Wanted: A Leopold Blake Thriller (4 page)

“Tell me,” he said, lowering his voice to a whisper. “Does the name Leopold Blake mean anything to you?”

Chapter 6
 
 

THE AIR CONDITIONING was broken and the meeting room had quickly warmed up with the mass of bodies assembled inside. Leopold stood at the far end of the room, watching the Louvre employees find a seat on the plastic chairs, while Dubois fiddled with a feeble-looking floor fan. After several attempts, Dubois managed to get the blades spinning, and aimed the airflow in the direction of the gathering crowd. As the mumblings and whispers began to fade, the old man leaned in close and caught Leopold’s attention.

“I’m afraid I will have to leave you for a while,” he said. “I have an… appointment across town, and I am already late. You will forgive me,
non?
”

Leopold nodded. “In fact, I’d prefer it. Without you in the room, people will relax a little.”

“Then please excuse me.” The director patted Leopold on the shoulder and made his way to the exit. “If you need me, try my cell phone.”

“I will, thank you.”

As the old man shuffled away, Leopold focused his attention on the employees gathered in front of him. He cleared his throat. “Thank you for coming,” he said, projecting his voice to the back of the room. “I’m sure you’re all wondering why you’re here. Director Dubois has kindly arranged this impromptu meeting on my behalf, but he won’t be joining us for the rest of the session.” He scanned the faces in front of him for any signs of nervousness. “No doubt you heard the security systems going off earlier this morning. I’m here to talk to you a little bit about why that happened. My name is Leopold Blake, and I’m here as a security consultant for the Musée du Louvre. Any questions?”

Nobody responded.

“Excellent,” said Leopold. “Then I’ll get right down to it. The alarms were set off deliberately to test the systems, which all appear to be fully operational. What does concern me, however, is there is little or no record keeping where members of staff or outsiders come into contact with pieces of art or other valuable assets. In the private security business, this often represents the biggest vulnerability of any system – the
défaut de la cuirasse,
so to speak. Part of my work here will be designing a system that tracks and documents who comes into contact with Louvre property and what justifications they have for doing so.”

A timid hand rose slowly at the back of the room.

“Yes?”

The hand’s owner, a small, mousy woman with thick spectacles, stood up. “There are hundreds of employees who might have access to any area of the collections,” she said. “Why ask only us to the meeting?”

“Good question,” said Leopold. “Director Dubois informs me that your division is most likely to personally interact with the artwork, so naturally I wanted to get your feedback first. I understand the restoration department, the acquisitions team, and the archive group are all here?”

A few members of the audience nodded.

“Would the senior managers from each department please raise their hands?” asked Leopold.

Four hands shot up in the air.

“Excellent. Tell me, when was the last time anything was stolen from the museum’s collections?”

One of the managers got to his feet, a balding man with a crumpled suit and a gray goatee.

“Nothing has been stolen from the Louvre for over a century,” he announced, his accent German. “Not since the Mona Lisa debacle forced us to lock her up behind bulletproof glass. This is a secure facility, Mr Blake. You should not come here and accuse us of being incompetent.”

Taking a step forward, Leopold met the man’s stare and raised his palms. “Believe me, accusing you of anything is the last thing I would want to do. I only want to use your expertise to help improve security, nothing more. I’m sure all you fine people only want to help make your nation’s prized collections just a little bit safer.”

The manager sat back down. “What do you want us to do?”

“This is the fun part,” Leopold replied, smiling. “I want you to tell me how you would steal something from this museum, and exactly how you would expect to get away with it.”

After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, several hands flew into the air at once and Leopold listened to his audience’s suggestions. Most of the ideas were too outlandish to reveal any useful leads, including one proposal that a would-be thief might simply swap out the real painting for a print from the gift shop while nobody was looking.

After twenty minutes, Leopold gave up. “Okay, okay, I think I’ve heard enough for now. There were some great ideas today, which I’ll be sure to include in my upcoming report.”

“Will we get to read it?” asked the mousy woman, getting up from her seat again. “Or maybe we could act it out,
non?
We could form a team, and try to steal something ourselves?” She was practically bouncing up and down with excitement.

“That won’t be necessary,” said Leopold. “I have everything I need for the time being.
Merci, tout le monde,
for all your help. You can get back to work now.” He gestured toward the door.

With a groan of disappointment, the employees got to their feet and shuffled out the main doors back to their offices. Once alone, Leopold took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples.

As a plan began to form in the back of his mind, the consultant felt a heavy weight on his shoulder. Turning, he looked up into the eyes of an impossibly tall man, dressed in a well-tailored suit almost as dark as his coal-black skin. Despite the excellent cut of the jacket, Leopold could make out the outline of a handgun holstered to the man’s ribs.

“Dammit, Jerome. I told you not to sneak up on me when I’m thinking,” said Leopold, trying to recover his train of thought. You’re paid to be my bodyguard. You don’t get a fat paycheck every month in return for giving me a heart attack.”

Jerome smiled. “It’s all part of my training program. Find out anything useful?”

