The Gilded Seal (32 page)

Archie’s rasping voice, the overspill of ash on the fl oral

tablecloth and the two empty bottles of Laphroaig were

the only reminders of the previous eve ning’s interrupted cel-

ebrations. Besson’s discovery had instantly derailed the party

atmosphere.

Not that Tom was entirely sure what it was he had discov-

ered. After all, how was it possible that the painting the

Louvre had carefully nurtured all these years was a forgery?

Hadn’t they known?

“Is that the best shot of your ugly mug they could get?”

Archie sniffed as Tom’s face filled the TV screen yet again.

He had flipped the chair around and was sitting with his

arms folded and resting on the chair back.

“Copied it from the Louvre security cameras, I expect,”

Tom yawned, having slept only fitfully. “To be honest, I’m

surprised they waited until this morning before putting it

out.” He swung the window open to let some air in and try

and wake himself up.

“It’s taken until now to circulate it to every policeman,

soldier, border guard, ticket inspector and check-in clerk they

can get their hands on,” Dumas explained, swilling some

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t w i n i n g

whiskey dregs around a glass, hesitating, and then putting it

down with a pained grimace. “Until we give the painting

back, you need to stay out of sight.”

“We’re not giving anything back until we’ve got Eva,”

Tom reminded him sharply.

“Are you sure it’s still Eva you’re worried about?” Dumas

asked.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m just wondering if this is really about you and Milo?

About not letting him win?”

Tom snorted dismissively. “No. And even if it was, what

does it matter as long as we get her back?”

“It matters because the painting isn’t a toy for you and him

to fight over,” Dumas insisted. “I won’t let anything happen

to it.”

“You think all this is a game?” Tom squared up to Dumas

unsmilingly.

“You two were always fi ghting when you worked for me,”

Dumas retorted, eyeing him defi antly. “Nothing changed af-

ter you both left. Why should it be any different now?”

Besson interrupted them with a cough.

“I want to take the painting back to my place and run some

more tests there.”

“Fine.”

Tom sat down with an angry shrug. The truth was he

didn’t want Milo to win. Wouldn’t let him win. But surely

that didn’t make saving Eva any less important or mean that

they should just give up?

“Take J-P with you, since he’s so worried about looking

after it. And don’t forget the
Yarnwinder
.”

“I’m almost finished,” Besson reassured him.

Tom’s phone rang. He gave a wry smile and then an-

swered it.

“Are you calling to congratulate me?”

“We need to talk,” Milo countered, his voice cold and

businesslike. “Top of the Arc de Triomphe. You and me.

Ten a.m.”

He rang off.

“We got a meet?” Archie went to light a cigarette, found

t h e g i l d e d s e a l

2 3 5

that the pack was empty and crumpled it into a ball in dis-

gust.

“Just the two of us.”

“How did he sound?”

“Annoyed.” Tom grinned.

C H A P T E R F I F T Y- T H R E E

FOUQUET’S, 8TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS

23rd April— 8:50 a.m.

Do you mind if I join you?”

Jennifer looked up from her paper, squinting into the

sun despite her sunglasses.

“Commissaire Ferrat?” Her tone registered her surprise.

“I thought we’d said midday?”

“We did.”

He sat down at her table and ordered an espresso. His

small brown eyes looked sore and tired. Two men were lean-

ing against the hood of the unmarked car parked opposite,

watching them carefully. Ferrat’s escort, she guessed.

“What are they saying?”

He nodded at the selection of late-edition English-language

newspapers that Jennifer had scattered in front of her and on

the chair to her left. Each was emblazoned with a shouted

headline:
Mona Lisa Missing; Da Vinci Masterpiece Snatched;

La Gioconda Stolen—Again.

Invariably, this was followed by five to six full pages of

detailed coverage with pictures of the painting and the car-

nage in the tunnel. A train crash in the Punjab killing two

hundred people and a suicide bombing at a primary school in

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the Middle East had been relegated to the seventh and eighth

pages respectively.

“They’re saying that you’re heading up the investigation.”

She smiled. “Congratulations.”

“For now.” He took a deep breath and placed his hat on the

table, arranging it so that the badge was square on to him.

“Twelve dead.
La Joconde
missing. The Louvre bombed. A

gun battle on the streets of Paris . . .” He paused, as if sud-

denly struck by the enormity of the previous day’s events. “A

case like this demands results. Immediate results. Or . . .

Bonjour Madame Guillotine.
” He brought the edge of one

hand down on to the open palm of the other in a chopping

motion.

“Is that why you’re here now?”

“I’m just here to talk.”

“Then I need to call the Embassy.”

She had, of course, been expecting to be interviewed. How

could she not? After all, she was the one who had tipped

them off about Tom in the first place. It was just that she had

agreed with the duty officer at the Embassy not to speak to

anyone without having one of the staff lawyers there with

her. Then again, the duty officer had agreed to get Green to

call her, and that hadn’t happened yet either.

“This isn’t a formal interview, just a . . . conversation be-

tween colleagues,” Ferrat reassured her. “It’s all off the

record.”

“Nothing’s ever off the record,” she observed dryly.

“Well, I’m not writing anything down and it’s just you and

me.” A pause, while he polished his hat’s shiny peak with his

fingertip. “It’s up to you, but it would help.”

Jennifer gave a deep sigh. She already felt bad enough

about what had happened yesterday, without Ferrat spooning

on the guilt.

“The papers said there was a hole in the bottom of the ar-

mored van. Is that right?”

“There was a hole, yes,” he confi rmed.

“And yet the doors were blown off as well? Doesn’t that

strike you as strange?”

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t w i n i n g

“You have a theory?”

