“We were supposed to . . .” She coughed again. One of the guards placed a hand protectively on her back. “They told us to wait here. They said this exhibit was closed so that we could try to copy those.” Gabrielle pointed from the blank canvases on their easels to the Old Masters that lined the walls. “When the sirens sounded, we tried to leave, but the doors were—” She coughed one more time and looked up at the men who surrounded her. Her eyelashes might have batted. Her cheeks might have blushed. A dozen different things might have happened, but the end result was that no one doubted her when she said, “Locked.”
Well, almost no one.
“What class? Why didn’t I know about any such class?” the director growled at the guards.
The gas was almost completely gone. Kat was breathing more normally. She smoothed the skirt of her uniform, feeling as if her balance had almost completely returned. Two and two were starting to equal four again as she turned and pointed to the sign on the open door, which read: GALLERY CLOSED FOR PRIVATE LECTURE (THIS PROGRAM MADE POSSIBLE BY THE W. W. HALE FOUNDATION FOR ART EXCELLENCE).
“But . . .” the director started, then turned. He ran a hand across his sweating face. “But the oxygen? The fire security protocols should have killed them!” He turned back to Gabrielle. “Why aren’t you dead?”
“Sir,” one of the guards cut in. “The fire was isolated in the next corridor. The oxygen deprivation measures wouldn’t have kicked in here unless—”
“Keep searching the galleries!” the director yelled. “Search them all.”
“The galleries are all secure, sir,” one of the guards assured him.
“We thought this gallery was secure!” Wainwright looked down, mumbling something to himself about oversights and liability. “Search them!”
“Sir,” one of the guards said softly, stepping closer. Kat savored the irony as he whispered, “They’re just kids.”
“Sir,” Simon said, his voice shaking so violently that Kat believed he was honestly on the verge of tears. “Could I call my mother? I don’t feel so good.”
And then one of the most brilliant technical experts in the world passed out cold.
The sound that came next was unlike anything Katarina Bishop had ever heard. It wasn’t the screech of an alarm. It was anything but the roar of sirens. One of the busiest museums in the world was like a ghost town, echoing. Haunting. And as the guards carried Simon into the grand promenade and its cleaner air, Kat half expected to see the shadow of Visily Romani hovering over them, telling her somehow that she’d done well, but she wasn’t finished. Not yet.
Through the Impressionist gallery’s open door, Kat watched Gabrielle slowly putting the blank canvases into the large carrying cases. Hamish and Angus hurriedly stuffed paintbrushes into backpacks. Kat moved to comfort Simon, but then she stopped. She listened.
A thud. An echo. A footstep.
She turned just as the man appeared at the end of the promenade. His arms pumped. His feet banged against the tile floor. And the whole world seemed to stop turning as he told them, “She’s gone.”
The words weren’t a cry, and they were far from a whisper. They held no trace of panic or fear. It was more like disbelief. Yes, that was it, Kat decided, although she couldn’t tell if it was his or hers.
“Leonardo’s Angel,” the man said again as the party made its way down the center of the grand promenade. The big double doors to the Renaissance room were standing open. A fireproof, bulletproof Plexiglas barrier still stood, sheltering the Angel from harm. Lasers shone red all around. But there was no mistaking that the frame at the center of it all—the heart of the Henley—stood empty.
“Gone?” Gregory Wainwright stumbled toward the Plexiglas barrier, reaching out for a painting that was no longer there. “She can’t be—” the director started, then seemed to finally notice that the frame wasn’t empty after all. The Angel was gone, but something remained: a plain white card and the words, “Visily Romani.”
If they had searched Kat, of course, they would have found a card exactly like it. If they had peeled back the top layer of canvas that covered the four frames Kat’s crew carried, they would have seen that Angel Returning to Heaven was not the only painting to leave the Henley that day, although somehow Kat imagined that only four walked out the front door.
Leonardo da Vinci’s painting was gone. The five children trapped in the mayhem were no longer a top concern. And so it was that Simon, Angus, Hamish, Kat, and her cousin walked out into the fading drizzle with four masterpieces secured in their artist’s portfolios, covered with blank canvas—a clean slate.
Kat breathed the fresh air. A clean start.
In the days that followed, no reporters would be able to interview any of the young artists who had been in danger that day. The Henley’s trustees waited for a call or visit from one or more attorneys, and word about what monetary damages there might be, but no such call or visit ever occurred.
It seemed to some as if the schoolchildren who had been locked in the Impressionist exhibit that day had simply gathered their bags and blank canvases, and walked out into the autumn air, and faded like smoke.
One of the docents reported seeing the children board a waiting school bus, an older driver at the wheel.
Many people tried in vain to gain a statement from officials at the Knightsbury Institute, but no one could uncover where the school was located—there certainly was no record of any such institution in London. Not in all of England. Some of the children had sounded American, the guards had said, but after three weeks of failed attempts, the coughing children with their hazy eyes were forgotten for a bigger story on another day.
No one saw the man in the Bentley who sat watching them walk from the museum in a single line. No one but he noticed that the portfolios they carried were a tad too thick.
No one but his driver heard him whisper, “Katarina.”
Chapter 35
Gregory Wainwright was not a foolish man. He swore this to his wife and to his therapist. His mother assured him of that fact every Sunday when he visited her for tea. No one who truly knew him thought that he was personally responsible for Henley security—he employed specialists for such things, after all. But the Angel . . . the Angel had gone missing. Had disappeared. And so Gregory Wainwright was fairly certain that the powers that be at the Henley would be inclined to disagree.