“You mean it was all just an accident? Months of planning, hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment ruined because some hood got lucky?”
“Why not? A courier would have been too risky, given how tight airport security has been recently. Cargo was a much safer option since most of it never even gets unpacked. I should know, I’ve used it myself. Steiner probably had people lined up to take the wine and the gems off him. But the coins — they were unusual. He needed help for those.”
“Right.” Jennifer could see where Tom was heading. “So Steiner came to Paris to see his old friend Ranieri. Maybe gave him one of the coins to get him started. But before Ranieri could sell it, someone tracked him down and killed him. When Steiner heard what had happened he came back here, grabbed his stuff, threw his newspaper in the trash, and ran back to Amsterdam, presumably with the other coins.”
“And wound up dead a few days later himself. Stabbed, just like Ranieri.”
“Didn’t Harry say that there were only a small number of people in the world who would be interested or able to buy coins like these?”
“What’s your point?”
“That it’s just possible, you know, that both Steiner and Ranieri ended up trying to sell them back to the same people who’d had them stolen in the first place.”
Before Tom could answer, the edges of the newspaper fluttered, the pages lifting and then settling again with a faint rustle. Jennifer’s eyes snapped to the open doorway.
“Did you shut the window behind you?” she whispered.
“I think so, yes,” Tom whispered back.
He slid off the sofa and flicked the switch, plunging the room back into darkness before stepping toward the doorway, pressing his back to the wall, Jennifer standing behind him.
They waited and listened, the silence strangely amplifying the sounds drifting in over the rooftops. A distant siren, a window slamming, a squeal of brakes, a baby crying. But then, through all these, a different noise. A faint creak, followed a few seconds later by another. Noises that could only be coming from inside the flat itself. From someone treading on the floorboards.
The footsteps drew irresistibly toward them like the steady beat of a muffled drum, only accompanied now, so close were they, by a faint rustle of fabric. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped and Tom knew that whoever it was must be standing just on the other side of the doorway. Readying themselves.
A gun barrel edged into the room, black and polished and snub-nosed. And then a man’s hand, white and pudgy, with large gold rings on each of the fingers and a spider’s web tattooed onto the soft mound of skin between the thumb and the forefinger.
Without hesitating, Tom reached forward and grabbed the man’s wrist, locking his fingers over the top of the man’s thumb and tightening his own thumb over the lower wrist joint. In the same movement, he spun the man’s hand round so that it went through 180 degrees and then snapped it back up toward his body. Tom immediately felt the connective tendons and ligaments rupturing and snapping all along the wrist joint as the gun dropped from the man’s fingers to the sound of his screaming. Tom loosened his grip on his wrist and scooped the gun off the floor. The man, whose face neither of them had yet seen, leaped back from the entrance, howling in pain.
“I’ll shoot the next person that tries to come into this room,” Tom shouted.
There was silence and then the sound of retreating footsteps and then two muffled voices that seemed to be coming from the bedroom.
“They’re probably deciding which is worse,” Tom whispered. “Trying to take us on in here or going back empty-handed to whoever sent them.”
The doorbell suddenly rang out, a shrill medley of electronic chimes that flooded the apartment with noise. In the deep silence that followed, they heard the sound of running feet fading away across the rooftops.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
The bell rang again, more insistently this time. Tom crept out into the kitchen and then, keeping close to the wall, made his way to the front door. Again the sound of the bell rolled through the empty flat, only this time it was accompanied by the dull thud of someone banging a fist against the wood. Tom edged his eye toward the chrome peephole that had been drilled into the middle of the door.
“Shit,” he whispered through his teeth. “Shit, shit, shit.” He screwed his eyes tightly shut and leaned his head against the door, shaking it slowly. This was the last thing he needed.
“Who is it?” Jennifer mouthed, still standing in the doorway to the living room, a curious look on her face. Without answering, Tom slipped the gun in his pocket, reached down, unbolted the door and opened it. The light from the corridor billowed into the room like a dense fog and made him squint.
“Ah, Felix, mon ami. I hope we did not disturb you?” A broad man with a cheery face and long curls of oily hair that were tied into a thick black ponytail peered into the darkness of the room, his arm extended. Jennifer recognized Felix as the name that Piper had claimed Kirk had operated under for the last ten years.
“Bonjour Jean-Pierre. You’d better come in,” said Tom grudgingly, shaking his hand. The man signaled at the two policemen standing on either side of him to wait. Jennifer flicked the lights back on, as Tom shut the door behind the man. “Jennifer, this is Jean-Pierre Dumas, from the DST — the French domestic secret service. Jean-Pierre, meet Special Agent Jennifer Browne of the FBI.”
“Enchanté.” Dumas shook Jennifer’s hand, his breath pure Lucky Strike. “These must be yours.” He glanced at her still-naked feet and held up her shoes in his left hand.
“Thank you.” Jennifer glared at Tom as she brushed the dirt and dust off each of her feet before slipping the shoes back on.
“Do you have any papers, mademoiselle?” Dumas asked when she stood up.
Jennifer reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out her FBI badge and handed it to him. He wedged his cigarette in his mouth and examined it skeptically, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“So, Felix really is working for the FBI. Maintenant j’ai vraiment tout vu.”
“I’m not working for the FBI,” Tom said tersely. “We’re cooperating, that’s all.”
“That’s right,” Jennifer interjected. “Mr. Kirk is here as a private citizen. Nothing more.”
“He always is,” Dumas said with a wave of his hand. “Come. Let’s sit down and we can discuss all this properly.”
He led them through to the sitting room and sat down reluctantly on one of the sofas, his weight barely depressing the cushion’s stiff springs, while Tom and Jennifer sat opposite. Dumas was dressed in a new pair of jeans, blue shirt over a white T-shirt and a heavy black leather jacket. He looked strong, although not particularly fit or fast. His brown eyes twinkled above his large, blunt nose, his face slack from alcohol and nicotine.
“So, my friend.” He turned to Tom. “What brings you back to Paris?”
“You two are friends?”
“Well, maybe not friends,” Dumas agreed. “Tom never likes to get too close to anyone, do you? But we have an understanding that is as close to friendship as I expect Tom will ever get.” Dumas smiled.
“I want you to tell her, J-P,” Tom said, insistently. “Tell her how we met.”
“Are you sure?” Dumas looked uncertain but Tom gave a firm nod of his head. Shrugging, Dumas continued. “Felix was having some problems a few years ago now. He had become, how you say, surplus to your government’s requirements. He came to me and we helped him disappear on the understanding that he would help us recover an item of national importance.”