Some sixth sense told him that he was not alone. He felt his heart start to pound, and he felt a sweat start to pour off him as he lay in his bedroom under the covers. He knew from his days as a mercenary soldier, sleeping in the field, that rolling over would accomplish nothing.
Instead, he slowly moved his arm. He moved it cautiously so his sheet would not rustle. And he moved in a way that brought his hand to the holster that held the pistol that he hung by his bedside every night. He hung it there for two reasons. Women found it an aphrodisiac when he was lucky enough to lure one back to his apartment. But the better reason was that of self-protection.
In terms of a home break-in during the dark of night, every second counted.
His hand found the holster. And the holster was empty.
He hadn’t failed to put the gun there. Its absence proved that he wasn’t alone. And its absence also told him that the enemy was waiting patiently for him to realize that the gun was gone, so that there would be a hideous panic in the moment of death.
In the dark, the full force of a lithe, powerful body came down on him, pinning him to the bed. Hands in latex gloves-hands that were like vices-pinned the upper part of his body. The hands were like steel. They clamped tightly.
Stanislaw let loose with a horrendous howl of profanity. He flailed and tried to fight his way forward, to escape the grip of the intruder.
Then there was a final sensation, that of a cool steel point pressing to the side of his neck, the point of something very sharp and very cold, like an ice pick.
A final kick, scream, and thrust and then Stanislaw felt the point of the pick penetrate his flesh, much like one feels a hypodermic needle. But this needle was several inches long. Pushed by a powerful hand, the blade shot upward into his jugular vein and slid onward through his head like a bolt of lightning.
When it went into his brain, a piercing blackness accompanied it. He shuddered a final time and was dead before the intruder withdrew the blade.
John Sun relaxed and withdrew from the sleeping area. Methodically, he placed the murder weapon in a zip-lock bag, the kind currently favored by airport security pests. He would later throw the pick into the Lake of Geneva. He went to the washroom and rinsed off his gloves but did not remove them. These days, in the era of DNA and micro-forensics, one could never be too careful. Get arrested in Switzerland, and he’d never see the light of day again. Even his government wouldn’t be able to get him out. Not that he was worried.
He returned to the dead man to make sure the dead man was a dead man. No movement, no pulse. Good. He breathed a little easier. He went to all the windows-there were only five in the apartment-and drew the blinds. Once again, one could never be too careful. Out of a sense of decency, he drew a cover over the dead man’s body. Like Colonel Tissot, the body would start to stink in about seven days and would draw investigators to the apartment. But by then, Sun would be long gone from the country and possibly even from Europe.
The apartment had a good audio setup in the living room, so he went to it and turned on some music. Most of the dead man’s music collection was not to John Sun’s tastes. But he did find some classical stuff, some Mahler and some Brahms, and he hooked up some restful, mournful stuff. He had killed two men today, partly out of retribution, partly because it had been his job. But it did set him in a mournful mood. No Verdi Requiem, so Mahler would have to do.
Then, for two hours, Sun prowled his second victim’s apartment. He found many items of interest, but the preeminent one was the file that the dead man had acquired less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Thoughtfully, he settled into a chair and read it, putting two and two together quickly.
Sun had a keen eye for attractive women, and his gaze settled almost immediately on the surveillance photographs of Alexandra LaDuca. This was the first time he had ever seen her, either in a photo or live, and it was the first time he had ever encountered her name. The file was clear as to what she was: an American agent who would be assigned to a case tangential to the late Pole, the late Colonel Tissot, and that star-crossed little statue that some busybodies had swiped from a Spanish museum, putting this whole skein of events in progress.
An American agent and a female one at that, as the pictures made clear. Interesting.
Alex LaDuca. Well, he had computer access and some very good backup people. He’d be able to find out more about this woman within a few hours, not the least of details being where and how to find her, if necessary.
He read the snippets about her background and then went back to the pictures.
The clearest photograph of Alexandra LaDuca was one week old. Color, shot from a surveillance camera in Barcelona. A trim woman in her late twenties, short dark hair, at ease on the streets of Barcelona, walking in a T-shirt, a short denim skirt, and sneakers, hardly the vision of a tough investigative agent. But appearances were frequently deceiving.
Another photo, taken from a greater distance, showed her on the beach in a red Nike swimsuit, and a third photo showed her at a café, sitting alone, reading a novel.
It was very strange, he pondered, where these back-channel paths sometimes led. He set the file aside near the door. He would take it with him. He then spent another hour prowling the apartment.
Around 4:00 a.m., he emerged from the lobby of Stanislaw’s building onto a quiet Geneva street. He walked two blocks, an American baseball cap down across his eyes just in case, and he found his car exactly where he had left it.
In another minute, he was gone, leaving the streets behind him quiet and lifeless.
TWENTY-ONE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 8, 7:15 A.M.
The next morning, Alex left her hotel and went for an early walk to get into the pace of the city. She had breakfast at a nearby café, opened her laptop there, and went to work as the city started to awaken around her.
In the background material that the curator, Rivera, had spoken of when he gave his introduction, someone had written an overview of art theft in the world of 2009.
“I say a prayer every time we hang a new show,” said one woman, the curator of a private gallery in London, setting the anxious tone of the material that followed.
“Historically, the most significant catalyst for art theft is war,” began the first section. It continued:
Conquering armies have claimed and redistributed artifacts of value since war began. World War II brought violence and destruction on a scale previously unseen. The confiscation by the Nazis of tens of thousands of artworks created by Jewish artists or belonging to prewar Jewish collectors prompted the drafting of the “Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict” in 1954. This was created to protect art, just as the Geneva Convention was created to protect civilians. Yet in 2003, professional thieves, working under the camouflage created by the invasion of Baghdad by US forces, looted the Iraq National Museum and other museums, libraries, and archaeological sites, making off with over 12,000 artifacts. Scholars worldwide have demanded that the authorities in Baghdad hold the thieves responsible according to the rules laid out in the aforementioned convention. Authorities caught an American scholar trying to smuggle pilfered statues into the States in June of 2007. From 1933 through the end of World War II, the Nazi regime maintained a policy of looting art for sale or for removal to museums in the Third Reich. Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe, personally took charge of hundreds of valuable pieces, generally stolen from Jews and other victims of genocide. In 2006, title to the gilt painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, by Austrian artist Gustav Klimt, was restored to Maria Altmann, an heir of the prewar owner. Provenance in this case was easy to establish; Bloch-Bauer, the subject of the painting, was Altmann’s aunt. Altmann almost immediately sold the painting at auction, and it was resold to Ronald Lauder for $135 million. At the time of the latter sale this was the highest known price ever paid for a painting.