CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
Jennifer’s hair was wet and her shoulders still glistened with hundreds of dew-like water droplets as she slipped her panties on and fastened her black lace bra. Then she sat on the edge of the narrow bed and stepped into her black jeans, maneuvering them up her long legs, lying back and lifting her hips up in the air as they slipped around her waist.
She was still hot from the shower and stepped to the window to let some air in, only remembering at the last minute to hide from the street below behind the net curtains that alternately rose and fell in the slight breeze. Her silvery flip-top phone began to vibrate frantically on the dresser. She paused for a few seconds before answering it, knowing who it would be, wanting to make sure that she was fully composed and had all her facts in order. She knew that the conversation she was about to have might be a difficult one.
“Hello.”
“Browne? It’s Bob Corbett.” The clipped, rapid-fire intonation immediately confirmed her suspicions. Jennifer kept her own answers short and to the point, as she knew Corbett preferred them.
“Yes, sir.”
“How are you getting on? Tell me you’ve got some good news. Christ knows, I need some.” He sounded tired and anxious and she guessed that Piper and the others must have been giving him a hard time since Renwick’s murder and the loss of the coin.
“We’re making some progress.”
“Good.” He sounded relieved. “What have you got?”
“We went to see Van Simson as agreed. His coin’s still there. But we — I mean I,” she corrected herself quickly, knowing that Corbett was the sort of person to read all sorts of implications into that sort of slip of the tongue, “sensed that he knew more than he let on. He acted surprised, but maybe not surprised enough. I think he already knew about the coins.”
“Anything else?” He didn’t sound impressed, although then she knew he rarely did.
“We went to Ranieri’s apartment but it was a decoy. Kirk found his real apartment and a German newspaper, dated a few days after Ranieri’s murder, which had an article mentioning a robbery from Schiphol Airport.”
“Oh, yeah?” Corbett sounded more interested now.
“I got Max to look into it. Apparently a few weeks after this Schiphol robbery a German wound up dead in Amsterdam, stabbed in the chest just like Ranieri.”
“What’s the link?”
“When the Dutch police went to this guy’s apartment, they found some of the gear taken in the airport job.”
“I don’t follow.” She could sense a slight tension in his voice, as always when his patience ran low.
“His name was Carl Steiner and guess who bailed him out of jail a few days before he got killed.”
“Ranieri?”
“Exactly.”
“So what are you saying?”
“It’s just a theory, but what if whoever stole the coins from Fort Knox tried to smuggle the coins back to Europe by hiding them in a freight shipment? Then this German guy, Steiner, got lucky at the airport and one of the packages he stole had the coins in it. Steiner knew Ranieri and so came to Paris to ask him to fence one of the coins for him. Then when Ranieri got killed, Steiner went back to the Netherlands, leaving the newspaper we found behind. A few days later, he got killed, too.”
“And your conclusion is…?”
“That the same person killed both Ranieri and Steiner,” Jennifer said firmly. “That this person was probably someone they were trying to sell the coins to. And given the small universe of people who would actually be interested in the coins, it’s even possible that Ranieri and Steiner tried to sell them back to the same person who’d had them stolen in the first place.”
There was a pause until Corbett spoke again and although she felt confident about what she’d just said, the silence was still an uncomfortable one.
“It makes sense,” he said eventually, to her relief. “In any case, it will give me enough to keep Piper and Green happy and buy you a few days. But you need to get to Amsterdam. Soon.”
“I was planning to drive there tomorrow.”
“Good. Meanwhile, I’ll see what else I can dig up about the airport robbery and the murder and get it to you. That reminds me, by the way — we got Renwick’s phone records. He made two calls that night, both to cell phones.”
“And?”
“They were both taken out in dummy names. One in the U.K., one in the Netherlands.”
“The Netherlands? You think there’s a link to Steiner?”
“No way of knowing. The phones are dead now. Maybe he was calling round to try and generate a bit of interest himself.”
“Well, clearly one of the calls hit home. Problem is we don’t know which one or who it was to.” There was a pause. “What do you want to do about Kirk?” She tried to ask the question casually, not wanting him to think she was especially bothered.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, did Secretary Young go for the deal or do we need to cut him loose?”
“Oh, that. Yes, I think we can live with that. As long as he keeps his side of the bargain and buries this whole Centaur thing.”
“Good.” Almost immediately she wished she had allowed herself at least a brief pause before answering to signal her indifference too Tom’s fate in case Corbett misinterpreted it as a sign that she was getting too close. He didn’t disappoint.
“Don’t get too friendly, Browne.”
“I won’t.”
She shook her head ruefully. She wasn’t losing perspective, of that she was sure. But there were certain things that didn’t add up and she wanted them explained.
“You need to watch out for Kirk,” Corbett continued.
“I know. It’s just—”
“Just what?”
“I don’t think that Piper gave us the whole story about Kirk.”
“You mean he didn’t murder his handler?”
“No, he admits he did that. But he says that he was double-crossed. That the CIA tried to have him killed and that he only acted in self-defense.”
“And you believed him?”
“Of course not,” Jennifer shot back. “At least not at first. The thing is the French secret service confirmed his story.”
“The what?” Real concern in Corbett’s voice now. Jennifer shook her head, annoyed with herself. This wasn’t coming out like she’d wanted it to.
“They caught up with us in Ranieri’s apartment. Followed us there from Van Simson’s, who apparently they’ve had under surveillance for months. They know Kirk. Told me that his story checked out. All of it.”
“The truth is, Browne, that we can’t be sure what happened back then. But even I would sooner take Piper’s word than the word of someone who has spent his whole life lying to people. At the end of the day he’s a crook, plain and simple.”
“I don’t deny he’s a thief. But what if he’s right? What if Piper trained him up and then cut him off? Wouldn’t that make us at least partly responsible for what he’s become? I’m not sure what choices we’d left him.”
“Okay, Browne, I take your point,” Corbett conceded. “Maybe there is more to this than Piper’s let on. But we can deal with that when this is over. Believe me, I’ll be the first one to stick it right up Piper’s ass if I find out he’s lied to us. But in the meantime, you just gotta drop it. Kirk is not your problem. Getting the coins back and whoever took them is.”
“I know that.”
“You gotta stay sharp and alert. Focused on the job at hand. If you’re not, I’ll pull you out right now. No questions asked.”