The Icon Thief

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  The rest of the afternoon passed quickly, although Maddy continued to wonder about the paranoid streak that Ethan had begun to display. Four hours later, she got off the train at Atlantic Avenue and walked the five blocks to her building. As she was ascending the brownstone steps, her eye was caught by a car across the street. Behind the wheel sat a man in a tracksuit, his blond ponytail gathered in a tight apostrophe at the nape of his neck.

  Maddy turned away from the driver, then looked back. She wasn’t sure why her attention had been drawn to him, but as she went inside, she had the unmistakable feeling that she was being watched. When she glanced back over her shoulder, however, he was not looking in her direction, but through the windshield, as if waiting for someone to return from nearby.

  After another moment, she closed the door behind her. There were a few bills in the mailbox, including an overdraft notice, which she tucked behind the others as she trudged up the stairs. When she entered her apartment, tossing the bills aside, she noticed that the hallway light was on. It annoyed her to think that it had been on all day, burning a soft hole in her utility costs. Unless—

  Feeling suddenly uncertain, she looked more closely at the living room, which was small enough to take in at a glance. At first, it seemed untouched. The heap of papers on the table, including the report from Tanya, lay exactly where she had left it. Setting down her purse, she went down the short hallway to the bedroom. When she switched on the light, she saw that the laptop on her desk was open.

  She regarded the laptop for a long moment. Usually, whenever she left the house, she made sure that it was closed. When she tried to remember if she had shut it that morning, she became increasingly sure that she had.

  An instant later, she flashed on the car parked outside. Going back into the entryway, she found herself racing down the stairs to the ground floor. Her phone was in her hands, ready to call the police, but when she opened the door that led to the sidewalk, she halted, pulse high. The curb across the street was deserted, and she was alone. The man in the car had disappeared.

  32

  Standing before the counter of the hardware store, Ilya accepted a bag from the cashier. Inside were a pair of needle-nose pliers, a ball of nylon cord, and a roll of plastic sheeting, the kind used by painters to lay down drop cloths. In a second bag at his side, he already had a travel umbrella and a pair of shipping tubes, one two inches in diameter, the other slightly wider.

  Outside, in Herald Square, the day was warm. He quickly covered the three blocks to his hotel, the bag thumping against one leg. Since returning to the city, he had cut and tinted his hair, and a pair of reading glasses from a drugstore display rack was pushed up on the bridge of his nose.

  Passing through the revolving doors, he entered the lobby. Because of its location, the hotel drew throngs of tourists, making it a convenient place to disappear. All the same, his situation was far from secure. The day before, when he had asked if he could pay for his room in cash, the clerk had requested identification. When Ilya had handed over the driver’s license, the clerk had barely glanced at it, taking it into the rear office for a photocopy before giving it back.

  Obtaining this license had been the weekend’s most challenging task. On Sunday, he had taken a train into the city. Upon his arrival, he had immediately gone to Central Park. Positioning himself on a bench across from the boathouse, he had watched it for several hours, keeping a close eye on the station in the parking lot where tourists rented bicycles. When the station attendant had ducked out for a bathroom break, Ilya had forced the lock and slipped into the empty kiosk.

  Forty bikes had been out, the renters required to leave a driver’s license and credit card. The licenses had been filed in an expanding folder. Closing the door behind him, Ilya had swiftly rifled through the cards. Half of the renters had been women, while half of the remaining possibilities could be discarded at once for differences of race or age. Of the remaining ten licenses, Ilya had chosen one that was close to his own coloring and build. He had slipped it into his pocket and left the station, emerging only seconds before the attendant returned.

  Looking back on this adventure, it seemed to him that he had taken considerable risk for a limited payoff. When he examined the license with a cooler head, its resemblance to him was less than impressive. The man’s nose was longer, his eyes set farther apart, his stated height three inches shorter than Ilya’s own. The haircut, tint, and reading glasses made the impersonation slightly more convincing, but Ilya knew that he could not rely on it for long.

