City of Lost Dreams (8 page)

NINE

S
ince Sarah had not wanted to leave the box unattended in Alessandro’s apartment, she had spent the afternoon flipping through Vienna guidebooks and more or less babysitting the model ship. She had found out what she could about it: a sixteenth-century “galleon” possibly owned by good old Rudy II. This object was right up his alley. Fully automated, it had once been able to trundle down the length of a table, playing music from the organ on its hull, the toy sailors in the crow’s nest striking hammers to announce the time, electors processing on the deck before the seated emperor, and cannons firing smoke.

She had found nothing on the Internet about the galleon having been stolen, which was reassuring. She tried to come up with legitimate reasons why a nanobiologist would have a treasure from the British Museum in her fridge, but quickly gave up. For Pols’s sake, she would do as she was told without asking questions.

Sarah had spent some time studying Renato’s Facebook profile. His picture was of a bust of Apollo, which Sarah hoped meant he had a sense of humor. Of course, that didn’t mean he would be okay in helping her with trafficked goods. At least she didn’t have to worry about Alessandro, who had neurology rotations at the hospital and wouldn’t be home until late.

So Sarah read and looked at pictures of Vienna’s tourist attractions. The guidebooks, she noticed, stayed clear of the city’s most recent history (no Hitler tours) and instead focused on the glories of Imperial Vienna, the Secession and Jugendstil, the café culture, the music. Sarah had already noticed that nearly every shop window in the city contained images of either Klimt’s
The Kiss
or a portrait of Empress “Sissi,” the melancholic, anorexic, and ultimately assassinated wife of Emperor Franz Joseph.

It was dark when Sarah arrived at Maria-Theresien-Platz, another grand testament to those ultimate size queens, the Hapsburgs. Two massive structures with identical Neo-Renaissance façades, the Kunsthistorisches and the Natural History Museum, faced each other across an expanse of formal gardens, complete with fountains and statues. A gigantic monument to Maria Theresia presided in the middle of the
Platz
, with the plump and motherly looking empress holding out one hand as if to say, “Welcome, my dears. Don’t muck up the shrubberies.”

Comfortably settled on a throne atop Corinthian pillars, Maria held in her other hand the Pragmatic Sanction, the document her father, Charles VI, had worked for during his reign, which would secure her succession since there were no male heirs. Maria Theresia would hold on to the throne for forty years, pop out sixteen children (including the next emperor, Joseph II, and one Marie Antoinette), and fight a couple of nasty wars. She was one of the few Hapsburgs who wasn’t inbred, though she had plenty of crazy ideas. Violently anti-Semitic and superstitious.

“Sarah?” Renato greeted her in English. He was a slight, dark-haired man with a long thick scarf wrapped around his neck. Sarah held out her hand and Renato touched her fingers lightly with his gloved hand. Sarah saw that part of his face was covered with a blistering rash.

“My condition is called seborrheic dermatitis and it is not contagious,” he said quickly, in a slightly mechanical tone that let her know he had said this very often. Before she could respond, he pointed with his chin at the statue of Maria Theresia. “One of my favorite monuments in Vienna. She always reminds me of my mother, who sits exactly so in the chair at the salon in Piazza Navona while she’s having her hair done.”

“Does that make you Joseph II?” Sarah smiled.

“No, Marie Antoinette.” Renato laughed. “So, shall we go for a glass of wine and discuss your art-related problem? I have a very boring life so I was really grateful for your message.”

“Actually . . .” said Sarah, who then ran through a creative version of “helping a friend who had been given something she thought had been stolen.”

“I know this is a terrible imposition,” Sarah said, hefting her bag. “And I don’t even know if this thing is real. But if it can be done discreetly, it seems the best thing to do is get it back to the museum it belongs to. If it is the real thing, it’s probably incredibly valuable. At the least, it’s very old.”

“How old?”

“Sixteenth century.”

“Pfft.” Renato made the Italian man’s noise of dismissal. “That’s not so old.” He appeared to think things over for several minutes, then asked, “Do you know where it is supposed to be?”

“The British Museum.”

Renato whistled.

