“You’d put some sort of security trigger on this guy’s file?” Corbett asked.
“Yeah. Because as far as we knew, he died ten years ago.”
“But why you? What’s your connection?” asked Green.
“My connection? I recruited him into the CIA fifteen years ago. His name’s Tom Kirk.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Piper reached into the slim leather briefcase that was resting against his chair leg and drew out four files, one for himself and one each for Young, Green, and Corbett.
“You two will have to share.” He nodded in Jennifer’s direction.
Jennifer edged her seat closer to Corbett’s as he took the file and broke the paper band that was wrapped around it with his hand, the seal ripping right between the words TOP and SECRET. Corbett opened the file, revealing some loose-leaf black-and-white photos and a thick wedge of bound documents.
“These photos were taken yesterday in London by the CIA. They show Tom Kirk, or as we knew him, Thomas Duval. Caucasian male, thirty-five years old, five foot eleven, no distinguishing features.”
Jennifer studied the photos. Even though the images were slightly blurred, she could see that Tom was an athletic-looking man, with a strong jaw and striking, intelligent eyes.
“He has dual British and U.S. citizenship from his parents, Charles and Rebecca Kirk. Both parents are now deceased, the mother in an MVA when Kirk was thirteen and the father earlier this year in a climbing accident in Switzerland.”
Jennifer looked up and saw Corbett eyeing Piper with a strange look, as if he suspected that this was leading some place that he’d rather not go.
“Following his mother’s death, Duval was sent to live with his mother’s family in Boston, while his father moved to Geneva.”
“Boston?” Green queried. “Any relation to Trent Duval?” Piper nodded.
“He’s Senator Duval’s nephew. That was another factor in his favor when we recruited him. After high school he won a scholarship to Oxford but was kicked out after a year and moved to Paris. That’s where I met him.”
“You were stationed in Paris?” asked Corbett with surprise.
“Three years. Normal diplomatic cover,” Piper confirmed with a nod. “I met Duval through a guy we had on the staff of the Sorbonne. He had signed up for an art history course. He was ideal material for us. Young, single, highly intelligent, no real family ties, looking for something to believe in. It took a while but I reeled him in. We put him through the Farm and then gave him some more specialist training for the program we’d recruited him for.”
“Which was?” asked Green.
“Industrial espionage. Code name Operation Centaur.”
“Industrial espionage?” Green repeated in disbelief.
“Computer files, blueprints, photos of prototypes, chemical formulas — you name it. The Europeans have been accelerating their efforts to reduce their reliance on U.S. and Japanese defense, technology, and biotech suppliers for years. Their investment was beginning to tell, costing us billions of dollars of lost revenue a year, not to mention potentially undermining our own national security. Duval and others like him were the cutting edge of our efforts to ensure we didn’t lose out.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Green. “I thought they were meant to be our allies.”
“Duval was the best agent we had. There wasn’t a safe or a security system he couldn’t deal with. And he blended in. He spoke five languages, had read the right books, knew the right people, could get an ‘in’ to anywhere he wanted. None of the agents we’d recruited in the States could do that. It gave him a real edge.”
“So what happened to him?” Green again.
“About five years in, he went bad.”
“What do you mean, bad?” Corbett now.
“Refused to take orders, started behaving erratically, backed out of jobs. We tried to bring him in but he refused. Said he was working for himself from now on. Then he went right off the reservation and murdered his handler. After that, he just dropped off the grid.”
“But you said you thought he was dead.” Green again.
“A year later Interpol provided a DNA sample of a man the French police had shot dead trying to break into the Ministry of Finance. It matched Duval’s. By then the whole operation had been shut down anyway, so we just closed his file and stopped looking.”
“But you still tagged his DNA profile,” said Corbett. “You weren’t convinced?”
“Let’s just say I had my doubts. Duval was too good to get caught out in the open by a bunch of cops. But that’s all they were. Doubts. I tagged his profile just in case and then forgot about it until a few days ago.”
“So what the hell happened to him?” Young replaced the gum in his mouth with a fresh piece, folding it between his teeth with a single, pudgy finger.
“Interpol suspect that Duval, or Kirk as he apparently now calls himself again, has been operating as an art thief for the past ten years based out of London. Goes by the name of Felix. They rate him as the best in the game.”
“What makes him so good?” Young again.
“We trained him, for a start. And let me tell you, the guy’s a real pro. Believe it or not, most art thefts are carried out opportunistically by small-time criminals who don’t really know what they’re doing. They just see something on a wall and grab it.” Corbett nodded in a rare show of agreement. “Kirk’s smart. He focuses on jewelery that can be recut or on B-list artists that don’t attract so much publicity and so can be more easily sold. And over the years either he, or someone working with him, has somehow assembled a network of private collectors who are prepared to pay big money for the right items and don’t ask questions about where they’ve come from.”
There was a pause as everyone let this new information sink in. Then Young asked the question that was in all their minds.
“Knocking off a museum is one thing. Hitting a government installation, well, that’s a whole different ball game. What makes you think he’s involved in the Fort Knox job?”
Piper shrugged.
“I know this guy. He always liked the difficult, spectacular jobs. A job like this has got his name all over it.”
“I think we’re going to need a bit more than gut feel,” Corbett observed dryly. “You got anything solid to back this up?”
Piper nodded firmly.
“Canadian INS has a record of a Mr. Felix Duval flying into Montreal from Geneva on June twenty-eighth, one week prior to the date you’ve just given us. You think that name and the timing and the fact that his DNA showed up in New York is all a big coincidence? He hit Fort Knox, then stopped off on Fifth Avenue for a bit of shopping. He’s laughing at us.”
“Jesus, how could you guys let something like this happen? One of our own people ripping us off!”
Piper responded swiftly.
“As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, none of this did happen. So we’re going to have to handle this investigation very carefully.”
“What are you hiding, John?” Corbett asked, his head angled quizzically to one side. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“Oh, fuck!” Young, who had been frowning into the desk for the past few minutes as if trying to remember something, gasped, the color draining from his face. “You said you recruited this guy fifteen years ago, didn’t you?”