The Gilded Seal (18 page)

“Let’s go,” he said, steering Dumas toward the door. “We’ve

done what we can.”

“I think that’s probably best,” Levy agreed, laying a hand

on Troussard’s quivering shoulder.

She waited until the door had closed behind them and then

turned on Troussard with a reproachful look.

“Was that entirely necessary?”

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t w i n i n g

“What do you mean?” He jutted his chin at her defi antly.

“I mean, what’s the story with you and Dumas?”

“There is no story,” he retorted a little too quickly and

forcefully to be convincing. “Apart from the one he just spun

for us. He’s a drunk, for God’s sake. I could smell it on him.

A plot to steal the
Mona Lisa
? Pah! He probably dreamed the

whole thing.”

“He seemed pretty convinced to me,” she refl ected. “His

friend too. Why would they make it up?”

“What else has he got to do all day? He probably thinks it’s

funny to have people like me running around in circles. Prob-

ably makes him feel more important.”

“I think I’m going to mention it to Ledoux all the same.

Just to be safe.”

“There’s no need to involve him.” Troussard frowned in

annoyance. “Not based on what we’ve heard today. I can deal

with this.”

“I can’t risk being wrong.” Her face blanched at the

thought. “He’s the Museum Director. Let him decide.”

“He’ll only make me change the guard rotas and walk

through the security set- up again,” Troussard huffed.

“Do you think we should tell the police?”

“If we called them every time we heard a story like that,

we’d never get off the phone,” he insisted. “Besides, security

is my responsibility, no one else’s. I don’t need anyone inter-

fering. Certainly not the police.”

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y- F O U R

JARDIN DU TUILERIES, PARIS

20th April— 5:02 p.m.

The round pond was encircled by trees. As arranged,

Archie was sitting on one of the park benches sheltered

under their swaying branches. Here and there gravel paths

led off from this central area like spokes, cutting through the

formal parterres. Another pond lay at the end of the wide,

unbroken vista that ran along the garden’s main axis, and

beyond that rose the granite spear of the ancient obelisk in

the Place de la Concorde, deliberately positioned close to the

site of one of Revolutionary France’s most active scaffolds.

“How did it go?” Archie asked as they slumped on the

bench beside him. A pile of discarded cigarette butts at his

feet suggested he’d been waiting a while.

“Imbéciles,”
Dumas swore, producing a hip flask from his

jacket and taking a swig.

“Idiots,” Tom agreed with a sigh, grabbing the fl ask off

Dumas and downing a mouthful himself.

“How bad?”

“They laughed.”

“That’s bad.” Archie grinned, the gold identity bracelet on

his left wrist glinting in the sun. “Well, I told you. They’re up

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t w i n i n g

their own arse, that lot.” He jerked his head in the direction

of the Louvre. “Always have been.”

“It’s Troussard.” Dumas shook his head, his jaw set fi rm.

“
Petit salaud
. He’s never forgiven me for . . .” He completed

the sentence with a small hand gesture. “Well now, my life’s

in the gutter. He’s finally won. The only reason he saw me

was to rub it in.”

“What about the police?” Tom suggested. “We could try

them.”

Dumas dismissed the idea with a wave.

“First thing they’d do is call Troussard. He’ll just laugh at

them the way he laughed at us.”

“So what do we do? We can’t just sit back and watch Milo

walk in and take it.”

“Assuming he
can
take it,” Dumas observed. “Troussard

was right about one thing. The security back there is bullet

proof.”

“You were right too. There’s a risk. Whatever systems

they’ve got in place, you can be sure that Milo’s fi gured out

some way around them. I would if I was going in for it.”

In front of them, a couple of children leaned over the

pond’s rounded edge and placed a small sailboat on to the

water. The wind caught its handkerchief- sized yellow sail

and gently propelled it across the pond’s dark waters. The chil-

dren jumped up with an excited shout, running around the

basin to keep up as it accelerated toward the opposite side.