  When the elevator arrived at his floor, Ilya went down the hall, using a key card to enter his room. Inside, the cramped, dingy space was very warm. Before leaving, he had made sure to turn off the air-conditioning and close the windows, despite the heat of the day outside.

  Ilya set the shopping bags on the bed and went over to the dresser. Reaching into the gap between the dresser and the wall, he felt his hand close around the upper edge of the painting, which he withdrew from its hiding place.

  He studied the headless woman, looking for signs of craquelure. There were no visible cracks, which made things easier. Using the pliers, he extracted the painting from its frame and removed the staples that held the canvas to its stretcher. He worked slowly, aware that a mistake would cause irreparable damage.

  When the staples were out, he unfolded the corners of the canvas and peeled it away from the stretcher. Time had stiffened the fabric, which bore an intricate pattern of creases where each corner had been folded over the wood. The image itself occupied the center of the canvas, with margins of raw fabric on all four sides. As for the stretcher, without the canvas, it was a plain wooden armature, covered with labels from galleries and shipping companies.

  Taking the mailing tubes, he used his knife to trim them to the width of the painting. From the plastic sheet, he cut a rectangle that was the exact size of the canvas. He spread the plastic on the floor and laid the canvas on top, the painted side facing down. Working carefully, he rolled the canvas around the smaller tube, the painted surface on the outside, with the plastic serving as interleafing. So far, it all seemed pliable enough. It was fortunate, he thought, that the weather was warm.

  When he was done, the painting was rolled snugly around the cardboard cylinder. He slid it into the larger of the two tubes, which was just wide enough for the painting to slip inside. Removing the collapsible umbrella from its nylon sleeve, which was the only part that he needed, he used the shears to punch four holes in the sleeve, one pair at the base, another at the mouth. Then he threaded two lengths of cord through the holes, tying them with slipknots.

  Ilya inserted the rolled painting into the sleeve. He pulled the loops of cord across his shoulders so that the sleeve hung down his back, like an archer’s quiver, then regarded himself in the mirror. It took a few minutes of tightening and loosening the straps before the package hung to his satisfaction. He took off the harness and replaced the slipknots with blood knots, each of which he hardened briefly in the flame of a match. Now he had a harness, customized for his body, that would be all but invisible under a loose shirt or jacket.

  Gathering up the staples, he scattered them in the slots of the heating vent that ran along the baseboard, hearing them rain against the metal. Then he rolled the remaining scraps of debris into a loose ball, which he stuffed behind the dresser, along with the stretcher and frame.

  Drained from an hour of focused activity, Ilya lowered himself into the chair by the window. On a table beside the chair lay a copy of that day’s paper, which he had bought on an earlier excursion. It had been opened to an article on an inside page of the city section. Most of it consisted of an account of the heist, but there was also a sidebar about the Reynard Art Fund. Looking at it reminded him of the two guests he had encountered at the party. Especially, for some reason, the girl.

  Ilya glanced at the article again, then put it down. What he needed, more than anything else, was information. At the moment, he had only one so
urce, as unreliable as it might be.

  From his pocket, he took a prepaid phone that he had bought at the same drugstore where he had found the reading glasses. He dialed. The phone rang twice before he heard the clank of the receiver. “Club Marat.”

  Ilya, picturing the vor seated in his downstairs office, spoke softly. “Sharkovsky.”

  There was a pause before the old man spoke again. “You took my eye. I should take yours in exchange.”

  “Then you won’t get your package.” Ilya felt as if he were skating along the grooves of a conversation that had been predetermined long before he had placed the call. “Has Vasylenko spoken to you?”

  “He called last night. He says that you’re willing to make a deal. What do you want?”

  “I want money and protection,” Ilya said. “In my bedroom in Brighton Beach, there’s a shoulder bag with books and papers inside. I want the bag and everything inside it. And I want eighty thousand dollars.”

