The Icon Thief

by Alec Nevala-Lee

  For the first time, Maddy clearly saw what she was contemplating. She closed the browser window as if slamming it shut, then looked at the photo again. “What am I thinking?” she whispered. “What am I really thinking?”

  She was still trying to answer this question when she heard the door open downstairs.

  Relief flooded her body. Rising from the desk, she went onto the landing. The apartment was on two levels, the bedroom and study upstairs, the living room on the ground floor. She was already on the stairwell, ready to tell Ethan that she was here, when she caught a glimpse of the man who had entered the apartment. His back was turned, and she saw him for only a moment, but it was more than enough time to see that it was not Ethan at all.

  She backed up from the stairwell. When the foyer was out of sight, she paused, heart juddering, listening for steps on the stairs. Instead, she heard the door swing shut. Downstairs, floorboards creaked as the stranger moved into the living room. There was no sign that he had heard her. At least not yet.

  Then she saw that there was no way out. The front door was within sight of the living room. The windows of the study were covered in bars. And the fire escape was at the other end of the house.

  Even as she finished this train of thought, the stranger began to climb the stairs.

  Maddy retreated into the study. As the footsteps drew closer, her eyes fell on the closet. There was no time to think. Going to the closet, she squeezed inside and pulled the door shut, one trembling hand on the knob.

  She had hoped that the stranger would go into the bedroom, clearing her way to the stairs. Instead, he entered the study. Through the gap between door and jamb, she could see the desk by the window. A pencil line of smoke hung in the air. She had forgotten to put out her cigarette.

  A man came into view. He was old, perhaps sixty, wearing a pair of wraparound sunglasses. He surveyed the room, eyes passing briefly across the closet, and finally went to the desk, riffling through the papers. Then he moved out of her field of vision. She heard a low squeak of metal and a soft click, then felt the air grow warm. He had turned on the gas fireplace.

  Returning to the desk, he scooped up an armful of notes, then vanished from sight again. As he came back for more, Maddy smelled burning paper. She watched as he took another stack. Then another. And another.

  Soon the room stank of smoke. The man went over to the window, then paused. From this angle, she couldn’t see his face.

  Then she saw him pick up the cup with her cigarette inside. It was still smoldering.

  Putting the cup down, the stranger took a step forward, disappearing from her line of sight. Maddy, hands groping, felt something cool and heavy at her side. It was the handle of the shovel.

  Her fingers had scarcely closed around the shovel when the closet door flew open.

  The man stood in front of her, a hand on the knob, close enough for her to see herself in his glasses. In his surprised face, she saw recognition. He knew her. For a single intake of breath, they stood eye to eye—

  —and before he could come any closer, she smashed the shovel against his face.

  He fell back. After a heartbeat, blood began to flood from his nose. Maddy emerged from the closet, the shovel in her hands. The man was clawing for something in his belt. She saw the taped handle of a revolver.

  “Fuck off!” The words exploded from her lips as she struck him on the wrist, driving his hand away from the gun. She hit him on the head, denting the shovel’s blade, a hot line of pain whipsawing up her right arm.

  The man fell to his knees. Maddy swung at him again, connecting with the crown of his skull, then turned to run. Before she could take a step, a hand shot out and seized her ankle. She fell forward, fumbling the shovel, and knocked her head against the floor, an abyss stretching between her and the stairs.

  The hand around her ankle tightened, the fingers sinking in savagely. She rolled over, forehead aching from where it had struck the floor. The bottle rack stood at eye level. Without thinking, she picked up the bottle rack with both hands, muscles shrieking, and swung it toward the stranger’s left temple.

  The man screamed as a hook caught him in the soft spot beneath one ear, knocking away his sunglasses. Maddy, gasping, yanked her ankle out of his loosened grip, tears leaving stinging tracks on her face. She got to her feet. On the floor, the man was breathing but unconscious. The top button of his shirt had come undone. And above his heart, there was the tattoo of a rose.

