The Icon Thief (24 page)

Rounding the corner, he saw a pyramid of tiles stacked against the plywood fence. He climbed it, tiles falling and shattering, and seized the upper edge of the barrier. Splinters bit into the palms of his hands as he pulled himself over, landing badly in an alley by a church.

When he saw where he was, he had no choice but to laugh, two muffled detonations blooming in his lungs. At One Police Plaza, a hundred yards away, officers were milling around the concrete block of police headquarters, an inverted ziggurat covered by a grid of windows. He did not think that anyone had noticed his sudden appearance, but knew that he could not remain here for long.

Ilya limped around the front of the church. A sign pointed him toward a gift shop in the basement, which could be reached by an outside set of stairs. Descending, he entered through a side door and found himself in an empty auditorium. Another sign pointed to the men’s room.

Going into the bathroom, he locked the door, his
ankle sending out periodic calls of pain. His jacket and shirt, soaked with sweat, went onto the countertop. Opening his bag, he withdrew the tube with the painting and slung it across his shoulders. He put on his shirt and Windbreaker, checking to make sure that the harness was invisible, and stuffed everything else into the garbage.

As he worked, he thought of what Sharkovsky had said. It had never been his intention to run, only to bide his time until the right moment came, but now he saw that it was no longer possible to wait.

He watched himself in the mirror until he was satisfied that he no longer looked like a hunted animal. When his hands were steady again, he went out into the basement. Then he headed back to the Five Points.

W
hen the gallerina unlocked the door of the Lermontov Gallery, Maddy brushed past her without a word, heading for the office at the rear. The gallerina followed close behind, heels clicking against the floor, protesting this invasion of her sacred space. Maddy tuned her out. She couldn’t remember if the gallery had a security guard, but supposed that it probably did.

Lermontov was at his desk, going over a stack of index cards with a blue pencil. As she entered, he set the cards aside. “Yes, my dear?”

Maddy shut the door, stranding the gallerina in the hallway. “I need to talk to you.”

After what seemed like the briefest of internal debates, Lermontov rose from his desk, went to the door, and opened it. The gallerina was waiting outside, a look of indignation on her perfect face. “It’s all right,” Lermontov said. “I’ve been expecting her. You can go back to work.”

Closing the door, he turned to Maddy. “I was wondering when I might see you again. How can I help you?”

Maddy handed him the tabloid that she was carrying. The paper was turned to an inside article, which she had
seen entirely by accident, about yesterday’s altercation at the courthouse. Below the headline was a screen capture from a security video, showing the man who had assaulted a guard and fled the scene. The image was grainy and blurred, but she had recognized his face at once.

“This is the thief from the party,” Maddy said, knowing that Lermontov would have heard the entire story by now. “The press hasn’t made the connection yet, but I know what I saw. And if what happened at the courthouse is any indication, he’s still trying to move the painting.”

Lermontov studied the article, handling the tabloid gingerly, as if he had been given a baby to hold. “What makes you say that?”

“It’s the only reason I can see for going to the courthouse at all. It’s an ideal place for a meeting or exchange. There are metal detectors and security guards, so you know you aren’t walking into an ambush. But it didn’t end well. Which makes me think that he still has the study.”

The gallery owner handed back the paper. “So what, exactly, do you need from me?”

“If I can learn why the painting was targeted, I can find out who ordered the theft. So far, the best theory I have is the one that you mentioned the other day.” Maddy paused. “I don’t know if you were serious about the Rosicrucians. But if this is real, you need to tell me.”

Lermontov glanced away. Following his eyes, she saw that a velvet curtain had been draped across a wall of his office. When he spoke again, he seemed tired. “You mustn’t overestimate my resources. I’m an old man with my own share of private notions. But if I’ve succeeded in this business at all, it’s because I have an eye for market forces that no one else has observed. Look here, for example.”

He went over to the curtain. With a gesture that struck her as more dramatic than was strictly necessary, he drew it aside.

