The Double Eagle

CHAPTER ONE

Gracefully he fell, his body arcing in one smooth movement out from the side of the building and then back in, like a spider caught in a sudden gust of wind as it dropped on its thread, until with a final fizz of the rope through his gloved hand he landed on the balcony of the seventeenth floor.

Crouching, he unclipped the rope from his harness and flattened his back to the wall, his dark, lithe shape blending into the stained stone. He didn’t move, his chest barely rising, the thin material of his black ski mask slick against his lips. He had to be sure. He had to be certain that no one had seen him on the way down. So he waited, listening to the shallow breaths of the city slumbering fitfully below him, watching the Met’s familiar bulk retreating into shadow as its floodlights were extinguished.

And all the while, Central Park’s dark lung, studded with the occasional lights of taxis making their way between East and West Eighty-sixth Street, breathed a chilled, oxygenated air up the side of the building that made him shiver despite the heat. Air heavy with New York’s distinctive scent, an intoxicating cocktail of fear, sweat, and greed that bubbled up from subway tunnels and steam vents.

And although a lone NYPD chopper, spotlight primed, circled ever closer and the muffled scream of sirens echoed up from distant streets through the warm air, he could tell they were not for him. They never were. Tom Kirk had never been caught.

Keeping below the level of the carved stone balustrade, he padded over to the large semicircular window that opened onto the balcony, its armored panes glinting like sheet steel. Inside, he could see that the room was dark and empty, as he knew it would be. As it was every weekend during the summer.

A few taps on each of the hinges that ran down the side of the right-hand window and the bolts popped out into his hand. Then carefully, so as not to break the alarmed central magnetic contact, he levered the edge of the window away from the frame until there was a gap big enough for him to slip through.

Once inside, Tom swung his pack down off his shoulder. From the main compartment he took out what looked like a metal detector — a thin black plate attached to an aluminium rod. He flicked a switch on the top of the plate and a small green light on its smooth surface glowed into life. Keeping completely still, he gripped the rod in his right hand and began to sweep the plate over the arid emptiness of the floor in front of him. Almost immediately the light on the back of the plate flashed red and he paused.

Pressure pads. As predicted.

Moving the plate slowly over the spot where the light had changed color, he quickly identified an area that he circled with white chalk. Repeating this procedure, he worked his way methodically across the room, moving in controlled, precise movements. Five minutes later and he had reached the far wall, a trail of small white circles in his wake.

The room was exactly as the photos had shown it and had the distinctive smell of new money and old furniture. A large Victorian partners’ desk dominated, a masculine marriage of polished English oak and Italian leather that reminded him of the interior of a 1920s Rolls-Royce. Behind the desk, the wall was lined with what looked like the remnants of a once substantial private library, now presumably scattered across the world according to auction lots.

The two sidewalls that ran up to the window were painted a sandy gray and symmetrically hung with a series of drawings and paintings, four down each wall. He did not have to look closely to recognize them — Picasso, Kandinsky, Mondrian, Klimt. But Tom was not there for the paintings, nor for the decoy safe he knew lay behind the third picture on the left. He had learned not to be greedy.

Instead, he picked his way back through the chalk circles to the edge of the silk rug that filled the floor between the desk and the window, its colors shimmering in the pale moonlight. With his back to the window, he gripped one corner of the rug and threw it back. Underneath, the wood was slightly darker where it had been shielded from the bleaching sun.

Kneeling, he placed his gloved hands flat on the floor and slid them slowly across the dry wooden surface. About two feet in front of him, the tips of his fingers sensed a slight ridge in the wood. He moved his hands apart along the ridge, until he reached what felt like a corner on both sides. Placing his knuckles on these corners, he leaned forward with all his weight.

With a faint click, a two-foot square panel sank down and then sprang up about half an inch higher than the rest of the floor. It was hinged at the far end and he folded the panel back on itself so that it lay flat revealing a gleaming floor safe.

The safe manufacturing and insurance industries cooperate on the security ratings of safes. Manufacturers regularly submit their products to independent testing by the Underwriters Laboratory, or UL, who in return issue the safe with a Residential Security Container Label that allows the insurers to accurately determine the relevant insurance premium.

The safe that Tom had revealed had, according to its freshly affixed label, been rated TXTL 60. In other words, it had been found to successfully resist entry for a net assault time of 60 minutes. It was one of the highest ratings that UL could give.

Even so, it took Tom just eight and a half seconds to open it.

Inside there was some cash — around $50,000 he guessed — jewelry, and a 1920s Reverso wristwatch. But he ignored all these, turning his attention instead to a large wooden box, its dark mahogany lid inlaid with a golden double-headed eagle, an orb and scepter firmly gripped in each of its talons. The Romanov imperial crest. He eased the box open, carefully lifting the precious object it contained out from the luxuriant embrace of its white silk lining.

He felt his pulse quicken. Even to him, who had seen myriad objects of breathtaking beauty, this was an exceptional piece. So much so that he took the unprecedented step, for him at least, of sliding his mask up off his face for a better view. His uncharacteristic imprudence was almost immediately rewarded. As the moonlight caught its jeweled surface, the delicate object came alive in his hands, glowing like firelight through the hoarfrosted window of a remote wooden cabin.

The words on the roughly torn page from the Christie’s catalog that had been included with his briefing notes immediately came tumbling back into his head.

Alone, he gazed at the egg. Soon, he could hear nothing except the steady rise and fall of his own chest and the ticking of an unseen clock. And still he stared, the room melting away from the edge of his vision, the diamonds sparkling like icicles in a midday sun, until he was certain he could see right through the egg, through his gloves and his fingers to the bones themselves.

Suddenly he was back in Geneva, standing at the foot of his father’s coffin, candles sputtering on the altar, the priest’s voice droning in the background. Some water had dropped off the circular wreath onto the coffin lid and was trickling off the side and onto the floor. He had stood there, fascinated, watching the red carpet change color as the crystal drops shattered again and again on its soft pile.

Unexpected and unwanted, a thought had occurred to him then, or rather a question. It had slipped into his head and tiptoed around the edges of his consciousness, taunting him.

“Is it time?”

Afterward, he had dismissed it. Not given it much thought. Not wanted to, perhaps. But in the two months since the funeral, the question had returned again and again, each time with increasing urgency. It had haunted him, undermining his every action, investing his every word with doubt and uncertainty. Demanding to be answered.

And now he knew. It was so clear to him. Like winter turning to spring, it was inevitable. It was time. After this, he was going to walk away.

He slid his mask back on, packed the egg up, shut the safe door, and closed the wooden panel. Stealthily retreating across the room, he made his way back out through the window onto the balcony.

The sirens far below him seemed louder now, and he found that his heart was beating in time with the thumping blades of the police helicopter that was almost overhead, its spotlight raking over the trees and street below, clearly looking for someone or something. Crouching, he attached the rope to his harness and timed his jump for when the helicopter had made its next pass. In an instant he was gone.

Only an eyelash remained where it had fluttered down from his briefly unmasked face to the floor. It glinted black in the moonlight.

CHAPTER TWO

She knew what would happen as the door opened and the dark shape came through it. She fought to stop herself, but it was no use. It never was. She raised the gun in front of her in a classic Weaver stance. Her stronger left arm was slightly flexed, pushing the gun away from her. Her supporting arm was bent and pulling the weapon in to create a properly braced grip, her feet apart with her weak-sided right foot slightly forward.

She fired three shots right in the kill zone — a perfect equilateral triangle. He was dead before he hit the floor, his white shirt billowing red like a bottle of ink spilled onto blotting paper. It was then, as the light hit his face, only then, that she saw what she had done.

Jennifer Browne woke with a jump, peeled her cheek, sticky with sweat, off the desk’s laminate surface and fumbled for the clock. Blinking hard, her eyes adjusting to the glare of the overhead neon, she checked the time. Seven A.M. Shit. Another all-nighter.

She stretched and flexed her neck, her back clicking into place. Yawning, she reached down and pulled out the bottom desk drawer, reached inside, and took out a cellophane-wrapped white blouse identical to the one she was wearing. It was resting on two others.

Placing it on her desk, she began to unbutton the one she had on, her fingers stiff as she worked the buttons. Eventually, when it was undone, she stood up and slipped it off, dropping it into the open drawer, which she then nudged shut with her foot.

She was strikingly beautiful in that effortless, double-take way that some women are. Five feet nine, milky brown skin, slender yet curving where it counted, rounded cheeks, and curly black hair that just kissed her bare shoulders. She wore no jewelry, never had, apart from the Tiffany’s twisted heart necklace that her sister had given her on her eighteenth birthday that nestled in the smooth curve of her breasts.

As she buttoned the blouse and tucked it into the waistband of her black trouser suit, she looked around at the windowless, painted concrete walls that encircled her and smiled, the dimples creasing into her soft brown cheeks. Even though it was small, she had still not quite gotten used to having her own office. Her own space. Her own air. After only three months back in D.C., the novelty had certainly not worn off yet. Not by a long way. Not after three years down in the Atlanta field office, afraid to breathe out too far in case the cubicle walls collapsed. She was glad to be back; this time she was planning on staying.

There was a knock at the open door and Jennifer’s thoughts were interrupted. She looked up reproachfully but relaxed her frown when she saw that it was Phil Tucker, her section chief, right on time. He’d told her yesterday that he wanted her in early, that he needed to talk to her. Wouldn’t say why, though.

“Hey there,” she called.

“You okay?” He walked up to the desk and squinted down at her through frameless glasses in concern, his double chin flattening over the top of his tie. “Another late night?”

“Is it that obvious?” Jennifer self-consciously smoothed down her hair and rubbed the sleep out of the corners of her eyes.

“Nope.” He smiled. “Security told me you hadn’t gone home…. Just so you know, I appreciate it.”

That was Tucker all over. He wasn’t one of these bosses who just expected everyone to stay late and then never noticed when they did. He kept track of his people and made sure they knew it. She liked that. It made her feel like she was part of something again, not just an embarrassment that had to be explained away.

“No problem.”

He scratched his copper-colored beard, then the top of his head, his scalp pink and raw where the hair was thinning.

“By the way, I spoke to Flynt, and the Treasury boys are going to handle everything from here on in on the Hammon case. They were very grateful for your help. He says he owes you one. Good job.”

“Thanks.” She gave an awkward shrug, never having been good at accepting compliments. She changed the subject. “So what’s all this about? Why the early start? Some congressman lose his dog?”

Tucker levered himself into a chair, his hips grazing its molded plastic arms.

“Something came up yesterday. I volunteered you.” He grinned. “Hope you don’t mind.”

She laughed.

“Would it make a difference if I did?”

“Nope! Anyway, you won’t want to. It’s a good opportunity. Chance to get back on the inside track.” He paused and looked suddenly serious. “A second chance, maybe.” His eyes dipped to the floor.

“You still trying to earn me my redemption?” With her dream still fresh in her thoughts, something bitter rose to the back of her mouth and made her swallow hard.

