The Icon Thief (31 page)

They went for the stairs, guns holstered but cocked and locked. Ilya and Sharkovsky were already at the top
of the steps, with only the old man’s legs still visible. Upstairs, the club was packed and pounding with music. Everyone’s eyes were on the dancers, so no one noticed the pair creeping sideways through the colored lights. Ilya’s gun had been lowered to the small of Sharkovsky’s back.

The two men reached the doors, which had been left open to the breeze, and emerged onto the terrace. Powell and the others followed close behind. Up ahead, the boardwalk was empty, swept clean by the tactical unit. The unit itself was nowhere in sight, although Powell knew that the agents were watching from their fallback positions. Farther off, he could see a white line of sand.

“Stay there,” Ilya said, replacing the gun against Sharkovsky’s head. The men inched backward toward the edge of the boardwalk. When they reached the steps that led to the beach, six feet below the boards, they turned sideways so that Sharkovsky could go first. Then they descended to the sand, each step taking them farther out of view, until both of them were gone.

As soon as they were out of sight, the three agents ran forward. “He’s on the beach,” Barlow barked into his radio. “Get a unit on the sand now. We’ll pin him down until he sees that there’s no way out—”

It took ten seconds to cross the boardwalk. Reaching the steps, they went down to the beach, then looked around in confusion. The shore was deserted, with nothing but sand stretching to either side. In the distance, the ocean was a dull mirror. Ilya and Sharkovsky had vanished.

“
What the fuck?
” Barlow looked up and down the beach. “
Where did they go?
”

Powell, heart thudding, looked more closely at the
stairs. A pair of drinking fountains stood on the level of the boardwalk. To allow maintenance crews to reach the plumbing, a snow fence had been installed nearby, keeping the area clear and leaving a gap beneath the boards.

He ran over to the opening. Without pausing, he slid onto his belly and squeezed himself through the gap, grains of sand skating beneath his weight. Part of him was expecting a trap, but instead, he found himself alone in the dark. In the distance, faintly, he could hear footsteps.

Barlow knelt by the gap, his face barely visible. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Put men on the fences,” Powell said, trying to remember what he had seen when he had last been under the boards. “There’s a gate behind the club. Another at the parking lot. They’ll come out one way or the other—”

Without bothering to reply, Barlow turned aside to radio the instructions to the rest of the unit. As he did, a shadow fell across the opening, and Wolfe slid down through the gap, landing on the sand next to Powell. From her inside pocket, she produced a penlight. Before he could say anything, she was already leading the way, heading farther into the darkness.

“I
don’t know what you have in mind, but it isn’t going to work,” Sharkovsky had whispered as they inched together across the restaurant floor. “There’s only one way that this can end—”

Ilya said nothing. They reached the doors that opened on the boardwalk and stepped outside, moving past the tables on the terrace. Ilya kept his eye on the agents. Although the larger of the two men, the one with the radio harness, was clearly in charge, he found his attention drawn repeatedly to the other, the Englishman, who had spoken to him in the hallway.

“Stay there,” Ilya said to them now. He replaced the gun against Sharkovsky’s skull, his forearm aching from the effort of bracing it for so long, and began to creep backward across the boards. As soon as they were far enough away, Ilya whispered, “Listen closely. When we get to the steps, you’ll see a gap between the boards and the sand. We’re going underground. You first. The parking lot is one hundred paces west. Once we’re through the fence, we go for the truck.”

Although his voice was calm, he had no idea if the plan would work. His original intention had been to
leave the way he came, but this was no longer possible. At least one unit would be covering the alley, and even with the streetlamps extinguished, there would be no chance of escape.

At the edge of the boards, Ilya told Sharkovsky to turn so that he reached the steps first. Glancing back, he saw that the agents, as instructed, were keeping their distance. Descending, the two men reached the sand. The gap in the boards lay directly in front of them.

“Move,” Ilya said, pushing the old man forward. “You only get one chance at this.”

