PART 1
1
Arkady Kuznetsov was tired. It had been a long day on the job, a day with extra strain beyond the usual annoyance of dealing with tourists. He didn’t like tourists. But he had learned to put up with them. He had to. Thousands of them came to St. Petersburg to see the art treasures here at the Hermitage Museum. None of them spoke Russian, of course. Most of them just spoke their own language louder, as if shouting would make foreign words turn themselves into Russian. Arkady was polite to all of them, no matter how loud and stupid. It was part of his job. But a busy day left him very tired.
Not often as tired as he was right now. There had of course been the usual tourists. It was summer, the season when they came here in great flocks from all over the world. But today there was even more to deal with than annoying foreign visitors. Today there had been a “credible threat”—that’s what his supervisor called it—that someone would try to steal one of the paintings Arkady and his colleagues spent their days guarding. Someone would try to steal a Van Gogh called Ladies of Arles. Arkady could not imagine why. He didn’t like that painting. To him it looked smeared. He preferred a picture to look like a picture. It should look like what it was, not all scrambled like this one. But that didn’t matter. The important thing was that somebody meant to take it—take it from the Hermitage, while he was watching it! As a matter of national and professional pride, Arkady would not let that happen.
So he answered the usual shouted and pantomimed questions as he stood at the door to Room 413, General Staff Building. And on top of that, he had added an extra layer of vigilance. It was a skill he had acquired in his twenty years in the Army, a very high percentage of it spent on guard duty. He had never been strong or smart or skillful enough for anything but regular infantry, and it had taken him fifteen years to rise to the rank of corporal. But he knew how to stand watch and stay alert. And when he had retired six years ago, his service had been just the right ticket to land him this comfortable job, security guard at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
But Arkady was feeling his years, and to be honest, he had put on a few pounds since leaving the Army. His back hurt, and his feet were killing him. The flow of ordinary tourists had not slowed down at all. If anything, there were more of the annoying kind today than usual.
Like this one now, the fat Frenchman, standing in his face and lecturing. He had approached Arkady in a reasonable way. The man smelled of garlic and stale wine. His appearance was messy, too. He wore a rumpled off-white suit, which did not hide the bulge of his belly. And it accented the man’s shaggy gray hair and disordered beard. Still, for a Frenchman, he had been polite at first, pointing to himself and loudly mouthing his name, Hervé Thierry. That was all Arkady understood. Arkady spoke no more than a dozen words of French. But he made the mistake of answering, “Plaisir,” which he thought was the right thing to say. Mr. Thierry took this as a sign and had immediately asked a series of questions in rapid French.
Arkady could not stop the flow and Mr. Thierry became more heated when no answers came. His voice got louder, and his fat, sweaty face got sweatier and redder, and that did not increase Arkady’s understanding of the man’s pointed speech at all—which of course increased Mr. Thierry’s frustration. He seemed to grow larger and redder all the time. He began to gesture at the paintings, and the word “France” came with frequency. Arkady figured that it had become a matter of national interest for Mr. Thierry. Probably because most of the paintings here were by French artists or had been taken from collectors who had taken them from France.
Finally, just when Arkady had started to think he would have to encourage the Frenchman to move along, Mr. Thierry raised an index finger in Arkady’s face, as if to scold him. For a moment, Arkady thought he saw a puff of smoke.
When they woke him much later, that was all Arkady remembered.
* * *
—
Ludmila Ukhtomsky was hungover. This was not truly an unusual condition for her, nor for many in her social circle. Normally a few cups of tea would set her right. Not today. She was halfway through her eighth cup of strong black tea for the day, and her head still ached. The rhythmic pounding in her skull still thumped in tandem with her heartbeat, and she had not yet decided if she wanted to live another day.
And then the alarm began to ring.
For a moment Ludmila thought it was another symptom of her hangover. She clutched at her temples, willing the sound to go away. But it didn’t, and then the call came from the security station. A guard was on the floor, unresponsive, either unconscious or dead. That did not matter to Ludmila. What mattered was the location—Room 413. As an assistant curator, she was of course aware that a threat had been made to one of the paintings in that room. She swallowed her rising bile, put her tea on the desk, and hurried out of her office.
When she got to Room 413, the alarm was still ringing, an unreasonably loud and discordant sound. Ludmila pushed through the crowd of gawkers in the doorway and peered anxiously into the room. She was relieved to see that the Van Gogh was still on the wall where it belonged. A ring of guards spread across the room, watching doors and windows. Ludmila turned her attention to the men at the doorway standing above the body of the fallen guard. One of them was Security Chief Loskutnikhov.
“He appears to be merely unconscious,” the chief told her, nodding at the man on the floor.
“Unconscious? In what sense of the word?” she asked. She was aware that her words were phrased oddly, but the alarm made thought nearly impossible.
At least her meaning seemed clear to Chief Loskutnikhov. He shrugged and said, “It is my guess that he was drugged.”
“But the painting is untouched?”
“It appears to be,” Loskutnikhov said. “Certainly it is still in its place and has suffered no apparent harm.”
“Then can it— Why is— Damn it, Chief, can we not turn off the chertovskiy alarm?”
Loskutnikhov raised an eyebrow fractionally. He seemed amused at her irritation, as if he knew she was hungover and he himself was above such things. “Of course,” he said. He removed the radio from his belt and spoke into it. “This is Loskutnikhov. Turn off the alarm for Room 413.” There was a pause, and then a reply crackled from the radio. Ludmila couldn’t hear the words, and the chief seemed uncertain, too. “Say again?” he demanded. The reply came again.
The chief frowned but didn’t speak. Then he looked at Ludmila. “They say the alarm is off,” he said.
“But it isn’t off—I can still hear it!” Ludmila said.
“Yes,” Loskutnikhov said. “But not for this room.”
* * *
—
It did not take long to trace the second alarm. The signal was coming from just below them, in Room 302. When Ludmila and Chief Loskutnikhov arrived, two security guards already stood in the doorway, holding back the curious tourists. One of the guards stepped forward. “Chief,” he said. He motioned at a dark-haired young woman, who stepped up beside him. “This is Anna Sokolov. A tour guide.”