“Maybe you
should
go in for it,” Archie suggested as the

children’s laughter blended into the sound of a South Ameri-

can pipe band that had started up somewhere on the Rue de

Rivoli.

“Sure. Let’s just wander over there now.” Tom laughed.

“I’m serious. If we had the painting, we could swap it for

Eva.”

“You
are
serious!” Tom exclaimed.

“Well, I’m not,” Dumas spluttered. “We can’t steal the

Mona Lisa
.”

“Why not?” said Archie.

“
C’est impossible!
”

“Milo’s planning to,” Archie reminded him.

t h e g i l d e d s e a l

1 2 5

“That’s different.”

“Not really,” Archie said evenly. “The way I see it, either

we walk away, or we beat him to it and then trade it for

Eva.”

“Trade the
Mona Lisa
?” Dumas snorted, his tone both

disbelieving and outraged.

“Not the real one,” Archie explained. “A forgery . . .” He

didn’t need to finish the sentence for Tom to see where he

was heading.

“We’d have to steal the real thing for Milo to believe that

we had it to trade,” he said slowly. “But if we traded Rafael’s

forgery for Eva, instead of the real painting, Milo wouldn’t

realize until it was too late. We’d be playing him at his own

game.”

“The painting’s been nicked before,” said Archie, his eyes

glinting. “We could do it again.”

“That was in 1911,” Dumas reminded him. “A lot’s changed

since then.”

“Maybe, maybe not,” said Tom, turning to Archie. “How

did they do it?”

“A guy called Eduardo de Valfierno was behind it,” Archie

explained, lighting another cigarette as he spoke. “An Argen-

tinian conman. They say he once managed to sell the Eiffel

Tower as scrap to some gullible punter.”

“A Belgian, I expect.” Dumas laughed.

“Valfierno teamed up with a forger called Yves Chaudron.

The plan was to pinch the
Mona Lisa
, have Chaudron knock

out and shift as many copies as possible while she was miss-

ing, and then drop her back at the Louvre so that the cops

would call off the hunt.”

“An art forger?” Tom said slowly. “Like Rafael?”

Archie locked eyes with Tom and nodded.

“Exactly like Rafael.”

“So that’s his plan.” Tom gave a low whistle. “Steal the

original, make some copies and sell off as many of them as

you can while it’s missing. Milo’s pulling the same stunt as

Valfierno tried to.”

“It’s a great con,” Archie conceded. “The buyers can

hardly go to the cops if they get suspicious. And he can

1 2 6 j a m e s

t w i n i n g

always let them think they’ve got the real thing by telling

them that he handed a fake back to the Louvre.”

Tom nodded slowly, part of him almost wishing he’d

thought of it himself.

“
Bravo, Milo
. Very clever. But I would still like to know

how Valfierno got the painting out of the Louvre without get-

ting caught,” Dumas insisted.

“He signed up Vincenzo Peruggia, a carpenter who worked

at the museum,” Archie continued. “Peruggia and two other

blokes went in one Sunday posing as tourists and then stashed

themselves in a storeroom overnight, knowing that the mu-

seum was shut the next day. The following morning they lifted

the painting off the wall, cut it out of its frame and walked out

dressed as maintenance men, cool as you like. When they saw

it was gone, the guards assumed it had been taken to be photo-

graphed. It wasn’t until over a day later that anyone twigged

that it was missing.

“They say it was the first ever truly global news story,” Tom

added. “There was a massive manhunt. It took them a week

just to explore the Louvre. The French shut their borders and

searched every ship and train leaving the country. The news-

papers hyped it endlessly. Rewards were offered. People were

arrested and released. If you ever wondered why the
Mona

Lisa
is the world’s most famous painting, it’s got nothing to do

with her enigmatic smile. It’s because she was stolen.”

“Where did they find it in the end?”

