Montezuma’s Revenge

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From a pigeon’s eye view, and there are pigeons enough in our nation’s capital, fed and fat from tourist popcorn and sandwich crusts, the National Gallery looked just as it always has done. White marble, domed and impressive, a suitable repository for the finest art from all over the world displayed for the pleasure of the American citizenry. Here the sweat-soaked sons of Kansas and California, Texas and Maine sought welcome relief from the steam-bath heat and shattering glare of a Washington summer, wallowing in wide-eyed wonder before the fleshy expanses of the Rubens matrons, shuffling glazed-eyed past the exuberances of the impressionists, while all of this time they were unaware of the human drama being played out in their midst.

If their attention had not been elsewhere they might have noticed him standing to one side in the book and art shop, a man with a decidedly worried expression that kept slipping back to his face no matter how he tried to dispel it with a professional smile. He was thin, of medium height, tanned and jet haired, his nose slightly too large for his face although he was not unhandsome for all of it, his smoothly pressed suit was beige and unassuming, his neatly knotted tie of an austere tone; he stood erect yet at ease with his hands clasped behind him, master of all he surveyed—which was indeed the case.

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