MOONLIGHT ON DIAMONDS (2 page)

Rudy reached across
three people and shook John’s hand. “Congratulations, man, you hooked it up!
One year sober!”

***

A light rain
sprinkled onto Sixth Avenue as John turned the corner and began to navigate his
way through the street vendors selling fake Gucci sunglasses and fluorescent
plastic necklaces. He passed NYU students chatting on their cell phones,
homeboys hanging out on the corner with their boomboxes, and Wall Street types
flooding out of the subway station bound for cozy West Village brownstones. The
streetlamps reflected off the wet pavement and the sky was a moody gray as
evening fell over Manhattan.

Some instinct made
John look up as he passed the crowded newsstand with its glossy fashion
magazines and trashy porno rags, which were placed front and center for any
five-year-old to see. It wasn’t the pair of fake double D hooters that caught
his eye but the headline of the
New York
Post
which stopped him in his tracks:

GHOST STRIKES AGAIN!

INTERNATIONAL JEWEL THIEF STEALS PUCK DIAMOND AT ACADEMY
AWARDS!

John felt his heart
skip a beat. “Oh shit.”

****

Marguerite Gateaux
had a perfect view of the Eiffel Tower from the windows of her seventh
arrondissement apartment as it shimmered with lights before vanishing into
midnight darkness for the rest of the evening. Now only the warm glow of
myrrh-scented candles illuminated the tanned skin and strong limbs of her
lover, René. She caressed his dark head absently as she might that of her
little King Charles spaniel, Voltaire, and relaxed in the semidarkness. Sighing
contentedly, she stretched a pair of long dancer’s legs on the divan where she
and René had just made love. Thoughtfully, she pulled a tangle of dark red hair
back revealing a wide sensual face that was not quite beautiful, but arresting
in the raw sensuality of her knowing smile and laughing feline-green eyes. The
radio, which had been throbbing with the slow erotic strain of French trip hop,
switched over to a news program, almost destroying the romantic atmosphere of
her tastefully appointed apartment.

Marguerite sipped
from a half-empty glass of Chateau Petrus as René yawned and moved his head
higher up from her bare belly to nuzzle against her breast and lay there like a
sleepy child. The newscaster droned on until he came to a bit of information
that made Marguerite perk up.

“The famous Puck
Diamond, belonging to movie star Katherine Park, was stolen in a dramatic scene
at this year’s Academy Awards Ceremony in Hollywood, California. While there
are no leads yet, Los Angeles police suspect the infamous ‘Ghost’ who once
plagued many of Europe’s great cities with a rash of thefts throughout the late
1980s and 90s.”

Mon Dieu, the Ghost?

She quickly clicked
the stereo remote and the soothing strains of baroque chamber music floated
through the apartment.

So they thought the
Ghost was on the loose, eh? That was certainly fascinating news, even if it was
impossible. The Ghost couldn’t have struck last night; Marguerite knew why,
though apparently the American police hadn’t figured it out. She looked down at
René to see if he’d picked up the story, but he seemed so entranced with the
soft curve of her breast that he hadn’t heard a word.

Marguerite smiled.
While she had not yet become
a woman of a
certain age
, she had lived enough to know that she adored younger men.
Younger men didn’t try to run the show, and if there was one thing Marguerite
knew how to do, it was put on a show. As the star of the Ballet de l’Aire
,
the French acrobatic group that had
taken the world by storm, she knew how to create quite a spectacle. She’d also
managed to make a splash in her other profession—cat burglar.

It was in
Marguerite’s nature to exceed expectations, and she loved rehearsing for each
new act, pushing herself to greater and greater feats of courage and agility.
She could master a triple back-flip on the trapeze or fly unnoticed past the
police helicopter’s searchlight with a bundle of sizzling white-hot stones
clutched in her hands and the wind whipping through her flaming hair. She loved
the costumes too, brightly colored, eye-catching ones for the big top and a
Parisian femme’s favorite of basic black for those late night prowls and yowls.

