“It’s not the kind of evidence we can take to the police.”
“It’s all electronic, for one thing. There’s no actual drawing. Did Delaney mention anything about finding it in Crawley’s office?”
“No. He kept on asking me where I saw it last, I kept on telling him Crawley had it in his hand.” She frowned. “I think he figures I stole it.”
“There must be surveillance cameras.”
“There are. I don’t know if I’m on them. If I am then that’ll prove I didn’t take it.”
“But it would also prove you photographed them,” said Valentine, “which might be enough reason to come after you at your apartment.”
“I thought of that, but it still doesn’t make any sense. It’s as though the very existence of the drawing, phony or not, is evidence of something… something worth killing for.”
“It’s like I said about going around in circles.” Valentine smiled. “Eventually you get to the little dot of truth at the middle of the vortex. Which I think perhaps you just did.”
“What truth?”
“The existence of the drawing is worth killing for.”
“What kind of truth is that?”
“A dangerous one.”
16
The man in the priest’s collar got off the Delta flight from Rome at three fifteen, ran his small black fiber suitcase through the machines and then showed his Vatican passport to a hard-eyed uniformed INS man. The passport identified him as Father Ricardo Gentile and his occupation as priest, which seemed fairly self-evident. In fact none of the information on the passport was true, and the passport itself, although genuine, did not exist on any records at the Vatican passport office in Rome. The INS man handed him back the passport after a brief glance then gave him an “I am the first line of defense in the war against terrorism” nod and allowed him into the United States.
Father Gentile followed the crowds out into the afternoon sunlight, picked up a cab and told the Nigerian driver to take him to the JFK Holiday Inn. He avoided speaking to the driver in his native Anaang although he spoke it fluently; the last thing he wanted to do was make an impression on anyone at this point. As usual the dog collar was bad enough.
The drive took only a few minutes and by three forty-five Father Gentile was checked into the office building slab of the hotel at the junction of the Van Wyck Expressway and the Belt Parkway. The room was narrow, simply furnished and small. The color scheme was predominantly a grape-tinted purple. His window looked out over some sort of Japanese garden. He couldn’t have cared less. He swished the blinds closed and switched on the desk light. There was no overhead; it was something he’d been noticing recently on his travels, the lack of overhead lighting. He went to the closet, found the hard-shell suitcase that had been left for him earlier that afternoon and unlocked it with the key that had been Fed-Exed to him the day before in Rome. He removed the contents, which included two suits, several Arrow shirts in different colors, still in their wrapping, a pair of black James Taylor and Son elevator shoes that added two inches to his height and a Glock 21 10mm automatic pistol with a fifteen-round law enforcement magazine and a Patrick Johnakin muzzle-up spring-loaded shoulder rig to go with it. He stripped off his priest’s clothes, redressed-complete with the Glock and holster-then neatly placed everything into the hard-shell suitcase and locked it again.
He reached inside the pocket of the suit jacket and withdrew two wallets, one large and European, the other an ordinary American-style bill-fold. The large wallet identified him as Peter Ruffino, an Italian agent of the Art Recovery Tactical Squad (ARTS), which was itself a division of Allied International Intelligence, or Alintel, a worldwide concern representing everybody from Lloyds to the British Museum, including several royal families, dozens of major corporations and even a few governments.
The other wallet was filled with the Homeland Security credentials of one Laurence Gaynor MacLean. Both sets of documents were authentic and subjectible to deep background checks. As Father Gentile was well aware, despite endless denials of its existence, the Vatican secretary of state had the single-longest-running intelligence department in the world, an organization that in one form or another had existed since St. Peter came to Rome and underground Christians had chalked the sign of the fish on catacomb walls. Documents and the “legends” to go with them were never a problem. Gentile decided on the Homeland Security persona of good old Larry MacLean, working for a minute in front of the bathroom mirror to spin away his Italian accent and replace it with something vaguely Midwestern, then left the room.
He went down to the lobby, asked for a taxi to take him into the city and half an hour later he was in Manhattan, checking into the Gramercy Park Hotel and telling the desk clerk that Delta had lost his luggage once again. He registered as Laurence G. MacLean and paid with a Bank of America Visa check card that was hooked into what was effectively a bottomless well. He spent ten more minutes in front of the bathroom mirror of his suite practicing a flat Kansas drawl, then left the hotel and began to work.
17
The store was called simply “Maroc” and occupied a tiny space on Lafayette Street about three blocks away, at the corner of Grand. A tinkling bell announced Finn and Valentine as they entered. It was like some kind of doorway that took them halfway across the world-the air was suddenly full of the scent of cumin, caraway and cinnamon, the walls hung with rugs of every size and color, tables piled on tables, stacks of everything from baskets to ancient muskets-all of it overseen by a fat man at the back smoking an oval cigarette and wearing a fez, dressed in a pure white linen suit that made him look as though he’d just stepped out of Casablanca. Finn expected Humphrey Bogart to appear at any minute with Ingrid Bergman right behind him. Valentine gave the man a small Islamic salutation and the man replied in kind. He looked at Finn curiously and Valentine introduced them.
“Finn Ryan, this is my friend Hassan Lasri.”
“Salaam,” said Finn, doing her best. Lasri smiled.
“Actually it is Shalom, since I am a Juif Maroc as they say in that other language of my nation, but it was a good effort.” He smiled again. “I am like a well-trained dog-I answer to any number of calls, especially from such a pretty checroun as yourself.”
“Checroun?”
“Redhead. They are said to be particularly lucky, among other things, and since my own name brings me nothing but bad luck…” He shrugged.
“Lasri means left-handed in Arabic,” Valentine explained.
“The worst kind of luck for an African like myself I’m afraid, but maybe you’ll bring me better.” He gestured toward a pair of ornately carved chairs and they sat down. He snapped his fingers incredibly loudly and a young man appeared in a long white robe and a small white embroidered cap. He gave Finn one wide-eyed appreciative look, then turned to Lasri, who spoke in rapid-fire Arabic for a few moments. The young man nodded, gave Finn another look and then disappeared.
“That is my nephew, Majoub. Clearly he is madly in love with you.”
Finn could feel herself blushing.
“Have no cause for embarrassment. You are very beautiful, it is true, and a wonderful example of a checroun, with sprinklings of freckles like stars and skin like milk, but I’m afraid Majoub would fall in love with a female chimpanzee if one came in the door. He is at that age. Harmless, believe me.” A few minutes later the young man was back with an enameled tray loaded down with three small cups, a Moroccan coffeepot and a plate of something brown, sticky and very fattening. Majoub cast a final glance at Finn, sighed and then disappeared for good. Hassan poured the coffee, spooning a tooth-aching amount of sugar into each cup and then passed around the plate of sticky brown things. “I have no idea what Majoub calls these but they are made from toffee and pecans and cashew nuts and are supposedly good for one’s prostate. You do not have to worry about such things, Finn, but we men must look to our health.” He grinned, popped two of them into his mouth one after the other and then washed them down with a swallow of coffee. Finn took a small bite out of the corner of one of the little bars and felt twenty years of careful dentistry in serious jeopardy. They were delicious.