Portrait of Antoinette
The dim lamp along the Rue de Rivoli threw his shadow against the centuries-old stone. He pressed himself tighter to the wall as the slow-moving vehicle swept past, then turned away to leave him alone once more in the midnight dark. He clutched the cardboard tube against his chest. He had escaped the same way he had entered, using the cunning mastery of his trade to breach the security of the Louvre. Darkness returned to the street and he broke for his car, parked at the top of the block. His black form dissolved into the background as though the night itself had claimed him.
Neil Hamilton was a thief. He had made a successful career of it, travelling the world in search of other men's treasures. He worked alone, unable to trust accomplices who might turn on him for reasons known only to themselves, getting in the way, complicating things, and then singing loudly to the authorities if it would save their own necks. And tonight he had made probably his greatest find.
The guard had come dangerously close to discovery twice while Neil moved through the eerie silence of the galleries. Each time he held his breath, disappearing behind a statue or a bench until the sleepy guard shuffled around the corner on his rounds. Neil had successfully avoided confrontation for twelve years and had no wish to break that record against a frightened man who might be more heavily armed than common sense recommended. His hand rested on the grip of the nine-millimetre as the guard passed, and he knew he would have used it if pushed. In his profession, the law was simple: kill or be killed.
But other than those two moments the mission had gone cleanly. He found the hall easily even in the dark, his reconnaissance of the previous week had etched the paths deeply into memory. The painting hung where it had hung for years. Neil deftly disabled the security devices dedicated to this single piece of art, then drew the razor from its sheath, the dim glow of the emergency lighting catching its honed edge. He slid it slowly along the frame and freed the canvas. The Mona Lisa curled in response to its freedom, rolling neatly into a scroll that slid effortlessly into the cardboard tube, her mystical smile caught within the coils.
He lit a cigarette as he drove, the strong bite of French tobacco stinging his eyes, and wound carefully through the empty streets to the small flat at the centre of the Île de la Cité.
* * *
"Is that you, my darling?" The sleepy voice came from behind the partly closed bedroom door.
"Did I wake you, Toni?" Neil said as he pulled the black sweatshirt over his head.
"Come to bed." Her words were soft and inviting, and Neil was glad he had made this particular change in his life.
It had happened quickly. Barely three months before, he had been walking the wooded paths of the Bois de Boulogne, thinking through his next move, when he heard it, a voice calling from the edge of the pond ahead.
"Monsieur... monsieur."
A girl stood at the water's edge, waving first at him and then at the wide-brimmed hat floating steadily away from her toward the centre of the pond.
Neil's French was barely passable, but he managed to assemble what he had as he walked the bank toward her.|
"Can I help you, Mademoiselle?" he said, his American accent doing no favours to the French language.
"Oui, yes." She switched to English without ceremony. "My hat. The wind took it into the water. Can you help me reach it?"
Her eyes met his and for a moment he was simply lost. She was beautiful, more beautiful than anyone he had ever seen. Her eyes were the deepest shade of green, half hidden beneath the length of her lashes. The wind pressed the cloth of her dress against the curves of her body and lifted a few strands of sun-streaked hair across her lips. She tilted her head slightly and smoothed them back into place, watching him with quiet patience.
"Sorry," Neil said. "What was it you said?"
"My hat." She smiled. "It is in the pond."
"Right. Yes. Absolutely." He bent to remove his shoes and nearly fell over in the attempt, hopping on one foot while she turned away to spare him his dignity.
Neil waded into the chilly water, retrieved the hat, and handed it to her with a smile.
"A little wet," he said, "but I think it's all right."
"Merci beaucoup, Monsieur. It is a new one."
"It's beautiful," he said, though he was thinking of something else entirely. "My name is Neil. Neil Hamilton."
"And I am Antoinette DuPlessis."
"I'm very pleased to meet you. May I call you Toni? My tongue has a little trouble with French, as you could probably tell." That was partly true. But he would have been tongue-tied in any language.
They spent the rest of the afternoon walking the quiet paths of the Bois de Boulogne, and when the light began to fail it was the only thing that parted them.
"May I see you again?" he asked, his hands resting lightly against her face.
She dropped her eyes, the wisps of her hair playing at his chin. He breathed in the scent of it. When she looked up again it was directly into his.