Her upcoming
performance at the Diamond Ball, which was to be held in Washington DC’s
Smithsonian Museum, would be the triumph of both her careers. Of course, she
hadn’t counted on having to deal with the Ghost publicity and all the extra
security that came along with it, but she’d manage to accomplish her mission to
steal the museum’s most valuable treasure just the same.

Marguerite almost
purred in satisfaction as she pictured the Hope Diamond wrapped around
Voltaire’s collar as she paraded her pet through the Luxembourg Gardens on his
daily walk. No one would ever guess they were watching the most famous gem in
history prancing by on four little legs. How she would laugh!

She’d have to plan
very carefully, she mused as she let her fingers play through Rene’s short but
surprisingly soft hair, especially if people believed the Ghost had risen from
the dead. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about Dornal Zagen, the ruthless
Austrian jewel thief whom she had clashed with on more than one high-pitched
rooftop. She still recalled with a shudder the look in his frosty gray eyes as
he’d placed the revolver against her temple in the moonlit dressing room of the
Comtesse De Vigne and slipped the majestic diamond-and-sapphire necklace from
Marguerite’s black-gloved hand. She was well aware only his fear of the
commotion a gunshot would raise in the well-staffed chateau had kept him from
pulling the trigger before he slipped through the air-conditioning vent and she
sprang empty-handed out of the third-story window. It had been bad luck running
into him like that. Thank God the Americans had had the good sense to lock up
the cold-blooded bastard. Hopefully he’d stay behind bars, and out of her
luxurious hair, for the next thirty years.

Of course, there
would still be the authorities to contend with. She had always gotten along so
well with the Paris police. She had found that the majority of them, and even a
few venerable judges, were happy to share her spoils, or her bed, in exchange
for turning a blind eye to her late night escapades.

The Hope Diamond
would be another matter entirely. The gem was a United States national treasure
so she’d just have to make sure she covered her tracks well and didn’t get
caught.

Marguerite closed her
eyes in pleasure as René slipped his sensitive fingers between her thighs and
began to gently stroke, sending waves of warm tingles up through her belly. She
could feel him hardening against her, a signal he was ready for another round.
He pulled back a strand of her blazing hair to kiss her neck. She felt his hot
breath as he whispered in her ear, “
Attaches-moi.”

She loved it when he
talked dirty. René knew how to spark the flames which always burned brightly in
her, but before Marguerite succumbed completely to her lover’s touch, she
couldn’t help smiling like the cat that ate the canary. As much as the young
Frenchman made her breath catch and the blood surge through her, the biggest
thrill of all was her secret: after almost fifteen years of Ghostly activity,
all the world longed to know the phantom jewel thief’s true identity, but no
one did. Only Marguerite was privy to that exclusive information.

****

The lights went out,
leaving only the ominous green glow of the security lamps to illuminate the
hall outside Dornal Zagen’s prison cell. He had been marked present during the
evening’s eight p.m. roll call. Now he was expected to settle in and go to
sleep like the rest of the inmates at Ossining Penitentiary.

But tonight Dornal
had other plans.

The thin-faced prison
guard with the pock-marked complexion and slicked-back hair had remembered to
leave his cell conveniently unlocked. He’d met Dornal’s stone-gray eyes for a
moment, just to make sure they both knew what was going on. Then he’d walked
away, leaving the notorious Austrian jewel thief’s metal door slightly ajar.
Dornal wondered how much his mysterious employer had bribed the guard to assist
in his escape, but he had no time for speculations as the alarm system would
only be down for five minutes. He’d have to hurry.

At 6’4”, with a shock
of white-blond hair and Nordic pale skin, he should not have blended so well
into the dark shadows of the prison corridor, but with an almost robotic
ability to contain his own energy and move efficiently in situations such as
this, he was able to pass by the rows of occupied cells in the blink of an
eye—a phantom passing unnoticed in the night.

