And third, if Rizzo was there, it wasn’t a coincidence. Her employers were hooking her up with someone she knew.
TWELVE
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND, SEPTEMBER 7, 9:32 A.M.
Colonel Tissot finished breakfast and prepared to address a day of business. As a merchant of munitions that were sold in the world’s gray economy, he was a busy man on most days, particularly in a “neutral” capital like Geneva. The beauty of five hundred years of Swiss neutrality was that Switzerland was a perfect place to conduct the commerce of warfare.
Well, why not? The Swiss banks and their codes of secrecy were there for a reason, were they not?
A fastidious man, quiet and unassuming in public, Tissot dressed in a light gray suit, one of several that he had bought on a recent visit to London. He tended to be a creature of habit, leaving between nine and ten each morning to meet his clients. He was, however, wary enough to alter his movements from day to day. One never knew when some pest from the past with some grievance, real or imagined, might step forth.
Tissot locked the double bolts on his door and stepped a few paces to the private elevator that served his floor. He checked to make sure he had both of his cell phones, one in his trouser pocket, the other with a small handgun in the briefcase he carried. He knew that Stanislaw would call him during that afternoon with a progress report of his drive down the southeast coast of France.
Tissot had a rueful admiration for his employee. The man had made a lifetime occupation of killing people, first in the military and then for hire. Well, it was a mean, unforgiving world, and everyone had uses for men like Stanislaw, who were just smart enough to get a job done and just dumb enough not to try thinking on their own.
When the elevator doors opened, there was a passenger whom he had never seen before. He gave Tissot a nod and Tissot reciprocated. No words were spoken. Tissot didn’t care for strangers and was leery of them. But people were always subletting in this building or entertaining promiscuous guests who stayed over. The morality of today led to a lot of strangers, Tissot mused, and he could have done without them.
Well, it would only be a few seconds, Tissot grumbled, and he did have his own weapon in his attaché case, along with his laptop.
The elevator doors closed.
Of course, Tissot pondered next, working his way through an unpleasant scenario, if this stranger in the elevator were any real threat, he would not have time to access the weapon. The man was Asian of some sort, much younger and athletic than he. Tissot had sold weapons to Asians many times. He liked them as customers but not necessarily as people. The elevator slowly descended, and Tissot put together a few other details.
The stranger in the elevator wouldn’t yield the rear of the car, insisting through his positioning that he remain behind the only other passenger. Then Tissot noticed that a band of tape had been placed over the security camera in the elevator. And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the man was wearing gloves.
Tissot quickly raised his gaze to the mirror in the corner of the elevator. He saw that the young man behind him was staring back at him. Tissot could read the look in an instant.
“Something troubling you, sir?” Tissot asked in English. He made a move to access the gun in his brief case.
“Yes,” the stranger said.
Then the gloves were in motion. Tissot jabbed an elbow backward. He flailed and fought to open his attaché case. But the stranger ripped the case out of his hands. It thudded onto the floor.
Tissot attempted to throw another elbow and tried to stamp down on his assailant’s instep. But the assailant had him by the head, one hand under the jaw, the other on the top of his skull, turning his head in a powerful twisting motion.
The grip was so tight that Tissot couldn’t open his mouth to speak. Tissot resisted by clenching his neck muscles and trying to strike backward with his arms. But the stranger was an expert. He had his own body flush against Tissot’s as leverage.
Then the stranger put everything he had into his mission. With a tremendous twist, he moved Tissot’s head sharply to the left, then jerked it backward. Tissot felt his own muscles tighten like springs, then gradually tear with an excruciating pain. The intruder jerked Tissot’s head upward, then spun it abruptly back to the left. Tissot felt as if his body was a car involved in some catastrophic wreck.
The crack of Tissot’s cervical column was as loud as a gunshot. It filled Tissot’s body with an immense pain that swelled and carried him into an unconscious blackness. Then Tissot’s body gave one final violent contraction as death claimed it.
Tissot’s body went limp. John Sun thoughtfully eased it to the floor. He let the body rest there briefly in a small moment of victory. He picked up Tissot’s attaché case and guided the elevator to an emergency stop. Then he took the elevator back to the sixth floor where Tissot had boarded.
Using the keys from the dead man’s pocket, he opened Tissot’s door.
He dragged the corpse in. Perfect so far. No one had seen anything, and presumably no one had heard anything. No blood. Sometimes things were too easy, but he wasn’t complaining.
Sun closed the door and locked it. He set aside the attaché case for a moment. He calmly dragged Tissot’s body into one of the bathrooms, dumped him headfirst in the tub, and closed the door. He returned back to Tissot’s front door and bolted it from within.
He then settled into the apartment of the man he had killed. He had to go through Tissot’s belongings. There were certain items he wanted, and he had several hours to go through everything and look for them. But the item he wanted most, which he would take with him, was the colonel’s laptop.
He found it easily.
THIRTEEN
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 7, 9:42 A.M.
Here, my distinguished guests, is the object we’re looking for,” José Rivera, the museum curator, continued in Spanish. “The Pietà of Malta. Let’s take a close look at the pilfered object.”
He passed around the table a series of identical files, one for each person present. Inside each, on the top page, was a color portrait of the object recently stolen. To a casual observer, it might have appeared to be a smaller and less refined version of Michelangelo’s majestic sculpture, The Pietà, as it was known to millions of art lovers and Christians around the world. Michelangelo’s masterpiece has remained at St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City to this day.
“The Pietà,” Rivera began, “is not just a single sculpture in Rome, but rather a singular subject in Christian art, normally depicting the Virgin Mary cradling the slain body of Jesus. As such, it is a particular form of the devotional theme of Our Lady of Sorrows. Any pietà depicts a scene from the Passion of Christ and is the thirteenth of the Stations of the Cross. When Christ and the Virgin are surrounded by other figures from the New Testament, the subject is strictly called a lamentation, although pietà is often used for this as well. The pietà-as an expression of faith and as an enterprise of religious art-gained popularity in Italy in the sixteenth century. Many German and Polish fifteenth-century examples in wood greatly emphasize Christ’s wounds and are seen as precursors to the genre. Woodcuts from Russia in the fourteen hundreds suggest a similar fascination with the form.”
Rivera paused. A trace of a smile crossed his face. “The most famous pietà, of course, is Michelangelo’s in St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Michelangelo’s last work was another pietà, a different one, featuring not the Virgin Mary holding Christ, but rather Joseph of Arimathea.” He paused, then added, “Michelangelo carved Joseph’s face as a self-portrait. A final act of piety wherein the sculptor humbly placed himself in a biblical context.”