The Icon Thief

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  25

  In the corridor outside the bedroom, Ilya dropped his glasses into a vase on the hallway table, hearing them ring softly as they struck the porcelain. His gloves went into the vase as well. He reached a second set of stairs, bypassing the one that led to the dining room. Descending to an empty corridor, he headed for the rear of the house, the package tucked securely under one arm.

  As he was approaching the sun porch, through the open door, he saw the ember of a cigarette and the curve of a broad shoulder in a white knit shirt. At the sound of his footsteps, the guard began to turn. Without breaking stride, Ilya reversed himself and went in the opposite direction.

  Now the only way out was through the front door. He went back through the house, moving unhurriedly past groups of guests, and headed for the foyer. A second later, he was outside. Ten yards away stood a cluster of shrubs, an island of refuge on the grass. On his way there, he passed a second guard, one close to his own age, who glanced at him momentarily before looking away.

  In the distance rose the luminous pavilion of the tent, the sounds of laughter and conversation still drifting across the lawn. He walked past it at a brisk pace, the grass springy beneath his shoes, until he arrived at the topiary spheres. As soon as he was behind the shrubs, he took off at a run, moving parallel to the mansion. Up ahead, he could see the crest of the dune that led to the beach.

  He reached the edge of the grass. The porch was to his left, illuminated by a single lamp. The guard who had been smoking a cigarette was nowhere to be seen. Beneath his feet, the lawn came to an end, replaced by the boards of the deck. Then he was on the sand itself.

  The dune was steeper than he had expected, sloping toward the beach fifteen feet below. Grass had been planted here to keep the sand from drifting, but as he landed on the dune, the loose grains shifted beneath his heels, and he realized that he was going to fall. He tried to correct himself, failed, and found himself tumbling down the hillside. Before he slipped, he had the presence of mind to toss the painting aside, so that he would not crush it with his body.

  Ilya slid down the dune, turning a somersault, and skidded to a stop at the base of the hill, near the slats of the snow fence. He got to his feet, brushing the sand from the front of his suit, and looked around for the painting. It was lying, apparently unharmed, a few feet away.

  Holding the painting above his head, he climbed over the snow fence, its slats tilted at haphazard angles, and saw that he was only five steps from the beach. It was then that he noticed that his gun was missing.

  He touched the holster inside his waistband. It was empty. Looking down, he found that the gun had slipped out of the holster when he had tumbled down the dune, and now it was nowhere in sight. The grass, though sparse, was six inches high, and the gun’s dull finish made it impossible to see.

  Fifteen yards up the beach, the truck’s parking lights blinked twice. Ilya looked at the pickup, wondering if he should take the time to retrieve his gun, then decided to leave it. From his own examination earlier that week, he knew that the gun’s serial numbers, both the one on the frame and the one that could be found only by taking it apart, had been carefully erased.

  He crossed the sand to where the pickup was waiting. As he approached the truck, Ilya saw that Sharkovsky had disposed of the garbage and painted over the logo on both sides.

  Ilya opened the passenger door. Behind the wheel, Sharkovsky had changed out of his coveralls. Zhenya, in the passenger seat, grinned at the sand on Ilya’s shirtfront. “Looks like you took a tumble.”

  “No harm done,” Ilya said, climbing into the pickup. Zhenya slid to the middle, allowing Ilya to take the passenger’s side, the vinyl package still in his hands. “But I lost my gun—”

  Sharkovsky started the engine. “Let it go. A true thief always leaves his gun behind.”

  He reversed the truck, backing up along the compacted sand of his own tracks, then went forward, driving smoothly down the beach with his wheels pointed straight ahead. As the truck planed along the sand, headlamps off, the lights of the mansion receded into the distance.

  When they neared the parking lot that led to the main road, Sharkovsky depressed the clutch, allowing the truck to coast, and made a wide turn toward the asphalt. With his experience as a driver, he timed it just right, and the wheels of the truck bounced over the edge of the curb. He floored the gas, accelerating, and a few seconds later, they were on the street.

