by UD Sandberg
When they had gone through all the halls, they came finally to the last: Saal XIII.
Both walked slowly towards the center of the room.
Alone in the center of the room it sat in a glass case.
On a pedestal.
It was a round box with four cloves. Not more than ten centimeters in diameter. It was covered with blue sapphires that shimmered in the subdued lighting.
The plaque in front of the booth said:
The Sapphire box of Edfu
3rd century BC
Egypt, Edfu
*
Harmoniegasse, Vienna
June 14
A few kilometers northwest of the Kunsthistorisches Museum and Ludwig and August Gruppeninspektor Alexander Wagner lay beside his five year old daughter Julia.
He looked at the clock, 21:06. In his lap laid a book: 1, 2, 3 by Elmo from the Muppets on Sesame Street.
He heard his wife Lisa clatter in the kitchen. She washed the dishes from the dinner and put in the dishwasher. Took out a tablet under the sink. Pulled back the cabinet door hard. Slammed the door of the machine. Turned the knob and started. A faint hum was heard. A chair pulled out. Elbows on the table. The hands on the face. Alexander heard a faint sobbing.
Alexander stood up carefully. He saw Julia drilling her head into the pillow. He smiled. He didn´t look toward his son Felix empty bed.
The light in the hall was dimmed, he lit it and went out to the kitchen. He pulled out a chair and sat down. He took Lisa on her arm. She pulled away.
”Lisa, come on now, we can´t have it like this, you understand that. Sometime we need to talk about it.”
Lisa looked up from the table. She had black splash of mascara around her eyes.
”Do what you want, stay here and talk, talk, talk. I will go to the hospital in a while.”
”But -”
Lisa left the kitchen and went to the toilet. Alexander heard that she locked the door. She just got colder and colder. Since six months they barely spoke to each other. They never had sex.
Lisa disappeared into herself. He longed for a scolding. That she was going to throw something into the wall. Losing her temper over not being able to open a can of crushed tomatoes. That she would call him Egon because he looked like the artistic prodigy Egon Schiele. Something that he hated, but he missed it tremendously.
Unlike many other couples they knew they had retained their language when they had children. Not jumped into the negotiating grave and schedule swamp. Not started calling each other mom and dad. But now it all crashed together.
He went back to Julia. Lay down. Felt her warmth. Smiled again when he saw her chest going up and down. She hugged her pillow. He listened to her breathing.
He looked over at Felix bed. Above the bed were pictures of Spiderman. Felix had looked on wide-eyed when Alexander a year earlier set them up.
On the bed was a drawing pad with half-filled shapes. Beside the pillow was Elmo - his favorite cuddly toy. At the next table were his first school books which he received as late as last year. Unlike Lisa, he went through what had happened several times a day. Although it was six months ago, he remembered it clearly.
*
August looked like a possessed man when he looked at the Sapphire Box. He stood silent for a few minutes. Along with Ludwig he examined the green malachite-stones the Egyptians took from the Sinai mountain where Moses received the Commandments and the exquisite blue sapphires that gave the box its name.
Ludwig saw the picture from the Theatrum Diabolus in front of him, the Bellarmine drawing of the scene when Thoth gave Moses the secret law that was unavailable to the masses.
Ludwig looked around. He formulated his head about how he would ask for his salary and terminate his employment. But he thought it was best to wait until August calmed down.
August stared at the box for a few minutes. He said.
”It's a little funny. Sapphires are considered to have a magical ability to cure envy. I rather think that they are the cause.”
He looked at Ludwig. The eyes narrowed again. They spoke for themselves. Ludwig knew. He knew what he was going to say. August said.
”I got to have that.”
Ludwig looked at him. He understood that August certainly often got his way, but he didn´t think he was crazy but he was unsure.
When August had talked about the Theatre all had fallen into place. His days in Victoria's chambers had become intelligible.
”But August, you can´t be serious. You aren´t seriously thinking about stealing it?”
”Scchh! Lowering your voice, Ludwig!”
Ludwig was going to say that the guards could hardly understand Swedish but refrained, afraid to make August even more upset.
August shook his head. Looked at his watch. It was seven days left.
”You don´t understand Ludwig. But maybe you don´t really know what it's like to lose someone. I have only a few days, I may not get anywhere but I don´t care. Victoria tried and I will not disappoint her by giving up where she, well, in which case I will for sure get closer to what happened.”
August swallowed. Suddenly he sounded deadly serious.
”The only thing I care about now is to get to the Theatre. And as long as I have the chance I will take it.”
Loss. Ludwig looked at August and fidgeted. He felt a need to tell him but he remembered how it used to be. Every time he had entrusted himself to anyone, opened up, it had backfired on him.
His weaknesses were exploited in sensitive positions.
Laughed about at parties, at least as he saw it. I know they didn´t mean anything bad but Ludwig couldn´t understand that, not then anyway.
Once he opened up now, let down his guard, he repented always afterwards. A creeping anxiety crept over him, as if he had been unfaithful to himself.
He had just opened for Ella.
August stared at Ludwig. He was about to say something but held back. Ludwig said.
