The Geneva Deception
JAMES TWINING

To Jack, Jill and Herbie. Vegas, baby.

‘There is a house in New Orleans They call the Rising Sun It’s been the ruin of many a poor boy And me, Oh Lord! was one’

Traditional American folk song

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Dedication

Historical Background

Excerpt

Prologue

One

Part One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Part Two

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

Forty-Seven

Forty-Eight

Forty-Nine

Fifty

Fifty-One

Fifty-Two

Fifty-Three

Fifty-Four

Fifty-Five

Part Three

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

Epilogue

Eighty-Seven

Note from the Author

Preview

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Historical background

This story was inspired by a Carabinieri raid on a warehouse in the Geneva Freeport in 1995 and their discovery within it of over ten thousand illegally excavated antiquities worth over $35 million. The resulting investigation implicated the mafia and raised questions over the role of some of the world’s largest museums, collectors and auction houses in the multi-million-dollar international trade in illicit cultural artefacts.

All descriptions and background information provided on works of art, artists, thefts, antiquities smuggling, ‘orphans’, illegal excavation practices, and architecture are accurate, apart from the Desposito Eroli in Rome, which I have altered to suit my purpose.

For more information on the author and on the fascinating history, people, places, art and artefacts that feature in The Geneva Deception and the other Tom Kirk novels, please visit www.jamestwining.com

Excerpt

Extract from the Amherst Papyrus, original court records from the reign of Ramses IX (-1110 BC); translated by J. H. Breasted, Ancient Records of Egypt, Book IV (1904)

We opened their coffins and their coverings in which they were. We found this august mummy of this king…Its coverings were wrought with gold and silver, within and without; inlaid with every splendid costly stone.

We stripped off the gold, which we found on the august mummy of this god, and its amulets and ornaments which were at its throat, and the coverings wherein it rested. [We] found the King’s wife likewise; we stripped off all that we found on her likewise. We set fire to their coverings. We stole their furniture, which we found with them, being vases of gold, silver, and bronze.

We divided, and made the gold which we found on these two gods, on their mummies, and the amulets, ornaments and coverings, into eight parts.

Extract from letter written by Thomas Bruce, the seventh Earl of Elgin, to Giovanni Lusieri, 1801

I should wish to have, of the Acropolis, examples in the actual object of each thing, and architectural ornament - of each cornice, each frieze, each capital of the decorated ceilings, of the fluted columns - specimens of the different architectural orders and of the variant forms of the orders - of metopes and the like, as much as possible. Finally everything in the way of sculpture, medals and curious marbles that can be discovered by means of assiduous and indefatigable excavation.

PROLOGUE

‘I see wars, terrible wars, and the Tiber foaming with blood’

Virgil, The Aeneid, Book VI, 86

ONE

Ponte Duca d’Aosta, Rome 15th March - 2.37 a.m.

The cold kiss roused him.

A teasing, tentative embrace, it nibbled playfully at his ear and then, growing in confidence, slipped down to nuzzle against his naked throat.

Eyes screwed shut, cheek pressed against the wooden decking, Luca Cavalli knew that he should enjoy this moment while it lasted. So he lay there, cradled by the darkness, the gentle swell of the river rocking him softly, concentrating on keeping the steady cadence of his breathing constant. So they wouldn’t notice he was awake.

Ahead of him, near the bow, a small pool of rainwater had gathered. He could hear it sloshing from side to side under the duckboards as the boat swayed, smell the rainbow shimmer of engine oil dancing across its surface, the heady scent catching in the back of his throat like an exotic perfume. He had a strange, uncontrollable urge to swallow, to taste the raw truth of this moment while he still could.

The momentary stutter in his breathing’s rhythmic beat was all it took. Immediately, the thin lips resting against his skin parted with a snarl, and the sharp teeth of the knife’s serrated edge bit into him savagely. He was hauled upright, eyes blinking, shoulders burning where his wrists had been zip-locked behind his back.

There were three of them in all. One at the helm, his slab hands gripping the wheel. One perched on the bench opposite, a gun wedged into the waistband of his jeans and a cigarette balancing on his lip. One hugging him close, the knife he had caressed his cheek with only a few moments before now pressed hard against his belly.

They were silent, although there was something noisily boastful about their lack of disguise, as if they wanted him to know that they would never be caught, never allow themselves to be picked out from some Questura line-up. Perhaps because of this, the longer he gazed at them, the more featureless they appeared to become, their cruel faces melting into black shadows that he imagined travelled on the wind and lived in dark places where the light feared to go.

Instead, he was struck by their almost monastic serenity. Mute, their eyes fixed resolutely on the horizon, it was as if they had been chosen to complete some divinely ordained quest. Part of him envied their solemn determination, their absolute certainty in their purpose, however base. These were not people whose loyalty could be bought or trust swayed. They were true believers. Perhaps if he’d shared their unswerving faith, he might have avoided his present damnation.

Cavalli gave a resigned shrug and glanced over the side. The river was engorged and running fast, the sharp ripples on the water’s ebony surface betraying the occasional patches of shallower ground where the current tripped and dragged against the muddy bed. Above them the streetlights glowed through the trees that lined the embankments on both sides, casting their skeletal shadows down on to the water. The roads appeared quiet, the occasional yellow wash of a car’s headlights sweeping through the gloom overhead as it turned, like a distant lighthouse urging him to safety.

Cavalli realised then that the engine wasn’t running, and that this whole time they had been carried forward noiselessly on the river’s powerful muscle as it flexed its way through the city. Peering behind them, he could see that because of this, and like some infernal, enchanted craft, they had left no wake behind them, apart from a momentary fold in the river’s dark velvet that was just as soon ironed flat again.

The gallows creak of the trees as they passed under the Ponte Cavour interrupted his thoughts. He glanced up fearfully and caught sight of the cylindrical mass of the Castel Sant’Angelo up ahead, the blemishes in its ancient walls concealed by the sodium glare of the lighting that encircled it. To its rear, he knew, was the Passetto, the corridor that had for centuries served as a secret escape route from the Vatican to the castle’s fortified sanctuary. For a moment, he allowed himself to imagine that he too might yet have some way out, some hidden passage to safety. If only he could find it.

Still the current carried them forward, steering them towards the Ponte Sant’ Angelo and the carved angels lining its balustrades, as if gathered to hear his final confession. It was a strangely comforting thought, although as they drew closer, he realised that even this harmless conceit was to be denied him. The pale figures all had their backs to the river. They didn’t even know he was there.

Abruptly, the helmsman whistled, violating the code of silence that had been so religiously observed until now. Up ahead a light flashed twice from the bridge. Someone was expecting them.

Immediately the engine kicked into life as the helmsman wrestled control from the current and steered them towards the left-hand arch. The two other men jumped up, suddenly animated, one of them readying himself with a rope, the other tipping the fenders into place along the port gunwales. As they passed under the arch, the helmsman jammed the throttle into reverse and expertly edged the boat against the massive stone pier, the fenders squealing in protest, the rattle of the exhaust echoing noisily off the vaulted roof. He nodded at the others and they leapt forward to secure the boat to the rusting iron rings embedded in the wall, leaving just enough play for the craft to ride the river’s swell. Then he switched the engine off.

Instantly, a bright orange rope came hissing out of the darkness, the excess coiling in the prow. The helmsman stepped forward and tugged on it to check it was secure, then found the end and held it up. It had already been tied into a noose.

Now, as he understood that there was to be no last-minute reprieve, that this was how it was really going to end, Cavalli felt afraid. Desperate words began to form in his mouth, screams rose from his stomach. But no sound came out, as if he had somehow been bound into the same demonic vow of silence that his captors seemed to have taken.

Hauling him out of his seat, the two other men dragged him over to where the helmsman was looping the surplus rope around his arm, and forced him on to his knees. Cavalli gave him a pleading look, gripped by some basic and irrational need to hear his voice, as if this final and most basic act of human communion might somehow help soften the ordeal’s cold, mechanised efficiency. But instead, the noose was simply snapped over his head and then jerked tight, the knot biting into the nape of his neck. Then he was silently lifted to the side and carefully lowered into the freezing water.

He gasped, the change in temperature winding him. Treading water, he looked up at the boat, not understanding why they had tied the rope so long, its loose coils snaking through the water around him. The three men, however, hadn’t moved from the side rail, an expectant look on their faces as if they were waiting for something to happen. Waiting, he realised as he drifted a few feet further away from the boat, for the current to take him.

Without warning, the river grabbed on to him, nudging him along slowly at first and then, as he emerged out from under the bridge, tugging at his ankles with increasing insistence. He drew further away, the rope gently uncoiling in the water, the steep angle of the cord where it ran down from the bridge’s dark parapet getting closer and closer to him as the remaining slack paid out.

It snapped tight. Choking, his body swung round until he was half in and half out of the water, the current hauling at his hips and legs, the rope lifting his head and upper body out of the river, the tension wringing the water from the fibres.

He kicked out frantically, his ears flooding with an inhuman gurgling noise that he only vaguely recognised as his own voice. But rather than free himself, all he managed to do was flip himself on to his front so that he was face down over the water.

Slowly, and with his reflection staring remorselessly back up at him from the river’s dark mirror, Cavalli watched himself hang.

PART ONE

‘The die has been cast’

Julius Caesar

(according to Suetonius, Divus Julius, paragraph 33)

TWO

Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC 17th March - 10.58 a.m.

One by one, the limousines and town cars drew up, disgorged their occupants on to the sodden grass, and then pulled away to a respectful distance. Parked end-to-end along the verge, they formed an inviolable black line that followed the curve of the road and then stretched down the hill and out of sight, their exhaust fumes pinned to the road by the rain as they waited.

A handful of secret service agents were patrolling the space between the burial site and the road. Inexplicably, a few of them were wearing sunglasses despite the black clouds that had sailed up the Potomac a few days ago and anchored themselves over the city. Their unsmiling presence made Tom Kirk feel uncomfortable, even though he knew it shouldn’t. After all, it had been nearly two years now. Two years since he’d crossed over to the other side of the law. Two years since he’d teamed up with Archie Connolly, his former fence, to help recover art rather than steal it. Clearly it was going to take much longer than that to shake off instincts acquired in a lifetime on the run.

There were three rows of seats arranged in a horseshoe around the flag-draped coffin, and five further rows of people standing behind these. A pretty good turnout, considering the weather. Tom and Archie had stayed back, sheltering under the generous spread of a blossoming tree halfway up the slope that climbed gently to the left of the grave.

As they watched, ceremony’s carefully choreographed martial beauty unfolded beneath them. The horse-drawn caisson slowly winding its way up the hill, followed by a single riderless horse, its flanks steaming, boots reversed in the stirrups to symbolise a fallen leader. The immaculate presenting of arms by the military escort, water dripping from their polished visors. The careful securing and transport of the coffin to the grave by a casket party made up of eight members of the 101st Airborne, Tom’s grandfather’s old unit. The final adjustments to the flag to ensure that it was stretched out and centred, the reds, blues and whites fighting to be seen through the tenebrous darkness.

From his vantage point, Tom recognised a few of the faces sheltering under the thicket of black umbrellas, although most were strangers to him and, he suspected, would have been to his grandfather too. That figured. Funerals were a vital networking event for the DC top brass - a chance to talk to the people you normally couldn’t be seen with; a chance to be seen with the people who normally wouldn’t talk to you. Deals were done, handshakes given, assurances provided. In this city, death was known to have breathed life into many a stuttering career or stalled bill.

There was perhaps, Tom suspected, another, more personal reason for their presence too. After all, like them, Trent Clayton Jackson Duval III had been an important man - a senator, no less. And as such it was in their shared interest to ensure that he got a proper send off. Not because they cared about him particularly, although as a war hero, ‘Trigger’ Duval commanded more respect than most. Rather because they knew, as if they were all party to some secret, unspoken pact, that it was only by reinforcing these sorts of traditions that they could safeguard their prerogative to a similarly grand send off when their own time came.

‘Who’s the bird?’ Archie sniffed. In his midforties, about five foot ten and unshaven with close cropped blond hair, Archie had the squareshouldered, rough confidence of someone who didn’t mind using their fists to start or settle an argument. This was at odds with the patrician elegance of his clothes, however; a three-buttoned, ten-ounce, dark grey Anderson & Sheppard suit, crisp white Turnbull and Asser shirt, and woven black silk Lewin’s tie hinting at a rather more considered and refined temperament. Tom knew that many struggled to reconcile this apparent incongruity, although the truth was that both were valid. It was only a short distance from the rain-lashed trestle tables of Bermondsey Market to Mayfair’s panelled auction rooms, but for Archie it had been a long and difficult journey that had required this expensive camouflage to travel undetected. Tom rather suspected that he now deliberately played off the contradiction, preferring to keep people guessing which world he was from rather than pin him down to one or the other.

‘Miss Texas,’ Tom answered, knowing instinctively that his eye would have been drawn to the platinum blonde in the front row. ‘Or she was a few years ago. The senator upgraded after meeting her on the campaign trail. He left her everything.’

‘I’ll bet he did, the dirty old bastard.’ Archie grinned. ‘Look at the size of those puppies! She’d keel over in a strong wind.’

The corners of Tom’s mouth twitched but he said nothing, finding himself wondering if her dark Jackie O glasses were to hide her tears or to mask the fact that she had none. The chaplain started the service.

‘You sure you don’t want to head down?’ Archie was holding up a Malacca-handled Brigg umbrella. A gold identity bracelet glinted on his wrist where his sleeve had slipped back.

‘This is close enough.’

‘Bloody long way to come if all we’re going to do is stand up here getting pissed on,’ Archie sniffed, peering out disconsolately at the leaden skies. ‘They invited you, didn’t they?’

‘They were being polite. They never thought I’d actually show. I’m not welcome here. Not really.’

The empty caisson pulled away, the horses’ hooves clattering noisily on the blacktop, reins jangling.

‘I thought he liked you?’

‘He helped me,’ Tom said slowly. ‘Took me in after my mother died, put me through school, recommended me to the NSA. But after I left the Agency… well. We hadn’t spoken in twelve years.’

‘Then tell me again why the bloody hell we’re here?’ Archie moaned, pulling his blue overcoat around his neck with a shiver.

Tom hesitated. The truth was that, even now, he wasn’t entirely sure. Partly, it had just seemed like the proper thing to do. The right thing to do. But probably more important was the feeling that his mother would have wanted him to come. Expected it, insisted on it. To him, therefore, this was perhaps less about paying his respects to his grandfather than it was a way of remembering her.