Sharkovsky slid through the narrow opening. Ilya followed, gun aimed into the darkness, and landed on the ground beneath the boardwalk. It smelled faintly of salt and dry shit, and was covered in debris that had blown through the gap without being caught by the fence.

The two men marched forward, Sharkovsky staying one step ahead. Behind him, Ilya heard voices on the beach. It would not take them long, he knew, to discover where their quarry had gone.

They had crossed slightly less than half the distance when Sharkovsky threw a punch. Ilya, who had been expecting such a move, blocked it easily, and it was only when he felt the other man’s foot slide softly next to his own that he understood that he had fallen for an old wrestler’s trick.

Sharkovsky swept his foot forward, striking Ilya’s ankle, then knocked him off his feet. Ilya fell, the sand rising to meet him, the moment endless until the ground clouted him awake. A hand closed around his throat. Ilya reached up, fingers going for the other man’s eyes, but
Sharkovsky snapped his head away in time. The old man’s breath was warm and stinking. “You like this,
zhid
?”

As the grip around his neck tightened, Ilya saw his night of retribution slipping away. He lifted the revolver, seeking a shot, then felt a set of fingers sink between the tendons of his wrist. His hand loosened for only an instant, but it was enough. A twist of his arm, and then his gun was gone.

Sharkovsky raised the revolver. In the second before he could squeeze off a shot, Ilya, groping in the sand, felt his hand close on a billet of wood. He lashed out randomly, striking the gun, which flew off into the shadows.

Without a pause, Sharkovsky drew something bright from a sheath around his ankle. Ilya was trying to remember if he had searched the old man’s legs when he saw a flash of silver. A hot line opened on his cheek, just below his right eye, and warmth began to flow down his face.

Ilya drew his own knife, the one that he had taken from the kitchen in the Hamptons. There was no pain, at least not yet, but he knew that he had only a few seconds of clarity remaining. He was about to charge forward when he heard the sound of footfalls against sand. Someone else was here.

As if by mutual consent, the two men drew apart, ducking behind the nearest pair of concrete supports. Sharkovsky’s voice was a hoarse whisper: “If I prick you, do you not bleed?”

Ilya, breathing hard, did not respond. Peering around the pillar, he saw the gleam of a flashlight. Two figures were coming his way. A moment later, the light winked
out. The agents were using it sporadically, to avoid turning themselves into targets, but it was clear that they were closing fast.

It took him less than a second to conclude that he had no choice. Throwing himself out from behind the support, he began moving quickly across the dark drifts of sand, then broke into a run.

A rectangle of gray light appeared up ahead. He reached the gate and hooked his fingers through the diamonds of wire. When he pulled, a section of the fence lifted away. He squeezed through the opening he had made. As he did, a corner of the wire caught on his bag. He reached back, trying to free himself, but the strap was twisted. With his knife, he cut the strap, yanking the bag loose, then found himself under the ramp that led to the boardwalk.

The parking lot was deserted. Leaving the shelter of the ramp, he ran forward, weaving between the rows of cars. In a moment, he knew, the lot would be surrounded. Behind him, he heard the ring of metal as someone else pushed his way through the fence. He did not look back to see who it was.

Ilya reached the abandoned playground. He did not know if Sharkovsky had escaped, but hoped blindly that he had. With all he commanded in ruins, the
vor
had been left with only one way out. He would seek refuge with the Chekists. And it would be there, at the very end, even as he offered thanks for his safety, that he would find the Scythian waiting for him at last.

E
than left his apartment just after sunrise. He had no destination in mind, only the urge to walk for hours, which he hoped would silence the noise in his head. As he went out onto the porch, a passing uncertainty made him feel the molding above the door to see if his spare key was still there. It was. He reached up to put it back, then reconsidered, and slid it into his pocket instead.

He crossed the Manhattan Bridge on foot, then passed into a secret city, one that was his alone. Above Houston, the grid became abruptly rational, short blocks going north, long blocks east and west. When he tried to envision the path he was tracing, he saw that it resembled a knight’s tour. You began at a random position on the board, then visited each square once, only to end up, like his own tangled thoughts, at precisely the same place as before.

