CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
Archie walked up the Rue Denain toward the station’s main entrance, checking the screen of his one remaining phone every so often. Under the streetlights, he could see that the wide area under the building’s neo-Corinthian façade was still busy with Algerian taxi drivers and pickpockets cruising for their next victim. Romanian gypsies, babies carefully positioned in the folds of their brightly colored skirts, begged, their hands dark with henna tattoos, their fingers covered in gold rings.
He sensed the car before he saw it, its headlights staining the road yellow, its tires sucking onto the tarmac as it drew up alongside him. It stopped when the rear window drew level with him, the smoked glass glinting. Archie’s eyes narrowed with suspicion as the window dropped an inch. The dry scent of air-conditioning seeped out onto the street.
“Going somewhere?”
“Do I know you?” Archie’s tone was cautious.
“Yes, and yet no.”
“I haven’t got time for riddles.”
“No. You’re almost right out of time.”
“Cassius?” Archie gasped, his heart leaping in his chest.
“You came highly recommended. I have to say, so far you have done little to suggest that reputation is deserved. Late on the first egg. Now, with two days to go, no sign of the second.” Archie swallowed, wished he had chosen not to walk.
“I know, but it’s been difficult. More difficult than we thought.” As he spoke he tried to peer through the gap in the window. “Perhaps if I had a bit more time—”
“That, unfortunately, is the one thing I cannot give you. I’ve paid you handsomely. Now I expect you to deliver. You know the consequences if you fail.”
Archie stammered out an answer.
“It’s not my fault. It’s Felix. I’m still working on him.”
“That is not my concern.”
“But I’ve got it all planned out.” Archie tried to sound confident.
“Where?”
“You know I can’t tell you that.”
“Where?” The voice insisted, the single word dripping with menace.
“Amsterdam,” Archie muttered, his eyes dropping to the road.
“Good.” The voice was more relaxed now. “I will be in touch. Don’t fail me.”
The window whirred back into its frame and the car eased away from the curb and out into the street. A few seconds later, it had gone.
PART III
All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Jennifer flopped onto the bed, her shoes slipping off her feet and dropping noiselessly onto the worn brown carpet. She had not slept well the previous night even though they had taken turns during the drive from Paris. She felt drained, exhausted by the events of the past few days. She knew that this was partly due to the jet lag, partly due to the intensity of her investigation and subsequent reconstruction of the Fort Knox robbery, days of worry and lost sleep that she was still recovering from.
And, of course, the last few days had hardly been easy. An innocent man murdered, the coin that had been entrusted to her safekeeping stolen, a hasty and unauthorized flight to France with her prime suspect riding shotgun. And still so many questions. Who had ordered the Fort Knox break-in? Was Tom involved? How had one of the coins ended up in the stomach of a murdered priest? Who was behind Renwick’s murder? What was Van Simson’s involvement, if any? Where did Steiner and his murder fit in? Where were the coins now?
Try as she might to dismiss it, she was also forced to recognize that part of her exhaustion stemmed from the emotional burden of the mismatch between the Tom Kirk portrayed by Piper and Corbett and the evidence of her own eyes and ears. The same burden that had led her — head poundingly reminding her that morning — to drink too much the previous night.
In Tom she had seen someone who was resourceful, intelligent, and fiercely loyal. Someone who had, if you believed him, his own unarguable reasons for being who he was, for becoming what he had. She had realized that morning in the car that she had come to a crossroads. To trust him or not to trust him? To believe what she saw, or what people told her?
In the end, she wasn’t sure she had any choice. Without Tom, she never would have found Ranieri’s hideout or the newspaper and made the connection to Steiner. And he’d saved her life on that roof, she was sure of it. As for the Fort Knox job, she had looked into his eyes and seen in that instance, at least, the unblinking passion of an innocent man. No, she was quite clear in her own mind. Tom Kirk deserved a second chance. The question was whether Corbett would see it the same way.
“What are you doing?” She opened one eye, then the other as she heard Tom struggling to hook a rug around the corners of the large mirror that dominated the right-hand wall.
“People sometimes use this room to make porn movies,” Tom explained without turning around, still trying to secure the right-hand corner of the rug over the mirror’s chipped frame. “I’m pretty sure this is two-way glass for hiding a camera behind. I figured you wouldn’t want to take any chances.”
Jennifer sat upright, fully awake now.
“You’ve taken me to a brothel?” She slid off the bed and held her hands in front of her, scared of brushing against any surface that could have been soiled by the room’s previous occupants.
“It’s not a brothel. Just a place people go sometimes. Anyway, I know the owner. It’s clean and safe and no one will come looking for us here. Sorry they only had the one room, though. Don’t worry, I’ll take the floor.”
“Fine.”
Unhappy but not prepared to argue further, Jennifer sat back down. She reached down the side of the bed to grab the thick padded envelope that Corbett had sent over to the hotel as promised. She opened it and summarized the first few pages out loud, her left hand brushing hair back behind each ear as she spoke.
“Karl Steiner. East German. Forty-six years old. A former border guard. Suspected Stasi informer. Did time for armed robbery, handling stolen goods, usual stuff. Was implicated in several murders in Germany but they could never make anything stick. Moved to the Netherlands three years ago apparently to better serve his heroin addiction.”
Tom gave a short laugh. “Well, he came to the right place. What about the murder? What does it say about that?”
Jennifer turned over a few more pages in the file before answering.
“Not a lot.” She looked up at Tom over the top of the brown folder and shrugged. “Exactly the same injury as Ranieri, though he was on the phone when it happened. The call was traced to another phone booth in London. His wallet and keys were still on him, so even the Dutch police worked out it wasn’t a random mugging. They think it was probably drug related. Happens all the time apparently.”
Tom pinched his nose in thought.
“Well, we know different at least. We’re dealing with professionals here, trained assassins. They killed Ranieri and then made their move on Steiner. Probably counted on the fact that no one would link the two. The only question is whether they got what they wanted.”
Jennifer nodded slowly.
“You mean the coins?”
“Yeah.”
She consulted another typed page.