  It was only a short drive to the staging area, a vineyard carved out of what had once been a potato field. Fifty acres of chardonnay and pinot noir vines surrounded a fake château, its gravel parking lot sheltered from the road. When they pulled into the lot, the château’s lights were dead. Only one other car was in sight, a hatchback that they had rented under a false name.

  Sharkovsky parked and turned off the engine. Climbing out of the truck, Ilya felt cool fingers of mist on his face. Next to him, Zhenya slid out of the pickup, visibly glowing with triumph. Ilya, for his part, found that he was exhausted. At the end of an assignment, he always felt drained, the energy devoted to a single goal abruptly depleted and dispersed. He had been hoping that this time would be different, but instead, he felt a strange emptiness, as if he had gained nothing but the canvas that would remain only briefly in his hands.

  They were nearly at the car, which was parked three spaces away, when Ilya saw a flash of movement in the windshield of the hatchback, a gleam of bright metal in the darkness.

  He fell to his knees, hearing the pop of a gunshot as a bullet passed through the space where his head had been an instant before. There was another shot, and something hit the ground beside him. He turned just in time to see Zhenya’s bloodstained face, still smiling, strike the gravel with a hollow smack.

  Ilya rolled. Under his back, gravel gave way to earth as he found himself in the field, away from the lights. Rising halfway, he plowed into the darkness, the painting wedged under one arm. Trellises toppled as he pushed himself through. He heard another gunshot, but felt nothing.

  After ten yards, he halted, a stitch tightening in his side, behind a trellis draped with mesh to keep away the birds. Looking back, he saw a dark figure standing by the truck, a gun in his hand. As he watched, Sharkovsky reached into the pickup and switched on the high beams. At once, the field was illuminated, the trellises casting harsh shadows along the ground.

  The old man looked out into the field, shielding his eyes with one hand from the glare of the headlamps. After a moment, he lowered his pistol, as if he had grown weary of its weight.

  “I know you’re there, zhid,” Sharkovsky said. “And I know you can’t hide forever.”

  Ilya did not move. Looking at the old man, who was outlined like a cutout against the lights, he groped for his own revolver, but his fingers closed on nothing. Only then did he remember that he had lost his gun.

  Moving very slowly, he set the painting down so it leaned against the trellis, one hand resting on its upper edge. The trellis was two feet wide. If he shifted even a few inches in either direction, he would give himself away. Peering through the vines, he felt his pulse ticking warmly around his ears, the world around him growing soft and red. All his attention should have been riveted on what to do next, but his mind persisted, perversely, in searching for reasons.

  As if the old man had overheard his thoughts, Sharkovsky said, “You must be confused. I can only say that the Chekists value discretion. Vasylenko was quite clear on this point. He was very insistent that I kill you both—”

  Ilya’s eyes fell on the coarse weave of the net. Although he knew that the next few seconds might mean the difference between life and death, he found himself distracted by a memory. For a moment, he could think of nothing but the star that had been scratched into the back of Vasylenko’s cross.

  Then his vision cleared, the weave of the mesh locking back into reality, and he saw that Sharkovsky was almost at the edge of the field. This jolted him into full awareness. If he allowed himself to be go
aded, he would make a mistake. He was forcing himself to focus, knowing that otherwise he would die once the sun rose, when he became aware of a cylindrical object pressing against his thigh.

  Ilya withdrew the penlight from his pocket, its brushed metal casing cold in his hand. He regarded it for a moment, then looked up again. Through the wooden slats, he could see the shadowy figure standing ten yards away.

  Despite the adrenaline flooding his body, his hands did not tremble. He chose his target carefully, centering it on the circle of the old man’s face. He thought again of the star on the cross, of snow singing underfoot in the prison yard, of the white scars that tattoos had left on his skin. Then he pressed the switch.

