The Gilded Seal (13 page)
hair, she guessed he was maybe forty, forty-five years old.
Behind him, she saw two people from the coroner’s offi ce
flip the girl over before lifting her into a body bag and zip-
ping it shut.
“You’re kidding, right? The bodies are still warm and al-
ready you’re trying to crowd us out?”
“I had an appointment with Mr. Hammon.” She nodded at
the large nameplate on the wall behind the reception desk. “I
only just found out about the shooting.”
“Hey, Sutton,” the man called out without looking around.
“You got anything in the book today with a Julia Browne?”
The body bag was lifted on to a stretcher and wheeled into
the open lift behind her.
“Jennifer,” she corrected him sharply.
“Whatever.” He shrugged.
A woman standing on the other side of the desk leaned
over the terminal, her finger leaving a greasy mark as she slid
it across the surface of the on- screen diary.
“Sure,” she called out. “Three-thirty. Special Agent Jen-
nifer Browne.” She looked up and gave Jennifer a fl eeting
nod that she took as sisterly encouragement not to let herself
be pushed around. There was no danger of that.
Grudgingly, the man reached out to shake her hand.
“Jim Mitchell, Homicide. I’m afraid Hammon’s going to
miss your three-thirty.”
“No kidding?”
“You a client?”
“I was hoping to talk to him about a case I’m investi-
gating.”
8 4 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
“Yeah, well, talking’s the one thing he won’t be doing
again,” Mitchell said with a smirk.
“What do you mean?”
“See for yourself.”
He threw open the large mahogany double doors behind
him and waved her through. Hammon’s office was located in
the corner of the building, its two glass walls framing the
graceful sweep of the Brooklyn Bridge as it unfurled against
the East River. At that moment a chopper took off from the
nearby heliport, its red- tipped rotors carving a steep circle in
the thin air.
Beyond the view and the extravagance of a large fi sh tank
set into the facing wall, however, the room was a triumph of
minimalist design. The only furniture consisted of two Bar-
celona chairs neatly arranged around a square glass table and
a massive cherrywood desk that was empty apart from a
folded copy of the
Wall Street Journal
and an open laptop. A
fax machine and a printer sat on a low table that hugged the
desk’s right leg.
“We’ve got three fatalities. Hammon, the receptionist and
a security guard in the lobby.”
“When?”
“An hour ago, maybe two. Eyewitnesses put two men at
the scene, with two more waiting in a car outside. Initial
reports suggest they were Oriental—Japanese or Korean,
maybe. You know . . .” he shrugged helplessly and for a mo-
ment Jennifer thought he was actually going to tell her that
they all looked the same to him. This guy was a real sweet-
heart.
“Were all the victims shot?”
“Point-blank range. Probably a .45. Only Hammon didn’t
get off quite so easy as the other two.” Mitchell nodded grimly
toward the desk and the large black chair with its back turned
toward them.
Jennifer stepped around the edge of the desk and realized,
as she caught sight of a wrist secured to the chair’s metal arm
with a plastic tag, that Hammon was still there.
“He’s next, as soon as they’ve loaded the other two up,”
Mitchell explained as she shot him a questioning glance.
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
8 5
Moving closer, she could see that the lawyer’s balding
head was slumped forward and to one side; his chin and
monogrammed shirt were soaked in blood. One of his expen-
sive leather shoes seemed to have half come off as he had
struggled, although the black handle of the Tanto knife that
was protruding from his chest, his Ferragamo tie draped
around it like a scarf, suggested it had been a short and un-
even contest.
Most shocking though were his eyes, or rather the gaping,
livid sockets where his eyes had been until someone had
prized them out, leaving red tears frozen on to his face like
wax.
“There’s no sign of them here,” Mitchell volunteered. “We
figure they took them with them.”
Jennifer looked up, her face impassive. The longer she did
this job, the less instances of random sadism such as this
seemed to shock her.
“Some sort of trophy?”
“Maybe.”
She leaned forward with a frown, having caught sight of
something soft and pink that seemed to have been skewered
on to the tip of the knife before it was plunged into Ham-
mon’s chest.
“What’s that?”
“His tongue,” said Mitchell, watching her closely.
“His tongue . . .” It was more of a statement than a question
and Mitchell seemed disappointed by her muted reaction. “So
it’s got to be some sort of a revenge killing, right? A punish-
ment for something he’d said or seen. Or both.”
“You tell me.” Mitchell shrugged. “I’m normally pulling
hookers out of dumpsters and junkies out of the East River.
What was your angle?”
“Hammon got into a fight with someone who’s involved in
my case. I wanted to find out why.”
“The guy’s an attorney. What more of a reason do you
need?” Mitchell laughed.
Jennifer smiled as she moved around to the other side of the
desk, slowly warming to Mitchell’s black humor.
“You got any paper?” she asked suddenly.
8 6 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
“What?” Mitchell frowned.
“Paper?”
Mitchell continued to stare at her blankly.
“For the fax,” she explained, pointing at the light blinking
on the fax machine. “Looks like something’s caught in the
memory.”
With a nod of understanding, Mitchell opened the printer
tray, removed a few sheets of paper, and placed them into the
fax. Moments later, the machine began to whir and hum,
sucking a fresh sheet inside and then spitting it out on to the
fl oor.
Mitchell picked the sheet up, studied it for a few seconds,
then handed it to Jennifer. “Go fi gure.”
Three items were listed on the page: First an alphanumeric
code—VIS1095. Then a sum of money—$100,000,000. And
beneath them, a letter in a circle.
The letter M.
LAS CANDELARIAS, SEVILLE
19th April— 9:33 p.m.
