The Music Lesson (12 page)

Starting that night and continuing into the days ahead, Mickey asked me a lot of very specific questions and I answered them to the best of my ability. Whenever I would say I didn’t know, he would persuade me to apply my imagination and my logical mind, and soon enough I would give him some kind of answer.

All business now, he would conduct a flurry of calls each night on a secure cell phone after rounds of questions and answers. The painting was called “Betty’s package” whenever it was referred to. Mickey would listen, relay more questions to me, and repeat my answers in carefully coded language that didn’t ever sound as if it carried any meaning at all. Several times he muttered, “Ring me back in ten,” and worked with me against the ticking clock. The phone always rang precisely ten minutes later, and by then I would have prepared some answers, and they—whoever they were, wherever they were—the others—would have come up with more questions.

A couple of times, Mickey went into my bathroom, locked the door, and ran the faucets in the tub full force in order to have some sort of private chat. I couldn’t afford to let it bother me. This was how it worked; this is how these things are done.

I provided him with a huge volume of information, from phrases people in the museum world use to descriptions of how a courier manages the paperwork and logistics at the airport and what the shipping invoices look like, and how the insurance company sets guidelines for security precautions.

At work—unbelievably, I was still going in to work at the library during these days, keeping to my normal schedule—I was very discreetly able to access some correspondence files on various computer links we share with museums that were exhibition lenders, and I found out a great deal of specific information about precise arrangements after the show’s closing.

A casual conversation with the right curator produced the name of the staffer at the National Gallery in London who had landed the return courier assignment for the queen’s Vermeer, which would travel with the paintings lent by the National Gallery in London.

The Frick curator who supplied me with this nugget, Fred Lewis, a myopic little man with a huge handlebar mustache, which I think he must groom every morning, like a pet, also volunteered that he’d kept an eye on me with my Irish cousin, to whom I’d introduced him when we were walking together through the underground passage that connects the library building with the Frick mansion. I always feel as if I’m on a secret cultural mission when I’m in that tunnel—it’s part of the whole elegant, hidden, rarefied feel of the Frick.

Fred told me that when we’d been through the galleries that first afternoon he kept noticing Mickey looking around, and he kept thinking about the Irish Vermeer having been stolen from Russborough House in Dublin on two different occasions in the last twenty-five years. Both thefts, he reminded me, had been organized by the IRA.
Lady Writing a Letter with Her Maid
was only recovered in Brussels in 1993. I had seen it for the first time in Washington.

“Faith and begorra, ’tis a close watch they’ll be keepin’ on that wee precious canvas on its way back to Dublin.” Fred smirked, using an outrageous lucky leprechaun accent. “In case the IRA is hopin’ the third time’s the charm.”

Oblivious to my frozen response, he added, “Do you know why they had the famine? The poor Paddys planted the potatoes, but then they couldn’t find them!”

Ha ha.

So I was in. There was never a precise moment when I agreed to participate, now that I think about it. Nor was there a moment when I said, No, stop, I’m not doing this; don’t ask me to do this.

It seemed so right, so inevitable. Do I keep saying that, protesting too much? That’s really how it felt. Only when I was searching the computer files for information to help Mickey did I realize that I had agreed, that I was,
in fact, taking part in a conspiracy to break the law, to steal.

I imagined myself in the eyes of my colleagues at the library—an efficient, rather cold, humorless person, a woman on her own, someone neither adventurous nor passionate. It was exciting to sit there among them, going through my usual routine, knowing that, like Mickey, I was beyond suspicion. It was during that conversation with Fred Lewis, when I felt the force of his casual contempt for the Irish in a new and personal way, that I realized what utter certainty I felt about the rightness of my participation.

I know that Mickey used my passion for Vermeer, that he knew perfectly well about my expertise from his intelligence sources, whatever they are. It’s one of the many things about which I have no knowledge whatsoever, and no need to know, though I have to admit I’m both flattered and apprehensive that Mickey was virtually sent to find me in order to assess the possibilities of a successful plan to do this, to take a Vermeer and ransom it for 10 million pounds sterling. He used my passion in all ways. And I let him.

