The Van Gogh Deception

by Deron R. Hicks

  “All clear,” he said.

  The two made their way down the corridor, past wooden doors with numbers stenciled in black paint. Tall transom windows capped each door.

  Seven.

  Eight.

  Nine.

  Ten.

  Art stood in front of the door stenciled with the number 10. He paused, placed his ear against the door, and listened.

  Nothing.

  The boy stepped back and stared up at the large transom window above the door. The pane was completely dark. From all appearances, no one was in the room. But Art knew that appearances could be deceiving.

  “Go ahead,” Camille urged him. “Try the key.”

  He took the key from his pocket and then motioned for her to move away from the door.

  “Seriously?” the girl asked.

  “Seriously,” the boy replied. “And if anything happens, don’t stick around to ask questions. Just run.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen,” Camille insisted. “No one’s in there.”

  “Promise me you’ll run.”

  “I promise,” she replied. She backed up to the opposite wall.

  Art put the brass key into the lock, held his breath, and gave it a quarter turn to the right. The cylinder turned easily, and the bolt slid back with a slight click. The boy exhaled, removed the key from the lock, and returned it to his pocket.

  “Well,” he said, “I guess we’re in the right place.”

  Art opened the door a crack. He paused once again and listened for any sounds from within. Again, all was silent.

  He motioned for Camille to remain where she was. She rolled her eyes but stayed against the far wall in the hallway. Art stepped into the dark room.

  Despite her bravado, Camille was scared. And contrary to what Art seemed to believe, she was not convinced that standing in the hallway was any safer than following him into the dark room. Every time she shifted her feet, the floor beneath her creaked. The sound seemed incredibly loud. If there was anyone in the building, they wouldn’t be able to help but hear them.

  Camille’s eyes darted constantly from one end of the long hallway to the other.

  Suddenly the lights in the room flickered on. Her heart jumped in her chest.

  “Wow!” Art exclaimed from inside the room. His words echoed through the building. So much for keeping quiet, Camille thought.

  “What is it?” she asked in a half whisper.

  “Get in here!” Art said. “You’ve got to see this!”

  8:10 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  Steaming Monkey Coffee Emporium, Washington, DC

  “A young boy and a young girl,” said Nigel Stenhouse. “The girl has red hair—​bright red hair. The boy, blond.”

  The thin girl with the purple hair hesitated. She clearly did not like giving away information about a couple of kids to a complete stranger.

  “Not sure,” she said. “We get all sorts of customers—​hard to keep up with them all.”

  Nigel Stenhouse nodded politely. The girl’s response was not unexpected, but Stenhouse didn’t have time to waste. He would need to put his secret weapon into action. Stenhouse was British, and he was about to unleash the full force of that English decorum against her.

  He leaned over the counter.

  “I understand your concern, miss,” he assured her in his distinctive North London accent. His voice was almost a whisper. “But I’m not some nosy parker. The girl’s name is Camille, and she’s my niece. She called home just a few minutes ago, and her mum asked me to drop by and pick her up.”

  Stenhouse paused for effect.

  “She’s in a bit of trouble for staying out too late,” he finally said. “Her mum’s a worrier.”

  The girl with the purple hair immediately relaxed. Stenhouse knew that anytime he could squeeze the word “mum” into a sentence, it worked wonders. Americans loved to hear someone with an English accent say “mum.”

  “They left maybe ten minutes ago,” the girl with the purple hair said. “The boy had a key to one of the art studios in the building behind the coffee shop. I think that’s where they were headed.”

  An art studio! thought Stenhouse, who tried to hide his surprise. So maybe the boy wasn’t simply wandering about the city at random. Maybe the boy had a plan—​a destination. Palmer would want to know about this new development immediately. The pieces, it seemed, were starting to fall into place. And, it also seemed, their guest had been withholding information from them.

  “Smashing!” said Stenhouse. “I truly, truly appreciate your help. Her mum will be ever so pleased.”

  The girl with the purple hair smiled warmly. “You’re quite welcome.”

  Chapter 36

  8:11 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  GWU Department of Fine Arts studio building, Washington, DC

  Camille gasped as she stepped through the doorway.

  The room was massive—​two stories tall, and long enough for a half-court game of basketball. The interior walls of the room were bare brick, and the floor was made of oak planks that looked as if they had been in place for a hundred years or more. Tall, narrow windows covered the far wall and steel I-beams crossed in the space high above their heads. A row of broad metal pendant lights hung near the ceiling along the length of the room. The lights were attached to an ancient collection of pulleys and chains that wound their way across the ceiling and down to a panel of brass hand cranks and levers beneath the windows on the far wall. The lights and the girders cast deep shadows throughout the room. The only sound was a slight hiss emanating from the ornate cast-iron radiator that ran down the left side of the room.

  “Creepy,” said Camille. “But really cool.”

  Art made his way over to the panel of cranks and levers along the wall. He selected a crank in the middle of the panel and held it tightly. With his free hand, he released the lever. He instantly felt the heft of one of the heavy pendant lights tugging against the crank. As he allowed the weight of the light to slowly turn the reel in a counterclockwise direction, one of the massive pendants in the middle of the room started to descend. Art stopped the light about fifteen feet or so from the floor and reset the lever. He then lowered two more lights. The deep shadows disappeared.

