Thief (11 page)

Though he saw no solid evidence he was being tailed, Monarch went on instinct and training. He performed several tight and quick changes of course, watching his back-trail, before heading back toward the refuge.

He pulled off the paved road a full mile beyond the orphanage, drove up a dirt two-track, and hid the bike behind some brush. Then he cut uphill and at an angle, pushing through scrub oak, operating by feel and the faint light the setting moon afforded.

Monarch wanted to be up high when the sun rose. He took the Difficult Way, ascending the steep, rocky face at a steady pace, still straining in the worst spots, but happy that his wind was definitely coming back. An hour after he left the motorcycle, the thief reached the bench. He eased down on it, happy for the sweat that made him shiver in the cool air and kept him wide awake.

The first light of dawn came soon enough.

The thief picked up the pack and kept a low profile as he scuttled forward to a position in the rocks where he'd soon be able to look down into the compound and the terrain and buildings all around it for a mile or more. Ever since the break-in, he'd been unable to shake the sense that the orphanage and the children were threatened, or being watched anyway.

He dug in the knapsack, and came up with a pair of Leica Geovid binoculars, his preferred long-range optic. Pressing the ten power glasses to his eyes, he started scanning the entire area, using a grid pattern to control the search.

In the gathering light, he picked up goats feeding on the land that Sister Rachel wanted to buy. Beyond the front gate, to the east, the road that came up from the city was sparsely traveled. A farm truck went by. A bus followed it. And then nothing.

Monarch swung the glasses toward a cluster of modest houses to the southwest, seeing a girl outside feeding chickens and a man chopping wood. Panning the glasses west, he peered into the few open spots in a grove of almond and olive trees that bordered the orphanage's south wall.

Slowly, methodically, as the dawn glow strengthened he dissected the shadows between the trees, looked for a silhouette against the dirt. He'd almost given up, when he caught something moving. It could have been an animal, the back end of a cow, but in Monarch's mind it registered as a man's torso and shoulders.

The thief again dug in the pack and this time extracted a 20-40-by-60 Leica spotting scope and a carbon fiber tripod. He trained the scope at twenty power into the gap in the trees where he thought he'd seen movement. For almost fifteen minutes, there was nothing but the fluttering of doves coming off their roost. Then the sun rose above the ocean's horizon and sent the first powerful beams of light across the city to the foothills.

The man moved a second time, showed his head.

There you are, Monarch thought. Now
who
are you?

Monarch dialed the knob, took the scope up to forty power. It took him a few slight adjustments before the picture in the lens cleared, and from three quarters of a mile away he saw the man turn his head, revealing a deformed left ear.

“What the fuck?” the thief muttered.

It had been nearly twenty years, but he knew the man in an instant. Monarch had thought him long dead. But there was no mistaking that ear. Something acidic churned in his gut.

He put the binoculars and scope away, threw the knapsack on his back, and got up in a crouch. He scuttled off angle to where he'd been perched, moving around the side of the hill where he couldn't be seen or heard from the almond grove, and then made a scrambled descent that left him gulping wind in a brushy draw just above the orphanage.

He heard a car start, and drive away somewhere below him. He snuck forward, smelling wood smoke, and using the binoculars again to scan the almond grove, now less than two hundred yards away. Nothing moved. Nothing stood out.

Monarch risked being seen when he darted across a small meadow into the grove, but then slowed to a crawl when the terrain began to climb. He looked up at the cliff where he'd used the scope, performed rudimentary triangulations, and spotted the gnarled olive tree on the lip of the rise. But there was no one beneath it now.

Boot prints showed all around the tree. The thief circled the area until he cut the prints heading toward the road where he'd heard the car start. It had been more than twenty years since he'd seen the man. What the hell is he doing alive and here?

Before the thief could ponder this unexpected development further, he felt his cell buzz, alerting him to a text. It came from Gloria Barnett, said: “Call me. Possible work if you're up to it.”

Monarch stood there in the grove, wondered whether he was in shape for work, then punched in the number. She answered on the third ring, said, “Switch to FaceTime.”

Monarch made the switch on his iPhone, saw Barnett sitting in a chaise lounge with a tropical beach out beyond her.

“How are you?” Barnett said. “Sister Rachel says you're strong.”

“Reasonably,” Monarch said. “How's Fiji?”

“It was nice, but I've moved on. New Caledonia.”

“You always were a trendsetter.”

She laughed. “I like to think so.”

“So what's this possible work?”

“Remember Sami Rafiq?”

“How could I forget?”

“He contacted me out of the blue by e-mail two hours ago. Wanting to find you.”

“That's funny, because the last two times I've seen him he said he never wanted to see or talk to me again.”

“Well, you did kind of fuck him over in Thailand last year,” Barnett said. “And in Algeria a couple of years before that.”

Sami Rafiq was a Lebanese expatriate who floated around the edges of the underworld, operating successful fabric stores while making a lucrative secret income as a first-class forger. Monarch flashed on his last memory of the man, standing in the pouring rain in southern Thailand, looking catatonic after surviving a firefight in a red-light district.

“Sami was well compensated for his troubles,” Monarch replied.

“He did say that.”

“You talked to him?”

“I did. He says to call him. Do it, and then call me back.”

Monarch agreed, hung up, and then called the number she texted him.

“Rafiq.”

“Sami? It's Monarch.”

“Robin!” Rafiq cried. “So good to hear from you. I was hoping you'd call.”

“What's the story? I was Rafiq enemy number one the last time I saw you.”

He cleared his throat, said, “Yes, well, the money was much appreciated.”

“You earned it,” Monarch said. “Gloria said something about a job.”

“A high-paying one, as I understand it.”

“What's the target?”

“I don't know. The men who approached me wouldn't say.”

