Counterfeit Conspiracies (27 page)

There was something. I really didn't know what, and I truly hoped I was wrong, but something told me Simon left this under Jane's dead body for more than to simply make a statement. Yet, we knew Moran was a master at attaining fakes to swap for the real thing. These last two reservations alone were the true reason I kept my expectations low until the final analysis was completed.

The authentication expert burned the midnight oil, usually with Max at his heels, trying to conclusively say whether the sword was true or not. Even her majesty sent a representative to shadow the pair, but this didn't surprise me if I believed Jack's story about how he got involved. The expert didn't say as much, from the outset I think he had the same misgivings I experienced. It had all the pieces that should have made authentication a no-brainer, but something kept everyone from sharing high-fives.

So, it wasn't earth-shattering to me when, before the week was out, the verdict came back as "excellent fake, but counterfeit."

 No matter, I had my own crosses to bear as I mopped up the mess Simon and Moran had left. A cleaning crew had already been in to gut the office, of course, as well as a crime scene crew to document fingerprints and DNA evidence. However, there were literal and figurative ends hanging everywhere. I should have been too busy to think, except nagging thoughts kept pressing in my mind. Each answer initiated new questions. And each question led to more thinking.

Interpol flagged Simon's passport right away, and his picture was circulated for everyone's facial recognition software, but no sign of him yet hit the radar. They kept us posted, since he was as much a risk to the foundation as he was the world. When it was learned Simon and I had spent months in a more personal relationship, a dapper inspector leading the search paid me regular visits until he finally realized, as I'd sadly concluded, I truly didn't know Simon at all. I was probably a suspect for a time but was never really treated as one. The inspector left his card and asked me to call him any time, that no memory or idea was too insignificant. I promised and put the card in my Prada. It's still there, I suppose.

Max was ready to spit nails at the results of the sword's authenticity—or, rather, lack thereof. He believed Simon took the real icon on the helicopter in the large duffle. If such was the case, he truly was using the one under the late Jane Leland's dead body to have a last macabre joke on me. Max was never the optimist unless it meant a coup for him, but he couldn't let loose of the idea of Arthur's sword, so continued believing it was out there somewhere with Simon. He could be right. Or, like the black mansion, the entire escapade likely was constructed as a joke, with Moran the chief architect behind what shaped up as a perpetual hoax in the art world.

Disappointment reigned, and after a week in that kind of atmosphere the time came when I realized I needed to get away for a moment, to reconnect with the world I bought into a decade ago. I chose art history as a major for one reason—I loved art. I didn't pick the discipline because I wanted a job in my grandfather's business; that was just luck. No, I wanted to make some kind of difference in making sure art stayed available and true for the masses.

It was a gray day for a gray mood, and I headed for the National Gallery. I surfaced from the underground, and offered a nod to the monument of Lord Nelson and the stone lions, picking up speed as I hit the middle of Trafalgar Square. Despite the chill in the air, tourists and pigeons were out in force, and I pulled my new trench coat tighter around my body as I wove through the masses. It was probably a football field away. But that was American talk. I needed to start thinking meters instead of yards. I was in charge of the London office, and I had to start thinking Brit.

I passed through the National Gallery's revolving door and crossed the marble floor, moving automatically toward room twenty-nine, the area holding the Peter Paul Rubens collection. I stood before Rubens's first rendering of
The Judgment of Paris,
still in awe, no matter how many times I viewed the glorious work.

Painted long before the artist had become a world diplomat and established his studio of artists, the work was acquired by the gallery in the mid-1960s. I liked this version for the fact I truly felt Rubens did all the work himself. In later years, the artist too often took more of an overseer position in the works that bore his name. The result wasn't a fake or counterfeit; Rubens always played some role in the final creation. Still, I felt there was something a little off about saying later paintings were "a Rubens," which was why most collections instead noted "from the studio of Rubens."

