The Gilded Seal (24 page)

kiss her on the cheek. “Maybe we can meet up tomorrow

when things have died down so I can get it back?”

“I’ll call you in the morning,” she agreed.

“And I’m really sorry about this—” He nodded at Lewis’s

slumped and moaning body. “I hope you don’t get into too

much trouble.”

“So do I.” She pursed her lips ruefully, already knowing

how Green would view this latest turn of events.

With a final wave, Tom took off toward the river. She

shook her head at his retreating back. This wasn’t exactly

how she’d pictured the eve ning ending: a fight and Tom on

the run.

“I’ll sue you for this,” Lewis groaned as he staggered to

his feet, supporting himself against the car. “You and your

boyfriend. I’ll sue you both.”

For one glorious moment, Jennifer seriously considered

hitting him again.

C H A P T E R T H I R T Y- T W O

RUE DE CHARENTON, 12TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

21st April— 11:02 p.m.

Dumas had found them this place, a small end-of- terrace

house, its render sloughing away like dead skin from

the dry brick walls underneath. It overlooked the railway,

and the sound of the trains was ever-present, a clanking

shriek of metal and sparks that flowed down the broad scar

formed by the rusty tracks. From the top floor it was even

possible to see the gleaming outline of the Palais de Bercy

sports and music arena rising uneasily above the festering

streets and leaking chimneys that encircled it, as if it knew it

had no right to be there.

“You been scrapping?” Archie grabbed Tom’s arm accus-

ingly as he stepped through the front door. Tom glanced at

the split on his knuckles where they’d connected with Lew-

is’s unshaven chin.

“Don’t start,” he muttered. “J-P here?”

“You just try and keep him away.” Archie winked, gestur-

ing toward the rear of the house.

They made their way through to the kitchen. A fl oor plan

of the fi rst floor of the Louvre had been pinned to a couple of

the pine-effect wall cabinets. Dumas was sitting with his feet

up on the chipped melamine table, smoking.

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

1 6 7

“What happened to coffee back at her place then?” he

growled disapprovingly.

“This wasn’t about that. Besides we’ve got work to do.”

“Beautiful girl. The city of light . . .” Dumas sniffed. “You

wouldn’t get far in French politics with an attitude like that.”

“I’m trying to play her, not sleep with her.”

“Why not do both?” Dumas insisted.

“She’s got the briefcase. That’s all that matters.”

“What did you do? Ask her to look after it for you?”

“Pretty much,” said Tom, not yet quite sure how to tell the

others about punching Lewis.

“We were just wondering what Milo’s take might be on a

job like this,” Archie mused distractedly.

“Depends how many copies Rafael did for him,” said Tom,

grateful for the change of subject. “Eighty, a hundred million

each?”

“Fuck me!” Archie swore. “That much?”

“The original was insured for a hundred million bucks

when it went on loan to the States in 1962,” Tom pointed out.

“Adjusted for inflation, that’s six or seven hundred million

today. If you ask me, a hundred million’s cheap.”

“What about the security set- up?” Archie rinsed a glass,

helped himself to some wine and accepted a cigarette from

Dumas.

“State of the art, as you’d expect,” Tom said with a sigh,

holding his own glass out for Dumas to fill. “Getting into the

building is easy. The problem’s going to be getting close to

the painting itself. Even if we go in at night, there are cameras

here, here and here—” he pointed out the locations on the

floor plan. “With laser trip wires all the way along the Grande

Gallerie, not to mention at least ten guards on random patrol

patterns.”

“And the room where the painting is?” Archie pressed.

“Even worse.” Tom tapped the relevant section of the fl oor

plan. “It’s been purpose built to house the
Mona Lisa,
and

they haven’t missed a trick. Two cameras on each door, three

on the painting itself.” Again, he traced their location on the

map. “Titanium gates. All the windows alarmed and bolted.

And don’t forget the two, maybe even three, armed guards.”