“
The Origin of the World
,” Lermontov said. “Not the original painting, of course, but a copy by René Magritte. This copy appeared in an obscure gynecological publication in the late sixties, and was believed lost, until I found it in a collection in Berlin. Based on what you’ve told me about Archvadze, it’s the kind of thing he might find interesting. I tried to call him about it the other day, but haven’t been able to reach him. It seems that he has disappeared entirely—”

Maddy looked at the canvas, trying to decide if any of this made sense. It was a replica of a painting by Gustave Courbet, which itself was one of the more notorious works in the history of art. It showed a woman with her legs spread, her genitals depicted with an almost pornographic attention to detail. Her body was draped in a white cloth, her face unseen, so that the eye was drawn inexorably to the thatch of her pubic hair and the slit of her labia. “So just because he bought the study, you thought he might be in the market for another headless nude?”

“There’s more to it than that. It’s generally agreed that Duchamp modeled the pose in
Étant Donnés
on this painting. And both works are visible manifestations of a secret current in art history.”

“I’m tired of your secret currents,” Maddy said. “Show me something real.”

Lermontov drew the curtain, hiding the picture from view. “There’s no real mystery. I have a theory about why Archvadze is buying, and I can give him what he wants. I’m not an occultist, but if a major buyer is collecting
works for esoteric reasons, I see no reason why I shouldn’t profit from it.”

“But I still don’t understand why a man like Archvadze would care about the occult.”

Lermontov returned to his desk, waving her into a chair. “He’s an oligarch. And what do oligarchs want? Power. I’m not talking about mystical power, you understand, but the most useful kind of political power. Secret power. The only kind that lasts.” He glanced at the curtain again, as if he could see past its velvet veil. “I know it seems hard to believe. The evidence that anything like the Rosicrucians ever existed is extremely tenuous. For the most part, it rests on a few old rumors—”

Maddy sat down. “Like the manifestoes. Which could have been forgeries or hoaxes.”

“Or wishful thinking. Yes. But there was another society in Germany, in the same region where the Rosicrucians later appeared, that really did exist. I’m talking about the Holy Vehm.”

Maddy recalled that Tanya had mentioned this group in passing. “The Vehmgericht.”

“So you’ve heard of them.” Lermontov smiled faintly, as if recalling something from his own past. “Secret tribunals tried and executed criminals in the absence of more orderly systems of law. They met in the forest, under a hawthorn tree. The condemned man was either hung by the neck or cut in two, so that the air would pass between the halves of his body—”

The image of a woman lying in a field, cut in half at the waist, ran briefly through her mind. “So where do the Rosicrucians come in?”

“It’s no coincidence that the Holy Vehm used a red
cross to mark the doors of their victims. When it became too dangerous for them to continue under the old dispensation, they resurfaced under a new name. And their legacy was of interest to many men. Do you know Proudhon? He was the first man to call himself an anarchist, and was obsessed with the Holy Vehm. For a time, he considered reviving it as a form of people’s justice. These plans never came to pass, but it’s likely that he discussed them with his closest confidant. It was, of course, Gustave Courbet.”

Maddy’s eyes returned to the drawn curtain. “Courbet and Proudhon were friends?”

“Is it so surprising? Courbet was a leading member of the radical scene in Paris. And it was their shared interest in these underground movements, as well as the occult, that inspired
The Origin of the World
. It’s a curious fact that this painting, as well as its copies, has always been displayed behind a curtain or screen, like a parody of the Holy of Holies. What’s the origin of the world? See for yourself. It isn’t God. It’s what an alchemist would call the bride.”

Maddy thought of Walter Arensberg, who had seen a vulva in the gravel strewn on a cathedral floor. “That’s your reading. But why should anyone else interpret it in the same way?”

“The best way to discover a painting’s true meaning is to see who paid money for it. The original version passed through the hands of many collectors, and was even seized for a time by the Soviet army, but in the end, it was sold to Jacques Lacan, the psychoanalyst, who hid it behind a sliding panel. His wife, Sylvia, had previously been married to a charming fellow named Georges Bataille.
And if you want proof that Lacan bought the painting for esoteric reasons, you should look into what Bataille was doing before the war.”

A flashbulb went off inside Maddy’s head. “You’re talking about Acéphale.”