  Sharkovsky swore, his head jerking back, as the laser struck him in the right eye. Ilya turned and scooped the canvas up from the ground. Fifty yards ahead, away from the lot, there stood a stone wall. He ran for it, trellises snapping and breaking as he fought his way through.

  Behind him, the old man squeezed off a pair of shots, firing blindly. Ilya vaulted over the wall, landing in a tangle of vines. Bent over in a crouch, he moved along the sheltered side. The painting was slowing him down. He thought about throwing it away, but in the end, he did not.

  Off in the fields, there was the cry of a bird, perhaps a raven, that had been caught in one of the nets. As Ilya ran, the old man’s words boomed in his mind. If Vasylenko had betrayed him, he would not run forever. Even as he plunged into the fields, crushing the vines underfoot, he sensed that something inside him had changed. It was only then that he realized that the most human part of himself had already been burned away, and that nothing remained but the Scythian.

  II

  JUNE 28–JULY 6, 2008

  [In 1915,] Arts and Decoration gives him “red hair, blue eyes, freckles…” while the Tribune reporter calls him “quite handsome, with blond, curly hair…” (The U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service records for 1915 list Duchamp as five feet ten inches tall, with a fair complexion, brown hair, and “chestnut” eyes.)

  —Calvin Tomkins, Duchamp

  The Pantheon should be cut in half vertically, and the two halves set fifty centimeters apart.

  —Tristan Tzara

  26

  From a distance, when darkness still made it difficult to see things in their proper scale, it seemed as if a single sooty torch had been kindled in the vineyard parking lot. Powell slowed the car to a crawl. As he drew closer, a pattern of colored lights resolved itself into a fire engine and rescue unit. A third car, a hatchback, sat at the lot’s edge, not far from where the fields began. It was on fire.

  He parked at a safe remove from the blaze and got out, followed closely by Wolfe. A fire investigator stood at the entrance to the lot, clipboard in hand. As they advanced, badges raised, he blocked the way. “Stand back, please,” the investigator said. “I’ll tell you when it’s all clear.”

  Wolfe looked over the investigator’s shoulder at the flames. “Is it going to explode?”

  The investigator grinned. “No, that only happens in the movies. But the pressurized struts in the trunk and hood can pop right out of the vehicle. You don’t want to get one of those between the eyes—”

  Powell watched as the fire crew sprayed the car with foam. “How long has it been burning?”

  “Maybe twenty minutes. The fire started on the driver’s side and spread back to the trunk. It hasn’t burned through the firewall to the engine, though, so it can’t have been going long.”

  “This was the only car you found?” Wolfe asked. “You didn’t see a green pickup?”

  The investigator shook his head. As the flames grew less intense, Powell could make out the figure in the driver’s seat for the first time. There was something wrong with the body behind the wheel, a strangeness, like an optical illusion, that had nothing to do with the fire.

  Finally, when the blaze had gone out and the fire crew, following the usual procedure, had disconnected the battery, Powell and Wolfe got the nod to move forward. They approached the hatchback cautiously, breathing in the smell of scorched metal and hydrocarbons. Powell could see white goo on the dashboard where the air bags had deployed and melted in the heat.

  Then he realized that the man behind the wheel was headless. Looking through the windshield, he saw the cylinder of the dead man’s neck poking up through the remains of his collar. His clothing had been badly burned, but the outlines of a suit were still visible. Peering into the side window, Powell looked at the dead man’s arms. Both of his hands were gone.

  Wolfe stared at the stumps. “Don’t know about you, but I think I’ve seen this before.”

  Powell only nodded. As Wolfe relayed the car’s description and license number over her phone, he bent down to study the gravel. Near the car, the uniform gray pebbles had been blackened with soot, but a few yards away, he saw traces of something dark and wet.

  “They killed him here,” Powell said to Wolfe, who was closing her phone. “At least one gunshot wound to the head. Then they stuck him behind the wheel and took the trouble of cutting off his head and hands.”

  Wolfe crouched to examine the bloodstained gravel. “Looks like a rush job to me.”

