The Hypnotist

THIRTY-THREE

On Wednesday morning the museum’s board of directors were assembled in the conference room around a large oval table made of rare zebrawood and ebony, being briefed by the FBI. At each setting was a Lalique tumbler and water pitcher, an Egyptian cotton napkin, a Limoges plate and Puiforcat silverware. Down the middle of the table were platters of miniature buttery croissants, golden-brown pains au chocolat and salvers of fat strawberries, shiny apples and glistening green grapes in arrangements borrowed from the Henri Fantin-Latour still lifes in the galleries below. None of the dozen men and women who comprised the august body of policymakers had yet taken anything to eat-they were all too astonished by what they were hearing.

Tyler Weil, who’d called this emergency meeting, the first of his tenure and the first in the museum’s last decade, sat at the head of the table explaining the situation. Doug Comley, in a pressed navy suit, crisp white shirt and carefully knotted striped tie, was on his left, and Lucian Glass, who was unshaven and wearing his usual black jeans and T-shirt and looked even more haggard and exhausted than usual, sat on his right.

“This is going to be an extremely sensitive negotiation, and I wanted you all to understand what we’re planning.”

“Before we go there, are you saying you haven’t even figured out why on earth this lunatic wants to exchange these four masterpieces for a sculpture?” Jim Rand interrupted. He was an impatient man in his seventies who was the CEO of a holding company that owned one of the largest advertising agencies in the world and had donated enough money to the Met in the past five years to have a gallery named after him.

“No one will fault us for making the exchange. The Van Gogh alone is worth a dozen Greek sculptures,” Nina Keyes said. The five-carat diamond earrings she wore bounced in sync to the vehemence of her response. “Just give them the sculpture.”

“It’s not that simple, Nina. If it gets out that we negotiated or capitulated we leave ourselves open and vulnerable to who knows how many more criminals.” Hitch Oster was chairman of the board. His father, a real-estate mogul, had been on the board, as had his father before him. There were half-a-dozen old masters that had discreet plaques beneath them that read, “A Gift of Milton Oster.” But Hitch wasn’t just fulfilling a family tradition. He was passionate about the museum and its holdings and the importance of the institution. “Museums of our caliber-the Louvre, the British Museum, the Uffizi-we’re all encyclopedias of art and humanity. We’re the crown jewels of civilized nations. We afford everyone of every socioeconomic level the chance to engage with, learn from and be elevated by the objects on display. We do not negotiate.”

“Rules will cripple you every time,” Nina responded.

“We will get the paintings back without the museum being compromised in any way,” Comley said. “And we’d like to fill you in on how we’re planning to do that.”

“Can’t you just legally confiscate them?” Rand asked.

“Why didn’t you do that already?” Nina asked. “You said you were with the paintings for twenty minutes.”

Lucian stopped himself from massaging his temples. He’d taken some pain pills a few hours ago, but they were wearing off. The headaches were always worse when he was stressed. Or hungry. The fruit looked good, but none of the platters were near him. “We don’t just want the paintings. We want the man who spearheaded this effort.” He was furious when he thought about what had happened yesterday…they should have-no, he should have-expected that a man smart enough to get this far would have every contingency covered.

“Are you saying he was able to get the paintings away from a whole team of FBI agents without being followed?” Rand asked dubiously. “How did he do that?”

Lucian explained as succinctly as he could: as he had feared, the agents in the parking garage, in front of the hotel and in the lobby who were waiting for a signal noticed the hotel guest who left, carrying two ordinary suitcases, four-and-a-half minutes before Lucian got back to his room and called to alert them, but they had no reason to be suspicious. Later, on the hotel’s videotape, they were able to watch the muscle man from the upstairs hallway, the elevator, the lobby and out front where the doorman helped him into a taxi. With the suitcases in the trunk, the cab drove off.

“So you didn’t get the paintings or a lead on who’s behind this?” Rand asked.

“Did this guy just take a chance that there’d be a taxi waiting downstairs?” Hitch asked.

“Probably not. On the tapes we examined there was a car idling in front of the hotel that drove off about sixty seconds after the taxi pulled out. If there hadn’t been a taxi just dropping someone off, our suspect would have probably jumped in that car.”

“What about that car?” Nina asked.

“The plates were stolen the day before from a Jeep belonging to a lawyer who lives in Santa Monica.”

“So basically-” Nina’s voice was strained “-you don’t know anything really?”

Victims got angry; Lucian was used to it. “We know the paintings are real and that whoever owns them bought them to trade them, which means the owner is probably not a typical collector. We know the governments of Iran and Greece both have requested the return of this same sculpture to their respective countries, making it possible that one of them is behind this. The law firm of Weil, Weston and Young has been engaged by the government of Iran to ensure that the exchange happens, and we have-”

“What the hell?” Rand turned the full force of his ire on the museum’s director. “Why didn’t we know about that?”

Weil folded his hands on the table as if needing to feel the wood under them. “My office sent each of you a letter to that effect, which you should have received last week. My father and I are not on speaking terms now and haven’t been for fifteen years. I only just found out about this myself from the museum’s law firm.” He spoke with his usual calm, but when he moved his hands, Lucian noticed that there were impressions of moisture where they’d rested.

“Your father’s law firm is working for the Iranian government, which is trying to take a famous piece of sculpture away from us? There’s a major conflict of interest here,” Rand said.

“No, actually, there isn’t,” Hitch Oster intervened. “Weil’s explained that he doesn’t have any dealings with the firm, he is not employed by them and doesn’t benefit by association with them, and in no way should this impact us or our faith in him. Now,” he said, dismissing Rand, whom he clearly didn’t have much respect for, and turning to the three men at the head of the table, “how are you going to get us our paintings?”

“I’d like to bring in someone for you all to meet,” Lucian said as he got up and walked out of the room.

Deborah Mitchell looked up when the door to the conference room opened and Lucian stepped out.

“They’re ready for you,” he said.