The Double Eagle
JAMES TWINING

DEDICATION

To Victoria, always

Là, tout n’est qu’ordre et beauté,Luxe, calme et volupté

Charles Baudelaire, L’Invitation au Voyage

EPIGRAPH

Executive Order No. 6102

By virtue of the authority vested in me by Section 5(b) of the Act of October 6, 1917, as amended by Section 2 of the Act of March 9, 1933, entitled ‘An Act to provide relief in the existing national emergency in banking, and for other purposes,’ in which amendatory Act Congress declared that a serious emergency exists,

I, Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States of America, do declare that said national emergency still continues to exist and pursuant to said section do hereby prohibit the hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States by individuals, partnerships, associations and corporations and hereby prescribe the following regulations for carrying out the purposes of this order.

All persons are hereby required to deliver on or before May 1, 1933, to a Federal Reserve bank or a branch or agency thereof or to any member bank of the Federal Reserve System all gold coin, gold bullion and gold certificates now owned by them or coming into their ownership on or before April 28, 1933.

Upon receipt of gold coin, gold bullion or gold certificates delivered to it, the Federal Reserve Bank or member bank will pay thereof an equivalent amount of any other form of coin or currency coined or issued under the laws of the United States.

Whoever wilfully violates any provision of this Executive Order or of these regulations or of any rule, regulation or license issued thereunder may be fined not more than $10,000, or, if a natural person, may be imprisoned for not more than ten years, or both; and any officer, director, or agent of any corporation who knowingly participates in any such violation may be punished by a like fine, imprisonment, or both.

This order and these regulations may be modified or revoked at any time.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

President of the United States of America

April 5, 1933

Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

Part I

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Part II

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

Forty

Forty-One

Forty-Two

Forty-Three

Forty-Four

Forty-Five

Forty-Six

Part III

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Fifty-Six

Fifty-Seven

Fifty-Eight

Fifty-Nine

Sixty

Sixty-One

Sixty-Two

Sixty-Three

Sixty-Four

Sixty-Five

Sixty-Six

Sixty-Seven

Sixty-Eight

Sixty-Nine

Seventy

Seventy-One

Seventy-Two

Seventy-Three

Seventy-Four

Seventy-Five

Seventy-Six

Seventy-Seven

Seventy-Eight

Seventy-Nine

Eighty

Eighty-One

Eighty-Two

Eighty-Three

Eighty-Four

Eighty-Five

Eighty-Six

Eighty-Seven

Eighty-Eight

Eighty-Nine

Ninety

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

What do you not drive human hearts into, cursed Craving for gold!

Virgil – The Aeneid (iii.56)

Pont de Grenelle, 16th Arrondissement, Paris 16th July – 9:05pm

They were late.

They’d said quarter to and it was already five past. It made him uneasy to be standing out in the open for this long. If they weren’t there in the next five minutes he was leaving, a million dollars or not.

He patted his pocket nervously. It was still there; he could feel it through the black woollen material, its warm weight pressing against his thigh. It was still safe.

A teenage couple, arms interlinked, strolled towards him, snatching kisses every few steps in the dying light. Mid-embrace, the girl caught sight of him and broke away with an embarrassed shrug. Her fingers flew unconsciously to the small silver crucifix that hung around her neck.

‘Bonsoir, mon père.’

‘Bonsoir, mon enfant.’

He smiled and nodded at them both as they walked past him to the other side of the Pont de Grenelle, noting that it was only then they allowed their guilty laughter to echo up through the fading heat. Against a crimson sky, the lights on the Eiffel Tower sparkled as if it was on fire.

He rested his arms on the parapet and looked out at the Statue of Liberty. Identical to her much larger sister across the Atlantic, she dominated the Allée des Cygnes, the narrow island in the middle of the River Seine upon which she had been erected in 1889, according to the inscription on her base. She had her back to him, smooth bronze muscles of crumpled fabric and taut skin, eternally youthful despite the green patina of old age.

As a child, his grandmother had once told him that many members of their family had made the long and difficult journey from Naples to America in the 1920s. When he looked at the statue, he felt somehow connected to those faceless relatives, understood something of their sense of wonder at their first sight of the New World, their unshakeable faith in a new beginning. So he always chose this place. It felt familiar. Safe. Protected. Caso mai. Just in case.

Two men appeared out of the shadows of the bridge below and looked up at him. He sketched a wave, crossed to the other side of the road and made his way down the shallow concrete steps towards them, walking under the bridge’s low steel arch. He stopped at the edge of the wide area encircling the statue’s massive stone pedestal, careful as always to keep about twenty feet between himself and them.

They must have been there all the time, he thought to himself; watching him, checking that he was alone, hiding in the lengthening shadows like lions in long grass. That figured. These were not people to take chances. But then neither was he.

‘Bonsoir,’ the large man on the left called clearly through the night air, his long blond hair melting into a thick beard. An American, he guessed.

‘Bonsoir,’ he called back warily.

A large Bateau Mouche swept down the river past them, its blinding lights reaching into the darkness, probing, feeling. The heavy folds of the statue’s robe seemed to ripple and lift gently under their touch as if caught in some unseen draught. As if she was teasing them.

‘You got it?’ The bearded man called out in English when the throb of the ship’s engines had faded and the burning lights had shifted their relentless glare further along the bank.