For the last twenty years of his life, he remembered, Duchamp claimed to have given up art for chess, while working all the while on a secret installation. This was usually interpreted as a massive deception, but perhaps it had been nothing but the simple truth. Duchamp had said, “I am retiring to play chess,” and after his death, the
world had been surprised by his final masterpiece, never suspecting that the two projects were one and the same.

As he walked past Washington Square, where chess hustlers would soon gather at their tables of stone, Ethan found himself imagining a game of chess that spanned the globe. Duchamp had not been the only player in those circles. Crowley had also been obsessed with chess. So had Lenin. Perhaps the real game had begun years before, at the Cabaret Voltaire, and had lasted beyond Lenin’s death, when a chessboard had been entombed along with his body.

There was a chessboard in
Étant Donnés
as well. Beneath the installation, invisible to casual viewers, a linoleum floor bore a checkered pattern in black and white squares. The floor had been part of Duchamp’s original plan, and had been faithfully transferred from his apartment to the museum, even though it formed no visible part of the tableau. It was repeatedly mentioned in the instructions for assembly, but no one knew why the artist had deemed it so essential. Unless, Ethan thought now, it was nothing less than a hint on how to read the work itself.

He reached Park Avenue and headed north. If the installation was a chess problem in disguise, the next step was to figure out the names of the players. It struck him again that there was one place where those names might have been found, but he had thrown his best chance away. The memory made his face hot. He had ruined things with Maddy. The only way to regain her trust was to show that his fears had been justified, but he had no chance of proving this without her.

Or almost no chance. There was, in fact, another possibility, a way to get the information on his own. It
involved a certain amount of risk, and would force him to expose himself more than he might have liked, but as he thought about it now, it seemed to him that it was his only real option remaining.

He gradually became aware that he had wandered into a familiar neighborhood. His legs had taken him all the way to the office, which meant that he had walked almost seven miles. He stood before the building, wondering if he should go in, until his legs, which had brought him this far, made this decision as well. Using his key card, he let himself inside.

Five minutes later, he was on the street again. Feeling not entirely himself, he headed for his second destination, which was three long blocks away. When he arrived at the gallery’s gilded doors, he rang the bell. Part of him knew that no one would be here so early, especially on the weekend, and he was already feeling his resolution falter when he heard the door unlock.

It opened. Ethan looked into the gray eyes of the man standing inside the threshold, then heard himself speak. “You don’t know me, but my name is Ethan Usher. I work with Maddy Blume—”

“I know who you are,” Lermontov said, his voice concerned. “Is Maddy all right?”

“That depends.” Ethan paused, nearly retreated, but something in the other man’s expression encouraged him to continue. “I know it must seem strange. But if you care about Maddy, you’ll listen to what I have to say.”

Lermontov regarded him for a second, as if deciding whether to let him in. At last, he stood aside. “Come. We’ll talk in my office.”

Ethan went into the gallery. Around them, the lights had been turned down, the gallerina’s counter deserted, as if awaiting the return of its resident goddess. In the rear office, Lermontov sat down at his desk, on which a number of index cards were arranged. “What can I do for you?”

As Ethan took a seat, he noticed that a velvet curtain had been hung across one wall. The words began to come more easily. “It’s about Maddy. Has she tried to contact you since last night?”

“No,” Lermontov said. “She came to see me on Wednesday afternoon, but I haven’t spoken to her since. What’s this all about?”

“It’s something that she and I are working on together. I’m not sure how much she’s told you, but we’ve been looking into the study that was stolen from Archvadze. At this point, our theory is that the theft had something to do with the painting’s connection to the Rosicrucians—”

“Yes, I know. Maddy explained this to me. I’ve already told her everything I can.”

“I’m not sure if that’s entirely true.” Reaching into his pocket, Ethan removed the page that he had copied out at the office. “This is a list of clients who have done business with your gallery in the past. I can’t be sure about all of them, but I believe that at least some of the names are fake. Either your clients have given you false information, or you’re deliberately concealing their identities.”