It was only a short drive from his downtown apartment to the worn-down industrial building in the northeast section of Washington, DC, but he might as well have traveled to another planet. Things change fast inside the Beltway. The fantasy world of multimillion-dollar town homes and hyperexpensive office buildings quickly give way to the basic realities of urban life. The building on Third Street was as anonymous as they come—constructed of unadorned cinder block and surrounded by other plain cinder-block buildings with nothing to distinguish one from the other except the elaborate graffiti scrawled on the outside. But that’s exactly what Dorchek Palmer had wanted when he purchased the former industrial site.
As he approached the building, a large steel security door slowly opened. Palmer’s car pulled inside, and the steel door closed behind him with a clang. Lights flickered on inside the structure. Palmer stepped out of his car and looked around the large open space. There was some old industrial equipment piled in one corner and a couple of large trash cans filled to the brim with packing material in another. Otherwise, the building looked as if it had not been occupied for years.
Palmer made his way over to the stairwell at the rear of the building and stepped inside. A single light bulb hung from the first-floor ceiling. A rusty iron gate with a thick padlock blocked access to the stairs. Old newspapers and coffee cups were piled up behind the gate. In the back corner of the stairwell was a steel door with the fading words MAINTENANCE CLOSET barely legible on it. The door was rusted at the corners and appeared every bit as old as the building itself.
“Welcome back, Mr. Palmer,” a voice said over a speaker.
Palmer nodded in the direction of a camera hidden in the corner of the stairwell.
With a buzzing sound, the steel door popped open. Inside the small closet was a dried-up string mop, an ancient bucket, and a cardboard box filled with empty tin cans. The small space still smelled faintly of industrial solvents and ammonia. Palmer stepped inside and pulled the door shut behind him. A moment later there was another buzz, and the rear of the closet opened up to reveal a shiny steel staircase. Palmer took the stairs down one floor to a room in the basement that would have fit in nicely with any of the modern office buildings just a few blocks to the south. Winston Lantham sat at a desk watching a panel of monitors while Gleb Bazanov poured himself a cup of coffee. Both of them looked as if they had fallen out of a tall tree and hit every branch on the way down.
“How’s our guest?” asked Palmer.
“Same as always,” Lantham replied. “Quiet.”
“I need to speak to him,” said Palmer. He made his way over to a steel door at the end of the room. The door clicked open. Palmer stepped inside, and the door closed behind him. The room was well lit and constructed completely of concrete. Ventilation into the room was provided by way of several narrow shafts along the edge of the ceiling. The only furniture in the room was a small cot at the far end. A tall man—too tall for the small cot—was lying down on it, his legs splayed out over the end of the cot and his eyes closed.
“We have a bit of a problem, Dr. Hamilton,” Palmer said.
“We have a problem?” asked the man lying on the cot. He kept his eyes closed.
Palmer did his best to maintain his composure, but his patience was worn thin. “I have a message from your son.”
Hamilton remained flat on his back. “That’s nice.”
Palmer knew that Hamilton was not going to make this easy. He had refused to answer any questions about the whereabouts of the journal—or about anything, for that matter. Hamilton seemed to understand what was happening—and seemed remarkably unfazed by it all.
Palmer, however, suspected that he might now finally get the good doctor’s attention.
“Your son has proposed a trade,” said Palmer. “The journal for your freedom.”
Arthur Hamilton Sr. remained poised, but it wasn’t easy. Everything had happened so fast in the parking garage at the National Gallery of Art. After realizing far too late that Dr. Belette was part of the plan to sell the fake van Gogh to the museum, Hamilton had barely enough time to stuff the journal—and some money—into his son’s bag. His last words to Art seemed ridiculous in retrospect—Hamilton had simply told his son to run and hide. But at the time that was the best he could do. He didn’t know whom he could trust, and he just wanted his son to make it out of the parking garage alive. His son was smart—brilliant, actually. He knew that Art would eventually find his way to the police or the FBI—to someone who could help.
