The Job (7 page)

“How would you like to proceed, Agent O’Hare?” Bernard asked. When he spoke in English, he sounded like Inspector Clouseau trying to imitate Sean Connery. “Shall we move in now, or shall we wait?”

“Let’s grab him as he’s climbing out the window. It’s when he’ll be the most vulnerable.”

As if on cue, the thief carefully reached out the window and set the cardboard tubes on the sidewalk. The entire theft, from break-in to escape, had taken less than five minutes.

Bernard picked up his radio and gave the command to move.
“On y va! On y va!”

The thief swung his legs out the window, but before his feet touched the ground, uniformed police officers swarmed around him.

Kate and Bernard emerged from the café and walked across the square as the thief was handcuffed and patted down for
weapons. He was smaller than Kate had expected, and at close range the mask was obvious and the effect was chilling. An officer pulled back the hood and removed the mask, and everyone gasped. The thief was a woman.

“Incroyable,”
Bernard said.

The police headquarters, the Hôtel de Police, was a decaying four-story block of concrete that was built quickly and cheaply in the hurried post–World War II reconstruction of Orléans. It had been eroding from neglect ever since.

The interrogation room was like the hundreds of others Kate had been in, right down to the unevenly balanced chair used to keep the suspect on edge. Kate sat across the table from the thief, whose fingerprints had identified her as Serena Blake. She was in her mid-thirties but could have passed for ten years younger. Her brown hair, colored to match Nick’s, was styled in a pixie cut that brought out the sharp features of her face, her slender nose and prominent cheekbones. She wore a black tank top that hugged her body like a too-tight leotard. She had the strong, slender physique of a gymnast, which made sense,
given what Kate now knew about her. Police records showed that Serena Blake was a British citizen who’d spent two years in prison for burglary in her early twenties and, although she hadn’t been arrested since then, was known to be an expert cat burglar. And because Kate had collected extensive information on Nick while she was chasing him, she knew he’d worked with Serena.

“We caught you red-handed stealing a Modigliani and a Degas from a museum,” Kate said. “You’ll do ten years for that. And when you get out, the Turkish police will be waiting to lock you up in Diyarbakir Prison for God knows how many years. It’s so hellish there that prisoners have set themselves on fire rather than endure their sentences. After that, assuming you haven’t killed yourself, your time in a Tennessee prison will feel like a vacation.”

Serena didn’t seem shaken by the grim forecast. She’d probably foreseen that future herself.

“If you’re so sure that’s it for me, end of story, why are you in here talking?” Serena asked.

“Because I might be able to shave a few years off your sentence if you cooperate.”

“The way you tell it, you’ve already got me dead to rights, so what more do you need?”

“You can tell me where we can find the Matisse, the sultan’s goblet, and the Vermeer.”

Serena gave a thin smile. “No deal.”

The artworks were the only leverage Serena had. That she
wasn’t willing to use it when it could do her the most good made Kate curious. What was she saving it for? There was something else at play here, and Kate didn’t know what it was. So she decided the best way to reveal what she didn’t know was to use what she did know.

“Okay, here’s an easier one,” Kate said. “What do you want from Nicolas Fox?”

“Nothing,” Serena said.

“It’s obvious that you’re desperate to get his attention. That’s why you were wearing a Nick Fox mask and planting his fingerprints at crime scenes.”

“
If
I did that, it was because he’s a famous thief and I wanted you to chase him instead of me.”

Kate decided to bluff and go with a crazy guess. “I might have believed that,” she said, “if you hadn’t hit Nashville, where you were part of the crew that helped Fox swindle Big Mike Gleaberg, and then Istanbul, where you helped him steal the Topkapi Dagger just to prove that it could be done.”

Serena blinked hard, clearly startled that Kate knew about their secret crimes. Kate was startled, too, because it meant that maybe Nick actually
had
stolen the dagger and put it back.