“No. You’re doing that all on your own. But you and I both know that it’s hard to change people’s minds.”

“I’m not looking for any handouts, Phil. I can make my own way back.” Her eyes shone with a fierce pride. Tucker nodded slowly.

“I know. But everyone needs a break once in a while, even you. And I wouldn’t have suggested you if I didn’t think you’d earned it. Anyway, I told him to swing by here about now, so it’s too late to back out.”

He checked his watch, shook his wrist, held it to his ear, and then checked it again.

“Is that the right time?” he asked, pointing at Jennifer’s desk clock. She ignored the question.

“Told who to swing by here?”

There was a knock at the open door before he could answer and a man walked in. Tucker leapt up.

“Jennifer, meet Bob Corbett; Bob, meet Jennifer Browne.” All three of them stood motionless for a few seconds and Tucker’s eyes flicked anxiously to Jennifer’s, as if he were worried she might do or say the wrong thing.

They shook hands. Tucker breathed a sigh of relief.

“Here, take my seat.” Tucker pointed eagerly at his chair before perching unsteadily on the edge of Jennifer’s desk. Corbett sat down. “Bob heads up the Major Theft and Transportation Crimes unit here.”

“We were introduced in the elevator once.” Jennifer nodded with a curious smile. From the times she’d seen him around the building, she knew that Corbett always looked immaculate, from his smoothly shaved chin to his polished black shoes, thin laces neatly tied in a double knot. But now she immediately noticed that something was different. The knot on his woven silk tie was much smaller than usual, as if he had loosened it and then retightened it several times. As if he were worried.

Corbett frowned and looked at her quizzically before nodding slowly in sudden recollection. When he spoke, his voice was strained, as if he had just run up several flights of steps.

“Sure. I remember. Hi.” He spoke in short, sharp bursts and there was something in the precise urgency of his machine-gunned words that suggested a military background. They shook hands again.

Corbett often passed for a man much younger than his forty-five years, although the deepening creases around his eyes and mouth suggested that time was at last beginning to catch up with him. Next to Tucker certainly, he looked fit and healthy although that was possibly an unfair comparison. There was something streamlined about him, from his slicked-back steel gray hair to the rounded contours of his chin and cheekbones that gave him the chromed elegance of one of those 1930s Art Deco locomotives that look like they were powering along at two hundred miles an hour, even when they were standing still. Above the sharp angle of his nose, the cold light of his close-set gray eyes suggested a very clever and very determined man. He reminded her, in a strange way, of her father. Hard but fair.

“You know, Bob’s got the best cleanup rate in the Bureau.” Tucker continued. “What is it now? Only five unsolved cases in twenty-five years? That’s outstanding work.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite come to terms with it.

“Actually Phil, it’s two. And I haven’t given up on them yet.” He smiled, but Jennifer could tell he wasn’t joking. He didn’t look like the sort of man who did.

“Bob needs someone to work on a new case for him. I suggested you.”

Jennifer shrugged awkwardly, her face suddenly hot as two pairs of eyes focused in on her.

“Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best. What’s the case?”

Corbett slid a large manila envelope toward her and motioned with a wave that she should open it. Warily, Jennifer lifted the tab and pulled out a series of black-and-white photos.

“The man in that photo is Father Gianluca Ranieri.” She studied the picture carefully, taking in the man’s contorted face and the large gash in his chest.

“They found him in Paris yesterday. River cops fished him out the Seine. As you can see, he didn’t drown.”

Jennifer flicked through the rest of the photos, her mind focused. Close-ups of Ranieri’s face and the knife wound flashed past her large hazel eyes. A quick scan through the translated autopsy report at the back confirmed what Corbett had just told her — stabbed and then presumably thrown in the river. A single blow through the xiphisternum, aimed up toward the left shoulder blade, had caused a massive, almost instant heart attack.

As she read, she flashed a quick look at Corbett. He was studying her office with a faint smile. She knew that some of her colleagues found it strange that she kept the stark green concrete walls bare. Truth was, she found the lack of clutter helped her keep her mind clear.

“Any thoughts?” Corbett asked, his eyes snapping back round to meet hers.

“Judging from the injury, it looks like a professional job. Some sort of hit.”

“Agreed.” Corbett nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly as if he were reappraising her in the light of this quick diagnosis.

“And it was public. The body dumped where they knew it would be quickly found.”

“Meaning?”

“That they’re not worried about getting caught. Or that maybe they wanted to send someone a message.”

Corbett nodded his agreement.

“Perhaps both. Best guess is that he was killed round about midnight on the sixteenth of July, give or take three or four hours either way.” He got up and padded noiselessly over to the filing cabinet, Jennifer noticing now that he seemingly kept his pockets empty of change and keys or anything else that might give away his position, like a cat who had the bell on its collar removed so that it might be better able to stalk its unsuspecting prey. She continued to leaf through the file.

“From what we know, Ranieri trained as a Catholic priest and then worked at the Vatican Institute for Religious Works.”

Jennifer looked up in surprise.

“The Vatican Bank?”

“As it’s also known, yes.” Corbett raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed now. “He was there for about ten years before going missing about three years ago, along with a couple of million dollars from one of their Cayman Island accounts.”

Jennifer swiveled her chair toward him, her forehead wrinkled in anticipation. She could see that Corbett was building up to something. Tucker sat enthralled with his arms crossed and resting on his belly, his mouth slack and half open. Corbett ran his finger along the top of the filing cabinet as if checking for dust. She knew there wouldn’t be any. Not in her office.

“He must have spent all the cash though, because he turned up in Paris last year. The French say he set himself up as a low-level fence. Nothing big. A painting here, a necklace there, but he was making a living; a good living, judging from the size of him.”

All three of them laughed and the tingle that Jennifer had felt slowly building inside her chest vanished like steam rising into warm air. Corbett moved back round to the chair and sat down again, Jennifer just getting a glimpse of the top of his shoes, where over the years the constant rubbing of his suit trousers had buffed the leather to a slightly deeper shade of black than the rest of them.

“I don’t get it.” Jennifer replaced the file on the desk and sat back in her chair, confused. “Sounds to me like he got whacked by someone he ripped off. Or maybe he had some sort of deal go sour. Either way, it’s got nothing to do with us.”

Corbett locked eyes with her and the tingle reappeared and instantly sublimated into a cold, hard knot.

“Our angle, Agent Browne — and you won’t find this in the autopsy report — is that when they opened him up, they found something in his stomach. Something he’d swallowed just before he died. Something he clearly didn’t want his killers to find.”

Corbett reached into his pocket and, leaning forward, slid something carefully sealed inside a small, clear plastic bag across the desk toward her. Against the desk’s veneered expanse an eagle soared proudly, its majestic flight etched in solid gold.

It was a coin.

CHAPTER THREE

Outside, the afternoon rush-hour traffic rumbled past, a never-ending river of rubber and steel that surged and stalled in tidy blocks to the beat of the traffic lights.

Inside, the shop windows glowed yellow as the sunlight fought to shine though their whitewashed panes. In a few places, the paint had been scratched off and here narrow shafts of light pierced the gloom, the dust dancing through their pale beams like raindrops falling across car headlights.

The room itself was a mess. The orange walls were blistered, the rough wooden floor suffocating in a thick down of old newspapers and junk food wrappers, while bare wires hung down menacingly from the cracked ceiling like tentacles.

At the back of the room, almost lost in the shadows, two tea chests rested on the uneven floor. Hunched forward on one of them, Tom Kirk was lost deep in thought, his chin in his hands. Although he was just thirty-five years old, a few gray hairs flecked the sides of his head and were more noticeable in the several days of rough stubble that covered his face, the hair slightly darker in the shallow cleft of his square chin.

He reminded everyone of his father, or so everyone told him, much to his annoyance. Certainly he shared his delicately angular face, messy brown hair, and deep-set blue eyes that nestled under thick brown eyebrows.

He was more athletic than his father, though; a lithe, sinewy five-foot-eleven physique that suggested someone both quick enough to steal second base and strong enough to crack a shot into the bleachers if he had to. The irony, of course, was that he’d never been much of a big hitter in high school, his signature play instead being a split-fingered fast-ball that had batters swinging at thin air as it broke violently downward. It fooled them every time.

Perched on the chest opposite him, a large backgammon board threatened to slide onto the floor at any moment. It was an intricately inlaid set that he’d picked up for next to nothing in some dusty side street off the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul years ago. It still smelled of glue and grease and spices. When he couldn’t sleep, he would sometimes play against himself for hours, checking the probabilities, shifting the pieces around the board, studying how different moves and strategies evolved. The half empty bottle of Grey Goose on the floor next to him suggested that it had been a long night.

But Tom wasn’t even looking at the board. Instead he was considering the black ski mask that lay in his lap, carefully cradled as if made from the finest Limoges porcelain. With a half smile, he slipped his right hand into the neck opening and then stuck a finger out of each of the eye holes, wiggling them playfully up and down like fish chasing each other in and out of a skull’s eye sockets.

He had long elegant fingers that made graceful, precise movements, each joint flexing like individual links in a chain, large white half moons at the bottom of each neatly clipped nail. And yet the back of his knuckles were covered in small white scars and his palms were rough and worn. It was almost as if he were a concert pianist who moonlighted as a bare-knuckle fighter.

Tom knew that he couldn’t avoid making the call any longer. He’d been out of contact for three weeks now and didn’t have a choice. But would Archie understand? Would he even believe him? Abruptly his smile vanished and he flung the mask as far as he could across the room, willing it to shatter into a thousand pieces against the opposite wall.

He took his phone out of his back pocket and dialed, the high-pitched tones echoing back over the traffic’s low rumble. It was answered almost immediately, but there was silence from the other end. Tom coughed and then spoke, his voice smooth and soothing, his slight American accent more pronounced than usual as it often was when he was nervous.

“Archie, it’s Felix.”

“Jesus Christ, Felix!”

Felix. A name that he’d been christened with years ago when he had first got going in the game. A name that he was stuck with now.

“Where the hell have you been?”

“I got… held up,” Tom answered.

“Held up? I thought you’d been nicked.”

Archie. The best fence in the business. Tom had often wondered whether his was an invented name, too, a shield to hide behind. On balance, he thought that it probably wasn’t. Somehow it seemed to fit.

“No. Just held up.”

“Spot of aggro?”

For once Archie sounded genuinely concerned.

“No, but I’m not doing the States again. I’ve told you, it’s too risky doing jobs back there. I know I’m the last person they expect to see alive but one day they might get lucky.”

“How did it go?”

“Pretty much like we planned. Except they were having some construction work done and I was worried about extra security until it was finished. So I staked it out for about three weeks in the end before I went in, you know, just to be sure. I dealt with the pressure pads and the combination hadn’t been reset, so it was all pretty simple.”

“Nice one. Usual place, then?”

“My stuff already there?”

“What do you think?” Archie almost sounded offended.

“Fine. I’ll drop it off in a few days.”

“You’re going to have to get your skates on for the second one, though. You’ve not left yourself much time.”

