The Icon Thief (35 page)

The man screamed as a hook caught him in the soft spot beneath one ear, knocking away his sunglasses. Maddy, gasping, yanked her ankle out of his loosened grip, tears leaving stinging tracks on her face. She got to her feet. On the floor, the man was breathing but unconscious. The top button of his shirt had come undone. And above his heart, there was the tattoo of a rose.

Keeping the bottle rack raised, ready to bring it down at the first sign of movement, she turned off the fireplace, then picked up her purse. When she went over to the desk, she saw that all of the notes were gone.

With shaking fingers, Maddy took out her cell phone and dialed Ethan’s number, her eyes fixed on the man on the ground. “Come on,” Maddy whispered, bringing the phone to her ear. “Pick up, Ethan, pick up—”

From inside the man’s coat, a ringtone sounded. Lowering her phone, Maddy stared. She recognized it.

As the cell phone rang again, the man’s eyes opened. His lips parted, forming a fine bubble of blood. Maddy screamed and fell backward. As the man tried to rise, she ran, nearly falling down the staircase. Without looking back, she threw herself against the front door, clutching at the knob. It wouldn’t turn. She tried it again, fingers slick against metal, then finally remembered to undo the latch. Opening the door, she fell through to the other side.

A car was parked across the street. Behind the wheel, watching her, was the thief she had seen at the mansion.

For an instant, their eyes locked. Before he could come after her, she was running.

As she fled, the faces on the sidewalk regarding her with amusement or concern, she found that she understood everything. Ethan had been right, and had paid the price, but not before leaving her one final message. Maddy ran up the street, hoping that it would protect her, but knew that this city, for all its power, could not keep her safe. The answer was not in New York. It was in Philadelphia.

III

O
utside a diner in Herald Square, an express bus idled at the curb, a string of passengers waiting to board. Unlike the other travelers, who were shoving packs and suitcases into the cargo hold, Maddy carried nothing but a purse. As the line inched forward, she found herself standing before the driver, a massive figure in a crimson parka. Pointing to the bus, she asked, “Is this Philadelphia?”

“No, ma’am. This is New York. Don’t you know where you are?” A flash of white teeth signaled that he was joking. “Sure, ma’am, this is Philadelphia. You got a ticket for me?”

“I don’t have a ticket,” Maddy said. “I’d like to buy one, please. One way only.”

“Fifteen dollars.” The driver waited as she fished the bills from her wallet, then gave her a slip of paper in exchange. “You doing okay?”

Maddy felt his gaze coming to rest on her right temple, where a large dark bruise had formed. “I’m fine.”

Looking away, she mounted the steps of the bus, moving down the aisle to an empty row. As she took a seat, arms aching from swinging the shovel, it seemed to Maddy that the other passengers were staring at her.

The driver slid behind the wheel, the doors closing with a hydraulic hiss. As they turned onto Ninth Avenue, shouldering their way downtown, Maddy looked out the window and tried to tell herself what she knew for sure.

First, Ethan was dead. The man at the apartment had carried Ethan’s phone, and had let himself into the building with his keys. Maddy could imagine all too clearly what had happened. After their argument, Ethan had gone looking for something, pausing only to leave her a note. Whatever he had been looking for, he had found it. Or, more likely, it had found him.

Which brought her to the second point. The Rosicrucians, or something close to them, were real. She didn’t know if they were exactly what she and Ethan had conceived, but they had been watching her at least since the night of the heist. They were real enough to follow her. And they were real enough to kill.

This, then, was the crucial point. She could never go home. The man at the apartment had recognized her. She had seen it in his face. If he didn’t come after her a second time, someone else would. Perhaps someone worse. Maddy had already taken out her phone to call Powell about this, but before she could dial, she had been brought up short by uncertainty over what she could possibly say.

Because this was about more than one man. Even if the police caught her attacker, they would only send her home again. And even if she walked away, turning her back on all Rosicrucians, real or imagined, the day would inevitably come when she would find the thief from the mansion waiting at her door. She had no doubt of this. And this meant that the only way out was to destroy their
secret itself, to expose and explode it until there was nothing left to hide.

Which brought her to Philadelphia. For the moment, at least, she was safe. Nobody knew where she was. And it was only now, when she was free and unobserved, that she could follow her argument to its logical conclusion.

Duchamp’s final secret was in the installation. To find out what Ethan had been killed to protect, she had to see it in person. Despite what she had concluded about its intended solution, she hoped that it was something she would see at once, now that her eyes were prepared. Once she had been to the installation, and was ready to reveal its secrets, she would call Powell, from the steps of the museum itself if necessary. But if she wasn’t able to see it with her eyes alone—

Before she could finish this line of thought, which hinted at something monstrous, it was cut off by a vibration against her hip. Taking the phone from her purse, she looked at the display. It was Lermontov.

She answered it. On the other end of the line, Lermontov sounded troubled. “I’m glad I could reach you. Are you all right?”

Maddy took a deep breath. Her hands were shaking. “Yes, I’m fine. What is it?”

