by James Ponti
“I want to put pictures of the paintings up too,” said Margaret. “That’ll help me keep track of them in my brain.”
“Good idea,” I said.
Margaret got the images off the web and printed thumbnail copies of each. “There,” she said as she taped the last one up. “It’s like Gallery Eighty-Five has come to the Underground.”
At first it was hard to look past anything but the massive sums of money paid out at the auctions. One of Monet’s water lily paintings sold for $47 million to a private collector, while a museum paid $32 million for a portrait by Renoir.
“We’re talking mad, crazy money,” said Margaret. “And we think one of these people may be the mastermind?”
“Not one of the winners,” I said. “Someone who can pay forty-seven million dollars for a painting doesn’t need to steal one. We’re looking for one of the losers. Someone who keeps trying to get one but gets outbid.”
“So, if you can’t beat ’em, cheat ’em?” she said.
“You got it.”
Basically there were four different types of bidders: institutions such as museums looking to add the paintings to their collections, monetary funds and banks buying them as financial investments, private collectors, and what were called “anonymous entities.”
“Why be an anonymous entity?” asked Margaret.
“A lot of reasons, I guess. Maybe you don’t want anyone to know how much money you have. Maybe you don’t want the art world to know which artists you’re interested in. Or maybe . . .”
“. . . you’re a criminal who wants to keep his identity hidden,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “Maybe that.”
We decided to focus on the anonymous bids.
“In order to stay anonymous, you have to hire a representative to do the actual bidding and communicating with the auction house,” I explained to Margaret. “So what you do is give your representative a limit—say five million dollars—and the representative stays in the bidding until the price goes over the limit.”
“That’s why so many of these end on nice round numbers,” she said pointing at one of the bid sheets. “This bidder stopped at ten million dollars. And this one stopped at fifteen million. Those must have been the limits their client gave them.”
“Exactly,” I said.
“So why did this one stop at 12,457,493 dollars?” she asked, pointing at a bid for a Monet.
I looked at it for a moment and said, “I have no idea.”
She looked at an auction six months later. “Here’s the same representative, American Art and Antique Acquisitions, trying to get another painting, also a Monet. The final bid is 12,629,127 dollars.”
“Those are such random numbers,” I said, completely baffled.
We looked through all the auctions and found nine instances when American Art and Antique Acquisitions tried to purchase a painting. Each time the painting was either a Monet or a Renoir. And each time the bidding stopped at a seemingly random number.
We wrote the bids on a separate sheet of paper and hung it on the wall, too. Then we just sat there and stared at it. And stared. And stared. As if the answer might jump out at us.
“Argghhh,” Margaret said, rubbing her temples. “It’s like I’m doing extra-credit algebra homework.”
“Maybe that’s it,” I said. “Maybe it’s algebra.”
“What type of algebra?”
I got on the computer to search for something. “Here it is. Write this down: ‘Amount to’ equals ‘amount from’ times ‘rate from’ over ‘rate to.’ ”
I looked up and she was giving me a total stink eye.
“I speak English, not equations,” she said. “Why don’t you just copy down what you see on the screen? And then explain what the heck you’re talking about.”
“Exchange rates. I dealt with them all the time when I lived in Europe. We’d have to figure out how many dollars are in a euro. Or if we went to London we’d have to convert euros into pounds. Maybe these actually are nice round numbers,” I said, pointing at the list. “Just not in dollars.”
I tried doing the math on paper until Margaret reminded me that the computer would be quicker. I started entering numbers into the equations, and then I compared those amounts with currency rates from the days of each auction. It was complicated, but when I was done it couldn’t have been more basic. Each number equaled the exact same amount.
“Fifty million leu,” I said.
“Fifty-million what?” she asked, confused.
“Leu. It’s a type of money.”
“Oh,” she said. “Which country uses the leu?”
That’s when I grinned. “Romania.”
23.
An Actor Named John Wilkes Booth
ONCE NICOLAE NEVRESCU ENTERED THE story, preserving my covert status became more essential. I wasn’t allowed to call or text Agent Rivers, and I certainly couldn’t just show up at the Hoover Building and ask to see him. If I wanted to make contact, he told me I needed to do so by way of a website made especially for people like me.
“You mean secret agents?” I asked, charged with excitement.
“No, I mean middle schoolers,” he answered, bringing me back to earth.
The FBI Kids Page is a site for students who want to learn about the Bureau. It has video clips, interactive games, animations, and a link called “Ask an Agent.”
I clicked the link and signed in as twelve-year-old Johan Blankvort of Bethesda, Maryland. My question: “How can you meet an agent in person?” Soon I received a standard response that told me about community outreach programs, such as the demonstrations put on by the FBI’s K-9 Explosives Detection team, where agents were available to the public. Then, the next morning while Margaret and I were walking to school, I got a text from a phone number I didn’t recognize. It read:
Tell Johan to visit Our American Cousin after school today.
That was it. I waited for another text that might, you know, explain what that one meant, but none came.