There was a pause and the line crackled with static as Tom sat down on the tea chest, massaging his temple with his left hand. As he’d thought, Archie wasn’t going to make this any easier for him. But he’d made his decision and he was going to stick to it.

“I wanted to talk to you about that.”

“Oh, yeah.” Archie’s tone was immediately suspicious.

“Thing is, I’m not going to do the other job.”

“You what?”

“You heard me. I’m calling it off.”

“You having me on?”

“The truth is, Archie, I’m done with this shit. I just don’t want to do it anymore. I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” The word was hammered back into Tom’s ear. “Sorry? What the hell’s that supposed to mean? You do me over and then you apologize? You must be having a laugh. Well, I’m sorry too, sunshine, but sorry just doesn’t bloody cut it. You’re sorry and I’m buggered because I’ve got to deliver two Fabergé eggs to Cassius in twelve days’ time or I’m a dead man. Capeesh?”

“Cassius?” Tom’s lips formed around the word. He stood up again, his feet sinking into the trash-strewn floor like it was quicksand, his voice a whisper. “That was never the deal. You said it was for some guy called Viktor. A Russian client. You never mentioned Cassius. You know I don’t work for people like that. For him especially. What the hell are you playing at?”

“Listen, when I took the job I didn’t know it was for him either.” Archie’s voice was calm, soothing even. But to Tom it sounded as if he’d practiced this speech many times, knowing how he would react. “And by the time I found out, it was too bloody late. We were already on the hook. You know as well as I do that you don’t muck Cassius about. Not now, not ever.”

“Especially if the money’s good, right?” said Tom bitterly. “Has a way of making you forgetful, doesn’t it?”

“Oh, do me a favor!”

“What’s your take, Archie? Did he promise you a few extra quid for keeping quiet?”

“The money don’t come into it. It’s a sweet deal for both of us and you know it. Straight in, straight out with a buyer lined up. You never even needed to know it was for Cassius.” Tom stood with one hand against the wall, his head bowed, the phone pressed to the side of his head. “Felix, I know it’s bang out of order but maybe we should meet.” Archie’s voice was gentle, almost pleading. “You know, go for a pint or something. We can plan the second job, deliver both eggs to Cassius and then move on. If you want to call it a day after that, fine, but we got to do this one thing and we got to do it right.”

What surprised Tom most was how quickly his answer came. He would have expected perhaps some silent deliberation, some internal dialogue as he considered Archie’s position and the implications of Cassius’s involvement on them both, weighed up the pros and cons of doing nothing or agreeing to follow through on this last job. But his answer was instinctive and immediate and had required no debate.

“I’m sorry, Archie.” Tom stood up straight, his voice hard. “You should have told me the truth. This is your problem now, not mine. You can have the egg I’ve got as agreed, but then that’s it. I’m out.” He snapped the phone shut and breathed out. There, it was done.

He looked up and flinched. When he had thrown it earlier, the ski mask had snagged on a nail. Now, as it hung there, the empty eye sockets seemed to be mocking him.

CHAPTER FOUR

It was the sound of the engine that finally woke him. It had broken into his dreams and gotten louder and louder until the noise had shaken him awake. The strange thing was that he had this dizzy, floating sensation as if he were still asleep. Then he remembered. The knock on the back of the head, the sudden flash of pain. Then nothing.

Blinking through the smoke, his head throbbing and awkwardly slumped forward onto his chest, his streaming eyes could just make out a steering wheel, a window, a red tube jutting into the car. The truth slowly dawned on him and his eyes opened wide with fear. Not like this, surely not like this. This wasn’t how it was meant to end.

He realized then that he was coughing, struggling to catch his breath, gasping for air as the blood raced around his head, the dull pumping of his heart echoing in his ears, the tie and collar of his uniform tight around his neck. He felt sick and random thoughts began to tumble through his head as he strained to remain conscious, fireworks of memory that exploded brightly and then immediately dimmed only for another to go off.

His Auntie May, drunk at Thanksgiving when he was eight. Kissing Betty Blake at the prom. Falling off his bike at college and cutting his chin open. His retirement party when police captain O’Reilly had clapped him on the back and whispered that if he ever wanted his old job back, then it was his. The time he’d picked the phone up to do just that, but then slapped it back down in the certain knowledge that Debbie would say no. Debbie and the kids waving to him from the porch, smiling and happy and oblivious.

Debbie. At the thought of her he had started to cry, tried to wrap his guilt in grief, but found that the tears wouldn’t come now, that his arid body had begun to ignore him and his throat merely constricted further with the effort.

Sweet Lord Jesus, he prayed through the drumming in his head, let me live long enough to tell Debbie what really happened, why I really did this, why they killed me.

Even though he couldn’t feel his legs, somehow he managed to summon the strength to beat his hand weakly against the glass, scrabble at the door handle. The handle moved, but the door wouldn’t open. The seat belt was hugging him, pressing into his stomach, crushing his chest, stopping him from breathing.

He tried to scream, but his red lips barely parted. And then, despite everything, despite the heat and the smoke and the fear, he smiled at the beautiful simplicity of it all. Gently, the sound of the engine lulled him back to sleep.

CHAPTER FIVE

“You still here?”

Dr. Sarah Lucas paused in the doorway to the laboratory as she pulled her jacket on, lifting her blond hair out from under the collar. The room was dark apart from the pool of light around the computer at the far end, the outline of the person hunched in front of it silhouetted against the flickering screen.

“Yeah,” the outline grunted back. “I promised some cop in New York I’d run something through the system before I left tonight. Kinda wishing I hadn’t.”

Sarah smiled. David Mahoney was a rookie fresh out of Quantico, full of zesty enthusiasm and uncomplicated ambition. He still had a lot to learn; knowing when to say no was right up there. But that would come with time and experience. Then again, she mused, it was past eleven and she was still there. Maybe some people just never learned to say no. She put her briefcase down and stepped into the room.

“What have you got?”

Mahoney was tapping furiously into the keyboard, his stubby fingers complementing his round, fleshy face, greasy brown hair parted on the left-hand side and scooped behind his ears. He barely looked up when she peered over his shoulder, adjusting her tortoiseshell glasses on her face.

“Get this. Some guy rappelled down to the seventeenth floor of a Park Avenue apartment block, stole a nine-million-dollar Easter egg and then vanished. NYPD forensics found an eyelash on the floor next to the safe. They figure it’s probably unrelated but wanted us to run it through just in case something showed up. It’ll only be another few seconds.” He looked up at her, the spots on his shiny forehead glowing purple in the flickering blue light. “What about you? What are you still doing here?”

“Keeping my promises, like you.” She smiled back. “Here you go.”

The screen flashed up a picture and a name, but before either of them could read it the image vanished and was replaced with a red screen, a boxed message flashing intermittently.

Beneath it, a name and a phone number.

“Shit,” she swore as she read the message and stood up straight.

“What just happened?” Mahoney was clicking furiously on his mouse as he tried to get the previous page back. “What does that mean?”

“It means you forget you ever saw this.” Her voice was grim, her jaw set firm. “You call up the NYPD tomorrow and tell them that you didn’t get a match. This never happened, understand?”

Mahoney nodded dumbly, his eyes wide and bewildered. She reached past him for the phone and dialed the number at the bottom of the message on the screen.

“Yes, hello sir,” she said when the phone was answered. “This is Dr. Lucas over at the FBI Lab in Quantico. I’m sorry for calling you so late. It’s just that we’ve had a match. NYPD sent across a sample taken from a crime scene two days ago. When we put it into the computer the system locked us out and said to call you… yes, sir… no, sir, just me and a new recruit… yes, sir, I’ve told him the drill.” She fixed Mahoney with a cold stare. “I think he knows the consequences… thank you, sir. You too, sir.”

She put the phone down and turned to a confused-looking Mahoney with a tight smile.

“Welcome to the FBI.”

CHAPTER SIX

The car was new and the smell of faux leather and molded plastic hung heavily in the air. A silver crucifix hung on a thin chain from the driver’s mirror and spiraled gently, its flat surface catching the light every so often.

Looking up from her notes, Jennifer lowered the window and let the hot breeze massage her face as the car crawled through the downtown traffic on Constitution Avenue toward the Smithsonian, as first the Lincoln Memorial and then the black hulk of the Vietnam Memorial inched past. A lone veteran was on patrol, two small Stars and Stripes taped to the handles of his wheelchair like pennants on a diplomatic stretch. Up ahead, two huge buses spewed Japanese tourists onto the sidewalk, cameras unholstered as soon as their feet hit the concrete.

Unconsciously she smoothed the left lapel on the jacket of her black trouser suit. She always wore black. She looked good in it and besides it was one less decision to make in the morning. Noticing the time on the dashboard clock, Jennifer shook her head in irritation. She was late for her appointment and she hated being late. Five minutes later, seeing that she was only level with the Washington Monument, she opened her purse.

“I’ll walk from here,” she said, thrusting twenty dollars past the driver’s right ear.

She opened the door and stepped out onto the street, the tarmac already soft under the heel of her shoes as the temperature climbed. She squeezed between two government-issue black sedans, their air-conditioned passengers shielded behind smoked glass, and stepped onto the sidewalk. A bit further on, a hot dog seller had already installed himself on the corner of Sixteenth Street and the smell of frying onions and reheated sausage made her stomach lurch unsteadily. Gritting her teeth and breathing through her mouth, she walked on.

The Smithsonian Institution is the largest museum complex in the world, comprising fourteen separate museums and the National Zoo in D.C. itself and two further museums in New York. Taken as a whole, the museum’s collection numbers over 142 million separate objects.

The Money and Medals Hall of the National Numismatic Collection is housed on the third floor of the National Museum of American History, a low-slung, white stone 1960s building on the National Mall at the junction of Fourteenth Street and Constitution Avenue. The collection numbers over four hundred thousand items, although only a tiny fraction of these are ever on display.

Ten minutes later, Jennifer was ushered into a dark wood-paneled office, her feet sinking into the thick green carpet. A Stars and Stripes loomed in the corner. Framed by two large windows at the far end of the room, Miles Baxter, forty-two, the curator of the National Numismatic Collection, was sitting behind a massive desk covered in files and papers. He wore a dark blue sports jacket over a button-down white shirt and beige chinos and the air was heavy with the scent of freshly applied aftershave. He didn’t get up.

“They didn’t tell me they were sending a woman.”

“I’m sorry to disappoint you.” Jennifer felt herself tensing automatically.

“Quite the contrary, Miss Browne. It’s a very pleasant surprise. It’s just that if I’d known I’d have made more of an effort.”

He smiled and two rows of piano-key-perfect teeth flashed back at her from a tanned and confident face. They shook hands and his palm felt moist. Almost subconsciously she registered that his hair was less fluffy where it parted on the left-hand side. She knew instinctively that he had licked his hand and then smoothed his hair down just before she had been shown in. So much for not making an effort.

“It’s Special Agent Browne, actually,” said Jennifer, taking out her ID and passing it to him.

His smile faded.

“Of course it is.”

