The Gilded Seal

‘And worst case?’ Ritchie asked with a glum frown.

‘If you don’t hear from them in the next twelve months, then chances are it’s been taken as collateral for a drugs or arms deal. It’ll take seven years for it to work its way through the system to a point where someone will be willing to make contact again. The timings run like clockwork. But I don’t think that’s what’s happened here.’

‘You’re just making this up,’ Clarke snorted with a dismissive wave of his hand. ‘You don’t know anything about this job or who pulled it.’

Tom shrugged.

‘Four man team, right?’

‘Maybe.’ Clarke gave an uncertain nod.

‘I’d guess two on the inside and two on the outside – a lookout and a driver. The getaway car was probably stolen last night. Something small and fast. Most likely white or red so it wouldn’t stand out.’

‘A white VW,’ Ritchie confirmed, his obvious surprise giving way to an irritated frown as he turned to Clarke. ‘I thought we’d agreed not to release any details yet?’

‘We haven’t,’ Clarke spluttered.

‘I know because it’s his usual MO,’ Tom reassured him.

‘Whose?’

‘His name is Ludovic Royal,’ Tom explained. He’s known in the business as Milo. French, although he would argue he’s Corsican. Turned to art theft after five years in the Foreign Legion and another ten fighting in West Africa for whoever could afford him. He’s ruthless and he’s one of the best.’

‘Why’s he called Milo?’

‘Back when he first got started a client, some Syrian dealer, stiffed him on a deal. Milo hacked both the guy’s arms off, one at the elbow, the other at the shoulder, and left him to bleed to death. When the photos leaked to the local press in Damascus they dubbed it the Venus de Milo killing. The name stuck.’

‘And that’s who you think did this?’ Ritchie sounded sceptical.

‘It’s too early to say,’ Clarke intervened.

‘Have you found the gambling chip yet?’ Tom asked. ‘It’s a small mother-of-pearl disc about this big, with the letter M inlaid in ebony.’

Clarke glared furiously at Dorling. ‘What else have you told him?’

‘Nothing,’ Dorling insisted.

‘I don’t care who’s told who what,’ Ritchie said firmly. ‘I just want to know what it means.’

‘Milo likes to autograph his scores,’ Tom explained. ‘It lets the rest of us know how good he is.’

‘The gambling chip is his symbol,’ Dorling confirmed. ‘They’re pretty common in the art underworld,’ he paused, deliberately avoiding Tom’s gaze. ‘Tom’s was a black cat, you know, like the cartoon character. That’s why they used to call him Felix.’

Ritchie nodded slowly, as if this last piece of information had somehow confirmed a decision that had been forming in his mind.

‘What do you know about the painting?’ he asked.

‘I know it’s small, about nineteen inches long and fifteen wide, so it won’t be hard to smuggle out of the country,’ Tom began. ‘I know it was painted between 1500 and 1510 and that a total of eleven copies were produced by da Vinci’s workshop. Yours was the original.’

‘What about its subject matter?’ Ritchie pressed.

‘Who cares?’ Clarke huffed impatiently.

‘It shows the Madonna pulling the infant Jesus away from a yarnwinder, a wooden tool used for winding wool,’ Tom replied, ignoring him. ‘It’s meant to symbolise the cross and the fact that even her love cannot save him from the Passion.’

‘Some of the copies even have a small cross bar on the yarnwinder to make the reference to the crucifixion more explicit,’ Ritchie confirmed with a nod. Then he paused, as if he couldn’t quite bring himself to continue.

‘Is there something else?’ Tom ventured.

‘You tell me,’ Ritchie said with a shrug, pointing to his right.

The forensic team had shifted to one side and Tom could now see the panelled wall where the painting had hung between two other works. But instead of an empty space, something seemed to have been fixed there. Something small and black.

‘They found the gambling chip you described in its mouth,’ Ritchie explained, earning himself a reproachful glare from Clarke.

‘In what’s mouth?’ Tom breathed.

He stepped closer, his heart beating apprehensively as the shape slowly came into focus.

He could see a head, legs and a long black tail. He could see a small pink tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth. He could see trails of dried blood where it had been nailed to the wall and a pool of sticky dark liquid on the top of the display case beneath it rendered a translucent pink by the light shining through the glass.

