frown deepened and then he cursed and tapped in the number.
Donovan jerked his thumb towards the stairs.
'Come and look at the Rembrandt,' he said to Fullerton.
'It's not my favourite piece, but it should fetch the most. Maury talked me into it, said it'd be a great investment. He's a Philistine, but you can't fault his business sense.'
Fullerton followed Donovan upstairs. The Rembrandt drawing was in an ornate gilt frame to the left of the door, positioned so that Donovan could see it while he was lying in bed. Fullerton whistled softly.
'Nice,' he said. He stood back from the picture and stared at it in silence for almost a full minute. It was of a small child reaching for an apple. A boy, but with long hair and an angelic, almost feminine face. The boy was looking around as if he feared being caught taking the fruit, but he was too well dressed to be a beggar or a thief. He was the son of nobility, so maybe the theft was greed. Or a lark.
'Just look at the hand,' said Fullerton.
'You can see the corrections, he must have worked on it for hours.' He moved to the side to get a slightly different view.
'Quill and reed pen with a brown ink,' he said.
'A very similar drawing went for almost three hundred grand at Sotheby's in New York a couple of years ago. That was an old man kids always fetch higher prices.'
'You're as much a Philistine as Maury,' laughed Donovan.
'I'm not saying it's not a great work, I'm just saying it's a very saleable piece. Which is why you bought it, yeah?'
'Can't argue with that, Jamie.'
'I don't think I'll have a problem placing it,' said Fullerton.
'I know a couple of guys with cash that want to put it into art.'
'Clean money?'
Fullerton flashed his shark-like smile again.
'It will be by the time you get it, Den.'
Donovan took the Rembrandt drawing down off the wall and placed it on the bed. He went into the bathroom and pulled a pale blue hand towel off the heated rail and tossed it to Fullerton.
Fullerton carefully wrapped the drawing in the towel.
'Can I ask you something, Den?'
'Anything so long as it's not geography,' said Donovan.
'I hate geography.'
'You've got a decent security system, but weren't you taking a risk, having them on show?'
'It's not like I advertised them,' said Donovan.
'And most opportunistic break-ins are druggies looking for a video or a CD player. They wouldn't recognise a Rembrandt if it bit them on the arse.' He nodded at the drawing that Fullerton was wrapping.
'Even my wife didn't know what that was worth. A scribble, she called it.'
'You didn't tell her what it was?'
Donovan shrugged.
'Vicky had a stack of interests, but art was never one of them. I tried to take her to galleries and stuff but it bored her rigid. More interested in Gucci than Goya.'
Fullerton picked up the Rembrandt.
'Can I see the Butters-worths?'
'Sure.' Donovan took Fullerton down to the study.
Fullerton put the Rembrandt on the desk and studied the painting that covered the wall safe.
'Brilliant,' he said.
'You know about Buttersworth?' said Donovan.
'Did a thesis on nineteenth-century American painters, believe it or not, and I always had a penchant for maritime artists. Look at that sunset, would you? More than a hundred and thirty years ago he painted that. We're getting the same view today that he had then. It's like we're seeing something through his eyes, isn't it, something that's been gone for more than a century. Awesome. Look at the skyline there, New York as it was back then. And just look at the detail in the clouds.' He turned to look at Donovan.
'And you use it to hide a safe. Who's the Philistine now?'
Donovan's jaw dropped.
'How the hell did you know that?'
Fullerton grinned and walked over to the frame. He pointed to the wall to the left of the gilded frame.
'See the indentations there?'
Donovan moved closer and peered at where Fullerton was pointing. He was right, there was a line of small marks where the frame had been pressing against the wall when it was swung away from the safe.
'You've got a good eye,' said Donovan.
'A thiefs eye,' laughed Fullerton.
'But don't worry, Den, your secret's safe with me.'
'Bloody thing's empty anyway,' said Donovan.
Fullerton went over to look at the second Buttersworth.
'I think I know just the man to buy these,' he said.
'A corporate finance chap over at Citibank. He's got a bonus cheque eating a hole in his pocket and he's mad about boats. I'm sure he'll jump at them.' He turned and grinned confidently.
'This is going to be a piece of cake, Den. Take my word for it.'
Jamie Fullerton opened the metal gates with his remote control and drove his black Porsche into the underground car park. He was grinning as he stepped into the lift and pressed the button for the penthouse. Three years he'd been waiting to meet Den Donovan, and he'd finally been handed the man on a plate. He couldn't believe his luck. He shook his head. No, it hadn't been luck. He'd been in the right place at the right time, and that had been down to planning, not chance. He'd put a lot of time and effort into cultivating Maury Goldman, once he'd found out that Goldman had been Donovan's art dealer of choice. There'd been other dealers, too. And other contacts. All friends and acquaintances of Donovan, all possible leads to the man himself. And it had worked. He'd been in the man's house. Shaken hands with him. Hell, Den Donovan had actually made him coffee.
Fullerton unlocked his front door and walked through to the kitchen, all polished stainless steel and gleaming white tiles. He opened the fridge and took out a chilled bottle of Bollinger champagne. He picked up a fluted glass and went out on to his terrace which overlooked the fast-flowing Thames. He popped the cork, filled the glass, then toasted himself. His grin widened.
'Onwards and upwards, Fullerton,' he said, then drank deeply. He felt elated, almost light headed. He was in. He was part of Den Donovan's circle. He'd met the man, talked to the man, joked with him. He was in close, and already Donovan was trusting him.
Fullerton went back inside his apartment. He walked along a white-painted corridor to his study with its floor-to-ceiling windows and sat down in front of his computer. He switched on the machine and flexed his fingers like a concert pianist preparing to perform. While the machine booted up he sipped at his champagne.
He logged on to the Safe Web site and then switched through to the website that Hathaway had assigned to him three years earlier. Hathaway had warned Fullerton about using his own computer, but Fullerton had grown tired of using internet cafes to file his reports. He'd made the decision to use his own machine, though he religiously deleted all incriminating files after each session. Fullerton grinned and started typing.
Gregg Hathaway's office was just five miles away from Jamie Fullerton's penthouse apartment, in the hi-tech cream and green headquarters of Mi 6, the Secret Intelligence Service, at Vauxhall Bridge on the south bank of the Thames. Unlike Fullerton, Hathaway didn't have a river view his office was four floors underground. Hathaway preferred to be underground. A view was a distraction that he could do without.
Hathaway sat back in his chair as he scrolled through Fullerton's report with a growing feeling of excitement. Over the years Fullerton had supplied him with increasingly useful intelligence which had helped put more than a dozen top London criminals behind bars, and Hathaway had recommended that Fullerton be promoted to sergeant. What Hathaway read on his screen now was pure gold, though, and it made his pulse race. Dennis Donovan was back in the UK. And was involved with Carlos Rodriguez. Rodriguez was a name that Hathaway was familiar with, a