‘You got the money?’ His voice was firm. It was the usual game, played out more times than he cared to remember. He looked down, feigning indifference and noticed that his polished black shoes were already dusty from the dry gravel.

‘Let’s see it first,’ the man called back.

He paused. There seemed to be something strange about the bearded man’s voice. A slight tension. He looked up and checked over his shoulder but his escape route was clear. He blinked his concern away and gave them the standard response.

‘Show me the money and I’ll take you to it.’

There. He saw it this time. Most wouldn’t have noticed but he had been around long enough to read the signs. The stiffening of the shoulders, the narrowing of the eyes as the lone antelope strayed just that little too far from the rest of the herd.

They were preparing themselves.

He looked around again. It was still clear, although it was difficult to see beyond the trees as night closed in. Then he realized. That’s why they’d been late.

So it would be dark.

Without saying a word he spun on the gravel, running, running as fast as he could, his slick leather soles spraying stones behind him like tyres accelerating on a dirt track. He couldn’t let them get it. He couldn’t let them find it. He snatched a glance over his shoulder and saw the two men bearing down on him, a gun barrel glimmering in the orange glow of the lights that lined the bridge overhead like a sharp claw.

Instinctively, he snapped his head back round just as he ran onto the point of the knife. Now he understood. The dark shape that had appeared in front of him, arm outstretched, face masked by the night, had been hiding in the shadows until he had come within striking distance. He’d been herded into the arms of death like an animal.

With a short, sharp punch, the six-inch serrated blade carved up into his chest and the shock of the impact made him swallow hard. He felt its coldness slicing through the soft cartilage at the base of his sternum, cutting into his heart.

It was the last thing he felt.

In the orange light, the blood that had leaked over the starched whiteness of his dog collar glowed green as Lady Liberty’s weathered skin. But unknowing, unseeing, unfeeling, her steady gaze was fixed instead towards America.

Towards New York.

PART I

Gold conjures up a mist about a man, more destructive of all his old senses and lulling to his feelings than the fumes of charcoal

Charles Dickens – Nicholas Nickleby

ONE

Fifth Avenue, New York City16th July – 11:30pm

Gracefully he fell, his body arcing in one smooth movement out from the side of the building and then back in, like a spider caught in a sudden gust of wind as it dropped on its thread, until with a final fizz of the rope through his gloved hand he landed on the balcony of the 17th floor.

Crouching, he unclipped the rope from his harness and flattened his back to the wall, his dark, lithe shape blending into the stained stone. He didn’t move, his chest barely rising, the thin material of his black ski mask slick against his lips.

He had to be sure. He had to be certain that no one had seen him on the way down. So he waited, listening to the shallow breaths of the city slumbering fitfully below him, watching the Met’s familiar bulk retreat into shadow as its floodlights were extinguished.

And all the while Central Park’s dark lung, studded with the occasional lights of taxis making their way between East and West 86th Street, breathed a chilled, oxygenated air up the side of the building that made him shiver despite the heat. Air heavy with New York’s distinctive scent, an intoxicating cocktail of fear, sweat and greed that bubbled up from subway tunnels and steam vents.

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

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

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

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

Pressure pads. As predicted.

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

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

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

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

Kneeling, he placed his gloved hands flat on the floor and slid them slowly across the dry wooden surface. About three feet in front of him, the tips of his fingers sensed a slight ridge in the wood. He moved his hands apart along the ridge, until he reached what felt like a corner on both sides. Placing his knuckles on these corners, he leant forward with all his weight. With a faint click, a two-foot square panel sank down and then sprang up about half an inch proud of the rest of the floor. It was hinged at the far end and he folded the panel back on itself so that it lay flat, revealing a gleaming floor safe.

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

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

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

Inside there was some cash, around fifty thousand dollars he guessed, jewellery and a 1920s Reverso wristwatch. But he ignored all these, turning his attention instead to a large wooden box, its dark mahogany lid inlaid with a golden double-headed eagle, an orb and sceptre firmly gripped in each of its talons. The Romanov Imperial crest.

He eased the box open, carefully lifting the precious object it contained out from the luxuriant embrace of its white silk lining.

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

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

‘The Winter Egg was made by Carl Fabergé for Tsar Nicholas II to give to his mother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, for Easter 1913. The Egg, cut from Siberian rock crystal, is encrusted with more than three thousand diamonds, with another one thousand three hundred diamonds adorning the base.

As with all Fabergé’s Eggs it contains an Easter ‘surprise’, in this case a platinum Easter basket decorated with flowers made from gold, garnets and crystals. The basket symbolises the transition from winter to spring.’

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

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

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

‘Is it time?’

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

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

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

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

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

TWO

FBI Headquarters, Washington DC18th July – 7:00am

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

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

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

She stretched and flexed her neck, her back clicking into place. Yawning, she reached down and pulled out the bottom desk drawer, felt inside and took out a cellophane-wrapped white blouse identical to the one she was wearing. It was resting on two others. Placing it on her desk, she began to unbutton the one she had on, her fingers stiff as she worked the buttons. Eventually, when it was undone, she stood up and slipped it off, dropping it into the open drawer which she then nudged shut with her foot.