Eva seemed reluctant to leave the workshop. Tom under-
stood why.
Unable to sleep the night of his own father’s funeral a few
years before, he had wandered through Geneva’s wintry
streets, vainly looking for answers to questions that he couldn’t
yet quite bring himself to ask. As dawn broke, he had found
himself standing outside the front door to his father’s old
apartment, drawn there as if by some ancient magic. Sitting
on the foot of his father’s bed, seeing his cuffl inks glittering
on the marble- topped chest and his ties peeking out from
behind the wardrobe door like snowdrops nosing their way
aboveground in early spring, it was almost as if he had still
been alive.
Now he sensed that Eva was doing the same, absorbing the
memories of her father that swirled stubbornly around this
room like paint fumes. The half-empty wine glass with a
ghostly lip-print on its rim. The pocket knife, its bone handle
smoothed by use. The discarded sunglasses, one arm bent
back on itself where he had sat on them. Part of Tom wanted
to hold her, to tell her that it would all be all right. But he
knew it wouldn’t, not for a long time, and that this was
8 8 j a m e s
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something she was going to have to come to terms with on
her own.
“We should go,” Tom muttered eventually as he carefully
wrapped the painting in a cloth and placed it inside his bag.
“Where to?” she said mournfully. “The police are in and
out of his apartment. I can’t bear it there anymore.”
For a moment Tom thought of suggesting that they go to
his hotel, but quickly changed his mind. Chances were she
would take it the wrong way, and in any case the cops were
probably there by now. The best thing would be to get out of
Seville as quickly as possible, but there was one more place
he needed to go first. According to Gillez, Rafael had been
seen going to confession at the Basilica de la Macarena the
night he was killed. Assuming that he hadn’t been gripped
by a sudden bout of evangelical fervor, Tom wanted to see for
himself what had drawn him there. But she interrupted him
before he could suggest it, her voice breathless and hurried.
“There’s something you should know. Something Rafael
told me about your father. About how he died. I should have
told you before only I was so angry with you that I never—”
The words stuck in Eva’s throat as the glass roof above
them suddenly imploded. Tom pulled her to the floor and threw
his coat over their heads, the shards embedding themselves
into the thick material and crashing around their feet. The
next instant he was up, dragging her toward the exit, but heavy
footsteps announced someone pounding up the staircase to-
ward them. He turned back, hoping to get to the window, but
two other men rappelled into the room, guns drawn, blocking
their path. They were trapped.
“On your knees.” The man to their left stepped forward,
his accent and appearance suggesting that he was of North
African origin—Moroccan, Tom guessed, his heart pound-
ing. His two companions were white; one of them had a long
pink bullet scar down the side of his head.
“Where’s Milo?” Tom asked, knowing immediately who
these men were and who had sent them. Eva pressed herself
to him, her eyes fl ashing defi antly.
“Shut up.”
“Let her go,” Tom insisted. “This is about me, not her.”
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
8 9
“It’s about both of you now.” The Moroccan’s eyes nar-
rowed. “Take her outside.”
The man standing behind Eva shoved her roughly toward
the staircase. She turned and cuffed him hard across the cheek,
the sharp crack of the blow echoing off the walls. Clutching
his face, he raised his gun to her chest, his thumb pulling back
on the hammer, his eyes blazing.
“No!” The Moroccan’s voice rang out. “He wants them
both alive.” He turned to the other man and ordered, “Help
him.”
Eva flashed Tom a desperate glance but it was no use. One
man grabbed her arms and pinned them to her sides while the
second grabbed her legs, lifting her off the ground. She began
to scream, the sound cutting into Tom, her body jack-knifi ng
as she raised her legs to her chest and then kicked out again
and again. But they had her in a firm grip and her cries were
soon muffled by a paint-soiled rag that one of the men scooped
off the floor and jammed into her mouth.
Tom stepped forward, his fists clenched, but was immedi-
ately warned off by the Moroccan waggling his gun at him.
Exhausted and gagging on the filthy rag, her struggling slowly
subsided.
“Put her in the trunk,” the Moroccan ordered.
“I’ll find you,” Tom called out as they half-dragged, half-
lifted her out of the room and down the staircase. She gazed
at him blankly as she sank out of sight, leaving the room still
and empty and Tom’s head ringing with the echo of her la-
bored breathing and the deafening plea for help that he had
seen framed within her dark eyes.
“Get over there,” the Moroccan instructed Tom as soon as
they were alone.
“If you’re going to shoot me, do it here,” Tom retorted.
“I said move!” He stepped forward and jabbed Tom in the
chest with his gun. Sensing his moment, Tom reached down
and grasped one of the shards of glass that had lodged in his
coat. Pulling it free, he plunged it into the man’s wrist. The
gun dropped from the Moroccan’s grasp as he clutched his
arm to his chest, screaming in pain.
Tom grabbed one of the rappelling ropes that were dangling
9 0 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
like vines from the roof, looped it around the Moroccan’s
neck and tugged hard. The man’s hands fl ew to his throat as
he clawed at the thick nylon cord, his legs dancing wildly
underneath him as he tried to wriggle free, his lips turning
blue. Tom held firm, managing to throw another loop over
the man’s head and then pulling down with all his weight. In
a few minutes, the Moroccan had gone limp, the rope hold-
ing him upright like an oversize puppet. In the intermittent
red neon light, it appeared that he had been drenched in
blood.
“Youssef?” A voice from downstairs. “You okay?”
Tom heard the tell- tale creak of someone making their
way up the stairs.
Scrabbling around on the floor, Tom found the Moroccan’s
gun and raced to the stairwell. Edging his head around the
doorway, he fired a shot at the approaching fi gure, catching