‘You didn’t have to come,’ Tom reminded him sharply.

‘What, and miss the chance to work on my tan?’ Archie winked. ‘Don’t be daft. That’s what mates are for.’

They stood in silence, the priest’s faint voice and the congregation’s murmured responses carrying to them on the damp breeze. Yet even as the service droned mournfully towards its conclusion. ‘Let us Pray’ people lowered their heads, a man stepped out from the crowd and signalled up at them with a snatched half-wave, having been waiting for this opportunity, it seemed. Tom and Archie swapped a puzzled look as he clambered up towards them, his shoes slipping on the wet grass.

‘Mr Kirk?’ he called out hopefully as he approached. ‘Mr Thomas Kirk?’

Short and worryingly overweight, he wore a large pair of tortoiseshell glasses that he was forever pushing back up his blunt nose. Under a Burberry coat that didn’t look as though it had fitted him in years, an expensive Italian suit dangled open on each side of his bloated stomach, like the wings on a flying boat.

‘I recognised you from your photo,’ he huffed as he drew closer, sweat lacquering his thinning blond hair to his head.

‘I don’t think…?’ Tom began, trying to place the man’s sagging face and bleached teeth.

‘Larry Hewson,’ he announced, his tone and eagerly outstretched hand suggesting that he expected them to recognise the name.

Tom swapped another look with Archie and then shrugged.

‘Sorry, but I don’t…’

‘From Ogilvy, Myers and Gray - the Duval family attorneys,’ Hewson explained, almost sounding hurt at having to spell this out. ‘I sent you the invitation.’

‘What do you want?’ Archie challenged him.

‘Meet Archie Connolly,’ Tom introduced him with a smile. ‘My business partner.’

Below them, the chaplain had stepped back from the casket, allowing the senior NCO and seven riflemen to step forward and turn to the half right, their shoulders stained dark blue by the rain, water beading on their mirrored toecaps.

‘Ready,’ he ordered. Each rifleman moved his safety to the fire position.

‘It’s a delicate matter,’ Hewson said in a low voice, throwing Archie a suspicious glance.

‘Archie can hear anything you’ve got to say,’ Tom reassured him.

‘It concerns your grandfather’s will.’

‘Aim,’ the NCO called. The men shouldered their weapons with both hands, the muzzles raised forty-five degrees from the horizontal over the casket.

‘His will?’ Archie asked with a frown. ‘I thought he’d left the lot to Miss 32F down there?’

‘Fire.’

Each man quickly squeezed the trigger and then returned to port arms, the sharp crack of the blank round piercing the gloom, the echo muffled by the rain. Twice more the order to aim and fire came, twice more the shots rang out across the silent cemetery. Hewson waited impatiently for their echo to die down before continuing.

‘The senator did indeed alter his will to ensure that Ms Mills was the principal beneficiary of his estate,’ he confirmed in a disapproving whisper. ‘But at the same time, he identified a small object that he wished to leave to you.’

A bugler had stepped forward and was now playing Taps, the mournful melody swirling momentarily around them before chasing itself into the sky. As the last note faded away, one of the casket party stepped forward and began to carefully fold the flag draped over the coffin, deliberately wrapping the red and white stripes into the blue to form a triangular bundle, before respectfully handing it to the chaplain. The chaplain in turn stepped over to where the main family party was seated and gingerly, almost apologetically it seemed, handed the flag to the senator’s wife. She clutched it, rather dramatically Tom thought, to her bosom.

‘I believe it had been given to him by your mother,’ Hewson added.

‘My mother?’ Tom’s eyes snapped back to Hewson’s, both surprised and curious. ‘What is it?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Hewson shrugged as the ceremony ended. The congregation rapidly thinned, most hurrying back to their cars, a few pausing to conclude the business they had come there for in the first place, before they too were herded by secret service agents towards their limousines’ armour-plated comfort. ‘The terms of the will are quite strict. No one is to open the box and I am to hand it to you in person. That’s why…’

‘Tom!’ Archie interrupted, grabbing Tom’s arm. Tom followed his puzzled gaze and saw that a figure had appeared at the crest of the hill above them. It was a woman dressed in a red coat, the headlights of the car parked behind her silhouetting her against the dark sky in an ethereal white glow.

‘That’s why I sent you the invitation,’ Hewson repeated, raising his voice slightly as Tom turned away from him. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of reserving a suite at the George where we can finalise all the paperwork.’

‘Isn’t that…?’ Archie’s eyes narrowed, his tone at once uncertain and incredulous.

‘Otherwise I’m happy to arrange a meeting at our offices in New York tomorrow, if that works better,’ Hewson called out insistently, growing increasingly frustrated, it seemed, at being ignored. ‘Mr Kirk?’

‘Yes…’ Tom returned the woman’s wave, Hewson’s voice barely registering any more. ‘It’s her.’

THREE

Via del Gesù, Rome 17th March - 5.44 p.m.

Ignoring her phone’s shrill call, Allegra Damico grabbed the double espresso off the counter, threw down some change and stepped back outside into the fading light. Answering it wouldn’t make her get there any quicker. And if they wanted her to make any sense after the day she’d just had, she needed the caffeine more than they needed her to be on time. Shrugging with a faint hint of indignation, she walked down the Via del Gesù then turned right on to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, cupping the coffee in both hands and blowing on it, her reflection catching in the shop windows.

She owed her athletic frame to her father, an architect who had met her mother when he was working as a tour guide in Naples and she, a Danish student, was backpacking across Europe. As a result, Allegra had contrived to inherit both his olive skin and quick temper and her mother’s high cheekbones and the sort of curling strawberry blonde hair that the rich housewives who stalked the Via dei Condotti spent hundreds of euros trying to conjure from a bottle. Nowhere was this genetic compromise more arrestingly reflected than in her mismatched eyes - one crystal blue, the other an earthy brown.

Lifting her nose from the cup she frowned, suddenly aware that despite the time of day, dawn seemed to be breaking ahead of her, its golden glow bronzing the sky. Sighing, she quickened her pace, taking this unnatural event and the growing wail of sirens as an ominous portent of what lay in wait.

Her instincts were soon proved right. The Largo di Torre Argentina, a large rectangular square that had once formed part of the Campo Marzio, had been barricaded off, a disco frenzy of blue and red lights dancing across the walls of the surrounding buildings. A swollen, curious crowd had gathered on one side of the metal railings, straining to see into the middle of the square, some holding their mobile phones over their heads to film what they could. On the other side loomed a determined cordon of state police, some barking at people to stay back and go home, a few braving the baying masses in a valiant attempt to redirect the backed-up traffic along the Via dei Cestari. A police helicopter circled overhead, the bass chop of its blades mingling with the sirens’ shrill treble to form a deafening and discordant choir. A single searchlight shone down from its belly, its celestial beam picking out a spot that Allegra couldn’t yet see.

Her phone rang again. This time she answered it.

‘Pronto. Yes sir, I’m here… I’m sorry, but I came as soon as I could…Well, I’m here now… Okay, then tell him I’ll meet him at the north-east corner in three minutes… Ciao.’

She extracted her badge from her rear jeans pocket and, taking a deep breath, plunged into the crowd and elbowed her way to the front, flashing it apologetically in the vague direction of the muffled curses and angry stares thrown her way. Once there, she identified herself and an officer unhooked one of the barriers, the weight of the crowd spitting her through the gap before immediately closing up behind her.

Catching her breath and pulling her jacket straight, she picked her way through a maze of haphazardly parked squad cars and headed towards the fenced-off sunken area that dominated the middle of the square. She could see now that this was the epicentre of the synthetic dawn she had witnessed earlier, a series of large mobile floodlights having been wheeled into place along its perimeter, the helicopter frozen overhead.

‘Lieutenant Damico?’

A man had appeared at the top of a makeshift set of steps that led down to the large sunken tract of land. She nodded and held out her ID by way of introduction.

‘You’re a woman.’

‘Unless you know something I don’t.’

‘I know you’re late,’ he snapped.

About six foot three, he must have weighed seventeen stone, most of it muscle. He was wearing dark blue trousers, a grey jacket and a garish tie that could only have been a gift from his children at Christmas. She guessed he was in his late fifties; his once square face rounding softly at the edges, black hair swept across his scalp to mask his baldness and almost totally grey over his ears. A scar cut across his thick black moustache, dividing it into two unevenly sized islands separated by a raised white ribbon of skin, like a path snaking through a forest.

For a moment she thought of arguing it out with him. Not the fact that she was late, of course: she was. Which, to be honest, she always was. Rather that she had an in-tray full of reasons to be late. But for once she held back, suspecting from his manner that he wouldn’t be interested in her excuses. If anything, his anxious tone and the nervous twitch of his left eye suggested that he was wasn’t so much angry, as afraid.

‘So everyone keeps telling me.’

‘Major Enrico Salvatore -’ he grudgingly shook her hand - ‘Sorry about… we don’t see too many women in the GICO.’

She just about managed to stop herself from rolling her eyes. GICO - properly known as the Gruppo di Investigazione Criminalità Organizzata - the special corps of the Guardia di Finanza that dealt with organised crime. And by reputation an old-school unit that frequented the same strip joints as the people they were supposedly trying to lock up.

‘So what’s the deal?’ she asked. Her boss hadn’t told her anything. Just that he owed someone a favour and that she should get down here as soon as she could.

‘You know this place?’ he asked, gesturing anxiously at the sunken area behind him.

‘Of course.’ She shrugged, slightly annoyed to even be asked. Presumably they knew her background. Why else would they have asked for her? ‘It’s the “Area Sacra”.’

‘Go on.’

‘It contains the remains of four Roman temples unearthed during an excavation project ordered by Mussolini in the 1920s,’ she continued. ‘They were built between the fourth and second centuries BC. Each one has a different design, with…’

‘Fine, fine…’ He held his hands up for her to stop, his relieved tone giving her the impression that she had just successfully passed some sort of audition without entirely being sure what role she was being considered for. He turned to make his way back down the steps. ‘Save the rest for the boss.’

The large site was enclosed by an elegant series of brick archways that formed a retaining wall for the streets some fifteen or so feet above. Bleached white by the floodlights’ desert glare, a forensic search team was strung out across it, inching their way forward on their hands and knees.

Immediately to her right, Allegra knew, was the Temple of Juturna - a shallow flight of brick steps leading up to a rectangular area edged by a row of travertine Corinthian columns of differing heights, like trees that had been randomly felled by a storm. They were all strangely shadowless in the artificial light. Further along the paved walkway was the Aedes Fortunae Huiusce Diei, a circular temple where only six tufa stone Corinthian columns remained standing, a few surviving bases and mid-sections from the other missing pillars poking up like rotting teeth.

But Salvatore steered her past both of these, turning instead between the second and third temples and making his way over rough ground scattered with loose bits of stone and half-formed brick walls that looked like they had been spat out of the earth. Here and there cats, strays from the animal shelter located in the far corner of the Area Sacra, glanced up with disdainful disinterest or picked their way languidly between the ruins, meowing hopefully for food.

With a curious frown, Allegra realised that Salvatore was leading her towards a large semipermanent structure made of scaffolding, covered in white plastic sheeting.

Wedged into the space between the rear of the second and third temples and the retaining wall, she immediately recognised it as the sort of makeshift shelter that was often erected by archaeologists to protect an area of a site that they were excavating or restoring.

‘I’d stay out of the way until the colonel calls you over,’ Salvatore suggested as he paused on the threshold to the shelter, although from his tone it sounded more like an order.

‘The colonel?’

‘Colonel Gallo. The head of GICO,’ Salvatore explained in a hushed tone.

She recognised the name. From what she remembered reading at the time, Gallo had been parachuted in last year from the AISI, the Italian internal security service, after his predecessor had been implicated in the Mancini corruption scandal.

‘He’ll call you over when he’s ready.’

‘Great.’ She nodded, her tight smile masking a desperate urge to make some pointed observation about the irony of having been harried halfway across the city only to now be kept waiting.

‘And I’d lose that if I were you, too,’ he muttered, nodding at her cup. ‘It’s probably better he doesn’t know you stopped off for a coffee.’

Taking a deep breath, she theatrically placed the cup on the ground, then looked up with a forced smile. It wasn’t Salvatore’s fault, she knew. Gallo clearly orbited his waking hours like a small moon, the gravitational pull off his shifting favour governing the ebb and flow of Salvatore’s emotions. But that didn’t make him any less annoying.

‘Happy now?’

‘Ecstatic.’

Greeting the two uniformed men guarding the entrance with a nod, Salvatore held a plastic flap in the sidewall open and they stepped inside. It revealed a long, narrow space, the scaffolding forming a sturdily symmetrical endoskeleton over which the white sheeting had been draped and then fixed into place. In one place some of the ties had come loose, the wind catching the sheet’s edges and snapping it against the metal frame, causing it to chime like a halyard striking a mast.

Salvatore motioned at a crumbling pediment, his gesture suggesting that he wanted her to sit there until she was called forward, then made his way towards a small group of people standing in a semi-circle fifteen or so feet in front of her - all men, she noted with a resigned sigh. Making a point of remaining standing, she counted the minutes as they ticked past - first one, then three, then five. Nothing. In fact no one had even turned round to acknowledge that she was there. Pursing her lips, she decided to give it another few minutes and then, when these too had passed, she made an angry clicking noise with her tongue and set off towards them. Busy was one thing, rude was another. She had better things to do than sit around until Gallo deigned to beckon her over like some sort of performing dog. Besides, she wanted to see for herself whatever it was they were and discussing so intently.

Seeing her approaching, Salvatore frantically signalled at her to stay back. She ignored him, but then stopped anyway, the colour draining from her face as a sudden gap revealed what they had been shielding from view.

It was a corpse. A man. A half-naked man. Arms spread-eagled, legs pinned together, he had been lashed to a makeshift wooden cross with steel wire. Allegra glanced away, horrified, but almost immediately looked back, the gruesome scene exercising a strange, magnetic pull. For as if drawn from some cursed, demonic ritual, the cross had been inverted.

He had been crucified upside down.

FOUR

Arlington National Cemetery, Washington DC 17th March - 11.46 a.m.

‘You sure about this?’ Special Agent Bryan Stokes stepped out of the car behind her, his tone making his own doubts clear.

