An Artful Assassin in Amsterdam

by Michael Grant

  OK, not the most eloquent statement but baby, it worked, because now the Vermeer crowd was all looking away, and all at the same time. As the drone skimmed along the more ambitious or athletic folks tried to leap in the air and bat it down. So much the better: look away, look away! Follow the drone! Listen to the crazy person’s wild threats.

  Did anyone see that I had launched the drone? Three did, a bored teenaged boy and two of the elderly Japanese. And what were they going to do about it? Fuck-all, because they were not guards, just random civilians, and I was a crazy old man in a wheelchair.

  I tapped the app and put the drone on hover. It hung in the air maybe twenty feet from The Night Watch, right where it could so easily dive right into the massive painting.

  And this was the beauty part: the drone wouldn’t have so much as knocked away a fleck of paint. It was a plastic toy, it weighed ounces not pounds, it moved at a few miles an hour, it was not a bullet. It was, in short, entirely harmless. And entirely captivating, especially to the eager heroes who leapt from atop benches in wild and awkward efforts to knock it down. Someone was going to break a leg and I wasn’t even going to feel guilty. It’s not my fault people are stupid.

  I stood up. (A miracle! I can walk!) I took six steps, lifted my foot over the stretched wire, and laid my hands on the gilt frame of Jewess at the Loom.

  I lifted it up off its hooks. It wasn’t heavy. I rushed back to the wheelchair, laid the Jewess on my lap, and threw the blanket over it. It was not an effective disguise; it was pretty clear that something rectangular was under that plaid wool. But it was enough for my purpose.

  ‘Was machst du?’

  That was from a frowning, worried woman whose expression was somewhere between thinking I was a senile old fool and a suspicion that the fact that I’d leapt from the wheelchair after clearly launching a drone suggested that just maybe, just maybe, I was neither senile nor old. Certainly not crippled.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said to her in my best Voice of Authority. I drew a wallet from an inner pocket and flashed a print-off of a police ID I’d found online. It was an ID for Jim Gordon from the Gotham City police, but at a glance it looked official enough. ‘Be calm. I’m with the police.’

  Only a moron would buy that, but God bless the Germans, they will defer to authority.

  I turned the wheelchair, pushed the joystick and sped away, out of the alcove, away from the embattled Night Watch, straight toward the swinging glass doors separating the Gallery of Honor and the Great Hall, and plowed right through them. Very Hollywood except for the low speed and total absence of shattering glass or explosions.

  Behind me I heard the German woman switch to tentative, plaintive English. ‘This man has taken a painting. Is this correct?’ Given the state of things in the Gallery of Honor it would take her five minutes just to get anyone’s attention.

  Then, just ahead, a guard was rushing through the Great Hall toward the Gallery of Honor, which would bring him right by me. So I gave him my best panic face and shouted, ‘I think there’s a bomb! There’s a bomb!’

  The guard ran past, through the doors. In a few seconds he might click on the fact that I had something under my blanket but not yet he hadn’t, not yet.

  At top wheelchair speed – about eight miles an hour for this model – I raced through the Great Hall, past tourists who hadn’t yet heard that something was going on. Benches and paintings to my right. Stained glass soaring above me on the left. Old man in a wheelchair, look out, step aside!

  ‘Someone has attacked The Night Watch!’ I cried, like Paul Revere yelling about the British coming. ‘Terrorists!’

  That sent the Great Hall crowd scurrying, some heading down the stairs to safety, others milling around and muttering, and still others running toward the Gallery of Honor while pulling their phones out to capture the excitement for their Instagram. This left zero people to chase me.

  Three floors down, down at the basement level where the cloakroom was, the sugar and nitrates should be – had damn well better be – billowing smoke.

  Because the thing was, all the automated security doors could be locked at the first sign of a robbery or vandalism … but you can’t lock doors when there’s a fire. Priority One: safely evacuate the building. There are countries where the security forces might make a decision to save the paintings and to hell with the lives of people breathing smoke, but the Netherlands was not one of those countries.

  Nice Dutch people do not lock doors when there’s fire.

  If there was a fire.

