Stealing Mona Lisa

by Carson Morton

  Valfierno jerked to a sudden stop, almost dislocating his shoulder in the process. But he kept his grip and managed to gain a foothold on one of the rungs, wrapping his elbow tightly around the side rail of the ladder. He looked around to get his bearings. The pipe and the ladder were attached to a perpendicular section of wall set into the otherwise curved tunnel. It was too dark to see the top of the ladder clearly, but he assumed it must lead to some kind of access door.

  Ellen clung to the pipe perhaps four feet away. She held on with both arms, but the swift current tugged at her legs, lifting her body almost horizontally. Valfierno could see the exhaustion and fear in her eyes.

  “Edward,” she called out over the noise of the rushing water, “I can’t hold on.”

  “You have to,” he said.

  Switching the valise between hands, he hooked his elbow around the downstream side rail before returning the valise to his left hand. This enabled him to hang on to both the ladder and the valise with the same arm. He reached out as far as he could, his back up against the side of the tunnel. She was still almost an arm’s length away.

  “Can you get closer?” he called out.

  With great effort, she pulled herself closer to the pipe and stretched out her hand as far as she could toward Valfierno, but the force of the water held her back and their fingertips barely touched.

  “I can’t…” she gasped, her voice growing weaker.

  “A little more,” he said, but she had reached her limit. Valfierno knew that it would be only a matter of seconds before she lost her grip entirely and surrendered herself to the current.

  He had to do something quickly. He looked at the valise. It held no small fortune. He turned back to Ellen and he knew in an instant the terrible truth: He couldn’t possibly hope to save them both …

  * * *

  The loud, insistent knocking tore Roger Hargreaves from Valfierno’s story like an alarm rips a sleeper from a vivid dream.

  Chapter 51

  PARIS—1925

  The sudden pounding on the door stopped Valfierno in midsentence. He exhaled, a long forlorn sigh, and his head sank deeper into his pillow.

  Hargreaves turned to the door, his face tight with agitation. “What is it?” he demanded.

  In spite of the insistent knocking that preceded it, Madame Charneau’s voice sounded muffled and tentative through the door. “I was just checking to make sure everything is all right, monsieur.”

  “Yes, yes,” Hargreaves snapped. “Everything is fine.” He turned back to Valfierno. “What happened? Did you save her? What happened to the money? To the painting?”

  Valfierno’s words seeped out like the dying hiss of a punctured tire. “I hesitated … a moment too long…”

  He was barely audible now. Hargreaves leaned forward, straining to hear, but Valfierno was drifting away.

  “… and in the end,” his voice trailed off, “I lost everything.”

  Valfierno tensed, choking on a sharp, desperate intake of air. His eyes locked frantically with Hargreaves’s, and his hand shot up and clutched the man’s lapel. Lifting his head slightly, Valfierno pulled Hargreaves down until their faces were only inches apart.

  “I almost held the greatest treasure a man could ever possess … but I let her slip through my fingers…”

  “What do you mean?” Hargreaves spluttered. “The painting? The money? Mrs. Hart? What treasure?”

  Valfierno’s expression tightened in fear, his eyes focusing on some unnamed terror approaching from the distance. The correspondent tried to draw back, but Valfierno would not release his grip. Hargreaves felt a horrified fascination as the older man’s eyes lost focus as if they were sinking backward into bottomless, black wells. Dilated pupils drifted up beneath his sagging eyelids before they fluttered closed, sealing those wells shut forever.

  A final rattling breath escaped from Valfierno’s throat as the strength drained from his arm muscles and he lowered himself back down to the bed, his mouth locked open in a hollow silent cry.

  There was a dreadful frozen silence before Hargreaves realized Valfierno’s hand still clutched tightly to his lapel. Sickened, he needed considerable strength to release the cold death grip before he could stand up and back away from the bed.

  “Madame,” he managed to call out. “Madame. Come quickly!”