It was a cat. A crucified cat.

He glanced sharply at Dorling who gave him a telling nod.

‘I told you he’d left you something, Felix.’

FOUR

Claremont Riding Academy, New York

18th April – 7.55 a.m.

As a precaution against being seen in Hudson’s company, Cole had allowed five minutes to elapse before following the older man down the ramp and out of the stables, leaving Jennifer and Green standing in an awkward silence.

‘Any questions?’ Green asked as Cole’s footsteps faded away, only to be replaced by the muffled thump of hooves from the floor below.

‘What about the case I’m on now? We’ve got a warehouse under surveillance over in New Jersey. I’m due on the next shift.’

‘It’s all taken care of,’ Green said firmly. ‘I explained the situation to Dawkins. He understands this takes priority.’

Although Jennifer felt bad about walking away from her team halfway through, she couldn’t deny that part of her was relieved. After the month she’d just had, the prospect of another two weeks of sleepless nights and weak coffee was not one she had been particularly looking forward to.

‘Anything else?’ Green asked.

‘Just one thing…’ Jennifer hesitated, not entirely sure how she should phrase this. ‘If you don’t mind my asking, sir, what’s this got to do with you?’

Green nodded, having clearly been expecting this. After all, it usually took a bit more than a suspect painting to get the Director of the FBI personally involved in a case, let alone wading through horse shit at 7 a.m. to a briefing.

‘Let’s head back down,’ he suggested. ‘I need to get out to LaGuardia for nine.’

She followed him out of the stall and back down the main aisle. A hosepipe had been left running, the end twitching nervously as water spilled across the floor, a ridge of straw and dirt forming at the edges of its wash. She stepped over it carefully, not wanting to ruin her shoes any more than they already had been.

‘Hudson and I read law together at Yale,’ Green explained as they picked their way down the ramp to the ground floor, his men jogging ahead to ensure the route was secure. ‘Or rather I read law and he played polo. We’ve stayed in touch ever since.’

‘I see.’ She fought off the dismayed look that had momentarily threatened to engulf her face. Great. Screw up and she’d carry the can. Get a result and Green would step in to look good in front of his old college buddy. Either way, she couldn’t win. In fact the best she could hope for was to get this over with as quickly as possible. ‘Did he call you?’

‘As soon as he found out about the second Gauguin,’ Green confirmed, pausing under the building’s arched entrance. ‘He’s convinced that his client’s version is genuine, of course. But then Cole’s client is the one with the certificate of authenticity.’

‘Can’t they just cancel the sale and sort it out between them?’

‘You want the short answer or the long one?’

‘Either will do.’

‘If they pull the lots, people will start to ask questions. Questions they can’t answer until they can identify the fake.’

‘They could control the story if they wanted to.’

‘Perhaps. But they’ve got enough on their hands fighting off all these Holocaust claims without adding to their problems. And after the anti-trust case, neither of them can risk another big scandal. That was the long answer by the way.’

Jennifer nodded. Both firms stood accused by descendants of Holocaust victims of auctioning off art works stolen from their families by the Nazis. Nothing had been proved, but news of them both selling the same painting would hardly help restore their already battered reputations.

‘So I’m guessing you want this kept low key.’

‘Until we know what we’re dealing with.’ Green wagged his finger in agreement. ‘Ask around. See what you can find out without making too many waves. Both Cole and Hudson agree that this isn’t an isolated incident. If there’s an art forgery ring here in New York, we’d all like to know about it. I don’t want to scare anyone off until we’ve got something solid.’

‘One more question, sir,’ Jennifer said as Green made to step out on to the street where one of his flunkies was hovering with an umbrella, ready to escort him to the limousine’s open door. ‘Why me?’

The question had been gnawing away at her all morning. After all, it had been nearly a year since she had last spoken to Green, and even then it had been the briefest of conversations. She knew she should feel flattered that he had selected her for this, but she had been in the Bureau long enough to suspect an ulterior motive.

‘Because you’re good. Because you deserve it.’

‘The Bureau’s full of good agents.’

Green turned to face her, his eyes meeting hers and steadily holding her gaze. She had the sudden feeling that he was doing this deliberately, as if to try and convince her of his sincerity.