  I sped along, heedless, literally shoving people out of the way and yelling, ‘Someone’s attacking The Night Watch!’ and the always popular, ‘Fire! Fire!’

  Past Frans Hals’s portraits of a husband and a wife, the man world-weary and not impressed, the woman staring bleakly.

  The next tiny alcove was empty of people and lacked security cameras. Perfect. I threw off the blanket, stood up again and fumbled at hyper speed with the zippered, black nylon art bag. I manhandled the Jewess into the second bag, the putty-gray bag within the T-Mobile bag and walked on, leaving the chair to block the narrow doorway behind me.

  By now the Bluetooth speaker would have been discovered and turned off. The drone, far beyond the reach of my control, had probably been batted down and everyone in the Gallery of Honor – with the exception of the German woman – would be thinking it was all a tasteless prank or political stunt. They’d be laughing nervously.

  And, suddenly, like an answer to a prayer, the alarm blew, loud ringing, in bursts. Fire!

  Excellent!

  Then I saw him. He was behind me, just beyond my strategically parked wheelchair.

  Willy Pete!

  TWENTY-TWO

  ‘Fuck!’ I yelped, with singular lack of originality.

  We made eye contact and that was a mistake because I could see mystification turn to sudden, shocked recognition.

  ‘You!’ Willy Pete cried.

  I ran, clutching the black zipper bag, keeping the pink T-Mobile logo turned outward. Willy clambered over the wheelchair and ran after me. I had maybe fifty feet on him. I ran full-out, as fast as I could while holding a painting into the openness of room 2.9, which was populated by glass display cases holding smashable objects including a very nice replica of a sailing ship.

  I had my second Bluetooth speaker in my jacket pocket. I had practiced finding the switch without looking and I turned it on then sent it skidding and bouncing across the polished floor.

  Now it was down to how well Willy has cased the Rijks because there are just three ways out of room 2.9. There’s the door I’d come in through. There was the door that led to more galleries. And there was the door that led to the cul-de-sac of room 2.8.

  If Willy has done his job and properly cased the museum he’d know 2.8 was a dead-end, and he’d guess that I knew it too. In which case the logical move was for Willy to assume I’d run on through the galleries, because that’s what a fleeing man would do; a fleeing man did not run into a dead-end, and I was pretty much the picture of a fleeing man.

  I ran into room 2.8.

  I opened my phone. I hit the second Bluetooth speaker which started yelling, ‘There’s a bomb! Run, there’s a bomb!’, the sound of panic filling room 2.9. If Willy wanted to hang around room 2.9 and explain why he was near a speaker yelling threats, that was up to him, but I doubted he’d linger.

  Room 2.8 was large, not Gallery of Honor large, but large enough that it was partly divided by a wooden portico set into an abbreviated partition wall. That didn’t matter. What did matter was that there was a security camera mounted in the corner to my left as I entered, and it was aimed so as to scan the room.

  I heard footsteps go racing past, back in 2.9. Willy was doing the logical thing. Good boy. He was also talking loudly, presumably into a phone. ‘Fucker’s heading south down the east side, second floor! Repeat. Target is …’

  I moved well into room 2.8 into camera view. There were two exit doors, t
he one I’d come in through, and a second one just a dozen or so feet to my left. Both were security doors with large overhangs, almost like shelves about two feet deep and eight feet high.

  The camera to my left wouldn’t see me and the only other camera was way down at the far end of the room pointed my way. That was the camera I was playing to.

  I tore off my duffer’s cap and pulled a blue stocking cap from eight my bag. I skinned off my jacket and dropped it on the floor. I did all this while being watched by an older man in the blue blazer of a guard. Was he deaf? Did he not hear the speaker in the next room shouting about bombs? He seemed puzzled. He moved hesitantly, not quite sure how he was to deal with me.

  The public address system came on suddenly, making me jump.

  Guests of the Museum we are experiencing security issues, please remain in place and remain calm.

  ‘They’re attacking The Night Watch!’ I told the guard, but he didn’t move. At first. Then he started toward me and I saw him twist his head sideways a bit to talk into his microphone – not that anyone in the security center had spare time to listen, probably. But I couldn’t have it.

