The Heist (10 page)

Kate glanced at Nick, who clearly thought this was a lot of fun. He poured a glass of tsipouro, and slid it toward her.

“You’re going to need this,” he said.

Kate looked back at Jessup and Bolton. “The Bureau set this idiot free?”

“Officially, no,” Bolton said. “He’s a fugitive from justice and wanted on three continents. He’s being actively pursued by dozens of law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.”

“And unofficially?” Kate asked.

“He works for us now.”

Nick held up his drink in a toast to Kate. “Welcome to the team.”

“Sit,” Bolton said to Kate, motioning to a chair.

Kate took a seat at the table, arms folded over her chest, the expression on her face saying
ex–Navy SEAL in kill mode
.

“First, I wanted this meeting to take place somewhere so
remote that there was virtually no chance anyone besides the four of us would ever know that it had occurred,” Bolton said. “Second, it was the ideal audition. I wanted to see how far you were willing to bend the law to enforce it.”

“I wanted to see how far you’d go to see me,” Nick said, smiling.

“To
arrest
you, or shoot you,” Kate said. “Or if I was really lucky, both.”

Bolton took a chair and leaned forward, elbows on the table. “My feeling was that if you showed up here, halfway around the world and in a place where women have been forbidden for a thousand years, then there was no question that you’re the right person for this job.”

“And clearly you’re game for anything, especially if it seems impossible,” Nick said. “Just like me.”

“Believe it or not,” Kate said, “the whole world doesn’t revolve around you.”

“Your world does,” he said.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“You’re here, aren’t you?”

In her mind, Kate briefly relived the glorious moment when she’d hit his car with a bus. Channel the bus, she thought.
Be
the bus.

She turned to Bolton. “Where is this going?”

“We want you to do the same thing you’re doing now. Catch the bad guys.”

“Like this one sitting across from me?” Kate took the half of the corned beef sandwich that Nick had offered her earlier and ate it.

“Bigger,” Jessup said.

“But only half as charming,” Nick said.

“As effective as we are at what we do,” Bolton said, “there’s still
a class of criminals that operates outside of our reach, people so rich and powerful that they can manipulate the legal system so they never have to answer for their crimes, assuming that they are ever caught at all. We’re going to change that.”

“By letting Nick Fox go free?” Kate said, and looked at Jessup. “Am I the only one who sees the contradiction here?”

“He’s not free,” Jessup said. “Nick Fox escaped from custody and is a fugitive. If he’s caught, he will go back to prison. But in the meantime, it’s the perfect cover.”

“It’s not a cover,” Kate said. “It’s who he is.”

“That’s why it’s perfect,” Bolton said. “Nick Fox is going to do what he does best. Only now he will be doing it for us, for the next five years, while remaining a fugitive. After that, you’ll capture him, but then he’ll be set free, and all charges will be dropped, when prosecutors discover that the case you put together was fatally flawed and won’t stand up in court.”

“Yes, it will,” she said.

“I think you’re missing the big picture here,” Nick said.

“I think I’m the only one in this hut who isn’t,” she said, turning to Jessup. “If I understand you right, you broke Nick Fox out of prison so he could swindle and steal for you.”

“For the FBI and the greater good,” Bolton said sternly. “He’s going to help us bring down criminals we can’t catch by conventional methods.”

“By that you mean the legal ones,” Kate said.

“That’s one way to look it at,” Bolton said.

“It must be the only way, or we wouldn’t be meeting in a cave on Mount Athos.”

“We aren’t meeting,” Jessup said.

“This is fun already,” Nick said, pouring himself another drink.

“This is surreal,” Kate said. “Am I dreaming? Am I being punked?”

“To bankroll Nick’s scams, swindles, and heists against the targets we select, and to finance his requisite glamorous lifestyle, we’ll be tapping a secret fund made up entirely of money and assets confiscated from convicted criminals,” Bolton said. “I consider it poetic justice.”