He studied her ID carefully, diligently comparing her face to the picture with several searching glances. She took the opportunity to wipe her palm, still damp where he had clutched her hand in his, against her trouser leg. He snapped her wallet shut and handed it back to her.

“Of course, I’ve dealt with the FBI before, although if I may say so never with someone quite so… attractive. Unfortunately I’m not at liberty to discuss those cases with you.” His eyes narrowed. “A small matter of national security. I’m sure you understand.” He gestured toward the right-hand wall, which she could see was decorated like a small shrine with photos, carefully calligraphed certificates, and gilt-lettered diplomas. She nodded and hoped that he didn’t notice her stifle a smile.

“Do you know Washington well?” She gave a slight shrug, which seemed to be all the encouragement Baxter needed. “You know, if you want someone to show you around, I’d be very happy to act as your tour guide one weekend.”

A couple of years ago, when she had still believed that intelligence and hard work would be enough to make it as an FBI agent, Jennifer would have met that sort of offer with an acidic smile and a dismissive laugh as a matter of principle. But that was before the dull blade of experience had taught her to use all the tools at her disposal. She knew now that if she wanted to get a result, she couldn’t afford to have those sorts of principles anymore. If that meant telling Miles Baxter what he wanted to hear so that she would have something good to go back to Corbett with, then so be it.

“I’d like that.” She brushed her hand coquettishly through her hair.

“Great.” He beamed. “Please sit down.” He nodded toward the leather armchair opposite him. “And you must call me Miles.”

“Thank you, Miles.” She smiled warmly. “You must call me Jennifer.”

Baxter placed his hands together as if in prayer, his fingers sore and ripped where he had bitten his nails.

“So, Jennifer, how can I help?”

She reached inside her jacket.

“What can you tell me about this coin?” She held the coin, still carefully sealed inside its protective plastic envelope, out to Baxter, who slipped on a steel-rimmed pair of glasses and angled it underneath the green shade of his desk light so that he could make out the embossed detail. He looked up, his eyes wide with amazement, his voice halting and for the first time uncertain.

“Where… what… how did you get this?” He shook his head in disbelief, the slack skin under his chin tracking his head movements like a small pendulum. “This is incredible. It’s impossible.” His breathing was ragged, his hands trembling slightly as he turned the coin over and over in his fingers as if it were too hot to hold still.

“What do you mean?”

“Well… it’s a 1933 Double Eagle, of course.”

She shrugged.

“I’m not a coin expert, Miles.”

“No, of course. Well, you see the U.S. government has been minting gold coins since the mid-1790s and twenty-dollar coins, or Double Eagles, since the 1849 gold rush.”

“Why Double Eagle? There’s only one eagle on the coin.”

“Just one of those things, I guess.” He sniffed. “Ten-dollar coins were known as Eagles, so when the twenty-dollar coins appeared, they were called Double Eagles. Most people can be very unimaginative if they try hard enough.”

“I see.”

“It’s all down to the date,” he said with a thoughtful look on his face.

“You mean on the coin? Why, what happened in 1933?”

“It’s more what didn’t happen in 1933,” said Baxter, tapping the side of his pink nose enigmatically as the color began to return to his cheeks and his voice grew more confident. He placed the coin on the desk and sat back in his chair. “The interesting thing about a gold coin minted in 1933 is that at the time America was in the grip of the Depression. And as a result, days after assuming the presidency in March 1933, Roosevelt took the country off the gold standard and banned the production, sale, and ownership of gold.”

Jennifer nodded as a high school history project bubbled back to the top of her mind. The Wall Street crash in 1929. The Great Depression that followed. A quarter of the nation out of work, the country in chaos. And in that hurricane of human misery, with stocks and bonds worthless and life savings wiped out, people had clung onto the only thing that they believed had any real value. Gold.

“The president wanted to stop the hoarding and calm the markets by shoring up federal gold reserves,” Baxter continued, illustrating this with a series of increasingly animated hand gestures. “Executive Order 6102 prohibited people from owning gold and banks from paying it out.”

“Leaving coins like this worthless, I guess.”

“Exactly. Not having been told otherwise, the Philadelphia Mint produced 450,000 1933 Double Eagles in the months following the passing of this law. But there was nowhere for them to go.”

“So they couldn’t issue them?”

Baxter smiled. “They couldn’t do anything with them. Except melt them down, of course, which they eventually did in 1937. Every single one.”

He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper.

“You see officially, Jennifer, the 1933 Double Eagle never existed.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

He’d had the shop’s frontage painted a treacly black, although the windows themselves were still obscured from the street by the thin coat of whitewash. Against this background the shop’s name, freshly painted in large gold letters in a semicircle across both large panes, seemed to stand out even more prominently. Tom read it proudly: KIRK DUVAL. His mother would have liked that. And then under it in a straight line and smaller letters: FINE ART & ANTIQUES.

He checked both ways and then crossed the street, stopping halfway as he searched for a gap in the traffic, eventually reaching the shop door. It opened noiselessly under his touch to reveal a jumble of hastily deposited boxes and half-opened packing crates, their contents poking resolutely through straw and Styrofoam. In one, an elegant Regency clock. In another, a marble bust of Caesar or Alexander, he hadn’t checked yet. Across the room, an Edwardian rosewood card table had been completely unpacked and a large Han Dynasty vase filled with dried flowers stood in the middle of the dark green felt. It was going to take weeks to sort it all out.

Still, that didn’t bother Tom. Not now. For the first time in as long as he could remember he had time on his side. He had thought about stopping before, of course, or at least toyed with the idea. After all, he hadn’t needed the money for years. But he’d never been able to stay away for more than a few weeks. Like gamblers ushered back to their favorite seats at the blackjack table after a brief absence, he had been sucked back in every time.

This time was different, though. Things had changed. He’d changed. The New York job had proved that to him.

And yet one name lurked beneath the thin veneer of normality that Tom had tried to build for himself over the past few days. Cassius. He wasn’t sure if Archie had been lying or not, using Cassius’s name perhaps to try and force Tom’s hand to follow through on the job. If so he was taking a big risk. But if it really was Cassius that had commissioned the theft, then Archie was rolling the dice without even properly understanding the rules or how Cassius played the game. Or even perhaps what was at stake.

But Archie wasn’t his responsibility. That’s what Tom kept reminding himself. Not now, not ever. If he had gotten himself into this mess then it was up to him to get himself out of it. Tom wasn’t being heartless. Those were just the rules.

He continued through the shop, the wooden floor freshly cleared of the debris that had coated it, until he reached the two doors at the rear of the room. Opening the one to his left, Tom stepped through onto the narrow platform that ran along the back wall of the large warehouse.

On the left-hand side, a metal staircase spiraled tightly down to the dusty warehouse floor some twenty feet below. A steel shutter in the opposite wall opened onto the street that ran down the hill and around the back of the building. There was a faint buzzing from the neon tubes that lined the warehouse ceiling and their primitive light made the flaking and stained white walls come out in a sickly sweat.

“How are you getting on?” Tom called out as he came down the stairs, the cast-iron staircase vibrating violently with each step where it had worked itself loose over the years. The girl looked up at the sound of his voice, brushing her blond hair aside.

“There’s still a lot to do.” She took her glasses off and rubbed her blue eyes. “How does it look?” Her English was immaculate, although spoken with the slight tightness of a Swiss-French accent.

“Great. You were right, the gold does look better than the silver would have.”

She blushed and put her glasses back on. Still only twenty-two, Dominique had worked for Tom’s father in Geneva for the last four years. After the memorial service, she’d volunteered to help him move all his father’s stock back to London and get the business up and running there. She’d done a great job. He was hoping she would agree to stay on.

“Is everything here?” Tom nodded toward the piles of crates and boxes that were stacked across the warehouse floor.

“I think so, yes. I just need to check those last few boxes off against my list.”

“These?” asked Tom, walking over toward the three crates she had pointed at.

“Uh-huh. Read off the numbers on the side, will you?”

“Sure.” He went to the first one and, bending his head slightly, read the numbers back to her.

“One-three-one-two-seven-two.”

She turned back to the laptop she was sitting in front of.

“Okay.”

Tom moved to the next crate.

“One-three-one-one—”

He was interrupted by a clipped, nasal voice that sank heavily from the platform above.

“My, my, we have been busy, Kirk. You must have knocked off Buckingham Palace to get your hands on this little lot.”

“Detective Constable Clarke,” Tom said flatly without bothering to look up. “Our first customer.”

Clarke robotically lit another cigarette from the one already in his mouth before flicking the sputtering butt over the railing and wedging the new cigarette between his teeth. It landed harmlessly at Tom’s feet.

“It’s Detective Sergeant Clarke now, Kirk,” he said as he took a drag on his cigarette and made his way down the stairs to the warehouse floor, the staircase strangely silent under his lazy step. “While you’ve been away, there’s been a few changes around here.”

“Detective sergeant? They really must be desperate.”

A muscle in Clarke’s neck began to twitch. He was quite a tall man, although his rounded shoulders made him seem shorter. He was also distressingly thin, his gray skin drawn tightly across his sharp cheekbones, his mouth pulled into a permanently grudging grimace, his hair fine and brushed forward to disguise how far it had receded. His wrist bones, especially, jutted out under translucent skin and seemed so delicate that they might snap if you shook his hand too firmly. The only color came from the broken blood vessels that danced across his sunken cheeks.

“I heard you were back, Kirk. That you’d crawled out from whatever hole you’ve been hiding in for the last couple of months.” His watery eyes flashed as he spoke. “So I thought I’d come and pay you a visit. A social call. Just in case you thought I’d forgotten about you.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’d certainly forgotten about you.”

Clarke clamped his mouth shut and Tom could see from the color rising to his face that he was focusing all his energies on not losing his temper. Eventually he turned away from Tom and indicated the room around him with his head.

“So, all this shit’s yours, then?”

Tom stole an anxious look at Dominique, but she was staring at the computer screen as if nothing was going on behind her.

“Not that’s it’s any of your business, but yes.”

“You mean it is now,” said Clarke, laughing coldly. “But God knows which poor sod you nicked it off.” He kicked the crate nearest to him, his clumpy, thick-soled shoes at odds with his delicate frame and making his feet seem huge. “What about this one. What’s in here?”

“You’re wasting your time, Clarke,” said Tom, his own mounting frustration giving his voice a slight edge now. “I’ve moved my father’s business from Switzerland and I’m reopening it here. I have import papers in triplicate from both the Swiss and British authorities for everything.”

Clarke turned back to face him and smirked.

“Tell me, was it the drink, or the shame over having you for a son that finally did him in?”

Tom’s body stiffened, the muscles in his jaw bulging as he clenched his teeth together. He could see Clarke savoring the moment, his eyes narrowed into fascinated slivers of gray.

“I think it’s time you left,” said Tom, taking a step forward.

“Are you threatening me?”

“No, I’m asking you to leave. Now.”

“I’ll go when I’m ready.” Clarke thrust his chin out in defiance and folded his arms across his chest, the material of his gray suit, shiny on the elbows, acquiring a new set of creases.