‘Absolutely,’ Jennifer Browne nodded, surprised at the unforced confidence in her voice as she watched Tom set off towards them, his short brown hair plastered down by the rain. He had seemed pleased to see her, his initial surprise having melted into a warm smile and an eager wave. That was something, at least.

‘So what’s the deal with you two?’ Stokes wedged a golf umbrella against his shoulder with his chin and flicked a manilla file open. Medium height, about a hundred and seventy pounds, Jennifer guessed that Stokes had been born frowning, deep lines furrowing a wide, flat forehead, bloodless lips pressed into a concerned grimace. In his early forties, he was dressed in a severe charcoal suit and black tie that had dropped away from his collar, revealing that the button was missing.

‘There is no deal,’ she said quickly, looking away in case he noticed her smile.

‘Then how do you know him?’

‘We’ve worked a couple of cases together, that’s all.’

Tom was navigating his way towards them through the blossom scatter of white gravestones like a skiff through a storm, tacking first one way and then the other as he plotted a route up the hill. Not for the first time she noted that despite his tall, athletic frame, there was something almost feline about the way he moved - at once graceful and fluid and yet strong and sure-footed.

‘It says here he was Agency?’

‘Senator Duval was on the Senate Intelligence Committee and recommended him,’ she explained, picking her words carefully. FBI Director Jack Green had made it crystal clear that the specific circumstances in which Tom had joined and left the CIA were highly classified. ‘They recruited him into a black op industrial espionage unit. When they shut it down five years later, Kirk went into business for himself, switching from technical blueprints and experimental formulas to fine art and jewellery.’

‘Was he any good?’

‘The best in the business. Or so they said.’

‘And the guy with him?’

‘Archie Connolly. His former fence. Now his business partner. And his best friend, to the extent he allows himself to have one.’

There was a pause as Stokes consulted the file again. It had been Jennifer’s idea to come here, of course. INS had flagged Tom’s name up when he’d landed at Dulles and it hadn’t taken her much to figure out where he’d be headed. But now that she was actually here, she was surprised at how she was feeling. Excited to be seeing Tom again after almost a year, certainly. But there was also a nagging sense of nervousness and apprehension that she couldn’t quite explain. Or perhaps didn’t want to. It was always easier that way.

‘And now they’ve gone straight?’ There was the suggestion of suppressed laughter in Stokes’s voice.

‘I’m not sure that someone like Tom can ever go straight,’ she mused. ‘Not in the way you and I mean it. The problem is, he’s seen too many supposedly straight people do crooked things to think those sorts of labels matter. He just does what he thinks is right.’

‘And you’re sure about this?’ Stokes pressed again, her explanation seeming to have, if anything, heightened his initial misgivings.

She didn’t bother replying, hoping that he would interpret her silence in whichever way made him most comfortable. Instead she stepped forward to greet Tom, who had reached the final incline that led up to where they were waiting. Tom, however, hesitated, his eyes flicking to Stokes and then back to her. He was clearly surprised that she hadn’t come alone.

‘Tom -’ She held out her hand. It felt all wrong, too formal, but with Stokes hovering she didn’t exactly have much choice. Besides, what was the alternative? A hug? A kiss? That also didn’t seem right after eleven months.

‘Special Agent Browne,’ Tom shook her hand with a brief nod, having clearly decided to ape her stilted greeting. He looked healthier than when she had last seen him, his handsome, angular face having lost some of its pallor, his coral blue eyes clear and alive.

‘This is Special Agent Stokes.’

‘Agent Stokes,’ Tom nodded a greeting.

Stokes grunted something indistinct in reply and glanced nervously over his shoulder, as if he was worried about being seen out in the open with him.

‘Come to pay your respects?’

‘We need some help on a case,’ Jennifer began hesitantly.

‘You mean this wasn’t a coincidence?’

Despite his sarcastic tone, she sensed a slight tension lurking behind his smile. Annoyance, perhaps, that she was only there because she wanted something. Or was that just her projecting her own guilty feelings?

‘I need your help,’ she said.

There was a pause, his smile fading.

‘What have you got?’

‘Why don’t we get in…’ She held the Suburban’s rear door open. Tom didn’t move. ‘There’s something I want to show you. It’ll only take a few minutes.’

Tom hesitated for a moment. Then, shrugging, he followed Jennifer into the back, while Stokes climbed into the driver’s seat.

‘Recognise this?’

She handed him a photograph sealed inside a clear plastic evidence bag. Tom smoothed the crinkles flat so that he could see through it. It showed a nativity scene, an exhausted Mary clutching her belly and staring blankly at the Christ child lying on the straw in front of her, an angel plunging dramatically overhead. Unusually, in the foreground a spiky-haired youth, his back to the viewer and one foot touching the baby, has turned to face an aged Joseph, his face tortured by a mischievous disbelief.

Tom looked up, a puzzled smile playing across his lips. Outside, the sky had darkened even further, the rain thrashing the roof, the water running off the windscreen in sheets like rolled steel off a mill.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Do you recognise it?’ Stokes repeated, although Jennifer could already tell from Tom’s face that he did.

‘Caravaggio. The Nativity with San Lorenzo and San Francesco,’ he pointed at the two other men in the painting gazing adoringly at the infant. ‘Painted in 1609 for the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo, Sicily. Missing since 1969. Where did you get it?’

It was Tom’s turn to repeat his question.

Jennifer looked to Stokes and took his muted sigh and faint shrug as agreement to continue.

‘Special Agent Stokes is from our Vegas field office,’ she explained. ‘A week ago he took a call from Myron Kezman.’

‘The casino owner?’ Tom asked in surprise.

‘The photo arrived in his personal mail.’

‘It had a New York City post mark,’ Stokes added. ‘We’ve checked the envelope for prints and DNA. It was clean.’

‘There was a cell-phone number on the back of the photo,’ Jennifer continued; Tom turned it over so he could see it. ‘When Kezman called it there was a recorded message at the other end. It only played once before the number was disconnected.’

The windows had started to fog up. Stokes started the engine and turned the heating on to clear them, a sudden blast of warm air washing over them.

‘What did it say?’

‘According to Kezman it made him a simple offer. The painting for twenty million dollars. And then a different cell-phone number to dial if he was interested in making the trade.’

‘That’s when Kezman called us in,’ Stokes took over. ‘Only this time we taped the call. It was another message setting out the instructions for the exchange. The denominations for the cash. The types of bags it should be in. The meet.’

‘And then they called you?’ Tom turned to Jennifer.

‘The Caravaggio is on the FBI Art Crime team’s top ten list of missing art works, so it automatically got referred our way,’ she confirmed. ‘I got pulled off a case to help handle it. I’ve been camping out in an office here in DC, so when I saw that you’d been flagged up at Dulles …’

‘You thought that maybe I could handle the exchange for you.’

‘How the hell did you…?’ Stokes eyed him suspiciously.

‘Because you’ve never dealt with anything like this before.’ Tom shrugged. ‘Because you’re smart and you know that these types of gigs never go down quite like you plan them. Because you know I might spot something you won’t.’

There was a pause as Stokes and Jennifer both swapped a look, and then laughed.

‘That’s pretty much it, I guess.’ Stokes nodded with a grudging smile.

‘When’s this happening?’

‘Tonight in Vegas. On the main floor at the Amalfi.’

‘Kezman’s joint?’

‘Yep,’ Stokes nodded.

‘That’s smart. Busy. Exposed. Plenty of civilian cover. Multiple escape routes.’

‘So you’ll do it?’ Jennifer asked hopefully.

There was a sharp rap on the window. Tom lowered it and Archie peered in, the rain dripping off his umbrella.

‘Very bloody cosy,’ he observed with a wry smile. ‘Not interrupting anything, am I?’

‘I don’t think you two have ever actually met before, have you?’ Tom asked, sitting back so Jennifer could lean across him and shake his hand.

‘Not properly.’ She smiled.

‘What do you want with my boy this time?’ Archie sniffed, eyeing her carefully.

‘The Nativity has turned up,’ Tom answered for her. ‘They want me to fly to Vegas with them to help handle the exchange.’

‘I’ll bet they do. What’s our take?’

Tom looked searchingly at Jennifer and then at Stokes, who shrugged sheepishly.

‘Looks like the usual fee,’ he said with a smile. ‘Attaboys all round.’

‘Well, bollocks to that, then,’ Archie sniffed. ‘You and I are meant to be meeting Dom in Zurich tomorrow night to see a real client. One that pays and doesn’t try and lock you up every five seconds.’ He gave first Jennifer, then Stokes, a reproachful glare.

Tom nodded slowly. Having given up on the Swiss police, the curator of the Emile Bũhrle Foundation wanted their help recovering four paintings worth a hundred and eighty million dollars taken at gunpoint the previous month. Archie had a point.

‘I know.’

A pause. He turned back to Jennifer.

‘Who’ll handle the exchange if I don’t?’

‘Me, I guess,’ she replied with a shrug. ‘At least, that was the plan until you flashed up on the system.’

There was a long silence, Tom looking first at Jennifer, then Stokes. He turned back to Archie.

‘Why don’t I just meet you in Zurich tomorrow.’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Tom,’ Archie protested. ‘I don’t know why I bother sometimes.’

‘One night. That’s all,’ Tom reassured him. ‘I’ll be on the first flight out.’

‘Fine,’ Archie sighed. ‘But you can deal with Hewson.’ Archie stepped back and pointed down the slope towards a lonely figure who appeared to be patiently waiting for them to return. ‘He’s doing my bloody head in.’

‘Whatever he’s got for me, it’s waited this long -’ Tom sat back with a shrug - ‘it can wait a day longer.’

FIVE

Largo di Torre Argentina, Rome 17th March - 6.06 p.m.

Allegra could just about make out one of the men’s low voices. A pathologist, she guessed.

‘Cause of death? Well, I’ll only know when I open him up. But at a guess, oedema of the brain. Upside down, the heart continues to pump blood through the arteries, but because the veins rely on gravity, his brain would have become swollen with blood. Fluid would then have leaked out of his capillaries, first causing a headache, then gradual loss of consciousness and finally death, probably from asphyxiation as the brain signals driving respiration failed. Terrible way to go.’

‘How long has he been here?’ the man next to him asked. From his flinty, aggressive tone, Allegra knew immediately that this had to be Gallo.

‘All day. Possibly longer. It was a cold night and that would have slowed decomposition.’

‘And no one saw him until now?’ Gallo snapped, his voice both angry and disbelieving. She could just about detect the vestiges of a Southern accent, presumably carefully discarded over the years. After all, provincial roots were not exactly something you advertised if you wanted to get ahead. Not in Rome.

‘No one works here at the weekend,’ Salvatore explained in an apologetic tone. ‘And you couldn’t see him from the street.’

‘Terrible way to go,’ the pathologist repeated, shaking his head. ‘It would have taken hours for him to die. And right until the end he would have been able to hear people walking around the site and the cars coming and going overhead, and not been able to move or call for help.’

‘You think I give a shit about how this bastard died?’ Gallo snorted dismissively. ‘Don’t forget who he was or who he worked for. All I want to know is who killed him, why they did it here and why like this. The last thing I need is some sort of vigilante stalking the streets of Rome re-enacting Satanic rituals.’

‘Actually, Colonel, it’s Christian, not Satanic,’ Allegra interrupted with a cough.

‘What?’ Gallo rounded on her, looking her up and down with a disdainful expression. He was six feet tall and powerfully built, with a strong, tanned face covered in carefully trimmed stubble. About forty-five or so, she guessed, he was wearing the full dress uniform of a colonel in the Guarda di Finanza and had chin-length steel-grey hair that parted down the centre of his head and fell either side of his face, forcing him to sweep it back out of his eyes every so often. He also had on a pair of frameless glasses with clear plastic arms. From the way he adjusted them on his nose, she sensed that these had only recently been prescribed and that he still resented wearing them, despite having done what he could to make them as unobtrusive as possible.

‘The inverted crucifixion,’ she explained, ignoring the horrified look on Salvatore’s face. ‘It’s taken from the Acts of Peter.’

‘The Acts of Peter?’ Gallo snorted. ‘There’s no such book in the Bible.’

‘That’s because it’s in the Apocrypha, the texts excluded from the Bible by the church,’ she replied, holding her temper in check. ‘According to the text, when the Roman authorities sentenced Peter to death, he asked to be crucified head down, so as not to imitate Christ’s passing.’

Gallo said nothing, his eyes narrowing slightly as he brushed his hair back.

‘Thank you for the Sunday school lesson, Miss…’

‘Lieutenant. Damico.’

‘The antiquities expert you asked for, Colonel,’ Salvatore added quickly.

‘You work at the university?’ It sounded like a challenge rather than a question.

‘I used to be a lecturer in art and antiquities at La Sapienza, yes.’

‘Used to be!’ he spluttered, glaring at Salvatore.

‘The university passed me on to the Villa Giulia. One of the experts there recommended her,’ Salvatore insisted.

‘Now I’m in the TPA,’ she added quickly, spelling out the acronym for the Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Artistico, the special corps within the Carabinieri tasked with protecting and recovering stolen art. He looked her up and down again, then shrugged.

‘Well, you’ll have to do, I suppose,’ he said, to Salvatore’s visible relief. ‘I take it you know who I am?’

She nodded, although part of her was itching to say no, just to see the look on his face. Ignoring the other two men standing there, which she assumed meant that he did not consider them important enough to warrant an introduction, Gallo jabbed his finger at the man next to him.

‘This is Dottore Giovanni la Fabro from the coroner’s office, and this is, or was, Adriano Ricci, an enforcer for the De Luca family.’

Allegra nodded. The GICO’s involvement was suddenly a lot clearer. The De Luca family were believed to run the Bande della Magliana, one of Rome’s most notorious criminal organisations. Gallo clearly thought this was some sort of professional hit.

He stepped back and introduced the corpse with a sweep of his hand. Even dead, she could tell that Ricci had been overweight, loose skin sagging towards the ground like melted wax on the neck of a bottle. He was bare-chested with a large Lazio football club tattoo on his left shoulder, and was still wearing a striped pair of suit trousers that had fallen halfway down his calves. His wrists and ankles were bleeding where the chicken wire used to bind him to the cross had bitten into his flesh.

‘Why am I here?’ she asked with a shudder, glancing back to Gallo.

‘This -’ He led her forward to the body and snapped his flashlight on to illuminate its face.