  “Better?” asked Art.

  “Better,” replied Camille. She didn’t bother asking how he knew how to operate the cranking system that lowered the lights. She didn’t have to ask—​she could see it in his eyes. The memories were returning—​and fast.

  The two stood and examined the room.

  “It looks like . . . Dr. Frankenstein’s lab,” said Camille.

  A thick wooden table ran through the middle of the room. On top of the table were Bunsen burners, beakers, burettes, tongs, funnels, scalpels, latex gloves, cotton swabs, tubing, clamps, bulbs, and test tubes. A computer keyboard and a huge microscope sat at the far end of the table next to a towering stack of notebooks and the largest computer screen Camille had ever seen in her life. On the opposite side of the table was a tall wire shelf filled with small containers made of a dark glass.

  The girl made her way over to the shelf and looked at a label on one of the glass containers.

  A look of horror crossed her face.

  “Dragon’s blood!” she exclaimed. “The label says it’s dragon’s blood.”

  What is this place? she wondered.

  And why does Art have a key to it?

  Art smiled. It may have looked like Dr. Frankenstein’s lab to Camille, but it felt like home to him. He could sense the memories bubbling up. He was starting to feel like a real person.

  “Dragon’s blood,” he said. “Sanguis Draconis. It’s a red pigment made from a tree in Asia.”

  “A pigment?” asked Camille. “For what? It sounds like something out of Harry Potter.”

  “Painters have used stuff like that for centuries to make paints,” he explained. “They would grind the pigment up and mix it wi
th oil. Dragon’s blood makes a great red paint. There’s even a mural in Pompeii that has dragon’s blood paint on it—​and that’s about two thousand years old.”

  Art stepped over to the shelf.

  He read several of the labels aloud—​boiled oil, hydrochloric acid, zinc oxide, ink of cuttlefish, ground mollusk shells, realgar, dragon’s blood, powdered mummy, potassium chlorate, lapis lazuli.

  “Art supplies,” said Art.

  “Not like any art supplies I’ve ever seen,” said Camille. “Powdered mummy? You have to be kidding me.”

  Art knew they weren’t like any art supplies that Camille—​or most people—​had ever seen. They weren’t nice prepackaged tubes of paint with pretty labels. They weren’t paintbrushes made of some industrially manufactured bristles. They weren’t convenient, easy-to-use aerosol cans filled with lacquer, or the nice premade canvases that you can buy in multipacks at the local craft store. No, the bottles on the shelf represented raw materials used by artists for centuries. Many of the items in the bottles were dangerous—​poisonous, corrosive, and, if handled improperly, potentially explosive. Artists throughout the ages had sacrificed their health, and many their lives, by using these types of chemicals, minerals, powders, and liquids to produce their art. The boy knew that some people believed that van Gogh may have suffered from lead poisoning—​a common ingredient in paints in the nineteenth century. But Art also knew that these same materials, as dangerous as they may have been, were also used to create many of the greatest works of art known to history.

  8:12 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  Hotel Monaco, Washington, DC

  Detective Evans and Mary Sullivan stood outside the front entrance of the hotel. The night was cold, and the snow was growing heavy. The National Portrait Gallery, barely a hundred feet from the entrance to the hotel, was little more than a fuzzy blur. The traffic outside the hotel seemed remarkably light—​perhaps everyone knew that even heavier snow was on the way.

  “What now?” Mary asked.

  “We keep looking,” replied the detective. “And I need you to check with Camille’s friends and any family you may have in the area—​anyone Camille might go to if she was in trouble or needed help.”

  Mary nodded. She suspected that the detective was just providing her with busywork—​something to keep her mind off the fact that her daughter was still missing. But that was fine—​Mary needed the distraction. She had started making a mental list of whom she needed to call when her phone rang. She pulled her cell out of her purse—​it was a call from her sister. Mary’s heart jumped in her chest. She had forgotten that her sister had been heading over to her house. Maybe Camille was already there. Maybe her daughter was already safe at home.

  “It’s my sister,” Mary said to Detective Evans as she answered the phone.

  Brooke Evans had been a detective for ten years. However, she didn’t need years of experience to read the look on Mary Sullivan’s face.

  She watched as the hopeful expression on Mary’s countenance gave way to concern.

  “Let me know if you hear anything else,” Mary said before ending the call.

  The worried mother stood at the top of the stairs outside the entrance to the Hotel Monaco and simply stared out into the cold, snowy night. The detective knew better than to try to push her to speak. Mary would talk soon enough.

  And she did.

  “There were two messages on our phone at home,” she finally said. “The first message was from a Detective Wasberger.”

  “Wasberger?” asked Detective Evans. How did he get involved in all of this?

  Mary continued to stare out into the night. “He said that Art’s brother had shown up at the station looking for him—​except he said the boy’s name isn’t Art. It’s Taylor, and he’s supposedly from Virginia. Detective Wasberger said the boy ran away from home. He gave the brother my address and phone number so he could call me and make arrangements to pick up Art . . . or whatever his name is.”