“Dominique,” Tom called out while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Clarke’s. “Could you please get me the Metropolitan Police on the line and ask to speak to Commissioner Jarvis. Tell him that Detective Sergeant Clarke is harassing me again. Tell him that he has illegally entered my premises without a warrant. Tell him he’s refusing to leave.” She nodded but didn’t move.

Clarke stepped forward until he was so close that Tom could smell the smoke on his breath.

“You’ll slip up, Kirk. Everyone does eventually, even you. And I’ll be there when it happens.”

Flicking his cigarette to one side, sparks scattering in its wake, Clarke marched back up the stairs and through the door.

Dominique fixed Tom with a questioning stare. He cleared his throat nervously. Although he had known that he would have to have this conversation at some stage, he had planned to do it on his own terms, when he was good and ready. Certainly not like this.

“I’m sorry you had to sit through that,” he began. “It’s not what it looks like.”

“Sure it is.” She gave him a half smile and then looked away.

“What do you mean?” His eyes narrowed.

Silence.

“Your father used to talk a lot, you know, when he drank,” she said eventually. “He said some things about you. I got the picture. Your policeman friend just filled in a few gaps.”

Tom sat down on the crate nearest her and rubbed the back of his head.

“Well, if you knew that, what are you doing here?”

“You really think I expected you to be the only honest person in the art business? Everyone’s got some sort of angle. Yours is better than others I’ve seen.”

“That’s it?”

“Partly.” She smiled and tilted her head to one side. “You know, I put a lot of time into this business with your father. By the time he died, things were going really well. When we first met, you said you were serious about trying to keep it going. I guess I wanted to believe you.”

“I am serious about making it work. More now than when we first spoke about it.” He looked at her earnestly.

“So what about…?”

“That’s over. This is all I’ve got now. That’s why I need to make it work.”

“Okay.” She nodded slowly.

“Okay?” He raised his eyebrows.

“Okay.” She put her glasses back on and turned back to the computer.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“And unofficially?”

Baxter leapt up from his desk and gripped the back of his chair.

“Unofficially, ten coins survived.” He breathed excitedly, his upper lip beginning to bead. “It turned out they were stolen from the mint by George McCann, the former chief cashier there, before the melting. He denied the accusations, of course. But it was him.”

“And the coins?”

“A couple started surfacing at numismatic auctions in 1944. A journalist alerted the mint, who brought in the secret service. It took them ten years, but eventually they tracked them all down and destroyed them. All apart from one.”

“They couldn’t find it?”

“Oh, they knew where it was. Only problem was that they couldn’t get to it. You see, it had been bought by King Farouk of Egypt for his coin collection and the U.S. Treasury, not realizing what it was, had issued him with an export license. There was no way he was going to hand it back just because they’d screwed up their paperwork.”

“Even though he knew it was stolen?”

“As far as he was concerned, that probably just added to its value. In any case, after the Egyptian revolution in 1952 he was out of the equation. The new government seized the collection and auctioned it off, including what had by then become known as the ‘Farouk coin.’”

“So somebody else bought it.”

“No.” Baxter’s eyes flashed, mirroring the excitement in his voice as he seemed to relive the events he was describing. “The coin just disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Jennifer found herself edging forward on her seat, excited by Baxter’s fevered account.

“Vanished.” Baxter bunched his fingers into a point and then blew onto them, stretching his hand out flat as he did so. “For over forty years. Until 1996, when Treasury agents posing as collectors seized the coin from an English dealer in New York and arrested him.” Baxter’s eyes glistened. “Only he then sued the Treasury, claiming that he’d bought the coin legitimately from another dealer. It went to court and eventually the Treasury agreed to auction the coin and split the proceeds with him.”

“How do you know all this?” Jennifer asked, puzzled at the level of detail that Baxter seemed to have at his fingertips. “This is just one coin; you must have hundreds of thousands here.” Baxter threw up his hands.

“Because this isn’t just any old coin, Jennifer. This is the holy grail of coins. It has been stolen from the Philadelphia Mint, owned by a king, vanished and then reappeared in dramatic circumstances. This is the forbidden fruit, the apple from the Garden of Eden. It is totally unique.”

“So how much are we talking?”

“Twenty dollars for the certificate to make it official U.S. coinage.” Baxter paused dramatically. “And just under eight million for the coin itself.”

Jennifer’s eyes widened. Eight million dollars for a coin? It was a crazy, reckless amount of money. It didn’t make any sense. Except that perhaps it did. It was certainly enough to kill for and, in Ranieri’s case, maybe even to die for.

“You know, the National Numismatic Collection automatically receives examples of all American coins. We actually have two 1933 Double Eagles on display over in the Money and Medals Hall. They and the Farouk coin are the only 1933 Double Eagles in existence, although as museum exhibits they are clearly not available for private ownership as the Farouk coin is. We can go and take a look if you like,” Baxter suggested eagerly.

“Sure.” Jennifer nodded. “That way we could at least compare them to this one.”

Baxter slipped out from behind his desk and over to the door, which he held open for her.

“After you.”

“Thank you, Miles.”

It was only a short walk to the hall, which revealed itself to be a long, narrow gallery, flanked on each side by wall-mounted rectangular display cases, their contents glittering under the lights. Baxter headed to one of the cabinets in the middle of the room and stopped next to it. Two coins were set apart from the others and lay side by side, in a specially constructed, chemically inert plastic container, each displaying a different face against the green felt.

“They’re beautiful, aren’t they?” Baxter’s hushed voice rippled through the empty room. Jennifer bent forward until she started to fog the glass, the ghostly fingerprints of earlier visitors materializing with each breath and then immediately vanishing.

“The actual design was commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 from the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. You can see his initials there, just below the date. He wanted to try and capture something of the majesty and elegance of the coins of the ancient world. I think he succeeded, don’t you?”

She sensed Baxter lowering his face and staring at her as she gazed at the coins, moving his head closer to hers, almost whispering in her ear.

“As you can see, one side features a large eagle in flight, while the obverse depicts Lady Liberty, a torch in her right hand and an olive branch in the left, symbolizing peace and enlightenment. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”

She felt Baxter’s hand brush against her neck and instinctively drew away with an annoyed shrug of her shoulders. She immediately wished she hadn’t. The hurt look on Baxter’s face showed his realization that this, rather than their earlier flirtatious exchange, perhaps better reflected her true feelings for him. When he spoke next, his voice was tinged with anger.

“Why don’t you just tell me what this is really all about, Agent Browne?”

“This is about whether my coin is a fake, Mr. Baxter.” Jennifer made no attempt to be friendly now. It was too late for that. “Or whether it’s the real thing.”

“Well, it’s impossible to say without running some tests. It’s clearly the same design and looks real enough, but we would need to analyze the coin… compare it to our originals. It could take days, weeks even….” He tailed off.

“I understand.” Jennifer nodded. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Baxter. It has been very useful. The lab will be in touch about those tests.” She turned to leave but Baxter reached out and grabbed her shoulder, his fingers scrabbling against the black material.

“Jennifer, wait.” His voice was strained, pleading. “You can’t just go like that. Where did you get that coin? I have to know.”

She smiled.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Baxter, but that information is classified. A small matter of national security. I’m sure you understand.”

CHAPTER NINE

“So we still don’t know if it’s a fake or not? This guy, Baxter, he couldn’t help with that?”

Corbett sat down on one of the wooden benches that lined the shaded banks of the Potomac in this part of the FBI compound and placed a polystyrene cup full of thick black coffee down on the ground between his feet. Jennifer sat down next to him, her sandwich still in its plastic wrapper. Lunch could wait.

“Not without sending it to the lab for tests, which I’ll do this afternoon. But he did mention something else.”

“What?”

“Well, it’s probably nothing….”

Jennifer noticed Corbett’s forehead creasing. Although he probably had many qualities, she suspected that patience was very definitely not one of them.

“It’s just that Baxter said that all nine of the coins recovered by the secret service in the 1940s were destroyed. But I spoke to someone I know over at the Treasury on the way out here who owed me a favor. He told me, off the record, that although four of the nine coins were destroyed, the other five were put into storage back at the Philadelphia Mint before being moved to Fort Knox about ten years ago, when they re-inventoried the place. As far as he knows, they’re still there.”

Corbett nodded slowly and settled back into the bench, the sunlight seeping under the branches of the overhanging tree. Jennifer studied his face and noticed the total lack of surprise at this latest piece of information. Her eyes widened in realization.

“But then, you already knew all that, didn’t you?” she said slowly.

“The French doctor who performed the autopsy on Ranieri happened to be a bit of a coin freak,” Corbett admitted, his eyes fixed on the river, the occasional splash and glittering ripple showing where a fish had risen to the surface and then powered its way back down, bending the water with a flick of its tail. “He recognized the coin. That’s why we got it back so quickly. I pulled the file. You just pretty much confirmed everything in it.”

“So what’s this all been about, sir?” Jennifer fought to control the anger in her voice. She’d thought she was being given a clear run, but Corbett was treating her with the same suspicion as everyone else. “Is this some sort of test? Because if it is I resent—”

Corbett cut her off, his eyes boring into her.

“You know, there’s a lot of people who think you’re damaged goods. That you’re a liability. That you should have been retired three years ago after the shooting.”

She paused before answering and returned his stare, trying not to let her voice sound too defensive.

“I can’t help that.”

“No. But it bugs you.” He shrugged and turned to face the river again. “Me, I think that everyone makes mistakes. It’s how people deal with them that sets them apart. Some just go to pieces and never recover. Others move on and come back twice as strong.”

“Which do you think I am, sir?”

He paused.

“It took me two days to get the Treasury to confirm what happened to those other coins. You did it in one phone call. Let’s just say that you don’t strike me as a quitter.” The hint of a smile crossed his face for the first time that afternoon. “The case is yours.”

She nodded and felt the warm flush of gratitude rising in her chest.

“Thank you, sir.” Jennifer stood up, a slight tremor in her voice. This was the sort of chance she had been hoping for. Praying for. “I’ll get right on it.”

“Good.” He flicked his eyes back round to hers. “I want you down in Kentucky first thing in the morning checking on those coins. I’ll get a jet booked for you.”

“Yes, sir.” Jennifer got up and turned to leave, but Corbett called after her.

“By the way, who bought that Farouk coin in the end? We’re probably going to need to talk to them, too.”

Jennifer reached for her notebook and flicked through the first few pages until she found the right entry.

“According to my Treasury contact several people bid for it. But it went to a Dutch property developer, a private collector.” She found the name she was looking for and looked up as she said it to see if Corbett recognized it.

“Darius Van Simson.”

CHAPTER TEN

“Vous savez pourquoi on appelle ce quartier leMarais?” Do you know why this area is called the Marais?

His French faultless, Darius Van Simson was sitting behind the large mahogany desk that dominated the right-hand side of his office. Circumflex eyebrows over a chopped angular face, his sandy hair and the firm arrow of his goatee were flickering slightly in the stiff breeze from the overhead air-conditioning unit. He was sipping whiskey from a heavy crystal glass.