  “Eighty thousand dollars is a lot of money. I will need time to get that much cash—”

  Ilya cut him off. “If you need cash, look to your left. You keep at least sixty thousand in change funds in the safe. Raid the obshchak for the rest. Considering what I’m giving you in return, I’d call it a bargain.”

  “A shame, I’m sure, that you can’t sell it yourself. Where shall we meet? The club?”

  “No.” Ilya named the location that he had in mind. He had spent the morning looking at potential sites, and had decided that this one seemed the most promising. “I’ll see you at noon tomorrow.”

  “Misha and I will be there. We will bring your cash and books. As for my eye—”

  Before the vor could finish, Ilya switched off the phone. Trying to get a sense of his feelings, he found that he was pleased. As he set the phone down, he hoped that Sharkovsky would conclude that all he wanted was money. Greedy men, he knew, always assumed that others were driven by the same thing. If Sharkovsky believed this, he would underestimate him, which was all for the better.

  It did not occur to Ilya, at least not then, that he might be underestimating Sharkovsky as well. Nor did he wonder, not even in passing, if their conversation might have been overheard.

  Three miles south, at a fake pine desk at the heart of the cubicle farm, a man rose and removed his earphones. The computer on his desktop was running the internal system employed to collect information from cell phones and landlines under electronic surveillance. It could be used to copy recordings and route them to translators, but for now, no translation was necessary.

  Leaving his cubicle, the agent approached an office at the far end of the floor. As he entered, Barlow looked up. “What is it?”

  “It’s Ilya,” Kandinsky said. “They’re meeting at the New York County Courthouse.”

  33

  The following morning, a few blocks from the courthouse, Ilya watched flocks of children tossing basketballs and playing on swings. This park lay near the heart of the Five Points, where Swamp Angels and Daybreak Boys had once fought for control of the city, but today, the area was relatively tranquil, with the silence broken only by the quick snap of sneakers against concrete.

  Ilya waited for a moment longer, then headed for the comfort station. The restroom was fashioned from rough limestone, as simple as a child’s house of blocks. Inside, it was a mildewed cave with aluminum fixtures, a perpetual stream of water trickling from the sink. Under the window stood a heavy garbage bin. Behind it, he wedged a plastic bundle containing his stun gun, knife, and penlight.

  Outside, he took in a lungful of fresh air and headed for the courthouse, approaching it from the rear. The building was stately and imposing, its hexagonal lines obscured by a severe Corinthian portico. As he mounted the steps, which took him a full story above the street, he noted that the federal courthouse next door was under construction, encircled on all sides by a sidewalk shed.

  Past the revolving doors, he approached a security checkpoint where marshals in blue uniforms were waving visitors through. Without being asked, he unslung his shoulder bag and set it on the conveyer belt, where it was fed into a scanner. When he walked through the metal detector, it remained silent.

  One of the marshals studied the cathode display. “Any electronics in the bag?”

  “Cell phone,” Ilya said. He had been asked the same question the day before. “And a radio.”

  The guard did not take his eyes from the screen. Aside from the cell phone and radio, he would see nothing but a Windbreaker and a mailing tube. “The phone have a camera? If it does, you have to declare it.”

  “No camera.” Ilya wondered if they would ask him about the radio, but the guard said nothing more. When his bag came out the other end of the scanner, he picked it up and slung it over his shoulder.

  As he was about to proceed into the courthouse, a second guard spoke. “What brings you here today?”

  Ilya found that it was easiest to tell the simple truth. “I am here to get a passport.”

  Leaving the checkpoint, he entered the courthouse. It was floored with echoing marble, six wings radiating outward from a central rotunda. Above him hung mosaics of the great lawgivers of the past, giant enthroned figures of Moses, Blackmun, Hammurabi. To his right, set apart from the main entrance, stood an emergency exit. It was cordoned off by two stanchions linked with a retractable belt, but there was no guard, and the door itself was held shut with nothing but a panic bar.

