The Double Eagle (18 page)
Authors: James Twining
KENT, ENGLAND
8:05
A.M.
I
t took them two hours to drive down to the airstrip. The black taxi made its way incongruously, once they had left the motorway, down narrow roads and steep country lanes, its domed roof just visible over the top of the thick hedgerows, until they reached the plane that was waiting for them at one end of a large sloping field deep in the Kent countryside.
Obtaining it had required a quick change of plan by the ever-helpful Max since, with the police looking for Tom, the chartered flight that Jennifer had been booked on was now out of the question. Good old Uncle Sam clearly did have very long arms, thought Jennifer proudly.
“Climb on board,” she said to Tom as they approached the plane. “I’m going to make that call.”
Nodding, Tom hauled himself through the hatch as Jennifer reached for her phone. It was just after three
A.M
. in D.C., but she figured Corbett would want to be woken for this. Her stomach tightened the second he picked up. “It’s me, sir.”
“Browne? What time is it?”
“About eight
A.M
. London time, sir. I’m sorry to have woken you.”
“No, that’s fine.” She heard a yawn from the other end. “How did it go last night? Everything okay?”
“No sir, everything’s not okay.”
“What happened?” The tiredness evaporated almost immediately from his voice.
“Renwick’s dead.”
“Dead?” She could picture Corbett jumping to his feet as he said this, his eyes flashing.
“Murdered. Shot. I saw it.”
“Slow down. What happened.”
She took a breath, tried to steady herself. When she spoke it was in calm, deliberate sentences.
“Kirk was there as planned. We had dinner and then he left. I stayed to talk the case over with Renwick. Then three men broke in. They attacked us, shot Renwick and knocked me out. When I came round the coin was gone.”
“It was
what
?” Now she saw him sinking onto the bed, his fist clenching and then relaxing against his side. There was a pause. “Shit. Young will have a heart attack when he hears this.”
“I’ll get it back, sir.”
“Do you think they were there for the coin or was it coincidence?”
“No coincidence. Renwick had millions of dollars of paintings hanging on his walls. They didn’t touch them. They were in and out. And they didn’t just shoot Renwick, they practically executed him. Because he knew who’d sent them.”
“But how did they know the coin was there?”
“Max is checking Renwick’s phone records for me. It looks like he made a few calls after Kirk left.”
“So we got a dead civilian and a missing eight-million-dollar coin?”
“The Brits think Kirk killed Renwick and tried to arrest him for it this morning. I had him under surveillance all night and there was no way he was involved. He was set up. His prints were deliberately left at the scene while mine were wiped.”
“What are you saying?”
“Sir, I think we may be chasing the wrong guy. I can read people and my gut tells me he knew nothing about Fort Knox and nothing about the coins until I told him.”
“So what are you suggesting? We just let him walk away?”
“He refused to strike a deal yesterday but now we’re his only alibi and he’s got no choice. He’s agreed to help if we put the cops here straight. I want to take him to Paris with me to see Van Simson. He knows the game better than anyone and he knows the territory over there, too. It makes sense to use him while we can.”
“I’m going to have to talk to Green and Young about this. It’s too big a call for me.”
“Fine, just let me take him with me now. If it comes back a no, we can decide what to do with him then. But the more time we lose, the colder the trail.”
“You’re way out on a limb here, Browne, you know that, don’t you? There’s no way you can be a hundred percent sure that Kirk’s not involved. It’s a big risk.”
“You’d take it…sir.”
Corbett gave a short laugh.
“You know what? I probably would.”
DEAUVILLE, COAST OF NORTHERN FRANCE
11:40
A.M.
T
he small Cessna Skylane bounced its way across the English Channel’s shifting wind currents like a stone skipping across a pond. Her eyes shut to steady her stomach, Jennifer barely said a word from the moment she stepped on board. But it didn’t seem to matter because Tom had not been particularly talkative, staring silently out the window instead.
Several hours later, the plane touched down at Deauville airport, where a dark green Renault Mégane was waiting for them, together with a few changes of clothing for Tom and a new American passport in the name of William Travis, that he accepted with a grudging nod of respect at Max’s obvious efficiency.
“So what was your boss’s verdict, Agent Browne?” asked Tom, as they turned onto the A13 and headed for Paris.
“You know, if we’re going to be working together, perhaps we should try first names.”
Tom shrugged.
“Sure, Jen.”
“Jennifer, if you don’t mind,” she said curtly. First names was one thing. “Jen” suggested a degree of familiarity they weren’t close to having. Tom made a dismissive noise and turned away. Jennifer shook her head ruefully. This was clearly going to be a long journey. “He said that he’d think about it.”
“Well, that fills me with confidence.”