“Presumably because it used to be a swamp.”

The man sitting opposite him was short and round, with a puffy red face and small brown eyes. He had long since outgrown his suit and the fabric creased violently around his shoulders and across his arched back. His cracked black leather belt could not hide the fact that he wore his trousers with the top button undone.

“Bravo, Monsieur Reinaud!” Van Simson slapped the table in appreciation. “Quite so. The Knights Templar drained it in the eleventh century. Who would have thought then, that in the Middle Ages it would emerge at the epicenter of French political life? That aristocratic families would build their massive houses on its narrow streets so as to be near their King?”

Reinaud nodded awkwardly, as if unsure if he should say something. Van Simson put his glass down, stood up and crossed to the other side of the room so that Reinaud had to shuffle around in his chair to see him. He was wearing a blazer over dark gray flannel trousers, his white shirt open at the neck. He wore no socks, his bare feet clad in a pair of brown suede moccasins.

Four large windows had been set into the wall and in between each one was a different Chagall painting, each illuminated by a single recessed spotlight that made the colors glow as if the image had been projected onto the space, rather than merely hung there.

“Of course, over the years, most of those grand houses were carved up into apartments or shops or offices or simply knocked down,” Van Simson continued, gazing out the window at the courtyard below. “Why, this very house was a ramshackle assortment of restaurants, craft shops, and dance studios before I bought them all out and had the place reconverted.”

“Monsieur Van Simson, this is all very interesting, but I fail to understand how this is relevant to—”

“Have you seen this?” Van Simson walked over to the white architectural model that stood in a glass display case in the middle of the room. Reinaud heaved himself to his feet with a sigh and walked over.

“What is it?”

“Surely you recognize it?”

Reinaud frowned as he studied the layout of the streets. A shopping mall, a car park, office buildings, luxury apartments around an artificial lake. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed.

“Never! I’ve told you, I’ll never allow it!”

Van Simson smiled.

“Things change, Monsieur Reinaud. A swamp can grow to become the site of a royal palace; an aristocrat’s home can decay into a slum. It is time for this land to evolve. You’re only fooling yourself if you think you can stand in the way of progress.”

“No, you’re the one fooling yourself with your lawyers and accountants,” Reinaud fired back, taking a step closer to him. “There will be no sale. Not now, not ever.”

Van Simson sighed. Nodding slowly, he reached into his inside jacket pocket and drew out a large checkbook that he laid flat on the display case. Unscrewing the lid of a silver fountain pen, he looked up at Reinaud with a smile.

“You are a tough negotiator, Monsieur Reinaud, I’ll give you that. But come now, enough of this… ” He searched for the appropriate word. “… posturing. I have the planning permission. Everyone else has accepted my terms. My men have already broken ground on the first phase of this project. Yours is the only outstanding plot. How much do you want?”

“The price is not the issue,” Reinaud spluttered. “My family have lived on this land for six hundred years. My ancestors lie buried in its soil as I and my children and their children will one day. To us, this is more than just land. It’s our birthright. Our inheritance. Its spirit runs through our veins. It’s not a cell on a spreadsheet, not a footnote in your annual report. We will never sell it. I would rather die than see this… this monstrosity come into being.”

Van Simson’s smile faded, his face creasing and narrowing into a point, furrows of anger carved in neat, vertical lines across his cheeks. Under his blazer, he could sense his shirt beginning to stick to his back. He walked over to his desk, had another sip of his whiskey, the ice tinkling against the crystal.

Suddenly, he spun round and in one violent movement hurled the glass across the room as hard as he could. It shot through the air, whistling past Reinaud’s head, crashing into the wall. The heavy base smashed on impact, an exploding petal of glass shards. Just for a moment, as the light caught them, hundreds of tiny rainbows fluttered through the air before falling to the floor.

“That tumbler was one of a pair salvaged from the first-class lounge of the Titanic. The only ones to have survived. Your stubbornness has just cost me a hundred thousand dollars,” Van Simson hissed, advancing toward a now white-faced Reinaud. “You mean nothing to me, Reinaud.” He snapped his fingers. “Certainly less than that glass. Defy me and you will find out what it means to stand in my way. Now for the last time, what is your price?”

On the other side of the room, whiskey ran down the wall in dark rivulets, pooling amidst the shattered glass. Against the pale brown carpet, it looked like blood.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Tom made his way through the gravestones, the cracked and threadbare path snaking its way down the hill. In a couple of places the tarmac had worn away completely and here the surface of an earlier, cobbled path shone through, the stones brightly polished where generations of heavy-hearted feet had stumbled over them. He clutched a bunch of carnations to his side, bought from the florist outside the tube station.

There was a time when he could have recited from memory the names on most of the tombstones between the upper gate and his mother’s grave. They jutted out from the fleshy earth like teeth, some overlapping, others separated by wide gaps, decaying according to the seasons in the wind and the sun and the cold. Here and there plastic flowers leered from rain-filled jam jars. In the distance, the distinctive scepter of the BT Tower rose above the city’s concrete ooze.

The solid black marble slab nestled snugly in the grass, sheltered by the drooping branches of a willow and the tangled undergrowth that concealed the crumbling cemetery wall. The gilding that had been painted into the carved inscription still shone brightly and Tom ran his fingers over the letters, silently tracing her name. Remembering. She would have been sixty that day.

Everyone had told him at the time that it wasn’t his fault, that it was just one of those things. An accident, a terrible tragedy. Even the coroner had played it down, blaming mechanical failure, before suggesting that his mother had been at best reckless for letting a thirteen-year-old boy drive, even if it was just a short distance down a normally quiet road. For a moment he had almost believed them.

But the look in his father’s eyes at her funeral, the anger that had shone through the tears when he’d hugged him, convinced Tom that he, at least, thought otherwise. That if she had let him drive, then it was because Tom had begged and bawled until she had relented. That he had as good as killed her. When he was much older, he often wondered whether when his father had hugged him so tightly that day, he had really been trying to suffocate him.

Tom closed his eyes, subconsciously toying with the ivory chess piece key ring in his pocket that his father had given him a few weeks before he died. He breathed in deeply through his nose, finding the smell of freshly turned earth and cut grass comforting. It reminded him of long, lazy summer afternoons in the garden, before all that. Before he had been abandoned to his loneliness. And his guilt. Because after that day, his father had never hugged him again.

“There’s a bloody fortune in marble here.” A familiar voice broke into Tom’s thoughts. “I know a bloke who’d take all these off our hands.” An impossible voice. “He just splits the top layer off and reengraves ’em. Buyers never know the difference.” A voice that had no right being there.

“Archie?” Tom spun round. “How… why?… What the hell are you doing here?”

Over the years, Tom had often wondered what Archie looked like, tried to mentally sketch a face to match the voice, an expression to suit the tone. With every conversation, a little more detail had been added to this picture; an extra crease around the eyes, a slight bump in the nose, a sharper edge to the jaw. At times, Tom had almost managed to convince himself that they must have met. But with Archie — the real Archie — actually standing there in front of him for the first time, his careful reconstruction instantly crumbled and now he found that he could not salvage a single memory of it.

Instead he saw a slim man — in his mid-forties, Tom guessed — about five feet ten. He had an oval face, his hair clipped very short and receding, so that it formed a fuzzy point right at the tip of his forehead. His three-buttoned suit was clearly bespoke, possibly Savile Row, a ten-ounce dark blue pinstripe that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any City trading floor. His blue gingham shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and instinctively Tom guessed that he was probably wearing a set of red suspenders to match his socks.

These were expensive clothes with the right labels in the right places, subtle tribal markings that allowed Archie to circulate unchallenged through the smart and fast moneyed world he inhabited.

And yet despite this, there was something rough-and-ready about him. His face was slightly crumpled, his chin dark with stubble, his ears sticking out slightly from the side of his head. He had the easy, confident manner of someone who knew how to handle himself and others. But his dark-brown eyes said different. They said that he was afraid.

Tom looked around anxiously, wary that Archie might not have come alone.

“It’s all right, mate. Cool it.” Archie held his hands up. “It’s just me.”

“Don’t tell me to cool it,” Tom’s voice was ice. “What’s going on? You know the rules.”

“Of course I know the rules. I bloody well invented them, didn’t I?” Archie gave a short laugh.

It had been Archie’s idea that they should never meet. Ever. It was safer that way, he had said, so that all they would have on each other was a name and a phone number. By coming to find him, Archie had broken his own most important rule. It was an act of desperation, a cry for help. Or maybe a trick?

Tom leaped forward and fired off two quick punches, a right to the stomach and a left to the side of Archie’s head. The first winded him, the second dropped him to the ground.

“Are you wearing a wire? Is that it, you bastard? Have you cut a deal with Clarke to ship me in?” Tom knelt over Archie and patted him down roughly, feeling around his chest and groin to see if he was concealing some sort of transmitter. He wasn’t.

“Fuck you.” Archie heaved Tom off him and rubbed the side of his face, coughing as the air seeped back into his lungs. “I’m no fucking snitch.” He hauled himself back to his feet and gave Tom an angry look, brushing his jacket down.

“Yesterday Clarke shows up promising to put me away. Then after ten years of avoiding each other, you break cover. What am I meant to think? That it’s all a coincidence?”

“Clarke, that hairy-arsed wanker? Do me a favor. You think I’d risk you, risk me for him? You should know me better than that.”

“Should I? The Archie I know doesn’t break the rules.”

“Look, I followed you here from your gaff. I’m sorry. I should have warned you or something.” Archie had his breath back now, but was still patting his cheekbone gingerly.

“You know where I live?”

Tom shook his head in disbelief, his anger mounting at this latest revelation.

“Yeah, well, after our last little conversation I got a bit worried, didn’t I. So I did a bit of homework. There aren’t that many Tom Kirks in London. Your place was the third I tried.”

“Christ, you even know my name.” Tom looked around him in concern and lowered his voice to an angry whisper.

“I hate to tell you this, mate, but I’ve always known. Ever since the first job you pulled for me. You don’t like taking risks and neither do I. Till now, I’ve never had any reason to need it.”

“Well, you’re wasting your time because this isn’t going to change anything. I’ve told you, you’ll have to find someone else to do the job.”

Archie had an awkward look on his face.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Sure it is.” Tom’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t sign up for Cassius. That was your call. Now you deal with it.”

Archie flashed Tom a guilty look.

“I didn’t sign up to Cassius either. He signed up to you.”

“What?” It was Tom’s turn to sound concerned.

“I got the usual visit from one of his people.” Archie stared down at the floor as he spoke. “Another bloody foreigner. Sometimes I think all the English people have left this country.” He shook his head. “Anyway, he said you were the best, that only you would do for the job, usual spiel. I told him that there’d been a death in the family, that you’d gone abroad for a few months to sort everything out and to find someone else. But he said he’d wait. When you came back it all sort of fell into place.”

“So you did know that Cassius was behind this job right from the start. You lied to me.”

