“Too bad it’s only an allegory,” Ethan said. “There’s no evidence that Rosencreutz ever existed, much less built a tomb for himself—”
“That isn’t the point,” Maddy said, feigning indignation. For all her own doubts about this line of reasoning, she wanted him to play along. “The Rosicrucians believed it. And it influenced Duchamp.”
Ethan set aside a vodka and tonic. They were seated together on a living room sofa, across from another couple by the bay window, the woman’s legs crossed to show off the red soles of her shoes. “Duchamp inspires all kinds of wild notions. If all you’ve done is turn him into a Rosicrucian, you aren’t trying hard enough. Have you heard of his connection to the Black Dahlia?”
Maddy regarded him with amusement. She had been hoping to entertain him with her theory about the Rosicrucians, but now it seemed that he had done her one better. “I can’t say that I have.”
“If you read enough about Duchamp, especially online, it’s bound to come up eventually. You know the story, right? A woman named Elizabeth Short was found dead in a field in Los Angeles, cut in half at the waist. The two halves of her body were ten inches apart, and her hands were bent over her head, like this—” Ethan arched his arms like a ballet dancer in the fifth position. “The killer was never found. But more than one critic has noticed that the crime scene photographs, with a naked body lying in the grass, look surprisingly similar to a certain work of art.”
Maddy finished her champagne. “So Marcel Duchamp killed the Black Dahlia?”
“Unfortunately, he was out of the country at the time. But several enterprising critics have speculated that he knew the killer’s identity. The prime suspect in the case is a doctor named George Hodel, an art collector and friend of Man Ray, Duchamp’s closest collaborator. And the first study for the installation was once thought to have been executed only a few months after the murder.”
“Or so everyone used to believe. But the new study pushes the date back at least three decades, when it was displayed at the Section d’Or. Which is more than thirty years too soon.”
“But for the true paranoid, there’s a deeper order at work. Section d’Or is the golden section, the ratio of the height of the body to the height of the navel. Which is precisely where Elizabeth Short was cut in half.”
Although his voice was grave, she saw a playful gleam in his eye. “Are you serious?”
“Not really. But it’s no more far-fetched than any other theory. Duchamp’s art doesn’t have a hidden message. It’s about process, like a game of chess. He was a chess master, you know, and in chess, dogmatists get slaughtered. His critics would do well to keep this in mind.”
She was surprised to hear him speak so passionately. “I didn’t know you were a fan.”
“For me, it’s less about the art than about the man. Duchamp belonged to no school or movement, lived in poverty for years, and spent his life trying to meet his own standards of intellectual purity. A movement of one. I admire that. Which is why I can’t buy any of these theories.”
“But isn’t that what you do for a living?” Maddy asked teasingly. “You reduce art to parameters in a pricing model. How is that different from what these conspiracy theorists have done?”
“It’s completely different,” Ethan said, his tone light and undefensive. “I deal in verifiable facts. If I enter bad data, the model will break. But if I want to connect Duchamp to the Rosicrucians or the Black Dahlia, as long as I’m clever enough, I can prove anything. It isn’t fair to him, that’s all.”
As Ethan spoke, Maddy studied him, her gaze slowed and prolonged by the wine. In his suit and tie, he was oddly attractive. His face was as smooth as a doll’s, but his eyes were quick, and they seemed to catch on her own. “So how did you get in here, anyway? Did you sneak past security?”
Ethan seemed genuinely surprised by the suggestion. “Why would I do that? I called Natalia Onegina’s publicist, dropped the name of the fund, and asked to be put on the guest list. It wasn’t so hard. Of course, it would have been easier if I’d been an attractive woman—”
Maddy blushed, although she wasn’t sure if it was because of the implied compliment or because this approach had failed to occur to her. “But how did you find out about the party?”
“I had my ear to the ground,” Ethan said. “You aren’t the only one with connections.”