Kate pushed on. “You also went out of your way to irritate Fox by framing him for crimes that were so simple in concept and execution that they’d tarnish his reputation for ingenious crimes. Or maybe you’re just not smart enough to pull off anything more clever.”

“I was clever enough to
allegedly
steal a Matisse, a rare
Turkish antiquity, and a Vermeer in three different countries over the course of a little more than a week. How many thieves do you know who could have done that?”

There was a knock at the door, and Commissaire Bernard stuck his head into the room and gestured for Kate to come out.

“What is it?” she asked, joining Bernard in the hall.

“Her lawyer is here.”

“It’s not even dawn, and she hasn’t made any calls. How did he know that she was here?”

“She might have had a hidden
confédéré
on the street who saw us arrest her and alerted her lawyer. But the fact remains, he’s here and we must deal with it. I’ve put him in a conference room.”

Kate followed Bernard down the hall to the room. “Does he speak English?” Kate asked.

Bernard reached for the doorknob. “A bit. His name is Jean-Luc Picard.”

Kate sucked in some air at the name of the captain of the starship
Enterprise
on
Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Stay calm, she told herself. Don’t punch a hole in the wall or have a high blood pressure attack. Just because it’s a name Nick would choose doesn’t mean it’s Nick. Okay, who was she kidding? She knew it was going to be Nick.

She stepped into the room and stared across the conference table at Nick. He was wearing tortoiseshell glasses balanced on a prosthetic Gérard Depardieu nose that loomed over a thick
horseshoe mustache that framed his mouth and went down to his chin. He wore a silk lavaliere scarf tied around his neck, a skinny blue blazer over a zip-up sweater, skinny Japanese denim jeans, and blue suede Derby shoes.

Before Kate could say a word, Nick spoke in a rapid stream of fluent French, dramatizing his points with elaborate, dramatic gestures. Bernard interrupted him with a short comment in French that was the only phrase in the conversation that Kate understood.
“Elle ne parle pas français.”

“Oh, please forgive me,” Nick said to her. “I assumed you spoke French. I am Jean-Luc Picard, Mademoiselle Blake’s
avocat.
I must insist on speaking to my client at once.”

Kate narrowed her eyes at Nick. “Jean-Luc Picard. Why is that name so familiar? Do I know you?”

“I would remember someone so beautiful,” Nick said. “Even with your hair pulled into that horse’s tail you are a goddess.”

“Serena Blake hasn’t requested a lawyer,” Bernard said.

“She has not been given the opportunity yet,” Nick said. “Has she?”

“It’s a little early for her to be making calls,” Bernard said. “It’s nearly dawn.”

“I am available to my clients at all hours of the day and night to save them from
obscènes abus d’autorité de la police comme ce qui s’est passé ici ce soir,
” Nick said, then caught himself, taking a deep, calming breath. “
Excusez-moi,
I forget myself when I get outraged.”

“The goddess would like to have a word in private with Monsieur Picard,” Kate said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Bernard said. “Something might get lost in translation.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Kate said. “I’ll make sure I am understood.”

Bernard reluctantly stepped out, closing the door behind him.

“You lied to me,” Kate said to Nick. “You’re a big, fat liar. You told me you didn’t know of any connection other than you. Liar, liar, liar.”

“I suspected Serena, but it was only a suspicion. I didn’t want to implicate her until I was sure. She was one of four people involved in those jobs. And any one of those four could have told someone else.”

Okay, so he’d told a fib to protect a colleague. Understandable. Especially since lying was second nature to him. And there was the code of honor about snitching. She got all that. Sort of. But things were supposed to be different now. He was on the good team. Sort of.

“Where’s the trust?” Kate said. “I thought we’d established trust.”

“You trust me?”

“Of course not. You’re a career criminal, a con man, and a cheat,” she said. “But I thought you at least trusted
me.
I’m dependable, responsible, and I’ve got sterling character. I wouldn’t take advantage of your immunity to arrest someone from your old crew.”