“So what?” said Archie, suddenly defensive. “What did you expect me to do? Turn him down?”

“After all the jobs we’ve done, all the years we’ve worked together, I’d expect you to tell me the truth.”

A mobile phone rang, an annoying, rambling tune that bounced jarringly down a high-pitched scale like a child sliding down stairs. Archie reached into his jacket’s left inside pocket, the lining flashing emerald as he pulled a phone out, checked the number that had flashed up on the screen and killed the call. He looked up.

“And I’d expect you to follow through on your promises. You signed up to both jobs. You can’t just back out because you feel like it. What do you think this is? A bloody game? I’m trying to run a business here. A business that has made you a very rich man. I find the buyers, you do the jobs. That’s how it works. That’s how it’s worked for the last ten years. Did I deliberately not tell you that the job was for Cassius? Too fucking right I did. A buyer is a buyer. His money is as good as anyone else’s.”

“It’s always the money with you, isn’t it?” Tom retorted. “Except now you’ve realized that his money isn’t the same. It comes with conditions attached.”

They were both silent and Archie moved closer to Tom, his black brogues sinking into the grass’s soft pile.

“What’s really going on, Felix? Let’s go for a pint and sort this out.”

“Felix is gone now. Finished.”

“It’s just another job. Pack it in after that if that’s what you want.”

“How long have you been doing this now, Archie? Twenty, twenty-five years?”

Archie shrugged.

“About that.”

“You never wonder how you got to this point in your life?” Tom spoke with a low, urgent voice. “About how a different decision here or action there could have totally changed things? Sometimes I think my life has been like a row of dominoes that I knocked over fifteen years ago. I can’t even remember how the first one got toppled and suddenly I’m here. “

Archie gave a short laugh.

“A thief with a midlife conscience? Pull the other one.”

A phone rang again, this time with a series of frantic beeps that grew louder and more frequent the longer the phone rang. Archie reached into his other jacket pocket and drew out a second phone, a thick gold bracelet glinting momentarily as his sleeve rode up his arm. Again he checked the number. This time he answered it.

“Hello… not right now, no… about five hundred… no… no deal, not unless he takes the lot. All right, cheers.”

Tom waited for him to return the phone to his pocket and look up before continuing.

“You know what? I’m thirty-five years old and I’ve never spent more than four weeks in the same place since I was twenty.”

Archie snorted.

“What, am I meant to feel sorry for you or something? That’s how they trained you. It’s part of what makes you so good. It’s part of the job.”

“There’s more to life than this job, Archie.”

Archie’s eyes flashed with impatience.

“Sorry, mate, but I’m fresh out of tissues.”

“All good things come to an end. Even this. Even us.”

Archie sighed.

“I’m just not getting through to you, am I? Unless we deliver a week today, we’re both dead men. Period.” Although his voice sounded casual, Archie’s eyes were burning brightly. “There’s a rumor about that Cassius is hard up, that he lost everything in some deal. So he won’t let it slide, won’t take no excuses. And if I can find you, then he certainly can. If we’re going to sort this, we’re going to have to do it together. I’m sorry, Tom, but this ain’t just my problem. It’s our problem.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

A black Ford Explorer had picked Jennifer up from her apartment that morning and driven her to Reagan Washington National, where, in one of the side hangars, a tan Cessna Citation Ultra had been prepped and was waiting for her. Corbett clearly did not kid around when it came to getting things done.

The jet had looked brand new and apart from the pilot and lone cabin attendant, she was the only passenger. Sinking back into the soft leather seats, she had stretched her legs right out into the narrow aisle, basking in the cabin lights. Twenty minutes later and the plane was arrowing through the clear Washington sky.

Flying had always made her slightly nervous. Once, though she was too traumatized now to remember exactly when, a plane she was on had hit an air pocket and dropped almost five thousand feet. As if they’d hit a glass wall in the sky and slid down it. Takeoff and landing were the worst and she unconsciously alternated between gripping the armrests and bracing herself for possible impact against the seat in front of her, depending on what stage of the journey they were at. This time, though, tired from the early start, she had found herself falling into a deep sleep until the gentle bump of the undercarriage coming down shook her awake.

Blinking, she turned her head to the window. The elliptical porthole framed a quilt of differently colored fields, each one bounded by a dark line of trees. A single, cotton-thin strip of blacktop ran in an unbroken line right to left and disappeared in both directions into a shimmering heat haze. Lonely farmsteads and barns stood marooned in the flat landscape like small wooden islands. Then, as the plane dropped lower, a low-slung galvanized fence on the military air base’s outer perimeter surged up to meet her.

“Welcome to Kentucky, Agent Browne.” Jennifer stepped down off the steps that had concertinaed out of the jet’s gleaming fuselage and shook the hand of the man waiting to greet her. “I hope you had a pleasant flight. I’m Lieutenant Sheppard. I’m to escort you to the Depository.”

“Thank you,” she answered, unable to mask her smile. It was quite an outfit. Pink plaid trousers, white Polo shirt, and yellow sun visor all competed for her attention. Beneath the visor the man’s face was creased into a broad grin as he pumped her hand up and down enthusiastically.

Although Jennifer was mindful never to form opinions of people too quickly — a trait she had inherited from her mother, who maintained that time was the only reliable lens through which to view someone’s true character — she instinctively liked Sheppard. He had a breezy, cheerful confidence and an uncomplicated and genuine manner that his gaudy wardrobe reinforced rather than undermined.

Sheppard looked down at himself and then flashed her a guilty smile, brown eyes twinkling in his smooth, suntanned face.

“I’m real sorry about the clothes, ma’am. I was just heading out when I got word to come and meet you here. I didn’t have time to change.” Jennifer nodded back, her tone understanding.

“That’s quite all right, Lieutenant. I appreciate you taking me over. Is it far?”

“No, ma’am. Not in this baby.” He pointed to a white golf cart, his clubs firmly strapped to the back.

“In that?” She looked at him questioningly as they walked over to it.

“In this.” He swung himself into the driver’s seat and then, reaching up, fixed a red light to the roof. “I had a buddy in the Corps of Engineers make a few alterations. You into cars?”

“I used to fix up and race Mustangs with my dad, if that counts,” she replied with a smile.

“Hey, then, maybe you should drive,” Sheppard suggested eagerly, sliding across to the passenger side. “Then you can tell me how you think this baby handles.”

“Sure.” She shrugged and slipped in behind the wheel, turning the key in the ignition. “You holding on?”

“Hell, yeah.”

As well as being the site of the U.S. Bullion Depository, Fort Knox is also the tank capital of the United States, its 109,050 acres home to 32,000 men and women of the U.S. Army Armor and Cavalry, which has its headquarters there. It was not long, therefore, before they were speeding past barrack buildings, mess halls, training blocks, and groups of soldiers running in tight formation, their chanted cadences blending with each other to form a muscular, sweaty symphony.

Her foot flat to the floor, Jennifer slalomed through the troops and the buildings, the red light flashing, oncoming vehicles sounding their horns as Sheppard called out the directions, his hand fiercely gripping the grab handle to stop himself from sliding across the shiny white vinyl seat as she dived in and out of the traffic. She sensed he was enjoying the ride.

Ahead of them, the granite-clad shape of the Depository loomed closer. From a distance, Jennifer thought that it seemed fairly ordinary; not much bigger than a small office block really, like one of those low-rise bank buildings you get in local malls. But as she drew closer she saw that it had, in fact, the squat solidity of a small white mountain.

Set in a wide compound, it was a two-story building, the upper story smaller than the lower one, its roof slightly tiered like the first few steps of a ziggurat. Steel-framed windows had been evenly set into the walls of both stories like embrasures in a castle wall. The only access came through a single gate in the fifteen-foot-high steel fence that encircled the compound, itself flanked by two armored sentry boxes. Once inside, a service road with neatly cut grass verges on each side ringed the building, which had four concrete bunkers surgically grafted onto each of its corners. A lone lawn mower patrolled the outer verge, its engine buzzing.

“It was built in 1936 and the first gold shipments arrived in 1937,” Sheppard shouted over the whine of the cart’s electric motor, angrily gesticulating soldiers scattering in front of them like ninepins. Jennifer nodded. She couldn’t imagine it having ever actually been built. It seemed to have been there forever, as if it had erupted out of the solid bedrock millions of years ago and then been shaped and polished by tens of thousands of years of sun and rain and frost.

“Usage peaked in 1941, when it held about six hundred fifty million ounces,” he continued. “Course these days, the main reserves are held at the Federal Reserve in New York, about five stories down. You should go and check it out sometime. I’m told the security there makes this place look like Disneyland.”

She slowed the cart as it approached the gate and then accelerated hard again as they were waved through. The sentries saluted Sheppard, their arms snapping to attention at the side of their head, their hands stiff, thumb tucked in, seemingly unfazed by his clothes and the sight of Jennifer at the wheel of the careering golf cart.

Up close, the building was even more formidable. The sheer mass of its granite walls seemed to weigh down on everything around it: a dark, dense, oppressive energy that compressed and squeezed and stifled. Jennifer found herself strangely conscious of the sound of her own breathing, of the sheer effort of moving, as if underwater.

Surveillance cameras, positioned high on the granite walls like glass eyes on white steel stalks, covered every inch of the building’s walls. Twin floodlights perched atop black poles gazed out at the surrounding compound on all four sides. A huge Stars and Stripes snapped in the wind outside the main entrance. The golden seal of the Treasury Department that had been carved into the lintel glinted overhead like a small sun.

“Stop here,” Sheppard shouted.

Jennifer immediately threw the cart into a tight skid, the tires biting the tarmac as it slowed to a stop.

“Wow,” Sheppard breathed. “I think you just set a new record.”

“It sure is quick.” She jumped out and tossed the keys over to him. “What did you do? Change the gearing?”

“Trade secret.” Sheppard smiled. “What d’ya think of the handling?”

“Slight understeer. You want to tighten up the front left suspension.”

“I’ll do that.” He winked at her. “Come on. Rigby will be waiting and boy, does he hate that.”

Turning on his heel, Sheppard disappeared through the depository’s massive black doorway into the cold marbled darkness of the building.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

As Sheppard had predicted, the officer in charge, Captain Rigby, was standing in the large entrance atrium ready to greet her. He gave her a brief handshake and what looked to Jennifer like a forced smile as Sheppard introduced them.

He was tall, perhaps six foot four, his uniform immaculate, his hair clipped short, his eyes bristling with well-drilled efficiency. From his snatched glances, Jennifer could tell that he was struggling to reconcile Sheppard’s garish golfing outfit with his well-ordered world. She decided to keep it short and businesslike, sensing that anything else would fail to show up on Rigby’s internal radar.

“Thank you very much for agreeing to see me today, Captain.”

“That’s quite all right, Agent Browne,” he said stiffly. “We all have a job to do.” The way his pale eyes narrowed a fraction over his thin nose and high-cut cheekbones suggested what he was really thinking. That he thought this was a waste of time. That he didn’t want her or any other federal pains in the asses anywhere near his facility, asking him questions, disrupting his routine, marking his polished floor. He just wanted her out, ASAP. That suited her just fine.