  I stepped into him and shoved the edge of my zippered painting up under his chin. He staggered back, tripped and fell. He was not unconscious and he was not on his back which was a bad combination for me. I dropped the Vermeer, straddled the elderly gentleman, and pistoned one knee onto his chest. It wouldn’t kill him, I hoped, but it knocked the last of the fight out of him. I said, ‘Sorry,’ and rolled him onto his belly so he was looking away.

  I leapt to the second exit door, the one so close to the security camera that it was out of view. There I had some quick moving and shuffling involving the putty-gray bag to do, and some standing on tiptoes, then ran back into room 2.9 clutching a black, zippered art bag with the glaring pink logo.

  Room 2.9 still echoed to the cry of, ‘Fire! Fire!’ No Willy. No guards that I could see. No people at all. The cameras would record that I had run through 2.9 into 2.8 carrying a T-Mobile zipper bag just the right size for concealing a Vermeer, had disabled a guard in full view of the camera, and just fifteen seconds later had reappeared before the cameras in room 2.9 still carrying the black and pink zipper bag.

  I went back the way I’d come and found my abandoned wheelchair which Willy Pete in his eagerness to get at me had pushed just far enough to let me slip by without the need to climb or vault.

  Into the Great Hall I went, not running now, just walking briskly, turned into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, flanked on both sides by confused patrons escaping a bomb or a fire or a crazy person or something, they weren’t sure what, they just knew they’d seen about enough art for one day.

  A total of two minutes and thirteen seconds had passed since I’d snatched the painting off the wall. People are slow, bless them. And I am not.

  I attracted no special attention as I fell in behind a gaggle of Spaniards noisily clattering down the steps. Down and down, but then, pushing against the tide, coming up the stairs came a man, a fit, serious-looking man I’d never seen before who ran right past me, then stopped, did a classic double-take, spun and yelled, ‘You there!’

  I stopped as well.

  ‘Yes?’

  I closed the distance between us. If I have learned anything from reading Jack Reacher books, it is to consider the balance of an opponent. My opponent was half-turned, one foot on a higher step, one foot lower, all the weight on that lower foot.

  I stumbled convincingly, fell to my knees right at his feet. My zippered art bag fell and slid down the steps. I wrapped one hand around the weight-bearing ankle of Mr Fitness, and yanked back hard.

  He fell, but man, he was quick! He softened his landing like a well-trained martial artist by slamming his hands back to take the impact. He’d be up in a flash but I already had my little spray bottle of hot sauce and grain alcohol out. I pumped frantically as he writhed, getting good coverage on his face.

  ‘Motherfucker!’ he yelled. So: American.

  He yelled and he got to his feet, just one eye open, streaming tears, and blindly missed a step and tried to catch himself by outrunning his fall. Might even have worked, had I not given him a helpful shove which sent him sprawling face-first down the worn stone.

  I snatched up my zipper bag, leapt over him and plowed ahead, down and down, occasionally yelling, ‘Fire!’ by way of explanation. I shed the blue stocking cap I had on, pulled on a plaid flat cap, slipped off my outer shirt, and debouched back on the lower level which was wonderfully, gloriously smoky.

  ‘Fire!’ I cried again in evident panic and raced for the exit already crammed with people having the same thought that this would be an excellent time to GTFO of there.

  Concealed by the crowd I collapsed my art bag – this required some brute force resulting in a bag that looked gratifyingly like a woman’s purse.

  The guards at the door weren’t searching, they were hurrying, trying to get bodies through the exit as expeditiously as possible. And all at once I was out in the great arcade, cold, damp wind in my face. The balalaika was not playing. The violinists were gaping at all the excitement, as the crowd in the arcade swelled into the hundreds.

  I walked north, toward the street, toward the bridge and the city center beyond. The rain had started again, this time with more vigor, which was all to the good, because rain obscures. Rain makes people hesitate before running out into it.

  Rain, fortunately, does not discourage a well-compensated flash mob and there they were, bless their clueless hearts, twenty people, all carrying identical black zippered art bags emblazoned with the T-Mobile logo, and dancing more or less in unison while singing the T-Mobile jingle.

