A Magnificent Crime (12 page)

Paris

 

I stood in front of the entrance to the Louvre. Carved stone palace walls rose up all around me, framing the broad cobblestone square whose center was occupied by the sharp glass and steel angles of the pyramid. I breathed crisp morning air that still held the coolness of April in Paris. A low, lemony sun gleamed off the pyramid.

Traffic hummed just a few blocks away. Tourists waited in line to enter the museum, snapping photographs of the cheesy, yet somehow compelling, human statues. One, a woman painted white down to her eyelashes and dressed like Marie Antoinette, held a pose for an impossible length of time.

The pyramid was the public entrance to the museum. And it was how I, a jewel thief, was going to walk in. The first time, anyway.

I polished off the last bite of the
pain au chocolat
I'd bought on my walk: it was crisp, buttery, and warm, with dark, melty chocolate. I crinkled up the paper bag and tossed it away in the trash.

Today I was casing the Louvre.

Just those words gave me a shiver. I had always wanted to say them.

I wouldn't be the first thief to attempt it, of course. The Louvre had been robbed many times. It's a huge building and a mighty tempting target. In the past, the Louvre has come under fire for not having sufficient security. It's been called lax, outdated, and insufficiently staffed.

Once, there was a theft of a Renoir, and while they were investigating that, they discovered a bunch of jewelry was missing, too—but they had no idea when those pieces had been taken. It could have been months prior.

These were the sorts of stories that soothed the career criminal in me. They gave me an inkling this job might actually be possible. I might actually pull it off. If everything went exactly right.

I entered through the pyramid. I was scrutinized, like everyone, at the security checkpoint. Guards rifled through day packs. Metal detectors bleeped as people walked through. I wasn't worried; I didn't have anything suspicious on me.

Not today, anyway.

There was a faint smell of cheese and garbage coming from the bin beside the guards, where people were dumping their food and trash. No outside food was allowed inside.

As I rode the escalator down into the heart of the entrance, the spacious atrium beneath the pyramid, my senses fired on full alert. My fingertips tingled. The Hope was in here somewhere.

I moved through the museum, down endless corridors of artwork and treasures, scribbling mental notes on the guards, the exit points, the physical space, the surveillance systems, the burglar alarms, the sensors on the windows and doors . . . everything.

Gladys, of course, had furnished me with a whole file on the security specs and architectural drawings of the Louvre. I knew this building inside out. But I still needed to flesh everything out with some on-site details.

Because I was a tourist, I could take as many photos as I wanted. And take notes on my iPhone, under the guise of texting someone.

When I saw the first sign pointing the way to the Hope Diamond, my heart fluttered. It was time to get a good look at the jewel itself.

I was in the eleventh grade when I first saw the Hope. Our big class trip for the year was to Washington, D.C., and one of the stops on our itinerary was the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It was meant to be educational.

And it was.

But perhaps not in the ways my teachers had intended.

Seeing that gem had solidified my fascination with jewels and had pushed me further down my path. It was the first truly world-class piece of jewelry I had ever seen. And I'd felt drawn to it like nothing else.

My favorite part of
Snow White
was the dwarves' diamond mine. My favorite part of
Cinderella
was the sparkling glass slipper.

What was it about bright, shiny things that made my heart beat faster? Was it that something so unworldly, so gorgeous, so magical in appearance was also so earthy and natural? Or was it more about what jewels represented: freedom, financial independence? Jewels were a prize. They carried the lore of a treasure chest. Maybe my ancestors had been pirates. Or maybe it was just a magpie tendency.

Whatever it was, I loved everything about jewels. Especially diamonds. And especially this one.

But I needed to knuckle down here, because I had arrived at the exhibit. Banners announced the subject of the exhibit, Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette was, of course, the controversial queen of France who was one of the more famous victims of the curse of the Hope. She wore the Hope—when it was called the French Blue—before it was stolen during the French Revolution and cut down in size.

This was a woman who had met a grisly end. I tried to ignore the chill that touched the base of my neck.

Throngs of people milled about, mostly tourists in shorts and sneakers and white socks. The exhibit was filled with glass display cabinets and freestanding cases. Natural light filled the high-ceilinged gallery. I inhaled a strong, powdery cloud of perfume from the clutch of ladies fresh off the tour bus, standing next to me.

I wandered the gallery, looking at the gowns and the letters and the paintings of Marie Antoinette. She had had everything. And none of it had saved her.

When it came right down to it, what would save me? And . . . why was I assuming I would be saved at all?

The centerpiece of this particular portion of the Marie Antoinette exhibit was the Hope Diamond itself. I gazed about the room. Besides the uniformed security staff, I spotted a plainclothes security officer by the water fountain. And another, pretending to read a plaque about the history of the Hope Diamond. They were as obvious to me as if they had been wearing uniforms.

I'd expected heavy security personnel to be surrounding the Hope Diamond, much as I expect public restrooms to run out of toilet paper. It was annoying when it happened, but inevitable.

I took the sight as a good reminder. I had to be cautious here of appearing to be anything other than an innocent tourist, an interested visitor. So I started snapping some carefully framed photographs.

After a few minutes a uniformed guard appeared at my elbow.
“Mademoiselle, qu'est-ce que vous photographiez?”

This was where being a grad student in French lit would come most in handy for this job. I was fluent in French. He had asked what I was photographing.

“The painting, of course,” I said, taking care to produce an authentic Parisian accent.

“It looked like you were taking a picture of the door.”

I looked at him with a bewildered expression. “Why would I do that?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, I wasn't.”

He looked at me carefully, the tissues around his eyes as tense as a first date. He didn't seem convinced.

