‘Fuck!’ I yelped, with singular lack of originality.
We made eye contact and that was a mistake because I could see mystification turn to sudden, shocked recognition.
‘You!’ Willy Pete cried.
I ran, clutching the black zipper bag, keeping the pink T-Mobile logo turned outward. Willy clambered over the wheelchair and ran after me. I had maybe fifty feet on him. I ran full-out, as fast as I could while holding a painting into the openness of room 2.9, which was populated by glass display cases holding smashable objects including a very nice replica of a sailing ship.
I had my second Bluetooth speaker in my jacket pocket. I had practiced finding the switch without looking and I turned it on then sent it skidding and bouncing across the polished floor.
Now it was down to how well Willy has cased the Rijks because there are just three ways out of room 2.9. There’s the door I’d come in through. There was the door that led to more galleries. And there was the door that led to the cul-de-sac of room 2.8.
If Willy has done his job and properly cased the museum he’d know 2.8 was a dead-end, and he’d guess that I knew it too. In which case the logical move was for Willy to assume I’d run on through the galleries, because that’s what a fleeing man would do; a fleeing man did not run into a dead-end, and I was pretty much the picture of a fleeing man.
I ran into room 2.8.
I opened my phone. I hit the second Bluetooth speaker which started yelling, ‘There’s a bomb! Run, there’s a bomb!’, the sound of panic filling room 2.9. If Willy wanted to hang around room 2.9 and explain why he was near a speaker yelling threats, that was up to him, but I doubted he’d linger.
Room 2.8 was large, not Gallery of Honor large, but large enough that it was partly divided by a wooden portico set into an abbreviated partition wall. That didn’t matter. What did matter was that there was a security camera mounted in the corner to my left as I entered, and it was aimed so as to scan the room.
I heard footsteps go racing past, back in 2.9. Willy was doing the logical thing. Good boy. He was also talking loudly, presumably into a phone. ‘Fucker’s heading south down the east side, second floor! Repeat. Target is …’
I moved well into room 2.8 into camera view. There were two exit doors, the one I’d come in through, and a second one just a dozen or so feet to my left. Both were security doors with large overhangs, almost like shelves about two feet deep and eight feet high.
The camera to my left wouldn’t see me and the only other camera was way down at the far end of the room pointed my way. That was the camera I was playing to.
I tore off my duffer’s cap and pulled a blue stocking cap from eight my bag. I skinned off my jacket and dropped it on the floor. I did all this while being watched by an older man in the blue blazer of a guard. Was he deaf? Did he not hear the speaker in the next room shouting about bombs? He seemed puzzled. He moved hesitantly, not quite sure how he was to deal with me.
The public address system came on suddenly, making me jump.
Guests of the Museum we are experiencing security issues, please remain in place and remain calm.
‘They’re attacking The Night Watch!’ I told the guard, but he didn’t move. At first. Then he started toward me and I saw him twist his head sideways a bit to talk into his microphone – not that anyone in the security center had spare time to listen, probably. But I couldn’t have it.
I stepped into him and shoved the edge of my zippered painting up under his chin. He staggered back, tripped and fell. He was not unconscious and he was not on his back which was a bad combination for me. I dropped the Vermeer, straddled the elderly gentleman, and pistoned one knee onto his chest. It wouldn’t kill him, I hoped, but it knocked the last of the fight out of him. I said, ‘Sorry,’ and rolled him onto his belly so he was looking away.
I leapt to the second exit door, the one so close to the security camera that it was out of view. There I had some quick moving and shuffling involving the putty-gray bag to do, and some standing on tiptoes, then ran back into room 2.9 clutching a black, zippered art bag with the glaring pink logo.
Room 2.9 still echoed to the cry of, ‘Fire! Fire!’ No Willy. No guards that I could see. No people at all. The cameras would record that I had run through 2.9 into 2.8 carrying a T-Mobile zipper bag just the right size for concealing a Vermeer, had disabled a guard in full view of the camera, and just fifteen seconds later had reappeared before the cameras in room 2.9 still carrying the black and pink zipper bag.
I went back the way I’d come and found my abandoned wheelchair which Willy Pete in his eagerness to get at me had pushed just far enough to let me slip by without the need to climb or vault.
