Noah's Mark

On the corner of Weteringstraat and Lijnbaansgracht, Noah Vanderbilt sat at a table in front of the Back to Black café drinking his third coffee of the morning as he waited for the Hopi Boy. As a master thief, no, a magnificent master thief, Noah amended, he prided himself on his nerves of steel, but his now empty espresso cup still chattered as he set it back on its saucer.

           Too much caffeine, Noah thought. Not nerves. Or fear. But, Noah was (mostly) honest with himself and knew he was rattled at the thought of what would happen if the Hopi Boys decided to make an example of him. The only reason he was not at the bottom of a canal somewhere was because he, Oskar, and the Hopi Boys knew it was him who stole the 200,000 Euros from their stash house on Mozartkade. At least, that is what the text he received last night said along with the instructions to bring the money this morning to the B2B café.

           Everyone in Amsterdam knew that while the Afro-Curaçaoan Hopi Boys were responsible most of the criminal activities across the city, the southeastern area was their home base and from where they stretched out their tendrils. That fact was really not on Noah’s mind when he saw the Audi R8 Spyder parked at the canal house entrance. All he was thinking was that a 150,000 Euro car in the front meant a good chance of nice goodies inside.

           Each morning over the following week, Noah set-up his easel across the canal on Reijnier Vinkeleskade and spent several hours each day rendering a very passable landscape that gave him the time he needed to fully scope out the home and plan. Also, being only a few hundred meters from the Sandvoort Gallery gave his presence a certain verisimilitude. Which, Noah thought was the particularly deft move of a master thief.

Packing up the last day, an older strolling couple stopped for a moment to admire his painting and compliment him on his brushwork. Noah demurely thanked them, and they all had a chuckle on his reply of how everyone in Amsterdam was an artist.

           Except for this idiot, mused Noah, watching from his café table as a caricature artist, to use the word generously, hustled tourists for 10 Euros to get a cartoon likeness as a souvenir of their Amsterdam visit. Noah’s resting sneer face deepened when he saw a giggling Japanese 20-something sit on the stool by the cheap easel.

As he was thinking how much he disliked sketch artists, his small table shuddered with the sliding arrival of the awaited Hopi Boy and Noah seat-jumped an inch or two at the startling slap on his shoulder.

“Yo, mahn!. You da teef?”

Noah turned to the gangster sitting next to him and recoiled a bit in surprise. This was who he had been so concerned (scared) about meeting? The boy couldn’t be more than 16. A startling white grin contrasted against his dark brown face. Eyes hidden behind aviator glasses under the bill of a ridiculous red and blue American sport’s cap. His puffy orange jacket was open to show a hairless bare chest adorned with a mad collection of gold chains.

Noah, stood up, “This is absurd, I am leaving.”

“Ohkay, mahn. You go den. You go swim wid your friend, Oskar, hmmm?” The gangster slid an iPhone 15 onto the small table. His stubby finger tapped the screen, and it lit up playing a video. Shrieking screams came from the device.

Noah collapsed back into the chair as his legs gave away. His eyes riveted to the bloody mask of the figure on the screen. Oskar. His long-time fence. Perhaps not a friend, but certainly a professional colleague. Noah closed his eyes and damned himself again for his stupid greed in taking the two Rolexes from the home when there had been so much cash. Ah, damn you, Oskar, he thought, I am sorry, but did you have to give them my name?

Noah felt a sharp poke in his chest. The Hopi Boy then lifted the phone up directly in front of Noah’s face. The sound was gone but the video was very clear. Street light lamps shined on Oskar horizontal on a bicycle stretched above the ground with two men each holding a wheel. Even in the dim light, Noah, could make out Oskar’s wide-open eyes and mouth, clearly still alive. They swung him back and forth with the third time letting go so he soared over the fence railing to the waiting canal. The picture blurred as it was turned away from the scene to a close-up of the grinning face that was also directly above the screen. Noah’s eyes jumped back and forth from the phone to the gangster.

“Yessss, mahn. Thaht me. And eet me who put you in da drink if’n you do nah make eet goot wid da Hopi Boys.”

Noah reached into his brown leather jacket but froze when the gangster’s hand whipped like a viper with a knife stopping just below his Adam’s apple, “Nah, so fahs, mahn.”

           Noah very slowly pulled out a brown paper wrapped brick of 100 Euro stacks. “It is all here,” placing the packet in front of the young man. “Now, we are good.”

           “Ha. Ha. Ha.” the gangster spoke. “You aw funny, mahn. We aw goot, when da Boss say we goot,” poking Noah again in the chest with the phone to emphasize. The Hopi Boy then spun the phone in his fingers and laid it back down on the table with the screen showing an image. “Boss say you teef, so you be teef for Hopi Boy’s an steal dis paihntin’, den, maybee, maybee, you goot.”

           Noah, looked down, his eyebrows raised, “That, that is impossible,” he sputtered.

