Theresa was almost alone in the Salle des États, La Gioconda on the ground leaning against a wall. She wasn't looking at it.
She was closely inspecting a painting sitting next to it. It had been anonymously delivered to the museum a few hours ago. It looked very, very, very, very much like the painting to its right. As a specialist Theresa was both annoyed and impressed.
"It's really good." She shook her head. "Not just technical talent. There are a few differences, but they look like deliberate artistic choices, not mistakes. I'd like to do a chemical analysis later."
The other person in the room — her boss' boss' boss, a prematurely aged man who was pointedly looking away from the wall — nodded. "The paint is always perfect."
Theresa turned around to look at the Director's back. "There were others?"
"Right, you're new. Yes. Fairly frequently and always on this date."
She tried to remember. A birthday? Death anniversary? The Director answered her before she had to ask the question. "It's the anniversary of the first time the Gioconda was returned after being stolen."
The Director now went to the wall and picked the new picture. "Come." Theresa silently followed him and the picture into a part of the museum she had never been in. At the end of a corridor with the indefinable air of a place seldom and never happily visited there was the most secure door she had ever seen.
The Director spoke again as he performed the complex processes of opening it. He sounded tired and the words had a certain hollow rituality. "Security was increased after the break-in. Horses and barns, I'm afraid."
"They took something from here?"
"The files, yes. And they brought something in."
Theresa felt her face freeze in fear without knowing why.
"The Gioconda we were showing," continued the director, turning on a light as he crossed the door. "And they shuffled everything around."
Theresa entered the long but narrow room. The wall to her left was empty. On the one to her right were mounted a few dozen paintings.
They walked quickly down the room seeking the first of the empty mountings while looking as little as possible to the paintings themselves.
"Which one?"
"Which one's above? We usually pick the best one. Should be the original, right? Last year there was a tie, we had to throw a coin." There was a brittleness in his voice that made the hairs on her arms rise. He was now looking closely at the painting he had just mounted. "There's always the chance that the one they send is the returned original, but I don't think it's this one. Not an improvement on the one above. What do you think?"
Theresa couldn't do more than nod. The Director wasn't looking at her. "Right," he said. "I'll give you the code and a key copy in case you want to do the chemical analysis." He didn't sound like he believed she would, and as they almost power-walked back to the door flanked by a wall of enigmatic smiles she didn't think that either.
She had a feeling she knew how her nightmares would look like for a long while.