  The passport office, a drab hallway lined with three wooden benches, occupied one of the rotunda’s wings. On the first bench, a man in a suit, perhaps a lawyer, was speaking rapidly into a cell phone; on the second, a redhead in a greasy denim jacket was slumped against the wall, gazing down vacantly at the floor. Ilya sat on the third bench, which was otherwise empty.

  A second later, the lawyer rose and moved away, still talking on his cell phone. This left only the redhead in the denim jacket, who did not seem altogether aware of his surroundings. Ilya was studying the vagrant, wondering if it might be better to find a different location, when he saw Sharkovsky and Misha walking across the polished floor of the rotunda.

  Although he had come half an hour early, he had anticipated them by only a few minutes. As the two men drew closer, he observed that Sharkovsky was wearing an eye patch, and that Misha carried his satchel in one hand. When they reached the hallway outside the passport office, Sharkovsky lowered himself onto the bench. Misha sat gingerly beside him, careful of his bad leg.

  A moment passed in silence. At last, Sharkovsky spoke. “I see no reason to draw out this transaction any longer than necessary, keelyer. Unless, of course, you have anything else on your mind.”

  As he looked into the old man’s sole visible eye, Ilya was reminded of a crow peering sideways at its prey. “If Vasylenko is a Chekist, he will answer for it in the end. But what about the rest of the brotherhood?”

  “What do you want me to say?” Sharkovsky said in Assyrian. “Chekist or thief makes no difference. Power is what counts. If you were told otherwise, it was because it was what you wanted to hear.”

  Ilya felt the truth of these words as another tightening of the noose. He thought again of the cross around Vasylenko’s neck, and of the star scratched into its hidden side. “So why did he choose me?”

  “He saw potential. Not every man can become what you are. It takes—” Sharkovsky paused to consider his words. “Detachment. Intelligence. And morality. There is nothing so dangerous as a deeply ethical man, once his life has been erased. And all it took was a word from him to leave you with nothing—”

  Ilya’s hands grew cold, as if all the blood had withdrawn to his heart. He found that he knew precisely what the old man was going to say, as if the realization had been lurking there, just outside his circle of awareness, ever since the night of the vineyard. “What are you talking about?”

  “You mean you don’t know?” Sharkovsky gave him a smile of monstrous tenderness. “You had to be on your own. Otherwise, you wouldn’t
be an effective instrument. So he did what he had to do. At least they were allowed to die in their sleep. Not everyone receives the same consideration.”

  Sharkovsky extended a hand for the satchel, which Misha gave to him at once. The old man turned back to Ilya, his good eye shining in its socket. “Now then. Are you ready to make the exchange?”

  34

  A few moments earlier, Powell and Wolfe had watched from across the street as Ilya entered the courthouse. Barlow’s voice came over Powell’s headpiece: “The marshals want to handle the security themselves. I’ve signed off on this. If our guy cased the site beforehand, we don’t want to scare him away—”

  Powell saw a door by the main entrance. “Do we have a man on the emergency exit?”

  “One second.” Barlow went silent for a moment, then returned. “All right, it’s done. Kandinsky is in place. He knows the drill. We’re going to let them talk for as long as possible. An interpreter is on the line. After they’ve left the courthouse, we put tails on all of them. Security says that our primary target isn’t carrying the package. Once he leads us to it, we grab him.”

  As Barlow signed off, Powell kept an eye on the courthouse, wondering if they were underestimating the Scythian. It was clear now that Ilya had stolen the painting. Based on the security footage, there had been two different men at the mansion, dressed in identical clothes. The heist had gone off as planned, but there had been a double cross, leaving one thief, probably Zhenya, dead. There was also the small matter of the ballistics results, received less than an hour ago, indicating that the gun recovered at the mansion had been used to fire a bullet into Arshak Gasparyan’s brain.