           The gangster tucked the phone and money brick into his puffy jacket, “Won week, mahn. Bring eet heah. Or,” again, the big white grin, eyebrows raised above the sunglasses, “you rhide bike wid Oskar.”

           The Hopi Boy slid away from the table to the sidewalk. He nearly collided with the Asian girl as she was squealing in delight at her finished cartoon image. The gangster gave her a mock bow and scooted away. The street hustler saluted the Hopi Boy with his paintbrush and a kowtow smile. Stunned Noah watched it all from his table and could not help himself but to think again how much he hated sketch artists.

* * *

           Noah paid for his milk coffee at the counter of the Cobra Café and walked to sit at an empty bench on the Museumplein. From there, he had a completely unobstructed (except for the ever-present tourists) perfect line of sight view down Museumstraat to the Rijksmuseum. The national museum of the Netherlands. Over 800 years of Dutch history and home of masterpieces from Rembrandt to van der Beeck. And, Vermeer.

           Noah pulled out his phone and again looked at the image of Vermeer’s Milkmaid. The oil on canvas painting from the 1650’s of a young maid in a kitchen pouring milk into a square clay container on a table with bread and butter was considered one of Vermeer’s masterpieces and, since 1908, one of the Rijksmuseum’s finest attractions. Absolutely priceless.

           But, absolutely impossible to steal? Noah had no idea what the Hopi Boy’s thought they could possibly do with the painting, but he had a very good idea what would happen to him if he did not deliver it – in, now, six days.

           He leaned back on the bench and stared at the sky. In a fit of frustration, he crushed the empty coffee cup in his fist and tossed it to the ground on his left. A housfrau walking her two-kilo ball of fur passed him and loudly sniffed through her long Dutch nose. Noah turned to tell her exactly what he thought of her disapproval when he saw past her, on the grass of the Museumplein park, two laughing youths buzzing picnicking tourists with a small drone.

Noah, the magnificent master thief, now knew how he was going to steal The Milkmaid from the Rijksmuseum.

* * *

On the morning of the fifth day since his charming coffee meet with the Hopi Boy, Noah pushed through the glass doors of the ground floor entrance of Rijksmuseum’s. He walked around the dividing wall and got in queue with the gaggle of tourists to pick-up a day ticket he had purchased online the night before. He was very relieved to see many other people also wearing KN95 masks. Most of them were Asian but he also noticed a few obvious Europeans in them as well. When Noah finally got to the ticket counter, he looked carefully at his dim reflection and was satisfied that between the mask, his reader glasses and his American sport’s cap (à la Hopi Boy), he was 100% unremarkable and unrecognizable.

He turned around and made his way across the ground floor, slaloming around the clusters of tourists and ubiquitous padded benches, to the corner stairs and elevators. Noah glanced to his left as he passed the Rijksmuseum café but knew to get a coffee now would simply be stalling.

Noah took the stairs instead of the elevator thinking the elevators would have cameras capable of very close scrutiny and recording of the passengers. Arriving at the second-floor landing, he took a moment before stepping through the archway into a small enclove with another padded bench complete with an Australian tourist couple pouring over a brochure.

He walked past them through the next archway and turned to his right to pay the appropriate homage to Rembrandt’s largest and most famous painting – The Night Watch. Noah was calmed by contemplating the huge canvas. Rembrandt’s manipulation of light in the capturing of the civic guard portrait never ceased to amaze Noah, a true master, he thought.

A proctor/guard moved into the corner of his vision and with a sigh, Noah turned around and walked slowly away from The Night Watch to the Gallery of Honour. Where I shall make art history of my own, he thought.

The Gallery of Honour’s long, wide corridor was streaming with people. archipelagos of tourists forming and dissolving around the paintings. The skillfully placed spot lighting in each of the encloves perfectly complemented the sun’s contributions flowing down from the sky lights high above in the arched ceilings. The large grey area rugs in the encloves silenced the footsteps of the visitors so only the hushed sounds of their whispered conversations foamed to fill the air.

Noah stopped at the third enclove. He stood behind a long-haired young man who sat on the padded bench centered in the room entry, dramatically sketching the tourists as they unknowingly posed before the work of real artists. Noah looked down at the spiral bound pad and rolled his eyes at the plebian style. Poseur, he thought. Then, looking directly across the enclove, horizontally centered on the wall of five paintings, hung his target: The Milk Maid.

Moving to his left, Noah leaned up against the marbled pillar side of the entryway. He eased his phone from his right jacket pocket and swiped the screen to access the app he had open and ready.

Noah paused. He looked to his left back toward The Night Watch, he looked to his right toward the Great Hall. He closed his eyes and thought about what he was about to do. The panic…the chaos. But, what choice did he have? To be a pain-toy for the Hopi Boys before being drowned? And, would it not be the most glorious and famous theft ever? Only possibly accomplished by the most magnificent master thief in all of the Netherlands?