“There’s something I need to show you. It involves our discussion from the other day. I’ve been reviewing my client list, and I’ve found something strange. You were right. The Rosicrucians are real—”

His words filled her with an almost painful sense of gratitude. Until now, she hadn’t known how desperately she wanted to avoid facing this final outrage by herself. “What did you find?”

“I’d rather not discuss it over the phone,” Lermontov said. “It might even be best if we met away from the gallery. Would it be possible for me to see you at home? I’ve spoken with Ethan, your colleague, and he indicated that he might be able to meet you there as well—”

Maddy opened her mouth, then closed it. A sudden flowering of paranoia made it impossible to speak. Up ahead, the entrance to the Holland Tunnel loomed like the maw of a whale.

“I’m going out to Boston for a few days,” Maddy said, choosing her words carefully. “Don’t worry about me. I just need time to think.” She looked out at the street. “I’m going into a tunnel. I can’t talk for much longer.”

Without waiting for a reply, she hung up the phone. As she slid it back into her purse, the bus entered the tunnel, the sound of traffic deepening to a roar as they passed through the tube, which was lit by a strange fluorescence.

Carried along by the bus, she felt like a bullet in the barrel of a gun. It was two hours to Philadelphia. Maddy closed her eyes, searching for that part of herself that was unwavering and cold. Instead, she pressed her head against the window, feeling the glass vibrate against her skull, and cried. It was too late.

O
n the refrigerator in Ethan’s kitchen, nestled among a skyline of other bottles, stood a fifth of vodka, halfway full, of a brand more famous for its typography than for the quality of its contents. At the moment, Sharkovsky was not inclined to be choosy. He seized the bottle’s slippery neck in one hand and took it into the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

Unscrewing the cap, he sucked down some of the alcohol. Without swallowing, he swirled it around in his mouth, ignoring the ensuing pulses of pain, and spat it into the sink. A stream of pinkish liquid went down the drain, along with a few white fragments. He took another mouthful, rinsed again, and spat a second time. Less pink. A third time, and it was almost clear.

Satisfied, he set the bottle on the toilet tank and opened the medicine cabinet. A vial of prescription painkillers caught his eye. He shook out two pills and swallowed them. Pocketing the vial, he closed the cabinet, his face swinging into view on the hinged mirror.

What he saw was not reassuring. There were shallow cuts on his forehead and temples where the sunglasses had broken, and yellow bruises had formed on his jaw
and the side of his face. Taking a wad of toilet tissue, he inserted it into his mouth and bit down. His good eye, which had been as glassy as that of a fish, grew watery, then regained some of its customary brightness.

Sharkovsky left the bathroom. He cursed his weakness and age, sensing that he had to counteract it with an act of sympathetic magic. It would require blood. And he knew exactly whose blood it should be.

A glance at the clock forced him to get moving. He had been unconscious for more than forty minutes. His nostrils were packed with blood and snot, making him whistle and wheeze as he looked around the room. The laptop went under his arm. After a moment’s consideration, he took the vodka as well.

Outside, his truck was parked at the corner. Sharkovsky opened the driver’s door and slid behind the wheel, tossing the laptop onto the seat beside him. He had just inserted the key into the ignition when his phone rang.

It was Lermontov. “The girl is leaving town. Have you been to her house yet?”

“No. She was here.” Speaking as quickly as possible, he told the gallery owner what had happened. As he spoke, he saw that there was no way to describe the incident without looking like a fool.

Lermontov’s voice hardened. “We need to find her. She said she was going to Boston, but that may have been a lie. Was there any indication at all of what she was doing at the apartment?”

“If there was, I burned it,” Sharkovsky said. “Up in smoke, like you asked. Except—” He glanced at the laptop on the passenger’s seat. “The computer. I have it here. Let me look.”

He opened the laptop. With so many transactions occurring online, he had long since been obliged to learn something about computers. Going to the menu of recent files, he found nothing of interest. Without a wireless signal, he couldn’t connect to the web, but was still able to view a list of recently visited pages. His attention was drawn at once to the two addresses at the top.

“Philadelphia,” Sharkovsky said. “Bus schedule. The Philadelphia Museum of Art.”

“To see
Étant Donnés
.” Lermontov fell briefly silent. “Fine. If you leave now, you can get there first. Sit on the museum until she appears. Don’t show your face again until this is resolved.”

“All right,” Sharkovsky said. “It’s done. I will call you again from Philadelphia.”

He hung up and pulled away from the curb. Turning at the intersection, he headed south, performing a mental survey of his faculties, like a pilot checking his instruments before takeoff. The ache in his jaw was subsiding, but the pain in his eye was as maddening as ever.

In time, he came to a ramp that took him onto the expressway. For an instant, as he entered the stream of traffic, he contemplated turning around. There was a hint of insanity in following the girl all the way to Philadelphia. Even if he picked up her trail at the museum, it would not be easy to take care of her there. Far better, he thought, to turn back while he still could.