False Impression

2

Anna Petrescu touched the button on the top of her bedside clock. It glowed 5:56 A.M. Another four minutes and it would have woken her with the early morning news. But not today. Her mind had been racing all through the night, only allowing her intermittent patches of sleep. By the time she finally woke, Anna had decided exactly what she must do if the chairman was unwilling to go along with her recommendations. She switched off the automatic alarm, avoiding any news that might distract her, jumped out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom. Anna remained under the cold shower a little longer than usual, hoping it would fully wake her. Her last lover — heaven knows how long ago that must have been — thought it amusing that she always showered before going out for her morning run.

Once she had dried herself, Anna slipped on a white T-shirt and blue running shorts. Although the sun had not yet risen, she didn’t need to open the bedroom curtains of her little room to know that it was going to be another clear, sunny day. She zipped up her tracksuit top, which still displayed a faded P where the bold blue letter had been unstitched. Anna didn’t want to advertise the fact that she had once been a member of the University of Pennsylvania track team. After all, that was nine years ago. Anna finally pulled on her Nike training shoes and tied the laces very tight. Nothing annoyed her more than having to stop in the middle of her morning run to retie her laces. The only other thing she wore that morning was her front door key, attached to a thin silver chain that hung around her neck.

Anna double-locked the front door of her four-room apartment, walked across the corridor, and pressed the elevator button. While she waited for the little cubicle to travel grudgingly up to the tenth floor, she began a series of stretching exercises that would be completed before the elevator returned to the ground floor.

Anna stepped out into the lobby and smiled at her favorite doorman, who quickly opened the front door so that she didn’t have to stop in her tracks.

“Morning, Sam,” Anna said, as she jogged out of Thornton House onto East Fifty-fourth Street and headed toward Central Park.

Every weekday she ran the Southern Loop. On the weekends she would tackle the longer six-mile loop, when it didn’t matter if she was a few minutes late. It mattered today.

Bryce Fenston also rose before six o’clock that morning, as he too had an early appointment. While he showered, Fenston listened to the morning news: a suicide bomber who had blown himself up on the West Bank — an event that had become as commonplace as the weather forecast or the latest currency fluctuation didn’t cause him to raise the volume.

“Another clear, sunny day, with a gentle breeze heading southeast, highs of seventy-seven, lows of sixty-five,” announced a chirpy weather girl, as Fenston stepped out of the shower. A more serious voice replaced hers to inform him that the Nikkei in Tokyo was up fourteen points and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng down one. London’s FTSE hadn’t yet made up its mind in which direction to go. He considered that Fenston Finance shares were unlikely to move dramatically either way, as only two other people were aware of his little coup. Fenston was having breakfast with one of them at seven, and he would fire the other at eight.

By 6:40 A.M., Fenston had showered and dressed. He glanced at his reflection in the mirror; he would like to have been a couple of inches taller and a couple of inches thinner. Nothing that a good tailor and a pair of Cuban shoes with specially designed insoles couldn’t rectify. He would also like to have grown his hair again, but not while there were so many exiles from his country who might still recognize him.

Although his father had been a tram conductor in Bucharest, anyone who gave the immaculately dressed man a second glance as he stepped out of his brownstone on East Seventy-ninth Street and into his chauffeur-driven limousine would have assumed that he had been born into the Upper East Side establishment. Only those who looked more closely would have spotted the small diamond in his left ear — an affectation that he believed singled him out from his more conservative colleagues. None of his staff dared to tell him otherwise.

Fenston settled down in the back of his limousine. “The office,” he barked before touching a button in the armrest. A smoked gray screen purred up, cutting off any unnecessary conversation between him and the driver. Fenston picked up a copy of The New York Times from the seat beside him. He flicked through the pages to see if any particular headline grabbed his attention. Mayor Giuliani seemed to have lost the plot. Having installed his mistress in Gracie Mansion, he’d left the first lady only too happy to voice her opinion on the subject to anyone who cared to listen. This morning it was The New York Times. Fenston was poring over the financial pages when his driver swung onto FDR Drive, and he had reached the obituaries by the time the limousine came to a halt outside the North Tower. No one would be printing the only obituary he was interested in until tomorrow, but, to be fair, no one in America realized she was dead.

“I have an appointment on Wall Street at eight thirty,” Fenston informed his driver when he opened the back door for him. “So pick me up at eight fifteen.” The driver nodded, as Fenston marched off in the direction of the lobby. Although there were ninety-nine elevators in the building, only one went directly to the restaurant on the 107th floor.

As Fenston stepped out of the elevator a minute later — he had once calculated that he would spend a week of his life in elevators — the maître d’ spotted his regular customer, bowed his head slightly, and escorted him to a table in the corner overlooking the Statue of Liberty. On the one occasion Fenston had turned up to find his usual table occupied, he’d turned around and stepped straight back into the elevator. Since then, the corner table had remained empty every morning — just in case.

Fenston was not surprised to find Karl Leapman waiting for him. Leapman had never once been late in the ten years he had worked for Fenston Finance. Fenston wondered how long he had been sitting there, just to be certain that the chairman didn’t turn up before he did. Fenston looked down at a man who had proved, time and time again, that there was no sewer he wasn’t willing to swim in for his master. But then Fenston was the only person who had been willing to offer Leapman a job after he’d been released from jail. Disbarred lawyers with a prison sentence for fraud don’t expect to make partner.

Even before he took his seat, Fenston began speaking. “Now we are in possession of the Van Gogh,” he said, “we only have one matter to discuss this morning. How do we rid ourselves of Anna Petrescu without her becoming suspicious?”

Leapman opened a file in front of him and smiled.

3

Nothing had gone as planned that morning.

Andrews had instructed cook that he would be taking up her ladyship’s breakfast tray just as soon as the painting had been dispatched. Cook had developed a migraine, so her number two, not a reliable girl, had been put in charge of her ladyship’s breakfast. The security van turned up forty minutes late, with a cheeky young driver who refused to leave until he’d been given coffee and biscuits. Cook would never have stood for such nonsense, but her number two caved in. Half an hour later, Andrews found them sitting at the kitchen table, chatting.

Andrews was only relieved that her ladyship hadn’t stirred before the driver finally departed. He checked the tray, refolded the napkin, and left the kitchen to take breakfast up to his mistress.

Andrews held the tray on the palm of one hand and knocked quietly on the bedroom door before opening it with the other. When he saw her ladyship lying on the floor in a pool of blood, he let out a gasp, dropped the tray, and rushed over to the body.

Although it was clear Lady Victoria had been dead for several hours, Andrews did not consider contacting the police until the next in line to the Wentworth estate had been informed of the tragedy. He quickly left the bedroom, locked the door, and ran downstairs for the first time in his life.

Arabella Wentworth was serving someone when Andrews called.

She put the phone down and apologized to her customer, explaining that she had to leave immediately. She switched the OPEN sign to CLOSED and locked the door of her little antiques shop only moments after Andrews had uttered the word emergency, not an opinion she’d heard him express in the past forty-nine years.

Fifteen minutes later, Arabella brought her mini to a halt on the gravel outside Wentworth Hall. Andrews was standing on the top step, waiting for her.

“I’m so very sorry, m’lady,” was all he said before he led his new mistress into the house and up the wide marble staircase. When Andrews touched the bannister to steady himself, Arabella knew her sister was dead.

Arabella had often wondered how she would react in a crisis. She was relieved to find that although she was violently sick when she first saw her sister’s body, she didn’t faint. However, it was a close thing. After a second glance, she grabbed the bedpost to help steady herself before turning away.

Blood had spurted everywhere, congealing on the carpet, the walls, the writing desk, and even the ceiling. With a Herculean effort, Arabella let go of the bedpost and staggered toward the phone on the bedside table. She collapsed onto the bed, picked up the receiver, and dialed 999. When the phone was answered with the words, “Emergency, which service?” she replied, “Police.”

Arabella replaced the receiver. She was determined to reach the bedroom door without looking back at her sister’s body. She failed. Only a glance, and this time her eyes settled on the letter addressed “My dearest Arabella.” She grabbed the unfinished missive, unwilling to share her sister’s last thoughts with the local constabulary. Arabella stuffed the epistle into her pocket and walked unsteadily out of the room.

4

Anna jogged west along West Fifty-fourth Street, past the Museum of Modern Art, crossing Sixth Avenue before taking a right on Seventh. She barely glanced at the familiar landmarks of the massive sculpture that dominated the corner of West Fifty-fifth Street or Carnegie Hall as she crossed West Fifty-seventh. Most of her energy and concentration was taken up with trying to avoid the early morning commuters as they hurried toward her or blocked her progress. Anna considered the jog to Central Park nothing more than a warm-up and didn’t start the stopwatch on her left wrist until she passed through Artisans’ Gate and ran into the park.

Once Anna had settled into her regular rhythm, she tried to focus on the meeting scheduled with the chairman for eight o’clock that morning.

Anna had been both surprised and somewhat relieved when Bryce Fenston had offered her a job at Fenston Finance only days after she’d left her position as the number two in Sotheby’s Impressionist department.

Her immediate boss had made it only too clear that any thought of progress would be blocked for some time after she’d admitted to being responsible for losing the sale of a major collection to their main rival, Christie’s. Anna had spent months nurturing, flattering, and cajoling this particular customer into selecting Sotheby’s for the disposal of their family’s estate, and had naïvely assumed when she shared the secret with her lover that he would be discreet. After all, he was a lawyer.

When the name of the client was revealed in the arts section of The New York Times, Anna lost both her lover and her job. It didn’t help when a few days later the same paper reported that Dr. Anna Petrescu had left Sotheby’s “under a cloud” — a euphemism for fired — and the columnist helpfully added that she needn’t bother to apply for a job at Christie’s.

Bryce Fenston was a regular attendee at all the major Impressionist sales, and he couldn’t have missed Anna standing by the side of the auctioneer’s podium taking notes and acting as a spotter. She resented any suggestion that her striking good looks and athletic figure were the reason Sotheby’s regularly placed her in so prominent a position, rather than at the side of the auction room along with the other spotters.

Anna checked her watch as she ran across Playmates Arch: two minutes eighteen seconds. She always aimed to complete the loop in twelve minutes. She knew that wasn’t fast, but it still annoyed her whenever she was overtaken, and it made her particularly mad if it was by a woman. Anna had come in ninety-seventh in last year’s New York Marathon, so on her morning jog in Central Park she was rarely passed by anything on two legs.

Her thoughts returned to Bryce Fenston. It had been known for some time by those closely involved in the art world — auction houses, leading galleries, and private dealers — that Fenston was amassing one of the great Impressionist collections. He, along with Steve Wynn, Leonard Lauder, Anne Dias, and Takashi Nakamura, were regularly among the final bidders for any major new acquisition. For such collectors, what often begins as an innocent hobby can quickly become an addiction, every bit as demanding as any drug. For Fenston, who owned an example of all the major Impressionists except Van Gogh, even the thought of possessing a work by the Dutch master was an injection of pure heroin, and once purchased he quickly craved another fix, like a shaking addict in search of a dealer. His dealer was Anna Petrescu.

When Fenston read in The New York Times that Anna was leaving Sotheby’s, he immediately offered her a place on his board with a salary that reflected how serious he was about continuing to build his collection. What tipped the balance for Anna was the discovery that Fenston also originated from Romania. He continually reminded Anna that, like her, he had escaped the oppressive Ceauşescu regime to find refuge in America.

Within days of her joining the bank, Fenston quickly put Anna’s expertise to the test. Most of the questions he asked her at their first meeting, over lunch, concerned Anna’s knowledge of any large collections still in the hands of second- or third-generation families. After six years at Sotheby’s, there was barely a major Impressionist work that came under the hammer that hadn’t passed through Anna’s hands or at least been viewed by her and then added to her database.

One of the first lessons Anna learned after joining Sotheby’s was that old money was more likely to be the seller and new money the buyer, which was how she originally came into contact with Lady Victoria Wentworth, elder daughter of the Seventh Earl of Wentworth — old, old money — on behalf of Bryce Fenston — nouveau, nouveau riche.

Anna was puzzled by Fenston’s obsession with other people’s collections, until she discovered that it was company policy to advance large loans against works of art. Few banks are willing to consider “art,” no matter what form, as collateral. Property, shares, bonds, land, even jewelery, but rarely art. Bankers do not understand the market and are reluctant to reclaim the assets from their customers, not least because storing the works, insuring them, and often ending up having to sell them is not only time-consuming but impractical. Fenston Finance was the rare exception. It didn’t take Anna long to discover that Fenston had no real love, or particular knowledge, of art. He fulfilled Oscar Wilde’s dictum: A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. But it was some time before Anna discovered his real motive.

One of Anna’s first assignments was to take a trip to England and value the estate of Lady Victoria Wentworth, a potential customer, who had applied for a large loan from Fenston Finance. The Wentworth collection turned out to be a typically English one, built up by the second earl, an eccentric aristocrat with a great deal of money, considerable taste, and a good enough eye for later generations to describe him as a gifted amateur. From his own countrymen he acquired Romney, West, Constable, Stubbs, and Morland, as well as a magnificent example of a Turner, Sunset over Plymouth.

The third earl showed no interest in anything artistic, so the collection gathered dust until his son, the fourth earl, inherited the estate and with it his grandfather’s discriminating eye.

