[JJ06] Quicksand

by Gigi Pandian

  “Bonjour,” a voice said in my ear. “Jolie peinture.”

  I jumped. A muscular blond man gave me a wide smile that revealed exceptionally bright white teeth. For a fraction of a second I wondered if Lane had donned a completely different disguise, but I quickly saw I was mistaken.

  I shook my head. “Je ne parle pas français.”

  “An American!” he said with an accent that told me he was from Australia, or perhaps New Zealand. “Even better. I’m David. I ditched my tour group. Too boring. Want to look at the art in a completely superficial way with me?”

  “Sorry, I’m busy,” I said, my nerves from ten minutes before returning full force. “Meeting up with someone.” I turned to walk away.

  “I’m wounded,” David said, his hands grasped over his heart.

  I spun on my heel and faced him. This was not part of the plan. I glanced around at the people in museum uniforms. None of them were near the painting yet. “Look, my boyfriend is meeting me any minute. He’s, um, the jealous type.”

  He flexed his muscles, his smile never wavering. “Don’t you worry, I can handle myself.”

  I kept my eyes on the painting. A nondescript museum guard made his way around a boisterous Italian tour group and walked up to the painting, stopping directly in front of it. My concentration instantly sharpened. This was it. It was time for me to act.

  “Come on,” my suitor continued. “I’m a fun guy. And unlike the guy you’re waiting for, I’d never leave you alone in this crazy place.”

  I smiled and batted my eyelashes at him, throwing myself into the part. “All right. Let me get rid of him first. I’ll meet you in front of the Richelieu Cafe in ten minutes.”

  “That’s more like it.” He winked at me.

  “I see him!” I said in a loud stage whisper. “Go!” I shoved him away, keeping my eyes locked on the fake guard in front of the painting that was going to be “borrowed.”

  I watched as the guard’s hands reached out and touched the frame of the painting. I held my breath, expecting a shout from a real guard or the piercing shriek of an alarm. Nothing happened.

  Jostled by a passing Japanese tour group, I lost sight of my accomplice and the painting, but when I looked up, the painting was gone.

  A moment later, I caught sight of the fake guard. With a stoic face and a casual strut, he walked in my direction with the painting firmly grasped in both hands. Rather than tackling him, as I would have expected, the sea of people parted. Visitors’ expressions showed various degrees of confusion or surprise, but not horror. They gave him wide berth.

  I didn’t have time to think about how on earth he’d managed to remove the painting. It was my signal to leave the fancy orange shopping bag at the room’s south entrance. I dropped the bag, and after one last glance at the painting in his hands, I forced myself to walk out of the room, not looking back.

  The buzz of the crowds filled my ears as I made a beeline to the lobby. Why wasn’t something happening? Or maybe it was. If a security alarm sounded, I wouldn’t necessarily hear it. The museum was large—the size of eleven football fields, I’d read.

  When I reached the cafe above the lobby, North was sitting in the same spot where I’d left him.

  “This is better than the movies,” he said, his eyes not leaving the phone screen. “Come look.”

  Shown on the video feed, the thief didn’t run. That would have been a giveaway. People in front of him weren’t going to question the person they believed to be a museum employee simply doing his job. Who were they to judge when was an appropriate time to remove a painting? A few of them cast dirty looks in his direction, though. Looking more closely, I saw the reason for the scowls. The thief wasn’t walking—he was dancing.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked with a sinking feeling. “And why is he still carrying the painting? Does that mean he didn’t find the box I left for him? Or he didn’t have time to locate whatever is hidden in the painting?”

  “All in good time. Ah! Here we are.”

  On the video screen, we watched as a real guard spotted him. The guard’s mouth opened, almost in slow motion. Or maybe that was merely my memory of it.

  That’s when the thief ran.

  “Something’s gone wrong.” I sprang from the chair. This was exactly what I’d been afraid of. Lane hadn’t had enough time to prepare.

  “Sit down,” North hissed. “Any moment now—”

  I ignored North, and ran to the railing overlooking the lobby below. The video feed had showed the thief heading back towards the lobby. If he didn’t get caught, I would see him within minutes. As I scanned the crowd, North joined me next to the railing.

  “Where’s Lane?” I asked. “Shouldn’t he be stepping in now that something has gone wrong?”

  “What makes you think something has gone wrong?”

  “Look.” I pointed all around us. From each of the wings, people streamed into the lobby more quickly than they should have, tripping over each other. “The alarm has been raised. They must be directing guests into the main lobby.”

  North held up his phone, watching the video. The thief was in one room, then another. Dodging people. A spot of orange flashed across the screen. It was the shopping bag I’d left for him. If he had it, why wasn’t he using the box inside?

  “Brilliant,” North whispered.

  A shout echoed in the lobby below. It was followed by several more. Something was happening. I don’t know what I expected—a deafening alarm blaring or metal bars clamping down around each wing—but none of that happened.