"Oui. Of course, Neil."
He saw her nearly every day for the next three weeks. The words of love came slowly, but when they arrived they felt less like an arrival than a recognition, as though both of them had simply been waiting for the other to catch up. It was only another week before Antoinette DuPlessis became Antoinette Hamilton.
* * *
"I missed you, darling. I wish you didn't have to work so late."
He had told her everything about himself. Everything except that. I'm a thief, he said to himself, and he had decided it was better she didn't know, better not to pull her into the shadow of it.
"I missed you too," he said, and climbed into the warm bed beside her. "I love you so much."
She kissed him and they fell asleep more than an hour later, his arm across her bare shoulders.
* * *
"Monsieur Rostand, I am Neil Hamilton. You come very highly recommended."
The shop on the edge of Paris was cluttered and dim, its antiques a mixture of the possibly genuine and the certainly not. The old man leaning on his crooked cane was bent and small-eyed behind heavy wire-rimmed spectacles, thin grey hair crossed in careful strands above his ears. But his fingers were long and straight and graceful, the hands of an artist.
"Monsieur 'amilton. I 'ave 'eard much of you. It is a great pleasure."
"Can you do a painting for me?" Neil asked without preamble.
"But of course. And I assume you will be providing the canvas?"
Stolen art was nearly impossible to move through customs, and the Mona Lisa had very little value to Neil while it remained in France. His client in America, a collector of significant means and negligible conscience, was prepared to pay extravagantly for it. The method was common practice in certain circles: paint over the stolen canvas with something that would arouse no suspicion, carry it through customs unmolested, and once safely inside, remove the overpainting to restore the original. Jacques Rostand had done it many times before, and his reputation in these hidden circles was impeccable.
"May I see the canvas?" the old man asked.
Neil removed the cap from the tube and unrolled the canvas slowly on the table. Rostand leaned forward, his cane clattering to the floor unheeded.
"The Mona Lisa," he said quietly. His eyes did not move from her face. "You 'ave stolen the Mona Lisa." It was not quite a question. He looked up at Neil as if to ask how, then thought better of it and returned his gaze to the painting. His eyes were bright with something close to tears.
"Can you cover it?" Neil was growing impatient. "I need to take it to America without discovery."
"Yes. Yes, of course." Rostand moved to the window and stood with his back to the room. "It will cost you fifty thousand dollars. American."
Neil knew this was two or three times the going rate. He felt the anger flare at the back of his neck and let it pass. The number was high not out of greed, he decided, but out of the old man's understanding of what was at stake.
"Agreed."
Rostand turned and sealed the arrangement with his eyes alone.
"And I will need a subject for the new painting," he said.
Neil thought for only a moment. Toni. The portrait of Antoinette. It was fitting, to conceal one ageless beauty beneath another.
"My wife," he said. "I want you to paint her portrait over the Da Vinci. But she must not know. Can you manage that?"
"Sans peine, Monsieur." No problem.
"Then we begin tomorrow."
Neil rolled the painting back into the tube, said farewell to the old man, and walked out into the street.
* * *
"You must remain very still, Madame 'amilton."
Rostand positioned Toni in the natural light of the studio, then applied a thin film of sealant across the surface of the Mona Lisa, a compound that would allow the overpainting to be removed cleanly when the time came. It left the canvas looking new. He traced the first faint outlines of Toni's face in charcoal, lines curved and delicate.
"How long will it take?" she asked, already restless in the pose.
"A week. Maybe two." Toni looked pleadingly at Neil. He shrugged, and she understood.
She sighed, but the smile on his face eventually drew one back to hers. Rostand grumbled at the movement but continued his careful strokes, and the white emptiness of the canvas began to fill.
The first week passed and the portrait was not finished. Rostand found Toni's eyes impossible to capture. He started over several times, new technique, different strokes, subtle shifts in tone, and each time came closer but not close enough. At this rate it might never be done.
"Monsieur 'amilton," he pleaded. "I am working as fast as I can. Your wife, she is so beautiful. The painting must show that."
Neil stepped close to him.
"Your painting is a cover, Rostand. Nothing more. A way to get the canvas past customs in New York. Finish it in two days."
The old man's face tightened. "Then I need twenty thousand dollars more."
"Done." Neil knew the total was still a fraction of what his client would pay. "Now get back to work."