Jamie Wentworth spent nearly a year exiled from his native land taking what used to be known as the Grand Tour. He visited Paris, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Venice, and St. Petersburg before returning to Wentworth Hall in possession of a Raphael, Tintoretto, Titian, Rubens, Holbein, and Van Dyck, not to mention an Italian wife. However, it was Charles, the fifth earl, who, for all the wrong reasons, trumped his ancestors. Charlie was also a collector, not of paintings, but of mistresses. After an energetic weekend spent in Paris — mainly on the racecourse at Longchamp but partly in a bedroom at the Crillon — his latest filly convinced him to purchase from her doctor a painting by an unknown artist. Charlie Wentworth returned to England having discarded his paramour but stuck with a painting that he relegated to a guest bedroom, although many aficionados now consider Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear to be among Van Gogh’s finest works.

Anna had already warned Fenston to be wary when it came to purchasing a Van Gogh, because attributions were often more dubious than Wall Street bankers — a simile Fenston didn’t care for. She told him that there were several fakes hanging in private collections and even one or two in major museums, including the national museum of Oslo. However, after Anna had studied the paperwork that accompanied the Van Gogh Self-Portrait, which included a reference to Charles Wentworth in one of Dr. Gachet’s letters, a receipt for eight hundred francs from the original sale and a certificate of authentication from Louis van Tilborgh, curator of paintings at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, she felt confident enough to advise the chairman that the magnificent portrait was indeed by the hand of the master.

For Van Gogh addicts, Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear was the ultimate high. Although the maestro painted thirty-five self-portraits during his lifetime, he attempted only two after cutting off his left ear. What made this particular work so desirable for any serious collector was that the other one was on display at the Courtauld Institute in London. Anna was becoming more and more anxious about just how far Fenston would be willing to go in order to possess the only other example.

Anna spent a pleasant ten days at Wentworth Hall cataloguing and valuing the family’s collection. When she returned to New York, she advised the board — mainly made up of Fenston’s cronies or politicians who were only too happy to accept a handout — that should a sale ever prove necessary, the assets would more than cover the bank’s loan of thirty million dollars.

Although Anna had no interest in Victoria Wentworth’s reasons for needing such a large sum of money, she often heard Victoria speak of the sadness of “dear Papa’s” premature death, the retirement of their trusted estates manager, and the iniquity of 40 percent death duties during her stay at Wentworth Hall. “If only Arabella had been born a few moments earlier...” was one of Victoria’s favourite mantras.

Once she was back in New York, Anna could recall every painting and sculpture in Victoria’s collection without having to refer to any paperwork. The one gift that set her apart from her contemporaries at Penn, and her colleagues at Sotheby’s, was a photographic memory. Once Anna had seen a painting, she would never forget the image, its provenance, or its location. Every Sunday she would idly put her skill to the test by visiting a new gallery or a room at the Met, or simply by studying the latest catalogue raisonné. On returning to her apartment, she would write down the name of every painting she had seen before checking it against the different catalogues. Since leaving university, Anna had added the Louvre, the Prado, and the Uffizi, as well as the National Gallery in Washington, the Phillips Collection, and the Getty Museum, to her memory bank. Thirty-seven private collections and countless catalogues were also stored in the database of her brain, an asset Fenston had proved willing to pay over the odds for.

Anna’s responsibility did not go beyond valuing the collections of potential clients and then submitting written reports for the board’s consideration. She never became involved in the drawing up of any contract. That was exclusively in the hands of the bank’s in-house lawyer, Karl Leapman. However, Victoria did let slip on one occasion that the bank was charging her 16 percent compound interest. Anna had quickly become aware that a combination of debt, naïveté, and a lack of any financial, expertise were the ingredients on which Fenston Finance thrived. This was a bank that seemed to relish its customers’ inability to repay their debts.

Anna lengthened her stride as she passed by the carousel. She checked her watch — off twelve seconds. She frowned, but at least no one had overtaken her. Her thoughts returned to the Wentworth collection and the recommendation she would be making to Fenston that morning. Anna had decided she would have to resign if the chairman felt unable to accept her advice, despite the fact that she had worked for the company for less than a year and was painfully aware that she still couldn’t hope to get a job at Sotheby’s or Christie’s.

During the past year, she had learnt to live with Fenston’s vanity and even tolerate the occasional outburst when he didn’t get his own way, but she could not condone misleading a client, especially one as naïve as Victoria Wentworth. Leaving Fenston Finance after such a short time might not look good on her résumé, but an ongoing fraud investigation would look a lot worse.

5

“When will we find out if she’s dead?” asked Leapman, as he sipped his coffee.

“I’m expecting confirmation this morning,” Fenston replied.

“Good, because I’ll need to be in touch with her lawyer to remind him—” he paused “—that in the case of a suspicious death—” he paused a second time “—any settlement reverts to the jurisdiction of the New York State Bar.”

“Strange that none of them ever query that clause in the contract,” said Fenston, buttering another muffin.

“Why should they?” asked Leapman. “After all, they have no way of knowing that they’re about to die.”

“And is there any reason for the police to become suspicious about our involvement?”

“No,” replied Leapman. “You’ve never met Victoria Wentworth, you didn’t sign the original contract, and you haven’t even seen the painting.”

“No one has outside the Wentworth family and Petrescu,” Fenston reminded him. “But what I still need to know is how much time before I can safely—”

“Hard to say, but it could be years before the police are willing to admit they don’t even have a suspect, especially in such a high-profile case.”

“A couple of years will be quite enough,” said Fenston. “By then, the interest on the loan will be more than enough to ensure that I can hold on to the Van Gogh and sell off the rest of the collection without losing any of my original investment.”

“Then it’s a good thing that I read Petrescu’s report when I did,” said Leapman, “because if she’d gone along with Petrescu’s recommendation, there would have been nothing we could do about it.”

“Agreed,” said Fenston, “but now we have to find some way of losing Petrescu.”

A thin smile appeared on Leapman’s lips. “That’s easy enough,” he said, “we play on her one weakness.”

“And that is?” asked Fenston.

“Her honesty.”

Arabella sat alone in the drawing room, unable to take in what was happening all around her. A cup of Earl Grey tea on the table beside her had gone cold, but she hadn’t noticed. The loudest noise in the room was the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece. Time had stopped for Arabella.

Several police cars and an ambulance were parked on the gravel outside. People going about their business dressed in uniforms, white coats, dark suits, and even face masks came and went without bothering her.

There was a gentle tap on the door. Arabella looked up to see an old friend standing in the doorway. The chief superintendent removed a peaked cap covered in silver braid as he entered the room. Arabella rose from the sofa, her face ashen, her eyes red from crying. The tall man bent down and kissed her gently on both cheeks and then waited for her to sit back down before he took his place in the leather wing chair opposite her. Stephen Renton offered his condolences, which were genuine; he’d known Victoria for many years.

Arabella thanked him, sat up straight, and asked quietly, “Who could have done such a terrible thing, especially to someone as innocent as Victoria?”

“There doesn’t seem to be a simple or logical answer to that question,” the chief superintendent replied. “And it doesn’t help that it was several hours before her body was discovered, allowing the assailant more than enough time to get clean away.” He paused. “Do you feel up to answering some questions, my dear?”

Arabella gave a nod. “I’ll do anything I can to help you track down the assailant.” She repeated the word with venom.

“Normally, the first question I would ask in any murder inquiry is do you know if your sister had any enemies, but I confess that knowing her as I did that doesn’t seem possible. However, I must ask if you were aware of any problems Victoria might have been facing, because—” he hesitated “—there have been rumors in the village for some time that following your father’s death, your sister was left with considerable debts.”

“I don’t know, is the truth,” Arabella admitted. “After I married Angus, we only came down from Scotland for a couple of weeks in the summer and every other Christmas. It wasn’t until my husband died that I returned to live in Surrey” — the chief superintendent nodded but didn’t interrupt — “and heard the same rumors. Local gossips were even letting it be known that some of the furniture in my shop had come from the estate in order that Victoria could still pay the staff.”

“And was there any truth in those rumors?” asked Stephen.

“None at all,” replied Arabella. “When Angus died and I sold our farm in Perthshire, there was more than enough to allow me to return to Wentworth, open my little shop, and turn a lifelong hobby into a worthwhile enterprise. But I did ask my sister on several occasions if the rumors of Father’s financial position were true. Victoria denied there was any problem, always claiming that everything was under control. But then she adored Father, and in her eyes he could do no wrong.”

“Can you think of anything that might give some clue as to why...”

Arabella rose from the sofa and, without explanation, walked across to a writing desk on the far side of the room. She picked up the blood-spattered letter that she had found on her sister’s table, walked back, and handed it across to him.

Stephen read the unfinished missive twice before asking, “Do you have any idea what Victoria could have meant by ‘a solution has been found’?”

“No,” admitted Arabella, “but it’s possible that I’ll be able to answer that question once I’ve had a word with Arnold Simpson.”

“That doesn’t fill me with confidence,” said Stephen.

Arabella noted his comment but didn’t respond. She knew that the chief superintendent’s natural instinct was to mistrust all solicitors who appeared unable to disguise a belief that they were superior to any police officer.

The chief superintendent rose from his place, walked across and sat next to Arabella. He took her hand. “Call me whenever you want to,” he said gently, “and try not to keep too many secrets from me, Arabella, because I’ll need to know everything, and I mean everything, if we’re to find who murdered your sister.”

Arabella didn’t reply.

“Damn,” muttered Anna to herself when an athletic, dark-haired man jogged casually past her, just as he’d done several times during the last few weeks. He didn’t glance back — serious runners never did. Anna knew that it would be pointless to try and keep up with him, as she would be “legless” within a hundred yards. She had once caught a sideways glimpse of the mystery man, but he then strode away and all she had seen was the back of his emerald green T-shirt as he continued toward Strawberry Fields. Anna tried to put him out of her mind and focus once again on her meeting with Fenston.

Anna had already sent a copy of her report to the chairman’s office, recommending that the bank sell the self-portrait as quickly as possible. She knew a collector in Tokyo who was obsessed with Van Gogh and still had the yen to prove it. And with this particular painting there was another weakness she would be able to play on, which she had highlighted in her report. Van Gogh had always admired Japanese art, and on the wall behind the self-portrait he had reproduced a print of Geishas in a Landscape, which Anna felt would make the painting even more irresistible to Takashi Nakamura.

Nakamura was chairman of the largest steel company in Japan, but lately he’d been spending more and more time building up his art collection, which, he’d let it be known, was to form part of a foundation that would eventually be left to the nation. Anna also considered it an advantage that Nakamura was an intensely secretive individual, who guarded the details of his private collection with typical Japanese inscrutability. Such a sale would allow Victoria Wentworth to save face — something the Japanese fully understood. Anna had once acquired a Degas for Nakamura, Dancing Class with Mme. Minette, which the seller had wished to dispose of privately, a service the great auction houses offer to those who want to avoid the prying eyes of journalists who hang around the sale rooms. She was confident that Nakamura would offer at least sixty million dollars for the rare Dutch masterpiece. So if Fenston accepted her proposal — and why shouldn’t he? — everyone would be satisfied with the outcome.

When Anna passed the Tavern on the Green, she once again checked her watch. She would need to pick up her pace if she still hoped to be back at Artisans’ Gate in under twelve minutes. As she sprinted down the hill, she reflected on the fact that she shouldn’t allow her personal feelings for a client to cloud her judgment, but frankly Victoria needed all the help she could get. When Anna passed through Artisans’ Gate, she pressed the stop button on her watch: twelve minutes and four seconds. Damn.

Anna jogged slowly off in the direction of her apartment, unaware that she was being closely watched by the man in the emerald green T-shirt.

6

Jack Delaney still wasn’t sure if Anna Petrescu was a criminal.

The FBI agent watched her as she disappeared into the crowd on her way back to Thornton House. Once she was out of sight, Jack resumed jogging through Sheep Meadow toward the lake. He thought about the woman he’d been investigating for the past six weeks, an inquiry that was hampered by the fact that he didn’t need Anna to find out that the Bureau was also investigating her boss, who Jack had no doubt was a criminal.

It was nearly a year since Richard W. Macy, Jack’s supervising special agent, had called him into his office and allocated him a team of eight agents to cover a new assignment. Jack was to investigate three vicious murders on three different continents that had one thing in common: each of the victims had been killed at a time when they also had large outstanding loans with Fenston Finance. Jack quickly concluded that the murders had been planned and were the work of a professional killer.

Jack cut through Shakespeare Garden as he headed back toward his small apartment on the West Side. He had just about completed his file on Fenston’s most recent recruit, although he still couldn’t make up his mind if she was a willing accomplice or a naïve innocent.

Jack had begun with Anna’s upbringing and discovered that her uncle, George Petrescu, had emigrated from Romania in 1972 to settle in Danville, Illinois. Within weeks of Ceauşescu appointing himself president, George had written to his brother imploring him to join him in America. When Ceauşescu declared Romania a socialist republic and made his wife, Elena, his deputy, George wrote to his brother renewing his invitation, which included his young niece, Anna.

Although Anna’s parents refused to leave their homeland, they did allow their seventeen-year-old daughter to be smuggled out of Bucharest in 1987 and shipped off to America to stay with her uncle, promising her that she could return the moment Ceauşescu had been overthrown. Anna never returned. She wrote home regularly, begging her mother to join them in the States, but she rarely received a response. Two years later she learned that her father had been killed in a border skirmish while attempting to oust the dictator. Her mother also repeated that she would never leave her native land, her excuse now being, “Who would tend to your father’s grave?”