She was strikingly beautiful in that effortless, double-take way that some women are. Five feet nine, smooth brown skin, slender yet curving where it counted, rounded cheeks and curly black hair that just kissed her bare shoulders. She wore no jewellery – never had – apart from the Tiffany’s twisted heart necklace that her sister had given her on her 18th birthday that nestled in the smooth curve of her breasts.

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

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

‘Hey there,’ she called.

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

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

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

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

‘No problem.’

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

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

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

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

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

She laughed.

‘Would it make a difference if I did?’

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

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

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

‘I’m not looking for any hand-outs, Phil. I can make my own way back.’ Her eyes shone with a fierce pride. Tucker nodded slowly.

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

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

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

‘Told who to swing by here?’

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

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

They shook hands. Tucker breathed a sigh of relief.

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

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

Corbett frowned and looked at her quizzically before nodding slowly in sudden recollection.

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

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

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

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

‘Bob needs someone to work on a new case for him. I suggested you.’

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

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

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

‘The man in that photo is Father Gianluca Ranieri.’

She studied the picture carefully, taking in the man’s contorted face and the large gash in his chest.

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

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

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

‘Any thoughts?’ Corbett asked, his eyes snapping back round to meet hers.

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

‘Agreed.’ Corbett nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly as if he was re-appraising Jennifer in the light of her quick diagnosis.

‘And it was public. The body dumped where they knew it would be quickly found.’

‘Meaning?’

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

Corbett nodded his agreement.

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

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

Jennifer looked up in surprise.

‘The Vatican Bank?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a coin.

THREE

Clerkenwell, London18th July – 4:30pm

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

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

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

At the back of the room, almost lost in the shadows, two tea chests rested on the uneven floor. Hunched forward on one of them, Tom Kirk was lost deep in thought, his chin in his hands.

Although he was just thirty-five years old, a few grey hairs flecked the sides of his head, becoming more noticeable in the several days of rough stubble that covered his face, the hair slightly darker in the shallow cleft of his square chin.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Archie, it’s Felix.’

‘Jesus Christ, Felix!’

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

‘Where the hell have you been?’

‘I got … held up,’ Tom answered.

‘Held up? I thought you’d been nicked.’

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

‘No. Just held up.’

‘Spot of aggro?’

For once Archie sounded genuinely concerned.

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

‘How did it go?’

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

‘Nice one. Usual place, then?’

‘My stuff already there?’

‘What do you think?’ Archie almost sounded offended.

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

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

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

‘I wanted to talk to you about that.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Archie’s tone was immediately suspicious.

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

‘You what?’

‘You heard me. I’m calling it off.’

‘You having me on?’

‘The truth is Archie, I’m done with this shit. I just don’t want to do it any more. I can’t do it any more. I’m sorry.’

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

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

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

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

‘Oh, do me a favour!’

‘What’s your take, Archie? Did he promise you a few extra points for keeping quiet?’

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

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

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

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

FOUR

Louisville, Kentucky18th July – 2:23pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

FIVE

FBI Laboratory, FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia

18th July – 11:10pm

‘You still here?’

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

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

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

‘What have you got?’

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

‘Get this. Some guy abseiled down to the 17th floor of a Park Avenue apartment block, stole a nine million dollar Easter egg and then vanished. NYPD forensics found an eyelash on the floor next to the safe. They figure it’s probably unrelated but wanted us to run it through just in case something showed up. It’ll only be another few seconds.’ He looked up at her, the spots on his shiny forehead glowing purple in the flickering blue light. ‘What about you? What are you still doing here?’

‘Keeping my promises, like you.’ She smiled back. ‘Here you go.’

The screen flickered red, a boxed message flashing intermittently.

‘Restricted Access – Security Clearance must be sought before viewing this file.’

Beneath it, a name and a phone number.

‘Shit.’ She swore as she read the message and stood up straight.

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

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

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

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

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

‘Welcome to the FBI.’

SIX

Washington DC19th July – 08:35am

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

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

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

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

She opened the door and stepped out onto the street, the tarmac already soft under the heel of her shoes as the temperature climbed. She squeezed between two government-issue black sedans, their air-conditioned passengers shielded behind smoked glass, and stepped onto the sidewalk. A bit further on, a hot-dog seller had already installed himself on the corner of 16th Street and the smell of frying onions and reheated sausage meat made her stomach lurch unsteadily. Gritting her teeth and breathing through her mouth, she walked on.

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

The Money and Medals Hall of the National Numismatic Collection is housed on the third floor of the National Museum of American History, a low-slung, white stone 1960s building on the National Mall at the junction of 14th Street and Constitution Avenue. The Collection numbers over four hundred thousand items although only a tiny fraction of these are ever on display.

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

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

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

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

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

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

His smile faded.

‘Of course it is.’

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

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

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

A couple of years ago, when she had still believed that intelligence and hard work would be enough for a black woman to make it as an FBI agent, Jennifer would have met that sort of offer with an acidic smile and a dismissive laugh as a matter of principle. But that was before the dull blade of experience had taught her to use all the tools at her disposal. If that meant telling Miles Baxter what he wanted to hear so that she would have something good to go back to Corbett with, then so be it.

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

‘Great.’ He beamed. ‘Please sit down.’ He nodded towards the leather armchair opposite him. ‘And you must call me Miles.’

‘Thank you Miles.’ She smiled warmly. ‘You must call me Jennifer.’

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

‘So, Jennifer, how can I help?’

