The Antiquarian

By Alfred Balm

As the son of a crofter family young Berend Bouters natural talent finds him in the prestigious Art Academy of Amsterdam.
It is early 1900. Everything points to a successful career as an artist, he works along Mondrian, becomes part of the Barbizon movement, until life throws him a curve ball. During the First World War, Holland remains neutral, Berend becomes the owner of a barge and during heart-stopping escapades, smuggles goods to occupied Belgium for which he is richly rewarded. When the war is over, authorities confiscate all his belongings. To rebuild his fortune, he ingeniously schemes to adopt a new identity though Switzerland, he becomes Baron Fernando Del Muntanyes, the famous Antiquarian. But when he becomes involved in the greatest art heist of the century, the theft of a 15th century panel of The Adoration of the Lamb from the St.Bavo cathedral in Ghent, he is relentlessly pursued by the police. Ultimately with the Sicilian mafia and the Belgian police on his tail he spectacularly escapes on board of the Hindenburg Zeppelin to America. It seems to give him a new start, will it?

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665536202

Alfred Balm

Alfred Balm is an architect, entrepreneur, adventurer and art historian. After building a multinational business conglomerate, he followed his passion and earned several art history degrees. Balm and his wife have two sons and live in Canada. This is his sixth novel.

Book preview

1

April 10, 1934

Ghent, Belgium

The last visitors of the day left the Saint Bavo Cathedral at their leisure. The guards ushering them to the exit were tired. It was seven in the evening, and they were famished. When the door opened, a cold wind rushed into the thousand-year-old church and blew out some of the gothic candles closest to the entrance. It was unusually cold for mid-April, a chilly eight degrees Celsius.

With the last admirer of the unique religious masterworks of antiquity gone, Antoine wished his colleague a good night, put on his warm coat and cap, and closed the heavy door behind him. Normally, the sexton would be the last person to leave after doing his rounds through the cathedral to ensure that nothing or nobody was left behind. This Tuesday, he was absent, visiting family in Oudenaarde, about thirty kilometers south of Ghent.

Nobody noticed the two individuals—a tall man and his much shorter companion, both dressed in black—hiding together in the intricately carved rococo pulpit. The tall one held a bag containing tools and a length of dark velvet cloth. The short one held a piece of paper with a sketch of the sturdy iron hinges that attached the wooden panels they intended to remove.

They waited.

It was a full moon, sparse light penetrated the tall stained-glass windows, and the sanctuary lamp in front delineated the monumental altar in a subdued red light.

Are you all right, Arsène? the tall man asked, unnecessarily whispering. You are shivering.

Whether from the cold or the suspense of the moment, the short man huddled down in the pulpit, pulling up his legs with both arms, and covered himself with the black velvet cloth.

They waited.

You sure that sexton keeps his word and stays put? the tall one inquired.

Yes, he will. A guy I knew from the Resistance scared the shit out of van Volsem. Don’t worry; we’re alone. The short man’s shivering voice betrayed his discomfort.

Suddenly, a clock in the tower chimed ten times, its bronze voice echoing through the ancient vaults.

Let’s go, the tall man said, straightening up and stretching his cramped legs.

They walked to the front of the cathedral, passing the altar. The short man, true to habit, crossed himself; then they continued to the ambulatory. They stopped in front of the Vijd Chapel on the right. The tall man forced the door and pointed his flashlight at the polyptych behind the altar. In spite of themselves and their mission, for a moment they stared in awe at the famous retable Het Lam Gods (Adoration of the Mystic Lamb), a world treasure painted on twelve wooden panels by Hubert and Jan van Eyck in 1432.

Let me have a look at that drawing again, the tall man said. After studying the sketch once more, he walked behind the altar to the side of the polyptych. He intended to remove two panels, the first one a grisaille depicting Johan the Baptist. The top of the panel was quite high. Go get me the ladder, Arsène.

Days before, Arsène, acting as a cleaner, had walked into the church carrying a bucket and a ladder, which he left in the back of the church out of sight. To free the panel, the tall man had to remove the solid iron hinges with the tools he’d brought.

Give me a bit more light here, he told the short man, who was holding the flashlight.

It took him more than an hour.

Arsène, come give me a hand. We can take this panel down now, but be careful. The tall man’s voice reverberated through the church.

Shhh, warned Arsène, nervously pulling on his dark moustache.

A tool fell with a loud clank on the stone floor. Arsène jumped.

