Marked Masters (20 page)

I extracted the
always to remain secret
from Jack
phone from my bag and dialed. I may not have been
able to see her as we spoke, but safe audio was always better than
risky video.

"It's about time you called," she huffed in
greeting.

"Hello to you too. Or, I guess I should say
buon giorno.
"

"Yeah, yeah. Quit being clever. I'm mad at
you."

Eek! Not what every boss dreams of
hearing.
"I'm sorry, Cassie, but truly, this has been my first
real chance to talk to you. Clive wouldn't let me have a phone on
the plane, and I threw away the burner phone at the airport to keep
Jack from tracking me, and—"

"I know. I know. Stop. It's okay," Cassie
said. "But I have some news, and I've been dying to tell you. But
you wouldn't call. Are you in a private place?"

I walked over and closed the drapes at the
balcony door, suddenly paranoid. "Yes, super secret. Tell me what
you have."

"Well…" And Cassie launched into a lot of
technical jargon about how she finally found a way into some of the
corrupted areas of the flash drive I'd discovered last month in one
of Simon's hidey-holes. She'd been mining the portions she could
open, matching up stolen works of art against sheets from Interpol
and the FBI. Not all of the art on the drive were missing, so we
had been operating under the assumption that whatever was still
where it belonged was on a potential hit list for theft by Simon
or, through his connection, by Moran. The inaccessible sectors
worried us for obvious reasons. We couldn't try to put out alerts
on things we knew nothing about. But now Cassie had news.

"I got the one sector open, and I'm going to
fine-tune my technique to see if I can get more sectors accessible
by the end of the day. However, here is the clincher." Cassie went
silent then, and I was nearly biting my nails in anticipation. When
she didn't speak right away, I thought I'd lost the connection.

"Hello, Cassie, hello."

"I'm here."

"Why did you stop talking?"

"I paused for dramatic effect."

I sighed. I couldn't help it. I'd had very
little sleep in the past seventy-two hours, had to listen patiently
to an overly enthused rock star art fanatic, and a moment before
had pissed off a man whom I needed to work with—though we did
always seem to get the job done better if there was friction
between us. Maybe that was why I called him before Cassie, so I
could put him off and wind him up in the process. Suddenly, I
realized she was talking, and I hadn't been listening.

"Cassie, wait. I have jet lag on steroids.
Humor me, please, and tell me what you just said
after
pausing for dramatic effect."

She laughed then, and I knew I was forgiven
for spacing out. "I'm sorry. I know you must be totally wiped out.
Do you have a nice place to stay?"

"Yes, a room in a private home. My taxi
driver was very accommodating. I'll text you the address."

"No worries. I can get it from this
call."

It seemed like everyone knew where I was
except me. But I tuned back in when she started talking art
again.

"It was the snuffbox that really brought it
all together. Nico sent it to the office by courier and added a
note to check out the mark on the bottom. He thought it was a
forger in Florence and wanted you to have the information as soon
as possible."

"Okay, let me find a pen and pad—"

"No, I'll e-mail you." I heard her clicking
keys and knew when I replaced my battery I would have e-mail pings
on my regular cell. I was wishing I'd asked the landlady for some
water. I hadn't realized how thirsty I was until I started
talking.

"Are you listening, Laurel?" And I realized
I wasn't—listening, that is.

"No, Cassie, I'm sorry. I zoned out again
when I heard you doing the e-mail thing. But I'm back now. I
promise."

"You need to find an espresso."

"What I need is some caffeine rocket fuel.
Let me walk around while we talk. Maybe that will help. Okay,
go."

"Well, the mark is one used by the
particular forger Nico knew about, but more importantly, the
forger's mark is forged."

"What?"

"Right. The forger's mark on the snuffbox is
almost the same as the Florentine forger, but two things give its
provenance some major problems. One is there's an extra curlicue on
the lower end of the mark. One never made before by this
forger."