  Instead, a dozen military-looking men ran down the small, circular staircase in the middle of the lobby across from the escalators most museum attendees used. Another set of men, and one woman, fussed around the main entrance doors. There was no message over an intercom, but people began to notice that something was going on.

  The video image on the phone screen was now fuzzy. It was clear for a second or two, then went fuzzy again. I realized what was happening. The camera kept bumping into other people. The blur wasn’t an error, but rather the image of the camera pressing up against other people’s clothing. The thief was no longer running. He was being carried along in the crowd. It was so crowded that the thief appeared to have lost the museum guard who had spotted him.

  Tourists shouted questions. Children shouted with glee. Museum staff shouted instructions—at least I assumed that’s what they were doing. They didn’t have bullhorns, and the snippets I heard from the closest wing were in French.

  “Isn’t this fun?” North asked. “You can see a whole swath of humanity right here in front of you. People from every continent, speaking dozens of languages, all brought together for their appreciation of art and history.”

  “Where’s Lane?”

  “I anticipate he’ll be along shortly.”

  North smiled as he looked into the chaos surrounding us. The escalators stopped moving. The armed guards prevented people from climbing the unmoving escalator to reach the exit. The loudest voices wafted up to us. “Stop shoving!” “I told you this was a bad day to come to the museum!” “Harold, is that man carrying a painting?”

  “There,” North said, tucking his phone into his pocket, “by the entrance to the Sully wing.”

  My throat ached as I realized what was happening. He was going to get caught. I was sure of it. Then, the most curious thing happened.

  The thief smiled as he made eye contact with the guards. He gave a little wave. It was a wave goodbye—right before he dove into an especially thick section of the crowd.

  People were shoulder-to-shoulder throughout most of the lobby now, so the maneuver wasn’t difficult. One moment the thief was there, and then he was gone.

  “Where did he go?” I scanned the crowd, but the man had disappeared as effectively as if he�
��d jumped into a black hole. If this hadn’t been the Louvre, I would have sworn he’d gone down a trap door like in one of Sanjay’s magic tricks.

  Seconds later, half a dozen guards reached the spot where the man had vanished. Four of them pushed people back while two of them looked at what was left in the spot.

  I almost expected to see the man lying dead on the ground after swallowing a cyanide pill. But this wasn’t a spy movie. There was no dead man on the ground.

  There was no man at all.

  The guards pushed people back far enough that there was now at least a fifteen foot radius. Enough space for me to see from above what was happening.

  On the floor was a navy blue jacket that looked like that of a museum guard. Next to it was a narrow cardboard box with a purple peace sign spray-painted on the surface, and a can of spray paint.

  One of the military-looking men reached into the box. He pulled out the painting. With a stoic face, he turned it over, inspecting it for damage. He nodded to one of his compatriots, unable to suppress a smile.

  If the painting was undamaged, did that mean the thief hadn’t been able to remove whatever it was they needed to borrow the painting for? I was glad he’d escaped, but wondered if North would think Lane and I hadn’t lived up to our obligations.

  “What an interesting piece of performance art!” North said, raising his voice loudly enough to be heard by everyone around us. “Look, everyone, it’s a political statement!”

  Murmurs of assent echoed through the crowd. “Did you see the performance below?” “Wait ’til the kids hear about this!” “Damn hippies.”

  “That,” North whispered in my ear, “is what I call a brilliant diversion.”

  CHAPTER 18

  “A diversion,” I murmured. The painting wasn’t important at all. It was merely a diversion.

  “A nice one,” North said. “Lane is good.”

  “But won’t they realize something else was—”

  “Let’s get going,” North said, putting his arm on my shoulder to guide me through the crowd.

  I pulled away. “There’s no rush. It doesn’t look like they’re letting anyone out.”

  “They will soon.”

  “Won’t they want to find the guy?”

  “Oh, they’ll look for a short time. But soon enough they’ll realize the futility of the situation. They won’t find him.”

  “But he wasn’t disguised.”

  “Wasn’t he?” His eyes twinkled as he paused and turned to me. “Tell me, what did he look like? Average height? Average brown hair? Not too old, but not too young? Half the men in this museum fit that description. And the painting wasn’t damaged—that was the purpose of the box you provided—so there was no harm done.”

  “But—”

  “Such impatience.” He glanced at the time on his phone. “Come on. We’re due to meet Lane. If he’s done his part—”

  “If?”

  “Regardless, I’d like to be near one of the exits as soon as they start letting people out.”

  We maneuvered through the crowd. Agitated people from every continent looked around in confusion. “But I have a flight to catch!” “I’m an American! I have rights!” “You can’t keep us here without telling us what’s going on! Honey, do something!”

  “As you can tell,” North said with a giddy smile, “they’re going to have a riot on their hands if they keep us too long.”

  It took longer than North expected for the authorities to open the doors. But as he predicted, they gave up before they identified their suspect. At least it looked that way. The authorities weren’t telling us anything.