For a few moments she couldn’t make out what he was pointing to, her attention grabbed by Ricci’s staring, bloodshot eyes and the way that, from the shoulders up, his skin had turned a waxy purple, like marble. But then, trapped in the light of Gallo’s torch, she saw it. A black shape, a disc of some sort, lurking in the roof of Ricci’s mouth.

‘What is it?’ she breathed.

‘That’s what you’re meant to be telling me,’ Gallo shot back.

‘Can I see it, then?’

Gallo snapped his fingers and la Fabro handed him a pair of tweezers. To Allegra’s horrified fascination, he levered the object free as if he was prising a jewel from an ancient Indian statue and then carefully deposited it inside an evidence bag, holding it out between his fingertips as if it contained something mildly repellent.

‘Knock yourself out,’ he intoned.

‘I thought it might be some sort of antique coin,’ Salvatore suggested eagerly over her shoulder as she turned it over in the light. ‘It seems to have markings etched into it.’

‘The ancient Romans used to put a bronze coin in the mouths of their dead to pay Charon to ferry their souls across the Styx to the Underworld,’ she nodded slowly. ‘But I don’t think that’s what this is.’

‘Why not?’

‘Feel the weight, it’s lead. That’s too soft to be used in everyday coinage.’

‘Then what about the engraving?’ Gallo asked impatiently.

She traced the symbol that had been inlaid into the coin with her finger. It showed two snakes intertwined around a clenched fist, like the seal from some mediaeval coat of arms.

‘I don’t know,’ she said with an apologetic shrug. ‘But whatever this is, it’s not an antique nor, I would say, particularly valuable.’

‘Well, that was useful.’ Glaring angrily at Salvatore, Gallo turned his back on Allegra as if she had suddenly vanished.

‘I’m sorry,’ Salvatore stuttered. ‘I thought that…’

‘We’ve wasted enough time. Let’s just get him bagged up and out of here so the forensic boys can move in,’ Gallo ordered as he turned to leave. ‘Then I want a priest or a cardinal or somebody else in sandals down here to tell me more about…’

‘It can’t be a coincidence though, can it, Colonel?’ Allegra called after him.

Gallo spun round angrily.

‘I thought you’d gone?’

‘It can’t be a coincidence that they killed him here?’ she insisted.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’

‘In Roman times, this entire area was part of the Campus Martius, a huge complex of buildings that included the Baths of Agrippa to the north, the Circus Flaminius to the south and the Theatre of Pompey to the west,’ she explained, pointing towards each point of the compass in turn. ‘The Senate even met here while the Curia was being rebuilt after a fire in 54 BC -’ she pointed at the floor - ‘in a space in the portico attached to the Theatre of Pompey.’

‘Here?’ Gallo looked around him sceptically, clearly struggling to reconcile the fractured ruins at his feet with the imagined grandeur of a Roman theatre.

‘Of course, the one drawback of this spot was that the Campus Martius stood outside the sacred pomerium, the city’s official boundaries, meaning that, although it was quieter than the Forum, it was not subject to the same restrictions against concealed weapons.’

‘What’s your point?’ Gallo frowned wearily, and she realised that she was going to have to spell it out for him.

‘I mean that Ricci isn’t the first person to be killed here,’ she explained, a tremor of excitement in her voice. ‘I mean that in 44 BC, Julius Caesar was assassinated on almost this exact same spot.’

SIX

The Getty Villa, Malibu, California 17th March - 10.52 a.m.

Verity Bruce had been looking forward to this day for a while. For nearly three years, to be precise. That’s how long it had been since she had first been shown the dog-eared Polaroid in a smoky Viennese café, first been winded by the adrenaline punch of excitement at what was on offer and chilled by the fear of possibly losing out.

She’d shaken on the deal there and then, knowing that the director would back her judgement. The trustees had taken a little more convincing, of course, but then they didn’t know the period like she did. Besides, once they’d understood the magnitude of the find, they’d bitten and bitten hard, sharing her mounting frustration at the years lost to the scientists as test upon test had heaped delay upon deferral until she was sure they must have finished and started all over again. And then, of course, the lumbering and self-perpetuating wheels of international bureaucracy had begun to turn, a merry-go-round of sworn affidavits, authentication letters, legal contracts, bank statements, money transfer forms, export and import licences and Customs declarations that had added months to the process. Still, what was done was done. Today, finally, the waiting ended.

She positioned herself in front of the fulllength mirror she’d had bolted to the back of her office door. Had the intervening years between that first breathless, absinthe-fuelled encounter and today’s unveiling aged her? A little, perhaps, around her fern-green eyes and in the tiny fissures that had begun to fleck her top lip like faint animal tracks across the snow. Ever since she’d turned forty-five, the years seemed to weigh a little heavier on her face, as if they were invisibly swinging from grappling hooks sunk into her skin. She could have had surgery, of course - God knows everyone else her age in LA seemed to have had work done - but she hated anything fake or forced like that. Highlights in her long, coiled copper hair were one thing, but needles and knives …Sometimes, nature had to be allowed to run its course.

Besides, she reminded herself as she put the finishing touches to her makeup, it wasn’t as if she’d lost her looks. How else to explain the fact that that gorgeous thirty-two-year-old speech writer she’d met at a White House fund-raiser the other month was pestering her to travel up to his place in Martha’s Vineyard next fall? And she still had great legs, too. Always had. Hopefully always would.

‘They’re ready for you.’

One of the Getty PR girls had edged tentatively into the room. Verity couldn’t remember her name, but then all these girls looked the same to her - blonde, smiley, skinny, jutting tits that would hold firm in a 6.1 - as if the city was ground zero in some freakish cloning experiment. Even so, the girl’s legs still weren’t as good as hers.

‘Let’s do it,’ she said, grabbing her leather jacket off the chair and slipping it over a black couture Chanel dress that she’d bought in Paris last year. It was an unlikely combination, but one deliberately chosen to further fuel the quirky image that she’d so carefully cultivated over the years. It was simple really. If you wanted to get ahead in the hushed and dusty corridors of curatorial academia without waiting to be as old as the exhibits themselves, it paid to get noticed. She certainly wasn’t about to tone things down now, despite the occasion, although she had at least upgraded from flats to a vertiginous pair of scarlet Manolos that matched her lipstick. After all, this was a ten-million-dollar acquisition and the Los Angeles Times would be taking pictures.

The small group of donors, experts and journalists that she and the director had hand-picked for this private viewing to guarantee maximum pre-launch coverage was already gathered expectantly in the auditorium. The figure had been draped, rather melodramatically she thought, in a black cloth and then placed in the middle of the floor so that people had to circle, brows furrowed in speculation, around it. Snatching up a glass of Laurent-Perrier Rosé from a tray at the door, Verity swept inside and began to work the room, shaking the hands of some, kissing the cheeks of others, swapping an amusing anecdote here and clutching at a shared memory there. But she was barely aware of what she was saying or what was being said to her, her excitement slowly building as the minutes counted down until she could hear only the pregnant thud of her heart.

‘Ladies and gentlemen…’ The director had stepped into the middle of the room. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, if I could have your attention please,’ he called, ushering the audience closer. The lights dimmed. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, today marks the culmination of a remarkable journey,’ he began, reading from a small card and then pausing for effect. ‘It is a journey that began over 2,500 years ago in ancient Greece. And it is a journey that ends, here, in Malibu. Because today, I am delighted to unveil the Getty Villa’s latest acquisition and, in my opinion, one of the most important works of art to enter the United States since the Second World War.’

With a flourish, the cloth slipped to the floor. Under a lone spotlight stood a seven foot tall marble sculpture of a young boy, his left foot forward, arms at his sides, head and eyes looking straight ahead. There was a ripple of appreciative, even shocked recognition. Verity stepped forward.

‘This uniquely preserved example of a Greek kouros has been dated to around 540 BC,’ Verity began, standing on the other side of the statue to the director and speaking without notes. ‘As many of you will undoubtedly know, although inspired by the god Apollo, a kouros was not intended to represent any one individual youth but the idea of youth itself, and was used in Ancient Greece both as a dedication to the gods in sanctuaries and as a funerary monument. Our tests show that this example has been hewn from dolomite marble from the ancient Cape Vathy quarry on the island of Thassos.’

Talking in her usual measured and authoritative style, she continued her description of the statue, enjoying herself more and more as she got into her stride: its provenance from the private collection of a Swiss physician whose grandfather had bought it in Athens in the late 1800s; the exhaustive scientific tests that had revealed a thin film of calcite coating its surface resulting from hundreds, if not thousands of years of natural lichen growth; the stylistic features linking it to the Anavysos Youth in the National Museum in Athens. In short, a masterpiece that was yet further evidence of the Getty’s determination to build the pre-eminent American collection of classical antiquities.

Her speech drew to a close. Acknowledging the applause with a nod, she retreated to allow people forward for a closer look, anxiously watching over the figure like a parent supervising a child in a busy playground.

At first all went well, a few people nodding appreciatively at the sculpture’s elegant lines, others seeking her out to offer muted words of congratulations. But then, without warning, she sensed the mood darkening, a few of the guests eyeing the statue with a strange look and whispering excitedly to each other.

Thierry Normand from the Ecole Française d’Athène was the first to break ranks.

‘Doesn’t the use of Thassian marble strike you as rather… anomalous?’

‘And what about the absence of paint?’ Eleanor Grant from the University of Chicago immediately added. ‘As far as I know, all other kouroi, with the possible exception of the Melos kouros, show traces of paint?’

‘Well, of course we considered…’ Verity began with a weak smile, forcing herself not to sound defensive even though she could hardly not feel insulted by what they were implying.

‘I’m sorry, Verity,’ Sir John Sykes, the highly respected Lincoln Professor of Classical Archaeology and Art at Oxford University interrupted with an apologetic cough. ‘It just isn’t right. The hair is pure early sixth-century BC, as you say, but the face and abdomen are clearly much later. And while you can find similarly muscular thighs in Corinth, I’ve only seen feet and a base like that in Boeotia. The science can only tell you so much. You have to rely on the aesthetics, on what you can see. To me, this is almost verging on the pastiche.’

‘Well, I’m sorry, Sir John, but we couldn’t disagree more…’ Verity began angrily, looking to the director for support but seeing that he appeared to have retreated to the periphery of the group.

‘Actually, Sir John, the word I’d use,’ Professor Vivienne Foyle of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University added, pausing to make sure everyone was listening, ‘is fresh.’

The loaded meaning of the word was clear. Foyle was suggesting that the statue was in fact a forgery, that it had been knocked up in some backstreet workshop and never been in the ground at all. Verity was reeling, but the mood in the room was now such that she knew she had no chance of sensibly arguing her case.

The interrogation continued. Why didn’t the plinth have a lead attachment like other kouroi? Couldn’t the degradation of the stone have been caused deliberately by oxalic acid? How was it that such an exceptional piece had only surfaced now? What due diligence had been carried out on it’s provenance?

She barely heard them, her ears filled with the dull pulse of her mounting rage. Her face white and cold as marble, she nodded and smiled and shrugged at what seemed opportune moments, not trusting herself to open her mouth without swearing. A further ten minutes of this torture had to be endured before the director, perhaps sensing that she might be about to erupt, finally saw fit to bring an end to her ordeal.

‘Fresh? I’ll give that senile old bitch fresh,’ she muttered angrily as she stalked back to her office. ‘Sonya?’

‘I’m Cynthia,’ the PR girl chirped, skipping to keep up with her.

‘Whatever. Get me Faulks on the phone.’

‘Who?’

‘Earl Faulks. F-A-U-L-K-S, pronounced like folks. I don’t care where he is. I don’t care what he’s doing. Just get him for me. In fact, I don’t want just to speak to him. I want to see him. Here. Tomorrow.’

SEVEN

Over Nebraska 17th March - 8.43 p.m.

Normally used to scoop whales into the casino’s deep-throated net, Kezman’s private jet was a potent introduction to the Vegas experience: snowwhite leather seats with a gilded letter ‘A’ embroidered into the head-rests, leopard-skin carpets, polished mahogany panelling running the length of the cabin like the interior of a pre-war steamer, a small glass bar lit with blue neon. At the front, over the cockpit door, hung a photo of Kezman, all teeth and tan, gazing down on them benevolently like the dictator of some oil-rich African state.

Tom, lost in thought, had immediately settled back into his seat, politely declining the offer of a drink from the attentive stewardess whose skirt seemed to have been hitched almost as high as her top was pulled low. Head turned to the window, gaze fixed on some distant point on the horizon, he barely noticed the plane take off, let alone Jennifer move to the seat opposite him.

‘You’re still wearing it then?’ she asked, head tilted to one side so that her curling mass of black hair covered the top of her right shoulder.

He glanced down at the 1934 stainless steel ‘Brancard’ Rolex Prince on his wrist. It had been a gift from the FBI for Tom’s help on the first case he’d worked on with Jennifer, although Tom suspected that the decision to offer it to him, and the choice of watch, had been all hers.

‘Why?’ He turned to face her with a smile. ‘Do you want it back?’

Five feet nine, slim with milky brown skin, she had a lustrous pair of hazel eyes and was wearing her usual office camouflage of black trouser suit and cream silk blouse. Her ‘Fuck You’ clothes, as she’d once described them, as opposed to the ‘Fuck Me’ outfits that some of the other female agents favoured, only to wonder why they got asked out all the time but never promoted. The truth was that the odds of a woman succeeding in the Bureau, let alone a black woman, were stacked so heavily against her, that she had to load the dice any way she could just to be given a fair spin of the wheel. Then again, from what he’d seen, Jennifer knew what it took to play the game, having risen from lowly field agent in the Bureau’s Atlanta Division to one of the most senior members of its Art Crime Team. That didn’t happen by accident.

‘Not unless you’re having second thoughts.’

‘Should I be?’

‘You just seem a bit… distracted,’ she ventured.

‘Not really.’ His gaze flicked back to the window. ‘I guess I was just thinking about today.’

‘About your grandfather?’

‘About some of the people there. About my family, or what’s left of it. About how little I know them and they know me.’

‘You’re a difficult person to get to know, Tom,’ she said gently.

‘Even for you?’ He turned back to her with a hopeful smile.

‘Maybe especially for me,’ she shot back, an edge to her voice that was at once resigned and accusing.

