I tried to think what a professional icon thief would do. Probably find an icon exhibit and slip this in with a bunch of cheap copies for sale. But I didn’t have access to an exhibit like that, plus I’d already wrapped it all up.
Hiding it on our floor didn’t make sense. They were sure to search there first. Maybe they were already setting up surveillance equipment.
But what about the top floor? I raced up the stairs and found myself in an exclusive bar with a view of large swaths of Saint Petersburg. There were big sofas and armchairs and little side tables featuring various types of orchids.
Not a customer in sight.
Not an employee in sight.
Was this wise? I couldn’t think.
Plus I had to go to the bathroom.
I went right over to the farthest sofa, back in the corner, and used the rest of the duct tape to secure the wrapped icon to its underside. Without further reflection, I secured the mummified icon to the bottom of the sofa in the bar. Preserved it for posterity. Or antiquity.
Either way, it was hidden now. And could be forgotten.
If we just pretended like we’d never taken it, we’d start believing it ourselves. And then it would be almost impossible to figure out what was actually true.
Everyone knows that the replicants that are hardest to identify are the ones who don’t know themselves. The ones who think they’re humans.
“Chew on that, Voight-Kampff,” I said to the empty room, to no one, and to everyone.
26
Most of the day was spent trudging along the Neva with Irina and Ivan. They didn’t ask us any questions and hardly exchanged any words with any of us. At one point Peter asked if we could stop somewhere and eat lunch, but an icy look from Irina put an end to that idea. So we kept marching until she got a phone call and led us back to the hotel, where they deposited us with a small nod.
As I waited for the others in the lobby bar, I was actually able to connect to the Internet again. After I deleted the e-mails in my in-box from the PTA, the chair, and the alarm salesman (who had somehow mysteriously tracked down my e-mail address), I did a search for “stolen valuable art” and found a site called the Missing Art Database. “Icons” had their own category. Against my better judgment I clicked, but although there were several that looked like it, the Dean Icon Christ figure didn’t appear to be in the system. On one side of the screen, there was a number you could call if you had information about any of the stolen artworks. It was the number for INTERPOL.
My body forgot how to breathe.
I could picture the headlines: “World-Famous Masterpiece Found in Hotel. Thieves Claim It Was a Gift.” “Norwegian Government Unable to Help Academics in Gulag.” “Icon Ingrid Dead of Overdose.” Because that was the worst thing. I was going to take the fall. Ingvill was completely unaware of what had happened, and Peter would wriggle his way out of the whole thing. Plus, he was a British citizen so the Queen would surely help him.
I, on the other hand, was in trouble.
“Where did you hide it?” Peter whispered when he came downstairs. His face was weirdly expressionless, and I wondered if the Neva stroll might have left him with permanent frostbite.
“It’s best if you don’t know.”
“But I was the one who got it!”
“Stole it,” I said. “Stole it.”
“You know—”
I cut him off.
“We have to stop thinking about it, pretend it doesn’t exist.”
“Pretend what doesn’t exist?” Ingvill asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
“Nothing,” Peter said.
“I wish you didn’t exist,” she said to me.
“And I wish you—” I began, but Peter elbowed me in the side.
“I think Irina’s interested in you,” Ingvill told Peter.
I started laughing uncontrollably, but stopped when I saw the look on his face.
“Why are you laughing?”
“I’m sorry, but she’s not interested in you.”
“How do you know that?” Ingvill asked.
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
“First of all she looks like Nastassja Kinski.”
“So?”
“And, by the way, Ivan is also completely uninterested in you.”
Ingvill scoffed and walked over to the bar to buy herself a glass of wine.
“I’ll have you know that she took my arm right before we reached the hotel,” Peter said. “And said she was looking forward to seeing me again. Plus she wondered if we could meet, just the two of us. Tonight. Before the opera.”
“What? When was this?”
“Right after she finished her phone call.”
That silenced me for a second. And frightened me more.
“Peter, it’s a honey trap!”
“What?”
“You mentioned them yourself, just yesterday! It’s when a secret agent lures someone with access to sensitive information into an emotional relationship or, better yet, into compromising themselves, and then pressures him or her into spilling the beans.”
“But Ingrid . . .”
“You said Irina wanted to meet you for a drink?”
“Yes, but . . .”
“It’s a well-known fact that the Soviet intelligence system used a lot of honey traps. You know, back in the sixties, even the wife of Norway’s prime minister got tricked.”
“What?”
“Werna Gerhardsen, during a trip to Armenia. Apparently it’s true.”
“What?”
My head had started throbbing, and suddenly I was incredibly exhausted.
“Don’t walk into a honey trap, Peter.”
“Maybe I could just go a little ways into the honey trap, but without compromising any sensitive information? You know, kind of turn the tables? Besides, I don’t know anything, anyway. You’re the one with the icon after all. I’ve hardly even seen it.”
The pounding in my head increased.
“Good news,” Ingvill reported as she returned from the bar.
“Yes?” Peter said expectantly.
“What is it?” I asked warily.