‘The press office got called up by some bullshit journalist a few days ago,’ Green began. ‘Leigh Lewis. Writes for one of the check-out rags – American Voice. You know it?’

‘No,’ said Jennifer, unsure where this was leading.

‘That figures,’ he sniffed. ‘Sometimes I wonder if anyone actually reads that shit. Anyway, he must have some good sources, because he was asking about the Double Eagle case.’

Jennifer’s eyes widened in surprise. As far as she knew, that case was still classified. Highly classified. And for good reason. At its heart was the cover-up of an old CIA industrial espionage operation and a theft from Fort Knox that led all the way to the White House. No wonder Green was being cagey.

‘What did he know?’

‘Not much. But he had a name.’

‘Mine?’ she guessed.

Green nodded.

‘Obviously we didn’t comment, but, given the extreme sensitivity of that investigation and your previous history…’

He didn’t have to complete the sentence for her to know what he was referring to. A few years back, while on a DEA-led raid, she’d accidentally shot and killed a fellow officer, her one-time instructor from Quantico. During the inquiry it came out that they’d been seeing each other. It was a real mess. Though she’d been cleared of any wrongdoing, that hadn’t stopped the press speculation and the Bureau gossips. It certainly hadn’t stopped her being shipped out to the Atlanta field office until, in their words, things had ‘blown over’, when in reality they had just wanted her out of the way.

‘You don’t think Lewis is going to drop the story?’

‘We’re doing what we can behind the scenes. But these things take time. That’s why, when Hudson called, I thought of you. Given the circumstances it seemed like a good fit.’

‘I don’t follow,’ she said with a frown. ‘What circumstances?’

‘This case needs to be run in stealth mode. That means you’ll be flying way beneath Lewis’s radar for a few months. It’s perfect,’ he exclaimed, clearly pleased with himself for devising such a creative solution.

Jennifer’s heart sank. Far from singling her out as she’d somewhat vainly assumed, all Green wanted was to banish her to the nursery slopes where she couldn’t do any damage. Suddenly two weeks of surveillance didn’t look quite the bum deal she’d thought.

‘Am I being suspended?

‘Of course not,’ he spluttered, a little too forcefully for Jennifer’s liking. ‘I wouldn’t have put you on this case if I didn’t think it was important and that you could do a good job. This is an opportunity, not a punishment. But until we find out what Lewis knows and where he’s getting it from, I don’t want you to take any risks. You know the potential embarrassment to the Bureau and to the Administration if the Double Eagle story gets out. We’ll all be in the firing line. This is for your own protection.’

Somehow, Jennifer seriously doubted that. There was a rumour that Green, armed with his new wife’s money, was thinking of running for office. A tilt at the Senate, some even said. The only protection he was worried about was his own.

FIVE

Apsley House, London

18th April – 5.13 p.m.

The hall was dark and still. Several marble busts, once milky white and now curdled a creamy yellow by age, flanked its square perimeter and glared unblinkingly into nothingness. On the walls, a series of sombre paintings. Archie glanced at each piece as he waited, fidgeting longingly with the cigarette packet and solid silver Dunhill lighter in his pocket, the sharp click of his heels amplified by the cloying silence.

‘Mr Connolly?’ A female voice suddenly rang out.

Archie swivelled round to see a short woman striding towards him purposefully, her lips shining in the gloom.

‘Yeah?’

‘Hannah Key.’ She thrust out her arm and grasped his hand firmly. ‘I’m the curator here.’

‘Nice to put a face to the voice,’ said Archie.

She was much younger and prettier than he had guessed from their phone conversation a few days ago, with a pale oval face and large, inky eyes that reminded him of a Vermeer painting. Her long black hair was pulled back into a ponytail that was fixed in place with an elastic band, suggesting she was more concerned with the immediate practicalities of keeping her hair out of her eyes than she was with looking good. This impression was further confirmed by her simple blue dress, complete lack of jewellery and makeup, and the unsightly chips in the pearl varnish along the edges of her nails. What struck Archie most though were her shoes, which were new, clearly expensive and a startling shade of emerald green. Perhaps, he speculated, these revealed a rather more impulsive and indulgent character than the severe and forbidding persona she projected at work.