Into the Great Hall I went, not running now, just walking briskly, turned into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time, flanked on both sides by confused patrons escaping a bomb or a fire or a crazy person or something, they weren’t sure what, they just knew they’d seen about enough art for one day.
A total of two minutes and thirteen seconds had passed since I’d snatched the painting off the wall. People are slow, bless them. And I am not.
I attracted no special attention as I fell in behind a gaggle of Spaniards noisily clattering down the steps. Down and down, but then, pushing against the tide, coming up the stairs came a man, a fit, serious-looking man I’d never seen before who ran right past me, then stopped, did a classic double-take, spun and yelled, ‘You there!’
I stopped as well.
‘Yes?’
I closed the distance between us. If I have learned anything from reading Jack Reacher books, it is to consider the balance of an opponent. My opponent was half-turned, one foot on a higher step, one foot lower, all the weight on that lower foot.
I stumbled convincingly, fell to my knees right at his feet. My zippered art bag fell and slid down the steps. I wrapped one hand around the weight-bearing ankle of Mr Fitness, and yanked back hard.
He fell, but man, he was quick! He softened his landing like a well-trained martial artist by slamming his hands back to take the impact. He’d be up in a flash but I already had my little spray bottle of hot sauce and grain alcohol out. I pumped frantically as he writhed, getting good coverage on his face.
‘Motherfucker!’ he yelled. So: American.
He yelled and he got to his feet, just one eye open, streaming tears, and blindly missed a step and tried to catch himself by outrunning his fall. Might even have worked, had I not given him a helpful shove which sent him sprawling face-first down the worn stone.
I snatched up my zipper bag, leapt over him and plowed ahead, down and down, occasionally yelling, ‘Fire!’ by way of explanation. I shed the blue stocking cap I had on, pulled on a plaid flat cap, slipped off my outer shirt, and debouched back on the lower level which was wonderfully, gloriously smoky.
‘Fire!’ I cried again in evident panic and raced for the exit already crammed with people having the same thought that this would be an excellent time to GTFO of there.
Concealed by the crowd I collapsed my art bag – this required some brute force resulting in a bag that looked gratifyingly like a woman’s purse.
The guards at the door weren’t searching, they were hurrying, trying to get bodies through the exit as expeditiously as possible. And all at once I was out in the great arcade, cold, damp wind in my face. The balalaika was not playing. The violinists were gaping at all the excitement, as the crowd in the arcade swelled into the hundreds.
I walked north, toward the street, toward the bridge and the city center beyond. The rain had started again, this time with more vigor, which was all to the good, because rain obscures. Rain makes people hesitate before running out into it.
Rain, fortunately, does not discourage a well-compensated flash mob and there they were, bless their clueless hearts, twenty people, all carrying identical black zippered art bags emblazoned with the T-Mobile logo, and dancing more or less in unison while singing the T-Mobile jingle.
I felt rather than saw pursuit, or maybe I was just imagining it, but I plunged straight into the flash mob, twenty people with identical bags. I pretended to dance along for a few steps, looking for pursuit. There were two Dutch patrol cops watching the flash mob and considering whether they had a duty to break it up. Out here on the sodden plaza no one knew that the Rijks was beset by Dutch masters-hating terrorists who might have set fire to the cloakroom.
If the Rijksmuseum security was really good, really decisive, really quick they would just about now be discovering my smoke bomb, and maybe even starting to realize they’d been duped and robbed. But it would still be too slow, because I was already crossing the wide avenue of the Stadhouderskade, dodging a trolley, plowing heedlessly through the bike lane. The area was an ant colony of commuters and tourists, cars, bikes and the clanging trolley.
I risked life and limb crossing against lights, was sideswiped by a Dutch woman on a bike who yelled at my retreating back – in English because, well, this was Amsterdam: ‘Hey watch where you go!’
Onto the bridge, the Museumbrug, with its iron railings lined with pink flowers. I stopped halfway across, breathing hard but still in the dead calm state of mind that often comes to me when I’m engaged in something insane. Praying silently to whatever saints have the job of looking after fools and thieves, I looked over the side.
And there by God was Milan Smit, my faux Hell’s Angel, lounging in an open boat drinking beer as if there was no rain.
‘Hey!’ I yelled.
He heard me and hit the throttle on the boat’s outboard and came chugging below me.
I slid the zipper bag over the railing and dropped it into his waiting hands.