Noah’s finger hovered over the screen, his eyes now on the faint nimbus of sunlight on the grey carpet in the exact center of the Gallery of Honour. Once the area of the corridor was clear of tourists. Noah pushed the button and activated the program.

After several dreadfully slow moments, Noah thought he had miscalculated, or something had gone terribly wrong. Just as he was about to turn away, he heard a loud crack and, only because he was carefully watching, saw the survey plumb bob flash down with a tinkling of glass to stick land directly below the circular sky light.

The tourists directly around the impact point stopped, not sure what had occurred, and instinctively looked up. Which likely saved them from serious injury as they saw the seven-kilo bowling ball burst through the skylight and were able to shirk from it and the shower of shards which came crashing to the floor in an echoing boom followed by a crescendo of shattering glass.

The screams began in earnest. Tourists were fleeing down both directions of the corridor to the exits. Several proctor/guards were very cautiously approaching. Many tourists had frozen in-place with some peeking out of their respective encloves.

Noah had been a bit stunned when the bowling ball had successfully come through the skylight – the drone specs indicated it would be capable of lifting, and certainly dropping, the ball, but what he had not known was if it would have enough momentum to breach the thick glass. Which is why he had programmed the drone to drop the ball from 50 meters. Hitting the exact center of the skylight had been masterful and Noah was filled with confidence. He swiped his finger across the second toggle of the app.

Almost immediately, and it had been perhaps only a minute since the plumb bob first pierced the skylight, six silver cannisters, about the size of a liter water bottle, began dropping through the fragmented hole. Each of them spewing thick black exhaust. As they hit the shattered glass covered carpet, they ricocheted in different directions. The dense smoke spreading quite quickly to bring visibility in the Gallery of Honour to barely arms-length.

Noah turned back toward his prize and was struck in the chest by the long-haired sketcher who was shrieking like a teenage girl and wrapping his arms around Noah’s neck. Noah shoved the fool away but as he did, his mask was stripped from his face and his sport’s cap was knocked away.

“Run, idiot!” Noah roared.

The idiot did. Running into the billowing blackness, his crying voice joining the cacophony of shouts of the tourists and the blaring alarm klaxon.

Noah knew the smoke cover would not last much longer. It was only meant to thickly cover the Gallery of Honour for a short period of time and that period was coming to an end. Any minute the guards would begin clearing the area.

He walked quickly and carefully with his arms outstretched until he came to his prize and his salvation. The Milk Maid was directly in front of him. He grabbed the painting from the wall. Reached into his pocket and pulled out a box cutter. With a quick mental apology to Vermeer, he cut the canvas as close as he could to the frame and rolled it into a tube. He traded the box cutter for his phone. Noah looked carefully at the screen and swiped the third toggle on the screen and then held the phone up high.

In a glacier-like minute, he felt air blowing down on his face. Noah looked up and the postal tube was dangling right in front of him. He quickly slid the painting, the box cutter and the latex gloves he had been wearing into the tube, sealed it, and swiped the fourth and final toggle on his phone screen.

* * *

The next morning, day seven, watching television in his townhouse, Noah was exultant. He was on every single channel! NPO 1, Sky and CNN. “The heist of the century!” “Clearly the work of a gang of master thieves.” But, most importantly, “Police clueless on identity of robbers!”

Noah reflected on yesterday’s stumble to the stairs in the dissipating smoke along with the remaining tourists. After being thoroughly searched, wanded and providing all his contact information, he had been released.

After getting home, he went to his roof garden and to his complete relief, found the postal tube and all eight drones in a neat line. The postal tube he took downstairs. The drones, he sent on their final journey directly west to run out of power over the deepest parts of Lake Markemeer.

Basking in his glory, Noah was brought crashing to Earth with a single text, “Congratulations. Same place. 1 hour.”

* * *

This time, the Hopi Boy was already at the same B2B café table with, if possible, an even bigger white grin. “Mahn! You da bess teef evah!”

Noah slid into the seat next to the gangster. He had salvaged as much pride as he could by taking almost exactly an hour to get to the café. But the walk had been very uncomfortable; he felt as if each person he passed was staring at him.

“Oh, da Boss be happy wid you, teef! Let me see da paihntin’” the Hopi Boy said, “jess to be sure.”

Noah popped the lid on the postal tube and slid the canvas out. He carefully unrolled it enough for the gangster to see.

Then the screaming began, “Police! Freeze! Police!”

Noah froze. The Hopi Boy jumped up and went back down again under the bodies of three politie who had appeared out of nowhere.

Two other politie grabbed Noah by the arms and lifted him up. One grabbed the postal tube from Noah. The other held up a laminated sheet of paper. Noah looked at it. His face drawn in broad caricature but very accurate – wearing reader glasses and with an angry snarl. Noah immediately recognized the style.

Closing his eyes, Noah thought, I hate sketch artists.