They were both quiet and the wheels thumped rhythmically over the joints in the tarmac like a needle reaching the end of a record. The flat countryside slid by, huge rectangular sheets of gold and bronze that the combine harvesters had yet to dent. After a while, Jennifer looked over at him.
“So you used to be in the CIA?”
She accelerated into the outside lane as she spoke, and noticed Tom clutching the grab handle over the door. She had insisted on driving, knowing that the familiar feel of the pedals under her feet and the wheel in her hands would help her unwind after the flight. Tom stared out the window as he answered.
“Yeah.”
“Operation Centaur?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what happened?”
“It’s a two-hour drive to Paris,” Tom snapped. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather talk about something else.”
“Fine.” Jennifer dropped a gear and sped past a huge truck, its plastic sides whipping the air, before changing up again, the car lurching forward as she stamped the accelerator down to the floor. She sensed Tom flinching next to her and smiled. She could see he was not used to being a passenger, but then neither was she.
Another ten minutes went by, until it was Tom’s turn to break the silence, his question betraying the thought that had clearly been circling through his head.
“How do you know about Centaur?”
“Oh, so you want to talk about it now?” Tom glared at her. “You dropped a hair in New York when you stole that egg.” She explained. “We got a DNA match and the system triggered an alert to the NSA. They briefed us about it. That’s how we made the connection between you and the Fort Knox job.”
“What else did they say?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Did they tell you about me? About what happened?”
“They said you went off the reservation.”
“Christ!” Tom started laughing. “John fucking Piper.”
“How did…?” Jennifer asked in surprise.
“Because only he would have said that.” He laughed again. “So John Piper’s managed to crawl his way out of the Agency into the NSA now, has he? I bet he’s terrified this whole Centaur thing will come out and bite him in the ass.”
“Like us, he just wants the coins back.”
“Let me tell you something about John Piper. All he’s ever wanted is what’s good for John Piper. What did he say about me?”
“That you were a good agent who went bad. Their best agent. He said you killed someone.”
“Did he now?” Tom’s voice was hard, his eyes narrowed.
“Did you?” Jennifer asked, briefly flicking her eyes away from the road.
“Yes.” He nodded slowly. “But he would have killed me if I hadn’t.”
“That’s original,” she sniffed dismissively.
“They’d decided to shut Centaur down.”
“Who’s they?”
“Piper and his CIA buddies. They asked me to do one last job—break into a Swiss biotech company, steal some files, torch the place, and then put a bullet in the chief scientist’s head so that he couldn’t re-create the research. I didn’t do wet work—they had other people for that—so I refused. They threatened to bring me up on charges. You know, refusing to obey a superior officer, that sort of crap. When I told them I was leaving they sent my handler to retire me. That’s what they call it, by the way. I just did what I had to do to stay alive.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” She shrugged disbelievingly, although she had to admit the little she’d seen of John Piper lent some credibility to Tom’s story, however much she mistrusted him.
“Because by then they’d realized that if Centaur ever got out they’d all be in the firing line. I figure they asked us all to make a hit to see how far they could control us. Maybe even planned to use it as blackmail to make sure we all stayed quiet. I don’t know what happened to the others, but when Piper realized I wasn’t going to play ball he made his move. It’s how they work.”
“It’s how you want me to think they work,” she snorted.
“They don’t play by the normal rules. You get caught on the wrong side of them and they come down on you hard.”
“So what happened in Paris?”
Tom smiled.
“I cut a deal with the French.”
“What sort of deal?”
“I got something back for them that they’d lost and they helped me disappear.”
Jennifer glanced at Tom.
“And then you became a thief?”
“What did you expect me to do? You think that I was ever going to be able to hold down a regular nine-to-five sort of job? Work in an office? Push paper around?” A faint shadow of Tom’s face reflected in the glass as he smiled at the thought. “I didn’t choose this life. The Agency left me swinging in the wind. I lost everything I had. In the end I had no choice.”
“But you enjoyed it, didn’t you?” she asked in an accusing tone.
“Why, was that wrong of me? Stealing was what I was good at, what I was trained to do. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Still do, I guess. The planning, the job, the escape. After a while, the adrenaline’s addictive. I stopped needing the money years ago.”
“So what made you decide to stop?” she asked skeptically, knowing that her tone would reveal that she still thought it highly unlikely he actually had.
He shook his head.
The reflections of white chevrons, painted onto the road to indicate how close cars could safely drive behind each other, strobed rhythmically across the front of Tom’s sunglasses.
“No one thing. My father’s funeral, maybe. I guess sometimes things come together in your head and you just know it’s time.”
1:37
P.M.