  Madame Charneau hurried into the room and bustled to the bedside, where she lifted Valfierno’s hand, feeling for a pulse. Then she lowered her head and put her ear next to his gaping mouth.

  “He’s gone, monsieur,” she said solemnly. “May God rest his soul.”

  She took a box of matches from her apron pocket and lit a lamp on the side table. Evening had crept into the room without Hargreaves even noticing. As Madame Charneau rose to the window and used the lamp to signal the men waiting in the courtyard below, an object on the table caught Hargreaves’s eye. He picked it up.

  It was a glove, a single long, white silk lady’s glove.

  * * *

  Roger Hargreaves and Madame Charneau stood next to each other in the courtyard, watching the monks slide the heavy coffin into the back of the hearse. The undertaker and the three hooded men had not spoken a word when they brought the casket up to Valfierno’s room, placed him in it, and carried him back down.

  The monks clambered into the back of the hearse, and the undertaker closed the door behind them. The tall man climbed back up onto the front bench and solemnly doffed his stovepipe hat to Madame Charneau. Taking up the reins, he signaled the horses with a slight flick of his wrists. The animals stirred to life, and the hearse clattered from the courtyard.

  “Well, monsieur,” Madame Charneau said with an air of finality, “I hope you got what you came for. Bonne nuit.”

  Madame Charneau disappeared back into the house. Surveying the empty courtyard, Hargreaves realized that he had been so enthralled with Valfierno’s tale that he had neglected to take notes. And he had lost interest in the evening’s entertainment at the Moulin Rouge. He felt drained and exhausted, and wanted only to return to the hotel for a few hours sleep before catching the train to Calais for the ferry back to England.

  As he walked out of the cour de Rohan toward Saint-Germain, he thought back through all Valfierno had told him. It seemed to have the quality of a dream, some parts indelibly etched in his mind, some already beginning to fade.

  The details were not important, he thought. The essential part was that he now knew almost the entire story of the most intriguing crime of the new century. The mystery could now be brought to its bittersweet conclusion and any credit would be his.

  The marquis de Valfierno, of course, still remained a cipher, but that was probably for the best. Though the public liked to see loose ends tied up neatly, they also liked their facts seasoned with a dose of mystery. He’d probably have to come up with a background story for the man, perhaps make him a nobleman whose family had fallen on hard times—there were certainly enough of them in Paris—and was forced by circumstances to take up a life of deceit and crime. Yes, that sounded about right.

  But he could think about all that tomorrow. Now he felt drained and tired. He would sleep on the train, and then again on the ferry. Yes, when he arrived in Dover, rested, he would remember everything with more clarity.

  * * *

  The three monks, seated on a wooden bench next to the coffin, swayed gently to the rhythm of the moving hearse. Beneath them, a wheel sank into a hole in the cobblestones and the carriage lurched, forcing them to involuntarily reach out to each other for support. It also caused the unhinged and unsecured coffin lid to slide partway off. The monks made no attempt to push it back in place but instead watched silently as a hand slowly emerged from inside, its fingers wrapping around the edge of the lid. With a forceful jerk, the hand pushed the lid off, and Valfierno slowly rose to a sitting position.

  “Will they never fix this road?” he said with a devilish smile.

  One of the monks raised his arms, pulled back
his hood, and Émile’s head emerged from beneath the rough cloth.

  “I can hardly breathe in this,” he said.

  “It wasn’t my idea to wear these things,” said Julia as she pulled back the hood of her robe.

  Ellen tossed back her hood and said, “So much for our vows of silence.”

  They all turned to the sound of knocking. Vincenzo Peruggia, sitting up on the driver’s seat, looked down at them, smiling, as he rapped his knuckles on the glass partition.

  “So,” Ellen said, extending a helping hand to Valfierno, “did you tell Mr. Hargreaves our little story?”

