Mirror Image

CHAPTER FIVE

His trusty old Bolsey 35mm camera slung around his neck, Keith Fields-Hutton purchased a ticket in a kiosk outside the Hermitage, near the Neva, then walked the short distance to the sprawling, gold-domed museum. As always, he felt humbled as he walked through the white marble columns on the ground floor. He experienced that every time he entered one of the most historic buildings in the world.

The State Hermitage Museum is the largest museum in Russia. It was established in 1764 by Catherine the Great as a separate area of the two-year-old Winter Palace. It quickly grew from the 225 pieces of art she bought for it to the current collection of 3 million pieces. The museum houses works by Leonardo da Vinci, Van Gogh, Rembrandt, El Greco, Monet, and countless masters, as well as ancient artifacts from the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, Bronze, and Iron ages.

Today, the museum consists of three buildings side by side: the Winter Palace; the Little Hermitage, located directly to the northeast; and the Large Hermitage, situated northeast of that. Until 1917, the Hermitage was closed to all but the royal family, their friends, and aristocrats. Only after the Revolution was it opened to the public.

As Fields-Hutton entered the great main hall, with its ticket takers and souvenir stands, he considered how sad it was that he was here. When Catherine established the museum, she'd posted some very sensible rules of conduct for her guests. The first and most important was Article One: "On entering, the title and rank must be put off, as well as the hat and sword. "

She was right. The experience of art should ease personal and political squabbles, not conceal them. But both Fields-Hutton and Leon believed the Russians had broken that compact. In addition to the death of the six workers and the shipments of material, there were increased levels of microwave radiation. Leon had come over before his employer's arrival and used a cellular phone in different areas around the museum. The closer he got to the river, the more the reception broke up. That might explain the tarpaulins. If the Russians had established some kind of communications center here, below the waterline, the electronic components would have to be insulated from the moisture.

The fact that they may have set up a communications center in the museum made strategic sense. Art was as negotiable as gold, and museums were rarely bombed in wartime. Only Hitler had violated the sanctity of this museum by bombing it. However, the citizens of what was then Leningrad had taken the precaution of evacuating their treasures to Sverdlovsk in the Urals.

Did the Russians build a center here because they were anticipating a war? Fields-Hutton wondered.

Fields-Hutton consulted the layout of the museum in his Blue Guide. He had memorized it on the train but didn't want to arouse the suspicion of guards by appearing to know where he needed to go. Each guard was a potential Ministry of Security freelancer.

After glancing at the map Fields-Hutton turned to the left, to the long, columned Rastrelli Gallery. Every inch of floor space was exposed, leaving no place to hide a secret room aboveground or a hidden staircase that could lead underground. Strolling around the wall that separated the Rastrelli Gallery from the East Wing, he stopped when he spotted what had once apparently been a custodial closet. There was a keypad beside the door, and he smiled when he read the printed sign on an easel to the left. It said, in Cyrillic letters:

This is the future home of Arts for Children, a television service that will broadcast the treasures of the Hermitage to students in schools throughout the nation.

Maybe, thought Fields-Hutton, and maybe not.

Pretending to read his Blue Guide while he watched the guard, Fields-Hutton waited until the man turned away, then hurried over to the door. There was a security camera above it, so he made sure not to look up from his book or show his face. He pretended to sneeze, covering his face with his hand and stealing a look at the lens. It was short, under twenty millimeters. It had to be a wide-angle lens, covering the door as well as the area well to the left and to the right, but not on the bottom.

Fields-Hutton reached into his pants pocket and removed his handkerchief. Inside was a Mexican peso, one of the few coins which had no value in Russia. At worst, if it were found, it would he picked up and kept as a souvenir— hopefully, by a high-ranking official who had something useful to say in private.

Sneezing again and bending hard as he did, Fields-Hutton slid the peso under the door. He was relatively certain that there would be a motion detector on the other side of the door, but that it wouldn't be sensitive enough to notice the coin. Otherwise, every cockroach and mouse in the museum would set it off. Rising quickly, he walked away, his nose buried in the handkerchief.

Meandering back toward the main entrance, he allowed a guard to search his shoulder bag and then went outside, found a spot under a tree by the river, and slipped his CD Walkman from the bag. He jumped the machine to different tracks on the disc— the numbers describing, in code, just what he'd seen in the museum. These numbers were recorded on the writable disc. Later, when he was away from any receivers that might be based in the museum, he would order the Walkman to transmit the signal to the British Consulate in Helsinki, where it would be relayed to London.

When he finished telling them about the TV studio, Fields-Hutton sat back to listen to what he hoped were the sounds of espionage taking place around his small peso.