“What happens if he gets caught by a mark or by some law enforcement agency?” Kate said.

“He’s on his own,” Jessup said.

“Even if he’s apprehended by the FBI,” Bolton said.

“Okay, now I am really confused,” Kate said. “
We’re
going to be chasing him?”

“Of course,” Bolton said. “He’s a federal fugitive.”

“But we’re the ones who set him free,” Kate said. “He’ll be out there doing missions for us.”

“We don’t know that,” Jessup said.

“Yes, we do,” Kate said. “That’s the deputy director of the FBI sitting next to you.”

“It was worth getting arrested just for this moment,” Nick said.

“Fox is still going to be on our Most Wanted list,” Bolton said to Kate, “and every agent except you will be on the lookout for him.”

“What will I be doing?” she asked.

“Keeping him from getting caught,” Bolton said. “While pretending to be pursuing him, of course.”

“Of course,” Kate said, and she finally knocked back her glass of tsipouro. “What happens if I get caught covering for him or helping him in one of his schemes?”

“You will be arrested and prosecuted,” Bolton said.

“That’s nice,” Kate said. “That makes me feel all warm inside.”

“Probably that’s the tsipouro,” Nick said.

Kate turned to Bolton. “What’s to stop him from stealing that secret slush fund from us or using it to pull off scams and heists of his own?”

“You,” Bolton said.

“What’s to stop him from ditching us and
really
going on the run?”

“You,” Bolton said.

She nodded. “I see a fatal flaw in your plan.”

“What’s that?” Bolton said.

She pointed at Nick. “Him.”

Bolton wanted Kate’s decision in the morning, though she had no idea what he would do, or what she would do, or what would happen to Nick Fox, if she refused to participate in their operation.

Bolton and Jessup chose to sleep on the cots behind the curtain. Kate opted to sleep on a bench in the main room. She liked the hard wood under her back and head. It kept her aware of her location and her bizarre situation. In fact her situation was so bizarre, she wasn’t sure it was real. Maybe she only
thought
she’d had a perfect landing when she parachuted in. Maybe she’d hit her head and she was hallucinating.

“Out of curiosity,” Kate asked, staring at the aged beams holding up the pitched ceiling, “how long have Jessup and Bolton been here?”

“They came in yesterday when it was clear you were making your move.”

“And who came up with this insane plan?”

“I did,” Nick said. “I thought it was a win-win for everybody.”

“Except for me,” Kate said.

“Especially for you.”

“How do you figure that?” she asked.

“You like chasing after me, traveling all over the place, kicking down doors, jumping out of airplanes, smashing into cars with buses,” he said. “There aren’t a lot of cases that are going to have the same excitement, danger, and fun. Not to mention you’re living in a box and this gives you a chance to get out.”

“I like the box.”

“It’s still a box.”

“And what’s in it for you, Nick, besides staying out of a cell for the time being?”

“Time being?”

She propped herself up on an elbow and looked at him. “You’re a crook. Your fate is inevitable. Even if you honor this deal, which I doubt, in five years you’ll walk away a free man and immediately pull off another big swindle and it will start all over again. I will come after you, and when I catch you there will be no deals. You’ll do hard time.”

“I might emerge from this a changed man. Or you might become an entirely different woman. You might not want to catch me anymore.”

“Yeah, right, that’s all not gonna happen.”

He shrugged. “We’ll see.”

Kate wanted to punch him, wanted to wipe the smug smile off his face. Then she wanted to punch Bolton and Jessup.

“Honestly,” she said, “this just isn’t fair. I’m a team player, but this is too much. This is wrong.”

“It’s the chance of a lifetime,” Nick said.

“For you.”

“Yes, but it comes with a price. I’m going to be stuck with you for five long years. And if you want to know the ugly truth, it’s not my idea of the good life. True, I find you strangely attractive, but that doesn’t mean you’re not a huge pain in the ass.”