  Keeping the bottle rack raised, ready to bring it down at the first sign of movement, she turned off the fireplace, then picked up her purse. When she went over to the desk, she saw that all of the notes were gone.

  With shaking fingers, Maddy took out her cell phone and dialed Ethan’s number, her eyes fixed on the man on the ground. “Come on,” Maddy whispered, bringing the phone to her ear. “Pick up, Ethan, pick up—”

  From inside the man’s coat, a ringtone sounded. Lowering her phone, Maddy stared. She recognized it.

  As the cell phone rang again, the man’s eyes opened. His lips parted, forming a fine bubble of blood. Maddy screamed and fell backward. As the man tried to rise, she ran, nearly falling down the staircase. Without looking back, she threw herself against the front door, clutching at the knob. It wouldn’t turn. She tried it again, fingers slick against metal, then finally remembered to undo the latch. Opening the door, she fell through to the other side.

  A car was parked across the street. Behind the wheel, watching her, was the thief she had seen at the mansion.

  For an instant, their eyes locked. Before he could come after her, she was running.

  As she fled, the faces on the sidewalk regarding her with amusement or concern, she found that she understood everything. Ethan had been right, and had paid the price, but not before leaving her one final message. Maddy ran up the street, hoping that it would protect her, but knew that this city, for all its power, could not keep her safe. The answer was not in New York. It was in Philadelphia.

  III

  To revenge the misdeeds of the ruling class, there existed in the Middle Ages in Germany a secret tribunal called the Vehmgericht. If a red cross was seen marked on a house, people knew that its owner was doomed by the Vehm. All the houses of Europe are now marked with the mysterious red cross. History is the judge; its executioner, the proletariat.

  —Karl Marx

  Arensberg, some two years later, thought he discerned a pattern in Duchamp’s work. “I get the impression,” he wrote, “when I look at our paintings of yours from the point of view of their chronological sequence, of the successive moves in a game of chess.” Duchamp readily agreed to the analogy and wondered, “But when will I administer checkmate or will I be mated?”

  —Alice Goldfarb Marquis, Marcel Duchamp

  52

  Outside a diner in Herald Square, an express bus idled at the curb, a string of passengers waiting to board. Unlike the other travelers, who were shoving packs and suitcases into the cargo hold, Maddy carried nothing but a purse. As the line inched forward, she found herself standing before the driver, a massive figure in a crimson parka. Pointing to the bus, she asked, “Is this Philadelphia?”

  “No, ma’am. This is New York. Don’t you know where you are?” A flash of white teeth signaled that he was joking. “Sure, ma’am, this is Philadelphia. You got a ticket for me?”

  “I don’t have a ticket,” Maddy said. “I’d like to buy one, please. One way only.”

  “Fifteen dollars.” The driver waited as she fished the bills from her wallet, then gave her a slip of paper in exchange. “You doing okay?”

  Maddy felt his gaze coming to rest on her right temple, where a large dark bruise had formed. “I’m fine.”

  Looking away, she mounted the steps of the bus, moving down the aisle to an empty row. As she took a seat, arms aching from swinging the shovel, it seemed to Maddy that the other passengers were staring at her.

  The driver slid behind the wheel, the doors closing with a hy
draulic hiss. As they turned onto Ninth Avenue, shouldering their way downtown, Maddy looked out the window and tried to tell herself what she knew for sure.

  First, Ethan was dead. The man at the apartment had carried Ethan’s phone, and had let himself into the building with his keys. Maddy could imagine all too clearly what had happened. After their argument, Ethan had gone looking for something, pausing only to leave her a note. Whatever he had been looking for, he had found it. Or, more likely, it had found him.

  Which brought her to the second point. The Rosicrucians, or something close to them, were real. She didn’t know if they were exactly what she and Ethan had conceived, but they had been watching her at least since the night of the heist. They were real enough to follow her. And they were real enough to kill.