She reached inside her jacket.

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

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

‘What do you mean?’

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

She shrugged.

‘I’m not a coin expert, Miles.’

‘No, of course not. Sorry. Well, you see, the US government has been minting gold coins since the mid 1790s and twenty dollar coins, or Double Eagles, since the 1849 Gold Rush.’

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

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

‘I see.’

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

‘You mean on the coin? Why, what happened in 1933?’

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

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

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

‘Leaving coins like this stranded, I guess.’

‘Exactly. By the time FDR passed this law, 445,500 1933 Double Eagles had already been minted and were just sitting in the Philadelphia Mint, ready to be put into circulation. Suddenly there was nowhere for them to go.’

‘So they couldn’t issue them?’

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

He lowered his voice to a dramatic whisper.

‘You see officially, Jennifer, the 1933 Double Eagle never existed.’

SEVEN

Clerkenwell, London19th July – 2:05pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Great. You were right, the gold does look better than silver would have.’

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

‘Is everything here?’ Tom nodded towards the piles of crates and boxes that were stacked across the warehouse floor.

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

‘These?’ asked Tom walking over towards the three crates she had pointed at.

‘Uh-huh. Read off the numbers on the side will you?’

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

‘131272.’

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

‘Okay.’

Tom moved to the next crate.

‘1311…’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Detective Sergeant? They really must be desperate.’

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

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

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

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

‘So, all this shit yours then?’

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

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

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

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

Clarke turned back to face him and smirked.

‘Tell me, was it the drink or the shame over having you for a son that finally did him in?’ Tom’s body stiffened, the muscles in his jaw bulging as he clenched his teeth together. He could see Clarke savouring the moment, his eyes narrowed into fascinated slivers of grey.

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

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘No, I’m asking you to leave. Now.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Sure it is.’ She gave him a half smile and then looked away.

‘What do you mean?’ His eyes narrowed.

Silence.

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

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

‘Well, if you knew that, what are you doing here?’

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

‘That’s it?’

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

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

‘So what about…?’

‘That’s over. This is all I’ve got now.’

‘Okay.’ She nodded slowly.

‘Okay?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You sure?’

‘Okay.’ She put her glasses back on and turned back to the computer.

EIGHT

The Smithsonian, Washington DC19th July – 09:06am

‘And unofficially?’

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

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

‘And the coins?’

‘A couple started surfacing at numismatic auctions in 1944. A journalist alerted the Mint who brought in the Secret Services. It took them ten years, but eventually they tracked them all down and destroyed them. All apart from one.’

‘They couldn’t find it?’

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

‘Even though he knew it was stolen?’

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

‘So somebody else bought it.’

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

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

‘Vanished.’ Baxter bunched his fingers into a point and then blew onto them, stretching his hand out flat as he did so. ‘For over 40 years. Until 1996, when Treasury agents posing as collectors seized the coin from an English dealer in New York and arrested him.’ Baxter’s eyes glistened. ‘Only he then sued the Treasury, claiming that he’d bought the coin legitimately from another dealer. It went to court and eventually the Treasury agreed to auction the coin and split the proceeds with him.’

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

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

‘So how much are we talking?’

‘Twenty dollars for the paperwork to make it official US coinage,’ Baxter paused dramatically. ‘And just under eight million for the coin itself.’

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

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

‘Sure.’ Jennifer nodded. ‘That way we could at least compare them to this one.’

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

‘After you.’

‘Thank you, Miles.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What is this really all about, Agent Browne?’

‘This is about whether my coin is a fake, Mr Baxter.’ Jennifer made no attempt to be friendly now. It was too late for that.

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

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

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

She smiled.

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

NINE

FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia19th July – 12:30pm

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

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

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

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s probably nothing…’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corbett cut her off, his eyes boring into her.

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

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

‘I can’t help that.’

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

‘Which do you think I am, sir?’

He paused.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Darius Van Simson.’

TEN

The Marais, 4th Arrondissement, Paris19th July – 6:00pm

‘Vous savez pourquoi on appele ce quartier le Marais?’

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

‘Presumably because it used to be a swamp.’

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

‘Bravo, Monsieur Reinaud!’ Van Simson slapped the table in appreciation. ‘Quite so. The Knights Templar drained it in the 11th Century. Who would have thought then, that in the Middle Ages it would emerge at the epicentre of French political life? That aristocratic families would build their houses on its narrow streets so as to be near their King?’

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

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

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

‘Monsieur Van Simson, this is all very interesting, but I fail to understand how this is relevant to…’

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

‘What is it?’

‘Surely you recognise it?’

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

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

Van Simson smiled.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ELEVEN

Highgate Cemetery, London20th July – 3:30pm

Tom made his way through the gravestones, the cracked and threadbare path snaking its way down the hill. In a couple of places the tarmac had worn away completely and here the surface of an earlier, cobbled path shone through, the stones brightly polished where generations of heavy-hearted feet had stumbled over them.

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

The solid black marble slab nestled snugly in the grass, sheltered by the drooping branches of a willow and the tangled undergrowth that concealed the crumbling cemetery wall. The gilding that had been painted into the carved inscription still shone brightly and Tom ran his fingers over the letters, silently tracing her name. Remembering. She would have been 60 that day.

