The Gilded Seal (7 page)
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
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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 disap-
proving tone.
“Nice gaff. Perhaps you could show me round?” he ven-
tured. 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 fi rst fl oor.”
“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 Wel-
lington after Waterloo,” she announced proudly. “The Water-
loo 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 copper-
plate 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 center of the
room. Dominating the space like a small boat, the lower level
was filled with decorated plates while the upper level ap-
peared to contain a twenty-foot-long scale model of an Egyp-
tian temple complex, complete with gateways, seated fi gures,
obelisks, three separate temple buildings and sixteen sets of
matching sacred rams.
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
4 1
“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 when-
ever 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 centerpiece is made from biscuit porcelain and modeled
on the temples of Luxor, Karnak, Dendera and Edfu. This
partic ular example was a gift from the Emperor to the Em-
press 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 centerpiece.
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, rea-
soning 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
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for certain. But there are some things you can do to even the
odds. Upgrade the locks, install security glass in all the cases,
reconfigure 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 ama-
teur 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 pho-
tograph 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
recognize him, do you?”
“No,” Archie lied. “But you never know. Someone else
might.”
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 gush-
ing 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
ware house 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 fl oor.
He killed the call and threw the phone down on the green
baize card table he was sitting at, his right hand deftly ma-
nipulating 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.
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“All right?” Archie asked, leaning against the back of one
of a pair of matching Chesterfi eld armchairs.
Tom caught a flash of cerise pink lining as Archie’s jacket
fell open and smiled. Subtlety had never been Archie’s stron-
gest 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 com-
modities 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 toward the
rear.
“Not seen her.” Tom shrugged. “Why, are you going to ask
her out?”
“What are you talking about?” Archie laughed the ques-
tion 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.”
“Very funny.” Archie smiled tightly. Tom decided to
change the subject before he completely lost his sense of hu-
mor.
“That was Dorling, by the way.” Tom nodded toward the
phone.
“What the hell did he want?” Archie bristled. While Tom
had understood the need to forgive his one- time pursuers if
he was to move on, Archie was less sanguine. His scars ran
deep, and he was suspicious of Dorling’s Machiavellian prag-
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matism, sensing the seeds of a further about-turn should the
circumstances require it.
“He just got the initial results of the forensic tests back.”
“And?”
“And basically they’ve got nothing. No prints at the scene.
The getaway car torched. Zip.” In truth, he’d have been more
surprised if they had found something. From what he’d seen,
this crew weren’t the sort to make mistakes.
“Any idea who pulled it?”
Tom flicked the chip down on to the card table, enjoying
the expression registering on Archie’s face as he stepped for-
ward for a closer look.
“Milo?” he exclaimed. “Pull the other one! He was down
for a ten-year stretch, minimum.”
“According to Dorling, he got out six months ago. They
found one of these at the scene.” He nodded toward the chip.
“This is one he gave me after a job we pulled together in
Macau. Back when we were still talking.”
“Well then, all we have to do is wait. He’ll just follow his
usual MO and ransom it back.”
“I think he’s picked up some new moves while he’s been
away. This time he left a message.”
“What sort of a message?”
“A black cat. Dead. Nailed to the wall. The chip was in its
mouth.” He shook his head, as if to shake the grotesque im-
age from his mind, but found that every time he blinked, its
ghostly outline reappeared in front of him, as if it had some-
how been seared on to the back of his eyelids.
Archie sat down slowly on the opposite other side of the
card table. He picked the chip up and considered it for a few
seconds, then locked eyes with Tom.
“And you think it was meant for you, don’t you?”
“I think it was meant for Felix, yes.” Tom was surprised at
the instinctive anger in his voice. That name sat uncomfort-
ably with him now, reminding him of a past life and a past
self that he was trying to forget, to leave behind. Only Milo
was trying to drag him back.
“It’s a bit bloody crude, isn’t it, even for him?”
“He’s a showman. He likes to shock people.”
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“What do you think he wants?”
“To let me know he’s back?” Tom speculated irritably. “To
show me that he’s not lost his touch? That he’s still number
one? Take your pick.”
“You don’t think it’s a threat?”
“No.” Tom gave a confident shake of his head. “We have
an understanding. More of a debt, really. Milo operates by
this old-fashioned code of honor, a hangover from his days in
the Legion. According to his code he owes me a life, because
I helped save his once. Until he repays it, he won’t touch
me.”
