The Double Eagle

CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

Jennifer flopped onto the bed, her shoes slipping off her feet and dropping noiselessly onto the worn brown carpet. She had not slept well the previous night even though they had taken turns during the drive from Paris. She felt drained, exhausted by the events of the past few days. She knew that this was partly due to the jet lag, partly due to the intensity of her investigation and subsequent reconstruction of the Fort Knox robbery, days of worry and lost sleep that she was still recovering from.

And, of course, the last few days had hardly been easy. An innocent man murdered, the coin that had been entrusted to her safekeeping stolen, a hasty and unauthorized flight to France with her prime suspect riding shotgun. And still so many questions. Who had ordered the Fort Knox break-in? Was Tom involved? How had one of the coins ended up in the stomach of a murdered priest? Who was behind Renwick’s murder? What was Van Simson’s involvement, if any? Where did Steiner and his murder fit in? Where were the coins now?

Try as she might to dismiss it, she was also forced to recognize that part of her exhaustion stemmed from the emotional burden of the mismatch between the Tom Kirk portrayed by Piper and Corbett and the evidence of her own eyes and ears. The same burden that had led her — head poundingly reminding her that morning — to drink too much the previous night.

In Tom she had seen someone who was resourceful, intelligent, and fiercely loyal. Someone who had, if you believed him, his own unarguable reasons for being who he was, for becoming what he had. She had realized that morning in the car that she had come to a crossroads. To trust him or not to trust him? To believe what she saw, or what people told her?

In the end, she wasn’t sure she had any choice. Without Tom, she never would have found Ranieri’s hideout or the newspaper and made the connection to Steiner. And he’d saved her life on that roof, she was sure of it. As for the Fort Knox job, she had looked into his eyes and seen in that instance, at least, the unblinking passion of an innocent man. No, she was quite clear in her own mind. Tom Kirk deserved a second chance. The question was whether Corbett would see it the same way.

“What are you doing?” She opened one eye, then the other as she heard Tom struggling to hook a rug around the corners of the large mirror that dominated the right-hand wall.

“People sometimes use this room to make porn movies,” Tom explained without turning around, still trying to secure the right-hand corner of the rug over the mirror’s chipped frame. “I’m pretty sure this is two-way glass for hiding a camera behind. I figured you wouldn’t want to take any chances.”

Jennifer sat upright, fully awake now.

“You’ve taken me to a brothel?” She slid off the bed and held her hands in front of her, scared of brushing against any surface that could have been soiled by the room’s previous occupants.

“It’s not a brothel. Just a place people go sometimes. Anyway, I know the owner. It’s clean and safe and no one will come looking for us here. Sorry they only had the one room, though. Don’t worry, I’ll take the floor.”

“Fine.”

Unhappy but not prepared to argue further, Jennifer sat back down. She reached down the side of the bed to grab the thick padded envelope that Corbett had sent over to the hotel as promised. She opened it and summarized the first few pages out loud, her left hand brushing hair back behind each ear as she spoke.

“Karl Steiner. East German. Forty-six years old. A former border guard. Suspected Stasi informer. Did time for armed robbery, handling stolen goods, usual stuff. Was implicated in several murders in Germany but they could never make anything stick. Moved to the Netherlands three years ago apparently to better serve his heroin addiction.”

Tom gave a short laugh. “Well, he came to the right place. What about the murder? What does it say about that?”

Jennifer turned over a few more pages in the file before answering.

“Not a lot.” She looked up at Tom over the top of the brown folder and shrugged. “Exactly the same injury as Ranieri, though he was on the phone when it happened. The call was traced to another phone booth in London. His wallet and keys were still on him, so even the Dutch police worked out it wasn’t a random mugging. They think it was probably drug related. Happens all the time apparently.”

Tom pinched his nose in thought.

“Well, we know different at least. We’re dealing with professionals here, trained assassins. They killed Ranieri and then made their move on Steiner. Probably counted on the fact that no one would link the two. The only question is whether they got what they wanted.”

Jennifer nodded slowly.

“You mean the coins?”

“Yeah.”

She consulted another typed page.

“I don’t believe it!”

“What?”

Jennifer, amazed, looked up at him.

“Apparently there’s a video of the whole thing.”

“A video? What do you mean, a video? A videotape?” It was Tom’s turn to look surprised. Jennifer nodded.

“Seems a couple of tourists caught the whole thing on camera. There should be a copy here somewhere.” Jennifer rummaged in the envelope until she triumphantly produced a cassette, a hastily scrawled label on the top side identifying it as Steiner — Video Footage in red ink.

Tom snatched it out of her hand and prodded the TV into action, its sleek black shape strangely out of place amidst the stained and ripped floral wallpaper and the laminate furniture, painted many years before in various shades of dark green. The built-in video player hungrily swallowed the tape with a low mechanical moan.

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

The hotel room was dingy and dirty. Stained green curtains clinging onto the rail by a few loose threads hung over a grimy window that had been nailed shut. The floor and the walls were lined in the same brown corduroy-effect material, no doubt the height of fashion when it had been laid in the 1970s, but now balding and flecked with the offal of its many occupants over the years.

The bed sagged in the middle like an abandoned trampoline, its bruised white headboard and pockmarked melamine side cabinets screwed to the wall. A Gideon Bible in the left-hand drawer had several pages torn out, the few black crumbs trapped between the Gospels of Mark and Luke and the heady smell of the remaining pages suggesting that they had been smoked one night out of desperation for a cigarette paper.

The ceiling had ripened to a watery yellow color, its sickly appearance hardly helped by the blotchy glow that emerged from the ripped and torn paper shade that engulfed the single forty-watt bulb in the middle of the ceiling.

But it served its purpose. People came and went without any questions being asked. Rooms were rented by the hour, by the day, by the week even — cash up front. It was easy to be anonymous there, to blend into the shadows, to slip in and out unobtrusively, unobserved. So he fitted in fine.

But he’d been there seven days now and was packed and ready to leave. He’d smoked himself silly, fucked four hookers, all of whom had reminded him in a strange way of his sister, and woken up each morning hugging an empty bottle of Jack and nursing a hangover. He’d almost proved to himself that you could have too much of a good thing. The mutilated Bible still bothered him, though. That was not right. That was not respectful.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out, flipped the cover open and pressed it to his face, the warm plastic nestling against his straggly blond beard.

“This is Foster.” His voice hinted at azaleas and whispering pines draped in Spanish moss, of long suffocating nights and alligator-infested swamps.

“Are you still in Amsterdam?” The voice was clipped, to the point. As always.

“Sure am.”

“Good. Stay put. There’s another little job I’d like you to do. Usual fee. I’ll call you in an hour.”

The line went dead.

Sighing, the man tossed the phone down onto the bed. The loose sheets swallowed it whole. He popped the catches of his suitcase and threw it open, lifting out neatly folded shirts and trousers from the lower half and placing them on the bed.

He reached into the case again, his hands pausing over the silky fabric that lined the inside of the plastic shell, before pulling it toward him. The Velcro holding the lining in place gave way with a reluctant rip and he folded it back, exposing the foam-filled compartment it had concealed within the lid.

The black Teflon sheen of his dismembered Remington M24 sniper rifle gazed silently back at him.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The screen glowed into life, darkness fading to light, the image jerking from the unsteady camera work.

A beatific sun smiled down through diaphanous clouds. The soothing hum of the tour guide’s harmless chatter and the swish of the water against the boat echoed in the background. The sights and sounds of the city, its bridges and canals and long narrow houses, drifted lazily in front of them.

Abruptly the mood changed. The sun disappeared, blotted out behind a tall building. The boat was plunged into shadow, the picture cold, the sky angry and portentous. And then, initially on the right-hand side but his face soon occupying the whole screen in terrifying detail, Tom and Jennifer saw Steiner. Saw his murder.

It was so quick. A man in a phone booth, two men silently approaching, the phone tumbling from his hand, swinging gracefully down and clashing against the phone’s metal base, the molded plastic shattering. Then the telltale flash of steel, a body lying crumpled on the pavement. In the background, the guide obliviously chanted her singsong commentary. A few seconds later and the tape ended. The screen was dark once again. A life extinguished.

They swapped a guilty glance, Tom shifting awkwardly on the edge of the bed, Jennifer swallowing nervously. He had been transfixed by the images, unable to look away as the knife dropped, as Steiner’s heart had stopped beating, as his life had spilled out onto the street. He could tell she had felt the same. That voyeuristic compulsion now hung over them like some terrible secret, a shared fetish that they were at once repulsed by and attracted to.

“Shall we have another look?” Tom was almost reluctant to suggest it, but it seemed unavoidable. Jennifer nodded silently.

He rewound the tape, pressed play and sat back down on the edge of the bed, trying to focus more objectively on what he was seeing. Steiner was easily recognizable from the mug shots and photo composites in his file. However, there was no way of identifying the murderers. The camera was never on the right side of them and by the time it was, they had both gone. Equally, it was impossible to see if the two men had removed anything from Steiner. At the crucial moment, when they had both been crouching over the body, the boat had passed under a bridge.

What was clear was that Steiner had recognized the threat as soon as they appeared. With good reason. They had murdered him in cold blood and in broad daylight in full view of a boat packed with tourists. It was a miracle no one else had seen them. In fact, if anything, it was almost as if they’d wanted to be seen. Either that, or they had been unwilling to risk missing him. They just took Steiner down at the first opportunity, whatever the consequences. These were desperate, dedicated men. Dangerous men.

Tom played the tape again, moving closer to the screen as if he was going to climb into the picture and walk right up to them all. A thought suddenly occurred to him. He stood up and rewound the tape again, pausing it just before Steiner had looked up and noticed the two men. Tom tilted his head, first one way and then the other, as if he were trying to see around the side of the image.

“What are you doing, Karl?” he asked slowly, more to himself than to Jennifer.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, look at him.” He walked right up to the screen and pointed at Steiner’s back. “Just before he notices the two guys. He’s facing the back of the phone booth, away from us. He’s bent slightly forward, his left arm leaning against the back wall, the phone jammed between his head and his left shoulder. What’s he doing?”

“Yeah, I see.” Jennifer got up and moved next to Tom. “It’s like he’s reading something. Or maybe leaning on the top of the phone with his right hand. Hey, I wonder if they found a pen on him?”

Jennifer flicked through the crime-scene report again, her eyes scanning the pages for the relevant section.

“Here we go.” She nodded. “Not on him, but there was one on the ground next to him. The cops think it must have fallen out of his pocket when the two men went through them.”

“You’re thinking he was writing something down, aren’t you?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, but what was he writing on?” She motioned to Tom to play the film again, advancing it frame by frame.

“You see,” she continued, “he definitely doesn’t put anything in his pockets or back in his wallet before the killers showed up and they then just killed him, searched him, and disappeared.”

“Meaning that if he was writing something down and the police didn’t find anything on him, then it might well still be down there,” said Tom, nodding in understanding. “Where’s the phone booth?”

“You must be kidding. It was nearly a week ago now.”

“Believe me, the Amsterdam police are not that well known for their efficiency. They’ve got a lot on their plate here. Let’s just go and have a look.”

“Are you serious?” Tom nodded. “Okay, fine.” Jennifer conceded with a shrug. “It’s on Prinze… I don’t know. How do you pronounce this?”

“Prinsengracht,” said Tom, glancing at the file. “Near the Hotel Pulitzer. It’s only about a fifteen-minute walk.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

They walked past the buzzing open-air cafés and ten-dollar caricaturists on Rembrandtplein, the air reverberating to faded Beatles songs and South American pipe music played by groups of itinerant street musicians. Then they cut across onto Singel, a human statue dressed as the Tin Man standing at the corner, his body shifting robotically every time change was thrown into the bowl at his feet. Finally, they made their way up Raadhuisstraat onto Prinsengracht.

Jennifer read the names aloud off the street signs fixed high above their heads, contorting her tongue around the clearly unfamiliar spelling and pronunciation. And all around them, the canal sparkled in the sunlight like a dew-covered spider’s web.

Amsterdam’s crescent-shaped city center was laid out in the seventeenth century, its canals originally a defense from invasion. As its importance as a trading port grew, so did the network of narrow streets and canals that fanned out from this crescent, a series of concentric circles that ended in squares where the city gates would have stood and been locked every night. Those gates were long gone now, and many canals had been filled in with the advent of the motor car and the desire to make the city more accessible to traffic. But the city remains unique, the Venice of the North, as it is often called. Four hundred stone bridges still cross over one hundred kilometers of canal, a delicate skeleton of water that binds the city together.

It was nearly five years since Tom had last been in Amsterdam. He’d been casing a job, of course. He’d taken the time back then to commit the city to memory as he did whenever he was planning a job in a new place. Its streets and landmarks, its shortcuts, its bars and restaurants, its idioms and idiosyncrasies. Its secrets. From his perspective, it was all about minimizing the risks, about getting the job done and getting away safely. Now that knowledge was rapidly being excavated from the archive of his mind.

It was obvious where the murder had taken place. A large white plastic tent had been hastily erected on the pavement, covering the phone booth and an area of about five feet around it like a temporary shrine, shielding it from curious eyes. The irony of that played around the edges of Tom’s consciousness. Steiner’s actual death caught on video, the scene of his death zealously guarded. Surely, if anything, it should have been the other way round.

The tent was itself encircled by a series of steel barriers, their thick metal bars interwoven with a series of white signs shouting POLITIE in large blue letters. Blue-and-white crime-scene tape snapped in the wind like the ribbons on a kite.

They approached the barrier and checked the street in both directions, but no one seemed to be guarding the tent, certainly not the police. Tom called out to make sure, but there was no answer from inside. Two girls, studs driven into their lower lips and noses, angry tattoos snaking across their midriffs and emblazoned up their backs, approached them, arguing. As they walked past, Tom casually checked his wrist as if they were waiting for someone who was late, before realizing that he’d left his watch back at the hotel. The girls didn’t seem to notice and when the sound of their voices had faded away, he nodded at Jennifer. Almost as one, they vaulted the metal barrier and slipped under the entrance flap to the tent.

Inside, the late-afternoon sun fought its way through the thick white plastic with a sickly glow. The air was heavy and wet, like a neglected greenhouse. On the floor, sawdust — now dried into thick black clods — had been scattered to soak up Steiner’s blood. The raw, sordid smell of death crawled over everything.

As all over Amsterdam, the back wall of the phone booth had been decorated with a collage of garish and explicit cards advertising strip shows, sex lines, and prostitutes. Naughty Schoolgirl Needs Spanking one claimed, Leather Lover Likes Licking another promised. It was a smorgasbord of sex; each girl pictured was more attractive and with bigger breasts than the next. Every whim catered for, every fantasy only a phone call away.

Stepping right into the phone booth, the shattered handset still dangling from its cable, Tom studied each of them carefully.

“Are you that bored?” Jennifer joked, the hollow echo of her voice throbbing in the deadened stillness of the tent.

“Not exactly,” he replied without looking up. “I’m just thinking that if he wrote something down, he might have just grabbed the nearest available piece of paper. There’s nothing on any of these, though.” He examined each one in turn. “But look. There’s a card missing here.” He pointed to where the back of the phone booth was showing through the dense patchwork of cards, a solitary island of black plastic amid a sea of naked flesh. “Are you sure they didn’t find a card or something on the floor?”

“The file would have said.”

“Well… that’s it, then.” His voice conceded defeat. “If he did write on one of these it must have blown away. Maybe he wasn’t writing at all. I guess we need to look somewhere else.”

He looked away, his face creased in disappointment. But then something caught his eye. A small flash of white — nothing more than a fleck. Stepping closer, he could see that it was the corner of a card that had fallen down the back of the phone.

He took his sunglasses off his head and using one of the rubberized arms, teased the corner out until he was able to pinch it between his thumb and forefinger. He drew it up into the open, the paper slick between his perspiring fingers.

It featured a blond girl wearing nothing but cowboy boots and hat, her breasts partially concealed by the invitation to Ride Me, Cowboy! Tom held the card up to the gap on the phone booth wall. It fit perfectly.

“I think we just got lucky.” He smiled.

“What does it say?” Jennifer stepped toward him.

She squinted at what had been hastily scrawled in the top left corner of the card. Numbers of some sort. Tom read them out: 0090212.

“What do you think it means?”

“I’m not sure.” Tom fluttered the front of his shirt to try and get some air to circulate against his skin. The plastic tent was trapping the heat like a sauna, the hot air slopping over them both like the backwash from a jet engine.

“An address, or a zip code?” she suggested eagerly. “Or a safe deposit box number?”

“Perhaps.” Tom was hesitant. “But you know in Europe double-oh is the international access code, not oh-one-one like in the States. It could be a phone number.”

“So what’s ninety and two-one-two?”

“Well, two-one-two is New York, isn’t it? But the country code for the U.S. is one not ninety, so that doesn’t make sense.”

“Isn’t that a list of country codes there?” Jennifer pointed at a laminated poster to the left of the phone. She ran her finger down the list, muttering under her breath every so often.

“It’s only got the major countries here, so it might not have it. China eighty-six… India ninety-one… Mexico fifty-two… Here we go. Turkey ninety. It’s Turkey.”

“Of course.” Tom snapped his fingers and grimaced in frustration.

“What?”

“I’d forgotten. Two-one-two is the city code for Istanbul.”

“So what are you saying? That maybe Steiner was in the middle of writing someone’s number down when he got killed?”

Tom agreed with a nod.

“Could be.”

“Maybe he was still searching for a buyer. Maybe he’d found someone there that was interested.”

Tom shrugged, his voice skeptical.

“In Istanbul? It’s possible, I guess. But it’s not an obvious place.”

“Well, can’t we find out who the most likely buyers are out there? If there isn’t a big list it should make it easier.”

“I guess so.”

A shadow fell over the tent, a dark silhouette projected against the white plastic that grew smaller as its owner drew closer.

“Wie is daar?” the shadow barked.

“Shit.” Tom slipped the card in his pocket and quickly searched for a way out. There was none. The tent had been firmly anchored to the ground, its skirt flush to the pavement.

A large gloved hand slipped through the doorway and gripped the entrance flap. Tom knew that this was not good. They’d used Jennifer’s contacts to bypass customs, taking a small, rarely patrolled road over the border. Technically, as in France, they had entered the country illegally.

What’s more, Tom had ensured that they did not have to fill out a registration card at the hotel, normally mandatory for all guests, the details uploaded onto national police databases every night. That was also illegal. Neither of them could afford a run-in with the law, not at this stage. The list of possible options ran through his head. In the end, only one was practical.

He grabbed Jennifer and kissed her.

CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

Kyle Foster could not remember a time when he had been without a gun. His fifth birthday present had been a gas-operated BB gun and his eighteenth a Magnum .45 with a specially engraved backup clip slipped to him lovingly by his mother. From that day on she hadn’t slapped him once, told him that he was a man now, that her work was done.

By the time he was twenty he’d tried just about every handgun, machine gun, sniper, hunting and assault rifle on the market and quite a few that weren’t. At least not legally.

It wasn’t just that he was a good shot, which he was, having served almost twenty years with the U.S. Army Rangers in their elite sniping unit. It wasn’t just that he enjoyed killing, which he did.

It was the hunt.

He still got that same feeling, that tightness in his chest, the butterflies in his stomach. He had first tasted the rush when out with his father hunting deer around the lakes near their farm in Mississippi. First reveled in the euphoria of the chase when he had had his face ritually smeared in blood from his first kill, still warm as it bubbled noisily from the deer’s throat.

The ultimate killer; that’s how he liked to think of himself now. Totally focused, totally in control, and totally lethal. When he was hunting, he was stronger, fitter, smarter than normal human beings. With his body, with all his senses working together in perfect harmony, bent to the kill, he could see further, hear clearer, smell more acutely.

Of course, he had gotten better. Of that there was no doubt. The rifle had given way to the gun. The gun to the knife. That was his favorite, now. That required real skill, real planning. Getting in close, seeing the look of surprise, of shock, of questioning in their eyes as the polished blade sliced into them.

He took the Gideon Bible out of the drawer and replaced it with the new one he had bought at the bookstore round the corner. It wasn’t his favorite version, but at least all the pages were there. That had to count for something.

He’d make tonight count, too. No opportunity to use the knife this time, he’d be too far away. It wasn’t that sort of job. No, tonight he’d be hunting with the rifle.

It was just like being out with his father again.

CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

Jennifer gasped in surprise, her eyes wide open. Her arms, trapped against his chest, tried to push him away from her. And yet her eyes fluttered shut, her lips parted. It was three years since she’d last been kissed like that.

An angry-looking policeman stepped into the tent, his pale blue shirt stained under the arms, the sweat trickling down the side of his head from under the edge of his peaked hat, its thin black visor rippling in the heat like tarmac in the desert.

“Stoppen,” he ordered. “Stop,” he shouted again when they ignored him. Jennifer looked up and squinted into the late-afternoon sun.

“This is forbidden area,” he said in halting English. Jennifer stared at the ground, hot waves of embarrassment washing over her. “Not for tourists.”

“Sorry,” Tom apologized. “It’s a mistake.” The policeman eyed them, his top lip quivering with suspicion, looking beyond them to see if they had moved or touched anything.

“You go now, yes.”

He held the flap open and they both stooped under his arm and vaulted the metal barriers back out onto the street. She could feel the policeman’s eyes burning into her back until they turned the corner.

They retraced their steps toward the hotel in funereal silence. Eventually Tom coughed out an apology.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t mention it.” Jennifer tried to sound casual, concentrating on her breathing, on trying to settle her stomach that was still turning over. In a way she wasn’t that surprised. After three years, a kiss — any kiss — was bound to make her feel strange. What did surprise her, though, was what she was not feeling. What she would have expected to feel. Guilty.

“No, really. I am sorry. It was just… well, you know. It was the only thing I could think of. I thought it would make us look less suspicious.”

