“So you used to be in the CIA?”
She accelerated into the outside lane as she spoke, and noticed Tom clutching the grab handle over the door. She had insisted on driving, knowing that the familiar feel of the pedals under her feet and the wheel in her hands would help her unwind after the flight. Tom stared out the window as he answered.
“Yeah.”
“Operation Centaur?”
“Yeah.”
“So, what happened?”
“It’s a two-hour drive to Paris,” Tom snapped. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather talk about something else.”
“Fine.” Jennifer dropped a gear and sped past a huge truck, its plastic sides whipping the air, before changing up again, the car lurching forward as she stamped the accelerator down to the floor. She sensed Tom flinching next to her and smiled. She could see he was not used to being a passenger, but then neither was she.
Another ten minutes went by, until it was Tom’s turn to break the silence, his question betraying the thought that had clearly been circling through his head.
“How do you know about Centaur?”
“Oh, so you want to talk about it now?” Tom glared at her. “You dropped a hair in New York when you stole that egg.” She explained. “We got a DNA match and the system triggered an alert to the NSA. They briefed us about it. That’s how we made the connection between you and the Fort Knox job.”
“What else did they say?”
“I can’t tell you that.”
“Did they tell you about me? About what happened?”
“They said you went off the reservation.”
“Christ!” Tom started laughing. “John fucking Piper.”
“How did…?” Jennifer asked in surprise.
“Because only he would have said that.” He laughed again. “So John Piper’s managed to crawl his way out of the Agency into the NSA now, has he? I bet he’s terrified this whole Centaur thing will come out and bite him in the ass.”
“Like us, he just wants the coins back.”
“Let me tell you something about John Piper. All he’s ever wanted is what’s good for John Piper. What did he say about me?”
“That you were a good agent who went bad. Their best agent. He said you killed someone.”
“Did he now?” Tom’s voice was hard, his eyes narrowed.
“Did you?” Jennifer asked, briefly flicking her eyes away from the road.
“Yes.” He nodded slowly. “But he would have killed me if I hadn’t.”
“That’s original,” she sniffed dismissively.
“They’d decided to shut Centaur down.”
“Who’s they?”
“Piper and his CIA buddies. They asked me to do one last job — break into a Swiss biotech company, steal some files, torch the place, and then put a bullet in the chief scientist’s head so that he couldn’t re-create the research. I didn’t do wet work — they had other people for that — so I refused. They threatened to bring me up on charges. You know, refusing to obey a superior officer, that sort of crap. When I told them I was leaving they sent my handler to retire me. That’s what they call it, by the way. I just did what I had to do to stay alive.”
“Why the hell would they do that?” She shrugged disbelievingly, although she had to admit the little she’d seen of John Piper lent some credibility to Tom’s story, however much she mistrusted him.
“Because by then they’d realized that if Centaur ever got out they’d all be in the firing line. I figure they asked us all to make a hit to see how far they could control us. Maybe even planned to use it as blackmail to make sure we all stayed quiet. I don’t know what happened to the others, but when Piper realized I wasn’t going to play ball he made his move. It’s how they work.”
“It’s how you want me to think they work,” she snorted.
“They don’t play by the normal rules. You get caught on the wrong side of them and they come down on you hard.”
“So what happened in Paris?”
Tom smiled.
“I cut a deal with the French.”
“What sort of deal?”
“I got something back for them that they’d lost and they helped me disappear.”
Jennifer glanced at Tom.
“And then you became a thief?”
“What did you expect me to do? You think that I was ever going to be able to hold down a regular nine-to-five sort of job? Work in an office? Push paper around?” A faint shadow of Tom’s face reflected in the glass as he smiled at the thought. “I didn’t choose this life. The Agency left me swinging in the wind. I lost everything I had. In the end I had no choice.”
“But you enjoyed it, didn’t you?” she asked in an accusing tone.
“Why, was that wrong of me? Stealing was what I was good at, what I was trained to do. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Still do, I guess. The planning, the job, the escape. After a while, the adrenaline’s addictive. I stopped needing the money years ago.”
“So what made you decide to stop?” she asked skeptically, knowing that her tone would reveal that she still thought it highly unlikely he actually had.
He shook his head.
The reflections of white chevrons, painted onto the road to indicate how close cars could safely drive behind each other, strobed rhythmically across the front of Tom’s sunglasses.
“No one thing. My father’s funeral, maybe. I guess sometimes things come together in your head and you just know it’s time.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
They drove on in silence, tower blocks and squat warehouses joining the land to the sky in a gray mist of steel and concrete as they reached the grimy underbelly of Paris, the glittering new soccer stadium in St. Denis an unexpected break in the dark suburban fog.
“What do you know about Darius van Simson?”
“Only what Harry told us last night,” Tom replied. “About him having bought the Double Eagle that came up at auction. The name’s familiar, though. I think I read about him somewhere.”
“You probably did,” said Jennifer. “He turns up in the Fortune 500 every year. They think he’ll break the top fifty this time.”
“Why do you want to go and see him?”
“Until a few weeks ago as far as anyone knew there were only three Double Eagles in existence — Van Simson’s and the two in the Smithsonian. Now, with the theft of the five secret Fort Knox coins, it seems there are eight. Van Simson shouldn’t know that yet. I want to see how he reacts when I tell him that his coin might not be quite so unique as he thought it was when he bought it.”
“You think he might be involved?”
“He’s certainly rich enough to have put the job together. And he’s a big player in the coin market as well as one of Harry’s biggest clients. I think it’s possible he may know something about what’s going on, yes.
“Where did he make his money?”
“Real estate. You know, office buildings, shopping malls, residential developments, that sort of thing. He seems to have a gift for buying cheap and then miraculously getting a road moved, or planning permission to add an extra three floors.”
“So he’s smart?”
“Smart and if you believe the stories, brutal.” Jennifer checked her mirror as she carved smoothly across two lanes to get out from behind another truck. Tom gripped the grab handle over his head.
“What stories?”
“They say he got his first break when he bought a retirement home and then forced all the residents to leave so he could knock it down and build something else. When they refused, he set fire to it. All told, thirteen people died. Of course, there was nothing to link him to it, but he got his apartment block.”
“You see, that’s the problem with you people. Always so willing to think the worst of everyone. Have you any idea how easy it is for these rumors to start?”