The Icon Thief (16 page)

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.

M
addy 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.

I
n 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.”