“Tom mentioned someone else. A thief called Milo. He

said that he was only taking the painting to stop Milo getting

to it fi rst.”

“We know Milo and we know what he’s capable of,” Ferrat

confirmed. “What’s your point?”

“My point? Two thieves. Two jobs. One comes up under-

neath, the other blows the doors off.”

“It’s possible.” Ferrat nodded, Jennifer guessing from his

expression that this was a scenario that he had already con-

sidered.

“I know Tom. There’s no way he was behind what hap-

pened at the Louvre or in that tunnel. There must have been

someone else involved.”

“I’ve got a forensic team working every centimeter of both

crime scenes. If either of them were there, we’ll know about

it.”

“The question is, who got to the painting fi rst?”

“That’s one question,” he agreed, his eyes meeting hers.

“The other involves you.”

“Me?”

“You know Kirk, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“How did you meet?”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but that’s classifi ed.” Even

off the record, she wasn’t prepared to go into the details of

how she had met Tom on the Double Eagle case. Not without

permission.

“You are friends.” It was a statement.

“No,” she insisted, the sting of Tom’s betrayal still

smarting.

“No?”

“Once, maybe,” she relented. “More acquaintances now.”

“And yet you had dinner with him just two nights ago?”

Ferrat had clearly done his homework and she wasn’t sure

she liked the way the conversation was heading, or the slight

hardening of his tone. She knew that she needed to tread

carefully.

“I already told you—” she kept her voice level and matter-

t h e g i l d e d s e a l

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of-fact—“we bumped into each other. He offered to help

with my case. We hadn’t seen each other for a while. I sug-

gested dinner to talk things over. I didn’t know that he was

setting me up.”

A pause.

“Do you know someone called Leigh Lewis?”

She crossed her arms and sat back in her chair. This was

hardly shaping up to be the gentle conversation Ferrat had

promised and she certainly wasn’t fooled by his casual tone

and the way he was picking invisible hairs from his uniform

as if barely listening.

“You know I do.”

“He called my office this morning. He certainly has an

interesting perspective on your relationship with Kirk.”

“I don’t have a relationship with Kirk,” she shot back.

“And Lewis is a liar who’ll say anything for a story.”

“He claims to have photographs of you . . . kissing Kirk.”

“Kissing!” She snorted. “If he thinks that’s a kiss he’s got

more problems than I thought. We were just saying good-bye.

Nothing more. What you need to understand about Lewis is

that he always makes things look worse than they are. That’s

his job.”

“And what you need to understand, Agent Browne,” Ferrat

sighed, locking eyes with her, “is that, the more I hear, the

worse it looks. We’ve circulated a description of both Kirk

and Milo, but so far all I know for certain is that a man fi tting

Kirk’s description hijacked a van belonging to an air-

conditioning company. A van that was later used to gain en-

try to an inner courtyard of the Louvre. A courtyard where,

thanks to your intervention, an emergency convoy was pre-

paring to remove
La Joconde
to safety, should the need arise.

And that need arose. Now, with the painting missing, I fi nd

that you and Kirk had dinner the eve ning before the robbery,

with photographs suggesting that you were, shall we say, more

than just acquaintances. Do you want me to go on?”

“Not until I call the Embassy.” Jennifer’s face hardened,

her eyes never having once left his. “We can continue this

conversation between colleagues
when they have sent some-

one over.”

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“Excellent idea.” Ferrat waved his two men over to the ta-

ble. “Why don’t you tell them to meet us at the station.”

“The station?”

Ferrat slid a pair of handcuffs across the table toward her,

the left cuff framing the
Mona Lisa
’s troubled smile as she

gazed out from the newspaper. Ferrat’s men appeared at Jen-

nifer’s sides, blocking any possible escape.

“Jennifer Browne,” Ferrat intoned, “I am arresting you on

suspicion of complicity in the theft of
La Joconde
.”

C H A P T E R F I F T Y- F O U R

ARC DE TRIOMPHE, PARIS

23rd April— 9:58 a.m.

There was a Napoleon quote that Tom vaguely remem-

bered, something about the sublime being only a few

steps from the ridiculous. Nowhere was that sentiment more

appropriate than here.

The Arc de Triomphe was, after all, a magnifi cent struc-

ture. Standing square and squat, like a gorilla resting on its

knuckles, it had a daunting, brooding presence. It spoke of

victories carved out on distant battlefields, of the thunder of

hooves and marching feet, of the intoxicating opium of abso-

lute power, of blood and sacrifice. And at its heart, sheltering

under the sharp snap and tumble of a giant tricolor, the tomb

of the Unknown Soldier, the sweet and fi tting sacrifice of war

captured in the blue hiss of an eternal fl ame.

And yet it was by the same token an outrageous memorial

to the vanity of one man. Napoleon, like a latter-day Ozy-

mandius, had carved his name and that of his victories in

stone, in the futile hope that they would not be shrouded by

the sands of time. It was in truth a monumental folly, executed

on an epic scale in a doomed attempt to emulate the martial

grandeur of ancient Rome. And today, reduced to the role of

central bollard at the heart of Europe’s biggest roundabout.

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t w i n i n g

Tom, wearing sunglasses and a faded baseball cap as a rudi-

mentary disguise, took the first elevator of the morning up to

the top of the viewing platform. He had been joined by a group

of Japanese tourists dressed in matching yellow Mickey Mouse

plastic ponchos, despite the bright sunshine. Milo came up in

the next elevator, Tom guessing that he had waited to see him

go inside before following. He appeared to be alone, although

there was no guarantee that none of the other people spilling

out of the elevator with him weren’t on his payroll.

“Hello, Felix.”

“Milo.” Tom nodded.