He understood what she meant, although she had got closer to him than most over the years. Not that things had started well between them when they had first met, necessity strong-arming their initial instinctive mutual suspicion into a grudging and fragile working relationship. And yet from this unpromising beginning a guarded trust, of sorts, had slowly evolved which had itself, in time, built towards a burgeoning friendship. A friendship which had then briefly flowered into something more, their growing attraction for each other finding its voice in one unplanned and instinctive night together.

Since then, the intervening years and a subsequent case had given them both the opportunity at different times to try and revive those feelings and build on that night. But for whatever reason, the other person had never quite been in the same place - Tom initially unwilling to open up, Jennifer subsequently worried about getting hurt. Even so, the memory had left its mark on both of them, like an invisible shard of metal caught beneath the skin that they could both feel whenever they rubbed up against someone else.

‘How have you been?’ Tom asked, deliberately moving the focus of the conversation away from himself. Jennifer glanced over his shoulder before answering, prompting Tom to turn in his seat and follow her wary gaze. Stokes was asleep, his legs stretched out ahead of him, his head lolling on to his shoulder, two empty whisky miniatures on the table in front of him. The stewardess had retreated into the limestone-floored toilet cubicle with her make-up bag.

‘Were you annoyed I came?’ Jennifer answered with a question of her own.

‘I was disappointed you didn’t come alone,’ he admitted, almost surprising himself with his honesty.

‘This is Stokes’s case,’ she explained with an apologetic shrug. ‘I couldn’t have come without him.’

‘That’s not what I meant.’

A pause.

‘You should have told me you were coming.’

‘I didn’t know I was until I was on the plane,’ he protested.

‘You could have called,’ she insisted.

‘Would you have called me if you hadn’t needed my help?’

Another, longer pause.

‘Probably not,’ she conceded.

It was strange, Tom mused. They weren’t dating, hadn’t spoken in almost a year, and yet they seemed to be locked into a lovers’ awkward conversation, both of them fumbling around what they really wanted to say, rather than risk looking stupid.

There was a long silence.

‘Why did you agree to come?’ Jennifer eventually asked him, her eyes locking with his.

‘Because you said you needed my help,’ he said with a shrug.

‘You were going to say no,’ she pointed out. ‘Then something changed.’

‘I don’t really…’

‘It was because I said I would handle the exchange myself if you didn’t, wasn’t it?’

A smile flickered across Tom’s face. He’d forgotten how annoyingly perceptive she could be.

‘What do you know about this painting?’ Tom picked up the photo from the table between them and studied it through the plastic.

‘It was one of four that Caravaggio completed in Sicily in 1609 while he was on the run for stabbing someone to death,’ she said. ‘We have it down as being worth twenty million dollars, but it would go for much more, even in today’s market.’

‘What about the theft itself?’

‘October sixteenth, 1969,’ she recited from memory. ‘The crime reports say that the thieves cut it out of its frame over the altar of the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo with razor blades and escaped in a truck. Probably a two-man team.’

‘I’d guess three,’ Tom corrected her. ‘It’s big - nearly sixty square feet. I’m not sure two men could have handled it.’

‘At the time, people blamed the Sicilian mafia?’ Her statement was framed as a question.

‘It’s always looked to me like an amateur job,’ Tom replied with a shake of his head. ‘Couple of local crooks who’d thought through everything except how they were going to sell it. If the Sicilian mafia have got it now, it’s because no one else was buying or because they decided to just take it. The Cosa Nostra don’t like people operating on their turf without permission.’

‘And no one’s ever seen it since?’

‘I’ve heard rumours over the years,’ Tom sighed. ‘That it had surfaced in Rome, or maybe even been destroyed in the Naples earthquake in 1980. Then a few years ago, a mafia informer claimed to have rolled it up inside a rug and buried it in an iron chest. When they went to dig it up, the chest was empty.’

‘What do you think?’

‘If you ask me, it’s been with the Cosa Nostra the whole time. Probably traded between capos as a gift or part payment on a deal.’

‘Which would mean that the mafia are behind the sale now?’

‘If not the mafia, then someone who has stolen it from them,’ Tom agreed. ‘Either way, they’ll be dangerous and easily spooked. If we’re lucky, they’ll just run if they smell trouble. If we’re not, they’ll start shooting.’ A pause. ‘That’s why I came.’

‘I can look after myself,’ she said pointedly; irritated, it seemed, by what he was implying. ‘I didn’t ask you here to watch my back.’

‘I’m here because I know how these people think,’ Tom insisted. ‘And the only back that will need watching is mine.’

EIGHT

Amalfi Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas

17th March - 9.27 p.m.

Ever since going freelance, Kyle Foster had never met or even spoken to his handler. It was safer that way. For both of them. Besides, what would have been the fucking point? All he needed was a name, a photograph and fifty per cent of his fee in his Cayman Islands account. Why complicate things with a face or a voice when he could just email the details through and save them both the trouble? Assuming the handler was a guy, of course. There was no real way of knowing. A broad in this line of business? Not unheard of, but rare. Maybe he should suggest a meet after all?

His PDA vibrated on the glass table in front of him, breaking into his thoughts. Swinging his feet to the floor he sat forward, muting the TV so he could concentrate on the message rather than the squeals of the girl being screwed by her twin sister wearing a strap-on.

It was the photo he noticed first, his boulderlike face breaking into something resembling a smile at life’s occasional burst of comic irony; he knew this person, or rather he’d come across them before on a previous job. Beneath it was a simple message:

Target confirmed arriving LAS tonight. Terminate with extreme prejudice.

Good, he thought, climbing on to the bed. He hated being kept waiting, especially now the minibar was running dry and he’d cycled through both the porn channels.

Unscrewing the ceiling grille, he lifted down a black US Navy Mark 12 Special Purpose Rifle from where he’d hidden it inside the AC duct and began to disassemble it. This weapon was a recent issue to US Special Forces in the Middle East and he liked what they had done with it, producing a rifle with a greater effective range than an M4 Carbine, while still being shorter than a standard-issue M16. He especially appreciated that although it had been chambered for standard NATO rounds, it performed much better with a US-made Sierra Bullets MatchKing 77-grain hollow-point boat-tail bullet, although for jobs like this he preferred using his own bespoke ammunition.

Stripped down, the dismembered weapon parts lay on the crisp linen sheets like instruments on a surgeon’s tray. Laying a white hand-towel down next to them, he carefully arranged the pieces on it and then rolled it into a tight bundle that he secured shut by wrapping duct tape around it several times. Shaking the trussed-up towel hard to make sure nothing rattled, he placed it in his backpack.

Draining the last of the whisky, he turned his attention to his uniform, pulling on his red jacket and ensuring that his buttons were straight and done up right under his chin. Not quite as smart as the Army Green hanging in his wardrobe back in Charlotte, carefully positioned so you could see the gold flash of his Rangers badge through the plastic, but it would serve its purpose. He doubted the dry-cleaning company had even noticed that it had been taken from its storeroom, and as for the waiter whose security pass he’d stolen and doctored…well, he wouldn’t be missing anything anytime soon.

Finally, he smoothed down his light brown hair, almost not recognising himself without his straggly beard. That was one thing that had thrown him about Vegas. You could walk around in an Elvis suit or with a twelve-foot albino python around your neck and nobody would give you a second look. But wander more than twenty feet down the strip with a beard and people would stare at you like you were a freak in a circus side-show.

In the end, he’d had no choice but to shave it off. How else to blend in with the casino staff? How else to get where he needed to be, to take the shot?

NINE

McCarran International Airport, Nevada

17th March - 10.37 p.m.

‘Kezman’s laying it on pretty thick,’ Tom observed as the plane taxied to a halt and the stairs folded down. A stretched white Hummer emblazoned with a gilded letter ‘A’ was waiting to greet them, its neon undercarriage staining the apron blue. ‘First the jet. Now this. What does he want?’

‘A friendly word with the Nevada Gaming Control Board,’ Stokes growled, as he pushed past Tom and stepped through the doorway. An unmarked FBI escort vehicle was drawn up behind the limo and he gestured at them to follow. ‘One of his pit bosses was caught dealing ecstasy to some college kids out here on spring break and he doesn’t want to lose his gaming licence.’

An envelope was waiting for them on the white leather seat, together with three glasses and a bottle of Cristal on ice. To Jennifer’s surprise, it was addressed to her. She opened it with a puzzled frown which relaxed into a slow nod as she realised what it was.

‘Status update from my other case,’ she explained as she flicked through it, guessing that someone in the escort vehicle must have been entrusted with it to pass on to her. Nodding, Stokes shuffled further along the seat towards the driver and reached for his phone.

‘Bad news?’ Tom asked eventually, his question prompting her unconscious scowl to fade into a rueful smile.

‘Isn’t it always?’ she replied, placing the typed pages down next to her.

‘Anything I can help with?’

She paused, her eyes locked with his. Discussing a live investigation with a civilian, let alone a civilian with Tom’s flawed credentials, wasn’t exactly standard procedure. Then again, her case wasn’t exactly standard either, and she had learned to value his opinion. Besides, who would know? Certainly not Stokes, whom she could overhear noisily checking on the money and making sure that Las Vegas Metro weren’t playing their usual jurisdictional games.

‘A few weeks ago the Customs boys over in Norfolk got a tip-off about a shipment of car parts out of Hamburg,’ she began in a low voice, leaning in closer. ‘When they opened the container everything looked fine, but something weird showed up on the X-ray.’

‘A marzipan layer?’ Tom guessed.

‘Exactly. Car parts stacked at the front and round the sides. A smaller crate hidden in the middle filled with furniture.’

‘Furniture?’ Tom frowned.

‘Eileen Gray. Ten to fifteen million dollars’ worth.’

Tom whistled, echoing her own surprise when she’d first understood what they were dealing with. Eileen Gray art deco furniture was apparently as rare as it was expensive.

‘They boxed it back up and then followed the shipment via a freight-forwarding service to an art dealer in Queens, an Italian who moved here in the seventies. He started squealing the minute they kicked down the door. It turns out he thought they were a hit squad. I don’t think anyone’s ever been so relieved to see a badge.’

‘Who did he think had sent them?’

‘It turns out that he’s been smuggling pieces for a high-end antiquities trafficking ring for years. The furniture was a little side-deal he’d cooked up for himself. He thought they’d found out.’

‘What sort of antiquities?’ Tom asked.

‘Statues, vases, plates, jewellery, even entire frescoes. Most of it illegally excavated from Roman and Etruscan tombs. One of their favourite tricks was to cover objects in liquid plastic and then paint them so that they looked like cheap souvenirs. That’s when they called me in.’

‘My mother used to be an antiquities dealer,’ Tom sighed. ‘I remember her once describing graverobbing as the world’s second oldest profession.

‘You’re talking about tomb robbers?’

‘In Italy they call them tombaroli, in Peru huaceros,’ Tom nodded. ‘Mexico, Cambodia, China, Iraq - The truth is that as long as there are people prepared to buy pieces without asking difficult questions about where they’ve come from, there’ll be others only too happy to dig them up.’ But Italy is ground zero, the Terra Santa of the tombrobbing world. It’s got over forty UNESCO World Heritage Sites and the remains of about five different civilisations.’ A pause. ‘Did your guy ID any of his buyers?’

She gave a firm shake of her head.

‘His job was just to get the stuff through Customs. He never had any idea where it was coming from or going to. But he did give us another name. Someone from within the organisation who had apparently broken cover a few weeks before, looking to bring something across. We passed it on to the Italians and they said they’d check him out.’ She tapped the file next to her in annoyance. ‘The State Department’s been working on them to make sure they keep us in the loop, but so far they’re playing hard to get.’

‘Does this outfit have a name?’

‘We’re not sure. Have you ever heard of the Delian League?’

Tom frowned.

‘League as in club?’

‘When we went through his trash, we found two bags of shredded paper,’ she explained. ‘Most of it was unusable, but the lab were able to piece together one yellow sheet, because the coloured strips stood out from everything else. It was mainly covered in doodles and practice runs of his signature; the sort of thing you do when you’re on the phone to someone. But in one corner he’d written the words Delian League and then sketched out a sort of symbol underneath. Two snakes wrapped around a clenched fist.’

‘Means nothing to me,’ Tom shook his head.

‘Well, it means something to him because he’s clammed up since we showed it to him. Won’t even talk to his attorney. But we found his bank records too and I think that the Delian League is -’

She broke off as Stokes ended his call and shuffled back down towards them.

‘The money’s ready and Metro are playing ball. Looks like we’re all set.’

They turned on to Las Vegas Boulevard, a grinning cowboy on an overhead billboard welcoming them to the home of the seven-day weekend, the streets teeming with nocturnal creatures who, like vampires it seemed, were only now venturing outside to feed.

It was Jennifer’s first time in Las Vegas, and even as they’d circled prior to landing she’d found herself struck by the almost unnatural way that this concrete oasis seemed to have been cut out of the desert’s soft belly, its neon heartbeat pulsing hungrily, its wailing lungs breathing expensively chilled air.

The view from the ground wasn’t much better, the different hotel resorts galloping past in a single garish streak of light, like an overexposed photograph of a merry-go-round. The Pyramids, Arthurian England, New York, Paris, Lake Como, Venice - she had the sudden, disorientating sensation of travelling without moving, of time and space having been folded in on itself so as to meet at this one point in the universe.

The strange thing was that while there was something undeniably intoxicating, perhaps even gorgeous, about the multi-million-dollar light shows, the balletic fountain displays and the smell of sulphur from the half-hourly volcanic eruptions, she had the strong sense that if she were to reach out and try to grasp anything, it would dissolve under her touch. She realised then that this was a city of hyper-reality, of carbon-fibre monuments, plastic trees and contrived experiences. A copy of everywhere and yet nowhere all at once, the desperate striving for authenticity only serving to reveal its essential falsehood. A non place. She hoped they wouldn’t have to stay here long.

‘We’re here,’ Stokes called as the limo turned in under a monumental arch topped by two rearing lions.

Despite its name, the Amalfi seemed to have been inspired by Florentine rather than Neapolitan architecture, although rendered on such a scale as to make the Duomo look like a concession stand. It was the Palazzo Strozzi on steroids, a massive, fortress-like structure made from Indiana limestone and Ohio sandstone, the soaring arched windows covered with portcullis-like iron grilles that only added to its impregnable appearance.

Rather than pull round to the covered main entrance, their car headed to the left and then dipped into an underground car park.

‘The high-rollers’ entrance,’ Stokes explained. ‘Some of these guys don’t want to risk getting jumped between the car and hotel.’

