“I have plenty of blankets to warm me and it is my duty to make sure they remain safe.”
What I don’t say is that by bearing witness to the paintings’ safety, I will also bear witness to their destruction, which will come by my own hand.
My plan is to steal a single painting during this trip from Amsterdam to Munich. I will report it missing when we arrive. These things happen all the time.
For months, Marie-Celeste and I have been writing to one another in secret. Each time a new letter arrives I feel the way I imagine I would seeing a missive from a new lover. My stomach erupts with the fluttering of a dozen hummingbirds, and I eagerly rip the envelopes open. She has given her parents the money I sent to her. They’ve been surprisingly amenable, having had their own doubts about the union but being in such a poor position to say no. I asked her again if she would like to continue her schooling in Holland. And to my utter surprise my daughter said yes. Now I am faced with coming up with the funds to both bring her here and support her once she arrives.
Gazing on the cargo feels like looking into my future, and my daughter’s, and I quickly get greedy.
I select an entire crate, three paintings, one of a misshapencrab against an emerald-green background that has several duplicates, two landscapes of Auvers, and three sketches. I’d only planned on taking one, but I can’t help myself.
I carefully remove the canvases from the frames and roll them in parchment paper before depositing them in my suitcase. Then I deal with the frames themselves. I stamp down on them hard to break them apart and put them back into the crate, which I then hurl on the track behind the caboose. As we pull into the next station I begin to scream.
“The door came unlatched! An entire crate fell onto the tracks as I slept,” I cry out in horror when the conductor comes to attend to me.
“How did it get unlatched?”
I shake my head in disbelief. “I do not know. You must not have secured it properly. I was nearly thrown from the car in my sleep.” I did not know how good an actress I could be when it suited me.
“You have my word we will conduct a complete inspection,” the dismayed conductor informs me, anxious to get this hysterical woman off the platform.
Jo will file an insurance claim. The railroad will likely give her a settlement. I chose subjects that she is not particularly attached to that Vincent painted many copies of. And since so many new ones have started appearing on the market over the past year or so, Jo is lacking in sentimentality even more than usual. This will be a business loss for her, but not a large one, and she will likely be well compensated.
The conductor is concerned, but he has seen this happen before. Cargo is damaged or goes missing on every trip. He doesn’t spend more than twenty minutes talking it through with me and directing me on how to file a complaint. With that finished, I oversee the unpacking of the remaining pieces to go to the gallery in Munich, my heart pounding out of my chest the entire time.
As I expect, Jo is disappointed about the loss, but it doesn’t consume her. She is much more concerned with getting the Germans to come to the events, with making sure the right critics will be at opening nights, and with negotiating prices with some of the rich Americans who are traveling across the Atlantic for the exhibits.
In Germany she asks me again if I would like help moving to Amsterdam and again I refuse. Bussum will be less expensive for both Marie-Celeste and me and I have already found an apartment for the two of us. The money from this next illicit sale to Henrik Swanson will be enough for the deposit and at least a year of my rent.
By the time the first show commences in Munich, I am able to slip away to France, where I have plans to meet both my daughter and Henrik Swansonagain.
27
Emma
I’m going towalk out of here with diamonds in my underwear.This thought sashays through my brain as we roll past the wrought iron gates leading to the holiday party at the Swanson château. No turning back now.
“We’re driving on top of a billion dollars,” Matthew whispers in my ear.
“Excuse me?” He’s been getting more and more talkative and agitated the closer we’ve gotten to the party, tugging at his cuffs and straightening his already neat tie.
“My great-grandfather bought this property because it was heavily fortified during the war. The soldiers carved tunnels beneath it, bunkers to protect them against the bombings. It’s storage for about a quarter of our art. They are climate-controlled boxes now. It’s like Daedalus’s maze down there.”
The secret bunker isn’t the only thing that’s fortified; the carwe’re driving in is a platinum Rolls-Royce with bulletproof windows, as if we are traveling royalty.
These are things he absolutely should be keeping to himself, I think. But he wants to impress me because he wants to finally sleep with me.
I express the proper amount of awe, which is quite easy because the idea of itisastounding. An entire labyrinth filled with priceless works of art, many of them possibly the originals of the ones Matthew’s father has “donated” to museums. A prison for art right beneath our feet.
He keeps going. “When I was about twelve years old, I wanted to explore down there. I merely needed a key at the time. There was much less fancy security then. I stole it from my grandfather’s study when I was visiting with my dad for a hunting excursion, just the two of us for a whole week. I had the ridiculous idea that we would get a chance to bond. Instead, it became the worst week of my life.”
“What happened?”
“I only wanted to go in for a bit, to see it. I was so curious. I was young, you know how kids are?”
I nod. I was a curious child myself.
“Anyway, my father noticed the key missing; he must have realized what I’d done because he used his spare to lock the door from the outside, adding a dead bolt so I couldn’t escape. I only stayed inside for fifteen minutes before trying to leave, but then the door was locked and I was stuck inside.”