Rostand's anger was real but well hidden. He needed the money, and he had no illusions about the man in front of him. He finished the portrait in the time agreed, and Neil was there for the final unveiling,
Toni beside him, her fingers tracing the back of his neck.
"It's magnificent," she said. The likeness was breathtaking, the paint seemingly on the verge of breath.
Neil could not speak. Rostand had done more than capture her face; he had caught something of the life behind it, the warmth, the particular quality of her attention that Neil had first noticed by a pond in the Bois de Boulogne. He drew the old man aside while Toni studied her own portrait as though looking into a mirror.
"Monsieur Rostand, you are a true artist. I am sorry for pushing you as I did. It will be with genuine regret that I strip this from the canvas beneath."
"But that is 'ow it must be, eh, Monsieur 'amilton? We both knew that from the very start."
Rostand hated this man. The business part of him kept it well concealed.
Neil counted seventy thousand dollars into the old man's hands. Toni said her goodbyes, to Rostand, and to France.
"I only hope," the old man called after them, "that you get what you deserve."
* * *
The wheels of the Air France 747 touched the runway at Kennedy in black puffs of smoke. Toni's nose was pressed to the window from the first sight of land, New York having existed until now only in photographs.
"Our new home," Neil told her. "The greatest city on earth."
"Anywhere I'm with you will be home to me." She wrapped herself around his arm and rested her cheek on his shoulder.
Customs proved no problem. The plane had been full and the agents were tired; they asked few questions and checked none of the Hamiltons' bags. The airport car moved slowly through the afternoon traffic, and the Long Island towns that followed grew quieter and greener, the peace of the shore settling over Toni like something familiar.
The car turned through a set of gates and stopped before a large brick Tudor set back from the drive.
"This is your house?" she asked.
"No," he said. "This is our house."
He held her in the car for a moment before the driver opened the door. At the threshold Neil swept her off her feet and spun her through the doorway. She threw her head back laughing and kicked her shoes off in two different directions. She clung to his neck with both arms and kissed him, and they stood there for a long time in the marble foyer while the driver stacked their luggage quietly around them.
"I love it here, Mister Neil Hamilton," she said at last.
"I hoped you would, Mrs. Neil Hamilton."
* * *
"What do you mean, you don't want it anymore?"
"It's too hot. Not worth the risk." The voice at the other end of the line was flat and final.
"I stole the Mona Lisa for you. I risked everything. And now..."
"The whole world is talking about it, Hamilton. Interpol, every newspaper on the planet. I'm a respected man. People know I collect. If it's found in my hands..."
"I'll expose you," Neil said. "I'll ruin you."
"You'll expose me?" The voice went cold. "You're a thief, Hamilton. A common crook. Open your mouth and you spend the rest of your life behind bars. Don't call me again, I'll be in touch when things cool down." The line went dead.
Neil's connections in the underground told him the same thing. The Mona Lisa was untouchable. Every buyer he approached turned him away. The investigation was expanding daily, Interpol working methodically across Europe, its attention now turning toward America.
"Day thirty-seven," the evening news anchor read, "and the mystery of the missing Mona Lisa remains unsolved. Interpol has taken jurisdiction and a concerted international effort is underway. Scant leads exist, but investigators have shifted their concentration to the United States, where similar crimes have historically been financed..."
Neil had locked the painting in an unused upstairs room, hidden by Toni's portrait and the bolt on the door. But the painting troubled him. It had never taken him this long to move a piece.
"Neil, why don't we hang my portrait above the fireplace?" Toni said one evening. "It would look beautiful in that room."
"Let's wait until we've finished the other decorating," he said. "Then we'll have a proper unveiling." She accepted this, trusting the love she saw in his face.
* * *
"You look tired, darling," Neil said over breakfast one morning. It was more than tiredness.
The skin on her cheeks had grown red and faintly puffy. Small lines - almost wrinkles - had appeared at the corners of her eyes and mouth.
"It's the change in the weather," she said. "Drying my skin out."
But it grew worse over the following days. The lines deepened and began to crack, thin traces of blood in the crevices. Skin was peeling at the corners of her eyes and small sores had appeared across her cheeks, weeping almost continuously.