"But he could have just gotten
careless—"

"I thought of that, but nope.
I called Nico." Cassie giggled.
"I
would say I'd awakened him, but I don't think he was sleeping, if
you know what I mean. He apparently was 'entertaining' the rock
group's publicist. To thank her for helping you."

Was the man a machine, for heaven's sake? I
couldn't even think about sex at the moment. If my body went
horizontal, I would be comatose. Maybe that was it. They did it
standing up.

"Laurel! Earth to Laurel."

Damn! Did it again
. "Sorry. What did
Nico say?"

"He gave me some names and numbers, and I
made a few calls. Turns out, several more forgeries with this same
kind of new mark have been appearing on the scene lately, from
small items like the snuffbox to paintings and sculptures. Each one
a better copy than this particular forger had been known for
throughout his career."

"So, he's been getting better?"

"No, he's been getting dead."

I must have heard her wrong. "Come again,
Cass?"

"He died. Almost a year ago. Under most
mysterious circumstances, I might add. And less than a month later
the first of the forgeries with this new mark appeared at
Sotheby's. In all, Nico's contacts told me about almost a dozen
pieces that have now been discovered, and with the quality of the
work, the fear is there are many more out there that people are
taking as the real thing."

"And…the new forger…is taking the
signature…of the dead forger?"

"Or using the dead forger to keep people
from realizing someone new is in the game."

Yes, my brain felt fried and fuzzy, but this
was strangely starting to make sense. "As long as people recognized
the older forger's mark, any items discovered as fake would be
attributed to a dead man, and the new forger could continue working
merrily along. Is that the idea?"

"What I figure, anyway."

"But, Cass, if he's as good as everyone
says, and as good as the snuffbox implies, why didn't he forge the
forger's mark truer. Why the extra curlicue?"

"Ego?"

"Yeah, I could see that."

"Have you seen Jack yet?"

I looked at my watch. I had just over a half
hour, and it would take me almost that long to cross the Arno River
and make it to the Piazza del Duomo. Unless I hurried. No, he might
see me, and him thinking I was hurrying to meet his mandate would
never do. A stroll was positively a necessity.

Plus, it was much easier to watch for people
following me if I wasn't running headlong into crowds of tourists.
And there would definitely be tourists.

"Okay, Cassie, this is good information.
Send anything you want Jack and me to see on my foundation e-mail
address. Send anything for my eyes only to my personal addy. I'll
share this forger info with Jack and see what he's come up with in
the meantime."

My own final word reminded me. I had more
for her to do in the interim.

"Speaking of which, while Jack and I are
starting things going here, I need you to do a little judicious
charming of the Max Monster." I filled her in about the Tony B
problem and gave her carte blanche to spin the story so Max
understood his mistake without completely revealing Tony B's
larceny. I knew I might need to tell Max everything later, and if I
did, I would have Jack and Nico beside me to back up the story. But
in the meantime, I needed Cassie to stress to our boss that my
current location needed to always stay confidential until this
entire operation ended. Too many twists continued forming in our
plotline, and I didn't need old loose lips creating any new
traps.

"Also, remind him Nico saved him airfare to
get me to Italy. That alone should send the man over the moon with
happiness and get him to agree to most everything you ask."

"Will do. What should I tell him if he wants
to talk to you?"

I thought over my current fiscal state and
how Max ordered all of my monetary requests must go through my
personal assistant, even though I was supposedly the new head of
the London office. A glance at the mirror over the bureau revealed
my face wearing its most evil smile as my blue eyes glowed. "Tell
Mr. Max we'll use the same go-between procedure he authorized for
my budgetary needs. If he needs to speak to me, he has to ask you
to initiate the request."

"Feeling a little vindictive, Laurel?"

"Feeling a lot vindictive, Cassie. Talk to
you soon. I'm behind schedule to face a volcano."

As fast as I walked—okay, as quickly as I
strolled—Jack still beat me to the east doors of the Baptistery. I
figured he'd been waiting there the whole time.