1 6 8 j a m e s

t w i n i n g

“So you’re saying that, even if we do get close to it, we’ll

be trapped as soon as we try to take it off the wall?” Dumas

said with a mournful shake of his head.

“Pretty much,” Tom agreed.

“That’s why Milo will have to make his move when they

shift it up to the lab,” Archie explained. “All those systems

will count for shit once it’s off the wall.”

“Systems can be fooled. The trick is getting close enough

to fool them,” Tom observed.

“I can get you close. In fact I can get you within touching

distance. But I don’t see how that’s going to help get it out,”

Archie said in a cautious tone.

“What do you mean ‘close?’ ”

“The display case.”

“What case?” Dumas frowned.

“The
Mona Lisa
sits in a bulletproof plexiglass case,” Ar-

chie explained.

“A gift from the Japanese when it went on tour to Tokyo in

the mid seventies, right?” Tom recalled.

“Yeah, 1974,” Archie confirmed. “It’s designed to main-

tain a constant temperature of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit

and fi fty-five percent humidity to stop the wood cracking.”

“There’ll be an infrared grid around it,” Tom said slowly.

“And it’ll be alarmed and secured to the wall.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” said Dumas.

“It isn’t.” Archie smiled. “The good news is that the case

has a built-in air-conditioning unit. They service it once a

year, every year. It takes a couple of hours. You can even

book tickets to watch it happen.”

“And this is happening tomorrow?” There was a spark of

excitement in Tom’s voice.

“No,” Archie sniffed. “It’s not due for a few months.”

“Then I don’t see . . .”

“The air-conditioning unit is remotely monitored by an

outside firm. It’s got some fancy internal diagnostic system

that tells them when there’s a problem. As soon as a fault is

detected they get on the blower and arrange to come in.”

“What’s the response time?”

“Thirty minutes. An hour max.”

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

1 6 9

“And to allow them to work on the unit, the Louvre would

have to switch off the alarm systems and let them into the

case,” Tom guessed. “You’re right, it does get us close.”

“What about the cameras and the guards?” Dumas re-

minded them.

“We could cut the video feed.” Tom dismissed his objec-

tions with a wave of his hand. “And the guards could be

distracted, even disabled if necessary.”

“Disabled?” Dumas shot him a concerned look.

“Gas. Tranquilizer darts. Don’t worry, J-P, I’m not plan-

ning to kill anyone. I leave all that to Milo.”

“But we still don’t have an exit,” Archie reminded him.

“We don’t need one,” Tom smiled. “Because we won’t

even be inside.”

“You’ve lost me.” Dumas, clearly confused, shook his

head.

“You and me both,” Archie agreed.

“Get me a plan of the sewerage system that runs under the

Louvre, and I’ll show you exactly what I mean.”

C H A P T E R T H I R T Y- T H R E E

FOUR SEASONS HOTEL GEORGE V, 8TH ARRONDISSEMENT,

PARIS

21st April— 11:33 p.m.

Jennifer had been on hold for almost fifteen minutes before

Green came on. Judging from the delay and the muffl ed

background noise, she guessed that he was on a plane.

“Browne, I’ve got three minutes so make it quick.”

“It’s Razi, sir. I’m almost sure of it. He’s been buying

paintings, making copies and then selling them in the Far

East, before reselling the originals through auction houses in

Europe and the U.S. He’s probably been at it for years.”

She ran through the details of the scam as Tom and she

had discussed it. The use of certificates of authenticity, the

targeting of Japanese buyers, the code of
Omertà
that seemed

to blanket the New York dealer community.

Green took a deep breath.

“We’re going to have to go through every major Impression-

ist auction over the past ten years and check it against whatever

Razi’s bought and sold in that same period.” She smiled; like

her, he sensed that the net was closing. “There could be mil-

lions of dollars at stake here. Hudson and Cole will go nuts.”

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

1 7 1

“But that still leaves Hammon,” she continued. “I don’t see

how he fi ts.”

