‘Who?’ De Luca frowned.
‘The FBI agent you had killed in Vegas.’
‘What FBI agent?’
‘Don’t lie to me,’ Tom shouted, his wrists straining against the handcuffs.
‘Cavalli was going to sing, so I clipped his wings,’ De Luca said in a low, controlled voice. ‘Ricci and Argento- that’s just business between Moretti and me. But I had nothing to do with killing any FBI agent. I’ve never even heard of her.’
‘She was closing in on the Delian League, so you had her taken out,’ Tom insisted.
‘Is that what this is about? Is that why you’re here?’ De Luca picked up the FBI file and glanced at its monogrammed cover with a puzzled shrug. ‘Well, then maybe somebody did us a favour. Either way, I never ordered the hit.’
‘Well, somebody in the League did,’ Tom insisted. ‘And I’ll take you all down to find them, if I have to.’
There was a pause. De Luca blew out the sides of his cheeks, clearly mulling something over. Then, with a shrug, he nodded.
‘Yes. I expect you probably would.’
Tom felt the needle before he saw it, a sharp stab of pain in his neck where the guard had stepped forward and pulled the trigger on an injection gun. Allegra was next, her head slumping forward as he felt the room begin to spin and darken. The last thing he was aware of was De Luca’s voice, deepening and slowing as if being played back at half speed.
‘Do give my best to your mother.’
FORTY-EIGHT
Sotheby’s auction rooms, Quai du Mont Blanc, Geneva 19th March -1.32 p.m.
Short, perhaps only four feet high, she had braided hair that fell across her forehead and down her neck. Dressed in a simple tunic that hung from her body in smooth folds, a hunting strap ran down from her shoulder and across her breasts, pulling the material tight against their firm slope. Gazing straight ahead, she wore a slight smile, lips parted as if she was about to speak. Her arms were cut off at the elbows.
‘Statue of the goddess Artemis; fourth century BC,’ Archie murmured to himself as he looked down from the marble sculpture to the auction catalogue and scanned through the entry again. ‘Believed to be from a settlement near Foggi. Private Syrian collection.’
This last detail made Archie smile. Even if Tom hadn’t asked him to investigate this lot, the fact that it had supposedly come from a Syrian family would have made him suspicious anyway. The simple truth was that, while the contents of most major European and American collections were well documented, little, if anything, was known about the majority of Middle Eastern and Asian private collections. Anyone trying to disguise the fact that an artefact was looted, therefore, was far more likely to tie it back to some obscure family collection where they could convincingly claim it had been languishing for the last eighty years, than to risk the awkward questions that a European provenance might trigger.
He stepped back and pretended to study some of the other lots, ignoring the call on his phone which he guessed, from the New York prefix, was the lawyer they’d met at Senator Duval’s funeral still trying to arrange a meeting with Tom. Next time, he’d know better than to hand out his card so readily, he thought to himself with a pained sigh.
Looking up, he caught sight of Dominique de Lecourt standing near the entrance. Seeing her now, blonde hair cascading on to her delicate shoulders, it struck him that her pale, oval face mirrored something of the goddess Artemis’s cold, sculpted and remote beauty. There was a parallel too, between the statue’s simple tunic and her tailored linen dress, and perhaps even an echo of the carved hunting strap in the rearing stallion that he knew Dominique had had tattooed on her shoulder when younger. But any resemblance was only a fleeting one, the illusion shattered by her Ducati biker jacket and the way her blue eyes glittered with a wild freedom that the marble sculpture would never taste.
She was too young for him, although that hadn’t stopped him thinking about what might have been from time to time. Still only twenty-five, in fact. Not that her age had prevented her from successfully running Tom’s antiques business, having helped him transfer it from Geneva to London after his father died. This was her first time back here since then, and he could tell she was finding it difficult, however much she was trying to hide it.
She had been close to Tom’s father-far closer, in fact, than Tom. The way she told the story, he had saved her from herself, offering her a job rather than calling the cops when he’d caught her trying to steal his wallet. With it had come a chance to break free from the spiralling cycle of casual drugs and petty crime that a childhood spent being tossed between foster homes had been steering her towards; a chance she’d grabbed with both hands. All of which made what they were about to do that much more ironic.
He nodded at her as Earl Faulks turned to leave the room, leaning heavily on his umbrella. Even if the auctioneer hadn’t accepted the carefully folded five-hundred-euro note to finger him as the lot’s seller, Archie would have guessed it was him. It wasn’t just that he had returned four times during the viewing period that had marked him out, but the questioning look he had given anyone who had strayed too close to the statue. It rather reminded Archie of a father weighing up a potential boyfriend’s suitability to take their teenage daughter out on a date.
Seeing Archie’s signal, Dominique set off, bumping into Faulks heavily as they crossed.
‘
‘That’s quite all right,’ Faulks snapped, a cold smile flickering across his face before, with a curt nod, he limped on.
‘Go,’ she whispered as she walked past Archie, their hands briefly touching as she handed him Faulks’s PDA.
Turning to face the wall, Archie deftly popped off the rear cover, removed the battery and then slipped out the SIM card. Sliding it into a reader connected to an Asus micro laptop, he scanned its contents, the software quickly identifying the IMSI number, before girding itself to decrypt its Ki code.
Archie glanced up at Dominique, who had moved back towards the entrance and was signalling at him to hurry. Archie gave a grim nod, his heart racing, but the programme was still churning as it tried to break the 128- bit encryption, numbers scrolling frantically across the screen.
He looked up again, and cursed when he saw that she was now mouthing that Faulks was leaving. Damn! He’d counted on him staying for the auction itself, although he knew that some dealers preferred not to attend their own sales in case they jinxed them. He looked back down at the computer. Still nothing. Dominique was looking desperate now. Back to the screen again.
Done.
Snatching the SIM card out of the reader, he hurried to the door, fumbling as he slid it back into Faulks’s phone and fitted the battery and then the cover. He crossed Dominique, their hands briefly touching again as slipped her the micro-computer, leaving her the final task of programming a new card.
‘He’s outside,’ she breathed.
Archie sprinted into the hall, down the stairs and through the main entrance. Faulks was settling back in the rear seat of a silver Bentley, his chauffeur already at the wheel and turning the ignition key.
‘Excuse me, mate,’ Archie panted, rapping sharply on the window.
The window sank and Faulks, sitting forward on his seat, fixed him with a suspicious look.
‘Can I help you?’
‘You dropped this.’
Faulks looked at the phone, patted his breast pockets, then glanced up at Archie.
‘Thank you,’ he said, his wary look fading into a grateful smile. Taking it with a nod, he sat back, the window smoothly sealing itself shut.
As Faulks’s car accelerated away, Dominique appeared at Archie’s shoulder.
‘All sorted?’ he puffed.
‘We’ve got him.’ She nodded, handing him the newly cloned phone.