That much, one of Jack’s squad members had been able to discover from an essay Anna had written for her high school magazine. One of her classmates had also written about the gentle girl with long fair plaits and blue eyes who came from somewhere called Bucharest and knew so few words of English that she couldn’t even recite the Pledge of Allegiance at morning assembly. By the end of her second year, Anna was editing the magazine, from which Jack had gathered so much of his information.

From high school, Anna won a scholarship to Williams University in Massachusetts to study art history. A local newspaper recorded that she also won the intervarsity mile against Cornell in a time of four minutes forty-eight seconds. Jack followed Anna’s progress to the University of Pennsylvania, where she continued her studies for a Ph.D., her chosen thesis subject the Fauve Movement. Jack had to look up the word in Webster’s. It referred to a group of artists led by Matisse, Derain, and Vlaminck who wished to break away from the influence of Impressionism and move toward the use of bright and dissonant color. He also learned how the young Picasso had left Spain to join the group in Paris, where he shocked the public with paintings that Paris Match described as “of no lasting importance”; “sanity will return,” they assured their readers. It only made Jack want to read more about Vuillard, Luce, and Camois — artists he’d never heard of. But that would have to wait for an off-duty moment, unless it became evidence that would nail Fenston.

After Penn, Dr. Petrescu joined Sotheby’s as a graduate trainee. Here Jack’s information became somewhat sketchy, as he could allow his agents only limited contact with Anna’s former colleagues. However, he did learn of her photographic memory, her rigorous scholarship, and the fact that she was liked by everyone from the porters to the chairman. But no one would discuss in detail what “under a cloud” meant, although he did discover that she would not be welcome back at Sotheby’s under the present management. And Jack couldn’t fathom out why, despite her dismissal, she considered joining Fenston Finance. For that part of his inquiry, he had to rely on speculation, because he couldn’t risk approaching anyone she worked with at the bank, although it was clear that Tina Forster, the chairman’s secretary, had become a close friend.

In the short time Anna had worked at Fenston Finance, she had visited several new clients who had recently taken out large loans, all of whom were in possession of major art collections. Jack feared that it could only be a matter of time before one of them suffered the same fate as Fenston’s three previous victims.

Jack ran onto West Eighty-sixth Street. Three questions still needed answering. One, how long had Fenston known Petrescu before she joined the bank? Two, had they, or their families, known each other in Romania? And three, was she the hired assassin?

Fenston scrawled his signature across the breakfast bill, rose from his place, and, without waiting for Leapman to finish his coffee, marched out of the restaurant. He stepped into an open elevator, but waited for Leapman to press the button for the eighty-third floor. A group of Japanese men in dark blue suits and plain silk ties joined them, having also had breakfast at Windows on the World. Fenston never discussed business matters while in an elevator, well aware that several of his rivals occupied the floors above and below him.

When the elevator opened on the eighty-third floor, Leapman followed his master out, but then turned the other way and headed straight for Petrescu’s office. He opened her door without knocking to find Anna’s assistant, Rebecca, preparing the files Anna would need for her meeting with the chairman. Leapman barked out a set of instructions that didn’t invite questions. Rebecca immediately placed the files on Anna’s desk and went in search of a large cardboard box.

Leapman walked back down the corridor and joined the chairman in his office. They began to go over tactics for their showdown with Petrescu. Although they had been through the same procedure three times in the past eight years, Leapman warned the chairman that it could be different this time.

“What do you mean?” demanded Fenston.

“I don’t think Petrescu will leave without putting up a fight,” he said. “After all, she isn’t going to find it easy to get another job.”

“She certainly won’t if I have anything to do with it,” said Fenston, rubbing his hands.

“But perhaps in the circumstances, Chairman, it might be wise if I—”

A knock on the door interrupted their exchange. Fenston looked up to see Barry Steadman, the bank’s head of security, standing in the doorway.

“Sorry to bother you, Chairman, but there’s a FedEx courier out here, says he has a package for you and no one else can sign for it.”

Fenston waved the courier in and, without a word, penned his signature in the little oblong box opposite his name. Leapman looked on, but neither of them spoke until the courier had departed and Barry had closed the door behind him.

“Is that what I think it is?” asked Leapman quietly.

“We’re about to find out,” said Fenston, as he ripped open the package and emptied its contents onto the desk.

They both stared down at Victoria Wentworth’s left ear.

“See that Krantz is paid the other half million,” said Fenston. Leapman nodded. “And she’s even sent a bonus,” Fenston, staring down at the antique diamond earring.

Anna finished packing just after seven. She left her suitcase in the hall, intending to return and pick it up on the way to the airport straight after work. Her flight to London was scheduled for 5:40 P.M. that afternoon, touching down at Heathrow just before sunrise the following day. Anna much preferred taking the overnight flight, when she could sleep and still have enough time to prepare herself before joining Victoria for lunch at Wentworth Hall. She only hoped that Victoria had read her report and would agree that selling the Van Gogh privately was a simple solution to all her problems.

Anna left her apartment building for the second time that morning just after 7:20 A.M. She hailed a taxi — an extravagance, but one she justified by wanting to look her best for her meeting with the chairman. She sat in the back of the cab and checked her appearance in her compact mirror. Her recently acquired Anand Jon suit and white silk blouse would surely make heads turn. Although some might be puzzled by her black sneakers.

The cab took a right on FDR Drive and speeded up a little as Anna checked her cell phone. There were three messages, all of which she would deal with after the meeting: one from her secretary, Rebecca, needing to speak to her urgently, which was surprising given they were going to see each other in a few minutes’ time; confirmation of her flight from BA; and an invitation to dinner with Robert Brooks, the new chairman of Bonhams.

Her cab drew up outside the entrance to the North Tower twenty minutes later. She paid the driver and jumped out to join a sea of workers as they filed toward the entrance and through the bank of turnstiles. She took the shuttle express elevator and less than a minute later stepped out onto the dark green carpet of the executive floor. Anna had once overheard in the elevator that each floor was an acre in size, and some fifty thousand people worked in a building that never closed — more than double the population of her adopted hometown of Danville, Illinois.

Anna went straight to her office and was surprised to find that Rebecca wasn’t waiting for her, especially as she knew how important her eight o’-clock meeting was. But she was relieved to see that all the relevant files had been piled neatly on her desk. She double-checked that they were in the order she had requested. Anna still had a few minutes to spare, so she once again turned to the Wentworth file and began reading her report. “The value of the Wentworth Estate falls into several categories. My department’s only interest is in...”

Tina Forster didn’t rise until just after seven. Her appointment with the dentist wasn’t until eight thirty, and Fenston had made it clear that she needn’t be on time this morning. That usually meant he had an out-of-town appointment or was going to fire someone. If it was the latter, he wouldn’t want her hanging around the office, sympathizing with the person who had just lost their job. Tina knew that it couldn’t be Leapman, because Fenston wouldn’t be able to survive without the man; and although she would have liked it to be Barry Steadman, she could dream on, because he never missed an opportunity to praise the chairman, who absorbed flattery like a beached sea sponge waiting for the next wave.

Tina lay soaking in the bath — a luxury she usually only allowed herself at weekends — wondering when it would be her turn to be fired. She’d been Fenston’s personal assistant for over a year, and although she despised the man and all he stood for, she’d still tried to make herself indispensable. Tina knew that she couldn’t consider resigning until...

The phone rang in her bedroom, but she made no attempt to answer it. She assumed it would be Fenston demanding to know where a particular file was, a phone number, even his diary. “On the desk in front of you” was usually the answer. She wondered for a moment if it might be Anna, the only real friend she’d made since moving from the West Coast. Unlikely, she concluded, as Anna would be presenting her report to the chairman at eight o’clock, and was probably, even now, going over the finer details for the twentieth time.

Tina smiled as she climbed out of the bath and wrapped a towel around her body. She strolled across the corridor and into her bedroom. Whenever a guest spent the night in her cramped apartment they had to share her bed or sleep on the sofa. They had little choice, as she only had one bedroom. Not many takers lately, and not because of any shortage of offers. But after what she’d been through with Fenston, Tina no longer trusted anyone. Recently she’d wanted to confide in Anna, but this remained the one secret she couldn’t risk sharing.

Tina pulled open the curtains and, despite its being September, the clear, sparkling morning convinced her that she should wear a summer dress. It might even make her relax when she stared up at the dentist’s drill.

Once she was dressed and had checked her appearance in the mirror, Tina went off to the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee. She wasn’t allowed to have anything else for breakfast, not even toast — instructions from the ferocious dental assistant — so she flicked on the television to catch the early morning news. There wasn’t any. A suicide bomber on the West Bank was followed by a 320-pound woman who was suing McDonald’s for ruining her sex life. Tina was just about to turn off Good Morning America when the quarterback for the 49ers appeared on the screen.

It made Tina think of her father.

7

Jack Delaney arrived at his office at 26 Federal Plaza just after seven that morning. He felt depressed as he stared down at the countless files that littered his desk. Every one of them connected with his investigation of Bryce Fenston, and a year later he was no nearer to presenting his boss with enough evidence to ask a judge to issue an arrest warrant.

Jack opened Fenston’s personal file in the vain hope that he might stumble across some tiny clue, some personal trait, or just a mistake that would finally link Fenston directly to the three vicious murders that had taken place in Marseille, Los Angeles, and Rio de Janeiro.

In 1984, the thirty-two-year-old Nicu Munteanu had presented himself at the American Embassy in Bucharest, claiming that he could identify two spies working in the heart of Washington, information he was willing to trade in exchange for an American passport. A dozen such claims were handled by the embassy every week and almost all proved groundless, but in Munteanu’s case the information stood up. Within a month, two well-placed officials found themselves on a flight back to Moscow, and Munteanu was issued an American passport.

Nicu Munteanu landed in New York on February 17, 1985. Jack had been able to find little intelligence on Munteanu’s activities during the following year, but he suddenly reemerged with enough money to take over Fenston Finance, a small, ailing bank in Manhattan. Nicu Munteanu changed his name to Bryce Fenston — not a crime in itself — but no one could identify his backers, despite the fact that during the next few years the bank began to accept large deposits from unlisted companies across Eastern Europe. Then in 1989 the cash flow suddenly dried up, the same year Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena, fled from Bucharest following the uprising. Within days they were captured, tried, and executed.

Jack looked out of his window over lower Manhattan and recalled the FBI maxim: never believe in coincidences, but never dismiss them.

Following Ceauşescu’s death, the bank appeared to go through a couple of lean years until Fenston met up with Karl Leapman, a disbarred lawyer who had recently been released from prison for fraud. It was not too long before the bank resumed its profitable ways.

Jack stared down at several photographs of Bryce Fenston, who regularly appeared in the gossip columns with one of New York’s most fashionable women on his arm. He was variously described as a brilliant banker, a leading financier, even a generous benefactor, and with almost every mention of his name there was a reference to his magnificent art collection. Jack pushed the photographs to one side. He hadn’t yet come to terms with a man who wore an earring, and he was even more puzzled why someone who had a full head of hair when he first came to America would choose to shave himself bald. Who was he hiding from?

Jack closed the Munteanu/Fenston personal file and turned his attention to Pierre de Rochelle, the first of the victims.

Rochelle required seventy million francs to pay for his share in a vineyard. His only previous experience of the wine industry seemed to have come from draining the bottles on a regular basis. Even a cursory inspection would have revealed that his investment plan didn’t appear to fulfill the banking maxim of being “sound.” However, what caught Fenston’s attention when he perused the application was that the young man had recently inherited a château in the Dordogne, in which every wall was graced with fine Impressionist paintings, including a Degas, two Pissarros, and a Monet of Argenteuil.

The vineyard failed to show a return for four fruitless years, during which time the château began to render up its assets, leaving only outline shapes where the pictures had once hung. By the time Fenston had shipped the last painting back to New York to join his private collection, Pierre’s original loan had, with accumulated interest, more than doubled. When his château was finally placed on the market, Pierre took up residence in a small flat in Marseille, where each night he would drink himself into a senseless stupor. That was until a bright young lady, just out of law school, suggested to Pierre, in one of his sober moments, that were Fenston Finance to sell his Degas, the Monet, and the two Pissarros, he could not only pay off his debt but take the château off the market and reclaim the rest of his collection. This suggestion did not fit in with Fenston’s long-term plans.

A week later, the drunken body of Pierre de Rochelle was found slumped in a Marseille alley, his throat sliced open.

Four years later, the Marseille police closed the file, with the words NON RESOLU stamped on the cover.

When the estate was finally settled, Fenston had sold off all the works, with the exception of the Renoir, the Monet, and the two Pissarros; and after compound interest, bank charges, and lawyers’ fees, Pierre’s younger brother, Simon de Rochelle, inherited the flat in Marseille.

Jack rose from behind his desk, stretched his cramped limbs, and yawned wearily before he considered tackling Chris Adams, Jr., although he knew Adams’s case history almost by heart.

Chris Adams, Sr., had operated a highly successful fine art gallery on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. He specialized in the American School so admired by the Hollywood glitterati. His untimely death in a car crash left his son Chris, Jr., with a collection of Rothkos, Pollocks, Jasper Johnses, Rauschenbergs, and several Warhol acrylics, including a Black Marilyn.

An old school friend advised Chris that the way to double his money would be to invest in the dot.com revolution. Chris, Jr., pointed out that he didn’t have any ready cash, just the gallery, the paintings, and Christina, his father’s old yacht — and even that was half owned by his younger sister. Fenston Finance stepped in and advanced him a loan of twelve million dollars on their usual terms. As in so many revolutions, several bodies ended up on the battlefield: among them, Chris, Jr.’s.

