Complication (10 page)

“Was the Rudolf Complication insured?”

The curator shook his head. “Publicly owned pieces seldom are. Traveling exhibits like
Rudolf's Curiosities
are only covered while in transit from one gallery space to another. Nail-to-nail, in insurer's vernacular. It's a great disappointment for thieves hoping to ransom against an insurance policy, but not much of a deterrent.”

“How much do you think the watch was worth?”

The question was slow to reach him as he stared out the window, watching the water move below. “Priceless,” he said at length. “But art is only priceless until it's on the market. Van Gogh's
Sunflowers
was priceless before it was auctioned for $39 million. A priceless Picasso then fetched $100 million. Priceless has lost its meaning. Egypt would sell the pyramids if the right offer came along.”

“So are we talking Picasso-level priceless, or . . . ”

“As a commodity, the Rudolf Complication has disadvantages.” He enumerated them on his fingers as he spoke. “One, it's not a painting. Sculptures, textiles, ceramics, jewelry—even the best rarely fetch as much as minor paintings by major artists. Two, the Rudolf Complication wasn't created by a major artist.
Credit for the piece is generally ascribed to one Edward Kelley, court alchemist of Rudolf II. Reputedly also a forger, adulterer, duelist, necromancer, bad credit risk, accomplished liar—but not, despite such an obvious wealth of qualifications, a famous artist. Three, and perhaps most importantly, the Complication has no provenance. No documented trail of ownership. The watch surfaced only a short time before it disappeared, and only then under dubious circumstances. Many believed it to be a forgery.”

Now we were getting into Paul territory. I had a hard time imagining him involved in a sophisticated European art heist, but getting himself killed over something worthless, something fraudulent? It was somehow easier for me to swallow. Which probably said as much about me as it did about him.

“Obviously, its questionable legitimacy was not something the Ministry of Culture flaunted in promotional materials,” said Gustav. “But the story about how the watch suddenly surfaced after being lost for centuries stretched the bounds of credulity. Those half-dozen people who care about such things were highly skeptical. I don't suppose you're familiar with the name Martin Novotny?”

The curator explained Martin Novotny was the last private owner of the Rudolf Complication—although for only a few hours, if Novotny's story was to be believed. An alcoholic, gambler, occasional burglar, and small-time grifter, he was already familiar to the police. After celebrating what must have been a particularly successful break-in, Novotny passed out drunk on some tram tracks in a neighborhood called Malešice. The police arrived before the tram did and discovered him with the watch around his neck and knew there was no way in hell he was the legitimate owner. He eventually admitted stealing it, though he refused to say from whom. They released him. A week later Novotny came to an unfortunate end when his body was discovered thrown in through a fourth-story window in Strašnice.

“
In
through a fourth-story window?” I asked.

“As opposed to out of, yes,” the curator said. “Either very dodgy police work or an unsolved case of reverse defenestration, take your pick. Meanwhile, no individual ever stepped forward to claim the watch. The government declared the Rudolf Complication to be state property. They organized a unique traveling exhibit, one which would first make the rounds of Prague galleries, then galleries throughout the Czech Republic, finally the world, before settling back at the National Museum. But of course, it never got farther than the west bank of the river. Did you bring a camera?”

“Not today.”

“Unfortunate,” said the curator. “Because we're now standing before The Most Photographed Window in Prague. At least during the two months immediately following the flood. Place yourself, if you will, in my shoes, and imagine it's mere days after the flood. The waters have at last subsided enough that you are finally permitted to return to your beloved gallery. You open that door behind you to find glass strewn across the floor. An iron grappling hook is wedged in the window frame. Attached to it, a nylon rope. Two computers, one security camera, a lockbox with petty cash, books, the alrauns and bezoars, the narwhal chalice—all have been left behind. Thank God, you think. And then you discover the Rudolf Complication is gone. And with it, you understand in an instant, any chance of your gallery co-hosting any further prestigious state-sponsored exhibitions. And you chastise yourself for your selfishness in the face of a crime not just against your gallery but art and history itself. But still.”