  From where we stood nearly underneath the pyramid, I could see a large crowd gathered outside in the courtyard. Visitors weren’t being let in, but people were now being let out. Dozens of armed guards ushered people toward the exits, no doubt trying to prevent a stampede. North hooked his elbow around mine so we didn’t lose each other in the throng.

  In my heels, it was possible for me to see at least a little bit of what was going on. Even so, I was lifted off the ground by the force of the crowd, which perfectly matched how I felt. Whatever control I thought I had was all an illusion. My feet touched the ground after only a few seconds, and North kept a firm hold on my elbow and pulled me from underneath the pyramid into the courtyard.

  “Dear girl, you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Let’s get you some sustenance.”

  Fifteen minutes later, we sat in the corner of a bistro that looked small from the outside but stretched back the depth of eight tables. We sat at the farthest table from the front, facing the door. In my dazed state I couldn’t remember ordering anything, but North must have requested both wine and espresso, because an elegantly-attired waiter set both in front of me.

  “I do appreciate a woman who knows what she wants.”

  “I ordered this?”

  His eyes crinkled as he took a sip of wine. “You don’t remember?”

  “Does this mean I’m in shock?”

  He laughed. “It’s almost over now. You can relax.”

  “Hugo is missing, possibly dead. And Lane isn’t here yet. I don’t call that being over.”

  The smile left North’s lips. “I’m truly sorry about Hugo.” He paused to take a long drink of wine, almost finishing the glass. He picked up the bottle and poured himself some more.

  “Shouldn’t we be meeting Lane by now?”

  “This is where he’s meeting us.”

  “In public?”

  “I’m glad to know you’re not going to be competition for my business. With the look of excitement in your eyes back at the museum, I wasn’t so sure. But you’ve got a lot to learn about how things work. Doing business in public is the best way for us legitimate art dealers to ensure that nobody gets the wrong idea about us.”

  I was distracted by the sight of a tall man wearing a newsboy cap who had just walked into the restaurant. The hat had a large brim that obscured part of his face, but that didn’t stop me from recognizing Lane. He wasn’t disguising how he carried himself. That was all I needed to know it was him.

  He took off the hat and headed straight for us. “It’s good to see you, Jones,” he said, sitting down next to me and slipping his hand into mine. His body was alert and relaxed at the same time, as if a great weight had been lifted but his adrenaline was still running strong.

  “I trust there were no problems,” North said.

  “None at all.” Lane took a flat object, roughly the size of his hand, from his shirt pocket. Even though we were handing it over to North, I was pleased to see Lane had placed the historical piece into a clear protective sleeve.

  North snatched it from his hand and tucked it into his own pocket, but not before I caught a glimpse of the item. It was a piece of parchment paper, with a few words of faded calligraphy and a painting of two animals intertwined with a man. The painting sparked a sense of recognition, but I didn’t have time for it to register.

  Lane cocked his head to the side, looking uncertainly at North. “That illuminated manuscript page is what you expected, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” North said. “I simply thought you’d show a bit of common sense. That’s why I provided the envelope.”

  That was odd. North had said the exact opposite only moments before. Lane must have found the request unexpected, too. He handed over a small envelope.

  “It’s a bit late for that now.” North watched me for a moment before breaking into a smile. “Well, no harm done.”

  “Won’t they be looking for it from whatever exhibit you stole that from?” I asked.

  “Nobody,” Lane said, “will realize it’s missing.”

  “Because of the diversion? That bought you time, but surely they’ll notice soon enough.”


  North laughed. “Not really. You see, nobody knows this exists.”

  CHAPTER 19

  “What do you mean nobody knows it exists?” I whispered.

  “Speak normally,” North said. “It’s much less suspicious.”

  “He’s right,” Lane said without lowering his voice. He continued speaking as a waiter set a wine glass in front of him. “We’re all old friends here.” He poured himself a splash of wine and raised his glass. “A toast to old friends about to say a fond farewell.”

  “Fine,” I said. “I’m not toasting, but if I speak normally, will someone answer my question?”

  “I can tell you this, my dear,” North said. “This page is the missing piece of an illuminated manuscript that’s been in my client’s family for years. The man who’s paying me for this will be very, very happy. This missing page has been a life-long obsession of his.”

  I stared at the imperfections on the thick wooden table in front of me, a combination of incidental scratches from years of use and purposefully carved initials. The worn table must have been decades old, but that was nothing compared to the age of the hand-painted piece of parchment I’d been a part of stealing. What did it mean to steal a piece of history if nobody knew about it?

  “You found it where the information indicated?” North asked.

  “I did,” Lane said. “Did you like the artist’s contribution on the other side of the museum?”

  “That was a lovely touch.”

  “He’s really a performance artist?” I asked. “Not one of your associates?”

  “That was the beauty of the plan,” Lane said. “He’s an artist who likes to subvert the system by showing how patriarchal art obscures larger political problems. I knew of his work, so I thought he’d be up for the challenge. The difficult part was finding him, because his identity is a closely-guarded secret.”

  “That’s one of the things Lane was busy with,” North added.