Lermontov smiled. “Very good. I always knew that you paid attention in class.”

Maddy, thinking back to graduate school, wondered if the impulse that led Lermontov to indulge in these speculations was also the urge that had caused him to reshape his own life, transforming himself from a drugstore heir into a worldly dispenser of wisdom. “But I still don’t understand why Archvadze would care, unless it has something to do with the Rose Revolution.”

“The rose is only a symbol,” Lermontov said. “I’m more concerned with what a man must do to effect change in that part of the world. One secret society is often built on the ruins of another, even if they have nothing else in common. And if I were trying to start a revolution in Georgia, I might find it useful to learn more about the forces that were already in place.”

“But what could a collector learn from Duchamp that he couldn’t learn elsewhere?”

“Great artists are sensitive instruments, tuned to the subtlest currents of their time. If Archvadze is as intelligent as he seems, he’ll seek insight from them, not from more mediocre minds. There’s a reason, you see, why his assistant wears red heptagrams on his cufflinks. They’re an air force roundel, yes, but they’re also the seal of the Ordo Templi Orientis.”

Lermontov rose and led her to the entrance of the gallery. “Bataille was another such instrument. Once you’ve
considered this carefully, come see me again. And if you need anything else—”

“I’ll be all right,” Maddy said quickly. “I’ve had some bad moments, but things are under control.”

Lermontov smiled. “Control is the easy part. There’s no shortage of ambitious young women with veins of ice.” He glanced at the gallerina at the front desk, who was typing something with her headphones on. “The hard part, as Bataille knew, is knowing when to embrace the irrational. If we’d had more time together, I might have taught you this, too. There’s always a place for you here, if you want it—”

A few seconds later, before she had a chance to say goodbye, Maddy found herself on the sidewalk. It struck her, belatedly, that Lermontov had been offering her a job. A week ago, she would have dismissed the idea at once, but these days, the prospect of returning to the gallery was disconcertingly seductive.

In any case, there were more important matters to consider. Lermontov had given her an idea. There were two forces at work here. One was the art market; the other, the occult. For the most part, these groups occupied separate worlds, but there were areas where they might intersect. And it was precisely on that common border, Maddy told herself as she pulled out her cell phone, that the collector she was seeking was most likely to appear.

Tanya, to her credit, seemed to know precisely what Maddy had in mind. “Acéphale is easy,” Tanya said after Maddy had explained the idea. “I can pull together the material tonight.”

“Good,” Maddy said into her phone. As she went up
the block, the distant prospect of the park reminded her of another possibility. “One more thing. I’d like you to look into Monte Verità. Have you heard of it?”

“Sounds vaguely familiar. Some kind of health resort in Germany, wasn’t it?”

“Actually, it’s in Switzerland. It’s only a hunch, but it might be useful. I’ll give you a call later to tell you more.”

After exchanging goodbyes, Maddy hung up. She was about to head for the subway, her mind already turning to this new plan of action, when she saw a familiar figure standing across the street.

She sucked in air at the sight. It was the man with the blond ponytail. She had nearly managed to convince herself that her stalker had been nothing but her imagination, and seeing him now, in daylight, seemed like an active act of defiance. Staring at his face, she felt, not fear, but an unexpected sense of anger.

Opening her purse, she removed her camera. Before the man across the street could react, she took his picture. He blinked, his brow creasing with dismay, and turned aside, limping rapidly up the sidewalk. She had intended to let him go, but instead, she found herself running after him, pushing aside the shoppers and tourists who were blocking her way.

“Hey,” Maddy said, her voice rising. “Who are you? Why are you following me?”

The man glanced back, his face unreadable, but did not slow his pace. A second later, he rounded a corner onto Columbus Circle. She followed, impeded by a sea of bodies. When she reached the intersection, he had vanished.

T
he following day, a clerk at the hotel recognized Ilya’s face on the news. An hour after the tip was called in, a tactical response team was assembled in the stairwell of the hotel’s seventh floor, along with Powell and Wolfe, who felt hemmed in by agents in hardshell vests.