It takes all of five minutes.

Then he is moving, the painting clutched to his chest, a shadowy figure darting out one doorway, through another, down a hallway and into a stairwell where he stops to remove the painting’s heavy frame and plate glass and leave them behind. Moving again, through a narrow corridor lined with marble sculptures, faster now, panting, sweating, he cuts through an archway until he comes to the side door, the Porte des Arts, all of it exactly as planned, a perfect dream. Until the doorknob does not turn.

He tugs and twists, pulls and jerks, but the knob will not budge, his spinning mind the only thing that is moving.

A deep breath, then another until it comes to him: the screwdriver, of course! The same tool he has just used on the bolts he now uses to unscrew the hardware until the doorknob drops into his hand and he stashes it in the pocket of his workman’s tunic, which he strips off, rolls up, and tucks firmly into the back of his belt.

He slides the panel under his shirt, aged canvas abrading his skin as he buttons his jacket over it, his heart beating against the mysterious four-hundred-year-old beauty who has witnessed her own abduction more than once, observed countless assignations from the wall of Napoleon’s bedroom, and endured the gapes and stares of millions, and now, tired and world-weary, she yearns to rest—but her story is far from over.

1

December 2019

Florence, Italy

Carlo Bianchi dabbed the handkerchief to his dripping nose. His shop, on the Via Stracciatella, not far from the Ponte Vecchio, was small and cramped, books in shelves, on his desk, scattered around the floor in stacks like miniature Mayan villages, everything covered in dust, the place reeking of mold and damp.

Bianchi was looking for a book on rococo garden design, which he knew was here somewhere. He finally found it at the very bottom of a tall stack. Lying on his side, beard picking up lint, he was just inching the book out when he saw the man’s thick-soled sneakers.

Bianchi twisted his neck for an angled view. “Posso aiutarla?”

The man peered down at him. “Do you speak English?”

“Yes,” said Bianchi, getting to his feet, slapping dust from his pants and jacket. “One learns many languages in a lifetime of dealing with books.”

“I am looking for a diary, a journal that you recently purchased from a French book dealer named Pelletier.”

“Pelletier? Let me think. I should have a list of recent purchases.” Bianchi made a show of sorting through a mass of receipts on his desk. He knew every book he sold or purchased, including those to and from the French dealer, Pelletier, though he never gave out a customer’s personal information.

“This journal was written over a hundred years ago,” the man said. Pelletier had sworn he’d sold the journal to Bianchi, and people rarely told lies when they had just lost a finger and there was the threat of losing another. “Surely, you would remember buying such a book.” He laid his hand over Bianchi’s, then pressed it against the wooden desktop.