Fenston Finance had allowed the debt to continue mounting without ever troubling their client. That was until Chris, Jr., read in the Los Angeles Times that Warhol’s Shot Red Marilyn had recently sold for over four million dollars. He immediately contacted Christie’s in L.A., who assured him that he could expect an equally good return for his Rothkos, Pollocks, and Jasper Johnses. Three months later, Leapman rushed into the chairman’s office bearing the latest copy of a Christie’s sale catalogue. He had placed yellow Post-It notes against seven different lots that were due to come under the hammer. Fenston made one phone call, then booked himself on the next flight to Rome.

Three days later, Chris, Jr., was discovered in the lavatory of a gay bar with his throat cut.

Fenston was on holiday in Italy at the time, and Jack had a copy of his hotel bill, plane tickets, and even his credit-card purchases from several shops and restaurants.

The paintings were immediately withdrawn from the Christie’s sale while the L.A. police carried out their investigations. After eighteen months of no new evidence and dead-ends, the file joined the other LAPD cold cases stored in the basement. All Chris’s sister ended up with was a model of Christina, her father’s much-loved yacht.

Jack tossed Chris, Jr.’s, file to one side and stared down at the name of Maria Vasconcellos, a Brazilian widow who had inherited a house and a lawn full of statues — and not of the garden-center variety. Moore, Giacometti, Remington, Botero, and Calder were among Señora Vasconcellos’s husband’s bequest. Unfortunately, she fell in love with a gigolo, and when he suggested— The phone rang on Jack’s desk.

“Our London Embassy is on line two,” his secretary informed him.

“Thanks, Sally,” said Jack, knowing it could only be his friend Tom Crasanti, who had joined the FBI on the same day as he had.

“Hi, Tom, how are you?” he asked even before he heard a voice.

“In good shape,” Tom replied. “Still running every day, even if I’m not as fit as you.”

“And my godson?”

“He’s learning to play cricket.”

“The traitor. Got any good news?”

“No,” said Tom. “That’s why I’m calling. You’re going to have to open another file.”

Jack felt a cold shiver run through his body. “Who is it this time?” he asked quietly.

“The lady’s name, and Lady she was, is Victoria Wentworth.”

“How did she die?”

“In exactly the same manner as the other three, throat cut, almost certainly with a kitchen knife.”

“What makes you think Fenston was involved?”

“She owed the bank over thirty million.”

“And what was he after this time?”

“A Van Gogh self-portrait.”

“Value?”

“Sixty, possibly seventy million dollars.”

“I’ll be on the next plane to London.”

8

At 7:56, Anna closed the Wentworth file and bent down to open the bottom drawer of her desk. She slipped off her sneakers and replaced them with a pair of black high-heeled shoes. She rose from her chair, gathered up the files, and glanced in the mirror — not a hair out of place.

Anna stepped out of her office and walked down the corridor toward the large corner suite. Two or three members of the staff greeted her with “Good morning, Anna,” which she acknowledged with a smile. A gentle knock on the chairman’s door — she knew Fenston would already be seated at his desk. Had she been even a minute late, he would have pointedly stared at his watch. Anna waited for an invitation to enter and was surprised when the door was immediately pulled open and she came face-to-face with Karl Leapman. He was wearing an almost identical suit to the one Fenston had on, even if it wasn’t of the same vintage.

“Good morning, Karl,” she said brightly, but didn’t receive a response.

The chairman looked up from behind his desk and motioned Anna to take the seat opposite him. He also didn’t offer any salutation, but then he rarely did. Leapman took his place on the right of the chairman and slightly behind him, like a cardinal in attendance on the Pope. Status clearly defined. Anna assumed that Tina would appear at any moment with a cup of black coffee, but the secretary’s door remained resolutely shut.

Anna glanced up at the Monet of Argenteuil that hung on the wall behind the chairman’s desk. Although Monet had painted this peaceful riverbank scene on several occasions, this was one of the finest examples. Anna had once asked Fenston where he’d acquired the painting, but he’d been evasive, and she couldn’t find any reference to the sale among past transactions.

She looked across at Leapman, whose lean and hungry look reminded her of Cassius. It didn’t seem to matter what time of day it was, he always looked as if he needed a shave. She turned her attention to Fenston, who was certainly no Brutus, and shifted uneasily in her chair, trying not to appear fazed by the silence, which was suddenly broken, on Fenston’s nod.

“Dr. Petrescu, some distressing information has been brought to the attention of the chairman,” Leapman began. “It would appear,” he continued, “that you sent one of the bank’s private and confidential documents to a client before the chairman had been given the chance to consider its implications.”

For a moment Anna was taken by surprise, but she quickly recovered and decided to respond in kind. “If, Mr. Leapman, you are referring to my report concerning the loan to the Wentworth Estate, you are correct. I did send a copy to Lady Victoria Wentworth.”

“But the chairman was not given enough time to read that report and make a considered judgment before you forwarded it to the client,” said Leapman, looking down at some notes.

“That is not the case, Mr. Leapman. Both you and the chairman were sent copies of my report on September first, with a recommendation that Lady Victoria should be advised of her position before the next quarterly payment was due.”

“I never received the report,” said Fenston brusquely.

“And indeed,” said Anna, still looking at Leapman, “the chairman acknowledged such, when his office returned the form I attached to that report.”

“I never saw it,” repeated Fenston.

“Which he initialed,” said Anna, who opened her file, extracted the relevant form, and placed it on the desk in front of Fenston. He ignored it.

“The least you should have done was wait for my opinion,” said Fenston, “before allowing a copy of a report on such a sensitive subject to leave this office.”

Anna still couldn’t work out why they were spoiling for a fight. They weren’t even playing good cop, bad cop.

“I waited for a week, Chairman,” she replied, “during which time you made no comment on my recommendations, despite the fact that I will be flying to London this evening to keep an appointment with Lady Victoria tomorrow afternoon. However,” Anna continued before the chairman could respond, “I sent you a reminder two days later.” She opened her file again and placed a second sheet of paper on the chairman’s desk. Once again he ignored it.

“But I hadn’t read your report,” Fenston said, repeating himself, clearly unable to depart from his script.

Stay calm, girl, stay calm, Anna could hear her father whispering in her ear.

She took a deep breath before continuing. “My report does no more, and certainly no less, than advise the board, of which I am a member, that if we were to sell the Van Gogh, either privately or through one of the recognized auction houses, the amount raised would more than cover the bank’s original loan plus interest.”

“But it might not have been my intention to sell the Van Gogh,” said Fenston, now clearly straying from his script.

“You would have been left with no choice, Chairman, had that been the wish of our client.”

“But I may have come up with a better solution for dealing with the Wentworth problem.”

“If that was the case, Chairman,” said Anna evenly, “I’m only surprised you didn’t consult the head of the department concerned so that, at least as colleagues, we could have discussed any difference of opinion before I left for England tonight.”

“That is an impertinent suggestion,” said Fenston, raising his voice to a new level. “I report to no one.”

“I don’t consider it is impertinent, Chairman, to abide by the law,” said Anna calmly. “It’s no more than the bank’s legal requirement to report any alternative recommendations to their clients. As I feel sure you realize, under the new banking regulations, as proposed by the IRS and recently passed by Congress—”

“And I feel sure you realize,” said Fenston, “that your first responsibility is to me.”

“Not if I believe that an officer of the bank is breaking the law,” Anna replied, “because that’s something I am not willing to be a party to.”

“Are you trying to goad me into firing you?” shouted Fenston.

“No, but I have a feeling that you are trying to goad me into resigning,” said Anna quietly.

“Either way,” said Fenston, swiveling around in his chair and staring out of the window, “it is clear you no longer have a role to play in this bank, as you are simply not a team player — something they warned me about when you were dismissed from Sotheby’s.”

Don’t rise, thought Anna. She pursed her lips and stared at Fenston’s profile. She was about to reply when she noticed there was something different about him, and then she spotted the new earring. Vanity will surely be his downfall, she thought, as he swiveled back around and glared at her. She didn’t react.

“Chairman, as I suspect this conversation is being recorded, I would like to make one thing absolutely clear. You don’t appear to know a great deal about banking law, and you clearly know nothing about employment law, because enticing a colleague to swindle a naïve woman out of her inheritance is a criminal offence, as I feel sure Mr. Leapman, with all his experience of both sides of the law, will be happy to explain to you.”

“Get out, before I throw you out,” screamed Fenston, jumping up from his chair and towering over Anna. She rose slowly, turned her back on Fenston, and walked toward the door.

“And the first thing you can do is clean out your desk because I want you out of your office in ten minutes. If you are still on the premises after that, I will instruct security to escort you from the building.”

Anna didn’t hear Fenston’s last remark as she had already closed the door quietly behind her.

The first person Anna saw as she stepped into the corridor was Barry, who had clearly been tipped off. The whole episode was beginning to look as if it had been choreographed long before she’d entered the building.

Anna walked back down the corridor with as much dignity as she could muster, despite Barry matching her stride for stride and occasionally touching her elbow. She passed an elevator that was being held open for someone and wondered who. Surely it couldn’t be for her. Anna was back in her office less than fifteen minutes after she’d left it. This time Rebecca was waiting for her. She was standing behind her desk clutching a large brown cardboard box. Anna walked across to her desk and was just about to turn on her computer when a voice behind her said, “Don’t touch anything. Your personal belongings have already been packed, so let’s go.” Anna turned around to see Barry still hovering in the doorway.

“I’m so sorry,” said Rebecca. “I tried to phone and warn you, but—”

“Don’t speak to her,” barked Barry, “just hand over the box. She’s outta here.” Barry rested the palm of his hand on the knuckle of his truncheon. Anna wondered if he realized just how stupid he looked. She turned back to Rebecca and smiled.

“It’s not your fault,” she said, as her secretary handed over the cardboard box.

Anna placed the box on the desk, sat down, and pulled open the bottom drawer.

“You can’t remove anything that belongs to the company,” said Barry.

“I feel confident that Mr. Fenston won’t be wanting my sneakers,” said Anna, as she removed her high-heeled shoes and placed them in the box. Anna pulled on her sneakers, tied the laces, picked up the box, and headed back into the corridor. Any attempt at dignity was no longer possible. Every employee knew that raised voices in the chairman’s office followed by Barry escorting you from the premises meant only one thing: you were about to be handed your pink slip. This time passersby quickly retreated into their offices, making no attempt to engage Anna in conversation.

The head of security accompanied his charge to an office at the far end of the corridor that Anna had never entered before. When she walked in, Barry once again positioned himself in the doorway. It was clear that they’d also been fully briefed, because she was met by another employee who didn’t even venture “good morning” for fear it would be reported to the chairman. He swiveled a piece of paper around that displayed the figure $9,116 in bold type. Anna’s monthly salary. She signed on the dotted line without comment.

“The money will be wired through to your account later today,” he said without raising his eyes.

Anna turned to find her watchdog still prowling around outside, trying hard to look menacing. When she left the accounts office, Barry accompanied her on the long walk back down an empty corridor.

When they reached the elevator, Barry pressed the down arrow, while Anna continued to cling onto her cardboard box.

They were both waiting for the elevator doors to open when American Airlines Flight 11 out of Boston crashed into the ninety-fourth floor of the North Tower.

9

Ruth Parish looked up at the departure monitor on the wall above her desk. She was relieved to see that United’s Flight 107 bound for JFK had finally taken off at 1:40 P.M, forty minutes behind schedule.

Ruth and her partner, Sam, had founded Art Locations nearly a decade before, and when he left her for a younger woman Ruth ended up with the company — by far the better part of the bargain. Ruth was married to the job, despite its long hours; demanding customers; and planes, trains, and cargo vessels that never arrived on time. Moving great, and not so great, works of art from one corner of the globe to the other allowed her to combine a natural flair for organization with a love of beautiful objects — if sometimes she saw the objects only for a fleeting moment.

Ruth traveled around the world accepting commissions from governments who were planning national exhibitions, while also dealing with gallery owners, dealers, and several private collectors, who often wanted nothing more than to move a favorite painting from one home to another. Over the years, many of her customers had become personal friends. But not Bryce Fenston. Ruth had long ago concluded that the words please and thank you were not in this man’s vocabulary, and she certainly wasn’t on his Christmas card list. Fenston’s latest demand had been to collect a Van Gogh from Wentworth Hall and transport it, without delay, to his office in New York.

Obtaining an export license for the masterpiece had not proved difficult, as few institutions or museums could raise the sixty million dollars necessary to stop the painting leaving the country, especially after the National Galleries of Scotland had recently failed to raise the required £7.5 million to ensure that Michelangelo’s Study of a Mourning Woman didn’t leave these shores to become part of a private collection in the States.

When a Mr. Andrews, the butler at Wentworth Hall, had rung the previous day to say that the painting would be ready for collection in the morning, Ruth had scheduled one of her high-security air-ride trucks to be at the hall by eight o’clock. Ruth was pacing up and down the tarmac long before the truck turned up at her office, just after ten.

Once the painting was unloaded, Ruth supervised every aspect of its packing and safe dispatch to New York, a task she would normally have left to one of her managers. She stood over her senior packer as he wrapped the painting in acid-free glassine paper and then placed it into the foam-lined case he’d been working on throughout the night so it would be ready in time. The captive bolts were tightened on the case, preventing anyone breaking into it without a sophisticated socket set. Special indicators were attached to the outside of the case that would turn red if anyone attempted to open it during its journey. The senior packer stenciled the word FRAGILE on both sides of the box and the number 47 in all four corners. The customs officer had raised an eyebrow when he checked the shipping papers, but as an export license had been granted, the eyebrow returned to its natural position.