Rebecca Laura Kirk née Duval

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

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

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

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

‘Archie?’ Tom spun round. ‘How … why … what the hell are you doing here?’

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

Instead he saw a slim man – in his mid-forties, Tom guessed – about five feet ten. He had an oval face, his hair clipped very short and receding, so that it formed a fuzzy point right at the tip of his forehead. His three-buttoned suit was clearly bespoke, possibly Savile Row, a 10-ounce dark blue pinstripe that wouldn’t have looked out of place on any City trading floor.

His blue Gingham shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and Tom guessed that he was probably wearing a set of red braces to match his socks. These were expensive clothes with the right labels in the right places, subtle tribal markings that allowed Archie to circulate unchallenged through the smart and fast-moneyed world he inhabited.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘You know where I live?’

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

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

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

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

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

Archie had an awkward look on his face.

‘It’s not that simple.’

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

Archie flashed Tom a guilty look.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Felix is gone now. Finished.’

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

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

Archie shrugged.

‘About that.’

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

Archie gave a short laugh.

‘A thief with a mid-life conscience? Pull the other one.’

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

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

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

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

Archie snorted.

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

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

Archie’s eyes flashed with impatience.

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

‘All good things come to an end. Even this. Even us.’

Archie sighed.

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

TWELVE

Fort Knox, Kentucky20th July – 10:05am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘In that?’ She looked at him questioningly as they walked over to it.

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

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

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

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

‘Hell yeah.’

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

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

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

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

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

‘Usage peaked in 1941 when it held about 650 million ounces,’ he continued. ‘Course these days, the main reserves are held at the Federal Reserve in New York, about five stories down. You should go and check it out sometime. I’m told the security there makes this place look like Disneyland.’

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

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

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

‘Stop here,’ Sheppard shouted. Jennifer immediately threw the cart into a tight skid, the tyres biting the tarmac as it slowed to a stop.

‘Wow,’ Sheppard breathed. ‘I think you just set a new record.’

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

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

‘Slight understeer. You want to tighten up the front left suspension.’

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

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

THIRTEEN

10:27am

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

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

‘Thank you very much for agreeing to see me today, Captain.’

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

‘Have you received the instructions from Washington?’

He nodded.

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

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

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

‘Any questions I choose to ask, Captain,’ Jennifer answered firmly.

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

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

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

‘Very well,’ he conceded, his voice slightly strangled.

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

‘Oh,’ Rigby sounded relieved, although there was still an unmistakeably impatient edge to his voice. ‘A bit of both. The buildings are on an army base so they have some responsibility for the security and defence of the facility. But it is run by the US Treasury and staffed by officers from the Mint Police. There are twenty-six of us in all.’

Jennifer frowned.

‘Buildings? I only see one building.’

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

‘So how do you get in?’

‘Through a twenty-ton steel door.’

Jennifer nodded, satisfied.

‘Okay. Then let’s get started.’

‘Yes ma’am.’

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

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

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

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

‘It’s certainly an impressive set-up.’

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

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

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

The room was like a massive warehouse, consisting of two floors built around the central space in which they were now standing. Each floor was divided into compartments with thick steel bars separating and enclosing the top of each compartment, so that they looked like a series of huge cages. Within each compartment, stacked from floor to ceiling, were thousands upon thousands of gold bars. It took her a few seconds to realise that she was unconsciously holding her breath; fearful, perhaps, that the sound of her breathing might rouse the slumbering dragon who must surely be guarding such a fairy-tale treasure.

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

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

‘Right.’ She nodded, smiling. Complimenting his facility seemed to have transformed Rigby into the very model of inter-agency cooperation.

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

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

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

‘I believe that this is what you came for.’

‘I’ll open it down here.’

‘As you wish.’

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

She opened the case, only to find another smaller box, about 8 inches long and 6 inches wide, inside it. It was covered in dark blue velvet that had worn away around the corners, leaving them bald and frayed. The top had been stamped with the gold seal of the US Treasury, now faded and dull.

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

But the box was empty.

FOURTEEN

Amsterdam, Holland

21st July – 4:40pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

PART II

Plate sin with goldAnd the strong lance of justice hurtless breaks;Arm it in rags, a pigmy’s straw doth pierce it.

William Shakespeare – King Lear (Act IV, Sc. vi)

FIFTEEN

FBI Headquarters, Washington DC

22nd July – 2:07pm

The desk fan was on its highest setting. The vibrations had caused it to skip across the conference table’s slippery surface until it was balancing against the thin rim of metal that ran around its edge and threatening to throw itself over the side.

‘Okay – let’s just go through them one more time,’ Jennifer suggested, slurping the dregs of her now warm and flat coke. She dropped the empty cup into the overflowing trash can that sat on the floor between them. Special Agent Paul Viggiano raised his dark eyebrows wearily.

‘What for? We’ve been through every single guy like a hundred times. Cross-checked them with the CIA and the NCIC databases. Been through their bank records. Checked their wives, their parents, even their kids for Chrissake. There’s nothing here. They’re all clean.’

Jennifer got up and moved around the conference table, the overhead halogens reflecting here and there in the polished walnut.

‘Because we’re not leaving here till we find something,’ she said firmly, her eyes flicking between the piles of paper and files and boxes that had been strewn along the table’s length, the rubble of her two day investigation so far.