  “Indeed,” Valfierno replied, taking her hand for support as he clambered out of the coffin. “Although I might have left out one or two minor details…”

  Chapter 52

  PARIS—1913

  … Valfierno released his grip on the money valise. The current immediately snatched it, carrying it off into the darkness. He unhooked his elbow from the ladder rail, let his arm slip for an instant, and caught the rail with his left hand. His reach now extended, he stretched out his other arm and gripped Ellen’s wrist.

  “Take my wrist!” he shouted.

  She did as instructed, strengthening their connection.

  “Let go of the pipe!”

  He responded to the fearful look in Ellen’s eyes by gently nodding his encouragement.

  “I won’t let go of you.”

  She took a deep breath and released her grip on the pipe. The underground river fought for her, not wanting to relinquish its prey. Valfierno pulled with every ounce of strength he could muster, gradually drawing her closer to the ladder. Growing weaker by the second, Ellen made a final effort and gripped the rail with her free hand. In a few seconds, they were both securely perched on the steps of the ladder.

  Slowly regaining her strength, Ellen peered down the length of the tunnel for a moment before turning back to Valfierno.

  “The money…”

  He smiled and shrugged. “It was only paper.”

  “And the painting?”

  “Only paint and wood. I couldn’t even begin to tell you where it is right now.”

  She gave him a tired smile and, pushing against the current, leaned her face toward him. He met her halfway and they kissed as passionately as they could under the circumstances.

  She slowly drew back and said, “I love you, Edward.”

  He smiled. A warm, genuine smile.

  After a moment, she said, “Well?”

  He hesitated a moment more before speaking.

  “And I—”

  A loud grating noise from above snared their attention. They looked up, squinting against a light shower of water dripping onto their faces. A sliver of light grew in size like a crescent moon waxing to full as a manhole cover slid loudly away. Julia’s face, backlit by the harsh light of an incandescent bulb, appeared over the rim.

  “They’re down there!” she shouted.

  Émile’s face appeared next to hers.

  “Are you all right?” he called down.

  “Émile,” Valfierno said with relief, “your timing has definitely improved.”

  * * *

  The collapse of the sandbags that flooded the streets relieved the pressure from the rising river, allowing the water to begin to subside. Farther downstream, near the Gare d’Orsay, a group of exhausted soldiers rested on a pile of sandbags.

  “Look,” cried a grizzled sergeant, pointing to a body careening toward the bank. “He just washed out of that pipe.” He indicated a wide iron drainage pipe extending from the river wall. The soldiers scrambled down the stone steps in time to take hold of the man’s clothing and pull him up out of the water.

  “Is he dead?” a young private asked.

  As if in response, the man’s body convulsed and he coughed up water. The sergeant firmly slapped the man’s face, and Vincenzo Peruggia’s eyes popped open.

  * * *

  The descending evening cloaked the city of Paris in a murky darkness it had not known in almost a century. Public works crews could no longer reach the gas lamps to light them; the city’s electricity-generating plants upstream in Bercy had ceased to operate. Emergency generators kept some lights on in public buildings, and naphtha-flare lamps wielded by soldiers and gendarmes pierced the night like fireflies on a summer’s evening.

  The streets of the Latin Quarter were still awash. A waning full moon, lurking behind a thin veil of clouds, washed the scene in an otherworldly light. Passerelles, hastily constructed wooden walkways and footbridges, had already started to appear between buildings. Makeshift rafts of barrels and planks shared the urban lakes with Berthon boats, each operated by two sailors propelling the collapsible waterproof canvas crafts with long poles. It was from the bow of one of these boats that a gendarme caught sight of something at the edge of the circle of light cast by his outstretched lamp. A man’s inert body was draped against a low wrought-iron railing, his jacket caught on the sharp points of the balusters. He held something in his arms. His eyes were closed, but his head was moving slightly and he seemed to be trying to speak.

  “He’s still alive,” the gendarme said as the boat closed in.