Ruth drove across to the waiting 747 and watched as the red box disappeared into the vast hold. She didn’t return to her office until the heavy door was secured in place. She checked her watch and smiled. The plane had taken off at 1:40 P.M.

Ruth began to think about the painting that would be arriving from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam later that evening to form part of the Rembrandt’s Women exhibition at the Royal Academy. But not before she had put a call through to Fenston Finance to inform them that the Van Gogh was on its way.

She dialed Anna’s number in New York and waited for her to pick up the phone.

10

There was a loud explosion, and the building began to sway from side to side.

Anna was hurled across the corridor, ending up flat on the canvas as if she’d been floored by a heavyweight boxer. The elevator doors opened and she watched as a fireball of fuel shot through the shaft, searching for oxygen. The hot blast slapped her in the face as if the door of an oven had been thrown open. Anna lay on the ground, dazed.

Her first thought was that the building must have been struck by lightning, but she quickly dismissed that idea as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. An eerie silence followed and Anna wondered if she had gone deaf, but this was soon replaced by screams of “Oh, my God!” as huge shards of jagged glass, twisted metal, and office furniture flew past the windows in front of her.

It must be another bomb, was Anna’s second thought. Everyone who had been in the building in 1993 retold stories of what had happened to them on that bitterly cold February afternoon. Some of them were apocryphal, others pure invention, but the facts were simple. A truck filled with explosives had been driven into the underground garage beneath the building. When it exploded, six people were killed and more than a thousand injured. Five underground floors were wiped out, and it took several hours for the emergency services to evacuate the building. Since then, everyone who worked in the World Trade Center had been required to participate in regular fire drills. Anna tried to remember what she was supposed to do in such an emergency.

She recalled the clear instructions printed in red on the exit door to the stairwell on every floor: “In case of emergency, do not return to your desk, do not use the elevator, exit by the nearest stairwell.” But first Anna needed to find out if she could even stand up, aware that part of the ceiling had collapsed on her and the building was still swaying. She tried tentatively to push herself up, and although she was bruised and cut in several places, nothing seemed to be broken. She stretched for a moment, as she always did before starting out on a long run.

Anna abandoned what was left of the contents of the cardboard box and stumbled toward stairwell C in the center of the building. Some of her colleagues were also beginning to recover from the initial shock, and one or two even returned to their desks to pick up personal belongings.

As Anna made her way along the corridor, she was greeted with a series of questions to which she had no answers.

“What are we supposed to do?” asked a secretary.

“Should we go up or down?” said a cleaner.

“Do we wait to be rescued?” asked a bond dealer.

These were all questions for the security officer, but Barry was nowhere to be seen.

Once Anna reached the stairwell, she joined a group of dazed people, some silent, some crying, who weren’t quite sure what to do next. No one seemed to have the slightest idea what had caused the explosion or why the building was still swaying. Although several of the lights on the stairwell had been snuffed out like candles, the photoluminescent strip that ran along the edge of each step shone brightly up at her.

Some of those around her were trying to contact the outside world on their cell phones, but few were succeeding. One who did get through was chatting to her boyfriend. She was telling him that her boss had told her she could go home, take the rest of the day off. Another began to relay to those around him the conversation he was having with his wife: “A plane has hit the North Tower,” he announced.

“But where, where?” shouted several voices at once. He asked his wife the same question. “Above us, somewhere in the nineties,” he said, passing on her reply.

“But what are we meant to do?” asked the chief accountant, who hadn’t moved from the top step. The younger man repeated the question to his wife and waited for her reply. “The mayor is advising everyone to get out of the building as quickly as possible.”

On hearing this news, all those in the stairwell began their descent to the eighty-second floor. Anna looked back through the glass window and was surprised to see how many people had remained at their desks, as if they were in a theater after the curtain had come down and had decided to wait until the initial rush had dispersed.

Anna took the mayor’s advice. She began to count the steps as she walked down each flight — eighteen to each floor, which she calculated meant at least another fifteen hundred before she would reach the lobby. The stairwell became more and more crowded as countless people swarmed out of their offices to join them on each floor, making it feel like a crowded subway during rush hour. Anna was surprised by how calm the descending line was.

The stairwell quickly separated into two lanes, with the slowest on the inside while the latest models were able to pass on the outside. But just like any highway, not everyone kept to the code, so regularly everything came to a complete standstill before moving off unsteadily again. Whenever they reached a new stairwell, some pulled into the hard shoulder, while others motored on.

Anna passed an old man who was wearing a black felt hat. She recalled seeing him several times during the past year, always wearing the same hat. She turned to smile at him and he raised his hat.

On, on, on she trudged, sometimes reaching the next floor in less than a minute but more often being held up by those who had become exhausted after descending only a few floors. The outside lane was becoming more and more crowded, making it impossible for her to break the speed limit.

Anna heard the first clear order when she reached the sixty-eighth floor.

“Get to the right, and keep moving,” said an authoritative voice from somewhere below her. Although the instruction became louder with each step she took, it was still several more floors before she spotted the first fireman heading slowly toward her. He was wearing a baggy fireproof suit and sweating profusely under his black helmet emblazoned with the number 28. Anna could only wonder what state he’d be in after he’d climbed another thirty floors. He also appeared to be overloaded with equipment: coiled ropes over one shoulder and two oxygen tanks on his back, like a mountaineer trying to conquer Everest. Another fireman followed closely behind, carrying a vast length of hose, six pole arms, and a large bottle of drinking water. He was dripping so much sweat that from time to time he removed his helmet and poured some of the drinking water over his head.

Those who continued to leave their offices and join Anna in her downward migration were mostly silent, until an old man in front of her tripped and fell on a woman. The woman cut her leg on the sharp edge of the step and began to scream at the old man.

“Get on with it,” said a voice behind her. “I made this journey after the ‘ninety-three bombing, and I can tell you, lady, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.”

Anna leant forward to help the old man to his feet, hindering her own progress, while allowing others to scramble past her.

Whenever she reached a new landing, Anna stared through the vast panes of glass at workers who remained at their desks, apparently oblivious of those fleeing in front of their eyes. She even overheard snatches of conversation through the open doors. One of them, a broker on the sixty-second floor, was trying to close a deal before the markets opened at nine o’clock. Another was staring out at her, as if the pane of glass was a television screen and he was reporting on a football game. He was giving a running commentary over the phone to a friend in the South Tower.

More and more firemen were now climbing toward her, turning the highway into two-way traffic, their constant cry: “Get to the right, keep moving.” Anna kept moving, her speed often dictated by the slowest participant. Although the building had stopped swaying, tension and fear could still be seen on the faces of all those around her. They didn’t know what had happened above them and had no idea what awaited them below. Anna felt guilty as she passed an old woman who was being carried down in a large leather chair by two young men, her legs swollen, her breathing uneven.

On, on, on, Anna went, floor after floor, until even she began to feel tired.

She thought about Rebecca and Tina, and prayed they were both safe. She even wondered if Fenston and Leapman were still sitting in the chairman’s office, believing themselves impervious to any danger.

Anna began to feel confident that she was now safe and would eventually wake up from this nightmare. She even smiled at some of the New York humor that was bouncing around her, until she heard a voice behind her scream.

“A second plane has hit the South Tower.”

11

Jack was appalled by his first reaction when he heard what sounded like a bomb exploding on the other side of the road. Sally had rushed in to tell him that a plane had crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.

“Let’s hope it scored a direct hit on Fenston’s office,” he said.

His second thoughts were a little more professional, as expressed when he joined Dick Macy, the supervising special agent, along with the rest of the senior agents in the command center. While other agents hit the phones in an attempt to make some sense of what was happening less than a mile away, Jack told the SSA that he was in no doubt that it was a well-planned act of terrorism. When a second plane crashed into the South Tower at 9:03 A.M., all Macy said was, “Yes, but which terrorist organization?”

Jack’s third reaction was delayed, and it took him by surprise. He hoped that Anna Petrescu had managed to escape, but when the South Tower came crashing down fifty-six minutes later, he assumed it would not be long before the North Tower followed suit.

He returned to his desk and switched on his computer. Information was flooding in from their Massachusetts field office, reporting that the two attack flights had originated out of Boston and two more were in the air. Calls from passengers in those planes that had taken off from the same airport suggested they were also under the terrorists’ control. One was heading for Washington.

President George W. Bush was visiting a school in Florida when the first plane struck, and he was quickly whisked off to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Vice President Dick Cheney was in Washington. He’d already given clear instructions to shoot down the other two planes. The order was not carried out. Cheney also wanted to know which terrorist organization was responsible, as the president planned to address the nation later that evening and he was demanding answers. Jack remained at his desk, taking calls from his agents on the ground, frequently reporting back to Macy. One of those agents, Joe Corrigan, reported that Fenston and Leapman had been seen entering a building on Wall Street just before the first plane crashed into the North Tower. Jack looked down at the many files strewn across his desk and dismissed as wishful thinking, “Case Closed.”

“And Petrescu?” he asked.

“No idea,” Joe replied. “All I can tell you is that she was seen entering the building at seven forty-six and hasn’t been seen since.”

Jack looked up at the TV screen. A third plane had crashed into the Pentagon. The White House must be next, was his only thought.

“A second plane’s hit the South Tower,” a lady on the step above Anna repeated. Anna refused to believe that kind of freak accident could happen twice on the same day.

“It’s no accident,” said another voice from behind, as if reading her thoughts. “The only plane to crash into a building in New York was in ‘forty-five. Flew into the seventy-ninth floor of the Empire State Building. But that was on a foggy day, without any of the sophisticated tracking devices they’ve got now. And don’t forget, the air space above the city is a no-fly zone, so it must have been well planned. My bet is we’re not the only folks in trouble.”

Within minutes, conspiracy theories, terrorist attacks, and stories of freak accidents were being bandied about by people who had no idea what they were talking about. There would have been a stampede if they could have moved any faster. Anna quickly became aware that several people on the staircase were now masking their worst fears by all talking at once.

“Keep to the right, and keep moving,” was the constant cry emanating from whatever uniform trudged passed them. Some of the migrants on the downward journey began to tire, allowing Anna to overtake them. She was thankful for all those hours spent running around Central Park and the shot after shot of adrenaline that kept her going.

It was somewhere in the lower forties that Anna first smelled smoke, and she could hear some of those on the floors below her coughing loudly. When she reached the next landing, the smoke became denser and quickly filled her lungs. She covered her eyes and began coughing uncontrollably. Anna recalled reading somewhere that 90 percent of deaths in a fire are caused by smoke inhalation. Her fears were only exacerbated when those ahead of her slowed to a crawl and finally came to a halt. The coughing had turned into an epidemic. Had they all become trapped, with no escape route up or down?

“Keep moving,” came the clear order from a fireman heading toward them. “It gets worse for a couple of floors but then you’ll be through it,” he assured those who were still hesitating. Anna stared into the face of the man who had given the order with such authority. She obeyed him, confident that the worst must surely be behind her. She kept her eyes covered and continued coughing for another three floors, but the fireman turned out to be right, because the smoke was already beginning to disperse. Anna decided to listen only to the professionals coming up the stairwell and to dismiss the opinions of any amateurs going down.

A sudden feeling of relief swept through those emerging from the smoke, and they immediately tried to speed up their descent. But sheer numbers prevented swift progress in the one-way traffic lane. Anna tried to remain calm as she slipped in behind a blind man, who was being led down the stairs by his guide dog. “Don’t be frightened by the smoke, Rosie,” said the man. The dog wagged its tail.

Down, down, down, the pace always dictated by the person in front. By the time Anna reached the deserted cafeteria on the thirty-ninth floor, the overloaded firemen had been joined by Port Authority officers and policemen from the Emergency Service Unit — the most popular of all New York’s cops because they dealt only in safety and rescue, no parking tickets, no arrests. Anna felt guilty about passing those who were willing to continue going up while she went in the opposite direction.

By the time Anna reached the twenty-fourth floor, several bedraggled stragglers were stopping to take a rest, a few even congregating to exchange anecdotes, while others were still refusing to leave their offices, unable to believe that a problem on the ninety-fourth floor could possibly affect them. Anna looked around, desperately hoping to see a familiar face, perhaps Rebecca or Tina, even Barry, but she could have been in a foreign land.

“We’ve got a level three up here, possibly level four,” a battalion commander was saying over his radio, “so I’m sweeping every floor.”

Anna watched the commander as he systematically cleared every office. It took him some time because each floor was the size of a football field.

On the twenty-first floor, one individual remained resolutely at his desk; he’d just settled a currency deal for a billion dollars and he was awaiting confirmation of the transaction.

“Out,” shouted the battalion commander, but the smartly dressed man ignored the order and continued tapping away on his keyboard. “I said out,” repeated the senior fire officer, as two of his younger officers lifted the man out of his chair and deposited him in the stairwell. The unfulfilled broker reluctantly joined the exodus.

When Anna reached the twentieth floor, she encountered a new problem. She had to wade through water that was now pouring in on them from the sprinklers and leaking pipes on every floor. She stepped tentatively over fragments of broken glass and flaming debris that littered the stairwell and were beginning to slow everyone down. She felt like a football fan trying to get out of a crowded stadium that had only one turnstile. When she finally reached the teens, her progress became dramatically faster. All the floors below her had been cleared, and fewer and fewer office staff were joining them on the stairs.