Dr. Blanton, a noted dermatologist, examined her carefully. "I can't find anything seriously wrong, Mrs. Hamilton. I'm going to prescribe a salve. This sort of thing passes." He smiled reassuringly. "You're a very beautiful young lady."
Toni thanked him, bought the salve, and vowed to use it faithfully. It made no difference.
* * *
Toni was away at a follow-up appointment when Neil unlocked the door to the upstairs room. He hadn't been inside it since the day he bolted the lock, nearly two months before. He swung the door into the dim light.
The painting stood against the far wall, and the sight of it filled him with his love of Toni. Rostand had caught her perfectly, the likeness almost alive in the shadows, the deep green of the eyes following his steps as he moved closer.
But something was wrong.
The paint was beginning to peel. Not at the edges, at the face. Small curls of overpainting were lifting from the canvas, the warm dark colours of the Mona Lisa showing through beneath. It should have held longer than this. Too much time had passed, the conditions were wrong, and the cover was coming away.
He stood very still and looked at the painting for a long time.
Then he heard Toni's voice below. He locked the door and went downstairs.
"How did it go?" he said, keeping his voice easy.
She hung her coat and turned to show him the small tube of prescribed salve, and he felt the breath leave him. Her face had worsened noticeably. Deep red patches mottled her cheeks, each centred on a festering sore. The skin near her eyes was peeling, pieces of it barely hanging by thin threads. He tried to hold his expression steady.
"He still doesn't know the cause," she said quietly. She could see his shock, feel the distance in him. "But he says it will go away."
"Of course it will." He took her into his arms and held her close, his face pressed to hers. "I love you. Whatever happens." Over her shoulder his eyes went to the ceiling, and to the room above it.
* * *
"Day fifty-seven in the mystery of the missing Mona Lisa. Interpol released new findings this morning in Paris. A small rental car was seen leaving the vicinity of the Louvre near midnight on the night of the theft. The vehicle was traced to a local agency, where investigators recovered a pair of sunglasses left on the floor, an expensive American brand, sold exclusively through a boutique in Manhattan. The shop has provided a list of buyers and the investigation is continuing in that direction. A spokesman for Interpol estimated the case would be resolved within the week."
The glass slipped from Neil's hand. Scotch soaked into the carpet.
"Let me get that," Toni said, looking up from her magazine. Her face was a reminder of everything closing in on him.
"I've got it," he said. "Clumsy. I'm sorry."
* * *
She went to bed early. The dull ache in her face was always with her now, persistent and worsening, and a day of work around the house had taken the last of her strength. Neil waited until the even rhythm of her breathing told him she was deeply asleep. Then he unlocked the upstairs room.
The hall light fell across the canvas.
"No." The word left him in a whisper.
The overpainting was lifting in more places now, curling away from the surface in pale, drying flakes. The Mona Lisa was emerging from beneath, the slight curl of her lip, the depth of her gaze, unmistakable even through what remained of Toni's face above her. The slight smile seemed to hold something. Not warmth. Something older.
He closed the door and stood in the hall with his back against it, his heart loud in the silence.
They had his sunglasses. The overpainting was failing. Both timelines were narrowing to the same point.
He undressed quietly and lay down beside Toni. She turned toward him in the depths of sleep and he found himself turning away, the loss of what her face had been settling over him in the dark.
* * *
The knock at the door brought him upright in the darkness.
The bed beside him was empty. The clock read 4:30. A line of light showed beneath the bathroom door.
"What is it, darling?" Her voice, but different. Lower. A timbre he didn't recognise, the accent shifted to something he couldn't name.
Red light swept across the ceiling. The pulse of police cars in the driveway below.
"Neil." The voice again, behind the door. "What is happening?"
"Open up, Mr. Hamilton. It's the police."
The bathroom door swung open and the light caught him full in the face.
She stood in the doorway. But it was not Toni. The face was thin and still, wearing its expression like something painted on... a faint, settled smile that he knew, that everyone knew, that had outlasted centuries.
"Is everything all right, my darling?" said the Mona Lisa.
The knock came again, harder this time. And from the locked room at the end of the hall there was only silence. On the floor beneath the canvas, small curled flakes of dried oil paint lay scattered across the boards, each one holding, in its fading colours, a fragment of Antoinette's face.
In the darkness, the Mona Lisa smiled her patient, ancient smile.