  “Me too. Normally, a body like this gets dumped in the harbor. They must have been in a hurry—”

  Powell went to the edge of the parking lot. Kneeling where the gravel gave way to the field, he noticed that some of the trellises were knocked over, their struts uprooted and flattened against the ground.

  “A double cross,” Wolfe said from over his shoulder. “The thief brought the painting here, and somebody killed him for it.”

  “It’s possible,” Powell said, although he found it hard to believe that the thief behind this heist could have ended up dead so soon. Fewer than ninety minutes had passed since they had lost the truck in the darkened streets, returning to the estate in time to see police cruisers pulling up at the entrance.

  They drove back to the mansion, where guests were still gathered in uncertain groups on the lawn. Upstairs, the master bedroom was packed. Archvadze stood in one corner, a cell phone to his ear, next to Kostava, his assistant. A few steps away, Natalia Onegina was speaking rapidly to the chief of police, whose crew cut was so precise that it seemed as if part of his skull had been lopped off. Although Powell was unable to make out her words, he sensed that she was less concerned by the theft of the painting than she was by her party’s failure.

  As Powell approached, Archvadze pocketed his phone. “Natalia, please calm down,” the oligarch said in Russian. Turning to the police chief, he said in English, “I apologize. She is very upset.”

  Powell, his badge out, reached the circle. “Excuse me, but I was wondering if I could ask a few questions—”

  To his surprise, Archvadze recognized his badge at once. “You’re based in London. What are you doing in this part of the world?”

  “We’ve been keeping an eye on your house,” Powell said. “We had reason to believe that a crime would take place, but not a burglary.”

  Archvadze’s eyes narrowed. “So what, exactly, did you think was going to happen?”

  “We thought that there might be an extortion attempt,” Wolfe said, showing her own badge. “Who else knew that the painting was here?”

  “No one,” Archvadze said. Then, correcting himself, he added, “Well, a few people did, of course. Natalia and myself. Kostava and a few members of my security team. My investment manager and my lawyer.”

  Powell wrote this down in his spiral notebook. “And the painting was insured?”

  “It was insured from the moment it left the auction house.” Archvadze made a gesture of impatience. “Please, this isn’t about the money. I can afford the loss. But this painting is irreplaceable.”

  “Yes, I can imagine.” As Powell looked at his notepad, his eye was caught by something that he had written earlier that evening. “What about the witnesses who saw the thief? Did you know them?”

  “I believe that we
met the girl briefly,” Archvadze said. “I had never seen her before tonight. As for the other one, I don’t think that I met him at all. Natalia, do you remember him?”

  Natalia, who had been following the conversation, shook her head. “No. But I do remember the girl. She struck me as too clever by half. I don’t know what she was doing here.”

  Kostava spoke for the first time, his accent considerably thicker than that of his employer. “She was on the list. A guest of another invitee. The other one called us himself. He said that he was working for a major art investor. We checked his story and said yes.” By the end of this uncharacteristically long speech, his voice was shaking. “Were they a part of this?”

  “We aren’t sure,” Powell said. “But we know that the getaway vehicle was disguised as a waste removal truck. How did it get inside?”

  Kostava launched into a rambling explanation, from which Powell gathered that he had not hired the truck, but had allowed it onto the grounds on the assumption that the caterer had requested it. By the time he realized that no one had approved the pickup, the truck was already gone.

  As the assistant finished his account, Archvadze broke in. “If you don’t mind, I would prefer to answer the rest of your questions another time. If you require further assistance, you can get in touch with my lawyer.” He wrote a name and number on the back of an ivory business card. “Please—”

  Archvadze gave Wolfe his card, then led the others into a far corner. Powell let them go, then entered the study, where technicians were dusting every surface for prints. As he examined the hole in the closet door, something else occurred to him. “According to the girl’s statement, the thief was holding a package that was exactly the size of the missing painting. No bag, nothing else in his hands.”

  “That’s right,” Wolfe said, coming up to his side. “Nothing except the revolver.”