“I mean, I didn't mean to. Okay, you got me. This is a new phone, and I don't really have the feel for it yet. I'm not much of a photographer. . . .”

Frick.
These guards were a little more on the ball than I had expected them to be. I needed to step up my game a little.

But also, I needed to see the security in operation.

After the security guard walked away, I strolled up behind a tourist in khaki slacks. I casually bumped into him without breaking my stride, which pushed him forward into a display, breaching the ribboned barrier.

I kept my gaze pinned on the panel by the doorway—lights flashed frantically. A silent alarm. Two guards in navy uniforms immediately descended.

They started questioning the man who was standing closest. And then called into their walkie-talkies to get the director of security down there to reset the system. Which struck me as odd. Why would they need the director?

Then I overheard one of the guards saying to another guard that if anything happened on the first day of the exhibit, Monsieur Pierre Severin wanted to know about it.

This was fortuitous. I already knew Pierre Severin was the director of security for the Louvre.

I watched as Severin arrived on the scene. He bustled in, an intense-looking man with a small mustache, wide-set eyes, and deep frown lines between his eyebrows. His hair was brown with a lot of gray on the sides and was thinning on top. He listened carefully to the two guards, then removed his gloves and reset the system with his fingerprints—first all the fingers and thumb of his left hand, then all the digits of his right.

Now, that was interesting.

Memo to self:

 

Obtain Severin's fingerprints, if at all possible.

 

I wondered how much of the Louvre's security was hooked up to Severin's fingerprints. I'd have to find out. With them, a whole lot of doors could be opened for me. Literally.

But how to get them? His office at the Louvre, surely, would have his fingerprints. Could I get an appointment with him there? Maybe. But dusting for prints while chatting to him would be . . . awkward.

Breaking into his home would be much more up my alley.

So I needed to find out his home address. Gladys could hunt it down, I'd be willing to bet.

I continued my stroll through the Marie Antoinette exhibit and at long last arrived at the gallery of the Hope.

I waited patiently for my turn to view the Hope itself. I reminded myself to
blend.
Tourists read the plaques lining the queue. Tourists spent very little time looking at the actual gem. I needed to do the same.

I gazed at a plaque called
THE HOPE DIAMOND IN FULL COLOR.
It described the Hope's unique property of glowing a deep bloody red when exposed to ultraviolet light. Most blue diamonds phosphoresce a blue-white light, but not the Hope....

“That's why everyone thinks it's cursed, you know,” the tourist standing next to me said with a South African accent. “They say that red glow is the devil inside.”

“Mmm,” I said absently, reading on.

“Did you know it was stolen from an idol? It was the eye of the Hindu idol Sita in India,” the South African man said.

I rolled my eyes, on the inside. You could always count on at least one of this type of know-it-all at every museum exhibit. I was willing to bet this guy had applied at some point to be a contestant on
Jeopardy.

“An explorer stole it in the seventeenth century, and that's what started the curse,” he continued.
Here we go again. The curse.
Why did everyone need to talk about the curse?

“It was all because of that original theft that people think it's cursed,” he said.

I did my best to ignore him. But he wasn't to be deterred. He continued chattering at me about all the trivia he'd learned about the Hope from various programs on TV.

At that moment I spotted another plainclothes security guy. Over by the Hope display case. I kept an eye on him without being obvious.

We moved farther ahead in the queue, inexorably.

And at last, it was my turn to view the Hope. I walked up to the display. The diamond rested in its impenetrable case. The stone was as blue as salt water. It was walnut size, surrounded by white diamonds and suspended on a diamond chain. Under the bright lights of the display, perfectly arranged, it glittered like a Fourth of July sparkler.

Nobody knew for sure if this stone had been an idol's eye. Those were just rumors. But standing here just for a moment, I found myself believing it. It seemed to look straight through me with that deep blue gaze. Time slowed down, and I could hear the blood pounding in my ears.

But that's the deceptive thing about jewels. Precious stones, like thieves, are sly and artful. Diamonds appear to be full of life, but they have no life in them whatsoever.

I was dazzled by the sheer beauty of the Hope, of course. And this stone was truly a thief's diamond. Many crooks throughout history had laid their crafty hands on it. The original thief, Tavernier, if you believed the stories. The thieves who stole it during the French Revolution. And who knows how many others as it wound its way through Europe, intermittently disappearing and resurfacing.

It occurred to me that the curse was particularly strong when it came to people who had stolen and held the diamond, those to whom it hadn't truly belonged.

And now I was about to be next in line to steal it. A cold chill centered between my shoulder blades.

Enough, Cat.
I could not give in to the sensationalism. I had a job to do.

I looked at the faces in the crowd, glanced at the security staff to make sure they weren't overly attentive to my presence. And they weren't. I was just like any other person there.

As my eyes slid away from the Hope to look casually around the room, my gaze landed on a man's face on the other side of the gallery. We locked eye contact just for a moment before I looked away.

My heart skipped a beat. And not in a good way.

I didn't know his face. I had no idea what his name was. But I recognized the look in his eyes. I glanced back and watched him for several seconds to confirm my suspicions. I can't explain it exactly, but there was something about the way he moved, the way he was looking at the displays but not really looking. The facial expression indicated that he was trying to appear casual and perhaps a little bored . . . but was anything but. I didn't know this man, but I knew exactly what he did for a living.

A tour group passed through my sight line, blocking my view for a moment. When the group cleared away, the man I'd been watching was gone. I scanned the room uneasily, looking everywhere. Where had he gone? It was like he had disappeared into thin air.

So that's what that felt like.

It didn't change anything. I knew what I had seen. The expression on his face had been one that I knew myself to possess. Alert, vigilant, paying attention to every small detail. And a certain hunger. It was the face of a fellow thief.