“I’m not sure how much more suspicious we could have looked,” she shot back, hoping that manufactured anger would help disguise the tremor in her voice.

Tom raised his eyebrows.

“Well, you were pretty convincing.”

“Like I had a choice?” she retorted.

There was a pause. A bicycle thrummed past, black and old-fashioned with a wicker basket hanging off the front and lights powered by a small generator that hugged the rear rubber tire with a low-pitched whirr. They stepped out of its way, the rider signaling his gratitude with a ring of his bell.

“Jesus, it was just a kiss. Get over it.”

Jennifer stared defiantly into the distance as she walked, her heart still thudding in her chest.

“Listen.” She stopped, hands on her hips. “You know when I said that I used to see someone, that they left me, that they died. Well, I think you should know. I killed him.”

“Oh.” She could see from Tom’s face that for once he was lost for words.

“So for me, there’s no such thing as just a kiss. Not anymore. So just drop it, okay?”

“Fine.”

She wasn’t sure why she had told him this, perhaps to warn him off, perhaps to explain why she had reacted as strongly as she had. One thing was for certain, though. She felt a lot better for it.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

The phone, moist where the molded plastic had been pressed against his skin, trilled hypnotically in Tom’s ear. On the other side of the street, a man was selling sweets, weighing them out into small paper bags for the children clamoring around his cart.

Ring-ring, ring-ring.

He shut his eyes as he waited, resting his head against the phone booth’s glass wall.

Ring-ring, ring-ring.

Unseen to him, the flow of people heading out of Centraal Station thickened briefly as a newly arrived train spewed out its passengers, than thinned out.

Ring-ring, ring-click.

Tom’s eyes snapped open. As ever, there was silence from the other end. Archie always waited for the person calling him to speak first. It was his own primitive call-screening system.

“Archie, it’s Fel — it’s Tom.”

“Tom, thank God it’s you. I’ve been trying to call since last night. Where the hell are you staying?”

Tom, sensing the panic in his voice, ignored the question.

“What’s happened?”

“He found me last night.”

“Who?”

“Cassius.”

Tom’s response was instantaneous.

“Bullshit. You don’t know that. No one’s ever seen him.” But his tone was also hopeful. He wanted Archie to be wrong. Needed him to be wrong.

“I didn’t say I saw him. But it was him all the same. He told me that we only had a day left. That if you didn’t deliver he’d find me. Then you.”

“Shit,” Tom hissed, his voice muffled by the handset. His eyes flicked absently over the woman gesticulating in the phone booth next to him, her high-pitched voice vibrating through the glass. She seemed to be upset about something.

“You still with that FBI bird?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you playing at?”

“I told you. They think I broke into Fort Knox. I’m trying to sort this mess out.”

“And took what exactly?”

“Some coins. Expensive coins.” Tom sighed heavily. “I think they’re being sold to someone in Istanbul but don’t know who to.”

“Istanbul? That’s easy.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s where Cassius is having his off-site tomorrow night. It’s what these eggs are for.”

“So he wants the coins and the eggs for the same gig,” Tom breathed.

“That’s why he’s set the deadline. I told you before, the rumor is that he had some deal go sour on him and he’s lost a lot of money. He’s scraping together what he can, even throwing in some of his own stuff and calling in a lot of old favors to make sure it goes well. If he hasn’t got enough lots he’ll have to call the whole bloody thing off. I don’t imagine that would do his credibility any good.”

“Where?”

“It’s very hush-hush. Strictly invitation only. All I know is that it’s tomorrow night in Istanbul.”

Tom closed his eyes. The woman in the adjacent booth was crying now, small tears springing from her eyes, dropping to the galvanized floor.

“So are you up for this job or not?” Archie asked, his tone more insistent now.

“I’m still thinking about it.”

“It’s not a definite no, then?” He sounded encouraged.

“It was. Now I’m not so sure.” Tom breathed in deeply and leaned back against the glass door. The woman in the adjacent cabin had left now, her place taken by a blind man who had set his white stick to one side and was feeling his way round the Braille characters set onto each of the keys.

Tom didn’t say anything for a few seconds. When he did, his voice was thoughtful, questioning, even.

“You know, when I got back to the hotel last night, after I met you, I overheard Jennifer on the phone to her boss.”

“What was she saying?”

“It was just the tail end of the conversation. But basically that he could count on her to do whatever it took to get a result. That she doesn’t care what happens to me after this.”

“You see.” Archie was triumphant. “I told you. You can’t trust these people.”

“I know, but it doesn’t make any sense.”

“It makes perfect sense because it’s who she is.”

“But I can’t just leave and do the job.”

“Why not?”

“All sorts of reasons. I’ve left my watch back at the hotel for a start.”

“It’s just a watch. I’ll buy you another one.”

“My mother left it to me.”

“Well, go back and get it then. You’ve got time.”

“What about my gear?” Tom was searching for excuses like a drowning man fighting to keep his head above the surface.

“Everything’s at the usual place. I sent it over last night.”

“How did you know I would need it?” Tom almost whispered, his mouth suddenly dry.

“Because I know you, Tom. And I know you’re one of the good guys. I knew that you wouldn’t just abandon me.”

Tom pressed the receiver against his head. What choice did he have? He could probably look after himself, but could he really just abandon Archie to Cassius’s attack dogs? And how long before they caught up with him, too?

“I’m sorry, mate,” Archie continued. “I would have liked to believe her offer was real. That you had a real shot to get out clean. But you heard what she said. We’re on our own. We always have been. We have to do what’s right for us.”

“Okay.” Tom’s voice was ice. “You win. I’ll get Cassius his egg. Then we bail.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

Bob Corbett leaned toward the speakerphone, his white shirt collar pulling at his smooth, tanned neck as he strained to catch Jennifer’s voice.

“Say that again.”

“I said he’s out.” Jennifer’s voice floated into the room like expensive perfume. “I told him I had to do some stuff and to amuse himself for a few hours. We’re sharing a room, so he understood.”

“Okay, Browne, thanks. We’ll see what we can come up with on that Istanbul lead at our end. Call in later tomorrow.” Corbett pressed the button on the speakerphone and the line went dead.

“Sharing a room?” John Piper snarled, his face red. “What the fuck’s she thinking. Three days ago Kirk was our number-one suspect. Now she’s sharing a room with him? What sort of a show are you running, Bob?”

“It’s called a cover, John,” Corbett hissed. He wasn’t sure what she was thinking, either, but there was no way he was going to let Piper score points from it. “I thought you used to be in the field? You don’t always get to choose where you stay and who you stay with.”

He swiveled round in his chair and turned to face the other people seated opposite him. The early afternoon sun slanted through the metal slats of the blind, projecting black stripes across the far wall and the round table’s polished wooden surface.

“So. What do you think?”

FBI Director Green was the first to speak, his gray suit creasing round his shoulders.

“It seems to me like Kirk is really trying to help. The link to Amsterdam and now this Istanbul thing. It’s good work. Maybe we should offer him his old job back!” The other men around the table laughed. Everyone except for John Piper.

“Oh, yeah!” he said sarcastically. “He’s fucking great. Ever since Kirk’s been on the scene we’ve lost an eight-million-dollar coin, wound up with a stiff in London, and narrowly avoided a major diplomatic incident with the French. Let’s get real here. The guy’s outta control.”

Corbett drummed his fingers on the desk.

“Well, it was your idea to cut him a deal,” he reminded Piper in a low voice. Piper’s eyes blazed but Green cut in before he could speak.

“Calm down, John. Listen, no one knows what really happened in London yet, nor whose fault it was. As for the French, they always turn everything into a diplomatic incident. Makes them feel more important. I still say Kirk has surprised us all. His are not the actions of a guilty man.”

The noise of Corbett’s nails hitting the glossy wood grew louder.

“How do we even know what’s really going on?” Piper insisted. “I told you Browne was not up to this case. I know this guy, nothing’s ever what it seems with him. Now he’s got her believing he’s got nothing to do with all this. And let’s not forget he can still finger the president. We need him under lock and key now.”

Corbett halted his desktop tattoo.

“For once, John and I agree on something,” he said. “Kirk is a criminal. He can’t be trusted. He had the means and the motive to pull the Fort Knox job. If he’s helping Browne now, it’s because he wants something. When he gets the chance he’ll make his move. Then he’ll probably leak the Operation Centaur story just for the hell of it.”

Piper nodded at him. Corbett raised his eyebrows at this unexpected show of solidarity.

“You may well be right,” said Director Green slowly. “But given where we are, what other options have we got? Are you saying we should just pull her out? I still think that we have more chance of locating the coins and who took them with Kirk’s help than without it.”

“I’m not disagreeing with that.” Corbett nodded. “And I still think Browne will come through for us. She can’t afford to fail and she knows it. All I’m saying is that Kirk needs watching.”

“Ah want to cover all the bases here.”

Treasury Secretary Young leaned into the table and spoke for the first time since they had sat down, his bald head shining like a mirror, stubby fingers gripping a thick Montblanc ink pen.

“Let’s see what else they dig up together. You never know, they might get lucky. If Kirk becomes a problem then we remove him from the equation. Simple. Frankly, when this is over, Ah don’t care what happens to him. From what you’ve told us, John, he’s a dangerous man with a lot of dangerous secrets. If he’s behind the Fort Knox break-in, then let’s nail him for that. If not, then Ah’m sure you can find something else to pin on him. Centaur’s far less likely to leak out if he’s inside anyway.”

Corbett nodded.

“Meantime, we need to make sure that Browne has backup. John, can you arrange for one of our consulate guys to get over to their hotel and keep tabs on them both? And, Bob.” Young locked eyes with Corbett. “Ah want you to get a bag packed and a team ready. If your girl needs help, Ah want you on the next plane out there. We don’t leave our people swinging in the wind. Never have. Never will.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE

It was dark before Jennifer heard footsteps outside the room, followed by a knock at the door. Tom had been out well over three hours. She’d taken the time to relax, have a bath, shave her legs and under her arms, pluck her eyebrows and moisturize herself from top to toe until her skin radiated pH neutral hydration.

“Come in,” she called out.

“How did you get on?” Tom asked as he stepped into the room.

“Fine, thanks. What about you?”

“Oh, I just had a walk around.” Tom poured himself a glass of iced water from the jug on top of the dresser. “It’s hot out there.”

“Tell me about it. Haven’t they heard of A/C in Europe?”

“Oh, they’ve heard of it. Just don’t believe in it.”

“Any news?”

“I called a friend of mine to see whether he knew anything about this Istanbul link.”

“And?”

Tom disappeared into the bathroom and his muffled voice echoed out into the room.

“He said he didn’t know.”

He reemerged, fastening his watch onto his wrist and made for the door.

“You going somewhere?” Jennifer’s voice registered surprise. “You just got back.”

“Yeah. It’s just this thing I’ve got to do.”

“What?” She took a step toward him, put a questioning hand on his arm.

“I won’t be long.” He moved to leave but Jennifer sprang to the door, pressing herself against it.

“You’re not leaving without me. Not with everything that’s going on. Not unless you tell me what the hell you’re up to.”

“This is personal. This has got nothing to do with you or the coin.”

“I don’t care. You’re not going.”

“I’ll be back in a few hours. And I am going.” This time Tom returned her gaze without looking away.

Reluctantly, she stepped away from the door. What else could she do, tie him to a chair?

“Just remember,” she said as he reached for the door handle, “you and me, we’ve got a deal. You screw up, we both go down.”

He gave her a quick smile.

“Don’t worry. The deal means as much to me as it does to you.”

CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX

As soon as the door had closed and the echo of Tom’s footsteps had faded into silence, Jennifer slipped a black sweater over her silk top, swapped her heels for some sneakers, grabbed the room key and flew down the stairs and out onto the street.

She looked first one way and then the other, peering into the darkness, but the street was silent and empty. She was too late. Only a retreating bicycle light flickered in the distance like a buoy.

And then she saw him — a dark figure momentarily silhouetted against the red brickwork as a car turned the corner in the distance. It was Tom.

Jennifer held back, hugging the side of the street, catching a glimpse of the back of his head and shoulders every so often as he walked under a streetlight or past the blue glare of a TV in someone’s front room. She followed him over the bridge, past the serrated brickwork of the Waag on Nieuwmarkt Square and the dancing lights of the open-air restaurants dotted around it, until the unmistakable glow from the approaching shop fronts confirmed where he was headed. De Wallen. The red-light district.

A few hundred yards later, Tom knelt as if to tie his shoelaces, and then suddenly darted into a side alley. Jennifer broke into a run. She knew that if she lost him in these labyrinthine side streets she would never find him again. Her heart was pounding, her mind bubbling over with questions. Where was he going? Why now? And why couldn’t he tell her?

As the alley loomed closer she slowed to walking pace, flattened her back to the wall and edged her head around the corner.

About five feet in, the alley widened into a small square, with another alley on the opposite side leading out onto a street running parallel to the one Jennifer was now on. Three identical glass-fronted shops, their lights staining the cobblestones outside them a dark red, dominated the left side of the square. Opposite them, a dark concrete wall loomed up into the darkness of the night sky like a church steeple, the faded and peeling remains of an abstract mural dedicated to a long-forgotten World AIDS Day the only relief from its grimy blankness.

Tom was standing outside the middle shop, talking through its open door to its current occupant, a pretty young girl with sky-high cheekbones, tent-pole waist, and freshly minted silicone breasts. Her short blond hair bobbed playfully around her face as she talked, lips painted Chinese red, her bright blue bra, panties, stockings, and garters smoldering against her milky-white skin.

Tom bent toward the girl, who had stepped forward and was now leaning seductively against the door frame and whispered in her ear. She laughed, her voice pealing up the alley like a glass bell, her head thrown back so that her hair kissed the tops of her shoulders. As she laughed, Tom handed her what looked like several hundred Euro, discreetly folded so that she could quickly close her delicate hand around the clean, crisp notes. More than enough, in these streets, for sex.

Still giggling, the girl stepped aside and Tom brushed gently against her as he entered the shop. She followed him inside, closed the door and pulled the thick red curtains shut. A thin ribbon of light danced tauntingly around the window’s edge.

CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN

Jennifer walked unsteadily back onto the street.

“You bastard.” She mouthed the words, closed her eyes, pushed the back of her head against the wall, her stomach churning. She knew that really she had no right to be upset or even surprised. Tom was, after all, a thief. Why should she have expected him to behave any differently from all the other sleazebags she’d come across over the years?

And yet, she did feel upset. Upset with him because the little she had found out about him had made her hope for better. Upset with herself that, much as she hated to admit it, her instinctive response on seeing him go inside had been jealousy, not anger. She dismissed it immediately. But the feeling nevertheless remained, an uncomfortable ache in her stomach that she couldn’t quite get rid of.

“Hashish? Ecstasy? Co-ca-ine?” Jennifer looked up in surprise at the dreadlocked Rastafarian. In the darkness, she could only make out his wide, staring eyes and the fragrant smell of the joint that hung down from the corner of his mouth.

“No, thank you.”

“It’s good sheeeet.” He stretched the word, flexing it playfully between his teeth. And then, as if to prove his point, he took a long drag on the joint, his eyes rolling back in his head as he held the smoke in his lungs before gently exhaling through his nose, a dizzy smile on his face.

“No, thank you,” she whispered firmly.

Muttering and shrugging his shoulders, the man shuffled off down the street, the reflective heels of his white sneakers winking in the streetlights every time he lifted his feet.

Shaking her head, Jennifer peered round the corner again and gasped. The curtains of the shop that Tom had disappeared into only moments before had been drawn back. The blond girl, her blue underwear dyed purple by the red lights, had lit a cigarette and was sitting on a steel-and-leather stool in the middle of the front room. Ready, it seemed, for her next customer. What the hell had just happened?

Jennifer turned down the alley and walked slowly into the square. As she drew level with the middle shop, the girl smiled at her lazily, the smoke coiling around her coquettish head. Beyond her, in the rear room, the carefully folded white sheets lay undisturbed at the foot of the bed. The room was empty.

Jennifer sprinted across the rest of the square and down the opposite alleyway, emerging onto the street that it gave onto. There was no sign of Tom. He certainly hadn’t come back the other way past her. How had she missed him?

She retreated across the square past the blond girl, who was already in the middle of a negotiation with another potential client, back up the alley and onto the main street. What now? she asked herself. In the end, she knew that she only had one option: head back to the hotel and confront him there when he returned. If he returned.

“Hoeveel?”

“What?” asked Jennifer, startled by the large man who had suddenly appeared out of the darkness in front of her.

“How much?” he asked in accented English this time, lowering his face to hers so that his warm breath, laden with beer, washed over her face.

“What do you mean?” Jennifer took a step back.

“For a suck and a fuck. How much?” He gave her a toothy smile.

“No,” she said through clenched jaws. “You want to try down there.” She jerked her head back toward the alley just behind her.

“You know what they say. You’re not a man till you’ve had some tan!” He gave a wide laugh and grabbed her around the waist, lifting her a few inches off the ground.

Jennifer knew that a punch with the heel of her right hand against the man’s exposed throat would bring him down as if he’d been shot. But she didn’t hit him. Something she’d seen over the man’s right shoulder stopped her. A figure had emerged at the top of the steps of a house about fifteen feet away from her, the light from the hallway swirling out onto the street.

It was Tom.

Her brain clicked. The hooker’s shop must have had a connecting door at the rear that led to this house, presumably allowing people to enter or exit unobserved. But why had Tom used it? What was he doing there?

“Three hundred Euro,” Jennifer said to the man. He dropped her as if he had been bitten, his broad shoulders concealing Jennifer from Tom’s eyes as he looked up and down the street and set off.

“How much?” he asked faintly.

“Three hundred. Or back there, fifty.” The important thing was to stay out of sight until she could see where Tom was going. In front of her, the man was rocking uncertainly on his heels, his eyes darting from Jennifer, to the alley, back to Jennifer. With a sheepish nod he stumbled past her toward the alley and the girl in the blue underwear.

Tom was already fifty yards in front of her now. He seemed to be heading back toward the hotel. She could see that he had changed and was now dressed in black, with a large backpack slung across one of his shoulders that he hadn’t had before.

It was only then, when Tom veered off to the left, that she noticed him. A shape slipping between the shadows ahead of her. A shape that was following Tom.

CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

Typically, he would have spent several months planning a job like this. Getting to know the layout of the rooms, what systems were in place, where they were housed, how they were controlled and maintained. And also the guards — their names, their routines, their quirks, their weaknesses.

Tonight he did not have that luxury. At any other time this would have been an unacceptable risk. But this was different. Five years ago he’d spent two months in Amsterdam planning a job at the same place he was going to hit tonight. That time, his target had been a small Dürer sketch. He’d planned out the whole job, covered every angle, every eventuality. But then Archie had called it off. Apparently, the buyer had been murdered by pirates while sailing up the Amazon.

Tom had never known how Archie did what he did. How he seemed able to come up with blueprints and technical drawings and specifications for alarm systems. But he always did. In fact, Tom had never known Archie to be wrong when it came to a job. That was why Tom was willing to take the risk now. Archie said that the systems had not been changed since Tom had planned the job five years ago. He said that although the guards had changed, their routine hadn’t.

Besides, what he had seen that evening when he had quickly dropped in just before closing time had confirmed Archie’s view. Apart from the refurbished ticketing area and the installation of an extra set of fire doors on the second floor, everything looked the same.

It was more of a private collection than a museum, really, housed within four slender eighteenth-century houses that had been knocked together behind their picture book facade to create several large lateral galleries. Collected over the last fifty years by Maximillian Schenck, the sole heir of the largest retailing family in the Netherlands, it was an eclectic but immensely valuable collection of Impressionist and Old Master paintings, modern sculpture, antique furniture, and objets d’art.

And one of the highlights was unquestionably the Fabergé egg that Tom was going to steal that night.

CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

The man was definitely following Tom.

For a few minutes, Jennifer had thought that she might be imagining it, that he was just walking the same way. But as he darted between cars and behind trees, his head low, turning where Tom turned, stopping when Tom stopped, that possibility rapidly evaporated.

So Jennifer held back, careful to stay fifty yards or so behind as she tracked the two men in front of her, watching where she stepped, controlling her breathing, tacking from shadow to shadow like a small boat racing upwind. The instructors back at Quantico had taught her well.

They walked on, past cars that lined each side of the canal like a multicolored metal wall. And everywhere bikes, so many bikes, chained to trees and railings and lampposts and street signs. Even to each other. Every so often they would step past a bar or a basement peepshow and the barrel-chested bouncer standing outside would ask them if they wanted to come in as they each walked past, first Tom, then the man, and finally Jennifer, as if they were all part of some bizarre extended conga.

As they walked deeper into the city, the dull bass of the live bands playing in the depths of innumerable sweaty bars and the laughter of gap-year students staggering from coffee shops gradually faded into the distance. Instead Jennifer’s constant companion was the canal, flowing thickly alongside her, its surface dark and coagulated by the night.

Ahead of her, first Tom, then the man, turned right. Jennifer made her way slowly to the end of the street, wary of Tom turning back on himself, or running into the back of the man who might have stopped ahead of her. She edged to the street corner and looked cautiously around it.

But both men had disappeared.

CHAPTER SIXTY

At their lowest part, where the gabled rooflines angled down to meet the redbricked facade, the buildings on this street were four stories high. The large black iron cranes set into the top of each gable were the only evidence of their former lives as a series of merchants’ houses where grain would have been hauled out of barges on the canal into the storerooms on the upper floors.

A ground-floor entry into the Schenck Museum was always going to be out of the question. The windows were too exposed and besides it was too close to the control room, where the three guards gathered at night, one eye on the closed-circuit TV monitors and the other on the TV. A succession of gaudy quiz shows and translated American sitcoms filled the minutes between the patrol that two of them made through the building every forty-five minutes.

