The Gilded Seal (41 page)

ing. “But where does that leave me?”

“That’s not my fault.” There was a desperate edge to

Ledoux’s voice.

“There’s hundreds of millions of dollars at stake here. It’s

somebody’s fault.”

“I thought you told me that you got the original back

3 0 6 j a m e s

t w i n i n g

when Kirk tried to swap it for the girl. You can just use that

to paint some more,” Ledoux suggested hopefully.

“That wasn’t the original, it was another forgery.” Milo gave

a hollow laugh. “Quintavalle must have made an extra copy

and left it for Tom somewhere. Anyway, the police put three

holes in it when they ambushed us. It’s no use to anyone.”

“That’s not my—”

With a sudden jerk, Milo smashed his forehead into the

bridge of Ledoux’s nose. The director screamed as it broke,

blood streaming between his fi ngers as he clutched his face,

his eyes filling with tears.

“I’ll tell you if it’s not your fault or not,” Milo hissed in his

ear.

“What do you want?” Ledoux sobbed, his voice muffl ed.

“It’s not my . . . I can’t help you any more than I already

have.”

Milo stepped back and considered him for a moment with

a curious smile, before holding out a crisp white handker-

chief.

“You can help me understand something that’s been puz-

zling me,” Milo asked as Ledoux accepted the handkerchief

and pressed it to his nose. “This job is worth millions, yet

you’ve never asked for anything. Not once.”

“So?” Ledoux shrugged sullenly.

“My father once told me that I should never trust a man

who didn’t drink,” Milo reflected, circling him slowly. “He

was wrong. What he should have said is that you should never

trust a man who isn’t interested in money. It makes them

impossible to read. Difficult to predict.”

“This was never about the money to me,” Ledoux insisted.

“This was about safeguarding the Louvre’s reputation.”

“Lie to me again and I’ll kill you.” Milo grabbed a handful

of hair and yanked Ledoux’s head back so that the sharp an-

gle of his adam’s apple bulged out of his neck. “Don’t tell me

that this was some selfless act. I don’t buy it. There’s no such

thing.”

“What do you want from me,” he gurgled.

Milo loosened his grip on Ledoux’s hair and pushed him

away.

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

3 0 7

“I want to know what you were doing at Drouot’s this eve-

ning.”

“There was a lot there I was interested in,” he explained

falteringly. “A book.”

“What’s it for?”

“N-nothing,” he stammered.

“You spent seventy thousand on nothing?”

“No, not nothing. Research.”

“Do you take me for an idiot?” Milo stood in front of him

again. “It’s not even your period.”

“I . . . I . . .” Ledoux began to edge away from him.

“Let me tell you what I think,” Milo said softly, taking his

gun out of his pocket, checking the magazine and then slap-

ping it home. “I think the reason you never asked me for a cut

was because you’d already figured out another way to cash

in. And I think it’s got something to do with that book.”

Ledoux said nothing, transfixed by the gun glittering in

Milo’s hand and the silencer that he was carefully screwing

on.

“Now I’m only going to ask you once. What’s the book

for?”

“I’m not sure,” he muttered.

“Guess.” Milo cocked the gun.

“Ask Quintavalle. He knows. He knows everything.”

At the sound of Rafael’s name, Tom strained to make out

Ledoux’s babbled words.

“What does he know?”

“He found something when he was doing his research.

Something that involved that book.”

“Where is it?”

“In my desk—” Ledoux gestured toward the offi ce, but

Milo’s gaze didn’t waver.

“What did he fi nd?”

The question went unanswered as a sudden gust of wind

blew the shutter Tom had opened against the wall with a clat-

ter. Milo’s eyes snapped around to the office door. Tom snatched

his head out of the way just in time.

“Who’s in there?” Milo demanded.

“No one.”

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t w i n i n g

“I asked you who’s in there.” Milo aimed his gun at him.

“No one,” Ledoux insisted.

“I warned you about lying to me!” Milo snarled as he

pressed the gun against Ledoux’s chest and fired, blood spat-

tering the walls as his back erupted.

Tossing him to the ground, Milo stepped toward the of-

fi ce.

C H A P T E R S E V E N T Y

23rd April— 9:01 p.m.

The door swung open. Milo carefully edged his gun and

then his head around the frame. The room was empty.

He stepped inside. The desk was to his right, a small sofa

and coffee table taking up the other side of the room. One of

the windows was open, the wind teasing the curtains and

playfully swinging the rusting shutters from side to side.

He stepped cautiously over to the window, checked that

there was no one there and then locked it shut. Becalmed, the

curtains dropped, a sudden hush settling over the room as he

wiped his blood- spattered sleeve on the dark green material.

He flicked the desk light on and then tried the drawers, all

of them opening easily and revealing a mixture of old bills,

business cards, loose photos and various newspaper articles

that had been carefully cut out. All, that is, apart from the

central drawer.

Holding his arm in front of his eyes, Milo placed the gun

against the lock and squeezed the trigger. The shot splintered

the front of the drawer and this time it slid out easily.

But the book wasn’t there.

He looked up at the window accusingly and then sprinted

through to the front door, opening it just in time to hear a car

accelerate into the distance.

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t w i n i n g

“Who was that?” Djoulou asked, stepping inside.

“Kirk!” Milo slammed the door.

“You sure?”

“It was him.”

“What happened?” Djoulou had just caught sight of

Ledoux’s crumpled body.

“He lied to me,” Milo sniffed disdainfully as he stepped

over the corpse and back into the offi ce.