Coming this day to view his work was not to debate the issue but to revel in the truth he painted on the canvas. I stared at the scene, our hero Paris with the golden apple prize, judging Venus the most beautiful woman there, with Juno and Minerva suddenly also-rans. I felt Juno's palpable anger. I wanted to be the nymph who reclined there on the ground, watching the proceedings and absorbing the moment.

"Does the picture give you a sense of satisfaction? Or rile your feminist tendencies?"

He hadn't really left my thoughts since we parted in France, and now here he was, mysteriously popping up beside me. Again. Looking as good as ever in jeans, a wool jacket and an open-necked blue shirt that lit up his eyes.

"Hello, Jack. No one has wanted to tell me anything about the clean up in Le Puy. And everyone changed the subject when I brought up your name."

"I like to keep a low profile." He smiled, and I couldn't keep from smiling back.

"Who told you I was here? Or are you tracking me with CCTV again?" I moved over to the second version of
The Judgment of Paris
, the one Rubens finished three decades or so after the first, a work where the mentees in his studio likely played a role in the creation. Jack kept pace with me, stopping to look once or twice across the room at other Rubens paintings.

"No, nothing high tech," he finally said. "I heard you'd been installed in the London office. I stopped in to see you, and your cohort from the V and A was there and pointed me in this direction. Promotion for you, I hope?"

I shrugged. I was still trying to decide exactly what anything meant at this point. Betrayed by Simon. Hoodwinked again by Moran. And now responsible for a physical office, instead of skipping blithely from one art recovery to the next. I felt like a bird with clipped wings, though Max did promise me all of Europe as my gilded cage.

"Cassie and I have had long talks about it. She'd been disappointed about her tenure at the Victoria and Albert Museum ending with no permanent hire, and I had an opening to fill since Martha chose to retire and live with her ailing sister. So Cassie came to work for me. Being able stay here and work for the Beacham Foundation helped assuage her disappointment, and I need someone I can truly trust."

"She seemed happy. Seemed to be reconstructing the office wainscoting."

I rolled my eyes. "I'm never going to break her from being a restorer. I told her I didn't even like wainscoting, and she still persists in trying to put Humpty Dumpty back together."

Jack laughed, and steered me toward the one empty bench. "Would it be so bad to let her put as much as she can back the way it was?"

"Nothing can go back the way it was, Jack. You know that."

"Ah . . . " He took my hand in both of his. "So what are you fighting? The ghost of Simon, or the specter of four walls keeping you trapped every day?"

I looked down at his hands, so warm, so comforting. His being there then wasn't an accident, I was sure of that, but I didn't know what it meant either. "They promised I could just base in London. Leave the day-to-day to Cassie and shoot off with the next assignment. I can live with those terms, even if I will miss the jaunts to Mexico, South America, and Asia."

"So, you'll be primarily Europe?"

"Yes, there's always been enough here and on the Continent to keep one person busy full-time, hence the London location."

"I've heard of worse posts to be left in."

Jack could always make me laugh. "I do sound pretty spoiled, don't I? It's just change. But not enough change to feel like I've had closure from the last case. As mad as I am at Simon, he was right. We humans do appreciate our closure."

He sighed and slipped an arm around me, making it look to all the world like we were enjoying a midday assignation. In reality, the sweet nothings he whispered in my ear were probably state secrets.

"I presume your office grapevine has already informed you Simon is still loose."

I nodded.

"A bomb squad swept the Moran mansion, and the place is still sealed as a crime scene and will likely stay that way. The estate is under constant surveillance in case he returns. And  because the villagers know they had a monster in their midst, they're ready to storm the castle if he shows his face again."

"He should be hung just for creating that monstrosity to art. But why wasn't he there the night of the party?"

Jack stood and pulled me to my feet, then steered me to Rubens's rich vision of
Samson and Delilah
. "Moran sent a representative to act as host for the evening."

I felt the frown in my forehead. "What are you trying to tell me, Jack?"

"His young grandson." Jack avoided looking at me, staring instead at the fallen Samson. "A young man with long hair and an easy smile. Someone who likes to dance with beautiful blondes."