Tom knew it had to be the roof, but getting up there was almost as difficult. He could, potentially, have used a compressed-air grappling hook, but that was risky. Unlike in the movies, there was never any guarantee it would grip onto anything and he certainly couldn’t afford to have a titanium hook come crashing down onto the sidewalk from four floors up.

It only left one option. The old-fashioned way. The hard way. He had to climb up.

Tom settled his heavy backpack squarely onto his shoulders. He checked again that the street was empty and started up the far right-hand side of the building, well away from the video camera which was trained on the museum entrance.

To most people, the building’s sheer facade would have represented an impassable obstacle, but Tom knew that the building was old and the cracked and crumbling mortar gave a climber of his ability a succession of firm hand-and toe-holds. He moved smoothly up the front of the building, his fingers searching for first one handhold, then another, his feet driving him upward as they locked onto faint ridges in the brickwork. Every so often a decorative course of white bricks had been laid so as to form a narrow ledge allowed him a temporary relief.

Once he was about fifteen feet off the ground, he traversed a few feet across the side of the building until he reached a thick metal drainpipe that emerged at that point out of the brickwork and led up to the roof.

Below him a police car swung onto the street and made its way slowly past the museum entrance. Tom pressed himself flat against the wall, the brickwork scraping against his cheek, his left foot jammed between the drainpipe and the wall. The car drove by, paused momentarily, and then turned right over a bridge and down another street. Peeling himself away from the wall, Tom gripped the drainpipe and started up toward the roof.

Two minutes later he swung his right arm, then his right leg over the parapet and dragged himself onto the roof. He lay there for a few moments, fighting to catch his breath, his mouth dry and sour as his muscles leaked lactic acid. Overhead, the stars sparkled, brilliant jewels laid on a black velvet cushion. Just for a moment, Tom allowed himself to think again about what he was doing. He’d fought against this hard, but in the end Archie had probably been right. Much as he wanted to believe Jennifer’s promise of a fresh start, he couldn’t trust anyone but himself.

His watch beeped and snapped his mind back into focus. He was right on time.

Rolling to his feet, he grabbed a long black rope out of his bag. Securing it quickly to the parapet, he dropped it down the side of the building, the thin nylon cord nestling in the shadow cast by a neighboring tree. From the street it was almost invisible, but it gave him a quick way down. Just in case.

Behind the gabled façade the roof was flat, the original triangular roofline having been removed in the 1960s in favor of a starker, more modern look for the galleries below. As part of these works, a series of large skylights had also been set into the flat roof to allow natural light in. Tom padded over to the skylight set into the very middle of the building and crouched down next to it.

On cue, two guards appeared at the doorway of the large room beneath him and looked in, running their flashlights around the room. Nothing to report. As they withdrew, one of them suddenly flashed his flashlight up toward the skylights overhead. The powerful beam leapt up from the floor below and shone up through the glass like a spotlight. Tom jumped back from the opening and set the timer on his watch. He had forty-five minutes exactly until they came back.

He removed a small axle grinder from the front pocket of his pack. Battery powered and specially modified by him to silence the sound of the electric motor, it was ideal for etching into the glass. With a faint buzzing noise, he cut into its smooth surface, scoring the outline of a large square.

Replacing the axle grinder, Tom produced two Anver suction hand cups, aluminum handles with two large circular rubber sucker pads at each end of them designed to carry about sixty-six pounds of load each. Placing these against the glass, he eased down the black plastic lever at the center of each pad, creating a vacuum between the pads and the surface of the area of glass he had outlined.

This was the moment of truth. Get it wrong, and the glass would shatter into a thousand pieces. He jerked his hands and with a loud cracking noise the section of glass snapped cleanly out of the frame.

He was in.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

On the roof of the building opposite the one he’d just seen Kirk climb up, Kyle Foster unpacked his M24 from his bag and began to assemble it. Just for fun, he did it with his eyes closed, like they’d been trained to back at Fort Benning in Georgia.

First slip the barrel assembly into the stock. Then insert and tighten the action screws, locking in the trigger guard assembly. Then clip on the scope by using the half-inch combination wrench to tighten the front and rear mounting ring nuts. Finally insert the bolt assembly. Magazine in. Safety off. Good to go.

Foster preferred the M24’s bolt action to the PSG-1 or the M21’s semiautomatic mechanisms that spat shell casings all over the place. It was light, too, featuring a HS Precision stock made of a Kevlar, graphite, and fiberglass composite bound together with epoxy resins. Empty, without a scope, it weighed just five and a half kilos and had an effective range of about eight hundred meters. More than enough for tonight’s job.

He’d swapped the normal Leupold M3A 10x42 day optic scope for a Litton Aquila x6 night vision device. And just to make sure, he’d also clipped on a Harris bipod and an under barrel laser pointer. Double bagging it, as his old staff sergeant used to say.

His only real complaint with the whole package — apart from the well-known limitations of the M118 round, which used to drive everyone in his unit nuts — was the long action, which had been known to cause feeding problems if the rounds were not pushed all the way to the rear of the magazine. But as he grasped its familiar shape, the butt nestling snugly against his shoulder, his eye pressed up to the scope, such minor considerations faded into insignificance. He was only going to need one shot anyway.

Instead the memories surged.

El Angel Negro.

The dark angel, that’s what the locals had taken to calling him in Colombia. Not that they ever knew who he was, or even if he was human. Some said he was a ghost, carrying their children and brothers and sisters and parents into the forest never to be seen alive again, their mutilated bodies only found months later, buried in a shallow grave or strung high above them in the dark branches of the forest canopy.

“Why?” their innocent eyes had asked as he leaned over them.

“Because I can,” he had whispered. “Because I’ve been told to.”

Just like he’d been told tonight. The usual phone call, the clipped voice rasping its instructions.

“Follow Kirk. Stay close. Take up a position opposite. And don’t miss.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

Tom placed the sheet of glass down a few feet away, loosened the suction pads and replaced them in his pack. Then he stood up and walked over to the chattering air-conditioning vent that sat just behind the skylight, a small pool of water at its base where the moisture extracted from the room below had condensed and dripped to the ground.

Kneeling down, Tom lifted a small remote-controlled Ramsey ATV winch out of his pack and secured it in place by looping a rope around the vent’s thick neck and then clipping it onto each side of the winch. Although designed to be powered by a car engine, Tom had adapted it for battery power. It wouldn’t last long, but it would be more than enough for what he had planned tonight. He flicked the winch on and fed out several feet of slack from its drum, the narrow steel cable glinting like barbed wire.

Standing at the edge of the skylight, he put his pack on back to front, so the main compartment sat on his chest, and clipped the cable onto the rappelling harness that he wore over his black overalls, the metal buckles, clips, and hoops wrapped in black tape to minimize noise and cut out reflective glare. Finally he slipped on a black ski mask, the material molding itself to his face with familiar intimacy. He was ready.

Crouching, he levered himself through the hole he had cut, until his legs were suspended in the room below, the winch taking his weight. He slid a small piece of hardened rubber under the wire to stop it rubbing against the frame. Pressing the remote control, he was silently lowered into the room.

The gallery floor lay about twenty feet below him, with the room itself measuring about thirty feet square. The only doorway into the gallery led out to a wide corridor with access to the other rooms and the main staircase down to the lower floors. There were also three cameras in the room — one static camera covering the doorway and two tracking cameras in opposing corners covering approximately half the room each. The white gallery walls glowed eerily in the moonlight, the semi-darkness broken regularly by the periodic flashing of the small red lights that indicated that the three cameras were all functioning properly.

The gallery had been daringly hung with a mix of artists from across the centuries. Rothko next to Rembrandt. Modigliani next to Monet. On the left-hand wall, he could just about make out the outline of the Dürer sketch that he had been planning to steal all those years before.

Through the open doorway, Tom could also make out a faint green glow. He knew from Archie’s schematics that this was the control panel for the grid of infrared trip wires that would trigger if anything touched the floor. But the floor was irrelevant; he had no intention of touching it. So, too, was the static camera trained on the doorway, since he wouldn’t be going near that. But the other two tracking cameras, their glass eyes sweeping rhythmically backwards and forwards across the room every ten seconds or so, they would have to be dealt with.

Both cameras had been deliberately angled down toward the lower parts of the surrounding walls and the floor, their relentless gaze directed, understandably, at the actual paintings and sculptures and display cabinets that they were protecting. This meant that they took in perhaps only ten feet of vertical height at the most. Suspended just below the skylight in the middle of the room, therefore, Tom was out of the cameras’ field of vision and would remain so as long as he stayed high and kept his legs up.

Tom reached into the backpack and took out a small speargun. Usually kept on life rafts, the great advantage of the JBL Mini Carbine was its compact size, being only twenty-seven inches from tip to butt. Underwater, it had an effective range of nine feet, but on land and with a few modifications, Tom had increased it to twenty. He judged the distance from him to the wall over the top of the left-hand camera to be about fifteen feet, well within range. He took aim carefully a few feet above the camera, knowing that if he missed, the spear would crash down to the floor and set the alarm off.

As he steadied himself, he felt the familiar taste of carbon on his tongue, dry and metallic. This was common to most art galleries, the carbon filters installed to remove fumes and odors, but most importantly the sulfur dioxide generated by the exhalation of gallery visitors that could severely damage the paintings if left unchecked.

Swallowing, Tom squeezed the trigger and the spear flashed across the room, spooling a thin nylon rope out behind it as it slammed into the wall, burying its nickel-plated steel tip about five inches deep. Without pausing, he reloaded the gun, turned, and fired another spear above the other camera in the opposite corner.

With both spears in place, he fed the two pieces of thin nylon ropes that were attached to the ends of both spears through a metal tightener. Winding the small handle on the side of the tightener drew the ropes together until they were taut. He checked his watch. Thirty-five minutes left.

Tom attached himself to the nylon cord that was now stretched diagonally across the room and unclipped himself from the steel cable. Crossing his ankles over the cord, his back to the floor, he pulled himself across the room, the metal clip fizzing against the rope like a zip wire, until he was directly above the right-hand camera.

Reaching down, he clipped a small black box to the wire that carried the video signal back down to the control room on the ground floor. Once activated, this stored two minutes of video footage onto its small memory chip before switching into playback mode, overriding the input signal and transmitting its recorded images again and again until the batteries died about an hour later. He’d be long gone by then.

Tom switched the device on, waited the two minutes for the playback to start and then hauled himself back over to the camera on the other side of the room where he repeated the same procedure. Two minutes later and the room was effectively invisible to the guards downstairs. Twenty-five minutes left.

Tom heaved himself back along the nylon cord and stopped in the middle of the room. Looking down over his shoulder toward the floor, the square display case beneath him stared back. Through its glass top, the gold filigree that embraced the Fabergé egg’s green surface winked at him in the half light, urging him on. Tom grinned. He hated to admit it, but he was enjoying himself. The buzz was still there.

He clipped himself back onto the steel wire dangling down from the roof and, pressing the remote, lowered himself facedown until he was right above the display case, his breath gently clouding the glass surface before instantly evaporating. The case rested on an elegant brushed steel column that widened into a large square base that, ziggurat-like, cascaded down to the floor through a series of narrow steps and ledges, each about two inches wide.

Tom pressed the remote again and lowered himself below the level of the glass display cabinet, examining the sides of the metal column until he was only a few feet above the floor, his legs bent back to avoid brushing against its polished wooden surface. Right at the bottom of the column, just before the base widened out, Tom finally found the metal panel that he was looking for set flush to the surface and secured in each corner with four small screws. He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes left.

Slipping a slim electric screwdriver out from inside his jacket, he carefully unscrewed the plate, each screw sticking resolutely to the magnetized tip of the screwdriver as they came free, before he deposited them safely on the top step of the column’s base. The last screw came loose and Tom trapped the panel with his left hand to stop it from falling out.

But the sudden movement must have caused his right hand to shake a little, because the screw dropped from the screwdriver, hit the base of the platform with a metallic ping, and then rolled, with agonizing lethargy, down each of its narrow ledges toward the floor.

CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

Suspended a few feet over the floor, Tom looked on in horrified fascination as the tiny silver screw tripped and skipped its way from step to step, flirting with the final edge that would have sent it spinning to the ground and the alarm being triggered.

But it did not fall.

Instead it hesitated, its shiny head peeking over the edge into oblivion, before gently coming to a rest. Tom blew through his masked lips in relief.

He reached toward the screw with the magnetized tip of the screwdriver, picked it up and deposited it safely. Looking into the small hole revealed by the panel he had just removed, he could just make out two wires. As Archie had predicted, it looked like the supply to a fairly basic pressure switch that would trigger if the egg was lifted out of the case. Easy enough to deal with — he simply snapped a small metal clip between the two wires that cut down through the insulation to the bare wires underneath.

He pressed the remote control, and the winch drew him back up over the top of the display case. Reaching into his overalls again, he produced a small diamond cutter with which he etched a large round circle into the glass directly beneath him. Replacing the cutter in his pocket, he struck the circle smartly with the heel of his hand. It snapped free, dropping into the case and bouncing off the top of the egg.

Tom reached into the case and clamped his gloved fingers around the egg’s silky surface. Hesitating momentarily, he lifted it out of the cabinet, a gentle click resonating inside the glass case as he pulled it clear. But the alarm stayed silent. Although the switch had been tripped, the circuit flowed uninterrupted through the secondary circuit formed by the metal clip that he had fixed to the wires.

Forty minutes gone. Five minutes left. Just enough time to get out.

He slipped the egg inside his jacket and then, pressing the remote, was hauled back up toward the roof. As his head and shoulders emerged through the space in the skylight, he stopped the winch and used his arms to help pull himself through.

That was when he noticed it. A small red dot flush in the middle of his chest. Tom stiffened, transfixed. He knew what it was immediately. The laser pointer of a high-powered rifle.

The red dot slid up to his face, flashing briefly into his left eye and making him blink. The dot then danced around his lips, tumbled down his arm, skidded across his gloved hand until it finally settled on the winch’s motor. Whoever it was, they were on the roof of the building on the other side of the canal. Playing with him.

There was a single shot. The motor sheared apart in an eruption of hot metal and sparks and the cable spooled free, sending Tom flying backward through the gap into the room below.

Instinctively, he reached out and somehow hooked the taut nylon cord that he had run across the room under his left arm. It brought him up short and hard, wrenching his shoulder in its socket. He clung onto the cord, locking his arm into place by grabbing his elbow with his other arm, panting in fear and pain. What the hell was going on? Who was out there? How had they known he would be there?

The cord dropped a few inches; jolted by the sudden impact, the left-hand spear had been torn from the wall. As Tom watched, its barbed tip slowly worked its way through the wood and plaster, the cord sinking inexorably lower. He held his breath. Five seconds. Ten seconds.

The spear abruptly ripped free and Tom plummeted to the alarmed floor.

The room exploded into life on impact. The lights burst on, their damning glare blinding Tom as he lay on the floor. The alarm detonated, a sonic boom of high-pitched sirens and bells that swept across the room in a wave of sound.

He staggered to his feet, reached helplessly for the doorway, but a huge steel door slammed down in front of it, sealing the only realistic exit from the room. With the skylight twenty feet above him, he knew that there was no way in or out.

He was trapped.

CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

The sight of the red dot on the opposite roof had suddenly explained to Jennifer where the man following Tom had vanished to. And yet it had still taken a few more seconds for her, crouching on the museum roof where she had climbed using the rope Tom had left dangling down the side of the building, to realize what the red dot actually was.

Even so, when it actually came only moments later, the sound of the shot had momentarily paralyzed her. It was only the strident sound of the alarm from the gallery below that had finally prodded her to her feet and sent her scrambling toward the skylight where she now stood, hands on hips, looking down at Tom through the hole in the glass.

“Having fun?”

“You?” Tom’s voice registered his surprise, but it was soon gone. “Quick, get me out of here.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Look, it’s not what it seems.”

She took in the alarm, the shattered display case, the masked figure below her. It was exactly what it seemed. Exactly what she’d been warned by Corbett to expect. How could she have been so stupid to think that everyone else might have got it wrong?

“Oh, no?” She laughed coldly. “What is it, then?”

Tom ripped the ski mask from his head, his hair damp and ruffled. She could see his eyes, big and dark and perhaps even a little frightened.

“I have about ninety seconds before the guards get here.” He motioned anxiously toward the steel door. “I’ll explain later.”

“No, you’ll explain now.” Her voice was firm, unyielding. She didn’t even know for sure why she was listening, why she hadn’t just gone straight to the police when she found the rope dangling down the side of the museum wall. But part of her wanted a reason.

“There’s no time,” Tom pleaded.

“I’ve got plenty.”

Tom shook his head, looked away, then back up at her.

“The Fabergé egg I stole in New York was for Cassius. Do you know who he is?” Cassius? The name was familiar, but she couldn’t think where from. Then it came to her. Cassius was the Captain Nemo figure that Corbett had mentioned in the meeting with Secretary Young. The criminal mastermind he believed was behind a coordinated spate of high-end art thefts. She nodded. “Right, so you know what I’m up against. The job was for two eggs but I backed out of taking the second. You see, I wasn’t lying when I said that I’d decided to get out. But Cassius wouldn’t have it. He threatened to kill me and a guy I work with if I don’t get it by tomorrow.”

She remained silent. How could she believe him? The steel shutter rose an inch from the floor as it was jacked open by the guards outside, their excited voices echoing through the gap.

“Why didn’t you just tell me?”

“Would that have made a difference? Would you have let me do this job?”

“No.”

“Then what choice did I have? Do nothing and get myself and someone else killed?”

“We had a deal. You should have trusted me. I could have protected you.” Her eyes flashed coldly but she was more uncertain now. Despite herself, despite everything, she wanted to believe him.

Tom shook his head with a sad smile.

“I heard you the other night, Jennifer. On the phone to your boss. Saying that he could count on you to do whatever it took to get a result. That you didn’t care what happened to me. I have to look after myself. I can’t rely on you or anyone else to protect me. I never have.”

Jennifer flushed as she heard her own words played back to her. Suddenly the reason for Tom being so cold over dinner in Paris made sense.

“What I meant was that my only interest in you is my belief that you can help solve this case and that’s true. I’m not interested in who’s done what to whom in the past. As far as I’m concerned we have a deal, and I intend to stick to it as long as you do.”

The steel shutter was three inches off the ground now and she could see the metal toe caps of the guards’ boots under the gap.

“Maybe that’s what you think now. But when the time comes, things might not be so clear. You’ll have your career to think about. I couldn’t take the risk of being betrayed a second time.”

“So what were you planning to do? Steal the egg and then disappear? Where to?”

“It’s for an off-site that Cassius is holding tomorrow night in Istanbul.” Tom was throwing increasingly nervous glances toward the slowly rising steel door. “I was planning to go there and try and settle this once and for all. For Harry.”

“Istanbul?” Despite everything, she couldn’t hide the sudden interest in her voice. Istanbul was a link to the coins. Perhaps a chance to get them back and the people who’d taken them. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

“That’s why Steiner had begun to write the number down on that card when he was killed. Cassius was clearly lining up the coins for his off-site. He may have even had them stolen specially for it. The coins and the two Fabergé eggs are probably the star lots.”

“So what happens if Cassius doesn’t get the second egg?”

“He can’t afford to have people show up to the off-site and then not produce the items he’s promised them will be there. He’ll probably just cancel it.”

Jennifer’s mind was racing. If the off-site was canceled, she’d lose her best chance of catching up with the coins. The chances of ever seeing them all in the same place again after that were small. She needed the off-site to go ahead.

“Grab this.”

Jennifer threw her rope down to him, the heavy cord whistling through the air as it uncoiled. The steel shutter was almost a foot off the ground now and she could see someone struggling to slide under it sideways.

Tom grabbed the rope, heaving himself out of the room as the steel security door rose another three inches. His feet flicked through the hole in the skylight just as the first guard slid into the room and jumped to his feet, gun out.

Tom leaned forward on his knees, sucking air. He looked up at Jennifer, his voice like sand on glass.

“Next time, just throw the rope down, will you. We can chat later.”

“There won’t be a next time. There wasn’t meant to be a this time.” She pulled him to his feet. “Let’s get out of here.”

They made their escape along the roofs of the adjacent buildings, rappelling down to the street and then retracing their steps to the hotel. The two-tone sound of police sirens and a growing swarm of flashing blue lights faded into the distance, a faint echo in the still night air.

They were followed all the way, though, by a single, incredulous, pair of eyes. As they disappeared into the hotel’s entrance, he pulled his phone from his suit pocket. He spoke as soon as it was answered on the other end.

“It’s Jones, sir… It’s a goddamned circus out here… Kirk just broke into a museum and then some crazy tried to take him out on the roof with a rifle… no, he missed. Browne? I’m sorry, sir, but it looks like she helped Kirk escape.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

“Let me see it. Let me have a look.” Jennifer’s voice was strained, excited even. The adrenaline was still coursing through both their bloodstreams, their hearts beating fast, their brains fizzing as they arrived back in their room.

“Are you sure?” Tom eyed her uncertainly. “You’re in deep enough already. Maybe it would be better if you just left it at that.”

“I’ve helped you escape from a crime scene. How much deeper can I get?”

Tom nodded, then flashed her an awkward look.

“You know I really appreciate what you did for me back there.”

“I must be crazy,” she whispered, almost to herself. “If anyone finds out, it will finish me. You know that, don’t you?” Her large round eyes glistened as she spoke.

“Yeah.” He paused. “So why did you do it?”

“No egg, no off-site. No off-site, no coins.”

“So purely business, then?” Tom almost sounded disappointed.

“Just business.” She hoped he didn’t notice the hesitation in her voice. Because there had been another factor running through her mind when she threw down that rope, a factor that she barely wanted to admit to herself, let alone Tom. That part of her had needed him to believe that he could trust her. That they were in this together. Because she knew what it was like not to be trusted, to have people always doubting your motives and your actions. Because she was determined to give him the second chance that so few people, until Corbett, had been willing to give her.