“Maybe. While this particular group might not be master criminals in the making, they did offer some insight into how the museum handles its more valuable pieces.”

“Such as?”

“The most important works, like the Mona Lisa, for example, are visually inspected at the beginning and end of each day for damage. The painting in question, ‘The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne’, is inspected once every week.”

“One of the inspection teams is responsible?”

“No, that would be too obvious. Although I’m sure the French police will want to question them, I’m certain they weren’t the ones to make the switch. The real importance of the inspection schedules is that the thief must have known the counterfeit would have been discovered at the next check. After all, the difference in the color palette is quite obvious to anyone familiar with the story behind the botched restoration, which the inspection teams are sure to be.”

“Meaning that whoever stole the original knew they’d get found out eventually?”

“Exactly. And, as I said to the director, this has to be an inside job,” said Leopold, starting to move toward the exit. “And anyone working for the museum will want this whole affair to stay under the radar for as long as possible, which can only mean one thing.”

“Always one for the dramatic, aren’t you?” said Jerome, following his employer through the doors and into the corridor. “And what does it mean?”

“That the thief was planning to switch out the counterfeit painting with a more up to date knock off. One that the inspection team wouldn’t notice is a fake.”

“Let me guess; you’ve got a plan to track this person down?”

“It’s quite simple. At least, it is now I’ve had chance to think. All we need to do is figure out who would routinely come into contact this particular piece while unsupervised and we’ve got enough evidence to start asking questions.”

“Are you going straight to the police with this?”

“My contract is with the Musée du Louvre,” said Leopold. “They can decide what to do with the information. I need to speak to the human resources department first, and then I’ll give the director a call with my recommendations. Hopefully he’ll be finished with his lunch date soon.”

The bodyguard stepped up the pace a little and the pair hit the main lobby, illuminated from above by the sunshine streaming through the enormous glass pyramid that formed part of the museum’s roof. After a muted conversation with one of the reception desk employees, the two men set off in the direction of the personnel offices, weaving their way though the tourists toward the HR department at the far end of the east wing.

“Looks like I’ve got some signal,” announced Leopold, inspecting his cell phone as they crossed the cavernous atrium. “But the director’s not picking up. We’re on our own for now.”

Jerome smiled as they passed through the reception area and into another long corridor. “Just the way you like it,” he said, closing the door behind him.

Chapter 7
 
 

JEAN DUBOIS HAD forged a respectable career in the Paris art community over his forty two years in the business, and he was damned if he was going to let today’s slipup tarnish his legacy. Something about the American consultant’s sudden appearance just didn’t sit right with him – after all, the museum hadn’t run into issues for decades and Dubois couldn’t fathom why the Louvre chairman would think some foreign stranger would know any better. The whole thing stank to high heaven, but, fortunately, the Musée du Louvre’s ill-conceived bumblings wouldn’t be his problem for much longer.

Having failed to flag down a taxi during the lunch time rush, Dubois resigned himself to taking the metro. Now, crammed into one of the city’s many underground trains, the old director kept his eyes down and tried not to breathe in the stale, sweaty air as the carriage rumbled through the tunnels beneath the Le quai de l'Hôtel-de-Ville.

Glancing at his watch, he tried to keep himself from panicking.
This is not the time to be late
, he thought to himself as the train rounded a corner and forced him up against the window.
Not today. Not with everything that’s going on.

The news had come through only weeks earlier. The board of directors had voted in favor of Dubois’ retirement at the end of the year, a move that forced him to reconsider his plans. The state pension from the French government was hardly enough to keep the old man in the lifestyle he had grown accustomed to, so drastic action would be needed to pad out his portfolio. And if that weren’t enough, the American’s recent discovery would cause an uproar once the news hit the national media. Dubois wasn’t so naïve to think he’d escape the lion’s share of the blame, meaning there was a strong chance he would find himself forced to resign, cutting his retirement funds even further.

They always need a scapegoat,
he mused, bitterly.

Still, after his lunch meeting, things would start to look a little better. The director gripped the handrail a little tighter as the train rattled through a particularly dark tunnel before squealing to a halt at the Saint Michel – Notre Dame station. He shuffled his way through the packed carriage toward the doors, which slid open with a reluctant groan. Stepping out onto the busy platform, he dodged his way through the station with a renewed sense of urgency.

As he reached the concrete steps that led up to the main road, Dubois took a moment to compose himself before following the crowd up the stairs. Out on the streets, the director could make out the twin towers of Notre Dame Cathedral just a few hundred feet away, reaching up beyond a line of tall trees. Dubois stepped out onto the sidewalk and made a beeline for the plaza, where his meeting companions would no doubt be waiting for him.

Glancing down at his watch once again, the old man saw something from the corner of his eye. He squinted up at the cathedral, noticing a glimmer of light at the top of one of the towers, a tiny pinprick of light that was nonetheless bright enough to draw his attention.

What the hell?

As the high velocity round passed through his skull, Dubois experienced only a nanosecond of regret before his life vanished into blackness.