”You´re just going to take it now? You will get no longer than two meters.”
”I know. I'm not stupid, Ludwig. I will not do anything now. That soiree that Loretta is hosting tonight. She'll be so mad at me but I don´t care. You saw the message in the Brotherhood´s corpus. There's nothing else to do. I must have the Four-Leaf Clover.”
The monkey grinned in the skull of Ludwig. He saw how the monkey-fucker caressed Ella´s cheek. Smiled his smarmy smile.
The warmth came over the temples.
It ached in his hand that he had punched on the toilet bowl.
He hoped that the nightmares would stop. That they could at least come only when he slept so he could wake up from it, not like now when he lived in the shit all the time.
For over a year they had swarmed over him around the clock. He was powerless.
The light in the room came on the loose. It spun for Ludwig. The room spun into a cold January night. Ludwig saw someone walking away on the street. A guy pissed in a staircase.
At his side was Ella. Ludwig flexed his fist. The memories mixed together. All his memory wires was so damaged that they flowed together and formed new terror patterns.
He felt the hard bench in C-building on the back. The warders with inferiority complex. The attorney. The judges and jurors who wronged him. If he returned, they would imprison him again.
Given what he had done, he would remain in the C-building the rest of his life. They never stopped coming. Ludwig knew it too well.
I remember that I was close to tears the first time Ludwig told me that he remembered basically everything that happened to him, verbatim, all colors, expressions, and I discovered pretty quickly that he often focused on the negative. But he was not bitter, he just stated that he didn´t understand some things.
In a notebook from the seventh grade, I found a poem he had written on a Swedish lesson, which he never leaved to the teacher.
In the memory catacombs alive
still the rotten corpses
>
beyond the graves and in the aisles, they run
like a track from a zombie soundtrack
hack
a broken record
Well now, everything dies, baby, that´s a fact
But maybe everything that dies some day comes back
Ludwig felt he had to go out. He could not wait any longer to ask August about his salary. He had to move on.
”August, it might be inconvenient but”
August did not listen, but grabbed Ludwig's arm and pulled him aside. Ludwig looked down at his arm and then at August.
”What are you doing?”
”Ludwig, I want you to help me.”
Ludwig looked surprised at August. He looked away and laughed. Hoped that he wasn´t serious.
But it you couldn´t misunderstand August's gaze. He looked seriously at Ludwig. Ludwig felt uneasy. August lowered his voice. Snapped his gaze in Ludwig.
”I know who you are, Ludwig.”
Ludwig solidified. It iced the joints. He tried to get out of the grip, but it wouldn´t go without resorting to violence.
He concentrated on not moving a muscle.
”I know what happened in Sweden. I know who you are.”
”What are you talking about?”
”Do you think I am that stupid that I didn´t look you up. If you hadn´t been so good at what you do, I had sent you away a long time ago.”
To say that the world collapsed around Ludwig would be a serious understatement. Ludwig felt the heart beating against the chest as hard as someone who is buried alive beat against the coffin lid. He checked immediately around him, whether it was police officers around them or were on their way. But he didn´t see any.
August leaned closer to Ludwig.
”I know you escaped from prison, Ludwig Norén. If you do not help me, I have a lawyer a call away. If he doesn´t hear from me at eight o'clock each morning and evening he calls the police and tell them where you are.”
Ludwig did not utter a word. None of them turned away their eyes.
Ludwig struck despair into anger for a short while. He looked cursed at August and said.
”Are you kidding me?”
”Not for a second.”
An elderly woman dropped the case for her camera on the floor. A guard was quickly on the scene and picked it up for her. She smiled and thanked him. The guard went back to his corner.
August released Ludwig´s arm.
”You have five minutes to decide. Then I'll call.”
Ludwig went off to the bathroom and locked himself. He rubbed his hands in the face, kicked on the toilet seat.
He thought about what he could do.
It was hell, fucking hell. He swore that he hadn´t understood how easily he sat in that leghold trap.
But it changed nothing. He was hooked.
He knew he had no choice.
Ludwig went back and accepted. August said.
”Remember now Ludwig, it´s more in your interest that we succeed in this, otherwise you can go home with double judgment.”
Ludwig did not respond.
They stood for a long while and watched the Sapphire Box.
Eventually Ludwig said.
”But we can´t just take it.”
”Have you any idea?”
Ludwig looked around. There were cameras everywhere. Ludwig knew the museum had had a high profile theft of its art piece Saliera just a few years ago and he thought that the museum was probably hyper sensitive to theft. He thought about what Loretta had said about the theft attempts against the Sapphire Box, which probably meant that the security was rigorous.
A guard sat leaning against the wall on a pallet. It crackled low on his walkie-talkie. A camera panned the hall slowly. Cameras, guards, outside was the city police. Ludwig looked at August. They were dwarves at the Colosseum, secure prey for tigers and gladiators.
Ludwig said.
”It's no use trying to get Loretta to show us, given all the times she denied. There is also no point in trying to break in here at night. We wouldn´t know what to do. The only way that I see it, is that we take it tonight during Loretta's soiree. There are less people here. The museum is shut down for the evening. There are probably fewer guards. But August, are you really sure of what you are doing?”