“Who’s that from?” Margaret asked.
“Agent Rivers.”
“What’s he have to say?”
Sigh. “I have absolutely no idea.”
She read the text and asked, “Who’s Johan?”
“I am. Johan Blankvort is my secret identity with the Bureau.”
“Get out!” She stopped in her tracks and turned to face me. “You have an actual government-issued secret identity?”
“I’ve even got fake IDs,” I said, fighting back an ear-to-ear grin.
“That may be the coolest thing I’ve ever heard,” she replied. “But if you’re Johan, then who’s your American cousin?”
I spent most of the day trying to figure that out. I must have reread the text a hundred times. Including once during life science, which cost me three class-participation points. But it wasn’t until lunch that I paid attention to the fact that the words “Our American Cousin” were all capitalized.
“You think that’s important?” Margaret asked when I pointed it out to her. “People are kind of random when it comes to punctuation in texts.”
“Agent Rivers isn’t random about anything,” I countered. “If it’s capitalized, it must be the title of something.”
I googled “Our American Cousin” and found that it was the name of the play Abraham Lincoln was watching the night he was assassinated.
Now I knew what I was supposed to do.
After school, I got on the Metro and took the Red Line to Gallery Place. (I’m guessing the instant I used my SmarTrip card a message alerted Agent Rivers I was on my way.) From the subway station it was just a short walk to Ford’s Theatre.
On April 14, 1865, Abraham Lincoln went to Ford’s to watch a performance of Our American Cousin. During the play’s third act, he was shot by John Wilkes Booth. Now it was a historic site run by the National Park Service.
It also happened to be right around the corner from FBI Headquarters.
I go
t my ticket and blended in with all the tourists walking through the exhibits that detailed the events leading up to the president’s death. I was looking at the actual derringer pistol Booth used to kill him when the man standing next to me asked a question.
“How long did it take you to figure out where we were meeting?”
I glanced up and saw that it was Agent Rivers.
“Most of the day,” I said. “And I got in trouble for looking at my phone during class.”
“Sorry about that,” he said. “But I knew you’d solve it.”
If anyone happened to notice us, we just looked like tourists on vacation. He’d swapped his normal suit and tie for a Nationals T-shirt and a pair of jeans. For the most part, we didn’t even look at each other. We just kept our eyes on the exhibits and talked quietly.
“So, what did you find out?” he asked.
“A lot,” I replied. “Last year Pavel Novak and five staff members from the National Gallery were at the same trade show in Budapest.”
“Anyone we know on that trip?” he asked.
“Earl Jackson . . . and Serena Miller.”
I could see his reflection in the exhibit glass and his reaction was as surprised as mine had been.
“Really? Earl and Serena?”
“It gets worse. Miller took two more trips to Europe, including one to Prague two weeks before Novak entered the country.”
“That’s . . . interesting.”
“I keep thinking back to when Earl’s name came up at the dinner party. She was so adamant that he couldn’t be involved. I thought it was because she trusted him. But maybe she was just worried that if we pursued him, it would lead to her as well.”
“What about the auctions?”
“More good news,” I said. “It turns out an anonymous bidder has tried—and failed—to acquire a major Impressionist work at nine different auctions. He’s put up a lot of money and is no doubt frustrated that he keeps losing.”
“If the bidder’s anonymous, how does it help us?” asked Rivers.
“Well, we know that the money is coming from Romania,” I said. “And also that the bids were placed by a company here in Washington.”
“So it could be Nevrescu laundering the money for his father?”
I nodded.
“I looked him up some more,” I said. “He really likes to get involved in cultural events. Especially ones in the Romanian-American community.”
“Right.”
“So in two weeks there’s an open house at the Romanian embassy. They’re calling it a festival of food and family. He’s one of the sponsors of the event. He’ll be there.”
“Maybe,” said Rivers. “But we sure won’t.”
“Why not?” I asked. “It’s a chance to interact with him in public. A chance to see who he’s meeting with.”
“We already have him under surveillance a lot of the time,” he reminded me. “So we know most of the people he meets with. But more important, we’re not allowed to go inside an embassy.”
“You’re the FBI. You can go anywhere you want.”
“In America,” he said. “But as soon as you set foot onto embassy grounds, by law you are in that country. If I tried to investigate someone while they were in that building, it would be seen as a violation of their sovereignty. Before you know it, the State Department’s involved and there’s an international incident.”
“Oh,” I said, slightly embarrassed. “I didn’t realize the legal part of it.”
“That’s okay. You’re the kid and I’m the FBI agent. I’m the one who’s supposed to know that,” he told me. “But you’ve done an amazing job, Florian. You’ve given us a lot to build on.”
“I love doing it,” I told him. “What can I work on next?”
He looked at me, sighed, and put his hand on my shoulder. Past experience told me I wasn’t going to like what he said next.
“Nothing,” he answered. “You can’t do anything involving the Woman with a Parasol case. I don’t even want you working on it at home.”
I was devastated.
