angling himself so that he could continue to observe the mansion. With the hedge gone, a dune planted with beach grass was all that separated the main house from the rest of the world. Across the dune ran a snow fence, its slats tilted at awkward angles, less for protection than to keep the sand from drifting. Otherwise, the house was completely exposed.

  Waffled tire tracks were visible in the sand by his feet. In the distance, he saw a couple of teenagers in a luxury shooting brake. They had paused half a mile away, the hatch raised, their torsos muscular and brown. As he watched them drive farther up the beach, a plan began to form in his mind.

  He heard the crunch of footsteps behind him on the sand. “So what do you think?”

  As Zhenya sat down, Ilya said, “In my opinion, it probably can’t be do
ne. It’s easier to steal from a museum than from a house like this. Museums don’t pay for the art themselves, so they don’t keep track of it. Private collectors are more careful, because they understand the cost of capital.”

  Zhenya seemed confused, as if he didn’t understand the cost of capital, either. “So you’re having second thoughts?”

  Ilya overheard a sneer in his voice. Working with this man, he thought, was like sharing a bed with a wolf cub. Zhenya, like all enforcers, wanted to become a vor, without understanding what such a life truly entailed. When Ilya tried to imagine him growing into a man like Vasylenko, it seemed impossible.

  A second later, it occurred to him that wisdom came from a lifetime of mistakes, and that Vasylenko, as a young man, might have been no less of a fool. Looking at Zhenya’s pockmarked face, Ilya reminded himself that the material here was not entirely unpromising. Zhenya had spent a year in jail without turning state’s evidence, an American jail, to be sure, but nothing to be dismissed out of hand. Which was to say that there was more to him than his ponytail.

  Ilya turned back to the mansion on the beach. “We’re sure that the painting is here?”

  Zhenya sifted a handful of sand between his fingers. “Our eye on the inside says yes. If it isn’t here now, it will arrive in time for the party. One hundred and fifty guests. Easy for us to get inside.”

  Ilya pictured the party, the glamour and money bright in the moonlight. “Security?”

  “Six men. They will be focusing on the lawn. The house will be wide open. Twenty cameras on the grounds outside the house, but inside, except one covering the vault, no cameras at all.”

  Ilya considered this. The sun had grown low in the sky. If they were going to make it back in time for the exchange, they had to leave soon, but he didn’t want to go just yet. He mentally retraced the journey that the painting had taken since Budapest. Instead of traveling the usual road, it had vanished for more than a year, and now it had resurfaced here, behind the endless hedge. But not for long. Because for all its protection by land, it was exposed from the sea.