Tom smiled, his twinkling eyes suggesting that he knew she hadn’t told him everything, although he didn’t press the point.

“Well, whatever the reason, it was the right one. We’re going to finish this together. Now, hold your hands out.”

He reached into his jacket and gently placed the small egg in her cupped hands.

“Oh, my God. It’s beautiful,” she breathed, stroking the egg’s smooth green surface, her fingers tracing the gilded flowers that snaked up its side from the twisted roots that served as its base. “What’s it called?”

“The Pansy Egg. It’s one of my favorites.”

“Why?”

“I’ll show you.”

He opened the egg and revealed a removable golden heart-shaped shield with eleven tiny doors, mounted on a delicately crafted easel.

“Each door opens to reveal miniature portraits of different members of the imperial family.” He opened a few of the doors. Somber, pale faces stared back. “I’ve always thought they look very sad, as if they knew what was going to happen to them.”

“You’re talking about the Russian Revolution?”

“I’m talking about the Bolsheviks murdering them and then confiscating the collection and selling it to finance Stalin’s army. For me, this one piece tells me more about the history of Russia than a thousand textbooks. It’s all here. The glory and the horror.”

“How many eggs are there in all?”

“Fabergé only made fifty. Eight have been lost. The Armory Museum in the Kremlin still has ten and a Russian billionaire recently bought nine from the Forbes family. The rest are in the hands of other museums and private collectors.”

“Haven’t you ever been tempted to keep all these things you’ve taken over the years for yourself?”

“Never.” Tom smiled. “It’s one of the first rules you learn. You do the job and then you move on. You can’t afford to fall in love with whatever it is you’re taking.” He held out his hand and reluctantly she handed the egg and the shield back. Tom wrapped up the egg and put it down on the dresser. “Let’s check in with Archie.”

“Who?”

“A colleague.” She sat down on the bed next to him as he dialed. “It’s me,” he said when the phone was answered.

“Are you all right, mate? Is there a problem?” Archie’s concerned voice filtered back down the phone.

“No, I’m fine. I’ve got it.”

“You’ve got it. Oh, thank fucking God. Well done, mate. Well fucking done.”

“Thanks,” said Tom, smiling at his friend’s relief.

“Any problems?” Archie had calmed down now and his tone was more businesslike. Tom gave a short laugh.

“You could say that. Archie, did you let anyone know that I was going to hit that place tonight?”

“Of course not. What do you take me for?”

“Okay, okay.”

“Why, what happened?”

“Well, as I was coming out—”

“Oh, bugger me!” Archie interrupted. “I did mention it to someone. Not where you were going to hit exactly but the city it was in.”

“Who?”

“The other night. Cassius.”

“Cassius? For Christ’s sake Archie. Who’s side are you on?”

“I know, I’m sorry. He caught me by surprise. Why, what happened?”

“Someone shot my winch out to try and get me caught.”

“Why the hell would Cassius get you to half-inch something, then make sure you got pinched nicking it? It doesn’t make any sense. It must be someone else.”

“Maybe.”

“How did you get out?”

“Jennifer.”

“The fed? You having me on?”

“No.”

“What’s her game? She must want something.”

“Maybe.” Tom eyed Jennifer, who was listening to his side of the conversation avidly. “I’m not sure of anything anymore. We’ll talk about it later. Anyway, I’ll leave the egg with Fleure in the morning together with my kit. You can take it from there.”

“No problem. Oh, and, Tom?”

“Yeah.”

“Cheers.”

“Don’t mention it.”

The line went dead. Tom turned to face Jennifer.

“Did you get all that?”

She nodded, her face serious.

“Archie, who I’m assuming is your fence, told Cassius about this job.” Tom nodded. “Now you think Cassius deliberately tried to have you trapped in that museum. And you don’t know why.”

“Do you?”

“The answer’s in Istanbul. It must be. I’ll get us down there in the morning,” she said calmly. “Max will take care of the details.”

“Don’t you need to call your boss? Let him know what’s happening?”

“I will. But for now, we should both get some rest.” She paused, looked him in the eye. “By the way, who was that girl?”

“What girl?”

“Back there. The blond one with the Victoria’s Secret dress sense.”

“That’s Fleure, the girl I’ve got to deliver the egg to in the morning. She’s just someone I know. Someone I can rely on. Why? You jealous?” Tom asked with a grin.

“You wish!” She shrugged the question away. “Now, do you want to flip a coin for who gets the floor?”

“No need,” Tom said generously. “The bed’s all yours.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

Behind the garden’s thick walls the clattering of the trams, the incessant sounding of car horns and the fierce cries of the street traders gave way to a cool, stony stillness and the gentle rattle of dice on large and elaborately inlaid backgammon boards. Several enterprising locals had arranged brightly covered cushions and kilims on the benches and hung rugs from the walls. These were subtle traps, designed to tempt a few of the garden’s many guests into one of the stalls that had been set up in the small cells that had served as classrooms when the garden still housed the medrese, or Islamic school, of the neighboring mosque.

As always, the air was thick with smoke from the water pipes, a sickly sweet concoction of apple-flavored tobacco laid on top of an endless supply of red-hot coals dispensed by a leathered old man who shuffled between the tables with sepulchral resignation. As the tobacco smoke was drawn down through the clear water, the gentle rumble of bursting bubbles rippled through the air like a large purring cat.

“Why do they do that?” asked Jennifer, as they sat down in the far corner of the garden, waving away the rug sellers who had immediately zeroed in on them as possible buyers of “genuine” Turkish kilims.

“It cleans the smoke. Cools it down,” Tom explained.

“You’ve been here before?”

“I spent some time here once,” said Tom, trying to attract the waiter’s attention.

“You’ve spent time in a lot of places,” Jennifer observed.

“More than is healthy,” Tom agreed. “What do you want? Apple tea or coffee? Just so you know, the apple tea is so sweet that it makes your teeth feel like they’re about to fall out. But on the other hand, the coffee is so bitter that it will make you grind your teeth together.”

“Oh, my, what a choice.” She rolled her eyes. “The coffee, I think.” Tom ordered a tea and a coffee and they appeared moments later, the tea steaming in a small curved glass, the viscous coffee bubbling like molten lead in its porcelain crucible.

“So why are we here?” asked Jennifer, sipping her coffee and looking around her, gratefully feeling the hard slap of the caffeine against her brain. The garden was busy but far from full, and she was aware of suspicious glances from the small groups of Turks who had gathered around the low tables to drink and smoke.

“Because we need information and this is the place to get it,” Tom explained, stretching his feet out on the bench.

Jennifer had called Corbett first thing that morning, insisting that the call be patched through to his house even though it was about three A.M. She’d told him what Tom had found out. That there was an illegal auction taking place in Istanbul and that they were both headed out there in case the coins surfaced. He had agreed with her plans and told her to be careful. They had caught an eleven A.M. flight out from Amsterdam that morning. It had been an awkward journey, both of them aware that what had happened at the museum had changed the relationship between them, yet neither of them quite yet able to understand how.

There was a sudden commotion near the garden entrance. Two large men clad in mirrored sunglasses and shiny gray suits, the material embroidered with silvery specks, strode into the garden and quickly scanned its occupants. Seemingly satisfied, they looked over their shoulders and nodded.

In swept a little barrel of a man that Jennifer took to be their boss. His face was almost entirely taken up by a thick bulbous nose and a wild black beard that matched his wavy jet black hair. She thought they both looked dyed. His eyes were hidden under thick-rimmed tortoiseshell Ray Bans, the maker’s logo printed on the corner of the left-hand lens so that their designer pedigree could not be doubted. He wore a heavy black leather jacket, the top three buttons of his black silk shirt left undone, his wrists and open-shirted neck glinting with thick knots of gold chains.

Two more men followed him in, each taking up strategic positions around him, their left armpits bulging tellingly. The waiter fussed nervously around their boss, showing him to the largest, most shaded table and unceremoniously shooing its objecting occupants across the floor, a well-aimed kick sending one of the more vocal protesters sprawling.

“Who’s that?” Jennifer hissed.

“Amin Madhavy. A liar and a thief,” said Tom quickly.

“Friend of yours, then?”

“How did you guess?” Tom winked. “Come on. We’re on.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN

The bodyguards, too busy ordering their own drinks, did not see Tom until he was only a few feet away.

“Madhavy-bey.” Tom used the respectful epithet that Turks reserved for formal greetings. “Have you returned for another lesson?”

A frown flickered across the man’s face. He did not look up, instead stirring first one, then two, then three spoons of sugar into his coffee.

“Kirk-bey,” he said eventually, mirroring the polite greeting, his high-pitched voice heavily accented. He looked up and the frown melted into a smile. “Welcome.”

The bodyguards, who had spun round at the unexpected sound of Tom’s voice, reaching inside their jackets, relaxed. Madhavy waved them away contemptuously.

“It’s too late now, you incompetent fools,” he snarled. “I would already be dead if he’d wanted to kill me.” He relaxed into a smile again. “I don’t know why I bother.” He shrugged, indicating the padded bench opposite him to Tom. “Come. Join me.”

He eyed Tom carefully as he sat down, his coffee cup dwarfed by his thick brown hands, gold rings glittering on each finger like expensive armor.

“So what brings you back to Istanbul?” He took his sunglasses off and his dark brown eyes twinkled mischievously. “Which poor soul will have the misfortune of your visit this time around?” Tom shook his head.

“Haven’t you heard? I’ve retired.”

“Ha! You must think me a fool.”

“I’m serious.”

“What are you doing here, then?”

“Actually, I’m looking for something. Well, somewhere really.”

“Ah!” Understanding flashed across Madhavy’s face. “And you need my help.”

“This is your city, Amin. Who else can I ask?” Madhavy nodded his agreement, his eyebrows rising.

“This is true.”

“Do you know anything about a sale that is taking place tonight? An auction of art.” Tom leaned forward. “Expensive art.”

Madhavy set his cup down.

“So.” He rested his hands on his wide stomach. “That is what brings you back. I know of it, of course, but the location is secret. Very secret. No one really knows where it is taking place. Not even I.” He clasped his hand to his chest to illustrate his hurt. “I would love to be able to help you, old friend, but… ” He shrugged his shoulders. Tom knew Madhavy well enough to see where this was leading.

“Okay, old friend. What do you want? Name your price.”

“My price! You think that Amin Madhavy can be bought?” He raised his voice and looked around him in indignation. Satisfied that enough people had heard him, he leaned forward and whispered, “A rematch.” Madhavy’s tone had an urgent edge now and he shuffled forward to the edge of his seat. “Last time, I couldn’t show my face for months. People were laughing at me. At me.” Madhavy flashed an incredulous look around the garden. “This time you will not be so lucky.”

Madhavy motioned with his hand and a large backgammon board appeared from nowhere and was placed on the low table between them. Tom smiled.

“Very well. First to five points, given I’m in a hurry. I win, you tell me the location. You win and… what happens if you win?”

Madhavy pointed at Tom’s wrist.

“I win, I get your watch.”

Tom hesitated. His watch. The watch his mother had left him. But what choice did he have? The auction was that evening, only hours away.

“Fine,” Tom conceded.

As they had been talking, Jennifer had drawn close to the table, and the bodyguards — clearly stung by Madhavy’s earlier criticism — responded this time with drawn weapons and loud shouts.

“She’s with me,” said Tom without looking up as he quickly arranged his pieces on the board. Madhavy grunted a few words and the bodyguards let Jennifer through to the table.

“Thanks for nothing,” she said reproachfully to Tom.

Madhavy laughed at her obvious annoyance.

“Woman trouble?” he asked, his voice tinged with mock concern. “I hope you won’t get distracted.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. It’ll take more than that for you to beat me. Let’s play.”

CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

An eerie quiet had descended around them as the game started. The bodyguards, sensing Madhavy’s tension, had drawn closer to the table, trying to keep one eye on the game and one eye on the rest of the garden.

They both played in the Arab style, violently flicking the tiny dice with their thumbs across the board, flashing the pieces around before most people would have had a chance to even see what they had rolled, let alone work out the best move.

Backgammon, or shesh-besh, as the Arabs call it, is one of the world’s oldest board games. To the inexperienced player, it is a game of luck, the dice cruelly dictating your moves, strategy a hostage to fortune. But to a player like Tom, the role of chance was relegated to that of willing accomplice. Where Tom drew his tactical advantage was by allying his mathematical mind and his understanding of probability with his ability to bluff.

The modern game is played with a doubling dice, allowing you to double the stake or points in play. Failure to bear off any pieces by the time your opponent has finished is known as a gammon and further doubles whatever has been staked on the game. Leaving a piece on the bar by the time your opponent has finished is known as a backgammon and triples the stake. Knowing when to accept, reject or even double back — the equivalent of raising in poker — is therefore as important as the positioning of your pieces. If not more so.

Madhavy started well, rolling a six and a one to form a vital point just outside his home board. Then on his next throw he got a double six, the double entitling him to four moves of six rather than the usual two, allowing him to move his two pieces out of Tom’s home board and close off another point.

Given Madhavy’s strong start, Tom was not surprised when he doubled him on his next turn. Normally, he would probably have refused the double, preferring to lose the one point rather than risk two. But this wasn’t a normal game.

To Madhavy’s thinly concealed delight, therefore, he accepted the double and a few moves later lost the game. Usually each game was worth a point, but with Tom having accepted the double this one was worth two.

“I win,” crowed Madhavy, punching the air. “Two points. You have lost your touch.”

“You were lucky,” said Tom, swiftly rearranging his pieces. “It’s first to five, don’t forget.”

Madhavy bent his head back down toward the board and his earlier jubilation seemed to evaporate as a swift exchange of pieces raised the excited murmur of the growing crowd of onlookers. Mindful of how the game was evolving, Tom quickly settled on a back game, placing his pieces in blocking positions and then waiting for an opportunity to hit Madhavy as he tried to bear off. It was a risky but potentially devastating strategy.

As Tom had planned, it wasn’t long before Madhavy, cursing his misfortune in rapid-fire Turkish, was forced to leave a piece exposed. Sensing his opportunity, Tom doubled him, but Madhavy, clearly fancying his odds, immediately doubled Tom back. In a few seconds it had gone from a one-point to a four-point game.

Tom stared Madhavy in the eye as he flicked the dice, not bothering to look down to see what he had rolled. The gasps from the enthralled crowd and Jennifer’s low whistle were sufficient. He had hit him.

With Tom having blocked all the points in his home board, Madhavy was now frozen out of the game, his piece stranded on the bar. All he could do was watch stonily as Tom swiftly bore off almost half his pieces before he was able to get back on the board and begin to bear off himself. Madhavy angrily conceded the game. Four-two to Tom.

CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

Madhavy snarled out an order for another coffee and snapped at one of his bodyguards for talking. Tom knew now that Madhavy couldn’t afford to make a single mistake or he would lose. And, according to the rules, there was no opportunity to use the doubling dice anymore, with Tom being only one point from victory. Madhavy had no choice but to win three games in a row. No wonder he looked rattled.

The muttering onlookers, crowded round them in a tight, jostling circle, were feeding hungrily on the tension. Tom studied Madhavy’s face thoughtfully, took in his bulging eyes, the nervous fidgeting with his beard, the oily slick of sweat on his forehead, the continuous wetting of his lips. Madhavy looked up and returned Tom’s stare, smiling apprehensively. Tom could see that Madhavy was on show here, in front of his own people. He had to play this very carefully.

The next game started with a balanced exchange of moves between the two players, no real advantage accruing to either of them. About four rolls in, though, a succession of poor throws forced Tom to change his strategy to an all-out blitz of Madhavy’s pieces. Death or glory.

Madhavy reacted well, striking Tom back and with a few doubles closing out most of the points in his home board. Tom suddenly found himself in a very difficult position, his pieces strung out over the board like a ragged necklace.

Three rolls later and Tom was in the same position Madhavy had faced in the previous game — frozen out — except that he had three pieces off the board while Madhavy had only had the one. Madhavy swiftly bore off his pieces, Tom eventually getting one, then another, piece back on. With only four pieces left to bear off, Madhavy’s anxious face relaxed into a grin. He rolled. Boxcars — a double six.

He purposefully took the final four pieces off the board and looked up at Tom, smiling. Tom still had one piece on the bar. Backgammon. Three points to Madhavy and therefore the match.

The small crowd around them erupted into applause and Madhavy energetically shook Tom’s hand, all smiles now. His bodyguards slapped him on the back, the tea garden manager fussed round him appreciatively, and he waved regally at the chattering crowd, who nodded their appreciation back. Tom Kirk beaten. It would be the talk of the town.

“Well done,” said Tom.

“Better luck next time, Kirk-bey.” Madhavy didn’t bother to mask his elation. Tom loosened the watch strap from his wrist, took a last regretful look at it, and handed it over to Madhavy. He accepted the watch with both hands and then held it over his head like a small trophy. Again the small crowd clapped and cheered.

“Come on. Let’s go,” Tom whispered to Jennifer.

“Go? Is that it? We didn’t even… ” She tailed off as she caught Tom’s glare.

“But we didn’t find anything out,” she whispered into Tom’s ear as they stood up. “What about the off-site?” Tom didn’t say anything, steering her instead toward the exit with a firm hand on her elbow. But just as they were about to leave, Madhavy called after them.

“Kirk-bey, wait.”

He walked up to them, leaving his admirers chatting excitedly in the middle of the garden.

“Come, let us part as friends.” He held his hands out and gave Tom a long hug, his head over Tom’s left shoulder, his arms around his waist, before shaking his hand again.

“Until next time,” Madhavy called after them as they walked out into the late-afternoon heat.

“What the hell was all that about?” Jennifer asked as they immersed themselves in the street’s clamoring tumult. The older men were clad in suits and neatly trimmed moustaches, the youngsters clean-shaven and wearing designer jeans and shirts. The women were smart, dressed in this year’s Italian fashions and last year’s Hollywood haircuts. Mobile phones were on show everywhere, clipped to belts or hung round necks like expensive necklaces. Stalls sold dates and orange juice, while others boasted Iznik pottery and Islamic prayer beads.

“Have you ever heard of the Cistern of Theodosius?” Tom asked her, an amused look on his face. He swerved past a marble block, the remnant of some ancient temple or pillar that had been left to rot at the side of the road.

“The Cistern of what?” She screwed her face up in confusion. “Wait a minute. Is that where it’s happening? Did he tell you?”

Tom nodded.

“He whispered it when he said good-bye.”

“Even though he won?” Tom nodded “Why?”

“I guess he was being gracious in victory.”

“You mean you lost deliberately?”

“The last time I played him, I won twenty games in a row. Ended up with his Mercedes. I heard he didn’t play for two years after that. I just figured he would be more likely to tell me if I lost convincingly than if I beat him again. Especially with all his people looking on. It wouldn’t look good to lose face twice.”

“But what about your watch? Didn’t you say your mother gave you that?”

“Oh, it was for a good cause. Besides,” Tom reached into his jacket pocket. “I don’t think I’ll miss it.” Grinning, he held his watch out.

Jennifer held her hands up in disbelief.

“How?” was all she could muster.

“Madhavy started out as a pickpocket before he hit the big time,” he explained as he strapped the watch back on. “I guess that makes him as good at putting stuff back into pockets as taking them out. If I know Amin, while he was happy to take the win, his sense of honor wouldn’t let him keep the watch without winning it fair and square. You see, despite what you might think, not all thieves are robbers.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY

The dark waters of the Golden Horn, the wide harbor that separates Europe on one side from Asia on the other, East from West, Christianity from Islam, were stained pink by the setting sun. And a lone, chanting voice rose clearly through the thin air.

“Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar… Ash’hadu ān lā ilaha illa-llah… Ash’hadu ānna Mūhammadār rasūlu-llah.”

The words fell from the neighboring minaret only to be buffeted joyfully across the jagged rooftops as first one, then another, then another voice took up the same chant. The haunting sound of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer spread and rose over the city like a forest fire fanned by a hot summer wind.

“How long are we going to wait here?” Jennifer asked.

“Not long. Just until it’s dark.”

They were both sitting in the dark blue BMW that they had rented at the airport. Outside, the light was beginning to fade and the last few stragglers were hurrying to their nearest mosque.

“So, what is the Cistern of Theodosius?” Jennifer settled back into her seat and turned the air-conditioning up a notch.

“When the Romans were here they built huge aqueducts to bring fresh water to the city,” Tom explained. “The cisterns were underground reservoirs, built to store the water once it had got here. There are several of them all over the city, although they’re all disused now.”

Jennifer nodded thoughtfully. They were both silent as the sun finally sank below the horizon and the water was plunged into blackness, its surface oily and dark. A small white bird landed on the front of the car and hopped about on the smooth blue metallic surface as if it were a shallow puddle.

“Tom, there’s something I want to tell you.” Her eyes were full, her voice unsteady. “Something I think you might understand. I’d rather you heard it from me than anyone else. I just don’t know how to begin.”

Tom turned round to face her, pulling one of his legs up underneath him, his face suddenly serious.

“You know, the Byzantines closed the mouth of the Golden Horn with a thick chain to stop anyone invading by sea. But when the Arabs got here they just took their boats out of the water and moved them overland on rollers and slides before launching them back into the water on the other side. A few years later and the city was theirs.” She was silent. “You see, sometimes, the largest obstacles can be easily overcome if you just don’t approach them head-on,” Tom added gently.

She smiled and nodded, then took a deep breath.

“You remember I told you that there used to be someone. That he’d died. That I’d killed him. I wasn’t joking, you know?”

Tom said nothing.

“His name was Greg. I met him at the Academy. He came to give a talk about a case he’d worked. I’ll never forget when he came into the classroom. He was so confident and determined and strong.”

Jennifer spoke quickly. Although she sounded excited, her eyes were dead. They looked straight ahead as she talked, absently tracking the small white bird as it bounced along the paintwork. Tom listened in silence.