The tall man started working on the front panel on the bottom left, which was of the same size as the grisaille he had just removed. But working on the back of the panel was easier and safer, as he did not want a single scratch. His arms were cramped when he tried to take it down. The panel depicted a man in a long blue coat, riding a white horse in front of a mounted group. Removing it was less strenuous, but it took time because the man idolized the maker. While the short man wrapped both panels in the black velvet cloth, the tall man took a note from his pocket and attached it to the frame of the polyptych. It read Tiré d’Allemagne par le traité de Versaille (Taken from Germany by the Treaty of Versailles).

Two hours later, just past midnight, two men carrying a large parcel stealthily walked to the black Citroën Traction Avant parked in front of the cathedral. They loaded the package, jumped in the car, and disappeared into the night without anyone noticing the car’s foreign license plate.

The spectacular heist hit the front page of newspapers all over the world and would remain unsolved for nearly a century.

Until now.

2

1915

It was no surprise to the rest of the world that the Netherlands declared itself neutral in August 1914 at the beginning of what became the First World War. It started in July of that year after Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb and Yugoslav nationalist, shot and killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir of the Austrian-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo. The murder committed by this nationalist would cause one of the deadliest conflicts in human history, costing many millions of lives.

Holland, as the Netherlands is often called, had just over five million citizens at the time, or fifty million, including the population of the colonies. But in a conflict between the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, the standing army of Holland was irrelevant.

In response to the murder, Austria issued an ultimatum to Serbia. Not satisfied with the response, the countries went to war. As the consequence of a network of alliances, what should have remained a bilateral Balkan problem involved most of Europe and ultimately many countries outside of Europe.

The strict enforcement of neutrality was neither cowardice nor altruism. The kingdom of the Netherlands was well aware that it could keep its colonies and its significant source of income only if law and order prevailed among the countries of the world. In 1899 and 1907, international peace conferences were held in the Hague, with the establishment of the Peace Palace as a result. The intention was to decide international conflicts through the mediation of this global supreme court. Neutrality fit well within Dutch politics and traditions.

Belgium, Holland’s neighbor to the south, was occupied by the Germans, irrespective of its neutrality, as it was Germany’s strategy to attack France through Belgium.

To prevent Belgian citizens or refugees from France from entering neutral territory and to prevent Dutch supplies to Germany’s enemies, the occupiers built a high-voltage electric fence that was more than three hundred kilometers long. It would electrocute more than a thousand people who tried to escape the misery of war and the atrocities of the German troops. More than a hundred thousand refugees were interned in the Netherlands, in accordance with the rules of neutrality, but not often in glorious circumstances. Many families also provided shelter to their Belgian neighbors, accepting them as family members until the war was over.

Staying neutral, even when many Dutch merchant ships were sunk, and espionage by warring parties within Holland’s borders was rife, resulted in chaotic times.

While chaos might be a problem for law-abiding citizens, it was a time of opportunity for certain scoundrels, who thrived, taking advantage of the needs in one place and abundance in another—the pirates of wartime.

Berend Bouters became one of them.

Before the war, at the age of thirty, he was the proud owner of a secondhand river barge with a cabin and an old but solid diesel engine. The vessel looked horrible from lack of maintenance at first, but it was mainly paint and minor repairs that were needed. He found her on a small shipyard outside of Rotterdam, bearing a hardly readable weathered sign—Te Koop (For Sale)—that told him there had not been a lot of interest from potential buyers. Layers of dirt, rotten leaves, pigeon droppings, and moss covered the torn tarp that partly covered the ship.

What d’ya think? he asked his three-years-older friend Koen, who had come with him and was acting very important as ship’s surveyor, despite being a master welder.

She looks like shit, man, he told Berend. Lots of work on that bitch. Your choice, but I would look for something that might actually float, if I were you.

The owner of the small yard was not impressed and immediately recognized the fake surveyor for what he was, but he wanted to get rid of that old tub, which had been taking up too much space for way too long. They agreed on a price that comfortably fit within Berend’s budget.

A bit of a problem was that the seller wanted the vessel removed from his yard within three months, giving Berend very little time to restore his ship and make it functional and presentable. But with the help of his friends, after three months of scraping, sanding, welding, carpentry, and especially painting, Berend Botje looked like a bride in spring and was ready to be launched. A friend of Koen’s was a mechanic with a passion for old diesel engines, and when he was done downstairs, the engine, pumps, generator, and auxiliary equipment looked like new, and the engine room was freshly painted.