“But you just said I’d done an amazing job.”
“You have,” he said. “But we can’t risk your safety. The more likely it is that Nevrescu is involved, the more likely it is that you’re in danger.”
“Why? Just because we were both at the same soccer game?”
“I’m sorry, Florian. But that’s more than enough for me.”
“But it was just a coincidence,” I argued. “There were tons of people there. Besides, if he wanted to do anything to me, don’t you think he would have just done it then, when he had the chance?”
Rather than answer, Rivers turned toward the enlarged picture on display in front of us. “This photograph was taken at Abraham Lincoln’s second inauguration,” he said, “six weeks before he was killed.”
The photo was of a massive crowd on the steps of the Capitol Building. In the middle of them all, you could see Abraham Lincoln, standing behind a podium reading his speech.
“Lincoln’s in the middle, but do you know who this is?”
He pointed to a man in the crowd of people looking down on the president from behind.
“No. Who is it?”
“He’s an actor named John Wilkes Booth,” he said. “But there were tons of people there. And besides, if he wanted to hurt the president, don’t you think he would have done it when he had a chance?”
I stood there silently and considered what he was saying.
“You tell me,” said Rivers. “You think him being there was a coincidence?”
24.
Let’s Play TOAST
WHEN AGENT RIVERS SAID I was off the case, he meant it. As soon as I started to leave Ford’s Theatre, it was as if we’d never met. I turned back to say good-bye, but he’d already disappeared through some unseen exit.
As the days passed, I had no idea if the leads I’d given him helped or if the case had taken a dramatic turn or maybe even hit a dead end. I constantly checked news sites to see if there were any breaking stories about Romanian mobsters being arrested, and every day I’d wait anxiously for my mother to get home from work, just in case she might have heard a rumor or maybe seen federal agents sealing off Serena Miller’s office.
My only connection to the investigation was in the Underground, where I still had my own case board on the wall. I tinkered with it all the time, straightening the cards, reorganizing them. Hoping I might stumble onto some perfect alignment that revealed the mastermind.
I was trying out a color-coding system for the cards when I heard someone hustling down the stairs to the basement. Seconds later, Margaret burst into the room in full-Margaret mode.
“I just had a genius idea!”
“What is it?” I asked expectantly. “Does it have to do with Woman with a Parasol? Finding your birth parents? Did you figure out how to find one of the long-lost firefighters?”
“No, no, and no. It has to do with you.”
“Okay,” I said, my enthusiasm slightly dampened. After all, I’m far less interesting than all those things. Still, I was happy that something was about to break the boredom. “What’s your idea?”
“You’re running for student council.”
I waited to see if there was any more to this brainstorm, but I could tell by her expression and the awkward silence that she had put it all out there.
“What’s . . . student council?” I asked warily.
“What do you mean, ‘what’s student council?’?”
“I think the question’s pretty self-explanatory,” I said.
“Have you been living under a rock or something?” she asked.
“No, but I have been living in Europe for the last eight years,” I reminded her. “I don’t think they have student council there. At least not at the schools where I went.”
“That’s too bad, because it’s really cool. There are two representatives from each homeroom and they get to help plan the school dances and organi
ze fund-raisers, and at the end of the year they take a trip to Kings Dominion. We’re talking epic roller coasters.”
“Dances, fund-raisers, roller coasters?” I said, listing three things I considered far more terrifying than the Romanian Mafia. Although, for the record, I had yet to confess any of these fears to Margaret.
“So what do you think?” she asked expectantly.
“I . . . don’t know.” I tried to fake a little enthusiasm but the best I could do was “Maybe?”
“Why maybe? It’ll be a great way to make new friends and it’s a lot of fun.”
“Really? Because it doesn’t sound like a lot of fun. It sounds like . . . a lot of work.”
She plopped into a chair and all the oomph seemed to drain from her body. “I don’t know how to break this to you, Florian, but in the world of twelve-year-olds, that stuff is fun. I know you got to be a part of something huge. And I think there are going to be times when you get to do that again. I mean, you’re a consulting detective with the FBI! That’s amazing. But it’s also a part-time job. You can’t just sit around rearranging the cards on your case board, waiting for a mysterious text.”
She looked up at the case board for a moment and smiled. “Although I see what you’re doing with the color coding and I think it may be game changing.”
“It works, doesn’t it?” I said, glad that she saw it too. “It helps your eye pull everything together.”
“Even so,” she replied, getting back on the subject. “You have to embrace the fact that you’re a seventh grader. Middle school has to be enough, because that’s your full-time job. That’s your life. So, you can either run for student council tomorrow. Or I can have your mom come down here and start giving you pep talks about how ‘seventh grade will be seventh heaven’ and why you ‘need to be your true self.’ ”
“You’d never do that to me,” I said.
She gave me a sly smile and said, “I think you know me well enough to know that’s exactly what I’d do.”
“Fine,” I said in full surrender. “Anything but that.”
“So you’re telling me you’ll run?”