Tom laughed.

‘They’re more likely to be robbed inside than out there.’

TEN

The Pantheon, Rome

18th March - 6.58 a.m.

Different day. Different place. And yet it seemed to Allegra that there was something strangely familiar about the way things were playing out - the unexpected, and unwelcome, phone call. The barked summons. The police barricades across the streets. The swelling crowd. The fevered wailing of the sirens. The helicopter wheeling overhead. The TV crews prowling like hyenas around a kill. Her being late.

Even so, there was a subtle difference from the previous evening’s events too. For if yesterday she had seen shock and curiosity on her way to the Area Sacra, today she had sensed outrage from the officers manning the barriers and mounting anger from the swelling crowd.

Returning her ID to her bag, she crossed the Piazza della Minerva and made her way on to the Piazza della Rotunda. Compared to the zoo she had just walked through, the square seemed eerily peaceful to her - the gentle chime of the fountain echoing off the massed walls, the hushed conversations of the officers and the muted fizz of their radios generating a faint hum that sounded like electricity on a power line on a wet day.

There was also a sense of dignified order here, perhaps even respect. For rather than being casually abandoned on the cobbles as appeared to have happened last night, the assembled police and other emergency service vehicles had been neatly parked next to each other along one side of the square.

As she walked it started to spit with rain, the sky huddling beneath a thick blanket of grey clouds, as if it didn’t want to be woken. The Pantheon loomed ahead of her, the classical elegance of the three rows of monolithic granite columns which supported its front portico compromised by the hulking, barrel-shaped building behind it. Squat and solid, it appeared to sit in a small crater of its own invention, the streets encircling it as if it had fallen, meteor-like, from the sky, and buried itself between the neighbouring buildings.

Allegra walked up to the portico, stooping under the police tape that had been strung between the columns, and made her way inside the rotunda, her shoes squeaking on the ancient marble. Almost immediately she paused, her eyes drawn to the pale beam formed by the searchlight of the helicopter hovering overhead as it was funnelled through the circular opening at the apex of the coffered dome. A slanting column of light had formed between the ceiling and the altar, sparks of rain fluttering around it like fireflies trapped in a glass jar. It was a beautiful and unexpected sight.

‘Are you coming in, or just going to stand there like a retard?’ Salvatore crossed through the beam of light, sounding even more put upon than he had yesterday.

‘“Hello” would be nice.’

‘You’re late.’

‘Believe me, it takes years of practice to be this unreliable.’

‘Gallo’s not happy.’

‘He doesn’t exactly strike me as the happy type.’

He eyed her unblinkingly, looking both appalled and yet also slightly envious of her brazen tone. He gave a resigned shrug.

‘Suit yourself.’

There were about fifteen, maybe even twenty people inside, some in uniform interrogating the security guards who’d been covering the night shift, others in hooded white evidence suits taking photographs or examining the floor around the altar, which itself was obscured by some makeshift screens. Gallo, in a suit this time, was waiting for her next to Raphael’s tomb, his hands folded behind his back like a teacher readying himself to hand out a punishment. As Salvatore had warned her, he was in a dark mood, and she found herself wondering if the angry atmosphere she’d noticed on the other side of the barricades was in some strange way linked to his own emotional barometer.

‘Nice of you to show up.’

‘Nice of you to ask me.’

Gallo paused, lips pursed, as if he couldn’t quite decide if he found her insolent or amusing.

‘Where did you say you were from?’ he asked, taking his glasses off and polishing them on his tie.

‘I didn’t. But it’s Naples,’ she stuttered, his question taking her by surprise.

‘An only child?’ It was a simple question, but she could tell from his tone that it was loaded with meaning - difficult, spoilt, selfish, stubborn. Pick your stereotype.

‘That’s none of your business.’

He paused again, then gave an apologetic nod.

‘You’re right. I’m sorry.’ Salvatore made a strangled noise next to her. She wondered if this was the first time he’d ever heard Gallo apologise.

‘You say what you think, don’t you?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘The difference between you and me is that you can get away with it because you’re a woman,’ Gallo sniffed. ‘When I do it, I get called a rude bastard.’

‘I wouldn’t say you were rude, sir.’ The words were out of her mouth before she even knew she was saying them.

His smile faded. Salvatore looked faint.

‘What can you tell me about this place?’ he snapped, motioning at her to follow him over to the altar.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The Pantheon. Is there anything I should know about it? Anything that might tie it to where we found Ricci’s body last night?’

She ran her hand through her hair, desperately trying to dredge up the highlights of some longforgotten lecture or text book.

‘It was built by Hadrian in about 125 AD, so there’s no obvious connection to Caesar, if that’s what you mean?’ she began with a shrug. ‘Then again, although it’s been a church since the seventh century, the Pantheon did used to be a pagan temple, just like the ones in the Area Sacra.’

‘Hardly conclusive,’ Gallo sniffed, patting his jacket down as if he was looking for cigarettes and eventually finding a packet of boiled sweets. ‘I’m trying to give up,’ he admitted as he popped one into his mouth. She noticed that he didn’t offer her one.

‘No,’ she agreed with a firm shake of her head.

‘Then what do you make of this?’

At a flick of his wrist, two forensic officers rolled away the screens. A body was lying on the altar, naked from the waist up. His bearded face was turned towards them, eyes gaping open with shock. Two gleaming white shop mannequins were standing at his head - one small and hunched, the other taller - staring down at the corpse with cold, vacant expressions. Both were unclothed, with moulded blank features and no hair, although the smooth hump of their breasts marked them out as female.

The taller mannequin had been carefully arranged so that her left hand was gripping the man’s hair and the right holding a short sword. The sword itself was embedded in a deep gash in the victim’s neck that had almost decapitated him. The blood had gushed from his wound, covering the altar and cascading to the floor where it had pooled and solidified into a brackish lake.

It was a carefully arranged, almost ritualistic scene. And one that, for a reason Allegra couldn’t quite put her finger on, seemed strangely familiar to her.

‘Who is it?’

‘Don’t you recognise him?’ Salvatore, looking surprised, had ventured forward to her side. ‘His brother’s always on TV. He looks just like him.’

‘Why, who’s his brother?’ she asked, wanting to look away and study the man’s tortured features at the same time.

‘Annibale Argento,’ Salvatore explained. ‘The Sicilian deputy. The stiff is his twin brother Gio, otherwise known as Giulio.’

‘Hannibal and Julius,’ Gallo nodded. ‘There’s your damn Caesar connection.’

‘What’s any of this got to do with me?’ she interrupted, wondering if she still had time to untangle herself from this mess before the media got wind of it.

‘We found this in his mouth -’

Gallo held up a clear plastic evidence bag. She knew, almost without looking, what it contained.

ELEVEN

Amalfi Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas

17th March - 11.02 p.m.

Kezman’s private elevator opened on to a tennis court-sized room, rainbows cloaking the lush tropical gardens that could be glimpsed through the open windows where the floodlights shimmered through a permanent cooling mist.

Glancing up, Tom could see that the soaring ceilings had been draped in what looked like black satin, three huge chandeliers flowering from within their luxuriant folds as if they were leaking glass. The only furniture, if you could call it that, was a 1926 Hispano-Suiza H6. Parked about twothirds of the way down, it was a mass of gleaming chrome and polished black metal, the wheel arches soaring up over the front wheels and then swooping gracefully down towards the running boards, two dinner plate-sized headlights perched at the end of a massive bonnet like dragon’s eyes.

‘You’re here. Good.’

A man had come in off the balcony, a radio in one hand, a mobile phone in the other. Short and wiry, his olive skin was pockmarked by acne scars, his black hair shaved almost to his skull. Rather than blink, he seemed to grimace every few seconds, his face scrunching into a pained squint as if he had something in his eye.

‘Tom, this is Special Agent Carlos Ortiz.’ They shook hands as she introduced them. ‘I’ve borrowed him from my other case for a few days to help out.’

‘Welcome.’

Ortiz’s expression was impenetrable, although Tom thought he glimpsed a tattoo just under his collar - the number fourteen in Roman numerals. Tom recognised it as a reference to the letter ‘N’, the fourteenth letter of the alphabet, and by repute to the Norteños, a coalition of Latino gangs from Northern California. Ortiz had clearly taken a difficult and rarely trodden path from the violent street corners of his youth to the FBI’s stiff-collared embrace.

‘I hope you’re half as good as she says you are,’ Ortiz sniffed. Tom glanced questioningly at Jennifer, who gave him an awkward shrug. ‘Did you get the envelope from the State Department?’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Let’s talk about that later. How long have we got?’

‘It’s set for midnight so…just under an hour,’ he replied, checking his watch - a fake Rolex Oyster, Tom noted, its second hand advancing with a tell-tale staccato twitch rather than sweeping smoothly around the dial as a real one would.

‘Everyone’s already in place,’ Stokes added. ‘I got six agents on the floor at the tables and playing the slots, and another four on the front and rear doors. Metro and SWAT are holding back two blocks south.’

‘What about the money?’ Tom asked.

‘In the vault in two suitcases,’ Stokes reassured him. ‘Unmarked, non-sequential notes, just like they asked. They’ll bring it out when we’re ready.’

‘Let’s get you mike’d up.’

Ortiz led Tom over to the car, which Tom suddenly realised had been turned into a desk, the seats ripped out and the roof and one side cut away and replaced with a black marble slab.

‘I guess rich people are always looking for new ways to spend their money, right?’ Ortiz winked.

‘Some just have more imagination than others,’ Tom agreed.

Ortiz removed a small transmitter unit from the briefcase and, as Jennifer turned away with a smile, helped Tom fix it to his inner thigh, hiding the microphone under his shirt.

‘If anyone finds that, they’re looking for a date not a wire,’ Ortiz joked once he was happy that it was secure and working. He checked his watch again. ‘Let’s go. Kezman asked to see you downstairs before we hit the floor.’

‘Any reason we didn’t just meet down there in the first place?’ Jennifer asked with a frown.

‘He thought you might like the view.’

They stepped back inside the elevator and again it headed down automatically, stopping at the mezzanine level, close to the entrance to the Amalfi’s private art gallery.

‘He suggested we wait for him inside,’ Ortiz said, nodding at the two security guards posted either side of the entrance as he walked past.

The gallery consisted of a series of interlinked rooms containing maybe twenty or so paintings, as well as a number of small abstract sculptures on glass plinths. It was an impressive and expensively assembled collection, bringing to mind the recent newspaper headlines when Kezman had broken his own auction record for the highest amount ever paid for a painting. Tom’s eyes sought out the Picasso he’d bought on that occasion in amongst the works by Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Manet and Matisse.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Jennifer said in a low voice, echoing his own thoughts. ‘Although, I don’t know, it feels a bit…’

‘Soulless?’ Tom suggested.

‘Yes.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Soulless. Perhaps that’s it.’

Tom’s sense was that Kezman had been less concerned with the paintings themselves than by who had painted them. To him these were trophies, specimens of famous names that he’d only bought so that he could tick them off his list, much as a big-game hunter might set out on safari intent on adding a zebra’s head to the mounted antelope horns and elephant tusks that already adorned his dining-room walls.

‘What do you know about him?’

‘He’s rich and he’s smart. In thirty years he’s gone from running a diner in Jersey to being the biggest player on the Strip.’

‘He buys a place that’s losing money, turns it around or knocks it down, and starts over,’ Stokes added, having been listening in. ‘As well as the Amalfi, he owns three other places in Vegas, two in Atlantic City and one in Macau.’

‘And he’s clean?’ Tom asked.

‘As anyone can be in this town,’ Stokes replied with a smile. ‘He mixes with a pretty colourful crowd, which always gets people talking, but so far he seems to check out.’

‘He used to collect cars, but art is his new passion now,’ Jennifer added. ‘He’s become a major donor to both the Met and the Getty.’

‘Which is your favourite?’

Kezman had breezed into the room wearing sunglasses, a gleaming white smile and a tuxedo. He was closely flanked by an unsmiling male assistant clutching a briefcase in one hand and two gold-plated mobile phones in the other. From the way his jacket was hanging off his thin frame, Tom guessed that he was armed.

Kezman was in his mid-fifties or thereabouts, and shorter than Tom had expected. Although he was still recognisably the same person, the photo on his jet had clearly been taken several years before, his brown hair now receding and greying at the temples, the firm lines of his once angular face now soft and surviving only in the sharp cliff of his chin. The energy in his voice and movements, however, was undimmed, his weight constantly shifting from foot to foot like a boxer, his head jerking erratically as he looked around the room, as if it pained him to focus on any one thing for longer than a few seconds. He answered his own question before anyone else had a chance to respond.

‘Mine’s the Picasso, and not just because I paid a hundred and thirty-nine million dollars for it. That man was a genius. A self-made man. A true visionary.’

Tom smiled, the machine-gun rattle of Kezman’s voice making it hard to know whether he was talking about himself or Picasso.

‘Mr Kezman, this is…’

‘Tom Kirk, I know.’ He grinned. ‘Luckily the FBI doesn’t have a monopoly on information. At least not yet. I like to know who’s on my plane.’

Tom stepped forward to shake his hand, but Kezman waved him back.

‘Stay where I can see you, goddammit,’ he barked.

Tom suddenly understood why Kezman was wearing sunglasses and moving his head so erratically - he was clearly blind, or very nearly so, his aide presumably there to help steer him in the right direction as he navigated through the hotel.

‘Retinitis pigmentosa,’ Kezman confirmed. ‘The closer I get to things, the less I can see. And one day even that…’

His voice tailed off and Tom couldn’t stop himself wondering if this explained Kezman’s insistence that they should go up to his private apartment first, before meeting him down here. It was almost as if he’d wanted to give them some small insight into his shrinking world. A world where there was little point in furnishing a room he could barely see, but where a view was still there to be enjoyed. At least for now.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. He didn’t know Kezman, but he meant it all the same.

‘Why? It’s not your fault,’ Kezman shrugged. ‘Besides, in a way, it’s a gift. After all, would I have started my collection if I hadn’t known I was going blind? Sometimes, it’s only when you are about to lose something that you really begin to understand what it’s worth.’

There was a long silence, which Ortiz eventually broke with a forced cough.

‘As I have discussed with your head of security, the plan is for Mr Kirk to take the money down on to the casino floor and wait there for them to make contact.’