  This, then, was the crucial point. She could never go home. The man at the apartment had recognized her. She had seen it in his face. If he didn’t come after her a second time, someone else would. Perhaps someone worse. Maddy had already taken out her phone to call Powell about this, but before she could dial, she had been brought up short by uncertainty over what she could possibly say.

  Because this was about more than one man. Even if the police caught her attacker, they would only send her home again. And even if she walked away, turning her back on all Rosicrucians, real or imagined, the day would inevitably come when she would find the thief from the mansion waiting at her door. She had no doubt of this. And this meant that the only way out was to destroy their secret itself, to expose and explode it until there was nothing left to hide.

  Which brought her to Philadelphia. For the moment, at least, she was safe. Nobody knew where she was. And it was only now, when she was free and unobserved, that she could follow her argument to its logical conclusion.

  Duchamp’s final secret was in the installation. To find out what Ethan had been killed to protect, she had to see it in person. Despite what she had concluded about its intended solution, she hoped that it was something she would see at once, now that her eyes were prepared. Once she had been to the installation, and was ready to reveal its secrets, she would call Powell, from the steps of the museum itself if necessary. But if she wasn’t able to see it with her eyes alone—

  Before she could finish this line of thought, which hinted at something monstrous, it was cut off by a vibration against her hip. Taking the phone from her purse, she looked at the display. It was Lermontov.

  She answered it. On the other end of the line, Lermontov sounded troubled. “I’m glad I could reach you. Are you all right?”

  Maddy took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking. “Yes, I’m fine. What is it?”

  “There’s something I need to show you. It involves our discussion from the other day. I’ve been reviewing my client list, and I’ve found something strange. You were right. The Rosicrucians are real—”

  His words filled her with an almost painful sense of gratitude. Until now, she hadn’t known how desperately she wanted to avoid facing this final outrage by herself. “What did you find?”

  “I’d rather not discuss it over the phone,” Lermontov said. “It might even be best if we met away from the gallery. Would it be possible for me to see you at home? I’ve spoken with Ethan, your colleague, and he indicated that he might be able to meet you there as well—”

  Maddy opened her mouth, then closed it. A sudden flowering of paranoia made it impossible to speak. Up ahead, the entrance to the Holland Tunnel loomed like the maw of a whale.

  “I’m going out to Boston for a few days,” Maddy said, choosing her words carefully. “Don’t worry about me. I just need time to think.” She looked out at the street. “I’m going into a tunnel. I can’t talk for much longer.”

  Without waiting for a reply, she hung up the phone. As she slid it back into her purse, the bus entered the tunnel, the sound of traffic deepening to a roar as they passed through the tube, which was lit by a strange fluorescence.

  Carried along by the bus, she felt like a bullet in the barrel of a gun. It was two hours to Philadelphia. Maddy closed her eyes, searching for that part of herself that was unwavering and cold. Instead, she pressed her head against the window, feeling the glass vibrate against her skull, and cried. It was too late.

  53

  On the refrigerator in Ethan’s kitchen, nestled among a skyline of other bottles, stood a fifth of vodka, halfway full, of a brand more famous for its typography than for the quality of its contents. At the moment, Sharkovsky was not inclined to be choosy. He seized the bottle’s slippery neck in one hand and took it into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

  Unscrewing the cap, he sucked down some of the alcohol. Without swallowing, he swirled it around in his mouth, ignoring the ensuing pulses of pain, and spat it into the sink. A stream of pinkish liquid went down the drain, along with a few white fragments. He took another mouthful, rinsed again, and spat a second time. Less pink. A third time, and it was almost clear.

  Satisfied, he set the bottle on the toilet tank and opened the medicine cabinet. A vial of prescription painkillers caught his eye. He shook out two pills and swallowed them. Pocketing the vial, he closed the cabinet, his face swinging into view on the hinged mirror.

  What he saw was not reassuring. There were shallow cuts on his forehead and temples where the sunglasses had broken, and yellow bruises had formed on his jaw and the side of his face. Taking a wad of toilet tissue, he inserted it into his mouth and bit down. His good eye, which had been as glassy as that of a fish, grew watery, then regained some of its customary brightness.