Viggiano stood up, a trim, muscular figure, his dark hair slicked back, his chin covered in a seemingly permanent five o’clock shadow. Shaking his head angrily, he tucked his white shirt back into his dark blue suit trousers – shiny fabric with a faint red thread running through it – as he spoke.

‘You know what? This whole thing stinks. It’s a goddamned mess.’ He slammed his fist down in front of him, the fan wobbling unsteadily before finally toppling off and plunging helplessly to the floor, the flex trailing behind it like a bungee rope that had been tied too long.

Jennifer had to agree. The whole thing was a mess. She knew that Corbett had fought to control the number of people in the loop over the last two days, but cases like this wouldn’t stay quiet for long. It was too good an opportunity for a fundraiser, a chance to put the boot in on some of the other departments and agencies and grab a bigger slice of the Federal budget in the process. It was the sort of story Washington lived and prayed for.

‘Yeah, it’s a mess, but it’s our mess,’ she retorted. ‘So you’re just going to have to deal with it.’

She replaced the fan on the table while Viggiano shook his head again and loosened his military-looking tie a little more. Jennifer knew that he was finding this harder going than she was. He was about ten years older than her and two years ago she’d worked on a case for him for a few months. He’d even made a clumsy pass in a bar that she’d brushed off as politely as she could. Now she was in charge and it clearly hurt, although his feelings were the last thing on her mind. She’d worked too hard for this opportunity to let Paul Viggiano screw it up for her. And although she hated to admit it to herself, she’d had to put up with so much crap over the last few years, it actually felt good to be on the other end for a change.

‘Look, I’ve been there, okay. I’ve seen the place,’ she continued, her voice hard and urgent. ‘We’re not talking about Macy’s here. You don’t just walk in and help yourself. Whoever did this had detailed knowledge of the vault’s layout and security systems. Very detailed.’

Viggiano snorted.

‘Big deal. Everything’s for sale at the right price. If someone wanted the plans for Fort Knox they could have got them. Money talks.’ Viggiano rubbed his thumb and forefinger together and held it up to Jennifer’s face with a thin smile.

‘You think they keep the details down at the local planning department? Layout, alarm systems, access codes?’ Jennifer asked sarcastically. ‘Everything about that place is classified. Jesus, they probably incinerate the grass clippings. It’s wrapped tight. I’m telling you, someone on the inside must have been involved. So we’re going to go through all of them again. Now.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’ Viggiano ran his hand through his thick quiff of dark hair in frustration and picked up the file where he’d thrown it down on the table earlier. ‘Where do you want to start?’ His eyes flashed at her, brimming with resentment.

‘Right at the beginning. With how many people have had access or actually been into the vault in the last twelve months. If we need to go back further we will, but let’s focus there first.’ Viggiano muttered under his breath as he counted the numbers again, consulting various sheets of paper that he picked up from in front of him.

‘Like I said before. Forty-seven people.’

‘Plus me. That makes forty-eight.’

‘What, you think I’m an idiot? You’re in the forty-seven,’ he said, his chin jutting in indignation.

‘I am? How do you work that out?’ Jennifer flicked through her hieroglyphic notes, adding numbers in her head.

‘Twenty-five guards from the Mint Police, fifteen military personnel, five Treasury officials and two Federal agents, one of which was you. Not that many people get down there.’ Viggiano held up the sheet of paper on which he’d done his sums and waved it in the air as if to prove his point.

‘That’s strange. Rigby told me there were twenty-six guards. That’s why I made it forty-eight,’ said Jennifer, her smooth brown forehead momentarily creased by a slight frown.

‘Who?’

‘Rigby. The Officer in Charge, remember?’ she said impatiently, although the corners of her mouth twitched at the memory of Sheppard’s pink trousers and Rigby’s ashen face.

‘Well according to the Treasury, it’s twenty-five. I got all the names here.’ He held up several sheets of paper by their corners between his thumb and forefinger. ‘They faxed them over this morning.’

‘Let me see those,’ she demanded. Viggiano shrugged and passed them over to Jennifer who scanned through the names carefully. She paused on the final sheet and then frowning, held it up to the light.

‘What?’ Viggiano’s tone was immediately defensive. Jennifer didn’t say anything but just gripped the sheet between her thumb and forefinger and rubbed them together. A second sheet peeled away from the first with a faint sucking noise. Viggiano went white.

‘Like I said, twenty-six guards,’ Jennifer said quietly, inspecting the single name at the top of the newly revealed sheet with a grim look on her face.

‘I don’t understand,’ Viggiano spluttered.

‘I guess the ink must have stuck them together.’ She knew that if their roles had been reversed, Viggiano would have come down on her hard for that sort of oversight, but that wasn’t her style. They both knew he had screwed up and as far as she was concerned that was that. There was certainly no point in rubbing his nose in it. What was important was seeing whether this new piece of information led them somewhere.

‘Tony Short.’ She read from the piece of paper, ‘DOB 18 March 1965. Deceased.’

‘Deceased? So he’s irrelevant,’ said Viggiano with relief.

‘He had access to the vault.’

‘But he’s dead.’

‘Only just.’ She laid the sheet on the table and pushed it over to Viggiano so he could read what it said for himself. ‘Four days ago.’

‘A coincidence.’ Viggiano sounded like he was trying to convince himself as well as her.