‘It’s unlikely they’ll bring the painting with them,’ Jennifer added. ‘So we expect them to either provide us with a location, which we will then check out before handing over the money, or lead us to it so that we can make the exchange there.’

‘Either way, we’ll follow them to make sure we grab them, the painting and the money,’ Stokes said confidently.

‘Once again, Mr Kezman, the federal government is very grateful for your co-operation in this matter. We’ll do what we can to ensure that your staff and customers…’

‘Don’t mention it,’ Kezman waved Jennifer’s thanks away with a sweep of his hand. ‘You just make sure no one gets hurt.’

TWELVE

Amalfi Casino and Hotel Resort, Las Vegas

17th March - 11.22 p.m.

It was funny how people conditioned themselves to only ever see what they wanted to, Foster mused. Ask anyone who wears a watch with Roman numerals how the number four is written on it and they’ll say IV. All those years that they’ve been looking at it, checking the time, the numbers only a few inches from their stupid dumb-ass faces, and they’ve never actually noticed that it’s IIII. That it’s always IIII on a watch, because IV would be too easily confused with VI. That their brains have tricked them into seeing what they expect to, or rather not seeing what they should. It was pathetic really.

Like tonight. The security detail at the staff entrance had barely glanced at his badly fitting uniform and tampered badge before waving him through. He looked the part, so why see something that you’ve convinced yourself isn’t there? That’s why the beard had had to go in the end; that might have been the one thing that could have triggered a response.

He, on the other hand, had immediately picked out the FBI agents, uncomfortable in their civilian clothes as they loitered near the entrance, or perched unconvincingly in front of the slot machines. It was the half-hearted way they were feeding the money into the machine that was the killer tell - either you played the slots, or they played you.

He stopped next to an anonymous-looking red door. How many people had walked past it, he wondered, without ever asking themselves why, out of all the doors that lined this service corridor, this was the only one that warranted two locks. Without ever asking themselves what might possibly lie behind it that demanded the extra security. But then, that’s what he’d noticed in civilians: a lack of basic human curiosity, a slavish, unquestioning acceptance of a life dropped into their lap like a TV dinner.

Quickly picking the locks, he opened the door on to a dimly lit stairwell that he slipped into, wedging a fire extinguisher between the base of the door and the bottom step of the metal staircase to stop anyone coming in after him. The staircase led up several flights to the observation deck - a series of cramped, interconnecting gantries hidden in the ceiling void that stretched over the entire casino floor.

Although in theory these were to allow maintenance staff to invisibly service the casino’s complex lighting grid and vast network of A/C ducts, the careful positioning of two-way mirrors and air vents also allowed casino security to spy on people without being seen. Dealers watching the gamblers, boxmen watching the dealers, supervisors watching the boxmen, pit bosses watching the supervisors, shift managers watching the pit bosses…the entire set-up functioned on the assumption that everyone was on the make and on the take.

Not that the deck was used as often as it used to be - video cameras and advances in biometric technology that could flag-up suspicious changes in body heat and pupil dilation had seen to that. But Kezman was famously old-school and had insisted on having it there anyway, both as a low-tech back-up, and because he knew that sometimes you needed to get up there and sniff the floor to get a feeling for where the trouble was brewing.

As Foster had expected, the gantries were empty. He took up his position, removed the towel from his back-pack, and unrolled it. Piece by piece he began to reassemble his rifle, the parts sliding into place with a satisfying click echoed by the sound of the roulette ball skipping on the wheel below. With the infrared sight fitted he hesitated momentarily, toying with the suppressor before slipping it into his top pocket like a good cigar he was saving for the right moment.

No suppressor. Not tonight. He wanted everyone to hear the shot, to be paralysed by its angry roar, and then to run. To run screaming.

THIRTEEN

The Pantheon, Rome

18th March - 7.41 a.m.

Allegra was sheltering in the portico, grateful for the coffee Salvatore had conjured up for her and for the fresh air - there had been a strange, curdled atmosphere inside that she had been glad to escape.

The storm had now tethered itself directly overhead, rain lashing the square, lightning cleaving the stygian sky only for the clouds to crash thunderously back together. But it was the more powerful storm brewing on the other side of the barricades that worried her now. Rising out of the warm waters of political scandal and feeding on the lurid details of these murders, it would quickly spin out of control, blowing them violently towards the rocks until either the media lost interest or they had all been dashed into pieces, whichever came sooner. She wondered if Gallo’s men all knew this, and whether what she could sense inside, what she could almost taste, was their fearful anticipation of the hurricane that lay ahead.

‘So it’s the same coin?’ Gallo had materialised at her side, lighting a cigarette.

‘I thought you’d given up?’

‘So did I.’

She was reassured that she wasn’t the only one feeling the pressure.

‘It’s the same.’ She nodded, not bothering to repeat that it wasn’t a coin but a lead disc.

‘So it’s the same killer?’

‘Are you asking me or telling me?’

‘I’m asking.’ As earlier, the hint of a smile was playing around his lips, as if she somehow amused him.

‘There are some obvious similarities,’ she began hesitantly, surprised that Gallo even cared what she thought. ‘The lead discs. The proximity of the two murder scenes. The pagan temples. The connection to Caesar. But…’

‘But what?’

‘It’s…the way they were killed. I’m not a profiler, but there’s no consistency between the two murders. They look different. They feel different.’

‘I agree. Two murders. Two killers.’ Gallo held up photographs of the two crime scenes side by side as if to prove his point.

Allegra glanced at the photos and jumped. There was something in the crime scenes, something she’d not noticed before, but which, when framed within the photographs’ white borders, was now glaringly obvious.

‘Where’s your car?’

‘Over there -’ He pointed out a dark blue BMW.

‘Come on!’ She stepped out into the rain, then turned and motioned impatiently at him to follow when she realised he hadn’t moved.

‘Where to?’

‘The Palazzo Barberini,’ she called back, her hair darkening. ‘There’s something there you need to see.’

A few moments later, Gallo gunned out of the square down the Via del Seminario, the Carabinieri clearing a path for him through the crowd, Allegra shielding her face as the photographers and TV crews pressed their lenses up against their windows. As soon as they were clear, he accelerated through the Piazza San Ignacio and out on to the busy Via del Corso, his siren blazing as he carved his way through the rush-hour traffic. Reaching the Via del Tritone he turned right, racing down to where the palazzo loomed imposingly over the Piazza Barberini and then cutting up a side street to the main entrance at the top of the hill. The drive was chained off, although the museum was clearly open, those foreign tourists still able to swallow the euro’s inexorable climb over the past few months already filtering through the gates.

‘Damn these peasants,’ Gallo muttered, leaning on his horn, until a guard appeared and let them through.

They lurched forward, the gravel spitting out from under their tyres as they shot round to the far side of the fountain.

‘First floor,’ Allegra called as she jumped out and headed through the arched entrance, not pausing on this occasion to admire the monumental Bernini staircase that led up to the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica, the museum that now occupied this former papal residence.

‘Police,’ Gallo called, waving his badge at the astonished museum staff as they burst through the entrance and bypassed the queue waiting patiently at the ticket desk.

Allegra sprinted through first one room, then another, her eyes skipping over the paintings, not entirely sure where it was, but knowing it was here somewhere. Filippo Lippi, Piero de Cosimo…no, not here. Next room. Tintoretto, Bronzino…still nothing. Carry on through. Guercino …

‘There,’ she called triumphantly, pointing at the wall.

‘Ammàzza!’ Gallo swore, stepping past her for a closer look.

The large painting showed a bearded man being decapitated by a woman, a sword in her right hand, his hair firmly gripped in her left. He was naked, his face contorted into an inhuman scream, his body convulsed by pain, the blood spurting on to a white sheet. Next to the woman stood an old woman, her wrinkled face hungrily absorbing the man’s death, her hands gripping the hem of her mistress’s dress to keep it clear of the blood.

Gallo held the photograph of the Pantheon crime scene up next to it. There was no question it had been staged to mirror the painting’s composition.

‘It’s the same.’

‘Judith and Holofernes,’ Allegra said slowly. ‘It was only when I saw the photos that I made the connection.’

‘And Ricci?’

‘The Crucifixion of Saint Peter in the Cerasi Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo,’ she confirmed. ‘That’s what links your two murders, Colonel. The killers are re-enacting scenes from Caravaggio paintings.’

FOURTEEN

Amalfi Casino and Hotel Resort, Las Vegas

17th March - 11.56 p.m.

Tom had insisted on getting down on to the floor early, guessing that whoever had been sent to meet him would already be in position and that it would help if it looked as though he was keen to do the deal. More importantly, it gave them a chance to see the money, to see that this was for real. It was at Tom’s feet now - twenty million in cash, neatly packed into two aluminium suitcases.

Twenty million dollars.

There was a time, perhaps, when he might have considered…But those days were behind him now, although you wouldn’t have guessed it from the obvious reluctance with which Stokes had entrusted the cases to him, and his pointed reminder that they were electronically tagged. Then again, maybe Tom was nałve to have expected anything else. All Stokes had to go on was his file, and that told its own, damning story.

He looked around the blinking, cavernous floor to get his bearings, momentarily disoriented by the tumbrel-clatter of the roulette wheels, the dealers’ barked instructions and the machines’ remorseless chuckling. The place was packed. If Vegas was suffering from the economic slowdown that the press had been so gleefully reporting for the past few months, then it was hiding it well. Either that or it was still in denial.

He spotted Jennifer at the bar to his left, nursing a coke. Ortiz, meanwhile, was to his right, pretending to play video poker and losing badly. Stokes, he knew, was in the back with the casino’s head of security, watching the screens and coordinating the other agents who had been posted around him. In front of him was a roulette table, the animated abandon with which a noticeably younger crowd were merrily flinging chips on to the baize contrasting with the silent, mesmerised application of the older people on the slots.

On cue, a woman wearing an ‘I love Fort Lauderdale’ T-shirt waddled over to the machine next to him, the stool screeching under her weight. Resting a bucket full of quarters on her lap, she bowed her head briefly as if offering up a prayer, and then began to feed it with metronomic precision, the tips of her fingers stained black by the coins. A kaleidoscope of changing colours immediately skipped across her rapt face, her eyes gazing up at the spinning wheels with a mixture of hope and expectation.

Tom wondered if she knew that her faith was unlikely to be rewarded. In here, chance danced to the casino’s tune. The roulette tables that paid out thirty-five to one, when the odds of winning were one in thirty-seven. The deliberate location of the premium slots next to the main aisles and blackjack tables, to lure people in. The lack of clocks and the suppression of natural light, so that everyone lost track of time. The careful variation in ceiling heights, lighting levels and music zones to trigger different emotional responses. The strategic location of the bathrooms, to minimise time off the floor. The purposefully labyrinthine layout, so that the sightlines provided neither a glimpse of a possible way out, nor allowed a potentially overwhelming view of the entire space. In this broad church, you were damned from the moment you walked through the door.

There. A man with his back to him at the neighbouring blackjack table, his head snapping back a little too fast to suggest the glance he had just given him had been accidental. And again, only this time he didn’t break eye contact. He knew Tom had seen him. He was tipping the dealer, getting up. This was it.

‘Blackjack table,’ Tom muttered into his mike, hoping the others could hear him over the noise. ‘White hair, black…’ His voice tailed off as the man turned round and nodded.

Dressed in a black suit, he was about five feet ten with a curling mop of white hair and a farmer’s sun-blushed cheeks that echoed the red handkerchief peeking out of a trouser pocket. But it was the white band encircling his neck that had drawn Tom’s attention, its unexpected glare seeming to cast a bleaching wash over everything at the periphery of his vision.

‘He’s a priest,’ Tom breathed in disbelief, as much to himself as anyone.

The man advanced towards him, Tom reassured that as Jennifer had predicted to Kezman earlier, he wasn’t carrying anything that might have contained the painting. That would have marked him and whoever he was working for as amateurs, and amateurs were unpredictable and more easily spooked. Instead, slung over his left shoulder was a tired leather satchel.

They met in the middle of the main aisle. Saying nothing, the priest reached into his bag and handed Tom a series of photographs. They showed the Nativity, but in more detail this time, with closeups of the faces and hands, always the hardest things to paint. From what Tom could tell, the brushwork looked genuine, and although the canvas had been slightly damaged over the years, overall the condition was very good, the faint reflection of a camera flash in a couple of the photos suggesting that it was being kept behind glass.

There was no sign of a signature, but Tom took that as further proof of the painting’s probable authenticity. As far as he knew, Caravaggio had only ever signed one painting, The Beheading of the Baptist, where he had marked an M for Merisi, his family name, in the blood spilling from John the Baptist’s neck.

‘Is it close?’ Tom asked.

‘Close enough,’ the priest replied, Tom detecting an Italian accent.

‘I need to see it.’

‘Is that the money?’

‘Twenty million dollars,’ he confirmed, tapping the case nearest to him with his foot. ‘Unmarked, non-sequential bills, as requested.’

‘Bene, bene.’ The priest nodded. ‘Good.’ There was an anxious edge to the man’s voice that surprised Tom. For a pro he seemed a little tense, although twenty million was enough to make most people tighten up.

‘I need to see the painting first,’ Tom reminded him.

‘Of course,’ the priest said. ‘You have a car?’

‘The painting’s not here?’

‘It’s not far. Where’s your car?’

‘The money’s going nowhere until I see the painting,’ Tom warned him.

‘Don’t worry,’ the priest immediately reassured him. ‘We have a deal, see -’ He reached for Tom’s hand and shook it energetically. ‘You have the money, I have the painting, we have a deal, yes?’

‘We have a deal,’ Tom agreed.

‘You want this painting, yes?’

‘As much as you want the money,’ Tom answered with a puzzled smile. It was a strange question to ask. Why else would he be there? ‘My car’s in the garage.’

‘It has been a long time. You will be the first, the first in many years to see it.’ His eyes flicked over Tom’s shoulder as he spoke and then back again. ‘It is beautiful, still beautiful, despite everything it has been through.’

Tom felt his stomach tightening. Something wasn’t right. First a hint of nervousness. Now an abrupt shift from urgency to an almost languid calm as if…as if he was trying to waste time so that somewhere else …

A shot rang out, its whiplash crack cutting through the casino’s raucous din. Tom staggered back, the world suddenly slowing, as if someone was holding the movie projector to stop the reel from turning - the individual frames crawling across the screen; a roulette ball, frozen in midflight; the soundtrack stretched into a low, slurring moan as words folded into each other.

