The Gilded Seal (15 page)
shit. Four fucking pages.” He began to quote from the paper
again, nailing her with an indignant look every few words.
“
Agent Browne has been involved in a number of high-profile
incidents since joining the Bureau. These include the fatal
shooting of fellow agent and lover Greg Durand on an ill-
fated DEA-led raid, and the imprisonment of a corrupt agent
during a top-secret investigation into a daring theft from
Fort Knox.”
“Sir, I . . .” She allowed her voice to tail off. There was no
sense in trying to reason with him. Not yet, at least. Not until
he’d cooled off.
“Oh look, there’s a picture of me,” he observed in mock
excitement. “That’s nice. Something to cut out and stick on
the refrigerator.”
He pointed at a photo of himself on page three. It had to be
at least fifteen years out of date, but Jennifer suspected it was
still the one he insisted be included on the Bureau’s website
and in all their publicity material.
He slumped on to the sofa with a sigh, throwing the paper
down on the coffee table in frustration. Jennifer allowed a
few seconds to pass before attempting the explanation that
she sensed he was now ready to hear.
“It was an accident,” she began. “Dumb luck, really. I was
on my way to interview someone. An attorney who’d been in
a fi ght with Razi a few weeks ago. But when I showed up he
was dead.”
“Yeah, I saw the bulletin. Triple homicide. No suspects.”
“Lewis was outside, sniffing around for a story. He saw me
and started asking questions. About Greg and the shooting.
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
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About my private life. I pushed past him to get inside. He
tripped and fell. That’s all there is to it.”
“That’s all there ever is to it,” Green growled. “That’s why
guys like Lewis are radioactive. They poison everything they
touch.”
“I never meant . . .”
“I know, I know.” He waved his hand at her with a sigh.
“But out there, they just see the headlines and a picture of
Lewis flat on his ass. They just see what they want to see.” A
pause. “Go and get dressed. Then we’ll try and fi gure some-
thing out.”
Five minutes later, Jennifer reappeared. From the slightly
puzzled expression on Green’s face, she guessed that he had
had a quick look around the sitting room and found himself
struggling to reconcile the orderly person he knew from work
with the unstructured chaos of her apartment—pairs of shoes
kicked off in the far corner, books spilling off the end of the
bookcase, clothes peeking out from behind the sofa cushions.
The truth was that, while at home, she found a certain com-
fort in letting things slide a little. It was her own crude way of
delineating the two parts of her life which so often threat-
ened to merge into one.
“Can I get you a coffee?” she volunteered.
“You got whole milk?” he asked hopefully. “I only get
skim at home now.”
“Two percent any good?” she offered, the mournful ex-
pression on Green’s face giving her a sudden insight into the
guerrilla war he was seemingly engaged in with his new wife
over low-fat food and regular exercise.
“Three sugars,” he added eagerly as he perched himself on
a stool on the other side of the breakfast bar, his mood seem-
ingly lifted by this impending act of defiance. “So what’s the
story with the attorney?”
Jennifer quickly recounted the circumstances surrounding
Hammon’s murder as she boiled the water and measured
three spoons of coffee into the cafetière.
“You think Razi’s involved?”
“I don’t know,” she sighed. “He knew Hammon. Broke his
arm in a fight a few months ago. And his name was vaguely
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linked to a Cuban smuggling scam. But so far his story
checks out; he has an alibi for this afternoon and everyone I
spoke to said he was a stand- up guy. Then again, he carries a
gun, so maybe they were too scared to say anything different.”
“Licensed?”
“Yeah. He travels a lot, mainly buying in the States and
Europe and selling in the Far East.”
“And how did he know Hammon?”
“Apparently Hammon represented a number of interna-
tional buyers. The sort of buyers who like to keep their name
out of the gossip columns and their business well beyond the
reach of the IRS. Razi was one of the dealers he bought from
on their behalf.”
“There must have been more to it than that. It can’t be a
coincidence that they both own paintings with identical twins,
and that both twins are being auctioned.”
“Or that the same Japanese company is selling them.” She
pressed the plunger down and poured the coffee out. “Ta-
kano Holdings.”
“Takano? Why do I know that name?” He frowned as he
concentrated on levering three heaped teaspoons of sugar
into his cup and topping it up with milk.
“It’s a privately owned Japanese trading house with opera-
tions in mining, energy, banking, electronics and construc-
tion. But there’s been some talk that it’s a front for the Takeshi
Yakuza family.”
“Takeshi? Wasn’t he the guy the Triads poisoned?” he
asked, stirring furiously.
“They contaminated his food with some sort of radioac-
tive spray,” she confirmed. “He nearly died. Since then, no
one’s seen him. He refuses to leave his apartment.”
“And he’s definitely behind Takano Holdings?”
“There’s no proof. Just rumors.”
“Well, either way, it would be good to run some forensic
tests on the paintings, so we can work out exactly who’s be-
ing ripped off here.”
“We can ask. But so far Takano refuse even to say where
or when they bought them. Maybe they don’t want to have to
explain where the money came from.”
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
1 0 3
“Where are the paintings now?”
“Christie’s is holding them in Paris until the sale.”
“Okay.” Green took a long, grateful swig of coffee. “Good
job, Browne. This will give whoever takes this case on a real
head start.”
“Sorry?” Jennifer wasn’t sure she’d heard him right.
“Well, I can’t exactly have you out in the field,” said Green.
“Not anymore.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because you assaulted a civilian. Because the longer
you’re in the public eye, the greater the chance that the whole
Double Eagle story will leak. I’m only talking about a couple
of weeks’ vacation until everything blows over. You know
the way the game’s played.”