T
hey drove on in silence, tower blocks and squat warehouses joining the land to the sky in a gray mist of steel and concrete as they reached the grimy underbelly of Paris, the glittering new soccer stadium in St. Denis an unexpected break in the dark suburban fog.
“What do you know about Darius van Simson?”
“Only what Harry told us last night,” Tom replied. “About him having bought the Double Eagle that came up at auction. The name’s familiar, though. I think I read about him somewhere.”
“You probably did,” said Jennifer. “He turns up in the Fortune 500 every year. They think he’ll break the top fifty this time.”
“Why do you want to go and see him?”
“Until a few weeks ago as far as anyone knew there were only three Double Eagles in existence—Van Simson’s and the two in the Smithsonian. Now, with the theft of the five secret Fort Knox coins, it seems there are eight. Van Simson shouldn’t know that yet. I want to see how he reacts when I tell him that his coin might not be quite so unique as he thought it was when he bought it.”
“You think he might be involved?”
“He’s certainly rich enough to have put the job together. And he’s a big player in the coin market as well as one of Harry’s biggest clients. I think it’s possible he may know something about what’s going on, yes.
“Where did he make his money?”
“Real estate. You know, office buildings, shopping malls, residential developments, that sort of thing. He seems to have a gift for buying cheap and then miraculously getting a road moved, or planning permission to add an extra three floors.”
“So he’s smart?”
“Smart and if you believe the stories, brutal.” Jennifer checked her mirror as she carved smoothly across two lanes to get out from behind another truck. Tom gripped the grab handle over his head.
“What stories?”
“They say he got his first break when he bought a retirement home and then forced all the residents to leave so he could knock it down and build something else. When they refused, he set fire to it. All told, thirteen people died. Of course, there was nothing to link him to it, but he got his apartment block.”
“You see, that’s the problem with you people. Always so willing to think the worst of everyone. Have you any idea how easy it is for these rumors to start?”
“Sure,” she cut in. “And sometimes those rumors start for a reason. Most of the time, there’s no smoke without fire.”
Tom shook his head.
“What do you know about it? I’ll bet you’ve never even had a parking ticket.”
Just for a moment Jennifer contemplated revealing how wrong he was. But the thought vanished almost as quickly as it had occurred to her. Much better to keep things strictly professional between them.
“Tell me about this Fort Knox job, then,” Tom asked eventually. “What do you think happened?”
Taking a deep breath, Jennifer briefed Tom on her investigation so far. The murder of the Italian priest Ranieri, the discovery of the coin, the FBI’s theory about the breakin and Short’s involvement and subsequent murder. Tom listened intently, especially to the technical details of how the job had actually been pulled.
“They were pros, that’s for sure.” Tom nodded slowly when she had finished. “Looks like they had every angle covered.”
“You do think it’s possible, then? Breaking into Fort Knox in the way I’ve described?”
“If they had a guy on the inside, then it’s possible, sure.” Tom shrugged. “All it takes is one person to disable a security system or not check something that they should and you leave yourself wide open.”
“And the computer virus? You ever see that before?”
“More and more. The world’s moving from keys to computers. A virus like that is just a very sophisticated lock pick. That was the easy part. It was getting the container inside that took some real planning.”
“Yeah.” She nodded thoughtfully. “I guess so.”
“You don’t sound convinced,” Tom said with a smile. “What’s the matter? You don’t believe your own theory?”
“No, it’s not that, it’s just…well, it’s probably nothing, really, but something’s been bothering me the last couple of days. Something I didn’t really think about at the time.”
“What?” Curiosity in Tom’s voice now.
“You don’t think that discovering the murder and finding the container so quickly was all a bit…convenient? All a bit easy.”
Tom shrugged.
“Just because everything points to the same thing doesn’t necessarily make it convenient. It could just make it consistent.”
“Maybe.” She paused before continuing. “But then what I can’t figure out is why go to all the trouble of faking a suicide when you’ve already smashed the guy’s skull to pieces? I mean, an autopsy is standard for all suicides. Someone was bound to pick it up sooner or later.”
“Unless they figured that no one would realize the coins were gone until years later and so never link the two?”
“Sure, but it’s not just the suicide. If you really wanted to destroy a vital piece of evidence, would you throw it onto a fire at the back of the house of the person you’d just murdered?”
“Maybe they got disturbed. Maybe it was a mistake.”
“No, these people don’t make mistakes. The job was perfectly planned from beginning to end. You said so yourself.”
“Well, then.” Tom clasped his hands together. “The only other explanation is that the reason they left the container there is the same reason they made it obvious that it was a faked suicide.”
“Which was?” Jennifer asked, already knowing in her own heart what Tom’s answer would be and wishing that she had another.
“So someone like you would find it.”