On the tenth floor, Anna stared through an open door into a deserted office. Computer screens were still flickering and chairs had been pushed aside as if their occupants had gone to the washroom and would be back at any moment. Plastic cups of cold coffee and half-drunk cans of Coke littered almost every surface. Papers were scattered everywhere, even on the floor, while silver-framed family photographs remained in place. Someone following closely behind Anna bumped into her, so she quickly moved on.

By the time Anna reached the seventh floor, it was no longer her fellow workers, but the water and flotsam that were holding her up. She was picking her way tentatively through the debris when she first heard the voice. To begin with, it was faint, and then it became a little louder. The sound of a megaphone was coming from somewhere below them, urging her on. “Keep moving, don’t look back, don’t use your cell phones — it slows up those behind you.”

Three more floors had to be negotiated before she found herself back in the lobby, paddling through inches of water, and on past the express shuttle elevator that had whisked her up to her office only a couple of hours before. Suddenly even more sprinklers jetted down from the ceiling above, but Anna was already drenched to the skin.

The orders bellowing from the megaphones were becoming louder and louder by the moment, and their demands even more strident. “Keep moving, get out of the building, get as far away as you possibly can.” Not that easy, Anna wanted to tell them. When she reached the turnstiles she’d passed through earlier that morning, she found them battered and twisted. They must have been brushed aside by wave after wave of firemen when they transported their heavy equipment into the building.

Anna felt disorientated and unsure what to do next. Should she wait for her colleagues to join her? She stood still, but only for a moment, before she heard another insistent command that she felt was being addressed directly at her. “Keep moving, lady, don’t use your cell phone, and don’t look back.”

“But where do we go?” someone shouted.

“Down the escalator, through the mall, and then get as far away from the building as possible.”

Anna joined the horde of tired savages as they stepped onto an overcrowded escalator. She allowed it to carry her down to the concourse before taking another escalator up to the open promenade, where she often joined Tina and Rebecca for an al fresco lunch while they enjoyed an open-air concert. No open air now, and certainly no calming sound of a violin — just another voice bellowing, “Don’t look back, don’t look back.” An order Anna disobeyed, which not only slowed her down, but also caused her to fall on her knees retching. She watched in disbelief as first one person then another, who must have been trapped above the ninetieth floor, jumped out of their office windows to a certain death rather than face the slow agony of burning. “Get back on your feet, lady, and keep movin’.”

Anna picked herself up and stumbled forward, suddenly aware that none of the officers in charge of the evacuation were making eye contact with those fleeing from the building or even attempting to answer any of their individual questions. She assumed this must be because it would only slow things down and impede the progress of those still trying to get out of the building.

When Anna passed Borders bookshop, she glanced in the window displaying the number-one bestseller, Valhalla Rising.

“Keep movin’, lady,” a voice repeated, even louder.

“Where to?” she asked desperately.

“Anywhere, hut just keep goin’.”

“In which direction?”

“I don’t care, as long as it’s as far away from the tower as possible.”

Anna spat out the last bits of vomit as she continued to move away from the building.

When she reached the entrance to the plaza, she came across fire trucks and ambulances that were tending to the walking wounded and those who just simply couldn’t manage another step. Anna didn’t waste their time. When she finally reached the road, she looked up to see a sign with an arrow covered in black grime. She could just make out the words CITY HALL. Anna began jogging for the first time. Her jog turned into a run and she started to overtake some of those who had departed earlier from the lower floors. And then she heard another unfamiliar noise behind her. It sounded like a clap of thunder that seemed to grow louder and louder by the second. She didn’t want to look back, but she did.

Anna stood transfixed as she watched the South Tower collapse in front of her eyes, as if it had been constructed of bamboo. In a matter of seconds, the remnants of the building came crashing to the ground, throwing up dust and debris that mushroomed into the sky, causing a dense mountain of flames and fumes that hovered for a moment, then began to advance indiscriminately through the crowded streets, engulfing anyone and everyone who stood in its way

Anna ran as she had never run before, but she knew it was hopeless. It could only be a matter of seconds before the gray, ruthless snake was upon her, suffocating all in its progress. Anna wasn’t in any doubt that she was about to die. She only hoped it would be quick.

Fenston stared across at the World Trade Center from the safety of an office on Wall Street.

He watched in disbelief as a second plane flew directly into the South Tower.

While most New Yorkers worried about how they could assist their friends, relations, and colleagues at this tragic time, and others what it meant for America, Fenston had only one thought on his mind.

He and Leapman had arrived on Wall Street for their meeting with a prospective client only moments before the first plane crashed into the North Tower. Fenston abandoned his appointment and spent the next hour on a public telephone in the corridor trying to contact someone, anyone, in his office, but no one responded to his calls. Others would have liked to use the phone, but Fenston didn’t budge. Leapman was carrying out the same exercise on his cell phone.

When Fenston heard a second volcanic eruption, he left the phone dangling and rushed to the window. Leapman walked quickly across to join him. They both stood in silence as they watched the South Tower collapse.

“It can’t be long before the North Tower goes the same way,” said Fenston.

“Then I think we can assume that Petrescu will not survive,” said Leapman, matter-of-factly.

“I don’t give a damn about Petrescu,” said Fenston. “If the North Tower goes, then I’ve lost my Monet, and it isn’t insured.”

12

Anna began running flat out, more and more aware with each step she took that everything around her was becoming quieter. One by one the screams were dying, and she knew she had to be next. There no longer seemed to be anyone behind her, and for the first time in her life Anna wanted someone to overtake her, anyone, just so she didn’t feel like the last person on earth. She now understood what it must be like to be pursued by an avalanche at a speed ten times faster than any human could achieve. This particular avalanche was black.

Anna took deep breaths as she forced her body to achieve speeds that she had never experienced before. She lifted her white silk blouse — now black, sodden, and crumpled — and placed it over her mouth, just moments before she was overtaken by the relentless, all-enveloping gray cloud.

A whoosh of uncontrolled air hurled her forward and threw her onto the ground, but she still tried desperately to keep moving. She hadn’t managed more than a few feet before she began choking uncontrollably. She pushed forward for another yard, and then another, until her head suddenly bumped into something solid. Anna placed a hand on the surface of a wall and tried to feel her way along. But was she walking away from, or back into, the gray cloud? Ash, dirt, dust were in her mouth, eyes, ears, nose, and hair, and clinging to her skin. It felt as if she was about to be burned alive. Anna thought about the people she had seen jumping because they felt that must be an easier way to die. She now understood their feelings, but she had no building to jump from and could only wonder how much longer it would be before she suffocated. She took her last step, knelt down on the ground, and began to pray.

Our Father... She felt peaceful, and was about to close her eyes and give way to deep sleep when out of nowhere she saw a flashing police light. Who art in Heaven... She made one last effort to get back on her feet and move toward the blue light. Hallowed be thy name... but the car drifted past, unaware of her plaintive cry for help. Thy Kingdom come... Anna fell once again and cut her knee on the edge of the sidewalk, Thy will be done..., but felt nothing. On earth, as it is in Heaven. She clung to the edge of the sidewalk with her right hand and somehow managed a few more inches. She was about to stop breathing when she thought she touched something warm. Was it alive? “Help,” she murmured feebly, expecting no response.

“Give me your hand,” came back the immediate reply. His grip was firm. “Try and stand.”

With his help, Anna somehow pushed herself up. “Can you see that triangle of light coming from over there?” the voice said, but she couldn’t even see where he was pointing. Anna turned a complete circle and stared into 360 degrees of black night. Suddenly she let out a muffled yelp of joy when she spotted a ray of sunlight trying to break through the heavy overcoat of gloom. She took the stranger’s hand and they began inching toward a light that grew brighter and brighter with every step, until she finally walked out of hell and back into New York.

Anna turned to the gray ash-coated figure who had saved her life. His uniform was so covered in dirt and dust that if he hadn’t been wearing the familiar peaked cap and badge she wouldn’t have known that he was a cop. He smiled and cracks appeared on his face as if he was daubed in heavy makeup. “Keep heading toward the light,” he said, and disappeared back into the murky cloud before she could thank him. Amen.

Fenston gave up trying to contact his office only when he saw the North Tower collapse in front of his eyes. He replaced the receiver and rushed back down the unfamiliar corridor to find Leapman scrawling SOLD on a “To Rent” board that was attached to the door of an empty office.

“Tomorrow there will be ten thousand people after this space,” he explained, “so at least that’s one problem solved.”

“You may be able to replace an office, but what you can’t replace is my Monet,” Fenston said ungraciously. He paused. “And if I don’t get my hands on the Van Gogh...”

Leapman checked his watch. “It should be halfway across the Atlantic by now.”

“Let’s hope so, because we no longer have any documentation to prove we even own the painting,” said Fenston, as he looked out of the window and stared at a gray cloud that hung above the ground where the Twin Towers had once proudly stood.

Anna joined a group of fellow stragglers as they emerged out of the gloom. Her compatriots looked as if they’d already completed a marathon but hadn’t yet reached the finish line. Coming out of such darkness, Anna found she couldn’t bear to look up at the glaring sun; even opening her dust-covered eyelids demanded effort. On, on, she stumbled, inch by inch, foot by foot, coughing up dirt and dust with every step, wondering how much more black liquid there could possibly be left in her body. After a few more paces she collapsed onto her knees, convinced the gray cloud could no longer overtake her. She continued coughing, spitting, spitting, coughing. When Anna looked up, she became aware of a group of startled onlookers, who were staring at her as if she’d just landed from another planet.

“Were you in one of the towers?” asked one of them. She didn’t have the strength to answer and decided to get as far away from their gaping eyes as possible. Anna had only covered a few more paces before she bumped into a Japanese tourist who was bending down trying to take a photograph of her. She angrily waved him away. He immediately bowed even lower and apologized.

When Anna reached the next intersection, she collapsed on the sidewalk and stared up at the street sign — she was on the corner of Franklin and Church. I’m only a few blocks from Tina’s apartment, was her first thought. But as Tina was still somewhere behind her, how could she possibly have survived? Without warning, a bus came to a halt by her side. Although it was as full as a San Francisco tram car during rush hour, people edged back to allow her to clamber on. The bus stopped on the corner of every block, allowing some to jump off while others got on, with no suggestion of anyone paying a fare. It seemed that all New Yorkers were united in wanting to play some part in the unfolding drama.

“Oh, my God,” whispered Anna, as she sat on the bus and buried her head in her hands. For the first time she thought about the firemen who had passed her on the stairwell, and of Tina and Rebecca, who must be dead. It’s only when you know someone that a tragedy becomes more than a news item.

When the bus came to a halt in the Village near Washington Square Park, Anna almost fell off. She stumbled over to the sidewalk, coughing up several more mouthfuls of gray dust that she’d avoided bringing up while she was on the bus. A woman sat down on the curb beside her and offered her a bottle of water. Anna filled her mouth several times before spitting out dollops of black liquid. She emptied the bottle without swallowing a drop. The woman then pointed in the direction of a small hotel where escapees were trooping in and out in a steady stream. She bent down and took Anna by the arm, guiding her gently toward the ladies’ room on the ground floor. The room was full of men and women oblivious of their sex. Anna looked at herself in the mirror and understood why onlookers had stared at her so curiously. It was as if someone had poured several bags of gray ash all over her. She left her hands under a flowing tap until only her nails remained black. She then tried to remove a layer of the caked dust from her face — an almost pointless exercise. She turned to thank the stranger, but she, like the cop, had already disappeared to assist someone else.

Anna limped back onto the road, her throat dry, her knees cut, her feet blistered and aching. As she stumbled slowly up Waverly Place, she tried to remember the number of Tina’s apartment. She continued on past an uninhabited Waverly Diner before pausing outside number 273.

Anna grabbed at the familiar wrought-iron balustrade like a lifeline and yanked herself up the steps to the front door. She ran her finger down the list of names by the side of the buzzers: Amato, Kravits, Gambino, O’Rourke, Forster... Forster, Forster, she repeated joyfully, before pressing the little bell. But how could Tina answer her call, when she must be dead, was Anna’s only thought. She left her finger on the buzzer as if it would bring Tina to life, but it didn’t. She finally gave up and turned to leave, tears streaming down her dust-caked face, when out of nowhere an irate voice demanded, “Who is it?”

Anna collapsed onto the top step.

“Oh, thank God,” she cried, “you’re alive, you’re alive.”

“But you can’t be,” said a disbelieving voice.

“Open the door,” pleaded Anna, “and you can see for yourself.”

The click of the entry button was the best sound Anna had heard that day.

13

“You’re alive,” repeated Tina, as she flung open the front door and threw her arms around her friend. Anna may have resembled a street urchin who had just climbed out of a Victorian chimney, but it didn’t prevent Tina from clinging to her.

“I was thinking about how you could always make me laugh, and wondering if I’d ever laugh again, when the buzzer sounded.”

“And I was convinced that even if you’d somehow managed to get out of the building, you still couldn’t have survived once the tower collapsed.”

“If I had a bottle of champagne, I’d open it so that we could celebrate,” said Tina, finally letting go of her friend.

“I’ll settle for a coffee, and then another coffee, followed by a bath.”

“I do have coffee,” said Tina, who took Anna by the hand and led her through to the small kitchen at the end of the corridor. Anna left a set of gray footprints on the carpet behind her.

