One cold March several decades before, two thieves dressed as policemen had stolen thirteen works, including a Rembrandt and a Vermeer. It remained the largest unsolved art heist in history. Any crime of that size would have been notable, but the loss was felt even more acutely because the Gardner museum was both small and unusual, unable to rebound in the way any other museum might have. Isabella Stewart Gardner had overseen every inch of the intimate museum’s creation. She’d acquired and placed every piece, micromanaged down to the building and tearing down of walls and other architectural features, and one of the requirements in her will was that nothing in the museum be changed after her death. Even widening one of the doorways a few inches for accessibility had required petitions and paperwork. This mandate meant that the museum couldn’t acquire new works or rearrange old ones to take the place of the stolen works. Instead, the empty frames had been hung back up where the pieces had been. In essence, the loss itself was now displayed—and what more universal piece of art could there be?

“Sweetmetals, why? Because they were weird choices? The stolen stuff, I mean?” Matthew asked, which, again, displayed slightly more focus than Declan had come to expect from his brother. He’d been paying attention on their many visits.

“Because they were weird, yes. Because there were more expensive pieces hanging just feet away and they left them. Because they took that bronze finial, of all things.”

“The bird thing,” said Matthew.

“Yes,” Declan echoed drily. This was more of what he expected from his brother. “The bird thing.”

For decades experts had been trying to understand why the thieves had taken the pieces they had, and why they had treated them the way they did. They’d hacked valuable canvases right out of the frame. They’d pocketed disparate works on paper. They’d taken the Shang dynasty bronze beaker that had been on the table in front of the Rembrandt they also stole. And of course, as Matthew noted, the bird thing—they had stolen a bronze eagle finial off the end of a random flagpole. Was it personal? Experts wondered. A random grab? What did these works have in common?

“I was thinking if they were sweetmetals, the randomness would make sense,” Declan said. “Or at least as much sense as any other explanation. It wouldn’t have been about traditional value or artistic merit. Just energy.”

“But why didn’t they take the dancing lady, then?”

“El Jaleo.”

“That’s what I said. Dancing lady with her arm on backward.”

Declan resented the somewhat accurate description of the painting but let it pass. “I don’t know. Maybe they ran out of time. Maybe it was too big. Maybe they had been told not to.”

“By who?”