Janne Drangsholt - The Marvelous Misadventures of Ingrid Winter

I looked at the canal and thought about gulags.

When I got back to the hotel, breakfast had just been served, and I sat down at a table conveniently positioned right behind a gigantic palm, but with a view of the lobby. Ivan turned up a few minutes later. He stood at the entrance to the breakfast room and looked around, but didn’t see me.

I was nowhere. I was invisible.

Right up until I wasn’t.

Pretty Putin bowed slightly, without saying anything.

“Hungry?” I held my plate up to him.

“I already had breakfast,” he said.

“Lucky you. It’s not that good.”

He nodded disinterestedly.

“I don’t know if the others are up yet,” I said, “but Ivan was just here, if you’re looking for him? He was wandering around in the lobby.”

He looked tiredly up at the ceiling.

“I wanted to talk to you.”

“To me?”

He nodded and pulled up a chair.

“What about?”

“About the purpose of your visit.”

“Oh?”

I began to break out in a cold sweat. Truth be told, I had no idea what the purpose was beyond general descriptions like cooperation , internationalization , and synergistic potential . After Ivan’s crazy tour of the university, I had assumed that no one else had any idea, either, that everyone was just pretending.

I cursed the Voight-Kampff test.

I cleared my throat.

“The purpose of the visit is to negotiate the terms of a cooperative agreement.”

“With whom?”

“Saint Petersburg State University.”

“With what intentions?”

“Intentions?”

I took a sip of my coffee.

“Internationalization.”

“Internationalization?”

I nodded.

“For students?”

“Bilateral ties at all levels.”

“A broad exchange agreement then?”

“Innovation. Synergy. Professional lock-in. Mobility.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I see.”

“Do you?”

He nodded.

“I have to go now. Ivan and Irina will be here soon to pick you three up so that you can photograph the Neva. I understand that your colleague with the cowboy hat really wanted to see it.”

“It’s not a cowboy hat,” I said. “It’s an urban bowler.”

“Why does he have it?”

“He’s cold.”

“But he bought it in America?”

“I doubt that. I bet he bought it in Hounslow.”

“Where?”

“Hounslow.”

“Can you spell that?”

He jotted down the name on a small notepad, bowed slightly, and disappeared into the lobby.

I counted slowly to sixty, then stormed out the same way and took the stairs three at a time up to Peter’s room, where I pounded on the door until he opened it.

“Where did you put it?” I asked, forcing my way into his room.

“Put what?”

“The icon!”

“It’s still in the bag.”

I ran over to the table he pointed to and found the icon with a sad mix of half-melted chocolate.

“You can’t store it like this! Look, you got chocolate on it.”

I got a hand towel and started rubbing away the brown spots.

“I just talked to Pretty Putin.”

“Who?”

“Artemis! He suspects us. I’m convinced. Oh, and we’re going to go see the Neva with Ivan and Irina. They’re definitely going to search our rooms while we’re gone. We have to hide the icon somewhere they’ll never find it.”

“Go right ahead,” Peter said and laughed hysterically.

“Why are you laughing ?”

“I have faith in you. You’ve got this.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t like Artemis being so involved. If only we had duct tape!”

“I have duct tape.”

“You do?”

“Of course. I never travel without it.”

I considered asking what kind of travel he usually did but had no time to lose, so I started wrapping toilet paper around the icon and then stuck the little bundle into an empty pillowcase. I wrapped that in newspaper and used most of a roll of duct tape sealing it.

“Aren’t you overdoing it a little now?”

“You can thank me when we’re sitting on the plane home,” I said, and thrust the icon and the duct tape under my jacket. “If anyone asks you, say you vaguely remember someone showing you a picture when we were in the dean’s office, but you weren’t really paying that much attention. You know nothing. Nothing! Got it?”

I swung the door shut on my way out and hurried down the hall as if I had a plan. In reality, I had no idea what my next move should be.

I tried to think what a professional icon thief would do. Probably find an icon exhibit and slip this in with a bunch of cheap copies for sale. But I didn’t have access to an exhibit like that, plus I’d already wrapped it all up.

Hiding it on our floor didn’t make sense. They were sure to search there first. Maybe they were already setting up surveillance equipment.

But what about the top floor? I raced up the stairs and found myself in an exclusive bar with a view of large swaths of Saint Petersburg. There were big sofas and armchairs and little side tables featuring various types of orchids.

Not a customer in sight.

Not an employee in sight.

Was this wise? I couldn’t think.

Plus I had to go to the bathroom.

I went right over to the farthest sofa, back in the corner, and used the rest of the duct tape to secure the wrapped icon to its underside. Without further reflection, I secured the mummified icon to the bottom of the sofa in the bar. Preserved it for posterity. Or antiquity.

Either way, it was hidden now. And could be forgotten.

If we just pretended like we’d never taken it, we’d start believing it ourselves. And then it would be almost impossible to figure out what was actually true.

Everyone knows that the replicants that are hardest to identify are the ones who don’t know themselves. The ones who think they’re humans.

“Chew on that, Voight-Kampff,” I said to the empty room, to no one, and to everyone.

Most of the day was spent trudging along the Neva with Irina and Ivan. They didn’t ask us any questions and hardly exchanged any words with any of us. At one point Peter asked if we could stop somewhere and eat lunch, but an icy look from Irina put an end to that idea. So we kept marching until she got a phone call and led us back to the hotel, where they deposited us with a small nod.

As I waited for the others in the lobby bar, I was actually able to connect to the Internet again. After I deleted the e-mails in my in-box from the PTA, the chair, and the alarm salesman (who had somehow mysteriously tracked down my e-mail address), I did a search for “stolen valuable art” and found a site called the Missing Art Database. “Icons” had their own category. Against my better judgment I clicked, but although there were several that looked like it, the Dean Icon Christ figure didn’t appear to be in the system. On one side of the screen, there was a number you could call if you had information about any of the stolen artworks. It was the number for INTERPOL.

My body forgot how to breathe.

I could picture the headlines: “World-Famous Masterpiece Found in Hotel. Thieves Claim It Was a Gift.” “Norwegian Government Unable to Help Academics in Gulag.” “Icon Ingrid Dead of Overdose.” Because that was the worst thing. I was going to take the fall. Ingvill was completely unaware of what had happened, and Peter would wriggle his way out of the whole thing. Plus, he was a British citizen so the Queen would surely help him.

I, on the other hand, was in trouble.

“Where did you hide it?” Peter whispered when he came downstairs. His face was weirdly expressionless, and I wondered if the Neva stroll might have left him with permanent frostbite.