“A few weeks later, he came to find me. Asked me out.” She flashed Tom a look as she said this. “We started dating. It was good. He made me feel good.” Now the images came back thick and fast; images that she tried not to think about. Greg smiling across a restaurant table. Greg laughing as he slipped an ice cube down her back. Greg lying in a pool of his own blood.

“Then I got assigned to work with him. It was just dumb luck, really. No one else knew we were seeing each other. If they had, they never would have allowed it. But we got a bit of a thrill from it all.”

Her voice now was hard and unfeeling. The white bird stretched its wings and flitted off into the night.

“One day we got called out on a raid of a warehouse. Some bullshit joint op with the DEA over in Maryland. We’d all fanned out through the building. Suddenly a door burst open and there was a guy there with a gun. I didn’t think. It was just instinctive. He was dead before he hit the floor…. I killed him…. I shot him.”

She looked at Tom, gave him an awkward shrug, then turned away again. “I can’t even cry about it anymore. I ran out of tears a long time ago. Now, mostly, I just feel numb.”

“What happened? After?”

“There was an inquiry, of course. A special investigation team went through every second of that day a hundred times. And it came out that we were seeing each other. It’s funny, but I think that freaked them more than the fact I’d shot him. So they looked into whether we’d been fighting or split up. Whether this was some sort of revenge killing or lovers’ quarrel. You know, whether I’d murdered him.”

She gave a joyless laugh.

“But in the end they concluded that it wasn’t my fault. That Greg had wandered ahead of everyone else and not kept up radio contact. That he shouldn’t have been where he was. That under the circumstances any other agent would have done the same. But I could tell that they didn’t entirely believe it. Not all of them, anyway. I could see it in their eyes, that suspicion that I was guilty of something, even if they didn’t quite know what. When they posted me down to Atlanta they said it was in my interest to keep a low profile until it had all blown over. Really, it was for theirs. Because it was easier for them to keep me out of sight than accept what had happened.”

There was a long silence and outside the car, for the first time since they had been there, nothing seemed to move or speak or shout or bang. The city paused. Expectant.

“I don’t know what to say,” Tom said, eventually.

“There’s nothing to say.”

“Only… I understand what it is to lose someone you love.”

And she knew that he really did understand.

“And I understand what it feels like to be rejected, to be viewed as a terrible accident that needs to be hidden away. I understand that it never gets any easier. That no matter how much others blame you, you blame yourself even more.” She gave a barely perceptible nod of her head and there was a long pause before Tom spoke again. “He was a good guy?”

“A great guy. And a good agent.”

“In that order?” Tom asked, smiling.

“Yeah.” She laughed.

“It was a mistake, Jen.” Tom’s voice was gentle and this time she found the use of her pet name strangely comforting. “That’s all. A mistake, an accident. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I killed the man I was in love with. My best friend. Now it’s like I have to live up to his expectations as well as my own.”

A stream of people, filtering home from their evening prayers, parted around them like water around a stone.

“So this case…?”

“Is my first real break in years. It took a lot of hard work to earn this chance. That’s why I don’t want to blow it. I owe it to myself. I owe it to my family. I owe it to Greg.”

“But you know solving this case won’t bring Greg back. Won’t stop the hurt.”

She nodded.

“I know that. But it might just help me to stop hating myself.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

Night had settled with a thick, dusty cloak. The air was dry and the choking smell of rotting food and stale exhaust fumes drifted through the narrow streets, pooling in doorways and under the streetlights’ sodium glow like a thick fog. In some places, old newspapers had been placed over the drain covers and wetted down to try and contain the warm flush of decay oozing up from the sewers.

From the rooftop vantage point that Tom had led them to, they could count at least five men, all of them heavily armed, guarding the cistern entrance. It was an ugly concrete shed entered through a single metal door about a hundred yards in front of them. Cars arrived and accelerated away. Faces were checked against computer printouts with flashlights. People spoke in low, urgent voices.

“How are we going to get past them?” whispered Jennifer as she squinted through the rubberized binoculars that Tom had handed her.

“We’re not.” Tom smiled. “We’re going to go under them.” He crawled over to the other side of the roof, dodging the washing lines that had been strung across its satellite-dish-encrusted surface like bunting. “Through there.”

He pointed to the square on the other side of the street. Lit by a tawdry neon sign, a narrow passage nestled between a spice shop on one side and a carpet shop on the other. The spices were fluorescent reds and yellows and oranges laid out in a small mountain range of conical piles, like sand at the bottom of an hourglass. The carpets, by contrast, were dark, muddy reds and browns occasionally lifted by a dirty white or yellow. The shop was so full, the carpets piled so high, that the windows seemed to be bowing out, the glass stretching and straining.

“If you say so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

“Are you ready?” Tom was worried that Jennifer was not feeling a hundred percent, that the cathartic effort of her earlier unburdening had taken its unavoidable emotional and physical toll. But he knew it was pointless to suggest she stay behind. She would never agree.

“Yeah.” She nodded, her face set into a determined half smile, as if she sensed Tom’s concern and wanted to reassure him.

They made their way off the roof and down the staircase that led out to the street. From there it was a two-minute walk to the narrow passage, the intermittent blinking of the neon illuminating their way.

Tom led them under the sign and into the passage. About halfway down, on the right-hand side, a circular window had been roughly hacked into the wall and behind it sat a bearded Turk, his face caving in on itself with age. Tom handed over a few dirty notes. A wet, minty heat blew up the passage toward them.

“What is this place?” asked Jennifer as they continued down the passage, the ragged concrete floor and walls giving way abruptly to a rich and dense white marble.

“A hammam. You know, a Turkish bath. It’s one of the oldest in the city, built over four hundred years ago by Sinan. Men that way. Women that way.” He nodded at the corridor to his right that led to another wooden door, identical to the one they were facing now.

“Are we splitting up?” asked Jennifer with surprise.

“No, we’re heading this way. To the basement.” Tom indicated a narrow wooden door recessed into the far left-hand wall. It opened onto a spiral staircase, the steep stone steps winding down into a tenebrous nothingness.

At the bottom, the staircase gave onto a low, stone flagged room, lit by a prancing light that seeped under a door at the far end.

“This is where all the water for the baths upstairs is heated,” Tom explained.

The demonic roar of the gas-fired water heaters grew as they neared the door. The heat became more and more intense with each step, until — almost without them realizing it — their clothes were soaked, the sweat seeming to bubble up and out of their skin.

“These baths used to be supplied with water from the main aqueduct.”

Tom’s voice sounded weak through the scalding thunder as they stepped into the sulphurous depths of the main boiler room. It was a mass of metal and fire, a hissing nest of pipes snaking out from two huge cauldrons, their roasting bellies glowing through thick glass inspection panels like a pair of malevolent eyes.

“The water came here via the Cistern of Theodosius.” He had to shout to be heard. “Now the water is piped in from a modern ring main, but the old water tunnels are still here. Look.” He pointed at a large square opening about six feet up the wall that had been crudely boarded over. “Here, give me a hand.”

He grabbed a thick metal pipe off the floor and rammed it into a narrow gap between two of the boards. Pulling down on the pipe they levered off first one board, then another two, the dry, brittle wood splintering, the rusty nails snapping. Soon there was enough space for them to crawl through.

Tom slipped a black Maglite out of his trousers and flicked it on before clamping it firmly between his teeth. Pulling himself up to the hole, he dragged himself in. Jennifer followed right behind him.

After about three minutes of slow progress, their elbows and knees raw and tender where they had drawn them raspingly over the tunnel’s rough stone surface, the narrow space widened out enough to allow them to almost stand. The flashlight flickered over the dry walls around them. In the darkness ahead, dim lights appeared and then vanished as they approached. Rats, Tom guessed with a grimace.

A hundred and fifty yards further on, their clothes filthy, the dark passage grew lighter and the faint murmur of voices echoed toward them. Tom snapped the flashlight off and tiptoed toward the noise. The tunnel mouth was sealed by a large rusty metal grille. They approached it carefully, crouching down when they reached it. Peering through, they could see that the tunnel emerged about ten feet off the cistern floor and four feet below the ceiling.

Thick stone columns, their sides pale and worn smooth, stretched the length and breadth of the cistern, supporting the roof at regular intervals. Originally, the entire room would have been flooded and the columns totally submerged. But now, with only a few inches of water covering the floor, they disappeared into the distance, reflecting off the surface like the bleached ribs of an enormous whale.

Below and to the left of them, about twenty feet away, a large wooden platform had been erected next to a brick staircase that Tom assumed ran up to street level and the concrete shed they had observed before. Chairs had been arranged in neat rows in front of a low podium.

Arc lights had been lashed to the corners of the platform, revealing a kaleidoscope of shapes and colors as people moved across its wooden surface, a shifting human mosaic. Tom counted perhaps thirty people in all and their voices filtered up to him — French, Russian, Italian, English — a babble of sound accompanying nervous handshakes and half smiles.

Abruptly, the lights dimmed and an expectant silence fell over the assembled guests as they took their seats.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

A man stepped up onto the small podium, his heavily gelled black hair gleaming like a polished helmet.

“Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for coming here tonight and, as usual, our apologies for the late notice and the enthusiastic search by my colleagues upstairs.” His sallow, acne-scared face twisted into a toothless smile, the nostrils on his thin nose flaring, his white lips pinched tight. His audience laughed nervously.

“We have thirty lots to get through tonight, so I anticipate we will be done by about midnight.” The man continued, his voice echoing eerily off the stone walls up to where Tom and Jennifer were crouching. Tom recognized the flat open vowels and harsh consonants of an Afrikaner, his pronunciation battle-hardened by three hundred and fifty years of struggle against the native South Africans, the English, and nature.

“All bids are to be made in U.S. dollars and must be settled immediately either in cash or by confirmed electronic transfer. Bids are binding and there is no appeal, so think twice before coughing.” Again the audience laughed apprehensively. This time, the man did not smile.

“If there are no questions, then I will begin.”

The assembled buyers remained silent and with a slight nod from the man, who was clearly acting as the auctioneer for the evening, a small door set into the wall to the side of the platform opened. Two muscled figures emerged holding a gilt-framed painting, which they set down on an easel to the left of the auctioneer’s podium. With a theatrical flourish one of them threw back the green cloth that had been laid over the canvas. Tom breathed in sharply.

“What is it?” asked Jennifer.

“Vermeer,” whispered Tom. “Stolen in the Isabella Stewart Gardner job. I’d heard it had been destroyed. Cassius must be selling off his best stuff.”

“The Concert by Jan Vermeer, painted in 1665 to ’66. The bidding will start at three million dollars. Can anyone give me three million. Thank you, sir. Three million, two-hundred thousand…?”

The bidding was fast and uncomplicated. There were no mobile phones or computer screens, no delays or deliberations, no live links to New York and Tokyo. The buyers had clearly come with detailed instructions from their employers on what to buy and how much to bid. The Vermeer went for just over $6 million. A Rembrandt that Tom identified as Storm on the Sea of Galilee, taken in the same job as the Vermeer, for $8 million. A Giacometti sculpture recently stolen from a museum in Hamburg and replaced with a wooden replica under the noses of the guards, for $300,000.

“This could be us,” hissed Tom suddenly.

One of the auctioneer’s assistants had stepped onto the platform holding a slim metallic case about ten inches long by three inches wide.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, an extremely rare item.” The auctioneer surveyed his expectant audience as the man holding the silvery case opened it and angled it to the light so they could see its contents.

“There are only eight surviving examples of the four hundred fifty thousand, five hundred Double Eagles minted by the U.S. Treasury in 1933 and then destroyed in 1937 by presidential decree. Five of them are offered here. I’m going to start the bidding at twenty million dollars. Do I hear twenty million?”

Four hands shot into the air just as a deafening boom thundered through the cistern and a section of the roof collapsed into the water below.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

The door at the top of the stairs exploded open, the force of the charge laid next to it ripping it from its hinges and sending it pirouetting down onto the platform where it narrowly missed the front row of seats.

Through the smoke, five masked men burst into the room, firing silenced machine guns over their heads, the bullets spitting into the brickwork and showering the bewildered people below with shards of hot stone, spent shells coughing out and hitting the water with a hiss. Two ropes spiraled down through the gaping hole in the roof and four more men slid down into the room, their heavy boots splashing down noisily on the cistern floor. Within seconds, the dazed people on the platform had been surrounded and the auctioneer and his two assistants disarmed without anyone putting up a struggle.

Jennifer jumped to her feet but Tom dragged her back.

“Stay down.”

Tom raised his binoculars and studied the unfolding scene below. The men were well-drilled, probably ex-military, moving deliberately and in close coordination. They were heavily armed, grenades hanging off their webbing, their hands clutching Heckler & Koch MP5SD6s, the silenced version of the weapon of choice for the world’s elite military and paramilitary units.

Their commander stood at the foot of the stairs, barking instructions, his shoulders broad as the side of a small car. As Tom watched, he smashed the butt of his gun into the small of someone’s back who had not knelt down quickly enough.

Another figure, also masked and dressed in black, appeared through the swirling dust and smoke at the top of the stairs. He made his way silently down to the auctioneer’s assistant, now on his knees, but still holding the metallic coin case in his left hand. The man took the case from him, opened it to check its contents, then slipped it inside his jacket.

He nodded to the commander, turned and walked back up the stairs. The auctioneer began to scream hysterically.

“You are all dead men! You don’t know who you’re fucking with! Nobody steals from Cassius!”

The man stopped at the top of the stairs and looked back over his shoulder at the kneeling figure, his gelled hair dusty and dishevelled, his face chiseled with hate. The auctioneer spat in the man’s direction, the gelatinous glob hitting the side of the brick staircase and snailing down to the floor. The man turned and made his way back down to the platform.

Without saying a word, he slipped a shiny silver Sig P228 out of his holster and pressed it against the auctioneer’s mouth. He levered it between his lips, rattling the smooth muzzle against his teeth, cutting into his gums as he tried to force it in, until the blood was dripping out of the corner of the auctioneer’s mouth onto the floor. Still, the auctioneer kept his jaws clamped firmly shut, his eyes staring defiantly ahead, until with a stomach-churning crunch, he lost his two front teeth. He screamed and as his mouth opened in agony the man slid the gun in, penetrating him until the trigger guard was jammed against his lips.

The auctioneer started to gag on the barrel, his body convulsing as the cold metal pressed against the back of his throat. Then a single, muffled shot rang out, the noise deadened by the auctioneer’s skull. The back of his head exploded as he slumped at the man’s feet, his jaw hanging off on one side from the force of the explosion. One of his eyes had burst down his lifeless cheek.

Tom surveyed the macabre scene through his binoculars, a grim look on his face. For as the man had pulled the trigger, the sleeve on his black flak jacket had ridden up onto his wrist. Tom had recognized the watch he was wearing instantly.

It had a black face and a pink-gold case, one of only fifteen like it in the world. It was a Lange & Söhne. It was the same watch that Van Simson wore.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

Indifferent to the execution that they had just witnessed, the armed men started to edge toward the staircase, still covering their cowering captives with their guns. A thick red cloud billowed in the water beneath the platform as the auctioneer leaked blood.

“They’re getting away,” said Jennifer, rising to her feet. “We’ve got to stop them.”

“Wait. We can get them later. I know who it is.”

He grabbed Jennifer by the shoulder but her momentum knocked him off balance and he tripped, falling heavily against the grille. Years of corrosion had clearly taken their toll. The grille gave way under Tom’s weight and he plunged headfirst down into the cistern.

At the noise three men, still at the foot of the stairs, spun round and opened fire blindly in Tom’s direction, the bullets fizzing overhead and slamming into the wall behind him.

“Hold your fire.” The killer had reappeared at the top of the stairs, his silver gun still drawn and flecked with blood, skin and pieces of the auctioneer’s teeth.

“I want him alive,” he barked. “Bring him with us.”

The three armed men vaulted over the platform’s low rail and splashed down into the cistern and over to Tom, dragging him to his feet. He seemed confused, his legs unable to support his own weight, as if he had hit his head on the way down.

Above them, Jennifer’s mind was racing. She had recognized the killer’s voice. It was Van Simson.

“Oh, and clean that hole out,” Van Simson shouted. “He might still be with that meddling FBI bitch.”

Jennifer was already on her way. She had to get out and follow them. They had Tom. They had the coins. She couldn’t lose them now.

Behind her, she heard a gentle metallic ping and then the unmistakable sound of metal striking stone, first once, then again, the echo bouncing and bobbling down the tunnel like large marbles. Grenades.

She scrabbled along as quickly as she could until she was fifty, sixty, eighty yards from the opening into the cistern. Silently she counted down the seconds. Five, four, three, two. Jennifer flattened herself to the floor, shut her eyes and covered her ears. One.

Nothing could have prepared her for the deafening explosion of sound and heat that rolled over her, an inhuman roar that pressed her to the ground, driving the air from her lungs. As she gasped for breath, a second explosion rocked through the tunnel, the force of it lifting her several inches off the ground before dumping her back down again like a sack of coal.

She struggled back to her feet, shaking the debris from her hair, her eyes streaming in the smoke and dust. She coughed hoarsely, her mouth dry with fear as blood seeped from a gash on her chin. She had to get out. Fast.

A few minutes later she jumped down into the hammam’s boiler room. A surprised, bare-chested Turk, his dark and hairy body glowing red and covered in an oily slick of sweat and grime, leaped backward in surprise before shouting machine-gun Turkish at her retreating back.

Out of the room, up the stairs, through the corridor, back into the square where they had parked the car in the forbidding shadow of the ancient Çemberlita¸s column, its metal hoops gleaming like manacles.

She slipped behind the wheel and fired up the engine just as two blue vans sped down the street in front of her. She knew she had to stop them, do something, before they got away.

She swung the car onto Divan Yolu, the tires squealing reluctantly over its polished cobblestones. It had long been closed to car traffic, given over instead to trams running in both directions down the middle of the road, a low curb separating the tram lines from the pavements on either side which were, as ever, full of people.

She mounted the curb, the car’s suspension groaning as it slammed down the other side onto the metal tramlines. Ahead of her, the two vans seemed to be trapped behind a tram, but as she accelerated up to them, they both managed to slip out from behind it and roar past. She accelerated up to the tram and then wrenched the wheel sideways to follow them, the left front wing dipping as gravity and aerodynamic pressures took over.

Her windshield was immediately swallowed by the looming headlights of an onrushing tram.

“Shit.”

She slammed on the brakes, the car weaving unsteadily as she tucked it back in, the oncoming tram flashing past in a blur of lights and bells, warm air flooding through the open window.

“Shit.”

As soon as it was safely past, she dropped the car into second gear, the engine screaming in protest as the rev counter flicked to the right, and overtook the tram.

The delay had cost her valuable time. The vans were already over at the far end of the Hippodrome to her right and she gunned the motor hard as she launched herself off the tramlines and after them. The rubber bit into the cracked tarmac.

Up to fourth, then fifth, she was doing nearly seventy miles an hour as Aya Sofya and then the Blue Mosque sped past, their massed walls dyed white in the floodlights, their minarets reaching into the sky like bony fingers. Her headlights flashing, she leaned on the horn, pedestrians scattering in her wake, the car jigging around the seemingly insomniac postcard sellers that littered the city.

“Get out the way!” she screamed over the whine of the engine, catching sight of her wild hair and dust-caked face in the rearview mirror. Long, dirty tearstains tumbled from the corner of her eyes, even though she couldn’t remember crying. The acrid smell of her burning clutch filled the car, making her cough.

At the end of the Hippodrome, the road banked sharply downhill and toward the left. Jennifer saw the turn late, but instinct took over. She dropped into second again and lifted the hand brake as she turned the wheel, sending the car into a screeching sideways skid, the suspension yawing violently.

Her foot instantly back on the accelerator, she massaged the engine speed, turning first into the skid and then — as she sensed some faint traction returning to the blistering tires — back the other way as she goosed the gas. The car flicked obediently out of the skid, rounded the corner, and plunged down the hill like a roller coaster jackknifing through a turn.

She could see the vans down below her now, heading down to the water’s edge, but a police car leaped out of a side street to her left, siren blaring and blue lights flashing. She yanked the wheel to the right to avoid clipping its front wing and then back to the left, the car carving across the cobbles like an ice-skater doing a figure eight. Above her, she caught a glimpse of the tiered foundations of the Hippodrome’s banked seating, the silent ghosts of the bloodthirsty crowds cheering her on.

She turned to follow the vans down a narrow side street but was immediately confronted by another police car speeding toward her, its lights on full beam. Blinded, she threw her arm up to her face. The front right tire hit the curb and snatched the wheel out of her hand. The car jumped sideways and ploughed into the side of an apartment block, the metal chewing into the crumbling stone in a blaze of sparks.

Panting, she gripped the wheel, her knuckles white. The police car’s passenger door flew open and a familiar figure emerged into the beam of her one remaining headlight. Jennifer tumbled out of the car.

“It’s Van Simson, sir. He’s got the coins. And he’s got Tom.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

The smell of chloroform hung about Tom’s clothes like cheap aftershave, its burning sweet taste clinging to his dry and cracked lips. He remembered falling, being dragged out of the cistern and then tossed roughly into the depths of a van. But then nothing.

He was alive, at least. Given the cold-blooded way that Van Simson had disposed of the auctioneer, that was something. Although it did raise the question, of course, as to what exactly Van Simpson was planning to do with him.

He tentatively rolled over onto his front and tried to stand up, his eyes still adjusting to the light. He collapsed almost immediately, vomiting noisily over the stone floor. Gasping, he rolled onto his back and fought back the waves of nausea, focusing on his breathing to try and calm his racing heart and pounding head.