“It’s not a game to me,” she countered. “This is my career
we’re talking about.”
“Well, what do you expect me to do?”
“I expect to be allowed to do my job, not pulled off a case
at the first bump in the road.”
“I know you’re upset, but this isn’t easy for any of us.”
“You’re damn right I’m upset,” she snapped, her dark eyes
flashing dangerously. “I didn’t ask for any of this. You were
the one who pulled me on to this case, remember? Now
you’re kicking me off. For what? Because some moron tripped
over his own feet. What about listening to my side of the
story? What about a little loyalty?”
“Don’t try and pin that shit on me,” he retorted, his voice
hardening. “And don’t forget who you’re talking to either.
The guy may be an asshole, but you hit him, Browne. What-
ever the reason, you hit him. The Bureau can’t just carry on
like nothing’s happened. You’ve got to think how this looks.
You’ve got to consider the optics.”
“I’m not interested in your DC politics.”
“Careful, Browne,” he warned her again. “I’m on your
side . . .”
“No you’re not.” The rumors of Green running for the
Senate suddenly seemed to make a hell of a lot more sense.
“You’re on the side of making sure none of this sticks, either
to you or to the administration.”
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“I’m on the side of facing the facts. And until this sorts it-
self out, I won’t have you and Lewis playing hide and seek all
over the city.”
There was a long pause, Jennifer fixing Green with a chal-
lenging stare, Green seemingly seeking inspiration from the
bottom of his coffee cup. Jennifer had a sudden thought.
“What about if I left the country?” she suggested, thinking
back to something Green had said earlier.
“What?” He gave a confused frown, as if he was only half
listening.
“You could send me to Paris,” she prompted, her voice
gaining in confidence. “Even Lewis will struggle to trip over
me there.”
“That’s a crazy idea.”
“It’s your idea.”
“It is?”
“You asked whether the Japanese would agree to forensic
testing. Well, let’s ask them. If we can get all the paintings
together, then maybe we can figure out which ones are the
forgeries and focus the investigation on them. And this way I
stay on the case, but out of Lewis’s way.”
He tapped his lip slowly, considering her suggestion.
“What would it take to set up?”
“A couple of phone calls from you to smooth things over
with the NYPD and push the paperwork through. Hudson to
call Razi and get his permission. Cole to convince the Japa-
nese. It’s not easy, but it’s doable.”
“It’s not really standard procedure,” he demurred.
“I’m sure Lord Hudson would appreciate you going out of
your way, like this,” she prompted gently. “Not to mention
the rest of the art community.”
“There’s a lot of money, a lot of jobs, tied up in the art
trade here in New York,” Green conceded solemnly, sound-
ing ever more as if he were rehearsing for the campaign trail.
“We need to do what we can to protect it.” He drained his
coffee and stood up. “Let me make a few calls. I’ll be in touch.
Until then, stay here.”
“If it’s okay with you, sir,” she said with a smile, “I might
just go back to bed.”
CAFÉ VOLTAIRE, 15TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS
20th April— 12:30 p.m.
The air was heavy with a swirling mist of cigar ette smoke
into which the chipped blades of the juddering ceiling
fan periodically vanished like propellers cutting through
clouds. Two men were at the bar, each holding a drink in one
hand and a betting slip in the other, their gaze fixed on the
TV screen overhead. The sound was turned down, but Tom
could still just about make out the frantic crescendo of the
commentary as the race reached its climax.
Behind them, the barman was hunched over that day’s
form guide, a white tea towel over one shoulder and a half-
finished beer to his left. An overflowing yellow Ricard ash-
tray was strategically positioned between the three men.
Tom paused for a second, struck by the timelessness of this
scene. He was certain that he could have walked into this
place at almost any time on almost any day, and the picture
of controlled boredom that was being presented to him would
have been exactly the same.
“Where is he?” Tom asked in French, rapping his knuckles
sharply against the bar.
The barman looked up grudgingly, nodded toward the rear
and then sank back into his newspaper.
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“Two espressos,” Tom ordered, squinting briefly into the
darkness that he had just indicated. “And lots of sugar.”
The barman rolled his eyes and then made a great show of
closing his paper and folding it carefully away. Tom walked
toward the back of the café, his eyes adjusting. A lone fi gure
was hunched over a table near the entrance to the toilet, the
only light coming from the intermittent flashing of the neigh-
boring pinball machine.
“Jean- Pierre?” Tom called as he approached the fi gure.
The man’s head lifted slightly at the mention of his name. A
cigarette was clenched in his left hand, a line of ash beneath
it where it had burned down to the butt and then extinguished
itself.
“
Je suis occupé, Felix
,” he muttered from behind a curtain
of lank hair.
“Yeah, I can see you’re busy,” Tom said with a smile, slip-
ping on to the chair opposite him. There was a pause.
“You heard she left me?” he mumbled eventually, in
En glish this time.
“I heard you started drinking again.”
The man looked up, lifting his hair off his face and brush-
ing it back behind his ears. Tom smiled a welcome, but had
difficulty in masking his surprise. He’d been friends with
Jean- Pierre Dumas for well over ten years now. It was Dumas,
one of the DST’s best agents, who had arranged his disap-
pearance and then fed bogus DNA evidence back to the
Agency to convince them that he was dead. In return, Tom
had helped out on a couple of dubious operations on behalf of
the French government, before striking out on his own. But he
sat there now, a pale ghost of the man Tom had once known.
In fact, Dumas had the look of someone clinging to life by