She saw again that she had underestimated him. “Does Reynard know you’re here?”
“Not yet.” Ethan gave her what was evidently meant as a cryptic smile. “I’m not sure he would approve, at least not before the fact. Later, if I bring him something useful, I’m sure he’ll agree that it was necessary.”
“But we may not have anything to show him. You’ve seen the art here. There’s nothing you couldn’t buy on a Carnival Cruise. For all we know, the real collection could be in storage. Or in a free port—”
“Or maybe it’s in a part of the house we haven’t seen yet.” Ethan leaned forward, as if to confide a secret. “A few days ago, I found a profile of this house in an architectural journal. I was hoping to find pictures of the art on the walls, but it didn’t have anything useful—”
“Where did you find a profile? I looked everywhere, and couldn’t find a thing.”
“Archvadze wasn’t mentioned by name. I did a search for the previous owner, and found a profile that ran two months after the house was sold, probably just after Archvadze redecorated. But here’s the important part. All the photos in the article were taken on the ground floor.”
Maddy saw where this was going. “And there was nothing from the second floor?”
“Nope.” There was something amused and provocative in his eyes. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Maddy, studying his face, realized that she was thinking of something that had nothing do with the art collection. An unmistakable feeling had been gathering over the past few minutes, in the part of her brain where bad ideas arose, and as she looked at Ethan, it only grew stronger.
An instant before the feeling was fully formed, she pushed it away. It was absurd. But the only way to remove it entirely was to replace it with another reckless idea, as one peg might be driven out by another.
“Come on,” Maddy said, rising from the sofa. “Let’s see what we can find upstairs.”
23
Standing before the door in the study, Ilya ran his compass along the frame, watching the needle closely. When it passed across a point one foot above the knob, the needle trembled. He ran it over the spot a second time to make sure, and saw the same fluctuation. To be safe, he swept the compass all around the door, checking for a backup switch, and found nothing.
The camera case that had contained his equipment lay at his feet, empty. Picking up the bag, he slipped it over his right hand, which was clutching the cordless drill. The bag was large enough to cover both his hand and the drill itself, forming a sort of shapeless mitt. Squeezing the trigger, he activated the drill, boring a tiny hole in the base of the bag, which allowed the tip of the bit to emerge. Then he zipped the mouth of the bag over his wrist.
With the makeshift silencer snugly enveloping his hand, Ilya drilled a pilot hole in the door, next to where the compass had fluctuated. It took only a few seconds before the tip of the drill penetrated to the other side of the wood, allowing the bit to turn freely. Ilya withdrew it and removed his hand from the camera case, replacing the bit with a jigsaw attachment. Then he pulled the bag over the drill again, poking the tip of the saw through the hole that he had cut in the base.
Going back to the door, he inserted the blade into the pilot hole and began to cut through the dense wood, guiding the saw upward and to the left. Although it was tedious work, he was careful not to rush, afraid of dulling the reciprocating blade. He eased it up and around, sawing a circular opening in the door that was just big enough to accommodate his arm up to the elbow. His glasses doubled as goggles, protecting his eyes from stray chips.
When he was
finished curving the incision back to where he had started, he was left with an amoeboid hole, sealed with a plug of wood. With his free hand, he pushed out the plug, hearing it fall to the floor in the other room. He put his eye to the opening that he had made, but saw nothing but darkness.
Two minutes had passed since he had disabled the camera. He estimated that he had another three minutes before he would need to worry about security. Although time was running out, he forced himself to move deliberately, knowing that a hasty mistake would cost him more than anything else.
From the equipment on the floor, he took a neodymium magnet, the size of a sardine tin, that he had procured from a hobbyist’s kit. He applied several lengths of double-sided tape to the flat side of the magnet. Then he stuck his hand into the hole in the door and taped the magnet to the inside jamb.