“Show me?”

“I can’t really whip it out in the
Platz
,” said Sarah. “It’s big.” She hefted the BILLA bag. Renato pinched the bridge of his nose, thinking again.

“Okay, here’s the plan.” Renato’s eyes were now twinkling with excitement. “We will go in through the security guard entrance, which actually has the fewest cameras. I will bring Thomas, my favorite guard, a nice espresso. I will introduce you as my friend. Then I will ask if we can use his service elevator, which I am not supposed to do, but he will let me and he won’t search your bag because it will all be very friendly and so forth. You will use your feminine wiles on Thomas. Then we’ll go straight to my tiny office, which is inside the antiquities wing. Everyone in that part of the building will be long gone, and the security guards only patrol outside the wing. They find the inside too spooky, apparently. Or maybe they are afraid of me.”

“Okay, that sounds good. Then what?”

“Then you show me what you have and then we figure out a nice safe place to leave it and then we go get a drink and a nice pasta.”

“Mille grazie,”
said Sarah. “If something goes wrong, act really surprised when they haul a priceless artifact out of my bag.”

“This is so exciting,” Renato said. “Nothing like this ever happens in Vienna. Or maybe just never to me.”

“Sadly,” said Sarah, “things like this happen to me all the time.”

 • • • 

T
he first part of the plan went surprisingly well, though Sarah made no attempt to use feminine wiles on Thomas. It was clear that the man had eyes only for Renato, who made jokes and seemed relaxed, but whose hand shook when he handed the barrel-chested guard the espresso. Sarah thought that the audacity of smuggling “loose” art into a museum might have caught up with his nerves, but in the service elevator Renato admitted that seeing Thomas was pretty much the happiest part of his day, and that he had nursed an enormous crush for several years.

“I look at beauty all day long,” he said. “But, you know, it’s all long-dead beauty. Still, a guy can dream.”

“He obviously likes you,” Sarah said. “Maybe you should—”

“He’s just a nice person,” Renato interrupted. “He’s way too perfect looking to be into someone like me.” The elevator doors opened and Sarah stepped into a twilit ghostly hall. The floor was a beautifully laid out geometric pattern of black and white marble. The ceiling was vaulted and decorated with elaborate stucco designs and paintings. Her nose was flooded by the scent of lavender.

“Holy smokes,” she said. “Is this place . . . perfumed?”

“Piped in the vents.” Renato nodded. “Very subtly. You have a good nose.” He led her across the hall to the antiquities wing, unlocking a door and waving a magnetic card over a sensor. She followed Renato through room after room of busts, cornices, jewelry, small figures, lamps, coins, and pottery. It was a huge collection. Although, Sarah thought, she had hardly visited a museum that didn’t seem to have an enormous amount of Greek and Roman antiquities. Had anything those people touched
not
made it into a museum? Or was it just that if something was made four centuries before Christ, you couldn’t just toss it, even if it was only a comb?

Renato unlocked a small door in the corner of a room filled with sarcophagi and she found herself in a small, book-lined office, just like hers back in Cambridge. Only better organized. And where she kept a silly papier-mâché bust of Beethoven that a friend had made for her, Renato had the bust of Apollo from his Facebook page. Renato saw her admiring it.

“Two thousand years old, and still working it, right?”

She set the BILLA bag on Renato’s desk. “For an antiquities expert this might not seem so impressive, but have a look.” Renato took off his thick gloves and replaced them with a thin fabric pair, textured at the fingertips. She saw that the skin on his bare hands was also peeled and patchy. It looked painful. She complimented him on the gloves.

“I made them myself,” he said, handing her a pair. “Latex and I are not friends. The gods have a terrible sense of humor, bless their hearts.”

Sarah glanced at the gleaming pale curves of Apollo’s face in the corner. Greek and Roman statues, she knew, had originally been painted in bright and lifelike colors. Only time had worn them down to smooth whiteness, rendering them exquisite and remote. Did Renato choose antiquities because things of the past were easier to be around? Or was it like her feelings about music—to be near greatness, to try to understand it, to show it to others, was the thing that gave a point to existence?