I made my best guesses about painting crates and shipping protocols and hundreds of other details. Presumably, most of my information was useful. Which makes me an accessory from the outset, I know. I will say
this again, because I want to be clear about it: I have gone every step of the way of my own free will and with my eyes open.

Mickey was very taken with my inspired invention of a double-sided crate with a hidden compartment, something I finally sketched out for him after much talk. “How would you switch a fake for a real painting?” he kept asking. “What would be the right moment?”

When I was a child, Paddy gave me a little balsawood box, a magic trick that made nickels disappear or turn into dimes, which worked on the same principles. My idea was to supply a supposedly empty crate that would have a hidden fake loaded in, so that whenever the real painting was removed, the false back would go with it and the fake would be put into place. That way, inventory counts would never be off for even a moment, though for a time the crate would actually contain
two
paintings. Someone would have to get a very good look at the empty crates in storage, so that the new crate would be a perfect match for the original crate. The fake crate would require more counterfeiting skill than would the fake painting.

The most important thing about the fake painting, I emphasized, was that the frame had to be a perfect match, because once those pictures were unbolted from the walls at the Mauritshuis, they were each going to be placed, ever so carefully, into their custom-made felt-lined
numbered crates, one by one, with all sorts of checklists and security sign-offs, and once the side runners were screwed into place over the slotted tracks, nobody was going to want the hassle, or the responsibility, of taking them off again, just so long as there was no reason to check, so long as nothing out of the ordinary attracted anybody’s attention.

And—I love this—given that a painting under glass is hard to scrutinize at an angle, a pretty ordinary fake would suffice; a cheap reproduction would do it. Such as the ones for sale in museum gift shops everywhere Vermeers are hanging on museum walls. We have them at the Frick, they were in the National Gallery, and I was sure they were for sale at the Mauritshuis. Most of the smaller paintings are reproduced full size, on a canvaslike textured board. People buy them. The Frick gift shop sells a couple of hundred a year. For about twenty dollars, you can buy a “deluxe” version of
The Music Lesson
, on a stressed-wood panel that really does look pretty authentic. It’s the most popular Vermeer reproduction in the shop, perhaps because it’s so small—about the size of a sandwich.

The new crate with its hidden duplicate was to be switched at the Mauritshuis as soon as possible, while the show was still hanging. So by the time they took the show down, it would be there, ready for the Mauritshuis staff to place
The Music Lesson
into its custom-built slot.
With the exhibition still on the walls, though, security around the empty packing crates wasn’t likely to be too intense. And the crate for
The Music Lesson
would be one of the smallest, probably only about twenty-four inches square, relatively easy to conceal.

Smuggling the new crate for
The Music Lesson
in would be no problem, I was told. We had someone in and out of there all the time right now, a sleeper on the maintenance staff; his diagrams of the building had been on hand for more than a year. But removing the old crate might be awkward. It would have to be destroyed or altered inside the building, Mickey fretted, or its premature discovery could tip the whole thing.

I solved that stumbling block very simply—some huge
FRAGILE
stickers to slap over the Queen’s Gallery/Buckingham Palace identifications, a prepared stencil, a small jar of odorless quick-drying paint, and a stencil brush would do the trick. In a matter of seconds, the crate could be given a different identification, say, the Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt-am-Main, and don’t forget the umlaut. Then mark the crate
EMPTY
(and find out the Dutch and German words for
empty
, and write it in Dutch and German as well as in English) and 1974 or something equally meaningless and misleading with a blue grease pencil in several places, and then shift the crate to the very back of a storage area. I know what museum storage areas are like, and even though the
Dutch are tidy, my guess is that crate won’t be examined for many years.

The actual
Music Lesson
is so small—not quite six by seven inches. If the removal of the genuine painting was to go undetected, with the decoy painting in place, there is no reason to think that the switch would be discovered for a very long while. The most important thing, I realized, was to pinpoint the weakest security moment, when the crate could be approached with the least amount of observation. That, I suggested, would probably be at the airport, after the careful Dutch had signed off, and not before.