“Have you received the instructions from Washington?”

He nodded.

“Yes, they came through this morning. As requested we have left the items in situ.”

“Good. Then before we go down, I wonder whether you could answer a couple of questions.”

“What sort of questions?” Rigby’s tone was immediately suspicious.

“Any questions I choose to ask, Captain,” Jennifer answered firmly.

“This is a classified installation,” Rigby countered forcefully. “If you think I’m just going to reveal sensitive intel without specific authorization, then I suggest you get back on your plane, Agent Browne.”

“And if you think I’m going to leave here without everything I want, I suggest you take another look at your orders, Captain.” Jennifer’s voice was hard and her eyes flashed defiance. Normally, she would have preferred to use reason rather than raising her voice, but in Rigby’s case she sensed he had been conditioned not to react to anything else. “They specify full and unconditional cooperation with the FBI for the duration of our investigation, including disclosing relevant security procedures. If you’ve got a problem with that, then I suggest we step into your office right now and call your and my superiors in Washington. I think we both know what the answer would be.”

There was an awkward silence, punctured only by the rasping of the studs on Sheppard’s golf shoes against the marble floor as he nervously shifted his weight onto his other foot. Rigby had gone a deep shade of red and he seemed to be rolling something around between his thumb and forefinger, the tips of both fingers white from squeezing so hard. Jennifer, lips pressed together, returned his glare until, eventually, he managed a grimace that she assumed approximated a smile.

“Very well,” he conceded, his voice slightly strangled.

“I have no intention of prying, Captain,” Jennifer said, adopting a more conciliatory tone now that she had made her point. “Just a bit of background about the installation to go into my report. For instance, is this a military or a federal installation?”

“Oh.” Rigby sounded relieved, although there was still an unmistakably impatient edge to his voice. “A bit of both. The buildings are on an army base so they have some responsibility for the security and defense of the facility. But it is run by the U.S. Treasury and staffed by officers from the mint police. There are twenty-six of us in all.”

Jennifer frowned.

“Buildings? I only see one building.”

“No.” Rigby shook his head firmly. “It’s two buildings. The one that you see around you now is just a single-story outer shell built from granite and lined with concrete. But the vault itself is an entirely separate building on two levels built from steel plates, I-beams and cylinders, all encased in reinforced concrete.”

“So how do you get in?”

“Through a twenty-ton steel door.”

Jennifer nodded, satisfied.

“Okay. Then let’s get started.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

He set off, with Jennifer next to him and Sheppard bringing up the rear. She soon saw what he had meant about the two buildings. The atrium led to a corridor running left and right that encircled the vault with offices and storerooms giving off its outer edge. It was a narrow, constricted space and Jennifer recognized the same ruthless anonymity she had witnessed in other federal installations, the Bureau included. She was glad when they emerged, having turned right and then followed the corridor round until they were on the other side of the building, into another large space.

Here, the large steel shutters that had been set into the outer granite wall and the loading bays and ramps suggested that this was where bullion and supplies were moved in and out. Opposite the shutter, built into the vault wall, was the gleaming steel bulk of the vault door.

“No single person has the combination to the vault,” Rigby continued. “Instead, three separate combinations are required, each held by different members of my team.”

As he spoke he approached a console to the right of the door. On the other side of a plate-glass window that looked onto the atrium, Jennifer saw another two men step toward similar consoles. Ten seconds later there was a series of loud clunks as the restraining bolts retracted. With a steady mechanical drone the massive door began to swing back toward them, steel pistons gleaming and hissing like a steam train.

“It’s certainly an impressive setup.”

At these words, Rigby came as close to smiling as she imagined he had ever done in his life and she sensed that their earlier disagreement had temporarily, at least, vanished from his mind.

“Ma’am, I’m proud to say this installation is more secure than most of our missile silos. We’re in the middle of a fully manned army base. We have our own power plant, water system, and strategic food reserves. We have twenty-four-seven, three-hundred-and-sixty-degree surveillance. Nothing gets in or out of here that isn’t meant to.”

They stepped inside the vault and walked along a narrow metal platform to the elevator that took them with a low-pitched whine down to the basement vault floor. Rigby held the gate open for them. Jennifer looked slowly around her.

The room was like a massive warehouse, consisting of two floors built around the central space in which they were now standing. Each floor was divided into compartments with thick steel bars separating and enclosing the top of each compartment, so that they looked like a series of huge cages. And within each compartment, stacked from floor to ceiling, were thousands upon thousands of gold bars.

It took her a few seconds to realize that she was unconsciously holding her breath; fearful, perhaps, that the sound of her breathing might rouse the slumbering dragon who must surely be guarding such a fairy-tale treasure.

“Impressive, isn’t it?” Sheppard winked. “It still hits me right here every time I see it.” He clutched a clenched fist to his chest as Jennifer nodded silently. The gold was everywhere she looked, glowing and alive; a huge dull mass pulsing rhythmically in the flicker of the lights like the beat of a powerful heart.

“We have small shipments going in and out of the facility all the time.” Rigby cut into her thoughts, pointing at three large silver containers standing in the middle of the room, each about four feet long, two feet wide, and three feet high with the U.S. Treasury seal emblazoned across the front. “This is what the bullion is transported in. These are due to go out this afternoon.”

“Right.” She nodded, smiling. Complimenting his facility seemed to have transformed Rigby into the very model of interagency cooperation.

“But the items you requested to see are over here.” He led her toward a compartment on the far left of the room. As she drew closer, she could see that it seemed a little less full than the other cages and contained boxes and briefcases and files.

“As you can see,” said Rigby, holding up a large metal tag that was fixed to the door of the compartment, “each of the thirty-four compartments is sealed. When any seal is broken, the compartment’s contents are re-inventoried and resealed by the U.S. Mint.”

He snapped the seal off and, reaching into his pocket for a key, unlocked the cage and stepped in. He emerged a few moments later holding a thin aluminium briefcase that he held out to Jennifer with a nod.

“I believe that this is what you came for.”

“I’ll open it down here.”

“As you wish.”

Rigby carried the case over to one of the containers and placed it down flat on its side, its catches facing Jennifer. She reached forward and flicked the catches open, the noise echoing through the room like rifle shots. Imperceptibly, Sheppard and Rigby moved around to stand on either side of her.

She opened the case, only to find another smaller box, about eight inches long and six inches wide, inside it. It was covered in dark-blue velvet that had worn away around the corners, leaving them bald and frayed. The top had been stamped with the gold seal of the U.S. Treasury, now faded and dull.

Jennifer gently removed the box from the case and pressed the small gold catch that released the lid, her throat suddenly dry and tight. The lid snapped up, revealing an interior lined in creamy white silk that had been fashioned to snugly house five large coins, two along the top, three along the bottom.

But the box was empty.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cindy and Pete Roscoe were enjoying themselves. London had been impressive, Paris beautiful, but Amsterdam was fun. The coffee shops, the girls in the windows, the canals. It was as different from Tulsa, Oklahoma, as it was possible to be. Hell, the concierge at their hotel had even tried to sell them some pot. They’d both pretended to be shocked but secretly they were pleased. It had made their trip seem somehow more authentic.

Amsterdam was also a special place for Cindy, whose grandparents had fled from Holland in the 1930s. She had endured an emotional visit to Anne Frank’s house the day before.

“That poor, sweet girl,” she had sobbed into Pete’s strong arms, her mascara dissolving into spidery streaks across her face as the other tourists thronged around them.

Today was their last day and after a fortnight of trekking through museums and across cities, they had agreed that a relaxing guided tour around the canals was the perfect way to round off their trip before the long flight home. Ten minutes in, clad in matching Dallas Cowboys jackets with the open-topped canal boat slicing through the city and the tour guide pointing out the various sights, they knew that it had been a great idea.

Cindy, as usual, was armed with a guidebook of biblical proportions, a parting gift from her emotional mother at the airport that she now believed to be the gospel on all things European. Such was her faith in its pronouncements that she had developed an annoying habit of matching any guide’s commentary to that of her book and then whispering to Pete if they got something wrong or, even worse, omitted some crucial fact.

Pete, meanwhile, had mastered a knack of nodding and making the appropriate noises while only half listening to his wife. His priority, instead, was to capture as much of their trip as possible on film. So while Cindy had her nose buried in a book, Pete had his eye firmly glued to the viewfinder of the tiny digital video camera that nestled in his broad hands.

Since they had been in Europe, Pete had developed his own dizzying cinematic style as his camera swooped up and down buildings, or suddenly panned in or out, the image uncertain and jumpy. This time, as they went under a bridge, Pete attempted a particularly ambitious shot, zooming out from the detail at the top of a building down to a wide-angle shot of the canal. He then tracked slowly across, until he had framed the rows of seats ahead of him and the tour guide standing right at the front of the canal boat. He smiled. She was cute.

Suddenly, something at the edge of the viewfinder caught his eye. An ex-cop, Pete had learned to recognize when things did not look quite right and instinctively he moved the camera to the right so that the tour guide’s face now only took up half the screen.

It was not the agitated man with the tanned face and the shaved head in the phone booth just before the next bridge who looked out of place, but rather the two men in dark suits that had just stepped out of the large black Range Rover and were walking toward him. There was a repressed energy in their walk, an assured confidence in their manner that reminded Pete of a dog walking at the very limit of its leash, tugging on its owner’s arm. These two were about to cut themselves loose.

He zoomed in on the phone booth, past the tour guide’s face, just as the man in it saw the two approaching figures. The phone instantly fell out of his hand and his head jerked from side to side, as he weighed his options. But Pete could see that he’d noticed them too late. Hemmed in by the phone booth on one side and the men on the other, he clearly had nowhere to go.

The two men approached the phone booth and their backs came together like heavy black curtains as they reached the man, blocking Pete’s view. He kept the camera trained on them, hardly daring to blink in case he missed something. Suddenly their shoulders parted and Pete got a glimpse of the man, his eyes wide with terror, a hand pressed over his mouth to stifle his screams. An arm was raised and a long serrated blade flashed in the sun, hovering for a few seconds, its shiny surface silhouetted against the cobalt sky, before swooping down and diving into the man’s chest. He collapsed, lifeless.

The boat was almost level with the two men now and Pete widened his shot as they hunched over the body and went through his pockets. But just then, at the very moment that he was going to get slightly ahead of them and catch their actual faces, the boat went under a low brick bridge and they were lost from view. When Pete emerged on the other side, his camera poised, the two men and the car were gone.

“Holy shit. D’ya see that?” Pete whispered to his wife, his mouth dry with fear and excitement. He kept the camera trained on the receding image of the corpse that lay slumped in the embrace of the phone box’s shadow.

“Oh, I know, honey, isn’t it bad?” Cindy said, shaking her head disapprovingly. Her hooped earrings bounced merrily against her orange cheeks. “That was where Van Gogh used to live and she didn’t say a thing!”