After the incident in the parking garage, the next thing Hamilton remembered was waking up in this room with a nasty headache—but at least he had still been alive. At that time, he had no idea what had happened to Art. Had he gotten away? The young man standing across the room—known to Hamilton only as Palmer—had served as Hamilton’s sole contact with the outside world for the past day or so. Palmer had said nothing about Art. Hamilton took it as a good sign that the young man continued to pester him about the location of the journal. If they had located the journal, then they would have located Art. So if they didn’t have the journal, that meant they didn’t have Art—he was still out there somewhere. But how long could Art evade these people? Had he gone to the police, or was he on his own somewhere?
Hamilton had already rolled through all the possible scenarios of what could happen—and there were some pretty bad ones. He tried to stay positive, but it was difficult. Of all the situations he had considered, he had never expected that his son would try to strike a deal for his freedom—and that scared Hamilton, that Art was communicating directly with Palmer. But the arrangement also provided the only chance that he—and Art—might make it out of this mess alive. His son was up to something, but what?
There was only one thing he could do—trust his son.
Hamilton sat up and opened his eyes. “Go on.”
“Your son has been quite the thorn in our side,” said Palmer. “We’ve chased him across the city. He’s sent two of my employees to the hospital, left one unconscious in an alley and another one unconscious in a hotel, and—quite frankly—I still haven’t figured out what he’s done to the last one I sent after him.”
Hamilton smiled. Another surprise from his son. Apparently Hamilton had been raising Jason Bourne.
“So what’s the deal?” asked Hamilton.
“That’s just it,” replied Palmer. “Your son didn’t provide a lot of details. The trade is supposed to take place at midnight tonight, but I’m not exactly sure where.”
Hamilton had not had access to a watch or clock for . . . well, he wasn’t sure how long. But the way his captor was talking, the time for the swap must have been getting close.
“What did my son say?” asked Hamilton.
“He said we would meet at the Pantheon,” replied Palmer. “I have no idea what that means. Isn’t there a Pantheon in Greece?”
The Pantheon.
Hamilton had to work hard to keep from laughing.
He knew exactly where his son intended to convene to exchange the journal for the hostage—and Hamilton also knew that his young captor was not going to be happy about it.
“Rome,” Hamilton said. “The Pantheon in Rome, not the one in Greece. Most people think of the building in Greece, but that’s actually the Parthenon.”
The blood drained from his captor’s face. “What?” he exclaimed. “Your son must be playing some sort of trick.”
Hamilton shook his head. “Nope,” he replied. “My son was talking about the Pantheon in Rome. That’s where he wants to meet you tonight.”
His captor stared across the room at the man on the cot. “We can’t conceivably get to Rome by midnight. Neither can your son. It’s not possible.”
“It is possible,” Hamilton said. “Interior of the Pantheon, Rome is a painting by a man named Giovanni Panini. He painted it in the early eighteenth century. It’s quite lovely, I might add.”
The painting showed the inside of the Pantheon, a Roman temple built in the early second century and a popular tourist destination. In the painting, tourists mill about in the spacious interior of the structure, under its grand dome. The painting was part of one of the children’s tours at the National Gallery of Art. Hamilton had sat in front of this image with his son on several occasions and discussed the various people on display in the work of art. What was the lady in the bright blue dress saying to the lady in orange? Why were so many people kneeling? Art loved that painting.
“A painting,” echoed Palmer.
“Yes,” replied Hamilton. “And do you want to guess which museum it’s hanging in right now?”
Hamilton’s young captor did not respond. He simply turned and left the room without another word.
Hamilton smiled, lay back on the cot, and closed his eyes.
And so they were to go back to the National Gallery of Art.
This was, Dorchek Palmer realized, a chess match—and the boy had just made his move. Palmer had to concede that it was an unexpected and inspired move—like Bobby Fischer’s sacrifice of his knight in his 1956 match with Donald Byrne. And Palmer did not need to be reminded that Bobby Fischer, the greatest American chess player ever, had been only thirteen years old when he defeated Byrne, a leading American chess master at the time.
But Hamilton’s son, as shrewd as he may have been, had made a serious miscalculation—he had elected to play a match on a chessboard over which Palmer had complete control.
The self-proclaimed grand master made the call to Dr. Belette and set his countermove in action.