Koen’s girlfriend insisted on decorating the cabin aft. The aft of the ship housed a small bedroom with a shower and toilet. Below that was another bedroom with a small dayroom; above it, a kitchen; and in front, the wheelhouse. A friend of hers, Marijke, was a hands-on interior decorator who could outperform many a handyman. Berend just loved the easy-smiling blonde.

Koen’s girlfriend did an excellent job decorating the cabin with hand-me-downs from friends and family. This was a relief to Berend, as the rebuild had already cost him almost as much as the original purchase price.

But when the barge was launched with the help of the yard owner, the man was flabbergasted. Darn, I just should have hired you guys to fix her up and then put her on the auction block. But he complimented Berend for the job done.

After the first champagne bottle shattered against the hull, and the Berend Botje was baptized, the next bottle was poured in glasses, and Captain Berend took those who had helped him for the maiden trip on the Maas River. The engine ran smoothly, as if it was brand new. Berend was as proud as any admiral of the fleet on the bridge of his flagship.

His thoughts went to Willem, his old mentor and friend of more than ten years ago—a time when Berend was still full of ideals, before his artistic talent and idealism lost the battle against the material things in life. He reminisced about the academy in Amsterdam, his painting years in Barbizon, and the let-downs later when modernists had ridiculed his talents. Much of what he had inherited from Willem had paid for his ship. He got out of his reverie.

If only his parents could see him—or that bastard of a headmaster in Saint Vincent Primary School, who always told him he would amount to nothing in later life.

But his mom and dad both had passed away so many years ago in that terrible fire.

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Berend was nine years old and often still cried himself to sleep after that horrible headmaster picked on him. Berend was dyslexic, a problem beyond the knowledge of the learned headmaster, in his three-piece, threadbare suit and Father Murder white rubber collar with the gray kerchief.

Stupid, in the back row, still does not know how to spell, no matter how often we correct him. Our patience has its limitations. We invite Dummkopf to step forward so we will try once more to make him understand the consequences of lunacy. The German teacher considered the royal we quite applicable to himself.

Looking down from his imagined pedestal on the little terrified boy who stood in front of him in braided woolen socks, the skinny scarecrow of a man would hiss, Stick them out, and whack five times—hard—with his wooden instrument of torture on the inside of the little hands. He cherished, like a king would his golden scepter, the flat wooden spatula with his initials engraved on it, as the epitome of authority.

Berend never told Mom or Dad. He knew that he was stupid—he had heard it so often from the headmaster—so he cried into his pillow and was terrified as he thought about the next day in school.

After school and during the weekends, Berend would help his dad on the crofter farm, doing heavy work to still his anger and build his muscle.

It was in fifth grade, after writing a short article on cheese-making, that the German headmaster ordered him to step forward again, his wooden scepter ready.

But Berend was not little Berend anymore. At the small farm, he had become a valuable helper, and many a boy in his class who thought to be funny at Berend’s expense would never do that a second time. He slowly walked to the front of the class, where the educational torturer waited with his spatula. The sadist should have been warned by the build of the boy and by the calluses on the inside of his hands. In the moment when he thought to deliver the first whack, the boy moved his open hands quickly to the side, gripped the wrists of the brute, and threw him—in one mighty sweep—behind him on the floor and into the center aisle of the class. Berend took the hated spatula, broke it over his knee, and threw the pieces at the terrified man on the floor. The kids in class where paralyzed but stared in awe at the boy, who left the class, never to return.

When he told his parents about the torture he’d had to endure in school all those years, they were happy to have him home, helping his father, who thought that five years in school was more than a man needed anyway.

The small farm Berend’s dad owned outside of the harbor village of Volendam would never make his parents rich, but it was eight hundred acres of fertile land, and the milk and cheese he produced brought him just enough to live a good life. There was no money owed on the property, and the pigs and sheep he raised brought in just enough extra so that on Sundays, he could proudly drive his wife to church in her traditional finest—complete with white, starched, winged headgear, the hull, and her three-string red coral necklace with its square golden lock around her neck. She looked as fine as any of the wives from the bigger farms.

After church, they would stroll along the harbor, he in his Sunday black suit with freshly whitewashed clogs and two shiny silver coins at his waist. She would wear a warm, blue-and-brown-striped woolen shawl around her shoulders and would take small steps in black lacquered half-open pointed slippers.