Anna sat down at a small, round, wooden table and kept her hands in her lap, while a soundless television was showing images of the other side of the story. She tried to stay still, aware that anything she touched was immediately smeared with ash and dirt. Tina didn’t seem to notice.

“I know this may sound a little strange,” said Anna, “but I haven’t a clue what’s going on.”

Tina turned up the sound on the television.

“Fifteen minutes of that,” Tina said as she filled the coffeepot, “and you’ll know everything.”

Anna watched the endless replays of a plane flying into the South Tower, people throwing themselves from the higher floors to a certain death, and the collapse of first the South and then the North Tower.

“And another plane hit the Pentagon?” she asked. “So how many more are out there?”

“There was a fourth,” said Tina, as she placed two mugs on the table, “but no one seems certain where it was heading.”

“The White House, possibly,” suggested Anna, as she looked up at the screen to see President Bush speaking from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana: “Make no mistake, the United States will hunt down and punish those responsible for these cowardly acts.”

The images flashed back to the second plane flying into the South Tower.

“Oh, my God,” said Anna. “I hadn’t even thought about the innocent passengers onboard those planes. Who’s responsible for all this?” she demanded, as Tina filled her mug with black coffee.

“The State Department is being fairly cautious,” said Tina, “and all the usual suspects — Russia, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq — have all been quick to scream, ‘Not me,’ swearing they will do everything they can to track down those responsible.”

“But what are the newscasters saying? There’s no reason for them to be cautious.”

“CNN is pointing a finger at Afghanistan and, in particular, at a terrorist group called Al-Qaeda — I think that’s how you pronounce it, but I’m not sure as I’ve never heard of them,” Tina said, as she sat down opposite Anna.

“I think they’re a bunch of religious fanatics who I thought were only interested in taking over Saudi Arabia so they could get hold of its oil.” Anna glanced back up at the television and listened to the commentator, who was trying to imagine what it must have been like to be in the North Tower when the first plane struck. How could you possibly know? Anna wanted to ask him. A hundred minutes telescoped into a few seconds, and then repeated again and again like a familiar advertisement. When the South Tower collapsed and smoke billowed up into the sky, Anna started coughing loudly, shaking ash onto everything around her.

“Are you OK?” asked Tina, jumping up from her chair.

“Yes, I’ll be fine,” said Anna, draining her coffee. “Would you mind if I turned the TV off? I don’t think I can face continually being reminded what it was like to be there.”

“Of course not,” said Tina, who picked up the remote and touched the off button. The images melted from the screen.

“I can’t stop thinking about all our friends who were in the building,” said Anna, as Tina refilled her mug with coffee. “I wonder if Rebecca...”

“No word from her,” said Tina. “Barry is the only person who’s reported in so far.”

“Yeah, I can believe Barry was the first down the stairs, trampling over anyone who got in his way. But who did Barry call?” asked Anna.

“Fenston. On his mobile.”

“Fenston?” said Anna. “How did he manage to escape when I left his office only a few minutes before the first plane hit the building?”

“He’d arrived on Wall Street by then — he had an appointment with a potential client, whose only asset was a Gauguin. So there was no way he was going to be late for that.”

“And Leapman?” asked Anna, as she took another sip of coffee.

“One step behind him as usual,” said Tina.

“So that’s why the elevator door was being held open.”

“The elevator door?” repeated Tina.

“It’s not important,” said Anna. “But why weren’t you at work this morning?”

“I had a dental appointment,” said Tina. “It had been on my calendar for weeks.” She paused and looked across the table. “The moment I heard the news I never stopped trying to call you on your cell, but all I got was a ringing tone. So where were you?”

“Being escorted off the premises,” said Anna.

“By a firefighter?” asked Tina.

“No,” replied Anna, “by that ape, Barry.”

“But why?” demanded Tina.

“Because Fenston had just fired me,” said Anna.

“Fired you?” said Tina in disbelief. “Why would he fire you, of all people?”

“Because in my report to the board, I recommended that Victoria Wentworth should sell the Van Gogh, which would allow her not only to clear her overdraft with the bank but hold on to the rest of the estate.”

“But the Van Gogh was the only reason Fenston ever agreed to that deal,” said Tina. “I thought you realized that. He’s been after one for years. The last thing he would have wanted was to sell the painting and get Victoria off the hook. But that’s hardly a reason to fire you. What excuse—”

“I also sent a copy of my recommendations to the client, which I considered to be no more than ethical banking practice.”

“I don’t think it’s ethical banking practice that keeps Fenston awake at night. But that still doesn’t explain why he got rid of you so quickly.”

“Because I was just about to fly to England and let Victoria Wentworth know that I’d even lined up a prospective buyer, a well-known Japanese collector, Takashi Nakamura, who I felt sure would be happy to close the deal quickly if we were sensible about the asking price.”

“You picked the wrong man in Nakamura,” said Tina. “Whatever the asking price, he’s the last person on earth Fenston would be willing to do business with. They’ve both been after a Van Gogh for years and are regularly the last two bidders for any major Impressionists.”

“Why didn’t he tell me that?” said Anna.

“Because it doesn’t always suit him to let you know what he’s up to,” said Tina.

“But we were both on the same team.”

“You’re so naïve, Anna. Haven’t you worked out that there’s only one person on Fenston’s team?”

“But he can’t make Victoria hand over the Van Gogh unless—”

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” said Tina.

“Why not?”

“Fenston put a call through to Ruth Parish yesterday and ordered her to pick up the painting immediately. I heard him repeat the word immediately.”

“Before Victoria was given the chance to act on my recommendations.”

“Which would also explain why he had to fire you before you could get on that plane and upset his plans. Mind you,” added Tina, “you’re not the first person to have ventured down that well-trodden path.”

“What do you mean?” said Anna.

“Once anyone works out what Fenston is really up to, they’re quickly shown the door.”

“Then why hasn’t he fired you?”

“Because I don’t make any recommendations he isn’t willing to go along with,” said Tina. “That way, I’m not considered a threat.” She paused. “Well, not for the moment.”

Anna thumped the table in anger, sending up a small cloud of dust. “I’m so dumb,” she said. “I should have seen it coming, and now there’s nothing I can do about it.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” said Tina. “We don’t know for certain that Ruth Parish has picked up the painting from Wentworth Hall. If she hasn’t, you’ll still have enough time to call Victoria and advise her to hold onto the picture until you’ve had a chance to get in touch with Mr. Nakamura — that way she could still clear her debt with Fenston and he couldn’t do anything about it,” added Tina, as her cell phone began ringing, “California Here I Come.” She checked its caller ID: BOSS flashed up. She put a finger to her lips. “It’s Fenston,” she warned. “He probably wants to find out if you’ve been in touch with me,” she added, flipping open the phone.

“Do you realize who got left behind in the rubble?” Fenston asked before Tina could speak.

“Anna?”

“No,” said Fenston. “Petrescu is dead.”

“Dead?” repeated Tina, as she stared across the table at her friend. “But—”

“Yes. When Barry reported in, he confirmed that the last time he saw her she was lying on the floor, so she can’t possibly have survived.”

“I think you’ll find—”

“Don’t worry about Petrescu,” said Fenston. “I already had plans to replace her, but what I can’t replace is my Monet.”

Tina was shocked into a moment’s silence and was about to tell him just how wrong he was when she suddenly realized that she just might be able to turn Fenston’s crassness to Anna’s advantage.

“Does that also mean we’ve lost the Van Gogh?”

“No,” said Fenston. “Ruth Parish has already confirmed that the painting is on its way from London. It should arrive at JFK this evening, when Leapman is going to pick it up.”

Tina sank down into the chair, feeling deflated.

“And make sure you’re in by six tomorrow morning.”

“Six A.M.?”

“Yes,” said Fenston. “And don’t complain. After all, you’ve had the whole of today off.”

“So where do I report?” asked Tina, not bothering to argue.

“I’ve taken over offices on the thirty-second floor of the Trump Building at 40 Wall Street, so at least for us it will be business as usual.” The line went dead.

“He thinks you’re dead,” said Tina, “but he’s more fussed about losing his Monet,” she added, as she snapped her cell phone shut.

“He’ll find out soon enough that I’m not,” said Anna.

“Only if you want him to,” said Tina. “Has anyone else seen you since you got out of the tower?”

“Only looking like this,” said Anna.

“Then let’s keep it that way, while we try and work out what needs to be done. Fenston says the Van Gogh is already on its way to New York and Leapman will pick it up as soon as it lands.”

“Then what can we do?”

“I could try and delay Leapman somehow while you pick up the painting.”

“But what would I do with it,” asked Anna, “when Fenston would be certain to come looking for me?”

“You could get yourself on the first plane back to London and return the picture to Wentworth Hall.”

“I couldn’t do that without Victoria’s permission,” said Anna.

“Good God, Anna, when will you grow up? You’ve got to stop thinking like a schoolteacher and start imagining what Fenston would do if he were in your position.”

“He’d find out what time the plane was landing,” said Anna. “So the first thing I need to do—”

“The first thing you need to do is have a shower, while I find out what time the plane lands and also what Leapman’s up to,” said Tina, as she stood up. “Because one thing’s for sure, they won’t let you pick up anything from the airport looking like that.”

Anna drained her coffee and followed Tina out into the corridor. Tina opened the bathroom door and looked closely at her friend. “See you in about—” she hesitated “—an hour.”

Anna laughed for the first time that day.

Anna slowly peeled off her clothes and dropped them in a heap on the floor. She glanced in the mirror to see a reflection of someone she had never met before. She removed the silver chain from round her neck and placed it on the side of the bath, next to the model of a yacht. She finally took off her watch. It had stopped at eight forty-six. A few seconds later and she would have been in the elevator.

As Anna stepped into the shower, she began to consider Tina’s audacious plan. She turned on both taps and allowed the water to cascade down on her for some time before she even thought about washing. She watched the water turn from black to gray, but however hard she scrubbed, the water still remained gray. Anna continued scrubbing until her skin was red and sore, before turning her attention to a bottle of shampoo. She didn’t emerge from the shower until she’d washed her hair three times, but it was going to be days before anyone realized that she was a natural blonde. Anna didn’t bother to dry herself; she bent down, put the plug in the bath, and turned on the taps. As she lay soaking, her mind revisited all that had taken place that day.

She thought about how many friends and colleagues she must have lost and realized just how lucky she was to be alive. But mourning would have to wait, if she was to have any chance of rescuing Victoria from a slower death.

Anna’s thoughts were interrupted by Tina knocking on the door. She walked in and sat on the end of the bath. “A definite improvement,” she said with a smile, as she looked at Anna’s newly scrubbed body.

“I’ve been thinking about your idea,” said Anna, “and if I could—”

“Change of plan,” said Tina. “It’s just been announced by the FAA that all aircraft across America have been grounded until further notice and no incoming flights will be allowed to land, so by now the Van Gogh will be on its way back to Heathrow.”

“Then I’ll need to call Victoria immediately,” said Anna, “and tell her to instruct Ruth Parish to return the painting to Wentworth Hall.”

“Agreed,” said Tina, “but I’ve just realized that Fenston has lost something even more important than the Monet.”

“What could be more important to him than the Monet?” asked Anna.

“His contract with Victoria, and all the other paperwork that proves he owns the Van Gogh along with the rest of the Wentworth estate should she fail to clear the debt.”

“But didn’t you keep backups?” asked Anna.

Tina hesitated. “Yes,” she said, “in a safe in Fenston’s office.”

“But don’t forget that Victoria will also be in possession of all the relevant documents.”

Tina paused again. “Not if she was willing to destroy them.”

“Victoria would never agree to that,” said Anna.

“Why don’t you phone her and find out? If she did feel able to, it would give you more than enough time to sell the Van Gogh and clear the debt with Fenston, before he could do anything about it.”

“There’s only one problem.”

“What’s that?” asked Tina.

“I don’t have her number. Her file is in my office, and I’ve lost everything, including my cell phone and Palm Pilot, even my wallet.”

“I’m sure international directories can solve that problem,” suggested Tina. “Why don’t you dry yourself and put on a bathrobe? We can sort out some clothes later.”

“Thank you,” said Anna, gripping her by the hand.

“You might not thank me when you find out what you’re having for lunch. Mind you, I wasn’t expecting a guest, so you’ll have to make do with leftover Chinese.”

“Sounds great,” said Anna, as she stepped out of the bath and grabbed a towel, wrapping it tightly around her.

“See you in a couple of minutes,” said Tina, “by which time the microwave should have completely finished off my gourmet offering.” She turned to leave.

“Tina, can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“Why do you continue to work for Fenston, when you obviously detest the man as much as I do?”

Tina hesitated. “Anything but that,” she eventually replied. She closed the door quietly behind her.

14

Ruth Parish picked up her outside line.

“Hi, Ruth,” said a familiar voice, about to deliver an unfamiliar message. “It’s Ken Lane over at United, just to let you know that our flight 107, bound for New York, has been ordered to turn back, and we’re expecting it to touch down at Heathrow in about an hour.”

“But why?” asked Ruth.

“Details are a bit sketchy at the moment,” Ken admitted, “but reports coming out of JFK suggest there’s been a terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. All U.S. airports have been ordered to ground their planes, and won’t be allowing any incoming flights until further notice.”

“When did all this happen?”

“Around one thirty our time. You must have been at lunch. You can get an update on any news station. They’re all carrying it.”

Ruth picked up the remote control from her desk and pointed it toward the TV screen.

“Will you be putting the Van Gogh in storage?” asked Ken, “or do you want us to return it to Wentworth Hall?”