Then again, Archie knew he wasn’t without his contradictions either. His accent, for example, straddled a broad social divide, occasionally hinting at a wholesome middle-class education but more often suggesting a rough apprenticeship amidst the traders who operated at the sharp end of the Bermondsey and Portobello antiques markets. And while he wore an elegant handmade suit and bright Hermès tie that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a Pall Mall club, his gold identity bracelet, square-shouldered physique and closely cropped blond hair suggested a journeyman boxer of some sort.

In a country that invested so much meaning in external markers of social class, he knew that people often struggled to reconcile these seemingly conflicting signs. Some even questioned whether this was, in fact, deliberate. Archie chose not to elaborate. He’d always found it paid to keep people guessing.

‘Not everyone who works in a museum is an antique,’ she remarked wryly, seemingly reading his thoughts. ‘Some of us even have a social life.’

‘Not many.’ Archie grinned. ‘At least not that I’ve seen over the years.’

‘Maybe things have changed since you got started?’

‘I’m forty-five. That’s thirty five years in the art game and counting,’ he said with a smile. ‘Everything’s changed since I got started.’

‘By art game you mean museum security?’

He paused before answering. Sometimes he had to remind himself that Tom and he were running a legitimate business. Museum security was certainly not how he would have described his years as a fence, although it was probably the best training he could ever have received for what he was doing now.

‘One way or another.’ He nodded. ‘Never been here before, though.’

‘So you said on the phone.’ She adopted a slightly disapproving tone.

‘Nice gaff. Perhaps you could show me round?’ he ventured. She wasn’t really his type, but there was no harm in chancing his hand.

‘Perhaps we should finish up here first,’ she replied curtly.

‘What’s worth seeing?’ She hadn’t said no. That was pretty much a green light as far as Archie was concerned.

‘Everything. But most people come for the paintings in the formal rooms on the first floor.’

‘Most people including your thieves?’

‘Thief, not thieves,’ she corrected him. ‘And no, he didn’t come for them. In fact that’s what’s most strange about this whole thing.’

She steered Archie over to a large rectangular room on the left side of the house that looked out on to a small walled garden.

‘This room contains some of the gifts bestowed on Wellington after Waterloo,’ she announced proudly. ‘The Waterloo Shield. His twelve Field Marshal batons. The Portuguese dinner service.’

She indicated the mahogany display cases that lined the walls, each brimming with porcelain, gold and silver and decorated, wherever space allowed, with swooping copperplate inscriptions extolling Wellington’s brilliance and the eternal gratitude of the piece’s donor.

Archie’s attention, however, was immediately drawn to the two-tier glass-sided cabinet positioned at the centre of the room. Dominating the space like a small boat, the lower level was filled with decorated plates while the upper level appeared to contain a twenty-foot-long scale model of an Egyptian temple complex, complete with gateways, seated figures, obelisks, three separate temple buildings and sixteen sets of matching sacred rams.

‘What’s that?’ It didn’t happen that often anymore, but he was impressed.

‘The Sèvres Egyptian dinner service,’ she explained. Archie noted how the cadence of her voice quickened whenever she spoke about any of the exhibits. ‘One of two sets made to commemorate Napoleon’s successful invasion of Egypt in 1798. Each plate shows a different archaeological site, while the centrepiece is made from biscuit porcelain and modelled on the temples of Luxor, Karnak, Dendera and Edfu. This particular example was a gift from the Emperor to the Empress Josephine after their divorce, although she rejected it. It was eventually gifted to Wellington by the newly restored King of France.’

‘And this is what your villain wanted? The centrepiece. Or part of it at least.’

‘Yes,’ she confirmed, her voice betraying her surprise. ‘How did you know…?’

‘This glass is new,’ Archie explained, pointing at the cracked varnish where an old pane had been removed and a new one inserted. ‘And someone has tried to pick the lock.’ He ran his finger across the small scratches at the edges of one of the cabinet’s brass locks.

‘Tried and failed. That’s why he smashed the glass.’

‘When was this?’

‘March thirtieth, so a couple of weeks ago now. One of the guards disturbed him before he could take anything. They chased him outside, but he had a car waiting.’