Van Simson? Was he Cassius? It didn’t make sense to Tom. He couldn’t be — why would he have stolen coins from his own auction? But he could still have been behind the Fort Knox job and then had the misfortune of Steiner stealing them from Schiphol Airport. Maybe he’d murdered Harry and hit the off-site to take back what he deemed to be rightfully his.

Either way, Van Simson was deeply involved in the whole mess and Tom had fallen straight into his lap. Literally. And what about Jennifer? Had she been able to get away? How would she know where Tom was when he didn’t even know himself for sure?

The nausea subsiding, Tom allowed himself to study the room around him. It was twelve feet square, he guessed, lit by a single bulb housed under an industrial-looking glass dome. There were no windows and the only way in or out was through a single steel door. An untouched tray of gray rice and yellow chicken lay at Tom’s feet.

He would have guessed that the room was an old wine cellar or some similar type of underground storeroom, if it hadn’t been for the items that had been theatrically arranged throughout the cell.

In the far corner, he recognized the unmistakable shape of an iron maiden, so called because of the unsmiling female face that decorated its exterior, unkempt hair trailing, some said, like a gorgon. Shaped like an upright sarcophagus and standing about six feet tall, it opened down the middle to reveal an inside filled with iron spikes. Its unfortunate victims would be placed inside and the two doors shut so as to impale them. In a sadistic refinement, the spikes were carefully positioned to avoid vital organs and so prolong the agony.

The walls were studded with similarly grotesque items. A blunt-looking heretic’s fork, large thumbscrews and some rusty cat’s-paws were just some of the items Tom recognized. Suspended from the ceiling, the thick chains of a Judas cradle swung gently in an unseen breeze.

The sound of approaching footsteps broke into his thoughts and he snapped his eyes toward the door as it gently eased open.

Darius Van Simson strode into the room, followed by two men, one wiry and thin, the other short and square. All three were still dressed in black combat fatigues. Clearly, they had not been back long.

“Tom, Tom, Tom.” Van Simson shook his head and tutted like a disappointed parent as he looked from the pool of vomit to Tom still huddled on the floor. “I’m sorry, really I am. That it should come to this. It’s not what I wanted.”

“Spare me your sympathy, Darius,” said Tom weakly. “By the way, nice place you’ve got down here.”

Van Simson smiled stonily.

“I’m reliably informed that this is the original torture chamber of the jail that stood on this site in the fifteenth century, before they knocked it down and built my house.”

So they were in Paris, Tom now knew. That was a five-hour flight from Istanbul even in Van Simson’s private jet. With a car journey at each end, that meant that at least six or seven hours must have passed since he’d been caught.

“I discovered it during the restoration work and thought I would recommission it. For historical reasons, of course. The items you see displayed here are all authentic.”

“What are you playing at, Darius? If the FBI isn’t on to you yet, they soon will be. And you’ve got Cassius to contend with now.” At Cassius’s name Van Simson’s back had stiffened slightly. Quickly he relaxed into another grudging smile.

“I see you share your father’s fighting spirit,” he observed.

“You leave my father out of this,” Tom snapped.

“And you also share his inability to mind your own fucking business.” The spittle flew from Van Simson’s mouth as he spoke, momentarily staining the floor black where it landed on the dusty flagstones.

“You made it my business when you killed Harry,” Tom yelled back, his strength returning to him.

“Harry? Harry Renwick? Is that what this is about? Oh, you should have said. We could have avoided all this unpleasantness. That was nothing to do with me. All I wanted was the coins. All I’ve ever wanted was the coins. I let that slimy bastard Ranieri slip through my fingers, but when I heard all five were going to be sold off I made my move. You should have kept out of it. It was a private party and you weren’t invited.”

“And you were?” Tom gave a short laugh.

“You think I’m worried? By Jean-Pierre Dumas’s eager little helpers scuttling around outside my house? They’ve got nothing. By the FBI? Well, that’s why you’re still alive, Tom. When they find out that Agent Browne’s dead and that the coins have disappeared for good, I think they’re going to be pretty interested in talking to you. I’m going to gift wrap you and hand you over myself. I might even tell them I caught you trying to break in here just to spice it up some more.” Van Simson’s mouth twisted into a cruel smile at the look on Tom’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry. You didn’t know, did you? I flushed out your little rabbit hole. I’m afraid she’s gone. Along with any alibi you might have had.”

With a sudden cry of fury, Tom lunged at Van Simson. But before he could cover the few feet between them, he was overpowered by the two guards who leaped onto him. The two men pinned Tom’s arms to his side and sat him up with his back to the wall.

“You will have to excuse me, Tom, but I am expecting someone,” said Van Simson as he reached up and unhooked a large metal object off the wall.

Tom recognized what he was holding. A scold’s bridle: A large cage made to lock around its victim’s head and prevent its unfortunate wearer from speaking by jamming a metal protrusion into their mouth.

“Husbands used to put these on their nagging wives,” said Van Simson as the two guards forced the cage over Tom’s head. “Let’s see if it cools your tongue. And your temper.” The lock clicked shut as he turned the key.

Tom tried to shout as Van Simson and his two guards left the room, but the thick metal tongue piece dug sharply into the back of his throat and he began to gag.

One thing was clear to Tom. He had to get out and he had to get out fast. Before Van Simson changed his mind and returned to try out any more of his sadistic toys.

Running both hands around his neck, he soon found the lock positioned on the right-hand side of the cage. He felt a glimmer of hope. Van Simson, in his commitment to authenticity, had not replaced the original, rather rudimentary lock with a more modern one. Grabbing the metal fork off the tray of congealed food on the floor next to him, he bent one of its prongs out and then back in on itself to make a small hook.

Inserting the bent prong into the lock opening, Tom moved it carefully around, feeling his way through the springs and levers until with a sudden click, the mechanism popped open. He lifted the cage off his head with relief, massaging his jaw and moving his tongue around in his mouth to get the circulation back, spitting flecks of paint and rusty metal out onto the floor.

Struggling to his feet, he made his way over to the door. This was not so hopeful. Here Van Simson had not compromised, fitting a complex electronic lock that would require specialist equipment to open. Equipment that Tom didn’t have.

Across the room, half lost in the semidarkness, the iron maiden leered at him pitilessly.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

The banging from the cell resonated down the corridor. At first the guard, the shorter, squatter one of the two men that had accompanied Van Simson, ignored it, burying his nose deeper into the newspaper. But as the incessant bone-jarring crashing of metal upon metal grew louder and louder, he threw increasingly angry glances toward the cell.

Finally, a renewed barrage caught him unawares and made him spill his coffee down his front, the scalding liquid soaking into his black combat trousers. He swore, swung his feet down off his narrow desk, threw the paper down on his seat, and stomped toward the cell.

The crashing abruptly stopped and the guard smiled, loosening his new IMI Barak combat handgun from his underarm holster. He had been around long enough to know when people were trying to be cute. But that was fine. If they wanted to play games, he’d show them a good time. He knew how to party.

He turned a key in the lock and as it clicked open he kicked the cell door open with the heel of his foot. The heavy steel door flew back on its hinges and slammed into the wall with a shuddering crash. That would take care of anyone hiding behind the door. He wasn’t falling for that old trick.

The lightbulb had been unscrewed and he flicked on the small under-barrel flashlight on his Barak. Through the open doorway, the beam picked out the cage that only minutes before he had helped fix onto the prisoner’s head. It had been placed in the middle of the room. He ran the flashlight around the rest of the cell. It was eerily quiet after the incessant banging. And it was also empty.

Or was it?

In the far corner, barely visible even in the bright beam of his flashlight, he saw that the doors of the iron maiden were ajar. Not much, but perhaps enough to allow someone to hide very carefully inside without being impaled. Smiling at his perceptiveness, he crept toward the large metallic object, his finger on the trigger.

“Come out!” he shouted from only a few feet away. But the iron maiden stayed silent.

“Come out! I know you’re in there.”

Nothing.

He cursed and leaned forward, placing his left hand on one door and the barrel of his gun on the other, before throwing them open in a quick movement

It was empty.

Crouching in the corner, Tom pushed back as hard as he could, driving his legs against the stone wall. The iron maiden teetered onto its front edge and then crashed to the floor, the spikes on its open doors impaling the guard underneath it and snapping his back like a twig.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN

Tom snatched up the guard’s gun and swallowed hard at the sight of his bloody and twisted face. It wasn’t the first time that he’d had to kill someone, but that never made it any easier.

He slipped out of the room and along the vaulted corridor, past dark rooms piled high with the debris of Van Simson’s life. Crates of wine, neatly catalogued archive boxes full of paper and files, sporting equipment arranged in specially constructed steel racks.

The gun’s rubberized grip felt like raw meat in Tom’s sweaty hands, wet and slippery. He paused at the foot of a narrow stone staircase to catch his breath and wipe his palms against his trousers. Tom didn’t really have a plan and he knew that was dangerous. He also knew that he was angry and upset and that that could make him careless. But despite all that, he knew that he owed it to Harry and Jennifer to get to Van Simpson. He owed it to himself. At that moment, that single desire informed his every movement, his every decision.

Tom edged open the door at the top of the stairs to reveal a limestone-floored corridor. The sound of approaching footsteps, metal-tipped heels rhythmically clipping the stone floor, forced him to pull it shut, leaving only a tiny sliver of light that cut into the darkness and cast a thin white line down the middle of Tom’s face.

The footsteps grew louder and then carried on past. Through the crack Tom recognized Rolfe, the albino who had frisked him and Jennifer at the entrance gate on their previous visit. Jennifer. Gone. He bit his lip, shook her image from his mind again. He couldn’t think about that now.

He eased the door open and crept up behind Rolfe, who had paused in front of the door at the end of the corridor to locate something in his pocket. He brought the butt of his gun crashing down on the base of his neck and the man fell grunting to the floor. It took another blow, though, Tom’s gun slapping into his temple, before he rolled over onto his side, unconscious.

He dragged Rolfe’s body back to the staircase and pushed him down the first few steps. Then, stepping back into the corridor and shutting the door behind him, he walked along it until he emerged into the familiar surroundings of the huge ground-floor entrance hall. Ahead of him, he knew, was the elevator; the one sure way up to Van Simson’s office and down to the vault.

He tried to force the elevator doors open, but he could only push them a few inches apart before they sprang shut with a violent metallic crash. Looking around him, Tom noticed a thin bronze sculpture nestling in the shadows next to the staircase. He grabbed it, a determined look on his face. Jamming the sculpture between the two elevator doors, he pried them apart as it slipped into the gap. Gradually, the doors slid further and further open, until — when they were about a foot apart — they gave up their struggle and retracted noiselessly into the wall.

Tom placed the bronze on the floor, stepped forward, and looked up and then down the elevator shaft. The top of the cabin reflected dully in the gloom beneath him. A plan formed in his mind — he would surprise Van Simson when he returned to the elevator by leaping on him through the access hatch.

Reaching into the darkness, Tom grabbed the steel cable that ran down from the elevator motor somewhere in the roof to the top of the elevator. Locking the greasy cable between his legs and arms, he slid down it, landing gently on the elevator roof.

He crouched and listened. A strange noise seemed to be emanating from underneath him, a rhythmical mechanical clunking, as if a machine had been programmed into some monotonous, repetitive cycle. Tom cautiously lifted the edge of the hatch. There was blood all over the elevator wall.

Opening the hatch fully, Tom recognized the wiry guard who had just accompanied Van Simson to the cell, slumped in the corner, a single gunshot wound to his head. The elevator doors were opening and shutting again and again on his outstretched legs.

Tom swung down into the elevator and stepped over the body. He peeked into the brightly lit concrete corridor that led down to the vault. It was empty. But the steel gate had been raised and beyond it he could see that the vault door was wide open. Tom crept along the corridor, keeping to the wall, gripping the Barak with both hands. The video cameras gazed blindly at him, their lenses smashed.

The vault was as he remembered it, a black rubberized floor meandering, maze-like, between twenty or so display cases, a shallow trench flanking the base of each wall. Over the top of the display cases he could see Van Simson hunched over the desk that dominated the small raised platform at the rear of the room. Tom dropped to his knees and picked his way through the cases, careful to always keep at least one between himself and the platform so that he could not be seen.

Eventually, only one case separated him from Van Simson. It was now or never. Taking a deep breath and checking that the safety was off, Tom spun out from the side of the case and aimed the gun at Van Simson’s head.

“Don’t move, Darius.”

Van Simson barely reacted, slowly raising his eyes to Tom’s.

“I hope you didn’t kill Rolfe.” He seemed distracted, sad, even. “He’s a good boy. Very capable.”

“Where are the coins?” Tom demanded, stepping up onto the platform, Van Simson still firmly within his sights.

“The coins? Here. Take them.” Van Simson slapped the same slim metallic case he’d snatched in Istanbul down onto the table. A muffled echo. “You think you’ve won? You’ve won nothing. We’ve all lost.”

“No, you’ve lost.” Tom reached forward to pick the case up. “And as you said before, I’m not sure you’ve left me many options.” He raised his gun as his fingers closed around the case, Jennifer’s image flooding his mind now. He owed her what he was about to do.

But a familiar voice rang out before he could pull the trigger.

“Not so fast, Thomas.”

CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT

The voice tore into Tom like a blunt blade. He swiveled around. A figure stepped out of the shadows and advanced into the light, his Glock 19, his gloved hand, then his outstretched arm slowly coming into view.

“Harry?” Tom croaked as the light finally fell on the man’s face.

“Put the gun down would you, there’s a good chap,” said Renwick. It was hard to believe this was the same, slightly dishevelled man that Tom had hugged good-bye just a few days ago. He looked immaculate in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, and bright blue Hermès tie. His hair was neatly cropped, his face smooth and pink, his eyes burning with a strange intensity that Tom had not seen before. Only the squat gold signet ring remained of the man Tom had known for years.

Tom lowered his gun and, trancelike, gazed at it as if he couldn’t work out how it had come to be in his hand in the first place. He went to put it on the table, but Renwick’s voice snapped out.

“Don’t be an idiot, Thomas! On the floor. Kick it toward me.” There was no hint of warmth or kindness in Renwick’s voice. Instead it drilled into Tom, familiar and yet foreign at the same time.

Tom bent down, placed the gun on the floor, and kicked it over to him. Renwick adjusted his grip on his own gun and kept it firmly pointed at Tom as he stooped to pick it up and then slipped it into his pocket.

“Harry? I don’t understand. How? Why?”

Renwick laughed.

“There’s the American in you. Always so keen to understand why. To find a reason. To blame some childhood trauma or unloving sibling. Well, it’s not that easy. You’re not meant to bloody understand people like me, just accept them.”

“But I thought you were dead.” Tom was almost whispering now, his head spinning.

“Why? Because some incompetent policeman found a body in my house? Because Agent Browne says she saw me die? All she saw was two blanks get fired and me go down. By the time she came to, I’d swapped the bodies.”

“Who with?”

“A nobody. Someone who was no longer important to me. Someone who did me a greater service by dying than he ever did when he was alive. After that, it was a simple matter of changing the dental records. How else were they going to identify a burned corpse? They fell for it, of course, as I knew they would. The police are so wonderfully predictable. I’m surprised you did, though, given that you employed a similar trick a few years ago when escaping your CIA masters.”

“You know about that?”

“Oh, there’s not much I don’t know about you, Thomas.”

“I’m only here because of you. To get the people who killed you.”

“How wonderfully loyal of you. I’m almost touched.”

“Who the hell are you?” asked Tom, repelled and yet fascinated by Renwick’s dispassionate tone.

“Can’t you guess?”

There was a long silence.

“Cassius,” Tom breathed. “You’re Cassius.”

Renwick smiled.

“Some people call me that.”

“After all this time, it’s you.” Tom took a step toward Renwick, who raised his gun and narrowed his eyes.

“Be careful, Thomas,” he said gently. “Be very careful.”

“It was all you, wasn’t it?” Tom’s brain was struggling to reorder the past few days’ events in his mind. “You had the coins stolen. Then you got me to do that job in New York so that I’d be in the U.S. at the same time.”

Renwick shrugged.

“I had simply planned to tip off the police but you kindly obliged by dropping a hair at the scene for the police to find. An uncharacteristic oversight. In any event, it all worked out rather well in the end, although at one stage I was concerned that you were taking rather too long to steal the first egg.”

“And then, what? You lost the coins. Steiner stole them from you and gave one to Ranieri to sell.”

Renwick’s face darkened.

“A minor inconvenience. Those responsible paid the price for their interference. Their mistake was to try and sell them back to one of my people.”

“So you got four coins back off Steiner and then bumped into me at Sotheby’s and invited me to dinner with Agent Browne, who just handed over the one coin you didn’t have.”

Renwick gave a short laugh.

“It was rather amusing. The coin showing up in my house, of all places. I’d been thinking about killing Harry Renwick off for a while. He was becoming rather depressing. It was too good an opportunity to miss.” There was no feeling in Renwick’s voice as he spoke, just a sense of relentless, ruthless efficiency.

“But I have to admit you impressed me, Thomas. Even I, who have followed your career so closely over the years, was surprised by your ability to wriggle out of trouble. First you slip out from under the murder charges that I had pinned on you in London. Then you somehow convinced Agent Browne that you had nothing to do with the Fort Knox robbery. Finally, you even escaped from the museum in Amsterdam after I had generously instructed my sniper not to hurt you but just to make sure you got caught.”

“You should have had him kill me when you had the chance.”

“Of course, I considered it. But you know a live suspect is so much more satisfying for the police than a dead one. It stops them having to look for his killers. It closes the circle. The British, the Americans, they would all have believed that they had their man. And in any case, I’m not a complete monster. I owed you that much, at least.”

“And him?” Tom nodded toward Van Simson, who had remained silent during the entire exchange, his face slack and gray.

“Darius?” Renwick’s voice rose again as he glanced at Van Simson. “He should have stuck to bribing politicians and murdering his business rivals. By the way, I don’t know what he told you, but Agent Browne’s very much alive. I’m so glad. She seemed a charming young lady.”

Tom’s heart jumped and his eyes pressed shut momentarily. She was alive. That was one thing, at least.

“But you, Thomas, unlike Darius here, have a choice. It’s not too late. Not yet.”

“What do you mean?”

Renwick took a step toward him, his hand outstretched. “You could join me. You’d be amazed at what we could accomplish together. As a team. As a family. We’d be unstoppable.” For the first time since Renwick had appeared, Tom detected just a hint of pleading in Renwick’s voice, sensed an unspoken need in his eyes.

Tom laughed.

“You really are mad. You took away the only real family I had left when you killed Harry Renwick. And now you offer it back at the point of a gun? I have no idea who you are anymore.”

“Then you’re about to find out.”

Renwick reached into his pocket, took out the gun that Tom had kicked over to him, aimed it at Van Simson’s chest, and fired.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-NINE

The bullet lifted Van Simson clean out of his chair and he thudded to the floor, limp. Sensing his opportunity, Tom dived to his left, rolling off the platform and running into the middle of the vault. Renwick reacted instantly, firing off three shots in the blink of an eye as he tracked Tom across the room. But the bullets smashed harmlessly into the bulletproof glass sheets suspended over each of the display cases, the glass cracking but holding firm. As Tom had remembered they would.

“A pointless gesture, Thomas,” Renwick shouted coldly, the echo of the shots still pinballing around the room. “Come out now and I’ll spare you. Of course, they’ll probably send you to prison for killing poor old Darius here when they find your prints all over the murder weapon, but at least you’ll be alive.”

The room was silent.

“So be it,” Renwick muttered. He stepped off the platform and, steeling himself, leaped around the side of the case where Tom had rolled only seconds before, gun gripped in both outstretched hands.

There was no one there.

“Stop playing games,” Renwick hissed.

Nothing.

His anger was replaced by a look of grim determination. Working methodically, he moved through the room, checking behind every display case as he went, his gun leading him around the corner of each case in a series of tightly choreographed steps, the soles of his shoes squeaking against the floor like sneakers on a basketball court. Suddenly, a smile flickered across his lips. Ahead of him, barely visible, he could just see the tip of a shoe poking out from the cabinet in front of him.

He crouched and then pounced, firing two shots in quick succession before Tom could do or say anything. But the bullets just buried themselves harmlessly into the floor. There was no one there. Just two shoes neatly arranged, one next to the other. Renwick knelt down to feel them. They were still warm.

Tom jumped out from behind the neighboring cabinet and launched himself at Renwick, bringing his shoulder crashing against his side. The impact slammed Renwick into the side of the case and sent his gun skidding across the room and into the trench at the base of the far wall. Renwick collapsed to his knees, clutching his chest as Tom scrambled on all fours to retrieve the gun.

“You bastard!” Renwick shouted after him.

He was interrupted by a bright red light flashing over the vault door. Tom’s eyes immediately snapped toward the platform. Van Simson had dragged himself over to the keyboard on the desk. He looked up into Tom’s eyes and as he smiled Tom understood. He was going to lock them all in.

Renwick hauled himself to his feet and sprinted toward the closing vault door. Tom, however, realized that from where he had crawled to retrieve Renwick’s gun, there was no way he was going to be able to reach the door before it shut. Then, suddenly remembering something that Van Simson had shown them on their last visit, he bent down to open the third drawer in the display case nearest to him. The dull sheen of Nazi bullion smoldered in the darkness.

Grabbing an ingot, Tom swiveled round on the balls of his feet and in one fluid movement threw it at Renwick as hard as he could. The ingot flashed through the air like a heavy blade, climbing slowly on its upper trajectory and then accelerating fast as gravity powered it home.

It struck Renwick hard between his shoulder blades. The impact caused him to stumble and he lurched unsteadily toward the shrinking gap as the door swung shut. He put his arm out to stop himself from falling and only just slipped through the narrow opening in time. But his sleeve caught on the door frame and before he could free it, the heavy steel door crashed shut. Renwick’s hand was severed just above the wrist.

His screams were only silenced as the locking bolts slid home and the vault’s airtight seal was activated.