Sitting down heavily at the desk, he began to sort through

some of the books that Ledoux had piled there, each with

pages turned down or marked with a piece of paper. Various

histories of da Vinci and the
Mona Lisa
. Biographies of Na-

poleon. Accounts of the Louvre’s history.

“What was he looking for?” Djoulou frowned.

“I’m not sure.”

“Maybe you should have asked him before you killed

him?” Djoulou observed.

“Maybe you should shut the hell up, Captain!” Milo hissed.

“Your men’s incompetence cost me close to three hundred

million dollars’ worth of merchandise today. Luckily for

them, they’re dead. Don’t make me look for someone else to

blame.”

His anger masked the fact that he knew Djoulou was prob-

ably right. The loss of the paintings had worn his temper to

breaking point. Ledoux’s insolence had pushed him over the

edge.

With a shrug, Djoulou picked up a note pad and leafed

through the first few pages. A rough chronology had been

sketched out on one of them—a series of dates from 1505

until just last year. Two were circled in red: 1800 and 1804.

Next to them a small comment:
La Joconde moved to Impe-

rial apartments.
Below it a large question mark.

“What do you suppose this means?”

Milo studied the page, his eyes narrowing and then relax-

ing into a smile as he guessed at its meaning. So this was

what Quintavalle had found. This was what Ledoux was

looking for in the book he’d paid so much to secure. Evi-

dence that the real
Mona Lisa
had survived. A clue as to its

present location. Perhaps there was a way of salvaging some-

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

3 1 1

thing from this after all. He reached for his phone and dialed

a number.

“Eva?”

“Did you get it?” she asked hopefully.

“Kirk was here before us.”

“How did he . . . ?”

“Never mind that. I’m more interested in where he’s going

next.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your stepfather discovered that Napoleon swapped the

Mona Lisa
for a forgery. Kirk thinks the original is still out

there somewhere. That book is the key to where.”

“Then we need to get the book back before he finds it,” she

exclaimed.

“Do we?” Milo sniffed. “He’s been one step ahead of us

right from the start. Why not use that? Why not just let him

lead us straight to it?”

“We need to find him to follow him,” she pointed out.

“That’s easy,” Milo smiled. “There’s only one place he can

go now.”

C H A P T E R S E V E N T Y- O N E

23rd April— 9:01 p.m.

Tom surged out of the darkness and rapped his knuckles

against the glass. They both jumped.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said breathlessly as he

climbed in.

Archie immediately dropped into first and accelerated

back on to the main road toward Paris.

“Did you slip?” Jennifer grinned at his dripping shoes and

trousers.

“I jumped,” Tom explained with a rueful smile. “It was the

only way past Milo’s men.”

“He was there!” She glanced back through the rear win-

dow in concern.

“Turned up just after me,” Tom confi rmed. “Ledoux’s

working with him. Or rather, he was. But I heard enough to

know that, whatever Rafael was on to, this is defi nitely the

key.”

He pulled the book out of his backpack, checked it was

still dry, and then handed it to Jennifer. She turned it over in

her hands, rubbing the leather binding appreciatively before

flicking through some of the pages.

“Either of you know anything about books?” she asked

hopefully.

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

3 1 3

Tom’s eyes met Archie’s in the rear-view mirror. Archie

nodded.

“Not enough to figure this one out. But there’s someone we

know. He works in the business too. He can help.”

“Where’s he based?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Tom smiled.

They settled back into silence for the remainder of the

journey, the darkness fading as they hit a main road and the

orange streetlights lit their path back toward the city.

At least now they knew why Rafael’s forgeries were so ac-

curate, Tom reflected. Ledoux had paid Milo to steal the

Mona Lisa
. Part of the deal must have been to give Rafael

direct access to the original painting, or rather the painting

that the Louvre had passed off as the original. Ledoux must

have helped him with his research too, locating any relevant

documents or contemporary descriptions. And somehow, dur-

ing the course of this work, Rafael had uncovered something.

Something that Ledoux had then picked up on. Finding the

real
Mona Lisa
would have been worth far more to Ledoux

than money. He should have guessed that Milo would never

have let him live long enough to enjoy the moment.

He glanced across at Jennifer. She was thumbing absent-

mindedly through the book, her thumbnail flicking the small

gap in her front teeth, her dark hair falling forward across

her pale brown face. It was funny, but the deeper they got,

the more relaxed she seemed to become. Perhaps she real-

ized now that she, like Tom, had been caught up in some-

thing bigger than either of them had initially realized. Perhaps

she had grasped that their chances of solving this were much

greater if they worked together rather than alone. Certainly

he was glad to have her there. He wondered if she felt the

same.

About an hour later they parked up near the northern end

of the Avenue de l’Opera, next to the Metro, and got out.

“Let’s take the obelisk,” Tom suggested, grabbing his

backpack out of the boot. “The cops may be looking for the

car.”

A blast of warm air tinged with the smell of rubber and

disinfectant rushed up to greet them as they stood at the top

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t w i n i n g

of the Metro steps, two streetlights arching gracefully above

them, like branches weighed down with ripe fruit.

“We’ll meet you back here in an hour,” Archie told Jenni-

fer fi rmly.

“I don’t think so,” she said with a dismissive shake of her

head. “I want to hear whatever this guy has to say.”

“Tom?” Archie appealed.

“She’s right,” said Tom, his voice muffled by the scarf he

was using to mask his face from passersby. “We’re in this

together.”

“You know the rules. If he twigs, he’ll go ape. He’ll never

let us in again.”

“You mean he might never let us out.” Tom grinned. “It

won’t come to that. She’ll behave. Won’t you?”

“I might, if you two would stop talking like I’m not here,”

she retorted. “Or if I even knew what you

were talking

about.”