With the fishermen respecting the Lord’s Day, all botters—the wooden, one-mast fishing boats built to fish the Southern Sea—were moored or anchored. The riggings rattled against the mast as they danced on the waves that splashed against the hulls. Seagulls dived around them or screamed from the pedestal of a mooring post.

Farmer Bouters loved the Sunday strolls along the cay, breathing in the salt- and tar-scented fresh sea air. Afterwards they would go to Spaander, the local tavern, and get a genever for him and a whipped-cream-topped advocaat—a thick, eggnog alcoholic beverage—for her.

They loved the warm atmosphere of the old inn, with its copper chandeliers and hissing Delft Blue petroleum lamps. They admired the many seascapes, boatscapes, peoplescapes, or seagull-on-mooring-pole-scapes that local artists left behind—often veritable pieces of art—in payment of their accrued tabs.

Johan and Katrina Bouters were a content couple. It was not in the stars that JohanBouters would ever own more than the pants he was wearing. He had left home when he was eight years old to escape the beatings of an abusive, disgruntled, stranger of a father who had returned from the colonies.

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Johan’s father (Berend’s grandfather), Bartus, had been as poor as a church mouse and more often drunk than sober. Johan’s mother worked the pubs in Rotterdam Harbor at night and would often come home when the first morning light penetrated the broken clay roof tiles of the dilapidated shed they lived in, under which leaking roof young Johan slept. She often started a fight with her drunken wanker. What Johan remembered from his early youth was hunger—gut-wrenching hunger—and fear, especially at night.

Bartus Bouters had been a hired hand at the ropewalk of the local shipyard but was fired for stealing from the foreman, who beat him, almost crippling him, before calling the scout. He spent two weeks in jail among the riffraff of the harbor town and could not find a job after that, so he accepted the ten guilders earnest money from a crimper in a smoke-filled harbor pub. He put his name on a roll to sail to the colonies a fortnight later, leaving a pregnant woman behind.

The year was 1825, and chaos reigned in the East Indies.

The war started on the island of Java, where the nationalist leader, Prince Diponegoro, assembled combatants from the local population of the kingdoms of Yogyakarta and Surakarta. They fought the Christian Dutch colonial oppressors in a jihad, costing more than two hundred thousand deaths on his side and fifteen thousand Dutch before it ended in a colonial victory in 1830.

But the analphabetic Bartus Bouters did not have a clue about the country, the population, or the situation in the faraway tropical country where he would live a tough life for six long years.

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The brigantine, a two-master with a square-rigged fore mast and a gaff-rigged aft mast, was bobbing alongside the cay, its hemp mooring lines pulling on the cleats as if she was eager to leave for open sea. The captain, a misanthropic obese person with a golden ring in his left ear and a graying, tobacco-juice–stained beard encircling his bony jaw, observed with disdain the sorrowful creature about to board his ship. The Voorspoed (the Prosperity) was in bad shape. Sloppy repairs on the hull and the castle, patchwork on the sails, and a lack of paint all over the two-master made Bartus wonder how this wreck would ever reach the Indies, but hey, he was no sailor; he guessed that captain knew best.

Longshoremen were presently bringing cargo on board in crates, barrels, and sacks, so he waited till they were done; he decided to walk the pier. He instinctively compared the Voorspoed to the magistral, well-kept three-masters he passed that proudly flew the red, white, and blue flags from the aft castle.

When he finally walked the plank to board, a gunny sack with his meager possessions over his shoulder, his first and immediate surprise was that he was signed up as a deckhand.

The master, an old salt with an anchor tattooed on one arm and a busty mermaid on the other, showed him the corner below deck where he was supposed to sleep on a folded tarp.

Bartus had a feeling that he had made a big mistake.

He had.

3

Berend was happy that he didn’t have to attend school anymore and be humiliated by that damned German headmaster. He smiled when he thought about the day when he avenged himself, throwing the bastard on the floor.

Helping his dad was hard work, but he enjoyed it. At night or during free hours on Saturday and Sunday, after he milked the cows and fed the pigs, he would make drawings or carve small statues from pieces of wood he’d cut from a lime tree they had taken down. His father looked at his art with barely suppressed disdain, but his mom encouraged him; she was surprised at the talent of the offspring, whose parents had not even the slightest bit of artistic aspirations.

The growth of the Dutch population, as a result of declining mortality due to better hygiene and improved health care, and the increase of wages due to industrialization, had a positive impact on the income for the farm. There was an increased demand for milk, cheese, eggs, and pork, at better