  Sharkovsky left the bathroom. He cursed his weakness and age, sensing that he had to counteract it with an act of sympathetic magic. It would require blood. And he knew exactly whose blood it should be.

  A glance at the clock forced him to get moving. He had been unconscious for more than forty minutes. His nostrils were packed with blood and snot, making him whistle and wheeze as he looked around the room. The laptop went under his arm. After a moment’s consideration, he took the vodka as well.

  Outside, his truck was parked at the corner. Sharkovsky opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel, tossing the laptop onto the seat beside him. He had just inserted the key into the ignition when his phone rang.

  It was Lermontov. “The girl is leaving town. Have you been to her house yet?”

  “No. She was here.” Speaking as quickly as possible, he told the gallery owner what had happened. As he spoke, he saw that there was no way to describe the incident without looking like a fool.

  Lermontov’s voice hardened. “We need to find her. She said she was going to Boston, but that may have been a lie. Was there any indication at all of what she was doing at the apartment?”

  “If there was, I burned it,” Sharkovsky said. “Up in smoke, like you asked. Except—” He glanced at the laptop on the passenger’s seat. “The computer. I have it here. Let me look.”

  He opened the laptop. With so many transactions occurring online, he had long since been obliged to learn something about computers. Going to the menu of recent files, he found nothing of interest. Without a wireless signal, he couldn’t connect to the web, but was still able to view a list of recently visited pages. His attention was drawn at once to the two addresses at the top.

  “Philadelphia,” Sharkovsky said. “Bus schedule. The Philadelphia Museum of Art.”

  “To see Étant Donnés.” Lermontov fell briefly silent. “Fine. If you leave now, you can get there first. Sit on the museum until she appears. Don’t show your face again until this is resolved.”

  “All right,” Sharkovsky said. “It’s done. I will call you again from Philadelphia.”

  He hung up and pulled away from the curb. Turning at the intersection, he headed south, performing a mental survey of his faculties, like a pilot checking his instruments before takeoff. The ache in his jaw was subsiding, but the pain in his eye was as maddening as ever.

  In time, he came to a ramp that took him onto the
expressway. For an instant, as he entered the stream of traffic, he contemplated turning around. There was a hint of insanity in following the girl all the way to Philadelphia. Even if he picked up her trail at the museum, it would not be easy to take care of her there. Far better, he thought, to turn back while he still could.

  As he reached the bridge, however, he understood that he had to make her suffer. In London, he would be nothing but a name. If he wanted to be feared, he had to resolve this situation in a way that silenced any questions.

  Caught up in these thoughts, he did not notice the car that passed through the toll gate a second after he did, following him onto the bridge. It had tracked him faithfully from Brooklyn, keeping a block’s distance at all times.

  In the car, Ilya glanced at his fuel gauge. He had not expected the vor to travel so far. With every mile, the chances of his success, which had not been great in the first place, grew increasingly remote.

  An hour ago, when Sharkovsky pulled over in Brooklyn, after making a brief stop at a convenience store, Ilya had been forced to keep going, since there were no other spaces available. Driving past with his head turned away, he had circled the block and doubled back. When he returned, the pickup had still been there, but Sharkovsky had been gone. Since none of the houses seemed more likely than any other, he had seen no choice but to park and wait, hoping that the old man would reappear.

  A few minutes later, he had been startled by the appearance of another familiar face. From outside his line of sight, a girl had come running around the corner. For a second, their eyes had locked, and he had recognized her. Before he could approach, she had disappeared. And another hour had passed before Sharkovsky, freshly bruised, had returned to the truck.

  Now the truck passed under the central tower of the bridge. As Ilya followed, ten lengths behind, he tried to make sense of what he had seen. The appearance of the girl from the mansion, whose face he remembered well, could not be a coincidence. Sharkovsky, he saw, had been ordered to silence her, but somehow she had escaped. Now the old man was tracking her again.