“Really?”

“Mostly. I suppose there could be circumstances—”

“Exactly,” Nick said. “You are
so
the job.”

“And you are
so
irritating.”

“I love when you get angry,” Nick said. “Your nose gets a cute little wrinkle in it.”

“Ugh!”

Kate closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Take a moment, she told herself. Think of something calm. A lake. A kitten sleeping. A puffy cloud drifting overhead. She opened her eyes.

He was grinning. “Feel better?”

She felt her nose to see if it was wrinkled. “If you suspected it was Serena, why did I find her first?”

“You guessed Orléans and I guessed Oxford. I ran into an old friend when I got to Oxford and found out Serena was in Orléans. I was watching a half block away from you when she got arrested.”

Yes! Kate thought. She’d outsmarted Nick. Woohoo! Yay! She wanted to do her happy dance, but she restrained herself.

“What job did you do in Oxford?” Kate asked.

“It’s where I recruited Serena. After I was thrown out of Harvard for cheating, I relocated to England and apprenticed with Duff MacTaggert. Even back then he was a legendary con man. When I left Duff and went out on my own, Serena was one of the first people I recruited. She had gymnastic skills worthy of Cirque du Soleil, and she had natural cunning.”

Kate felt some of the air go out of her celebratory balloon.
There was a quality to his voice that she didn’t often hear. Hard to put a name to it, but it told her that Serena was more than just a member of Nick’s first crew.

“She must mean a lot to you if you’re willing to walk into a police station in that outrageous disguise to see her. It’s a miracle you haven’t been recognized.”

“It’s human nature,” Nick said. “Context is a huge part of how we process information. This is the last place the police expect to see me, so they don’t.”

Kate thought that was a load of baloney, but she didn’t want her nose to wrinkle so she moved on.

“Okay, now what?” she asked him.

“I want to talk to her. You can make it look real by telling Bernard there’s the possibility of a plea bargain.”

Kate opened the door and gestured for Bernard to come back in. “I told Picard that we’d make a deal, trim some time off Serena’s sentence, if he convinces his client to tell us where she’s stashed everything that she’s stolen. I can talk the U.S. Justice Department into it. Will you back me on that with the French prosecutor?”

Bernard didn’t look too happy about it, but he nodded anyway. “We have her, and we have our paintings back, that’s what matters to us. So yes, I think I can talk him into it. I can also have a word with my counterpart in Germany, but I doubt Turkish authorities will be so generous.”

“They will if they want their goblet back in pristine condition,” Nick said.

“All right, Picard,” Kate said. “Let’s see what you can do for us.”

Bernard opened the door to the interrogation room. “Your lawyer is here to see you,” he told Serena.

Nick squeezed past Bernard, whose body filled the doorway, and Serena went wide-eyed with surprise.

“Yes, it is I, Jean-Luc,” Nick said. “I’m always here for you.”

He went to her and kissed both of her cheeks. Bernard grabbed Nick’s shoulder and pulled him back with a stern warning. “
Gardez vos distances, Picard.
You may speak to your client, but you must not touch.”

“Oui, bien sûr, je m’en excuse.”
Nick apologized to him, took a seat across the table from Serena, and looked soulfully into her eyes. “Tell me, what horrors have you endured?”

Bernard groaned and closed the door, leaving the lawyer alone to speak with his client.

“I wouldn’t call pulling off a string of international heists the most ideal way to communicate with someone,” Nick said to Serena.

“You didn’t give me any choice. You completely disappeared after your escape from the courthouse in Los Angeles.”

“I’m on the FBI and Interpol’s most wanted lists,” Nick said. “I didn’t think it was a good idea to tweet.”

“Since I couldn’t find you, I came up with a way to make
you
find
me.
”

He had to admire her for that. At least she’d learned something from him.

“Here I am,” he said. “What’s so important that you’d risk going to prison in four different countries just to get my attention?”