‘Maybe. But he’s the only one we haven’t checked out. What do we know about him?’ Viggiano turned to the laptop to his left and typed in the name. A file flashed up a few seconds later.

‘Ex NYPD. Medal of Honour. Transferred to the Mint Police five years ago. Married with kids. Usual boy scout shit. It’s all here. Deceased*.’ He looked up. ‘What’s the asterisk for?’

‘Suicide,’ Jennifer replied. ‘The asterisk means suicide.’

SIXTEEN

Clerkenwell, London

22nd July – 7:42pm

It had been a hat factory when it had first been built in 1876, according to the inscription chiselled into its once proud façade. Then, during the Second World War, production had been given over to the manufacture of buttons for RAF uniforms. By the time Tom had bought it, the building had fallen into disuse, the store and warehouse level empty, the three upper floors carved up into office space in the 1960s.

Tom had chosen the, by comparison, palatial surroundings of the Managing Director’s office as his bedroom. Inexplicably it came complete with its own marbled en suite bathroom, as if the former boss’s managerial mystique would have crumbled had the staff ever suspected that he used the toilet much like the rest of them.

Eventually, Tom’s idea was to have this top floor as a huge open plan living room complete with kitchen and dining area. The second floor would be bedrooms and bathrooms while the first … well he still hadn’t quite decided what to do with the first. More showroom space perhaps?

It didn’t matter. That was all in the future anyway, after the store was up and running. For now, he had to make do with the cracked mirror on the back of the bathroom door as he adjusted his tie, picking his silver cufflinks off the chipped filing cabinet that now doubled as a chest of drawers and deftly threading them through the double cuff of his Hilditch & Key shirt.

‘I’ll see you later,’ he shouted to Dominique as he clattered down the concrete steps, his footsteps echoing back up around the stairwell’s empty carcass.

‘Okay.’ She had appeared at the doorway to the second floor where she had taken up residence amid the tea-stained walls of the former finance department. ‘Have fun.’

Tom stepped out into a cherry sunset, the sun scrolling down through an orange sky, a warm whisper of air shushing through the streets. He liked seeing the city at this time. It was a strange transition period, when one set of users melted away and another appeared.

He soon reached Smithfield, Europe’s oldest meat market, a low slung amalgam of a refurbished cast-iron Victorian market hall and a post-war brick and concrete hangar. It was surrounded on all sides by a crenulated roofline of alternately short and tall warehouses, a jarring convergence of red brick and white stone, of Gothic windows and industrial steel shutters. Five minutes later he was in Hatton Garden, the centre of London’s diamond trade.

It was nearly empty. Gone were the eager shop assistants enticing you to enter, offering you their very best price, suggesting a pair of earrings to go with the necklace. Gone were the courier bikes and the security vans and the anxious soon-to-be-weds, comparing ring prices in gaudy shop windows. Their shutters had been drawn down, their contents safely stowed for the night, their neon lights extinguished.

And yet the street projected a latent energy. Rather than be asleep it was merely resting. A few Hasidim with pale faces and dark suits still stood in doorways, plunged into shops and buildings, swapped anxious glances from under their dark fedoras. Behind the scenes, the work went on, stones were cut, deals were done, hands shaken, money counted.

Perhaps because his own life had been so lacking in order, so devoid of any fixed reference points or rules, Tom was fascinated by this place. As in Smithfield, he drew an almost spiritual reassurance from the continuity of these streets, their daily cycle, the comforting embrace of their familiar routine. In a way, he craved their predictability.

Stepping in off the street, Tom presented his pass to the security guards on duty in the dingy fluorescent lobby of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd. Sitting behind their barred window they inspected it carefully, flickering screens in front of them covering every angle of the lobby and vault and staining their faces blue. Satisfied, they buzzed him through the first door and then, when that had closed behind him, the second door with metal bars running through it.

The reinforced vault there, at the foot of the dark green linoleum stairs, is about seventeen foot square, its walls lined from floor to ceiling with 950 identically-sized tungsten and steel doors that gleam silver under the lights, each individual box numbered in black. Unusually for that time it was empty. That suited Tom perfectly.

He took a key out of his pocket and indicated to the guard who had followed him into the room which box he wanted opened. They both put their keys into the two separate keyholes and turned them. With a click, the door opened; Tom drew out the long black metal container it concealed and placed it on the metal tray that slid out from between two layers of boxes at about waist height. It was empty apart from another key which he removed. Turning to a second box on the opposite wall, he and the guard again inserted their keys. This time, Tom waited until the guard left the room before opening the black container.

He already knew what was in it but opened the small leather pouch it contained anyway, emptying its contents into his gloved hand. Just over quarter of a million in cut diamonds, his share for the Egg he’d stolen in New York. Much easier to move than cash and, if you knew who to ask, accepted in more places than American Express. He tipped the diamonds back into the pouch.

Reaching into his jacket pocket, he removed the Egg and placed it in the second box. He’d wrapped it in his ski mask, a small symbolic act that he knew wouldn’t be lost on Archie when he came to collect it. He slid the box back into the wall and locked the door. He then dropped the pouch and the key to the second box into the first box, returned it to the wall and again locked it shut.

He passed through the security gates again, nodded at the guards and then stepped out onto the street just in time to see the street lights buzz on.