Based on photographs of the system, provided by the same source as the floor plans, he had determined that it consisted of a simple reed switch. If the door was opened without deactivating the switch, its movement would remove a magnetic field, opening the contacts and triggering an alarm. Taping a second magnet to the jamb would circumvent the system. Or so he hoped.
In any case, it was too late to worry about this now. Reaching through the opening he had made, Ilya unlocked the door from the inside, turned the inner knob, and pushed the door open.
No alarm sounded. He entered the room, leaving the lights off. The space was windowless, the size of a prison cell. Inside, there were five racks of paintings, mounted on casters that allowed them to be rolled out one at a time. He took the handle of the nearest rack, yanking it in his direction. Two canvases slid into view, neither the one he wanted. He did not give them a second glance, although one was a Braque and the other was a Bonnard.
Ilya slid out the next rack. There, mounted securely to the mesh, was Study for Étant Donnés. In the darkness of the vault, illuminated only by the light from the room outside, the headless woman on the grass seemed furtive, concealed, as if she were the bearer of a secret message.
With a pair of pliers, he removed the fasteners that held the painting to the mesh and took it into his arms. In his hands, it seemed very light, a delicate armature of canvas and wood. Then he opened the envelope that he had made out of patterned wallpaper and slid the painting inside. It fit perfectly.
There was a flap at the mouth of the envelope, which he folded over and sealed with a length of tape. The finishing touch, of which he was inordinately proud, was a bow of red ribbon, which he removed from its adhesive backing and slapped onto one side of the envelope.
Moving quickly now, he stuffed the rest of his equipment, including the drill with the saw attachment, back into the camera bag. The flashlight remained in his pocket, next to the revolver inside his waistband.
He left the vault and returned to the study. Looking for a place to dispose of the bag, he saw that a gap of several inches separated the rear panel of the bookcase from the wall. He squeezed the bag into this space, shoving hard to push it inside. When he stood back, he could barely see the bag wedged between the wall and the shelf. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do.
Ilya tucked the painting, disguised as a birthday present, under his right arm, carrying nothing else in his hands. Pausing for a moment, as he had in Budapest, he asked himself if there was anything that he had overlooked. This time, he decided, he was safe. He had outgrown his phase of carelessness.
With this reassuring thought, Ilya went to the study door, unlocked it, and reemerged into the master bedroom, still carrying the painting. It was only then that he realized that he was not alone.
24
Maddy and Ethan had left the living room a few minutes earlier, looking for a way to the second floor. The grand staircase had seemed too obvious; climbing it would be an act of blatant trespass. Although she didn’t know where she was going, Maddy led the way, not wanting Ethan to assume control.
As they headed for the rear of the house, searching for a way up, she glanced back at Ethan, who was following close behind. Her feelings toward him were shifting rapidly, and she wasn’t sure what form they would ultimately take. She was surprised by the possibility that she was attracted to someone so cerebral and detached, qualities that she had pointedly avoided in men, until now.
At the moment, Ethan seemed inseparable from his usual rational self. “If there’s a servants’ staircase, it’s probably near the kitchen. Or the dining room. Didn’t we pass one earlier?”
Maddy remembered the table flanked by Windsor chairs. “You’re right.” She pivoted, turning back the way she had come. “If you knew it was there, why didn’t you say anything?”
Ethan grinned. “I was following you. You seemed to know what you were doing.”
They retraced their steps to the dining room. As Ethan had guessed, a door beside a china cabinet led to a flight of stairs. Ascending, Maddy found herself in an empty corridor. “Now what?”
“He’ll want to keep his art close,” Ethan said. “Near the master bedroom, maybe.”
Maddy saw the same challenging look in his eyes as before. “You’re sure you want to do this?”
“If I were alone, I’d have turned back by now. With two of us, it’s less suspicious.”