Ludwig tried to get out of the grip, but he understood that it was probably a stillborn project to try to persuade August. But it was worth every attempt to get out of the leghold trap. He continued.
”Is not it better to listen to what Loretta said and forget about this?”
August looked at Ludwig as if he was going to kill him. He was serious.
”Not a word, Ludwig.”
He pointed to the phone in his hand.
”Not a single fucking word.”
Ludwig swallowed. August said after a moment with a slightly softer tone.
”But you're right, Ludwig, the soiree is best. But only if we do it as fast as possible. God knows how much that lies between the Theatre and the Four-Leaf Clover.”
They sat on a bench in a hall next to Saal XIII. Two stone statues sat on each pedestal. An elderly couple walked hand in hand past them.
They walked out of the museum and sat in the park in front of the entrance. They did not know where to begin. Threw out nonsense. Talk bordering on idiocy. Ludwig thought of the movies he had seen the famous thefts, and the books he read to get inspiration for their daring coup: Rififi. Inside Man, the theft of the Gardner Museum, The Great Train Robbery, Heat, P3 Documentary about the art coup11.
They tried to come up with at least a good idea. Getting something that was useful. Ocean's Twelve. Inca Gold. Art History Mysteries. Hudson Hawk. Adele's Wish.
Amazingly a few approaches crystallized after an hour.
They walked around the park and walked along the Babenbergerstrasse. After about an hour, they had come up with a plan. But it would take luck and a lot of skill if they were going to succeed.
They went back to the museum to test some of their planes. August stood up while a smaller group of seniors came into the hall of theSapphire Box of Edfu.
Ludwig went off into one of the two corridors that were in the Egyptian collection. One ran from the entrance, the other to a large, anonymous hall with toilets. Both were closed with large ports. He walked out to the door to the hall with toilets. Beat a god with his eyes.12 He saw no cameras. He returned to Saal XIII and August. Nodded. He stood some distance down the hallway.
August walked around the senior citizen group, who stood and admired the Sapphire Box. He stumbled and fell into one of seniors. Leaned against the glass case.
An alarm went off.
Ludwig heard a cry from one of the seniors. Half a minute later the door opened into the corridor facing the entrance. Three guards came running. They ran all the way along the corridor until they reached the hall lying next to Saal XIII.
Ludwig returned. August helped one of the ladies to a bench. The guards recovered the alarm. Made sure that all was well.
When they were finished August went up to Ludwig and said.
”Perfect. The hallway was free huh?”
”Yes and no cameras outside the toilets.”
They walked out of the museum. Pulled up pen and paper. Wrote down what they needed. Picked out money from an ATM. Shopped at shops that were along Mariahilfer Strasse.
August bought cardboard, tape, stamps, scissors, a velvet pouch, cords, gloves, glue, pens, paper. In order to hide from the cameras they had planned to have some long pieces of fabric on.
August came to think of his old friend who was a priest by profession who reasonably should have some kaftans at home. They went there instead of chasing halfway across town. August had the keys to his apartment at Kruger Strasse, behind the State Opera. They took a taxi there.
It was a mess in the apartment. August searched the closets when Ludwig came up with an idea. He explained the idea to August who said flatly no, but Ludwig was able to c
onvince him.
Ludwig ran out on the town. Come back after fifteen minutes. In the bag he had graphite powder, wood glue and transparent paper. Ludwig rigged August's laptop. Power on the camera. After a while Ludwig finished. August put forth some kaftans that had a hood. Cut them. Custom their length.
They checked in the Hotel Sacher near the museum. The hotel was in Vivaldi's old home. August paid and arranged a suite with two bedrooms.
They rested after the long day, tried to gather strength for the evening.
Ludwig lay on his bed and tried to calm down but it was difficult. He looked at the ceiling. BBC was on in the background. His pants were thrown over an upholstered armchair. He thought of what Loretta had said. From what he had understood from their conversation.
*
Cellar in Vienna
June 14
The curtain was still drawn against the street. Matteo took care of his tuxedo. He stretched out his arms and straightened his bow tie. Looked at himself in the mirror.
Luca tested radio equipment, set up the frequencies. Juan laid up his weapon on his bunk, checked the magazine, disassembled his Sig Sauer P225. He cleaned it by pulling a bore snake through the spout. It was clean as a virgin.
Marco went through what routes they would drive against Italy. They would stay on the smaller roads. He estimated the time. They would have to drive carefully. Don´t draw attention to themself. Don´t let the eagerness press down the accelerator pedal.
They gathered in a circle and went through the layup at the museum one last time.
25
Harmoniegasse, Vienna
June 14
In separate directions, they all laid and rested. While Ludwig was resting on his bed at the Hotel Sacher Alexander rested with his daughter Julia. Soon, however, they would get acquainted with each other and they would find that they had more in common than they may have thought at first.
On Julia's bedside table was a pink radio with a teddy bear on top. Alexander stretched over her and turned on the radio low. He navigated to Radio Ö3.
Lisa came out of the restroom and pulled on her coat out in the hall. She was about to take her usual trip to the hospital.