Then, almost immediately, everything sprang forward, only sharper, louder and faster than before, as if time was overcompensating as it tried to catch up with itself. The ball landed, the winner cheered. But their celebration was drowned out by a terrified scream, one voice triggering another and that one two more until, like a flock of migrating birds wheeling through a darkening sky, a sustained, shrieking lament filled the air.

Tom glanced instinctively to his left. Jennifer was lying on the floor. Her blouse was blotted poppy red.

FIFTEEN

Institute for Religious Works,

Via della Statzione Vaticana, Rome

18th March - 8.08 a.m.

As the six men opposite him bowed their heads, Antonio Santos picked up his spoon and studied the hallmarks. To the left he recognised the symbol of the Papal State, and next to it the initials NL - Lorenzini Nicola, an Italian silversmith active in the mid eighteenth century, if he wasn’t mistaken.

‘Nos miseri homines et egeni, pro cibis quos nobis ad corporis subsidium benigne es largitus, tibi Deus omnipotens, Pater cælestis, gratias reverenter agimus ...’ Archbishop Ancelotti intoned grace, his voice rising and falling as if he was reciting some mediaeval incantation. Turning the spoon over, Santos smiled at the way its polished surface distorted his reflection.

‘Simul obsecrantes, ut iis sobries, modeste, atque grate utamur. Per Iesum Christum Dominum nostrum. Amen.’

‘Amen,’ Santos agreed enthusiastically, carefully returning the spoon to its proper place before anyone had opened their eyes.

Ancelotti looked up and nodded at the two young priests standing near the door to serve breakfast. He was wearing a black simar with amaranth-red piping and buttons together with a purple fascia and zuchetto. A large gold pectoral cross dangled from his neck. The other five men sitting either side of him were similarly dressed, although, as cardinals, their buttons, sashes and skull-caps were scarlet.

‘Thank you for coming, Antonio,’ Ancelotti said, motioning with his finger to indicate that he wanted one, two, three spoonfuls of sugar. ‘I apologise for the short notice.’

‘Not at all, Your Grace,’ Santos said with a generous shrug, holding his hand over his coffee as one of the priests went to add cream. ‘I apologise for being late. The Carabinieri seem to have closed off half the city.’

‘Nothing too serious, I hope,’ Ancelotti enquired, brushing his hands together over his plate to dust some crumbs from his fingers.

‘My driver told me that they’ve found a body in the Pantheon,’ Cardinal Simoes volunteered, pushing his gold-rimmed glasses back up his nose.

‘Dear, dear,’ Ancelotti tutted, licking some jam from his thumb with a loud sucking noise. ‘We live in such wicked times. Jam?’

‘No, thank you.’ Santos gave a tight smile. ‘I don’t eat breakfast.’

‘You should, you should,’ Ancelotti admonished him. ‘Most important meal of the day. Now, does everyone have what they need?’

Seeing that they did, he waved at the two priests to retire to the outer room, then turned back to face Santos.

‘I believe you know everyone here?’

He nodded. Cardinals Villot, Neuman, Simoes, Pisani and Carter. The Oversight Commission of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione. The Vatican Bank.

‘Your eminences,’ he said, bowing his head. Their murmured greetings were muffled by fresh croissants.

‘Antonio, we asked you here today in our capacity as the largest shareholder in the Banco Rosalia,’ Ancelotti began, sipping his coffee.

‘Largest and most important shareholder,’ Santos added generously. ‘We are, after all, working to help finance God’s work.’

‘Ah yes, God’s work.’ Ancelotti clasped his hands together as if in prayer, pressing them against his lips. ‘Which is, as I’m sure you understand, why we need to be especially vigilant.’

‘I’m not sure I do understand, Your Grace,’ Santos said with a frown, placing his cup back down on the table. ‘Vigilant for what?’

‘For anything that could harm the reputation of the Catholic Church, of course.’

‘I hope you are not suggesting that -’

‘Of course not, Antonio, of course not,’ Ancelotti reassured him warmly, ‘But after what happened before…well, we have to go through the motions, be seen to be asking the right questions.’

He was referring, Santos knew, to the huge scandal that had engulfed the Vatican Bank in the 1980s, when it had been implicated in laundering billions of dollars of mafia drug money. It was partly in response to this that the Oversight Commission had been set up in the first place.

‘I fail to see how…’

‘Your year-end accounts are almost a month overdue,’ Cardinal Villot said in an accusing tone.

‘As I’ve already explained to Archbishop Ancelotti, there are a number of small, purely technical matters that the auditors have…’

‘We’ve also heard your liquidity position’s deteriorated,’ Cardinal Carter added, his voice equally sharp.

‘Not to mention the provisions on your real estate portfolio,’ Cardinal Neuman chimed.

Santos took a deep breath. So much for casting the money lenders out of the temple, he thought ruefully. Instead, armed with an MBA and a bible, the Oversight Commission seemed to be setting up shop right next to them.

‘A number of banks have withdrawn their funding lines, yes, but that’s to be expected with the squeeze that the whole market is feeling. We still have more than enough headroom, given our deposit and capital base. As for our real estate book, we’ve seen a slight uptick in bad debts like everyone else, but the provisions we took last year should be more than …’

‘I think what we’re suggesting is that a short, sharp financial review would help allay our concerns, in light of the extreme volatility of the markets and the rather bleak economic outlook,’ Ancelotti said in a gentle tone.

‘What sort of a financial review?’

‘We’d probably start with a quick canter through your latest management accounts, bank statements and ALCO reports,’ Ancelotti said breezily. ‘We have a small team of accountants we like to use for this sort of thing. They’ll be in and out in a few weeks. You won’t even notice they’re there.’

A pause. It wasn’t as if he had any choice.

‘When would you like them to start?’

‘Is the day after tomorrow too soon?’ Ancelotti asked with a casual shrug, although Santos noticed that the archbishop’s eyes were locked on to his, as if to gauge his reaction.

‘Of course not,’ Santos replied with a confident smile. ‘That gives me enough time to brief the team so that we can make sure that we have a room set aside and all the documentation prepared.’

‘Excellent, excellent.’ Ancelotti stood up to signal that the meeting was over and leant across the table to shake his hand. ‘I knew you’d understand. By the way, I’m hosting a Mozart recital in Santa Sabina next month. You should come.’

‘It would be my pleasure, Your Grace,’ Santos smiled. ‘Please forward on the details. Your Eminences…’

A few minutes later he was down on the street in the rain, angrily loosening his collar as he flicked a tin open and pushed one, then two pieces of liquorice into his mouth. Then he reached for his phone.

‘We’re fucked,’ he barked into it the moment it was answered. ‘Ancelotti and his performing monkeys want to audit the bank…I don’t know what they know, but they must know something, and even if they don’t, it won’t take more than a few days for them to figure everything out…I need to bail. How much would I have if I liquidated everything?…No, not the property. Just whatever I can get out in cash by the end of the week …Is that it?’ He swore angrily, earning himself a disapproving look from two nuns walking past. ‘That’s not enough,’ he continued in an angry whisper. ‘That’s not even halfway to being enough…Hold on, I’ve got another call.’ He switched lines, ‘Pronto?’

‘It’s done,’ a voice rasped.

‘Are you sure?’ Santos stepped out of the rain and sheltered inside a doorway.

‘It’s done,’ the voice repeated. The line went dead.

Smiling, Santos went to switch back to the first caller before pausing, a thought occurring to him. He helped himself to some more liquorice as the idea slowly took shape. It had only ever been part of the set-up, but why not? Why the hell not? The trick was getting to it, but if he could…the Serbians would take it off his hands. They were always in the market for that sort of thing.

‘Spare some change?’

A beggar wearing a filthy army surplus overcoat, his face masked by a spade-like beard studded with raindrops, was holding a creased McDonald’s cup up to him. Santos glanced up and down the street behind him. It was empty. With a flick of his wrist he knocked the cup into the air, the few, pathetic coins it contained scattering across the pavement. The beggar dropped moaning to his knees, his blackened fingernails scrabbling in the gutter.

‘Spare you some change?’ Santos spat. ‘I’m the one who needs a handout.’

SIXTEEN

Amalfi Casino and Hotel Resort

18th March - 12.08 a.m.

Kicking their stools out from under them, people began to run, half-drunk cocktails collapsing to the floor and neatly stacked piles of chips swooning on to the baize as gamblers clambered over each other like calves trying to escape a branding pen.

Tom fought his way across to Jennifer’s side, Ortiz only a few feet behind him. She was still alive, thank God, her eyes wide with shock, but still alive. He ripped her blouse open, saw the blood frothing from under her left breast.

‘It’s okay,’ Tom reassured her, leaning close so she could hear him. She nodded, lifted her head as if to speak, then fell back.

‘Where’s she hit?’ Ortiz fell on to his knees next to him as the fire alarm sounded.

‘Get an ambulance here,’ Tom shouted back over the noise, ripping his jacket off and folding it into a makeshift pillow. ‘Press down -’ He grabbed Ortiz’s hand and jammed it hard against the wound, then leant across and snatched his Beretta out from under his arm.

‘Where the hell are you going?’ Ortiz called after him.

‘To find the shooter.’

He leapt up on to the roulette table, knowing from the location of her wound and the direction she’d been facing that the gunman must have been positioned somewhere ahead of her. Scanning the floor, he suddenly noticed an unexpected shimmer of glass under the stampeding crowd’s feet. He glanced instinctively up at the ceiling and saw that a single mirrored panel was missing from its reflective surface, the empty black square as obvious as a decaying tooth in an otherwise perfect smile.

‘He’s in the ceiling void,’ Tom breathed.

He leapt down and grabbed a passing security guard who seemed more intent on saving himself than in stewarding anyone else to the exit.

‘The observation deck,’ Tom shouted. ‘How do I get up there?’

The guard paused, momentarily transfixed by the gun gripped in Tom’s left hand, then pointed unsteadily at a set of double doors on the other side of the floor.

‘Through there,’ he stuttered.

Snatching the guard’s security pass off his belt, Tom fought his way through to the doors he had indicated and swiped them open. He found himself in a long white service corridor lit by overhead strip lighting and lined on both sides by a series of identical red doors. Cowering under the fire alarm’s strident and persistent echo, a steady stream of people were half walking, half running towards him - casino staff ordered to evacuate the building, judging from their identical red Mao jackets and the confusion etched on to their faces.

Tom walked against the flow, scanning for a pair of shoes, or a uniform, or a face that didn’t quite fit. Ahead of him, about two thirds of the way down the corridor, a door opened and a man wearing a baseball cap stepped out. Tom noticed him immediately. It was his studied calmness that gave him away. His calmness and the detached, almost curious expression on his face, as if he was taking part in some bizarre sociological experiment that he couldn’t quite relate to.

He seemed to notice Tom at almost the same time because, grimacing, he turned and retreated back inside, locking the door behind him. Tom sprinted down the corridor after him, tried the handle and then stepped back and pumped four shots into the locks. With a firm kick, the door splintered open.

Carefully covering the angles above him, Tom made his way up the stairs into the shadows of the observation deck, his eyes adjusting to the darkness. He felt the shooter before he saw him, the metal walkways shuddering under his heavy step as he sprinted along the gantries away from him. Tom took aim and fired three times, then twice more, a couple of the bullets sparking brightly where they struck the steel supports. But the man barely broke his stride, turning sharply to his left and then to his right.

Tom set off after him, trying to guess where he’d turned, so that he wouldn’t end up stranded in a different section of the deck. Up ahead the gunman paused and then in an instant was over the side of the gantry and dangling down over the suspended ceiling below. Tom again took aim, and fired twice, this time catching him in his shoulder. With a pained yell he let go, crashing through the mirrored ceiling and vanishing from sight.

Tom sprinted across to the same point and then lowered himself down as far as he could before letting go and dropping through the hole on to a blackjack table scattered with chips and fresh blood.

‘Where did he go?’ Tom asked the dealer, who was staring up at him open-mouthed.

The man pointed dumbly towards the exit. Tom looked up and saw the gunman almost at the door, his jacket burst open at the shoulder where the bullet had passed through him. Tom again pulled the trigger, the bullet skimming the man’s head and shattering a slot machine deliberately positioned to tempt people into one final roll of the dice before heading outside. Next to it a bearded man in a ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ baseball cap carried on playing, gazing at the wheels as if he hated them.

Tom leapt down and followed the gunman outside, determined not to lose him. But rather than melt away into the panicked crowd that had swamped the forecourt, the man seemed to be waiting for him, backpack hitched over one arm. For an instant, no longer, they stood about twenty feet apart, their eyes locked, the swollen human flow parting around them like a river around two rocks. The gunman, clutching his shoulder, studied Tom with a detached curiosity; Tom, his gun raised, finger tested the trigger spring’s resistance. But before he could take the shot, a powerful hand gripped his arm and pulled him back.

‘Not here, for Chrissake,’ Stokes yelled. ‘Are you fucking crazy? You’ll hit someone.’

Tom angrily shook him off, took aim and fired. The gun clicked, empty. With a wink, the killer turned and dived into the frothing sea of people.

In an instant, he was gone.

SEVENTEEN

18th March - 12.23 a.m.

‘Where’s the backup? They need to set up a perimeter,’ Tom ordered angrily.

‘It’s a little late for that,’ Stokes shrugged helplessly at the untamed mob that had already spilled out on to the Strip, bringing the traffic to a standstill as they surged across the road, trying to get as far away from the Amalfi as they could.

Tom glared resentfully at the crowd, wanting Stokes to be wrong but knowing he wasn’t. What made it worse was that the gunman had played him. He’d seen Tom was carrying a Beretta, counted the shots until he’d known it was empty, then waited for him. Taunted him.

With a violent jolt, Tom’s thoughts snapped back to Jennifer.

‘How is she?’

‘The paramedics are with her now,’ Stokes reassured him, before lowering his gaze. ‘She’s lost a lot of blood.’

‘Where is she?’

‘They’re taking her up on to the roof for a medevac to UMC.’

‘Get me up there,’ Tom barked.

They ran back into the casino and, using the card Tom had taken from the security guard, rode up to the top floor.

‘What happened to the priest?’ Tom asked as the levels pinged past.

‘We lost him too,’ Stokes admitted. ‘Soon as everyone started running, he vanished. The money’s safe, though.’

‘You think I give a shit about the money?’ Tom hissed.

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