My mouth dropped open. "Rollie! Rollie is Moran's grandson?"

"And the heir apparent."

For a second I couldn't breathe. I thought about Rollie and my conversations before and during the bus ride. His talk about disappointing his grandfather for not yet taking over the business. "No, not Rollie."

Jack nodded.

This put a whole new slant on my ability to be conned and be confident. All the talk about his grandfather being an architect and having a manufacturing facility. Sure, the architect of the greatest art thefts in our century and the perpetrator of manufactured counterfeits and fakes. How could I be in charge of the London office if I couldn't even see when I was being played on the way to a renaissance festival? Worse, how long had he followed me to be sure he was where he needed to be when I arrived? He said he bought his ticket weeks before. Had he done so in preparation, or . . . I thought back to the old man who chased off the motorcyclist. The one who gave me directions which ultimately led to the bus ride. Suddenly, the name of the architectural firm that designed the house hit my memory. PA Designs. Philippe Aubertine, my ass! The sudden revelation made me dizzy.

"You need to tell Interpol I can give them an updated description on Moran, and an alias he employs when in France."

He cocked his head and stared hard at my face. "You got that close to him?"

"I was in the same car, and I had no idea."

"When you got shot—"

"He picked me up after running off the shooter. A shooter on a motorcycle with a full helmet. I think it was the Amazon."

Suddenly, I was caught up in an embrace so tight I could barely breathe. I think I cried a little, glad I could hide my tears in one of Jack's shoulders. When he spoke again, his voice was thick.

"She hasn't cropped up anywhere, but Interpol dusted Simon's—I mean, your office, before the clean-up and have a pretty good idea which fingerprints are hers."

I pulled back to see his face. "Is she in the system?"

"Her prints are, but we've had no person to attribute them to until now. We think the Amazon is muscle for hire."

"Moran's."

Jack frowned. "I don't think so. There's another player out there. Someone or some new group causing ripples in the power structure. Currently, it's nothing but chatter. If you're right that the old man was Moran, and if it was the Amazon on the cycle, it could mean she recognized him and that's why she ran."

I thought about all the bogus text messages, especially the one that led me away from my meeting in Italy. "Could the Amazon be the one who killed the Greek and the Welshman?"

We pulled out of the embrace, and he shook his head. "They caught a guy who's taking credit for the Greek."

"You don't think he did it?"

Jack shrugged. "Again, hired muscle, and he won't tell who hired him, but admits it wasn't Moran."

"But the Greek was killed around the same time I was following the bogus text message," I said. "Does that mean we can assume he works for this new underground group?"

"That's what I told my boss. I like your thinking." He smiled, and I felt a little warm.

"And the Welshman?" We walked toward the exit.

"He made it, believe it or not. Then disappeared from the hospital before he could be questioned, despite a guard posted at his door." Jack slipped a hand down to the small of my back. It felt comfortable there.

I remembered the lights and sirens when the ambulance raced away from the docks with the Welshman inside. They only did that when the patient was still alive. I'd noticed at the time, but the evidence didn't register. I wondered whether he was a good guy or bad. I also wondered whether Simon was responsible for his disappearance.

"Which means we all continue looking over our shoulders?" I asked. "See if we get lucky?"

He shook his head and grinned. "I don't know that you should keep counting on luck. You have some good self-defense moves, but they're almost as rusty as your French. I think you need some private lessons before anything else happens."

"I'm heading for America tomorrow," I said, shaking my head. "A quick trip, I hope, but I can't take you up on the offer of lessons. I'm booked on a morning flight to Orlando to follow a lead we received on one of Simon's safe deposit boxes and bank accounts. I have to follow up on this, no matter how sketchy the possibility."

Jack stopped just short of the door, and pulled a phone from his pocket. "I had to get a new mobile. Don't know what happened to the last one, but I'm finding I like this little jewel." He swiped the screen a couple of times, and held it up to show me a flight number and seat assignment. "For instance, I get unbelievable clarity when I need to store e-ticket information."