Apparently, my suggestions were useful.

Part of the understanding has been, from that first night, that I would not ask any questions at all. In the beginning, whenever I did blurt out an irresistible question, Mickey would go silent, simply not answer, which I hated, and it taught me to stop soon enough. What I don’t know can’t hurt me, and what I don’t know can’t hurt anyone else.

They succeeded. I believe the painting was removed at Schiphol Airport, in the British Airways freight area, though I don’t know the precise circumstances. I don’t know if there was a violent confrontation of any kind, or if it was all done surreptitiously. I do know that it had
been established from the outset that any guards who were in the wrong place at the wrong time would be handcuffed to radiators or pipes and duct tape would be used to blindfold them as well as to bind them, so even though they would suspect that something had been stolen, they would have a hard time figuring out exactly what, and the ensuing confusion would buy valuable time. But my sense of the actuality of any of this is based only on movies and television. I have no idea how they pulled it off, and I don’t want to know. I prefer to imagine that it was clever and clean.

I don’t know, for instance, when the theft was detected, though it’s highly likely that the discovery wasn’t made before the picture was uncrated in London. Then there would have been some confusion about where the actual crime took place, and under whose jurisdiction. Perhaps for those reasons, perhaps because of the ransom—I’m not really sure quite why—the theft hasn’t been made public even now.

Mickey told me it “went off a bomb,” which terrified me at first, until we sorted out our linguistic differences. I was, as per instruction, in the call box next to Nolan’s pub, in the middle of Ballyroe, across from O’Mahoney’s, and Mickey was who knows where. The connection was bad and it was a very brief call, and as it was the first time I had heard Mickey’s voice since New York, I was desperate
to keep hearing it. Kieran O’Mahoney was watching me from his shop. Annie Dunne was watching me from hers. I turned my back, spooked by a silly sense that they could somehow discern the content of the call by the look on my face.

Mickey meant that it had gone off brilliantly. I didn’t believe him at first, especially since there had been nothing at all in the newspapers or on BBC radio.

Waiting, alone in the cottage day after day all through that interminable week, I had gone from my moments of exalted wonderment at my body, my mind, the beauty of the universe, et cetera, to paranoic fantasies that this was in fact an elaborate practical joke or hoax of which I was the butt. Or was I being victimized in some other way? Was my apartment being ransacked at this moment? Was Mickey after my money? Had I been taken in by some sort of weird con? Then, when a mental review of every aspect persuaded me that it was real, I wondered for a little while if I was the pawn in a dangerous political game I didn’t understand at all.

It was hard to believe, because, I confess, the whole scheme had really seemed like a lark to me, like some elaborate role-playing fantasy, a wonderful game, a game in which I was thrilled to be invited to participate. Even as I organized my indefinite leave of absence from the library, packed up some clothing, organized some bills that needed paying, telephoned Pete with a vague explanation
about visiting Ireland with Mickey, bought my ticket, and got on that plane (Mickey having unexpectedly disappeared two days before, leaving me a muttered one-sentence message on my machine saying he’d see me “at home”), right through to my arrival at the cottage in Gortbreac Cove as per detailed instructions, it all seemed like a tremendously exciting adventure, a crazy fantasy.

And I hadn’t actually had any IRA contact, other than with Mickey, I mean, until I began to get his messages. So nothing about any of my activities matched my notion of what IRA operations are like. (Which notion was, I think, something highly cinematic involving Harrison Ford in pursuit of sinister men in black balaclavas.) I had yet to see a gun. I have yet to see a gun.

But they had done it. I didn’t know it, but they had done it on the third day I was in Ballyroe. I was worried that the scheme had failed because I had heard nothing. I was getting antsy, and every day that passed, when I had convinced myself all over again that this insane plan was in fact real, I was worried that something had gone horribly wrong.