I gazed at the watermark scarred on the building opposite and tried to picture how it all went down that night five years ago. The best my jetlagged imagination could conjure was a cheesy
America's Most Wanted
–style recreation. Camera pans down from
a CGI-enhanced moon to find a lone figure clad like an urban ninja in cliché black hoodie and ski mask. He's drifting down the shadowy canal in a canoe, a rowboat, a kayak—nothing with a motor because of the noise, and he hardly would have swum. Police patrol the nearby streets on motorized rubber rafts, flashlight beams moving across the dark water, sweeping over the walls, bouncing off the windows. On this night the Little Venice moniker is for once fitting, with not just the Čertovka canal but all the narrow lanes and twisting byways of lower Malá Strana submerged in floodwaters. Electricity out, buildings vacated, no sounds but the water, perhaps the odd bullhorn or siren in the distance. Our figure navigates by moonlight, drifting silently down the streets until he merges with the canal. Gliding to a halt beside a pale blue building, he breaks the third story candy glass window with the hook and expertly ties the rope to the boat to keep it from floating away. The water is so high it's no climb at all to reach the window, and in one fluid, stuntman-enacted motion, he hoists himself inside.

He searches the room, locates the watch, and carefully wraps it in a plastic shopping bag, a nylon sack, something waterproof. This he slips it into a small backpack. He lowers himself back into the boat, cuts the rope with a cinematically large and shiny bowie knife, and drifts away, leaving the hook still lodged in the window frame. At some point north, between say the Charles Bridge and the Mánesuv Bridge, he goes silently to ground. A sinister looking man with slicked back hair emerges from the shadows, greeting my brother with an oily smile. In the final shot, the abandoned get-away vehicle washes downstream, and the camera pans up and fades on the moon. My father plays the tanned and vengeful studio host who steps forward and gives the audience a number to call if they have any information about Paul Holloway, considered highly dangerous to himself and those who by birth or
misfortune care about him. In the background, Vera wears a telephone headset, manning calls on the tip line and then we go to commercial break.

Aside from piloting the boat, there was virtually no risk involved. The gallery was empty, alarms useless without electricity, all potential witnesses in the neighborhood had been evacuated, and the city was in a general state of emergency. Stealing copper wiring from a construction site was probably more dangerous. If my brother really had been a part of this, it was among the most well-thought-out actions in his entire life. Which made me suspect he wasn't the one doing the thinking.

“Whoever did it had to know the watch hadn't been taken somewhere else during the flood,” I reasoned aloud. “They knew it was still in this building.”

“And knew it was on the third floor,” Gustav added, leaning halfway out the window as if addressing the water below. “And knew which room it was in. And knew where inside the room it was located. An inside job. That's what the police thought. I was one of the leading suspects for a time. Maybe I still am. Is that why you're here? Posing as a journalist to see if my story still checks out?”

I gave a chuckle. Tried to smile but my face wouldn't cooperate and my stomach went sick and twitchy. So I just chuckled again and it came out all wrong.

“I'm quite serious. You don't work for any newspaper.” He turned to face me now, head tilting slowly back, eyes narrowing as if weighing the compositional merits of a photograph he didn't particularly like. “You haven't written down a word I've said. You carry no tape recorder, no notebook, take no pictures. You're wearing a decent suit. Wrinkled and oversized, but not the suit of an expatriate journalist. And while I'm perfectly willing to believe an American could live and work here for two years without
bothering to learn Czech, it seems you would at least be familiar with the phrase asking if you had. At the same time, I don't think you're Interpol. And you're obviously not the local police. But maybe I should give them a call. They might be interested in who you really are. What you're really doing here. I know I am.”

He took a phone out of his pocket.