As he reached the
medical wing, perhaps the most feared area of the prison, he paused outside the
door, his blood running cool through his veins. He paused just long enough to
listen and make sure no one stirred inside.

All quiet.

Noiselessly, he
pushed open the door and dropped to the ground, slinking toward the front desk
where a nurse sat reading tabloids and smoking menthols. She wasn’t supposed to be there. He’d been told they
shut down the admissions room of the medical wing at night. With the alarm only
turned off for a few more minutes, he had no time to dwell on her unwelcome
presence.

The Austrian’s nose
dusted the puke-colored floor as he inched slowly past her. He didn’t have time
for this. He could feel the seconds ticking away as he moved one muscle at a
time, silently making his way across the floor like some cold-blooded reptile
stalking its prey.

At last he reached
the hallway, which led into private rooms where inmates lay hopeless in their
beds praying for death’s release. Dornal slipped by, unmoved at the plight of
his fellow prisoners. Who were they but a bunch of futureless, low-level drug
pushers and street trash? The world would be better off without them.

He passed the
operating room with its Plexiglass windows, which allowed spectators to watch
from the hallway. The cold glint of steel caught his eye. His brain calculated
like a computer how much time had passed, how much time he had left, and how
long it would take to make a momentary detour.

In a flash, he was
inside the operating room. His eyes swept the pedestal next to the sink where
some careless or distracted nurse had left a scalpel out to dry instead of
locking it securely away in the cabinet across the room with the rest of the
instruments. His hand closed around the knife with its razor-thin blade and
then he was back in the hall moving fast toward the fire exit.

One of the patients
in a room to his right let out a loud curse and began screaming gut-wrenching
gibberish at the top of his lungs. The insane shrieking would have chilled the
blood of any normal human, but all Dornal felt was annoyance. He couldn’t help
but wonder, as he retreated back into the operating room, why this idiot wasn’t
kept sedated.

He held his breath as
his fellow inmate screamed pitifully into the lonely night. Surely the nurse
would come through with a needle full of whatever dope they were using to shut
their patients up. The seconds ticked by and no one appeared.

Dornal had no choice
but to head back into the hall and make a break for the fire exit. He fingered
the steel blade in his hand. If he met the nurse along the way, she wouldn’t
hold him up for more than a few seconds.

But evidently the
nurse wasn’t coming and he reached the fire exit without any more trouble. The
door was supposed to be unlocked. At least it would be as long as the operating
system that controlled the alarm was still down, but Dornal trusted nothing and
no one. He cautiously put his hand on the knob and twisted until he felt the
click. It was unlocked. The last thing he heard before the heavy door shut
behind him was the whimpering sound of the patient in the room down the hall.
Then he was in the stairwell flying down the steps on silent feet. When he
reached the bottom, the door to freedom awaited, beckoning him. His heart was
hammering now, even as his brain remained calm and cool. He’d learned over the
years that he could not always control the instincts of his body, but he could
always keep his mind clear.

How much time had
passed? Was the alarm system still off? On or off, this was the closest he’d
been to freedom in a long time and he would make his move. Forcefully, he
pushed the door open.

Sirens screamed out
from every direction and the giant spotlight atop the watchtower at the
perimeter of the jail swung around, combing the building with a bright-white
beam. The yelping of dogs let loose from the security stations raised the hair
on the back of his neck. If there was one thing he didn’t like it was animals,
especially ones trained to go for the jugular.

He looked down and
saw the storm drain his employer had promised would be there. It had better be
unscrewed, because he’d never have time to unfasten the dozen or so bolts that
held the cover down onto the cement. Holding the scalpel between his teeth, he
grabbed the edges of the cover and pulled.

The spotlight was
just bearing down on him and he could sense the bloodhounds picking up his
scent as they turned in their tracks on the open field and charged in his
direction. The heavy iron cover rolled away and he shimmied down into the
tunnel, replacing the cover behind him only moments before the choppers roared
overhead with their thermal detectors and probing spotlights.