  “But the brother never called, did he?” asked Detective Evans. She knew Wasberger had just been trying to be helpful—​but providing Mary’s address and phone number had been a big mistake.

  Mary shook her head. “No. He never called.”

  “And the second message?”

  “From Camille,” replied Mary.

  “Your daughter called?” asked the detective. “What did she say?”

  “She said things were a little crazy but that she was keeping an eye on Art like she had promised.”

  The detective did not immediately respond. Things were a little crazy? Whatever Camille meant by that, it didn’t sound good. Mary, Evans could tell, understood that as well.

  “Did she say anything else?” the detective finally asked.

  “Just that she . . . would be home soon,” said Mary. And with that, she burst into tears.

  8:20 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  Townhouse apartment, Washington, DC

  “Front entrance, one rear exit,” said Dorchek Palmer. “No alarm system. Twelve studios, one stairway in the rear of the building, and an elevator near the main entrance. There’s nowhere to run or hide once they go inside one of the studios—​the rooms are long but narrow. Security camera on the front of the building, but I’m running an empty loop on that, so you’re good to go.”

  Palmer had pulled up the floor plan for the building from a directory on the university’s website. Nigel Stenhouse, the only remaining member of the team, sat in his vehicle—​yet another large black SUV—​and listened intently as Palmer spoke. Stenhouse understood the gravity of the situation.

  “You’ll have to go in alone,” said Palmer. “Everyone else is out of commission. Do anything you need to do to finish the mission.”

  Palmer paused.

  “No one,” he finally said, “gets in or out of the building until we find that boy. Understood?”

  “Understood,” said Stenhouse.

  “And one more thing,” Palmer said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Do not underestimate these kids.”

  8:21 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  GWU Department of Fine Arts studio building, Washington, DC

  “These are seriously art supplies?” said Camille, after spending several minutes inspecting the containers on the shelf. “What is this place?”

  Art didn’t respond. He went over to the computer keyboard and pushed one of the buttons. The large screen immediately lit up. Camille made her way over and examined the monitor. The panel itself was the thinnest and largest she had ever seen. The screen was at least four feet high and six feet wide. But what was more remarkable was the image on the monitor: a small text box against a brilliant blue background. The text box seemed to float in space—​it looked remarkably lifelike, or as lifelike as a floating text box could be. The image was three-dimensional, but with a clarity Camille had never seen.

  “You need a password,” she said, stating the obvious.

  Art stared down at the keyboard. A moment later he typed five letters.

  “What did you type in?” she asked.

  “Verum,” he replied. “It means ‘truth’ in Latin.”

  “And how do you know that’s the password?”

  “I just know,” the boy replied, and pressed Enter.

  The small text box blinked out of existence, and an instant later another image appeared.

  Camille gasped.

  She stared at the picture on the massive computer screen. It was an image with which she was familiar—​but not one she would ever have expected to see in this setting.

  What have I gotten myself into? she thought.

  Chapter 37

  8:23 p.m.

  Saturday, December 16

  GWU Department of Fine Arts studio building, Washington, DC

  “Is that what I think it is?” Camille asked.

  “Yes,” replied Art.


  They stared at the image floating on the screen. It was the long-lost painting by Vincent van Gogh, The Park at Arles with the Entrance Seen Through the Trees—​the same painting that they had seen earlier that day on the large banners hanging from the front of the National Gallery of Art.

  The image on the screen was remarkable.

  “It’s so . . . real-looking,” said Camille.

  Art nodded. It was incredible. He stood directly in front of the monitor, his face only inches away, but it was as if he were standing in front of the painting itself. There was no sense of the image being anything less than a real object—​the boy could almost smell the dust in the intricate carvings on the thick wood frame. Whatever technology was used to capture this image was not something bought off the shelf at the local electronics store.

  Art reached out and touched the painting on the screen. Instantly a small circle appeared and the area that he had touched was enlarged tenfold. The detail was unbelievable. The boy could actually see a single hair from a paintbrush trapped in the dried paint. He put his hands on either side of the circle and moved them apart. The circle expanded—​and the image within enlarged even more. He could now see thousands of hairline cracks crisscrossing the surface of the painting.

  Art touched the circle again, and it disappeared.

  “Wow,” said Camille. “But why is this here? Why would someone need this?”

  Art continued to stare at the screen. “Good questions,” he replied. He could feel the answers struggling to get out from behind the dam in his head.

  “What else can you do with it?” Camille asked.

  Another good question. “Let’s see,” the boy replied.

  Art put both his hands under the bottom of the frame and moved them up. The painting shifted up, as if Art was actually lifting it. He brought his hands back down, and the painting settled into place. He then took the canvas by its right edge and moved his hand to the left. The painting rotated sideways. The edge of the frame appeared. He could see the little dings along the frame’s perimeter and the small worn areas where the darkened wood peeked through the gold paint—​the hallmarks of the frame’s many journeys. Art turned the painting completely sideways. All he could see was the edge of the frame itself.