The Lebanese forger said an old and trusted client reached out to him on behalf of an unnamed third party.

“They were looking for a thief,” Sami said.

“To steal what?”

“I don't know, but my client said these people have deep, deep pockets, like money is no object.”

Monarch thought about that, said, “Thanks, but no thanks, Sami. My targets have to be of a certain kind.”

Rafiq sounded disappointed. “Don't you at least want to hear their story?”

“What's in it for you if I do?”

“A handsome finder's fee,” the forger admitted.

“How much?”

“That's not your—”

“How much?”

Rafiq sighed. “One million five British pound sterling.”

Monarch ran the numbers in his head. That was over two million dollars.

“Hell of a finder's fee,” the thief said.

“It is,” the forger agreed. “So the take's got to be big, right? Especially if you're executing a plan someone has already designed.”

Rafiq was right, and despite his misgivings, Monarch was intrigued.

“Who's your client?”

“Please, I don't use names. I've never used yours.”

“Fair enough,” Monarch said. “How do I get in touch with him?”

“You don't,” the forger said. “I was told if you were interested, the third party would ask you to meet them face-to-face.”

“Where?”

“London.”

Monarch thought about that, said, “And they don't know who I am?”

“They didn't want to know. All they wanted was a competent thief. I think you more than fit the bill.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That you were ex–special forces, ex-CIA, and highly skilled. Did I lie?”

“Let me think about it.”

“See that's the thing. There's a deadline. If you're interested, they need you to be in London tomorrow latest, and by the way, you'd be going there on their dime.”

Monarch considered the proposal, ran the numbers again. Based on a five percent finder's fee, the take could be as high as thirty million dollars. Based on a fifty-fifty split, he could be looking at thirteen, fourteen million going Sister Rachel's way.

Am I ready? He supposed that depended on the challenges of the job.

And what about the man he'd seen studying the orphanage in the morning light?

“I'm not promising anything,” Monarch said to the forger.

“Of course not,” Rafiq said. “You look at the deal, take it, or leave it.”

“I'll need a first-class round-trip ticket, and a five-star hotel in London. Coordinate it with Barnett.”

“Pleasure doing business with you again,” the forger said, and hung up.

A bell began to peal.

 

15

THE BELL HUNG FROM
an ox yoke suspended on stone pillars by Sister Rachel's residence, a small cottage beneath the pines. She rang the bell three times, calling the orphans to breakfast, and was surprised when, before any of them exited the dorms, Robin Monarch came through the front gate, carrying a heavy knapsack.

As he crossed the lawn toward her, something about his troubled expression caused the missionary doctor's mind to fly back almost two decades. She saw her younger self in a heavy wool sweater, gloves, and hat following Robin up the Difficult Way on a winter day with a raw clipping wind in their faces.

*   *   *

By that point, six months had passed for Robin inside the Refuge of Hope, but she still was asking him that question, “What good have you done today?”

Robin told her about a chair he had repaired, and the wood he had chopped for the heat, and how he had worked with some of the younger kids on their reading.

“Very good,” she said. “Your load will be that much lighter going down.”

But when they reached the top, and he'd set down the pack, Robin didn't seem to feel any better when she reached into the knapsack, took a large stone and threw it away.

She said, “Something's troubling you.”

He hesitated. “This knapsack isn't big enough for some rocks, Sister.”

Sister Rachel considered him a long moment in the slanting winter light before saying, “Have you done big-rock things, Robin?”

Robin closed his eyes, nodded painfully, said, “The night you saved me, I killed the man who tried to kill me. His name was Julio. He was the
jefe
of
la fraternidad
.”

She'd suspected as much, but had waited for him to confess.

“Was it in self-defense?” she asked finally.

“Yes, but it was a fight that I wanted to happen,” he replied. “I just didn't realize he would try to kill me for real.”

For several minutes she had not known how to respond, but then she did.

“Pick up your pack,” she said.

“Are you going to turn me in, Sister? If you do, my parents' enemies will have me killed.”

“You'll do no good rotting in a jail,” the missionary doctor remembered saying. “But I think to even begin to atone for something like this, you are going to have to do something very, very good and to do it you are going to have to carry a very, very heavy load.”

“You're getting me a bigger pack?” he'd asked, confused.

“No. This burden will ride on your shoulders and your shoulders alone.”

“What is it?

As Sister Rachel told Robin what he had to do in atonement for murdering the leader of the Brotherhood of Thieves, she'd seen the crushing weight of the task almost buckle his knees.

“That's impossible,” Robin said.

“Nothing is impossible,” the missionary doctor insisted. “Not when you have the greater good on your—”

*   *   *

“Sister?” Monarch called out as a stream of sleepy kids stumbled from their dorms across the lawn, heading toward the dining wall. “Are you all right?”

Sister Rachel smiled, said, “Just thinking about old times, Robin. Why are you here so early? Are you feeling okay?”

“I climbed the Difficult Way this morning in record time, but I wanted to know if I'm good to fly.”

Sister Rachel regarded him for a moment. “On a job?”

“Job interview.”

“You're a grown, accomplished man, so I can't begin to tell you what to do with your life.”

“Really?” Monarch said impishly. “You've done pretty well at it in the past.”

She fought against a smile, and nodded, saying, “Okay, okay. I just…”

“What, Sister?”

“I worry about you, Robin. I never know when you're going to show up, and in what condition. The next time you might not be so lucky.”

“I don't think this is that kind of a job,” Monarch said to allay her fears.

“Really?”

“Some kind of consulting thing,” he assured her.

The missionary doctor hesitated again, sure that there was something he wasn't telling her. But she said, “If you can climb with that pack, you can fly.”

“Good,” he said, then paused. “I'm going to have Claudio come up and stay with you while I'm gone. It shouldn't be more than a day or two.”