“This is like Christmas!” Renato gently cut away the paper and bubble wrap to reveal the galleon. “What a lovely toy. Beautiful craftsmanship.” He bent down to examine the figures on the deck of the ship. “What do you know about it?”

“It was made by a German clockmaker. Rudolf II had it at some point. It’s an automaton, though apparently it doesn’t actually move anymore and the clock, obviously, has run down.”

“Well, it’s fifteen centuries after my period, but it looks authentic. We have Rudolf II’s
Kunstkammer
here, on the other side of the building. This would fit right in.”

“Any ideas on how to get it back to the British Museum?”

“Actually I think it will be quite easy.” Renato grinned. “We just got a crate from them yesterday. Two vases for our January show. I’ll just tell them that this was in the crate, too. Someone obviously packed it by mistake.”

“Will they believe that?”

“Oh, stuff like that happens all the time. Things go missing; they get broken or vandalized. Stolen. Mostly this doesn’t get reported, since it’s always very embarrassing. Once the Brits have it back, they won’t ask a lot of questions. Everyone will just point the finger of blame at someone else.” Sarah’s relief was so intense that she spontaneously hugged Renato, who seemed surprised but pleased.

The galleon would go away, and now Bettina would
have
to help Pols.

“A really big
dish of pasta,” said Sarah. “And a really expensive bottle of wine. You’ve earned it.”

They set about rewrapping the galleon. When Sarah tilted the automaton so Renato could position the plastic, the tip of her finger caught something on the underside of the ship. The hands of the clock face on the prow of the ship swung around, which caused a hidden compartment door to slide open.

“Oh, crap.”

“Did you break it?”

“No. I found something, though.”

Renato came around the desk and peered over her shoulder. “Secret chamber. How cute.”

Sarah tilted the galleon so they could peer inside, and a tiny cannon emerged from the compartment, clicking into place.

“Very cool,” said Sarah, as they both leaned forward.

Ssssssssssss
. The tiny cannon directly in front of their faces released a cloud of spray, exactly like an aerosol can. They both jerked back, only just not dropping the galleon. Sarah looked at Renato, whose eyes were streaming. Her own felt like they had just dilated to three times their normal size.

“Gesù Cristo!”
Renato reached for a tissue, coughing. “What was that?”

Sarah wiped her face, which was lightly misted, and sniffed the back of her hand.

“Please tell me that we did not just get sprayed with anthrax.”

Sarah shook her head. She examined the cannon carefully, but it appeared to have shot its entire wad. She brought her hands to her nose.

“It smells like . . . amber.”

She laughed. Renato laughed, too. Soon they had to sit down they were laughing so hard.

“Wait,” Sarah spluttered. “Why are we laughing?”

“I . . . don’t know.” Renato flapped his hands helplessly. “We should be screaming!”

This made them laugh even harder.

“Are we high?” Renato gasped. “Did we just do sixteenth-century crystal meth?”

“I’m so sorry!” Sarah felt like her face was going to crack from laughing. “How do you feel?”

She stood up and Renato stood up, too. Sarah looked around the room. Her vision seemed to be clear, her senses all firing. She just felt so . . . energized. Elated.

“I’m loving this!” said Renato. “Let’s pack this golden bong up and leave it in my superior’s office. I’ll write a message saying it was delivered to me by mistake and we’ll let her notify the British Museum.”

It turned out to be absurdly fun to wheel the box on a little handcart across the museum’s spotlit rooms. They deposited the galleon in another office, and then Renato gave Sarah a whirlwind tour of all his favorite works of art. Sarah thought the Kunsthistorisches had to be the most beautiful museum she’d ever been in. Marble floors, velvet couches and chairs for resting, huge doors. Spandrel frescoes by Klimt in the main hallway, along with a giant Canova of Theseus defeating a centaur. “Come see the Tintoretto!” Renato would whisper and they’d go racing into a room. “Come see the Salome!” They couldn’t stop laughing. Sarah looked at a portrait of Archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol, Philippine Welser’s husband, and thought she saw the little lamb on his Order of the Golden Fleece turn and wink at her.