The Gates of Paradise
are the famous
fifteenth-century doors of the octagonal Baptistery of Saint John,
crafted in bronze by Lorenzo Ghiberti over a fifty-year time span.
Of course, the doors on display are copies, but the original
masterpieces—believed by art historians, my humble self included,
as heralding the beginning of the Renaissance due to their
masterful work of perspective—those magnificent doors are now
behind protective walls in the cathedral museum adjacent to the
Baptistery. But no matter. One look at the copies was enough to
take a person inside the vision as the images leapt out in a manner
defining Renaissance art. This was the beginning use of the
three-dimensional perspective, and Ghiberti's
Gates of
Paradise
gave the art world its new sense of depth.

At twenty-one when he began the commission,
Ghiberti learned as he worked, producing tiles projecting a
vanishing point where the lines in each image converged. Creative
points in the designs were shortened because Ghiberti realized that
doing so extenuated the depth of the scene and defined a distinct
foreground, middle, and background. The best part? Anyone viewing
the doors became part of the scene.

Copies or original, the way the images leapt
out not only offered significance to art history, but I'd always
found studying them to be an amazing way to spend an afternoon.
Despite the other tourists jostling for their chance to see.

Equally breathtaking, but for other reasons,
was the thunderous look Jack shot my way when I caught his
attention. My gaze made a quick sweep of the perimeter in case I
needed an escape plan. Though the calendar showed it was past the
height of the summer tourist season, the crowds were still thick
enough in the Piazza del Duomo. I could get away from him if I
really wanted to. From the furrowing of his brows, I assumed he
came to the same conclusion. Though his actual greeting surprised
me.

"You have no idea how worried I was."

I couldn't win, whatever way I answered. A
glib quip would sound crass, and a simple thank you would come
across as stupid or sarcastic. So I smiled and patted his arm, and
it surprisingly seemed to work. He slipped my hand into the crook
of his elbow, and we headed for the Giotto Bell Tower. Without
another word of lecture, I might add.

"I know what you're doing," I said as we
neared the spot to trade our euros for gaining entrance to the
two-hundred-and-seventy-seven-foot bell tower.

"You do, do you?" Jack dropped my hand and
pulled out his wallet.

"You don't want to be overheard when you
read me the riot act and then try to find out how much I know that
you don't."

He cocked an eyebrow at me, then he put a
hand at the small of my back, and we walked to the entrance. "Or
I'm going to throw you over the side once we get up there because
I'm tired of you giving me a heart attack nearly every day."

I laughed. "I still have a portable chute in
my purse. I may break a leg, but I wouldn't die."

"One more thing I have to thank Nico for
doing."

The bell tower, like the dome staircase by
the way, can feel a little claustrophobic, especially if there's a
pack of people climbing along at the same time. For that reason, I
was happy to see the closest tourists gamely attempting the trek
were quite a distance above us. I shifted the Fendi on my shoulder
and grabbed the handrail to start the circular journey skyward. "I
take it Nico provided our reasoning for the split flights, and you
disapproved."

"Hard to disapprove of a plan when one isn't
given the option."

I straightened a bit taller. "Max told me
Cassie is my keeper now. I never received the memo I report to you
as well."

He took hold of my arm and pulled me around.
Though he was a step down, we were eye to eye. "This isn't about
you spending too much money, Laurel. That's between you and Max.
This is about watching each other's backs. We need to back each
other at all times, and I can't back you up if I don't know where
you are or how you're going to get there until you've already
disappeared."

"In that case, where did you go yesterday
morning after you left the yacht?"

"What?"

Oh, good. He saw the trap he waltzed himself
into. "You know, Jack, back in Miami? Before you met me outside
Tina's condo building. The errand you had to leave for so early,
despite the fact you said we needed to talk?"

A French couple entered the tower below us,
laughing and chattering as they mounted the staircase. I pivoted
and resumed our trek. But I did say over my shoulder, "I do
appreciate your choosing the bell tower instead of the dome. The
double dome always feels a bit close to me, and this route saved us
about fifty steps."