SEVENTEEN

Louisville County Mortuary, Louisville, Kentucky

23rd July – 11:37am

Jennifer had always believed that there were no such things as coincidences, just different perspectives. From one perspective, a series of individual events could appear totally random with nothing binding them together other than their actual existence. A coincidence.

From another, however, events could evolve, become more complex, deepen in significance until they ultimately emerged as constituent parts of an overall pattern of cause and effect that could never have been dreamt of originally, let alone guessed at.

These were the facts as far as she could tell: Short had worked at Fort Knox. He was young and healthy. He was happily married with three children he adored. He was a regular churchgoer. And he was liked and respected at work. So from one perspective, the fact that he had committed suicide just a few days before the discovery that five gold coins had been stolen from Fort Knox, was just a terrible coincidence. And yet, when viewed from another, more cynical perspective, it was no coincidence at all. It was downright suspicious.

Corbett had agreed when she had finally managed to track him down the previous afternoon on his way to another internal meeting, a look of grim-faced resignation stamped across his face. He had greeted her with a tired smile.

‘Five minutes, Browne, that’s all I got. So you’d better make it quick. Let’s talk and walk.’

She had rapidly explained what she had found out about Short, choosing to omit Viggiano’s mistake, although she knew he wouldn’t have done the same for her. Corbett had clearly been impressed, even pausing to give her a pat on the side of the shoulder that had made her swell with pride.

‘So he didn’t leave a note?’

‘No.’ She had given a firm shake of her head. ‘All the witness statements say it was totally out of character. He was happily married and doing well at work. He just doesn’t fit the profile.’

‘I agree.’ A brief pause. ‘And you say he was one of the guards down at Fort Knox?’

‘Yeah. One of their star performers apparently. Whatever that means.’

‘And tell me again when this happened?’

‘Four days ago. That’s just two days after Ranieri was murdered in Paris.’

‘Hmmn.’ Corbett’s forehead had creased in thought.

‘The autopsy hasn’t happened yet. I spoke to the Louisville coroner’s office earlier and they’ve agreed to delay the procedure until tomorrow so I can observe. I’ve booked a flight.’

‘Good,’ Corbett had nodded as he reached the meeting room door he’d been heading for. ‘You’re right, it doesn’t add up. Let me know what you find. Oh and Browne…’ He had said as she turned away. ‘Nice work.’ She could almost have kissed him.

The mortuary was an anonymous white slab of a building on the outskirts of town, only a short drive from Louisville International Airport and screened from the road by a wall of cedar trees. Jennifer stepped gratefully out of the humidity’s dank embrace into the building’s refrigerated reception area.

There was a hint of desperation to the way it had been decorated, the walls painted a jarring concoction of pinks and blues, orange moulded plastic seating lining one wall. The Beach Boys was being piped through a lone ceiling speaker, the noise muffled where the protective mesh had been painted over by mistake.

An expressionless woman, funereally dressed behind a rectangular access hatch punched into the far wall, acknowledged her with a shrug, dialled a number and announced her arrival in a whisper. A few minutes later and a short balding man – about fifty years old, Jennifer guessed – bustled into the room, gold pocketwatch chain spanning his stomach before vanishing into the depths of his waistcoat pocket.

‘Agent Browne? I’m Dr Raymond Finch, the pathologist here. We spoke earlier on the phone.’

‘Hello.’ Jennifer shook his hand warmly, holding out her ID in her other hand, although she noticed that he barely gave it a glance. ‘Thank you for inviting me down here.’ He’d had no choice really but she knew that it never hurt to show a little humility, especially with the locals.

‘No problem. We’re pretty much good to go if you are.’

‘Great.’

He led her through a door, along a narrow corridor, down some stairs and then through a set of heavy double doors that swung open in front of them to reveal a small, white tiled ante-room. The temperature had dropped down here and her throat had a slight burning sensation from the cocktail of disinfectant and formaldehyde that seemed to grow stronger as she penetrated deeper into the building’s entrails.

‘You ever done one of these before?’ Finch handed her a long white gown that she slipped on over her black jacket and long skirt, taking one for himself to cover the pale green scrub suit he was pulling on. He then placed a set of plastic shoe covers over his brown deck shoes.

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s pretty straightforward. Ugly but straightforward. You’re welcome to sit out here until we’re done, if you like.’

He smiled sympathetically but Jennifer gave a firm shake of her head. She hadn’t travelled all this way to miss the action.

‘I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies, Doctor. One more won’t hurt.’

‘Okay. Then let’s get started.’

Finch led her through another set of double doors to the autopsy room. It was quite a wide space, perhaps twenty foot square and blindingly white. Powerful lights beat down on the spotless tiled walls and floor and reflected off the stainless steel worktops and glass fronted cabinets that wrapped themselves around two of the walls. In the middle of the room stood a stainless steel table, a waist-high slanted tray that had been plumbed for running water. A chrome hanging scale rocked gently in the air conditioning’s hum like a medieval gibbet.

‘So what’s the Bureau’s interest in this case?’

‘It’s just a routine enquiry. Nothing to get excited about,’ she lied, hoping that she had disguised the deceit in her answer better than Finch had disguised the curiosity in his original question.

‘Ah.’ She could tell he didn’t believe her. ‘Well, it may be routine for you but we don’t get too many suicides round these parts. And when we do, they tend to have put a gun to their head. So this is about as exciting as it gets.’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.