Maddy saw his point. A man or woman wandering alone through the mansion would look strange, but a couple had a convenient motivation. Smiling at the unspoken implication, she advanced down the corridor so that Ethan would not see her face. She had picked the direction at random, and was surprised to find herself, a few seconds later, at an actual bedroom door. It was ajar. Turning back, she looked at Ethan, who was one step behind her. “You really want to keep going?”
Instead of responding, Ethan reached forward and pushed the door open. “Why not?”
Maddy’s smile, already halfway formed, faltered at the thought that they were testing one another, trying to see how far the other would go. So far, it had been amusing, but she wasn’t sure where it would end. If they found the art collection, the escalation would stop there. But if they failed, she had a feeling that the evening would conclude in some other way.
She entered the bedroom. At her side, Maddy felt Ethan go quiet, as if he, too, sensed that the mood had changed. Five minutes ago, they had been embedded in the party, talking within earshot of the other guests, but now they were alone. Something about the bedroom itself, with its visible signs of a couple’s private life, made the situation seem even more charged.
Maddy, feeling pressed up against the awkwardness of the moment, decided to push straight through it. She went farther into the room, acting more boldly than she felt. A few steps ahead, a door led to the bathroom, while an adjacent door was closed. She was moving toward the second door, wondering if she was reckless enough to open it, when her attention was caught by something on the nightstand. Going to the bedside table, she picked it up. It was a cell phone.
Ethan came closer. The amusement was gone from his face. “What are you doing?”
As she looked at the phone, not listening, Maddy was struck by another thought. If this was Archvadze’s phone, it would contain his address book, as well as a record of his calls. This was information that the fund would love to know, and it would only take a second to retrieve it.
Maddy slid a finger across the touchpad of the phone. The interface was sleek and intuitive, allowing her to find the call history with ease. “Give me a second. I want to check something.”
“Wait,” Ethan said. “Searching the house is one thing, but this is crossing the line—”
Ignoring him, she scrolled through the list of incoming calls. The first few were to contacts with Georgian names, a blur of consonants and patronyms. Failing to see anyone she recognized, she was about to switch to outgoing calls when Ethan, tired of being ignored, plucked the phone from her hands. He closed the call history, his finger moving swiftly across the touchpad, and put the phone back on the nightstand. “We need to get out of here.”
She was about to
tell him to mind his own business when she heard a door open behind her. When she turned, she saw a stranger emerging from the door of the study. He was slender, dressed in a brown suit, his face framed by a pair of black plastic glasses. A present wrapped in gift paper was tucked under his right arm. The paper, she saw, was covered in roses.
When the man in the brown suit saw Ethan and Maddy, his eyes widened briefly, then narrowed. Before either of them could speak or react, the man reached down and drew a revolver.
“On the floor,” the man said, his words touched by a Slavic accent. “Both of you.”
Ethan seemed caught off guard by the unreality of the situation. “Are you kidding?”
The man pointed the revolver at Maddy’s head. “On the floor now. Nose to the rug.”
Maddy knelt, her eyes on the gun. Even as she lowered herself to the ground, she was overwhelmed by a sense of the absurd. Through her dress, the pile of the rug pressed up against her knees.
“Lie down on your faces.” The man moved forward into the bedroom. “Quickly.”
Maddy obeyed, resting her face on the clean nap of the carpet. Ethan lay down next to her. He seemed on the verge of laughter, as if he couldn’t believe it either, but there was a grain of real fear in his eyes. Then she felt the pressure of five cool fingers, and realized that he had taken her by the hand.
The man in the brown suit seemed to hesitate, as if weighing what to do next. At last, he headed for the door. “Count to one hundred. If you move before then, I’ll be waiting for you—”
He left the bedroom, closing the door behind him. Maddy remained on the floor, her heart thudding against the carpet. She knew exactly what had been inside that package. Part of her wanted to share this insight with Ethan, whose face was only a few inches from her own, but in the end, she said nothing. Before long, she knew, they would need to confront what had happened, and both of their lives would change, but for now, she could think of nothing else but his hand in hers.
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