“Peruggia had it all along,” Archie said with an apprecia-

tive smile. “All Valfierno wanted was the story in the papers

long enough for him to shift his six forgeries. Once the news

broke, Peruggia never heard from him again. A few years

later, he tried to sell the painting to a dealer in Florence. The

dealer tipped off the Uffizi. When the police nabbed him,

they found that he’d been stashing it in a specially built trunk

with a false bottom.”

“So, based on that, all we need to do is hide in the Louvre

overnight, take it off the wall and walk out.” Dumas grinned.

“What are we waiting for?”

“What do you mean, ‘we?’ ” Tom frowned. “You’ve done

t h e g i l d e d s e a l

1 2 7

your bit, J-P. You got us in to see Troussard. Archie and I will

take it from here.”

“
Non,
you’re not freezing me out now, Felix.” Dumas’s

eyes fl ashed defi antly. “I was quite happily drunk in that bar

until you dragged me out. Now that I’m sober, you’re stuck

with me until the end.”

“You’re a government agent, J-P,” Tom insisted. “Archie

and I know what we’re getting into. This isn’t your thing.”

“What is my thing now, Felix? I’ve got no job. No wife . . .”

“Archie, you tell him,” Tom pleaded.

“We’ll need the extra muscle,” said Archie with a shrug.

“He’s a spy,” Tom reminded him. “You hate spies.”

“Ex-spy,” said Archie. “Same as you. Besides, I’ve always

thought J-P would make a good villain, if he put his mind

to it.”

“
Merci
.” Dumas winked. “Anyway, if by some miracle

you actually do manage to steal the
Mona Lisa
, someone

needs to make sure you two don’t accidentally decide to hold

on to it.”

“You see, he’s a natural crook,” Archie said solemnly. “He

doesn’t trust anyone.”

C H A P T E R T W E N T Y- F I V E

AVENUE DE L’OBSERVATOIRE, 14TH ARRONDISSEMENT,

PARIS

21st April— 9:02 a.m.

The elevator was enclosed in a black wire cage that rose

like a scorched tree up the central core of the winding

stone staircase. Hauling open the concertina- style gate, Jen-

nifer stepped inside, allowing it to spring shut behind her. The

date on the brass control panel, almost polished away over the

years, indicated that it had been installed in 1947. It seemed

older.

She pressed five and, after a few moments’ refl ection, the

cabin lurched skywards with an ominous clunking and shriek-

ing noise. The floors crept past like rock strata, and she had

the sudden sensation of being hauled up the side of a cliff in a

wicker basket.

Henri Besson, the forgery expert Cole had hooked her up

with, was standing waiting for her on the landing. At least

she assumed it was him, the elevator rising to reveal fi rst bare

feet, then brightly patterned knee-length shorts and fi nally a

loosely buttoned Hawaiian shirt sprouting silvery chest hair.

He held out his hand, his greeting immediately dispelling her

doubts.

t h e g i l d e d s e a l

1 2 9

“
Mademoi selle Browne? Enchanté. Henri Besson à votre

ser vice
.”

He had the tan to match his clothes, his dark blue eyes

twinkling out from an unshaven and surprisingly youthful

face, given he was fifty or so years old. Only his curly hair,

graying at the sides and thinning on top, gave some indica-

tion of his true age.

“Good morning.” She smiled. “Thank you for doing this at

such short notice.”

“The larger the client, the less warning they give you.”

He gave a disconcertingly lopsided smile and it took her a

few moments to realize that the entire left side of his face was

paralyzed. One cheek was slack and heavy, the other fi rm and

dimpled; one eye drooping, while the other twinkled. She

guessed that he’d had some sort of a stroke.

“Come in, please. The others are already here.”

Hudson and Cole had both insisted that somebody from

their respective Paris operations should be on hand to wit-

ness the initial examination in person. Partly this was to en-

sure that the tests were conducted to their mutual satisfaction,

but she suspected there was also an element of cold-war style

politics to it as well. Neither superpower was willing to con-

cede the slightest potential advantage to the other.

Ushering her into a small office dominated by a fl oor-to-