I turned to leave and he grabbed for the sleeve of my jacket. I shook him off and was already hurrying away when I heard a stifled shout and his glasses clattering over the floor. As I got to the doorway, I glanced back over my shoulder.

The room was empty. The curator was gone.

I hesitated, then turned and bolted back into the room, inadvertently kicking his glasses and sending them spinning into the wall. I leaned out the window and looked down. The curator lay in crumpled heap on the pavement three stories below. He was less than a foot from the edge of the canal. His right arm was twitching, blood already pooling around his head in a red-black penumbra. I could hear him moaning. He still clutched his cell phone.

“Don't move,” I yammered. “ Hang on.”

His one visible eye beaded on me, blinked and closed. I tore out of the room, hurtled down the stairs and out of the gallery.

The real problem started when I got outside.

With all the buildings jammed together, I couldn't just run around the side of the house—I'd have to circumnavigate the entire block the reach the back. I headed one way but dead-ended into some little plaza dominated by a turquoise statue of two men pissing in a fountain. There were plenty of people around—I could have asked for help, but I didn't. I had to get to him first, make sure he didn't roll into the canal. I reversed course, headed back up the block, ran all the way to the waterwheel near the base of the Charles Bridge, then raced along the canal bank behind all the little Hansel and Gretel houses.

I stepped in his blood before I realized he was gone. Aside from what was smeared at my feet, there was no sign of him. Nothing in back but an empty watering can and an overturned wheelbarrow edged up against the building. The canal water moved with undisturbed lethargy, its surface brackish and opaque. If he'd fallen in, the current wouldn't have carried him far.

I kicked off my father's shoes and dove in.

I swam to the bottom, groping blindly in the silty darkness. I came up for air, dove down again. The third time I started panicking, and when I splashed back to the surface, I was gasping for air, dizzy and sputtering. A woman was leaning out a second-story window in a building on Kampa Island and yelling something at me. I wanted to yell back for her to call for help, that a man had fallen in the canal, but I could barely breathe. I hoisted myself back onto the bank and she kept yelling. By my estimation, the curator had probably been underwater for between three and five minutes now.

“Police,” I managed to croak. I made a thumb-to-ear, pinkie-to-mouth phone gesture. She made an ugly face and parroted the word back at me. I repeated it and she unleashed a stream of invectives. She thought I was taunting her, daring her to call the cops on me for taking an unauthorized dip in the canal. Then all at once her expression changed. She saw the blood. An instant later where she'd stood was only a yellow curtain fluttering in the breeze. All I could hear was a sloshing sound in my head. I put on my dad's shoes and rose, taking one last look for splashes or bubbles or any sign of the curator upon the canal's surface but saw only my own wavering reflection, hair plastered and dripping on my forehead, eyes blinking away thick drops of water. And then I was gone. The canal reflected only the sky.

AUDIO RECORDING #3113d

DATE: September 26, 1984 [Time Unspecified]

Subject: Eliška Reznícková

Case: #1331—Incident at Zrcadlové Bludiště

Interview session #8

Location: Bartolomějská 10, Prague, Praha 1

Investigator: Agent #3553

 

AGENT #3553: Let us summarize what you've told us up to this point. A man you'd never met, calling himself Vokov, no first name given, arrived at the Black Rabbit just before closing time on the night of Saturday, September 22.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: I saw him only after we had closed. I have no idea when he actually arrived.

 

AGENT #3553: This man then told you that he'd been followed by a plainclothes member of the police. He showed you an accordion case inside which were fifty copies of an illegal publication called
The Defenestrator
. He showed you a copy of this samizdat and said he was to deliver the accordion case to an unknown third party who would be waiting atop Petřín Hill the next morning. He then asked you to help him burn the copies in the tavern's fireplace, as he believed he was about to be arrested.
You not only refused to destroy them, but also volunteered to deliver the contents of the accordion case yourself.

 

REZNÍCKOVÁ: That is correct.

 

AGENT #3553: Remarkable. Let's resume there.