The vault had become a tomb.

CHAPTER EIGHTY

A new sound now.

Running water.

Looking down, Tom realized that his feet were already submerged as water bubbled up from the trenches at the foot of the walls and surged across the floor. Van Simson’s voice echoed in his head. What had he called it? Another little precaution?

He leaped onto the top of the nearest display cabinet just as a powerful electric charge was run through the water, which had leveled off at a depth of about three inches. Near the vault door, Renwick’s hand twitched spasmodically as it floated into the darkness.

Tom knew that his best chance of escape was to try and get back to the platform and see if he could get the vault opened again from there. Problem was, of course, that he was a good fifteen feet from it, and the nearest display case at about six away. If he could somehow get onto that, however, then he could see a path through to the platform by jumping from case to case.

He maneuvered himself to the edge of the display case and stood up. This was not going to be easy. The low ceiling and the suspended glass screens made getting any sort of momentum into his jump difficult and he was barefoot, his shoes sloshing around somewhere on the floor beneath him.

He took several deep breaths, swinging his arms forward with every breath as he timed his jump. One, two, three.

He propelled himself across the void and landed heavily on the cabinet. He groaned in pain as his chest crashed down on the glass surface, his thighs and knees slamming into the steel drawers on its side. Almost immediately, he began to slip, his hands sliding across the polished surface, scrabbling for grip, his nails squeaking as his knees sank lower and lower.

He stopped, his feet only inches above the water. Slowly, he hauled himself forward until he was able to hook his left knee over the edge and pull himself up to safety. He stood up and breathed a sigh of relief.

From there it was easy. Five relatively short jumps took him over to the platform and Van Simson who had slumped back into his chair.

“Darius. Wake up.” Tom shook him by the shoulder. “Stay with me. Come on, wake up.”

Van Simson’s eyelids fluttered open.

“Darius, listen to me,” said Tom. “Renwick’s escaped. He got out. Open the door. Let me go after him. Let me get some help for you.”

Van Simson shook his head.

“No,” he whispered. “It’s too late.” His eyes shut again, until Tom shook him roughly by the shoulder.

“It’s not too late.”

Tom ripped Van Simson’s shirt open and studied the wound. A small hole in the upper-right side of his chest was bubbling with bright red blood. He pressed his ear against Van Simson’s chest, his cheek staining red.

“You’ve got a punctured lung,” Tom explained, scrabbling around on the desk for something that he could use. “Every time you breathe in, you’re drawing air into your chest cavity through the bullet hole. That’s making it harder and harder for you to breathe as the air pressure builds up and crushes your lung.”

Tom found what he was looking for. A plastic document folder and some thick tape.

“You’ll live if we get help fast.” He ripped a small three-inch square out of the folder and placed it over the bullet hole. “But you have to open the door, Darius. You have to let us out.”

Using the tape, he stuck down three sides of the plastic square to Van Simson’s skin, leaving the fourth side free. It was a simple valve, allowing air to escape as he breathed out through the unstuck side, but sealing itself back to the skin when he breathed in. Within a few minutes, Van Simson’s breathing eased and his eyes opened again. Tom spoke gently now.

“Darius, you don’t have to die here. You don’t have to die now. Open the door. I’ll get help, I promise. And then I’ll get Renwick. I’ll get him for both of us. This isn’t over.”

Van Simson stared at Tom and then nodded. He reached forward toward the keyboard in front of him. Pausing every few seconds to summon his strength, he slowly tapped out a long sequence of numbers before fainting back into the chair.

The vault door began to swing open.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-ONE

Armed French police swarmed into the room, the plastic visors on their sinister black helmets glinting like huge eyes, their radios spitting.

“Les mains sur la tête.” The instructions were shouted and tense. Tom clasped his hands around the back of his head and called back.

“Il me faut un médécin.”

The policemen fanned out through the vault, cautiously making their way toward the platform, guns raised.

“A terre,” came another barked order. Tom struggled down onto one knee and then the other, his arms still raised. Two policemen approached the platform, one covering Tom, the other stepping forward to examine Van Simson. He was still unconscious, his breathing shallow and strained.

“Une ambulance, vite,” called the policeman.

“Tom,” Jennifer called out as she ran into the room, dodging between the policemen and the display cabinets. “Are you okay? I saw the blood outside and… oh, you’re fine.”

“You sound disappointed,” Tom joked. The police backed off, shouldering their weapons and muttering under their breath.

“No it’s just that—”

“I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, and nearly electrocuted. What does a guy need to do to get a little sympathy around here?”

“Get shot,” she said with a smile, catching sight of Van Simson over Tom’s shoulder. “Is he going to be okay?” Two paramedics had arrived. They checked Van Simson’s vital signs before fixing him to a drip and hoisting him onto a stretcher.

“He’ll live. Any sign of Renwick?”

“Who?”

“It was Harry, Jen, Harry all along. He organized the Fort Knox job. He had Ranieri and Steiner killed when they stumbled upon the coins. Then, when you showed up with the last coin, he faked his own death to steal it and tried to pin everything on me.”

Jennifer shook her head, her forehead creased in confusion.

“Harry? I don’t believe it.”

“Neither did I.” Tom’s voice was sad, hurt even. “But it was him all along. He admitted the whole thing”

“I’m so sorry, Tom.” She squeezed his hand. “I know how much he meant to you.”

The familiar shape of Jean-Pierre Dumas appeared in the vault doorway. He waved at Tom from across the room before buttonholing two policemen and shouting some orders. Tom raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“I recognized Van Simson’s voice in the cistern but this time I figured we could do with some backup. Jean-Pierre arranged all this.” She waved at the small army buzzing around them. “We came in as soon as we knew for sure that Van Simson was in the building.”

“Well done.” A powerful voice cut through the noise as a tall man strode into the room and up to the platform, his hand extended, pristine white shirt nestling under an immaculate double-breasted suit. “My name’s Bob Corbett. I’m the agent in charge of this investigation. You’ve done a great job here. A great job,” he continued, shaking Tom’s hand vigorously. “I have to admit I had my doubts, given your past history. But Agent Browne has made it clear that if it weren’t for you, we’d be nowhere. The U.S. government is very grateful.”

“It was Renwick, sir,” said Jennifer urgently. “He was behind the whole thing.”

Corbett frowned in confusion.

“Harry Renwick?” The question was almost laughed, as if the possibility was so remote as to be faintly ridiculous.

Tom nodded firmly.

“He’s been playing us off against each other all along.”

Corbett’s eyes narrowed as disbelief turned to hard-faced determination. “Tell us what you can and I’ll get on it. He can’t have gotten far.” Corbett turned to face two of his men and rattled off a series of instructions in a low voice before turning back to them, a purposeful look in his eye.

“These are yours, I believe.” Tom slid the slim metallic case off the desk and handed it to Corbett.

“Thank you.” Corbett pressed the catch and looked up gratefully. “Let’s just see if we can hang onto them this time.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-TWO

The hotel windows were open and the same intoxicating blend of laughter, Vespa engines, and tinkling crockery soared up to his room as it had two nights before. He was alone now, though, Jennifer having joined Corbett at the George V or wherever it was that the FBI saw fit to house its agents.

He didn’t blame her for going back there with them. No doubt she had to be debriefed and Corbett would want to know the ins and outs of everything that had happened for the past few days. At least he trusted her to tell his side of the story and argue his case for him. He’d followed through on his part of the deal, Amsterdam aside; but he knew she wouldn’t mention that.

There was a knock on the door. He crossed the room, the wooden floor sloping toward the middle of the building where the beams had settled over the centuries, and opened it. It was Jennifer. He stood staring at her blankly for a few moments before she spoke.

“Can I come in?”

“Yes. Yes, of course, sorry.” He opened the door and she stepped inside. The bed was the only piece of furniture solid enough to sit on and she perched on the end of it. “I just wasn’t expecting you, that’s all. How’s it going?” He remained standing near the door. “I’m surprised they let you out.”

“Well, they didn’t really, but they were driving me nuts asking the same questions over and over again. So I thought I’d come and find a familiar face.”

“I’m glad you did. How’s Corbett?”

“Oh, he’s fine. Mad as hell that he was the one that arranged for me to have dinner at Renwick’s, but fine. He’s got Renwick firmly in his sights now, though. He’s even talking of a federal task force to track him down. Oh… and he wants to see you in the morning to discuss your deal and how it’s going to happen. He said that he guessed you’d rather not do it at the U.S. embassy, so he suggested a place called Les Invalides. Said you’d know it.”

Tom nodded but didn’t move from the door.

“Will you be there?”

“Sure.”

“It’s an interesting place. Well worth a visit. You should get a guidebook.”

She nodded and there was an awkward pause.

“You know, you didn’t need to come all the way over to tell me that,” Tom said. “You could have called.”

“I know, but I wanted to come.”

Tom flashed her an amused grin.

“Agent Browne, did you actually miss me?”

Her eyes dipped to the floor.

“A little, maybe.”

Tom reached down and locked the door. At the sound of the key turning, she raised her eyes to his and smiled. Tom felt his pulse quickening.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-THREE

A thick heat had settled on the city by lunchtime of the following day. Jennifer was glad to walk out of the haze of exhaust fumes, through the vaulted entrance arch, into the coolness of the Hôtel des Invalides’s vast stone courtyard. She was a little early for her meeting with Bob and Tom, but then she hated being late.

The thought of Tom brought warm memories from the long, lazy night they’d spent together. She’d surprised herself by how much she’d wanted him. How much she’d needed that release. But she was also realistic. She knew that it was unlikely to last. That he was not the sort of man to be pinned down by anyone, even though she sensed that was perhaps what he thought he wanted.

She looked up at the weather-stained building around her and flicked to the relevant page in the guidebook she’d bought in the hotel’s gift shop that morning.

The Hôtel des Invalides, she read, comprises the largest single complex of monuments in Paris. It was founded in 1670 as a military hospital and barracks by Louis XIV, the Sun King. Today it houses the Musée de l’Armée and the remains of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, transferred from St Helena in 1840 and housed under the magnificent gilded dome of the Eglise St. Louis, one of Paris’s most well-known landmarks. No expense was spared for the tomb and Napoleon’s body lies within six separate coffins — iron, mahogany, two of lead, ebony, and red porphyry — the whole resting on a green-granite pedestal.

She looked up and smiled. Half of the cobblestone courtyard was bathed in light, the other cloaked in shadow as the sun made its way over the sloping roof. Windows had been set into the gray slate, each one carved to look like a medieval knight’s helmet, while the rounded windows of the floor below echoed the swooping arches of the raised cloister that ran all the way around the courtyard. She stepped up into the cloister, walked past the rusting and scarred hulks of captured cannons that had been strapped to the wall or laid on wooden blocks, her nose buried in the guidebook again.

When the Eglise St. Louis was built, in 1676, state protocol forbade soldiers from using the same entrance as the king and his court when attending Mass. The unusual solution was a double church with a shared altar in the middle of the building, the soldiers entering from the courtyard on the north side and the king entering from the south side under the dome.

Without warning, Tom stepped out from behind a column. He grabbed her by the arm and marched her into the shadows in the far left corner of the courtyard.

“What the fuck is going on?” Tom hissed into her ear as they walked.

“Get off. You’re hurting me.” Jennifer struggled under his rough grasp. He pushed her away from him, Jennifer only just managing to remain on her feet as she tottered across the slippery stone slabs.

“I should have known.” Tom took a step toward her. “Archie was right, you’re all the same.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Her back was against a World War I tank, one of the permanent exhibits on show there.

“Don’t tell me you don’t know—”

“Know what?”

“What he’s doing here?” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

“Who?”

“Clarke. The British police officer I told you about. There are four of them out there waiting to pick me up. You’ve sold me out.”

“What?” Jennifer’s eyes widened. “Tom, listen to me.” She stepped toward him, her voice low and serious. “I don’t know anything about this; you’ve got to believe me. It must be a mistake or something.”

Tom glared at her as she took another step forward.

“Look,” she continued. “You stay here. I’ll go and find Bob. I’ll try and find out what’s going on. I’m sure it’s just a mix-up. After what you’ve done for us, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Believe me.”

She took a final step and placed her hand on his arm. Tom nodded reluctantly.

“I’ll give you ten minutes. If you’re not back by then, you’ll never see or hear from me again. That’s a promise.”

“Ten minutes. Fine.”

Signs pointed the way to the tomb in five different languages. She followed them down a dark corridor, emerging onto a graveled area at the side of the church. Large metal barriers had been drawn across the path and again translated signs told her that the tomb was temporarily closed and apologized for any inconvenience. Seeing no one around, she vaulted over the barrier and walked round to the front of the church. Low, honey-colored steps led up to the entrance.

She paused at the top of the steps and looked out at the gardens around her. They were empty and in a few places the sprinklers were on, rainbows of water glittering in the midday sun as they arced twenty feet over the grass and bushes.

She could see the men that Tom had meant now, on the other side of the railings that encircled the gardens. Four of them in all, two in a car, one on a bench pretending to read a paper, the other pacing up and down. They were obviously watching the church entrance. One of them looked especially agitated, his suit jacket hanging listlessly off his thin, hunched shoulders. She turned to the entrance and stepped inside, the noise of the city vanishing as the glass vestibule door shut behind her.

She found herself instead swallowed by a deadened hush, the air still, the light muted and restrained, the marbled floor and stone walls frozen in respectful awe. Above her soared the dome, its interior an ecstatic communion of reds and oranges and blues. The painted figures represented the Apostles, her guidebook had told her.

There were four side chapels and here the light that filtered in was dyed by their stained glass windows, one green, the other blue, another yellow, the last one orange — small islands of color that glowed in each corner of the room like small fires. A solitary tomb dominated the middle of each chapel, with smaller monuments and memorials mounted on and against the walls. She whispered their names as she walked past.

“Foch, Vauban, Bertrand, Lyautey, Duroc.” Names she didn’t know but that sounded appropriately impressive and heroic. More than Browne certainly. Or Corbett for that matter. She frowned. Where was he? It wasn’t like him to be late.

A huge black marble and gold leaf altar stood at the far end of the room and behind it a glass wall glittered, separating what was now a tomb from what had been the soldier’s side of the double church. A low circular marble balustrade lay directly beneath the dome. As she approached it she could see that here the floor had been removed. In its place, rising from what had once been the crypt floor, was an enormous coffin, a spectacular scrolled mass of red stone resting on a green pedestal.

She leaned on the balustrade and looked down. The floor around the coffin had been inlaid with the names of Napoleon’s greatest victories with the whole encircled by a white marble colonnade. In the shadows cast by these columns she suddenly thought she saw a shape. Unrecognizable at first but, as her eyes adjusted to the light, unmistakeable.

The sole of a shoe. A man’s leg.

She jumped up and ran toward the altar at the rear of the church, flying down the steps behind it that led to the lower level. Max, her CIA contact from London, lay slumped on the floor in the narrow corridor that led from the stairs to the colonnade, his shirt stained red. She opened his eyelid, saw that he was dead, stepped over him, her heart racing.

And then she saw Corbett on the other side of the colonnade, stretched out on the floor, his head covered in blood, still and silent.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FOUR

With a small cry, Jennifer sprang toward Corbett and turned him over, pressing her fingers against his carotid artery, feeling for a pulse.

He was still alive. Thank God. He had a deep cut down the right side of his head, but he was still alive.

“Sir. Sir, can you hear me? It’s Browne.”

At the sound of Jennifer’s voice Corbett’s eyes fluttered open. He groaned and she bent her head down to listen, her ear hovering over his mouth.

“The coins. He took the coins.”

He was lying half in and half out of a small chamber that gave off the colonnade. The chamber was dominated by a towering marble statue of Napoleon dressed in all his imperial finery. On the floor in front of this, on a white marbled tombstone engraved with the name NAPOLEON II, was a small vase of flowers. Jennifer tipped some of the water from it onto her handkerchief and handed it to Corbett. He had dragged himself upright and was sitting against the door frame. He accepted the wet cloth gratefully, placing it against the wound to staunch the blood.

“What happened?” Jennifer asked gently, crouching down on the floor opposite him. He shook his head in confusion, his voice weak, his face ashen. Jennifer was suddenly struck by how old he looked.

“I don’t know. It all happened so fast. I thought I’d have a look around while I was waiting for you guys. He hit me from behind. I just got a glimpse of his face as I fell. It was Renwick.”

“Renwick? Are you sure?”

He nodded.

“I recognized him. No question.” He began to cough, his body convulsing as he fought to clear his lungs. Jennifer waited until he had settled.

“And the coins?”

“They were in my pocket.” He patted his jacket. “They’re gone.” His voice cracked with disappointment. “I figured if I had Max I’d be okay. I never thought someone would—”

“Don’t worry about that now. I’ll get a doctor down here, get you checked out.” Jennifer stood up. “Okay?”

Corbett nodded feebly.

Jennifer took her mobile out of her purse, flipped it open, but paused before dialing.

“By the way, why are the Brits here?”

“Who?” She couldn’t see Corbett’s face, the handkerchief was masking it, but she sensed him frowning.

“The British police. I saw them outside. Did you call them?” Corbett lowered the cloth from his head and narrowed his eyes, his voice suddenly firmer.

“Stay out of that, Jennifer. It’s way over your head. It’s straight from the top.”

“Stay out of what? What the hell’s going on?”

“It’s for the best.”

Her eyes widened.

“You’re turning him in? He helps us and you just hand him over? He’s done nothing wrong. He’s innocent.” Her eyes flashed with indignation. Corbett gave her a watery smile.

“Innocent? Of what? Maybe he didn’t kill Renwick. Maybe he didn’t steal the coins. But he’s done plenty of other jobs. He’s a crook, Browne, a two-bit thief who deserves to be inside.”

“That’s bullshit!” she shouted angrily.

“You think we can have a guy like that running around knowing what he knows? It would just be a matter of time before he spills his guts and then what? A diplomatic shit storm that would set our foreign policy back twenty years.”

“We had a deal. He helped us and promised to keep quiet and in return we wiped his slate clean. He trusted me. I gave him my word.”

“And you believed him? Hah!” Corbett snorted. “I told you not to get too close, that he was dangerous. There’s more riding on this than your word. As far as the Brits are concerned, Renwick’s been murdered and Kirk’s their man. This way we get to go after Renwick and Kirk gets taken off the street and his silence is guaranteed.”

“Screw that.” Jennifer’s voice shook with anger. “You’re betraying him for what? So the president doesn’t get asked a few awkward questions? So the CIA doesn’t have to face up to its own mistakes? So you can stick another collar on your resumé?”

“Wake up, Jennifer.” Corbett snapped back, using her name for the first time. “This is the real world and sometimes it gets ugly.” His voice was rough and unfeeling. “This is about getting the right result. For all of us. It’s cut-bait time and you know it.”

“This is exactly the sort of bullshit you told me you hate. If you think I’m going to stand by and just let this happen, you’re wrong. Dead wrong.”

“Hold it right there,” Corbett snapped. There was a pause. “You need to think about your next step very carefully.” Corbett’s voice was edged with menace. “And I’m telling you this because I care about you.” He paused. “You see, back home we’ve been a little worried that you were getting too close to Kirk. That you might be in danger. So Piper got one of our guys in Amsterdam to keep an eye on you both; you know, sort of watch your back.”

Jennifer swallowed, not daring to break eye contact.

“I’ve got a sworn statement saying he followed two people back from a museum to your hotel three nights ago. Turns out the museum was robbed the same night.”

He paused again.

“It would be a goddamned shame if he was to identify you as one of the people he saw. You know, I’m not even sure what would happen.” His voice had a carefree tone now. “You’d do time for sure. The Bureau hates its own agents crossing over to the other side. It’s not good for morale.”

“You bastard,” she spat the words out but knew he had her. He would place her at the scene and she would go down for it. Five, seven years inside. There would be no going back.

“You bastard,” she said again, hearing the uncertainty in her voice.

“It hurts now,” said Corbett soothingly. “But in time you’ll see it’s for the best. It ain’t pretty but this is how the system works. Sometimes, you gotta take some shortcuts. There’s no reason anyone should know what happened in Amsterdam. That’s between me and you. I know you only did it for the right reasons. You play your cards right now and you’re going all the way in the Bureau. I guarantee it.”

Jennifer didn’t answer, staring instead at the floor. She wanted to hit him.

“Why don’t you clean up,” he said, pointing at her blood-covered fingers, “and then we can talk some more.”

Jennifer went into the small chamber and picked up the vase from the floor, emptying its contents into her cupped left hand. Then she put the vase down and rubbed her hands together, the water splashing and dripping onto the floor, the white marble blushing red. She looked up, tears of rage and frustration in her eyes, at the statue.

Was this it, she found herself wondering as she gazed into the statue’s unseeing and proud eyes? Was this what it was all about? Using and discarding people. Was that the secret of Bob Corbett’s success? Is that what she would have to do if she was going to make it herself?

And all for what? They had nothing. The coins gone. Cassius vanished. Tom betrayed. But what could she do? Whatever she said, they’d still put Tom away for the Amsterdam job. It was pointless.

She rubbed her hands down the sides of her skirt, the black material soft and absorbent, preparing herself to turn around and face Corbett’s smug smile. She checked to make sure all the blood had gone from under her nails and the sight of her fingers made the memory of Renwick’s severed hand flash into her head — a bloody stump dropped callously into a clear plastic evidence bag and then carried off to some lab or evidence room. His right hand.

Her brain snapped into focus. His right hand.

What was it that Finch had told her back in Louisville after Short’s autopsy? Something about an old forensic trick. About how right-handed people would tend to strike down on the right side of their victim’s head because otherwise they couldn’t get any real force into the blow. Bob had a gash down the right-hand side of his head. How could Renwick have done that if he was missing his right hand?

“Bob, I’m going to go and get you a doctor.” She tried to keep her voice casual, her eyes steady. “Let’s talk about all this later.”