‘It don’t make no sense,’ Archie said with a frown, reasoning with himself as much as anyone. ‘The most he could have got away with would have been a couple of pieces. And what would they have been worth? A couple of grand, tops.’

‘Exactly. Any one of the swords or batons would have been worth a lot more.’

‘And been easier to flog,’ Archie added. ‘He certainly doesn’t sound like a pro.’

‘To be honest, I don’t care who he is,’ she retorted. ‘All I want to know is how we make sure nothing like this happens again.’

‘The bad news is you can’t,’ Archie said with a sigh. ‘Not for certain. But there are some things you can do to even the odds. Upgrade the locks, install security glass in all the cases, re-configure the patrol cycles, that sort of thing. Anything more will cost you. If you’re interested, I’ll pull something together laying the options out. Maybe we could run through them over dinner?’

‘Do you think there’s any chance he’ll try again?’ she persisted, ignoring his suggestion.

‘Normally I’d say no,’ Archie said with a shrug. ‘But this guy seems to be making it up as he goes along. It might be worth watching out for him, just in case.’

‘The problem is we don’t know what he looks like,’ she said. ‘The guard only saw the back of his head.’

‘What about the cameras outside?’

‘He had his head lowered in every picture. The police said he must have known where they were.’

Archie frowned. If this intruder had taken the trouble to scope out the cameras, then maybe he wasn’t quite the amateur he had assumed. Was he missing something?

‘This is the best shot we could come up with,’ she said, taking a manilla folder from a side table and removing a photograph of a man, his head dipped so that only a narrow crescent of the bottom half of his face could be seen. Archie studied it for a few seconds and then looked up, straining to keep his voice level and face impassive.

‘Mind if I hang on to this?’

‘Why?’ she asked, a curious edge to her voice. ‘You don’t recognise him, do you?’

‘No,’ Archie lied. ‘But you never know. Someone else might.’

SIX

Clerkenwell, London

18th April – 8.59 p.m.

Tom was finishing a call when Archie let himself in, the chatter of the refrigeration unit on a passing lorry gushing through the open door before draining away the instant it was shut behind him. Removing his coat, Archie tossed it over the back of one of the Georgian dining chairs arranged in the shop’s two large arched windows.

Tom had bought this building just over a year ago now, transferring the stock from his father’s antique business in Geneva after he’d died. As well as the dimly lit showroom area they were in now, the ground floor consisted of a large warehouse to the rear and an office that Tom and Archie shared as a base for their art recovery work. Tom himself lived on the top floor.

He killed the call and threw the phone down on the green baize card table he was sitting at, his right hand deftly manipulating a small mother-of-pearl casino chip through his slender fingers. Behind him, a grandfather clock lazily boomed the hour, triggering a sympathetic chorus of subtle chiming and gently pinging bells from the other clocks positioned around the room.

‘All right?’ Archie asked, leaning against the back of one of a pair of matching Chesterfield armchairs.

Tom caught a flash of cerise pink lining as Archie’s jacket fell open and smiled. Subtlety had never been Archie’s strongest point and even in a suit, a uniform Tom had rarely seen him out of, his forceful character seemed to find a way to flaunt itself. He had at least recently shed one of the two phones that he used to juggle from ear to ear like a commodities trader, although from the occasional involuntary twitch of his fingers, like a gunfighter stripped of his .45, Tom knew that he still missed the buzz of his old life.

‘Good. You?’

‘Not bad, not bad,’ Archie sniffed.

Tom nodded, struck by how, the better you knew someone, the less you often needed to say.

‘Dominique in?’ Archie glanced hopefully towards the rear.

‘Not seen her.’ Tom shrugged. ‘Why, are you going to ask her out?’

‘What are you talking about?’ Archie laughed the question away.

‘You know exactly what I’m talking about. What are you waiting for?’

‘Leave it out, will you?’ Archie snorted.

‘If you don’t make your move, someone else will.’

‘If I wanted to make a move, I would have done,’ Archie insisted.

‘Well, it’s probably just as well,’ Tom sniffed, his eyes twinkling at Archie’s discomfort. ‘She’d only have said no. Better to avoid the rejection.’