“Maybe Razi got greedy and Hammon threatened to talk.”

“Or maybe it’s something else altogether. Something that

involves the Louvre accession number we found on that piece

of paper in his offi ce.”

“I thought you were going to speak to someone there?”

“I had an appointment, but they blew me out. I’ll try again

tomorrow.”

“You should feed all this back to the NYPD. They might

have a view.” His tone suggested he thought this highly un-

likely. “Well done, Browne. It’s too bad—”

“There’s one other thing, sir,” she interrupted. “Lewis.”

“What about him?” She sensed his voice harden. He cer-

tainly wasn’t going to make this any easier for her.

“He’s in Paris. He followed me here.”

“You’ve got to be kidding!” Green exploded.

“I wish I was. The problem is . . .”

“You just steer clear of him, you hear?” Green barked.

“You don’t speak to him, you don’t even look at him. If he

walks in the room through one door, you walk out through

the other. That way there won’t be any problem. In fact, I

want you on the next flight home, just to be sure.”

“It’s a bit late.”

“A bit late for what? Please tell me you didn’t hit the guy

again.”

“I didn’t hit him, sir.” She paused, sensing that the conver-

sation had reached its tipping point but knowing that she

was too far along now to turn back. “But Tom Kirk did.”

“Kirk?” If Green was holding a drink, she guessed from

his tone that he’d probably just dropped it in his lap.

“The guy who helped us on the Double Eagle case.”

“I know who he is, Browne,” he replied icily. “What the

hell has he got to do with this?”

“It was a coincidence,” she explained, glancing over at

Tom’s briefcase, which she’d placed on the bed. “I ran into

him at the Louvre. We got talking and I thought he might be

able to help on the case. We carried on over dinner.”

1 7 2 j a m e s

t w i n i n g

“Dinner! Christ, this just gets worse.”

“Lewis was waiting for us when we came out. He picked

up where he’d left off in New York. Tom . . . Kirk, I mean,

punched him. Knocked him to the ground.”

There was a long silence from the other end of the phone.

When Green eventually spoke, it was in a strangely calm and

measured voice. She’d preferred it when he’d been angry.

“You understand that this doesn’t look good, Browne? The

optics, I mean.”

“Yes, sir, but I’ve not done anything wrong.”

“You think Lewis cares about right or wrong? He just

wants a story. And whether you meant to or not, you’ve given

him another headline.”

A long silence. Much as she hated to admit it, he was

right.

“What do you want me to do?” she asked, her stomach

turning over as she sensed all her good work over the past

few years slowly unraveling.

“I want you to take that vacation we spoke about the other

day. A couple of weeks. Maybe a month. Just long enough for

us to calm this whole situation down before it gets totally out

of control.”

“What about Razi?” There was a hint of desperation in her

voice now.

“That’s what I was about to tell you.” Green’s voice was

breaking up. “Razi caught a flight to Grand Cayman this

morning. Then took the shuttle to Cuba. We’re too late for

him now.” A pause before he added, almost as an after-

thought. “I just hope it isn’t too late for you.”

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

GINZA DISTRICT, TOKYO

22nd April— 1:22 p.m.

The edges of the room were wreathed in darkness, the

center weakly illuminated by parallel strips of sunken

LEDs running down the middle of the ceiling like landing

lights on a runway. Leo waited until he was summoned for-

ward, the dining table stretching fifteen, maybe even twenty

feet in front of him, a shimmering ebony bridge across the

cherrywood floor. The Dobermans, flanks scarred from fi ght-

ing, eyed him disdainfully from their vantage points on ei-

ther side of the room’s only chair, their silky ears pressed fl at

against their skulls.

The bald- headed figure seated in the chair glanced up

from the shadows at the far end of the table and called him

over with a fl ick of his chopsticks. As usual, he was dressed

in a black suit with a crimson lining, black shirt and crisp