“It certainly won’t be going back to Wentworth,” said Ruth. “I’ll lock the painting up in one of our customs-free zones overnight and then put it on the first available flight to New York once JFK lifts the restrictions.” Ruth paused. “Will you confirm an ETA about thirty minutes before your plane is due to touch down so I can have one of my trucks standing by?”

“Will do,” said Ken.

Ruth replaced the receiver and glanced up at the TV. She tapped out the number 501 on her remote control. The first image she saw was a plane flying into the South Tower.

Now she understood why Anna hadn’t returned her call.

As Anna dried herself, she began to speculate on what possible reason Tina could have to go on working for Fenston. She found herself shaking her head. After all, Tina was bright enough to pick up a far better job.

She pulled on her friend’s bathrobe and slippers, placed the key on its chain back around her neck and put on her one-time watch. She looked at herself in the mirror; the outward façade had considerably improved, but Anna still felt queasy whenever she thought about what she had been through only a few hours before. She wondered for how many days, months, years it would be a recurring nightmare.

She opened the bathroom door and maneuvered her way down the corridor, avoiding the ashy footprints she’d left on the carpet. When she walked into the kitchen, Tina stopped laying the table and handed over her cell phone.

“Time to call Victoria and warn her what you’re up to.”

“What am I up to?” asked Anna.

“For starters, ask her if she knows where the Van Gogh is.”

“Locked up in a customs-free zone at Heathrow would be my bet, but there’s only one way to find out.” Anna dialed 00.

“International operator.”

“I need a number in England,” said Anna.

“Business or residential?”

“Residential.”

“Name?”

“Wentworth, Victoria.”

“Address?”

“Wentworth Hall, Wentworth, Surrey.”

There was a long silence before Anna was informed, “I’m sorry, ma’am, that number is ex-directory.”

“What does that mean?” asked Anna.

“I can’t give out the number.”

“But this is an emergency,” insisted Anna.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but I still can’t release that number.”

“But I’m a close personal friend.”

“I don’t care if you’re the Queen of England, I repeat, I’m unable to give out that number.” The line went dead. Anna frowned.

“So what’s plan B?” asked Tina.

“No choice but to get myself to England somehow and try to see Victoria so I can warn her what Fenston’s up to.”

“Good. Then the next thing to decide is which border you’re going to cross.”

“What chance have I got of crossing any border, when I can’t even go back to my apartment and pick up my things — unless I want the whole world to know I’m alive and kicking.”

“There’s nothing to stop me going to your place,” said Tina. “Tell me what you want and I can pack a bag and—”

“No need to pack,” said Anna. “Everything I want is ready and waiting in the hallway — don’t forget I was expecting to fly to London this evening.”

“Then all I need is the key to your apartment,” said Tina.

Anna unclasped the chain round her neck and handed over her key. “How do I get past the doorman?” asked Tina. “He’s bound to ask who I’ve come to see.”

“That won’t be a problem,” said Anna. “His name is Sam. Tell him you’re visiting David Sullivan and he’ll just smile and call for the elevator.”

“Who’s David Sullivan?” asked Tina.

“He’s got an apartment on the fourth floor and rarely entertains the same girl twice. He pays Sam a few dollars every week to keep them all blissfully unaware that they are not the only woman in his life.”

“But that doesn’t solve the cash problem,” said Tina. “Don’t forget you lost your wallet and credit card in the crash, and all I have to my name is about seventy dollars.”

“I took three thousand dollars out of my account yesterday,” said Anna. “Whenever you’re moving a valuable painting, you can’t risk any holdups, so you have to be prepared to take care of the odd baggage handler along the way. I’ve also got another five hundred in the drawer by the side of my bed.”

“And you’ll need to take my watch,” said Tina.

Anna took off her watch and swapped it with Tina’s.

Tina studied Anna’s watch more closely. “You’re never going to be allowed to forget what time it was when that plane flew into the building,” she said, as the microwave beeped.

“This may well be inedible,” Tina warned her, as she served up a dish of yesterday’s chicken chow mein and egg fried rice. Between mouthfuls, the two of them considered the alternatives for getting out of the city and which border would be safest to cross.

By the time they had devoured every last scrap of leftovers along with another pot of coffee, they had gone over all the possible routes out of Manhattan, although Anna still hadn’t settled on whether she should head north or south. Tina placed the plates in the sink and said, “Why don’t you decide on which direction you think would be quickest, while I try to get myself uptown and in and out of your apartment without Sam becoming suspicious.”

Anna hugged her friend again. “Be warned,” she said, “it’s hell on earth out there.”

Tina stood on the top step of her apartment building and waited for a few moments. Something felt wrong. And then she realized what it was. New York had changed over a day.

The streets were no longer full of bustling, haven’t-got-time-to-stop-and-chat people, who made up the most energetic mass on earth. It felt more like a Sunday to Tina. But not even Sunday. People stood and stared in the direction of the World Trade Center. The only background music was the noise of perpetual sirens, which continually reminded the indigenous population — if they needed reminding — that what they had been watching on television in their homes, clubs, bars, even shop windows, was taking place just a few blocks away.

Tina walked down the road in search of a taxi, but the familiar yellow cabs had been replaced by the red, white, and blue of fire engines, ambulances, and police cars, all heading in one direction. Little clusters of citizens gathered on street corners to applaud the three different services as they raced by, as if they were young recruits leaving their homeland to fight a foreign foe. You no longer have to travel abroad to do that, thought Tina.

Tina walked on and on, block after block, aware that just like the weekend, commuters had fled to the hills, leaving the locals to man the pumps. But now there was another unfamiliar group roaming around the city in a daze. New York had, over the past century, absorbed citizens from every nation on earth, and now they were adding another race to their number. This most recent group of immigrants looked as if they had arrived from the bowels of the earth, and like any new race could be distinguished by their color — ash gray. They roamed around Manhattan, like marathon runners limping home hours after the more serious competitors had departed from the scene. But there was an even more visual reminder for anyone who looked up that autumn evening. The New York skyline was no longer dominated by its proud, gleaming skyscrapers because they were overshadowed by a dense, gray haze that hung above the city like an unwelcome visitor. Occasionally there were breaks in the ungodly cloud, when Tina noticed for the first time shards of jagged metal sticking out of the ground — all that was left of one of the tallest buildings in the world. The dentist had saved her life.

Tina walked past empty shops and restaurants in a city that never closed. New York would recover but would never be the same again. Terrorists were people who lived in far-off lands: the Middle East, Palestine, Israel, even Spain, Germany, and Northern Ireland. She looked back at the cloud. They had taken up residence in Manhattan and left their calling card.

Tina once again waved unhopefully at the rare sight of a passing taxi. It screeched to a halt.

15

Anna strolled back into the kitchen and began washing the dishes. She was keeping herself occupied in the hope that her mind wouldn’t continually return to those faces coming up the stairs, faces she feared would remain etched on her memory for the rest of her life. She had discovered a downside to her unusual gift.

She tried to think about Victoria Wentworth instead, and how she might stop Fenston from ruining someone else’s life. Would Victoria believe that Anna hadn’t known Fenston always planned to steal the Van Gogh and bleed her dry? Why should she, when Anna was a member of the board and had been fooled so easily herself?

Anna left the kitchen in search of a map. She found a couple on a bookshelf in the front room above Tina’s desk: a copy of Streetwise Manhattan and The Columbia Gazetteer of North America, propped up against the recent bestseller on John Adams, second president of the United States. She paused to admire the Rothko poster on the wall opposite the bookshelf — not her period, but she knew he must be one of Tina’s favorite artists, because she also had another in her office. No longer, thought Anna, her mind switching back to the present. She returned to the kitchen and laid the map of New York out on the table.

Once she’d decided on a route out of Manhattan, Anna folded up the map and turned her attention to the larger volume. She hoped that it would help her make up her mind which border to cross.

Anna looked up Mexico and Canada in the index, and then began making copious notes as if she was preparing a report for the board to consider; she usually suggested two alternatives, but always ended her reports with a firm recommendation. When she finally closed the cover on the thick, blue book, Anna wasn’t in any doubt in which direction she had to go if she hoped to reach England in time.

Tina spent the cab journey to Thornton House considering how she would get into Anna’s apartment and leave with her luggage without the doorman becoming suspicious. As the cab drew up outside the building, Tina moved a hand to her jacket pocket. She wasn’t wearing a jacket. She turned scarlet. She’d left the apartment without any money. Tina stared at the driver’s identity information on the back of the front seat: Abdul Affridi — worry beads dangling from the rearview mirror. He glanced around, but didn’t smile. No one was smiling today.

“I’ve come out without any money,” Tina blurted, and then waited for a string of expletives to follow.

“No problem,” muttered the driver, who jumped out of his cab to open the door for her. Everything had changed in New York.

Tina thanked him and walked nervously toward the entrance door, her opening line well prepared. The script changed the moment she saw Sam seated behind the counter, head in hands, sobbing.

“What’s the matter?” Tina asked. “Did you know someone in the World Trade Center?”

Sam looked up. On the desk in front of him was a photo of Anna running in the marathon. “She hasn’t come home,” he said. “All my others who worked at the WTC returned hours ago.”

Tina put her arms round the old man. Yet another victim. How much she wanted to tell him Anna was alive and well. But not today.

Anna took a break just after eight and began flicking through the TV channels. There was only one story. She found that she couldn’t go on watching endless reports without continually being reminded of her own small walk-off part in this two-act drama. She was about to turn off the television when it was announced that President Bush would address the nation. “Good evening. Today, our fellow citizens...” Anna listened intently, and nodded when the president said, “The victims were in airplanes, or in their offices; secretaries, businessmen and women...” Anna once again thought about Rebecca. “None of us will ever forget this day...,” the president concluded, and Anna felt able to agree with him. She switched off the television as the South Tower came crashing down again, like the climax of a disaster movie.

Anna sat back down and stared at the map on the kitchen table. She double-checked — or was it triple-? — her route out of New York. She was writing detailed notes of everything that needed to be done before she left in the morning when the front door burst open and Tina staggered in — a laptop over one shoulder, dragging a bulky case behind her. Anna ran out into the corridor to welcome her back. She looked exhausted.

“Sorry to have taken so long, honey,” said Tina, as she dumped the luggage in the hallway and walked down the freshly vacuumed corridor and into the kitchen. “Not many busses going in my direction,” she added, “especially when you’ve left your money behind,” she added, as she collapsed into a kitchen chair. “I’m afraid I had to break into your five hundred dollars, otherwise I wouldn’t have been back until after midnight.”

Anna laughed. “My turn to make you coffee,” she suggested.

“I was only stopped once,” continued Tina, “by a very friendly policeman who checked through your luggage and accepted that I’d been sent back from the airport after being unable to board a flight. I was even able to produce your ticket.”

“Any trouble at the apartment?” asked Anna, as she filled the coffeepot for a third time.

“Only having to comfort Sam, who obviously adores you. He looked as if he’d been crying for hours. I didn’t even have to mention David Sullivan, because all Sam wanted to do was talk about you. By the time I got into the elevator, he didn’t seem to care where I was going.” Tina stared around the kitchen. She hadn’t seen it so clean since she’d moved in. “So have you come up with a plan?” she asked, looking down at the map that was spread across the kitchen table.

“Yes,” said Anna. “It seems my best bet will be the ferry to New Jersey and then to rent a car, because according to the latest news all the tunnels and bridges are closed. Although it’s over four hundred miles to the Canadian border, I can’t see why I shouldn’t make Toronto airport by tomorrow night, in which case I could be in London the following morning.”

“Do you know what time the first ferry sails in the morning?” asked Tina.

“In theory, it’s a nonstop service,” said Anna, “but in practice, every fifteen minutes after five o’clock. But who knows if they’ll be running at all tomorrow, let alone keeping to a schedule.”

“Either way,” said Tina, “I suggest you have an early night, and try to snatch some sleep. I’ll set my alarm for four thirty.”

“Four,” said Anna. “If the ferry is ready to depart at five, I want to be first in line. I suspect getting out of New York may well prove the most difficult part of the journey.”

“Then you’d better have the bedroom,” said Tina with a smile, “and I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“No way,” said Anna, as she poured her friend a fresh mug of coffee. “You’ve done more than enough already.”

“Not nearly enough,” said Tina.

“If Fenston ever found out what you were up to,” said Anna quietly, “he’d fire you on the spot.”

“That would be the least of my problems,” Tina responded without explanation.

Jack yawned involuntarily. It had been a long day, and he had a feeling that it was going to be an even longer night.

No one on his team had considered going home, and they were all beginning to look, and sound, exhausted. The telephone on his desk rang.

“Just thought I ought to let you know, boss,” said Joe, “that Tina Forster, Fenston’s secretary, turned up at Thornton House a couple of hours ago. Forty minutes later she came out carrying a suitcase and a laptop, which she took back to her place.”

Jack sat bolt upright. “Then Petrescu must be alive,” he said.

“Although she obviously doesn’t want us to think so,” said Joe.

“But why?”

“Perhaps she wants us to believe she’s missing, presumed dead?” suggested Joe.

“Not us,” said Jack.

“Then who?”

“Fenston, would be my bet.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea,” said Jack, “but I have every intention of finding out.”

“And how do you propose to do that, boss?”

“By putting an OPS team on Tina Forster’s apartment until Petrescu leaves the building.”

“But we don’t even know if she’s in there,” said Joe.

“She’s in there,” said Jack, and put the phone down.