There was no reply.

She turned around and saw Corbett almost standing on top of her. He had his gun out and brought it crashing into the side of her jaw. She collapsed to the floor, blood pouring from her mouth.

“Move,” Corbett barked. “Back in there.” He kicked her in the ribs as she half crawled, half dragged herself into the depths of the small chamber, shielding her face from Corbett’s immaculately polished black shoes.

“I’m sorry, Jennifer. Really I am. I never thought it would come to this.” He reached into his pocket and took out a thick silencer that he screwed carefully onto the end of his standard-issue Beretta as he spoke.

“It’s Kirk’s fault I’m going to have to kill you.” There was an almost hysterical edge to his voice as he spoke. He pulled back on the Beretta, the gun giving a distinctive metallic click as a bullet was loaded into the chamber.

“What are you doing, Bob?” Jennifer croaked. She coughed, swallowed the blood in her mouth, felt her back against the cool marble of the statue’s pedestal.

“I would have thought that was obvious.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-FIVE

Tom’s hand was on the door handle, poised to open it, when he heard raised voices on the other side. Then it fell quiet again. Instinctively, he knew something was wrong. Very wrong.

Once Jennifer had left him, he’d slipped through the soldier’s entrance of the Eglise St. Louis from the courtyard of the main building. Despite what he’d said about disappearing, he wanted to know what was really going on for himself — whether Jennifer had betrayed him or if it really was all a mistake. Clarke would still be safely stationed on the other side of the railings, his neck muscles twitching furiously as the minutes dragged on.

Inside the church, banks of dark wooden seats stretched in front of him across the limestone floor. High above, where the massive walls met the delicately barreled roof, regimental colors and captured enemy flags extended along the length of the nave, swinging gently, their battle-ravaged and bloodstained fabrics still vibrant. At the far end was an altar.

Tom had walked to the altar and then made his way behind it. There, set into the glass wall, he had found the small connecting door between the two halves of the church he was looking for. That’s when he’d heard the raised voices.

He tried the handle and the door opened noiselessly onto the small half-landing that led down to the colonnaded walkway around the base of the sarcophagus. Crouching, he could see Max on the floor and on the other side just make out two shapes.

He turned to his right and walked silently up the stairs to the ground-floor level, making his way over to the low marble balustrade. He could hear voices again now, talking beneath him.

“Tell me, how did you know?” That was Corbett clearly. “I’m interested.”

“Your wound.” Jennifer’s voice sounded strange. “Renwick couldn’t have done that with his right hand missing.”

“Very clever. As always. Maybe I’ll just have to pretend Kirk did it, just before he took my gun and shot you.”

Corbett’s voice got louder as Tom made his way around the balustrade, suggesting that he was moving closer to him. Jennifer’s voice was weaker. Tom guessed that she was in the small chamber that he knew lay over at this side of the coffin.

“Why are you doing this? Why now? For the money?” Corbett laughed, and Tom could tell that he must be right below him now. Without hesitating, Tom slipped over the balustrade and crouched on the narrow rim at its base.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SIX

“I’ll almost miss you, Browne,” said Corbett as he raised his gun. He paused just for a second as he tightened his grip on the gun, his finger toying with the trigger’s tightness as he steeled himself for the shot.

With a final push, Tom swung down off the ledge and hit Corbett square in his back with the flat of his feet. Corbett slammed into the wall, his nose breaking against the marble, the gun spinning out of his hand and into the chamber, where it struck the statue’s pedestal before dropping to the floor. Tom landed heavily on his back, his hands breaking his fall.

Corbett turned around, snarling, fists clenched, poised to leap on Tom, but Jennifer stepped between them, gripping his gun.

“I will shoot you if I have to, sir.” She tilted her head to one side and raised the gun to his chest. “We both know I’ve done it before.”

Corbett’s eyes narrowed, the blood filtering through his fingers from his nose and his voice muffled as he cupped his face.

“You talk a big game, Browne, but you and I both know you’re bluffing. You can’t kill me, not after what you did to Greg. They’ll just lock you away this time.”

“Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. But sometimes you got to take some shortcuts if you want to get the right result, isn’t that true?”

Something in her tone seemed to make Corbett hesitate.

“You won’t do it,” he snarled, eventually.

“Well, I will then,” said Tom, stepping forward and taking the gun from her grasp. “So I suggest you shut the hell up.”

Corbett began to laugh, his blood forming large bubbles from his nose that burst before re-forming again.

“What’s funny?”

“You two. What a team. We never planned on that.”

“We?” said Jennifer, taking a step forward. “What we?” Corbett didn’t answer, his laugh melting into a thick cough as some blood flowed back down his throat.

“Cassius,” said Tom, suddenly. “You’ve been working with Cassius, haven’t you?” Corbett pressed his back heavily against the wall as his cough subsided. Tom glanced at Jennifer. “That’s how Renwick knew that you were still alive. That’s how he knew the NYPD got a DNA match on me in New York.” He looked back at Corbett. “Because you told him.” Corbett remained silent.

“But I don’t understand,” said Jennifer, turning to Tom. “How could he have been involved with Renwick? I was working with him all along. I would have noticed.”

“Because he only let you see what he wanted,” Tom countered. “After Steiner got lucky at Schiphol Airport, Renwick tracked him and Ranieri down and had them both killed. The only problem was that Ranieri had swallowed the fifth coin and it ended back with you guys in Washington. So they arranged for both of us to meet for dinner at Renwick’s house. That gave them the opportunity to grab the coin back, get rid of Harry Renwick once and for all and incriminate me so that I’d be blamed for everything. Only they didn’t count on you doing such a good job of pinning down my movements all night.”

“You still don’t get who he is, do you? The genius of the man. What he’s capable of.” Corbett spat, his voice getting stronger now. “You’re both as dumb as the rest of them. Piper, Green, Young, they all fell for it.”

“What do you mean, fell for it? Fell for what?” Tom asked.

“Oh my God,” Jennifer gasped. “Of course. None of it ever happened, did it?”

Corbett began to clap slowly, his face twisted and hateful.

“What are you talking about?” asked Tom.

“You were right, Tom.” She turned and spewed words at him as her mouth strained to catch up with her brain. “You said it was all too convenient. That they’d wanted us to discover the faked suicide and the container. Well, that’s why. None of it ever happened. Corbett was the one who suggested going through the personnel files. He knew I’d find out sooner or later that Short had been murdered and focus the investigation there. He knew I’d find the container out the back of his house and the money in his bank account. The whole thing was a setup.”

“Short was so fucking bored.” Corbett dabbed his nose with his sleeve. “So desperate to be a cop again, to get a bit of the old buzz back. So when I flashed my badge and told him that we needed his help on a secret government project, he couldn’t do enough to help. Dumb fuck didn’t even want to get paid. Told me he was proud enough to be doing something for his country again. Can you believe that?”

“So there was no gold shipment?” Tom asked.

“Oh, the container turned up, all right. Short did the inventory himself so no one else would get a good look at it. Then he saw to it that it was put downstairs and that all the paperwork checked out and screwed around with the generator so I could sell my computer virus theory. But there was nobody actually inside the container. The whole thing was Renwick’s idea. To set up a robbery that never actually happened. So that if anyone came looking, they’d have something to investigate.” He locked eyes with Tom and smiled. “Someone to investigate.”

“But if no one was in the container, how did you get into the vault? How did you get the coins out?” Jennifer asked, frowning in confusion.

Tom nodded in sudden understanding.

“Because this wasn’t a setup. It was a cover-up. All this was to cover up an earlier crime, wasn’t it? Because you already had the coins. You just needed to make sure that someone else took the fall. Me.”

There was a pause as Jennifer looked from Tom to Corbett, back to Tom in confusion.

“Ten years,” said Corbett slowly, breaking the silence. “Ten years they’ve been sitting in a safety deposit box. Waiting. Millions of dollars and I couldn’t touch it. Until Renwick offered me a way out.”

“But how did you get them?” Jennifer asked. “How did you do it?”

“Didn’t you get taught to check back?” Corbett flicked his eyes to hers. “FBI 101, Jennifer. Always, check back. You were more interested in following the obvious clues I’d left you than in doing your basic homework.” He gave a short laugh. “But then, that’s why I chose you. I knew you’d be so desperate to do well, to impress, to earn another shot at the big time that you’d go for the story I’d carefully laid out for you. If you’d looked properly, you’d have noticed my name as the officer in charge when the coins were moved from Philadelphia back to Fort Knox ten years ago.”

Jennifer felt suddenly hot. He was right. She had followed the obvious clues, even when she’d sensed that something was wrong. She’d got carried away by her hunger to succeed.

“There I was, two weeks after Martha left me for some guy she met in her yoga class, sitting in the back of a van with five coins worth millions of dollars handcuffed to my wrist. So I just opened the case and took them. When we got down to Fort Knox, no one checked that the coins were there. They just signed the case in and took it straight down to the vault, empty. Everyone trusted good old Bob Corbett. They always have. It was too easy.” He smiled at them triumphantly.

“So what was the plan? Smuggle the coins back to Europe and auction them off? What was your cut?” Tom asked.

“Half the proceeds.”

“I’ve heard enough,” said Jennifer, her face wrinkled in disgust. “Give me the coins.”

Corbett reached inside his jacket and removed the polished metal case.

“You’d better call for some backup,” said Tom as he took the case from Corbett and gave it to Jennifer. She opened it to check that the coins were there and then snapped it shut again.

“You leave first.”

“No way. Not till he’s been dealt with.”

“I’m serious. I can take it from here.” She held her hand out for the gun. “Until all this has been cleared up, you shouldn’t risk getting caught.”

“You sure?”

An unfamiliar voice echoed across the tomb’s empty space before she could answer.

“What the bloody hell is going on here?”

A man was standing in the corridor’s half shadow, gazing at Max’s outstretched body. Tom turned to Jennifer.

“It’s Clarke.”

CHAPTER EIGHTY-SEVEN

As Tom turned, Corbett kicked out and caught his hand with the side of his shoe. The gun flew through the air and landed with a noisy rattle on the floor behind him. In the same movement, Corbett turned on his heel and sprinted toward the stairs.

“Ah, Corbett,” said Clarke when he saw him running toward him. “I thought I heard someone down here.” He pointed at Max’s body. “Is this Kirk’s work?”

Corbett elbowed him out the way without breaking his stride and Clarke’s head hit the marble wall with a thump. He slumped to the floor.

“Quick,” said Tom. “Give me a leg up.”

Jennifer cupped her hands and Tom stepped up onto them until he could reach the rim of the balustrade above. He hauled himself up and crouched there until he heard the clatter of Corbett’s heels reaching the top of the stairs. Tom jumped up onto the balustrade as Corbett came past and threw himself at him, his arms wrapping around Corbett’s waist and then sliding down to his ankles, toppling him like a rolled-up carpet.

Corbett was up in a flash, catching Tom on the side of his face with a heavy blow that made his face sting. Tom rolled to his feet, adrenaline pumping, blood trickling from the side of his mouth, and placed himself between Corbett and the exit. Corbett stood, fists raised, his eyes flicking uncertainly between Tom and the door, clearly trying to assess how likely he was to get past him.

“Be my guest,” said Tom.

With a roar, Corbett launched himself at Tom, lashing out with a series of well-aimed kicks and punches that Tom blocked with his arms before striking out himself and catching Corbett on the left cheekbone, sending him sprawling. On his hands and knees now, Corbett lifted his head toward Tom, his eyes ablaze.

He stood up and took several steps back. Tom realized too late what he was doing as he unclipped the red rope from one of the mobile barriers that had been pushed up against the wall behind him and picked up one of its brass poles. With a triumphant sneer, he walked toward Tom, swinging the heavy brass pole in front of him with both hands, the thick square base swishing menacingly through the air.

Tom backed away and Corbett broke into a run, swinging the pole around his head like a claymore. Tom dodged the first two sweeps, one to his right, one to his left, but the third took him by surprise, a low sweep that caught him just behind the left knee and flipped him onto his back. Corbett immediately raised the pole above his head and brought it crashing down. Tom rolled one way and then the other just in time as the heavy brass base struck the marble twice, sending large chunks of the polished stone spinning through the air. He kicked out and caught Corbett in the stomach, momentarily winding him and sending him staggering back.

Tom scrambled to his feet and ran to the other pole, unclipping the rope from it and picking it up, flipping it between his hands as he tried to get used to the weight. The two men circled each other warily, both looking for an opening.

Corbett made the first move, taking a wild swing at Tom’s head. Tom parried the blow, the two brass poles crashing together with a metallic clang that echoed back off the painted dome like a bell. He immediately struck back catching Corbett on his arm. Corbett shouted with pain; he stumbled backward and then charged again, swinging the pole backward and forward. Tom defended himself desperately as he was driven back toward the marble balustrade, the brass poles clashing again and again and again, until his hands were numb from the vibrations.

Sensing the balustrade behind him Tom jumped up onto it and Corbett leaped forward, swinging at Tom’s legs. Tom jumped up, the pole swinging harmlessly under his feet and then again as it came back the other way. But the momentum of the second swing seemed to throw Corbett slightly off-balance and Tom kicked out, catching him across his already bloodied and broken nose. Corbett shrieked with pain and dropped his pole as his hands flew to his face. Tom jumped down and booted the pole across the room, then threw his own after it.

Corbett looked up at him, eyes streaming, hair wild, blood dripping from his nose, his suit ripped and dirty. With a final, desperate roar, Corbett propelled himself across the few feet that separated them. Tom threw himself to the floor and tripped him, Corbett’s face flicking from hate to surprise as he fell heavily.

Tom was on his back immediately and wrapped his arm around his neck in a choke hold. He tightened his grip as Corbett began to cough, slapping Tom’s forearm like a capitulating wrestler as he struggled to get his breath.

Tom slowly lifted Corbett’s head back toward him, felt his struggling get more desperate as the ligaments in his neck began to stretch and tear and the vertebrae grind against each other, crushing his spinal column.

Some faint memory from his CIA training flashed into his head: that it requires only six pounds of pressure to break a human neck.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-EIGHT

“Don’t do it, Tom.” He felt Jennifer’s gentle touch on his shoulder. “He’s not worth it.”

He held Corbett still, his mind on fire, the pounding in his head drowning everything out. Again her voice came, gentle and calm.

“Let him go. Don’t prove him right.”

Slowly Tom loosened his grip, until he suddenly snatched his arm away and jumped up, leaving Corbett writhing on the floor, coughing and gasping. Jennifer smiled at him.

“Well done.”

“Right, nobody move.” Clarke emerged from behind the altar and walked toward them, Corbett’s gun in his hand. “Nobody’s going anywhere until I find out exactly what’s going on here.” He was rubbing the back of his head and still looked dazed.

“It’s very simple,” said Jennifer, stepping toward him and then stopping when Clarke waggled the gun at her. “Bob Corbett is suspected of complicity in a criminal conspiracy. I have just placed him under arrest.”

Clarke raised his eyebrows.

“What, one of your own bloody agents? What are you Yanks playing at?”

“It’s complicated,” said Jennifer, throwing him a quick smile.

“It’s a bloody shambles, that’s what it is. Normally is with you lot. Anyway, that’s your business. I’m here for him.” He turned to face Tom, his voice unsteady but strengthening. “I told you I’d catch up with you eventually.” He gave a thin smile.

“I hate to disappoint you, but Tom has been working for us,” said Jennifer gently, taking another step toward him.

“Kirk? Working for the FBI? Pull the other one. He’s a killer.”

“You mean Harry Renwick?”

Clarke nodded. “Too bloody right I do.”

Jennifer took another step forward and was now standing just a few feet from Clarke.

“Harry Renwick’s still alive and I can prove it.”

Clarke looked at each of them disbelievingly, the color rising in his face, a muscle in his neck throbbing violently under his pale skin.

“Bollocks. You’re protecting him. You think I was born yesterday?” There was a desperate tone to his voice now.

“I’m not and the Bureau will back me up.”

“Oh, I get it!” Clarke’s worried face lifted into a triumphant sneer. “You’re working with him, aren’t you? You’re both in this together. It’s some sort of scam. Well, I’ll have you both.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a shiny set of handcuffs.

“Tom Kirk,” he began. “I’m arresting you for the murder of… ”

Tom shot a glance at Jennifer.

“Do you mind?” he asked.

“Let me.”

“… Henry Julius Renwick,” Clarke continued. “Anything you say—”

Jennifer drew her right hand back and punched Clarke on the point of his chin. He gave a wheezy cough and then collapsed onto the floor like a puppet that had had its strings cut.

CHAPTER EIGHTY-NINE

The announcer’s tinny voice echoed through the departure lounge, first in French, then in English.

“Final call for Air France flight number 9074 for Washington, D.C. Would all remaining passengers please make their way immediately to gate number five.”

“I guess that’s my flight,” sighed Jennifer.

“I guess it is,” said Tom.

“Listen. I want to say thank you,” Jennifer said awkwardly. “You know, for everything.”

“No, thank you. For trusting me. It meant a lot. Still does.”

Jennifer blushed and looked down at her feet.

“Well, if you’re ever in the States….”

Tom smiled. “Don’t worry, I will. If you have time; now you’re so important.”

“Oh, you heard about that.” She blushed again.

“You deserve it. I’m sure Corbett would have approved. How is he, by the way?”

“Jean-Pierre smoothed things over with the local authorities here. Now he’s under military escort until he gets back to D.C. Then we’ll see. Like he told me, the Bureau has a thing about rogue agents. My guess is it’ll be a long, long time before they’ll let him out.”

“Good. He’s earned it.”

“And what about you? What will you do now?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ve got my shop opening soon. There’s still a lot to do for that. I guess I haven’t really thought about it. I’ve never had time to think about it before.”

“And you’re sure that you don’t want any protection in case Renwick makes a move.”

“Oh, no, I’ll be fine. I have a feeling I’ll see him again one day, but I’ll be ready.”

“Well, we’ll be looking for him, too.” Jennifer picked her bag up. “I’ll let you know if we find him.” A pause. “I’d better go.”

“I know,” said Tom. He kissed her on the forehead, then the lips, and they hugged each other tightly.

“Take care,” she whispered into his ear as they parted.

“Oh, and by the way,” she said as she turned toward the gate. “Your friend Piper has resigned. The treasury secretary didn’t take too kindly to being lied to about what happened. And as long as you keep quiet about Centaur, our deal stands. When you get home, your friend Clarke will give you the full red-carpet treatment.”

“That’s great.” Somehow Tom doubted it.

“The secretary even suggested some sort of reward or something for you, but then I remembered that you didn’t really like working for the government, so probably wouldn’t want anything.”

Tom smiled.

“Just the memories.”

“Bye, Tom,” she said, her eyes twinkling.

“Don’t you mean au revoir?” he whispered to himself as she disappeared through the gate.

CHAPTER NINETY

“So that’s put the kibosh on that then?” Archie’s familiar voice broke into Tom’s thoughts. “Thank God.”

Tom shook his head in smiling disbelief.

“Just happened to be passing, did you?” He kept his eyes fixed on the spot where he had last seen Jennifer. Archie stepped forward and rested his back against the low steel rail that Tom was leaning on. He wore a suit and tie, a briefcase in one hand and the Financial Times under the other arm, blending in seamlessly with the hordes of businessmen making their way through the terminal.

“Someone’s got to watch your back.” His words were muffled as he took another bite of the sandwich that he was clutching in his right hand. The yellow wrapper matched his Ferragamo tie.

“Last time you were watching my back, you signed me up to do a job for Cassius and nearly got me shot,” Tom said sarcastically.

Archie looked mortified.

“Oh, that hurts, mate, that really hurts.”

“What are you really doing here?”

“Making sure you didn’t do something you might regret. Like get on that plane.”

“Would that have been such a bad idea?” asked Tom thoughtfully.

“Er… yes!” Archie slurped on his drink. “First, she’s a fed. That’s generally bad news if you’re a thief. Second, she lives in America. That’s a long way from home. Third, she’s far too hot for the likes of you.”

“You’re probably right,” said Tom, laughing.

He stood up straight and turned around, leaning against the rail next to Archie, and shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. Nestling at the bottom of his left-hand pocket, he felt an unfamiliar shape. He slipped it out into the open.

It was a stainless-steel 1934 Rolex Prince, its case glinting in the sunlight. The one Jennifer had pointed out to him on the morning they had first met. The one she must have slipped into his pocket when they had hugged good-bye. A little trick she seemed to have picked up from Amin Madhavy back in Istanbul.

“Nice piece,” said Archie, peering in for a closer look. “I know someone who’ll take that off your hands if you want to shift it.”

“No, thanks,” said Tom, following Jennifer’s plane as it taxied out onto the runway, imagining her knuckles glowing white as they gripped the armrests in anticipation of takeoff. “I think I’ll hang onto this one.”

There was a silence and the airport throbbed around them, children screaming, baggage trolleys squeaking, phones ringing.

Archie coughed and straightened his tie.

“Actually, Tom, there’s another reason I’m here.”

“Here we go.” Tom rolled his eyes. “What have you done now?”

“Nothing. It’s just that I’ve had this great idea. You and me. Kirk and Connolly. In business together.” Tom sighed and began to walk toward the exit.

“Where are you going?” Archie ran after him. “Your skills and my connections, we’d be unstoppable. Think about it.”

“Archie, I’ve told you. No more jobs.”

“No, that’s my point. A proper business. All kosher and aboveboard. You know, buying stuff here, selling it there, helping people get stuff back. We could make a fortune. We could be the good guys for a change.”

“Archie,” said Tom as he threw his arm around his shoulders. “If you’re involved, how can we ever be the good guys?”

Archie stopped in his tracks, his expression pained.

“Oh, that hurts, mate. That really hurts.”

Tom laughed.

“Maybe a pint will help you get over it.”

“As long as it’s none of this foreign muck.”