Kate perked up at that. She liked the possibility that she could make his life a living hell. And while she was raining on Nick Fox’s parade she might be able to catch some bad guys. Sure there was some risk involved, but risk was always present. Look at Nick Fox: He was driving home from work one day, and he got hit by a bus. Who would have thought?

Nick stayed awake long after Kate fell asleep. There were practical problems he had to face. To mount his cons and heists, he’d need a crew. He rarely used the same crew twice, but he was loyal to everyone who’d been loyal to him. He wouldn’t betray them by involving them in a hustle that he was secretly running for the FBI.

And he didn’t trust the FBI much more than they trusted him. If he introduced the feds to his network of fellow con artists and thieves, he’d be exposing them all to law enforcement scrutiny, revealing not only who they were but their methods of operation. The FBI might turn around one day and use that knowledge to arrest them. Nick couldn’t live with himself if that happened. Not to mention if his clever cohorts discovered he was working with Kate instead of running from her, his cover would be blown and his life would be in jeopardy. Nobody in his field liked a rat, which is what they would naturally assume he was even if he wasn’t. And they would justifiably begin to wonder what he’d divulged about
his past scores, and his past colleagues, and if he’d tipped the FBI off to the Crimson Teardrop job, even though he’d arranged with Bolton for the release of his crew on a sketchy legal technicality as a condition of his participation in this operation.

So to mount the cons against the big fish targeted by the FBI he’d have to assemble a crew from scratch, recruiting entirely new people and never letting them know who they were actually working for. He already had some people in mind, since he was always on the lookout for new talent, but he knew that bringing in an entirely inexperienced crew introduced a level of risk and uncertainty that could swiftly derail a con and get everybody killed. And no one was more of a wild card in the deck than Kate O’Hare. She was 5′ 5″ of trouble, and he was going to have a hard time keeping his hands off her, torn as he was between wanting to wring her neck and wanting to sweet-talk her out of her Kevlar vest.

Kate woke up with a stiff back. She stood and stretched and checked to make sure her cuffs and gun were still in her pockets. Nick was at the fireplace, stirring a big pot suspended over the fire.

He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You were expecting me to steal your gun?”

“You’re a thief,” she said. “I expect you to steal everything. What are you making?”

“Hermit’s stew. Basically, a lentil soup. I’ve also got some fresh bread, some salted fish, and red wine, all produced here on Athos.”

“Wine for breakfast?”

“It’s what the monks drink.”

Jessup and Bolton joined them. Bolton looked like he’d spent the last few hours in cryogenic freeze. There wasn’t a wrinkle on
his clothes and his hair was perfect. Jessup looked like an unmade bed.

“Have you reached a decision, Agent O’Hare?” Bolton asked.

Kate gave him a single nod. “I’m in. But I want a few things clear from the get-go. I’m in charge of this partnership.”

“You obviously don’t understand the meaning of ‘partnership,’ ” Nick said.

“I’m the cop, you’re the crook,” Kate said to Nick. “If I think something is too risky, or too crooked, or too anything, I can shut it down.” She turned to Bolton. “That goes for you, too, sir. Once we have an assignment, I have the absolute authority to change the play or call the whole thing off.”

“I don’t know if I’m comfortable with that,” Bolton said.

“It’s not your comfort I’m worried about,” she said. “I’m the one who could end up dead or in a prison cell if one of our operations falls apart. This is nonnegotiable.”

Jessup looked at Bolton. “I have to back O’Hare on this. I’ve been undercover. I know what it’s like being out there on your knees in the muck, with your neck on a chopping block over an open latrine while a psycho in overalls stands over you with a roaring chainsaw.”

Bolton mentally chewed on that for a moment. “Very well.”

Nick smiled, poured four glasses of wine, and held his up for a toast. “To our grand adventure.”

“This is not an adventure,” Kate said. “It’s a job. We aren’t doing it for fun or for profit.”

“Speak for yourself,” Nick said.