  The gendarme and one of the sailors hoisted the victim over the side and into the boat. The man was middle aged, heavyset, and well dressed. He clutched a small wooden panel.

  “Don’t worry, monsieur,” the gendarme said, “you are safe now.”

  After directing the two sailors to pole the boat toward a temporary infirmary in a nearby church, the gendarme put down his lamp and tried to unwrap the man’s arms from around the rectangular panel. Despite being only semiconscious, the victim refused to relinquish it, holding on with a deathlike grip.

  Joshua Hart protested with incomprehensible grunts as the panel was finally pried loose from his grasp. The gendarme turned it over, lifted his lamp, and stared into the faintly mocking smile of La Joconde.

  * * *

  A few miles downstream from the city, where the Seine ran through one of its many serpentine curves on its way north, the body of a large bald man drifted facedown with the current. He was accompanied on his journey by a flotilla of hundred-dollar bills. They floated around him like green lilies, many with the profile of Benjamin Franklin staring up in wonder at the slowly clearing night sky.

  * * *

  Nearby, on the bank of the river, a farmer named Girard searched through the shallows by the feeble light of the veiled moon for a calf he thought might have drowned in the high water. Something caught his eye and he waded over to a rectangular wooden panel caught in some overhanging branches. He picked it up. It was a painting of a woman, her hands crossed in her lap, a slight smile on her face. It was not bad. And there was something vaguely familiar about the eyes.

  As luck would have it, it was his wife’s birthday soon. The panel was wet but appeared undamaged. Perhaps Claire would like it as a present.

  Chapter 53

  Monsieur Duval, official photographer for the Louvre, stood in the midst of the crowd gathered in the Salon Carré for the official rehanging of La Joconde. Politicians, dignitaries, military officers, and their wives filled the salon, barely leaving room for a harpist and string quartet stuck in a corner. Scarcely two weeks had passed since the recovery of the painting by a gendarme from the flood-soaked streets of the Latin Quarter. Remarkably, the painting and the panel were virtually undamaged. The many layers of lacquer that had been applied over hundreds of years to both the front and rear of the panel had protected it during the apparently short time it had been subjected to the elements. Under the supervision of Monsieur Montand, the museum director, various curators had quickly authenticated the painting, and this ceremony had been hastily arranged.

  Duval himself had been allowed only a perfunctory examination of the painting. His job had been to compare it with recent photographs, which had not helped much. It had always been difficult to capture the image with consistent lighting, and this made precise comparison prob
lematic. His inclusion in the process had been only a matter of form, anyway. Within minutes, the panel had been taken from him and he had been thanked for his services. Montand had obviously been in a hurry to get the painting back up onto the wall and put the whole unfortunate incident behind him. Following the theft, thought Duval, Montand must have had to pull in every favor he had ever accumulated to keep his position.

  As various politicians and patrons looked on, the painting—already ensconced in a new shadow box—was hoisted onto its pegs on the wall between the Correggio and the Titian. It was at this moment that Duval realized what had been bothering him since his token examination. The painting itself seemed genuine enough; it was hard to imagine any artist so perfectly re-creating the master’s technique. No, it was something else. Something about the panel itself, and not the front of the panel, but the back. Still, it was impossible to be sure.

  Then he remembered: Of all the photographs taken of the masterpiece, only one had been made of the rear panel to document a repair from the last century.

  Of course.

  He pushed backward against the tide of spectators pressing forward for a better view. He had to get back to his office to see the photograph.

  * * *

  Standing before the eager crowd, Monsieur Montand thought briefly of Inspector Carnot as he acknowledged Police Commissioner Lepine standing in the front row. Carnot had completely disappeared two weeks ago. It was suggested that he perished in the flood, perhaps even taken the opportunity to drown himself rather than endure the shame brought on by his miserable failure to apprehend the thieves. It was of no consequence. Montand never did care much for the man’s manner, not to mention his cheap, ill-fitting suits.