  I felt rather than saw pursuit, or maybe I was just imagining it, but I plunged straight into the flash mob, twenty people with identical bags. I pretended to dance along for a few steps, looking for pursuit. There were two Dutch patrol cops watching the flash mob and considering whether they had a duty to break it up. Out here on the sodden plaza no one knew that the Rijks was beset by Dutch masters-hating terrorists who might have set fire to the cloakroom.

  If the Rijksmuseum security was really good, really decisive, really quick they would just about now be discovering my smoke bomb, and maybe even starting to realize they’d been duped and robbed. But it would still be too slow, because I was already crossing the wide avenue of the Stadhouderskade, dodging a trolley, plowing heedlessly through the bike lane. The area was an ant colony of commuters and tourists, cars, bikes and the clanging trolley.

  I risked life and limb crossing against lights, was sideswiped by a Dutch woman on a bike who yelled at my retreating back – in English because, well, this was Amsterdam: ‘Hey watch where you go!’

  Onto the bridge, the Museumbrug, with its iron railings lined with pink flowers. I stopped halfway across, breathing hard but still in the dead calm state of mind that often comes to me when I’m engaged in something insane. Praying silently to whatever saints have the job of looking after fools and thieves, I looked over the side.

  And there by God was Milan Smit, my faux Hell’s Angel, lounging in an open boat drinking beer as if there was no rain.

  ‘Hey!’ I yelled.

  He heard me and hit the throttle on the boat’s outboard and came chugging below me.

  I slid the zipper bag over the railing and dropped it into his waiting hands.

  TWENTY-THREE

  My first thought was, Oh my God: it worked.

  My second thought was, Uh-oh: Willy Pete.

  Willy, followed closely by two other guys, one with a splotchy red face sparkling with Tabasco tears, were closing in. I didn’t try to run. They were all in better shape than I was. Besides, I didn’t need to.

  ‘You!’ Willy Pete snarled as he and his boys hemmed me in, doing the chest-push and generally intending to terrify me.

  ‘Problem?’ I asked innocently, hoping my panting and my hammering heart wouldn’t turn it to soprano.

>   ‘Problem?’ Thug number two had a lisp. It seemed like not the time to suggest a good speech therapist. ‘You stole a fucking painting!’

  ‘Did I?’ I theatrically patted my body as if such a thing might be concealed on my person.

  I saw a metallic flash. Willy had his stiletto out, but hidden by our tight-packed bodies. ‘You have three seconds to live, asshole. Give up the Jewess.’

  Words that had been spoken in this city before, albeit in German.

  ‘Go ahead. Stab me Willy Pete, aka Carl Willard, who moonlights for the CIA.’

  I was not at all sure that would work. Willy Pete’s eyes narrowed and his compadres exchanged worried looks.

  ‘You could die choking on that information,’ he growled.

  ‘I could die of an embolism,’ I said. I was not as scared as I probably should have been. But I just didn’t see them murdering me on a busy bridge in broad daylight, especially since they were sure I was the guy with the painting they wanted. But I thought I’d best make that point explicitly, just in case.

  ‘Kill me and the Vermeer is gone,’ I said. ‘That’s a lot to pass up just for the pleasure of stabbing me.’

  ‘Listen, smart guy, if I don’t get the Vermeer, you will die. Don’t have any doubt about that. Now or later, those are your choices.’

  ‘Well, I’m going to have to pick, later. And as for later, Willy, here’s what I’ve got on you. You lost your wallet, didn’t you?’

  If looks could kill …

  ‘Yeah, I have it,’ I said, getting into the whole noirishness of the back-and-forth. ‘I have pictures of your driver’s license and your credit cards, all safe in the cloud. I know about the safe house in Langley. I know you’ve been promised a hell of a lot of money to steal the Vermeer, and I know the guy who hired you is Daniel Isaac.’ I watched his face. He had the relaxed gaze of a hawk staring down a mouse. I waited for a flicker. And there it was: on the mention of money. I turned to Lisp, the henchman not weeping and wiping his eyes, and said, ‘How much of that fifty million bucks do you two clowns get?’