A Magnificent Crime (36 page)

I slipped silently along the shadows of the Louvre courtyard, making my way to the far Denon wing. I checked the time. Six minutes to complete this part of the operation.

The cobblestones were slick—there had been a brief rain shower just after midnight, two hours ago. My breathing was heavy, but I controlled it. I tried not to think about the armed guards who patrolled outside the Louvre, wearing fatigues accessorized with semiautomatic weapons.

I knew Ethan was also moving toward his target entry point, approaching from a different direction. We had split up for safety, as a precaution.

“You there, Gladys?” I said quietly, knowing it would be picked up by my earpiece.

“Yes, dear. All set,” Gladys answered.

This was the good news I'd received at the clinic. While Gladys had not been able to be there to help us during the gala, because her plane had been delayed, that delay meant she'd arrived just in time for this attempt on the vault.

She was positioned in a crepe truck outfitted with all the equipment she needed, and parked just outside the Louvre gates, courtesy of Jack and his Parisian hacker contact, Taylor. This fact, of course, gave me a cramp of guilt in my chest, which I tried hard to dislodge and ignore.

Having my hacker on-site was definitely a boon. Everyone was doing his or her part; now I just needed to do mine.

And my first task was breaking in. This is always a tricky maneuver in the best of circumstances, but it was especially true in this case because the Louvre was a fortress.

Except for one spot: the roof.

Being a former palace, the Louvre contained grand rooms with ceilings that soared high above. And many of those ceilings were made of glass.

That would be my way in.

I was wearing my black Lycra. It felt good to be moving easily again after spending so much time in that peach chiffon. The other thing that made me feel more free was the fact that I wasn't wearing a Kevlar vest.

Ethan had held it out as I was getting ready. I had stared at it and shaken my head.

His eyebrows had gone up. “You sure?”

I'd nodded. “I'm sure.”

The tarot card, however, was a different story. I had it tucked in my bra. I suppose this meant I wasn't entirely able to let everything go, but that was okay. Once this was all over, I'd get therapy or something. For now, I was solid enough to do this job.

I hoped.

The rest of my equipment was tucked into a sack wrapped around my body. I had a glass cutter, a CCTV jammer, a rappel harness, a magnet, and two lengths of rope. Plus a small, portable scuba tank. Just in case.

I approached my target area, and after glancing around to be sure there were no guards in sight, I began scaling the wall. My fingers, gloved, worked their magic, and the muscles in my legs and shoulders burned as I crawled ever upward. I paused briefly to readjust my positioning and took a fleeting look down. The ground was incredibly far away.

But I wasn't scared. I mean, I was nervous and apprehensive, but I wasn't terrified. It wasn't stopping me from doing what needed to be done. There was no panic attack hovering offstage in the wings.

I silently prayed that it would last.

I reached the roof and levered myself onto it. I slithered the rest of the way and stayed low, moving over the glass like it was a frozen pond until I reached my objective. I shone a flashlight into the dark cavern to locate just the right spot.

Far below, I knew these floors contained movement sensors. There was an override panel in this wing, and I needed to drop down and disable it.

I cut the ceiling panel with my glass cutter. It sliced like a dressmaker's shears through silk, making a faint scraping sound that gave me shivers. I cut a hole just big enough to fit through and anchored the rope from my rappel harness to the far edge of the panels, right where the glass met the stone of the roof.

I licked my lips, took a deep breath, and clambered through the hole. I eased my weight onto the rope holding me, then gingerly dropped down. With that, I was committed.

Jesus, what the hell was I doing?

Breaking into the Louvre, that's what.

I paused for a moment as the full insanity of it hit me like a falling piano.
Surely
they must know what I was about to do. They were probably just waiting for me to break in and grab the Hope. They'd all have a good laugh. Of course that was what they were doing. This was the goddamned Hope Diamond, after all.

And then I reminded myself that this was the Louvre. There were countless treasures in here. The museum itself was over six hundred thousand square feet, and every inch was covered in priceless objects. And the fact was, the French guards were much more concerned with protecting, say, the
Mona Lisa
than the Hope Diamond. The
Mona Lisa
was a national treasure. The Hope was just on loan from the cursed Yanks.

There just weren't enough guards to protect it all. And that was why this was going to work. Why it
had
to work.

“Do you have a fix on the patrol locations?” I whispered to Gladys.

I knew guards patrolled inside. I did not know exactly when the next one would be approaching my area. That was where Gladys came in handy, and her ability to hack into the CCTV system.

“There's a patrol in the east part of the Denon wing, but they're not coming your way just yet. You've got time, my dear.” Breaking into this system had also allowed her to block out the feed from the CCTV for the immediate area in which I was operating.

But she had no control over the floor sensors—they were strictly manual access. I needed to disable the panel, and I needed to do it fast. I was hanging here like a fish on a hook. I pulled myself horizontal and set to work, hacking in.

There was a fingerprint scanner. I grinned, pulling out latex replicas of Severin's fingerprints—now a complete set including the left thumbprint, courtesy of a certain FBI agent.

But then I noticed beside the fingerprint scanner, there was also a combination code touch pad.
Damn.

I carefully applied the latex fingerprints, and the panel emitted a soft beep. But it remained activated. I squared my shoulders and set to work on the combination code. My mini UV wand illuminated fingerprints on four different buttons of the touch pad: two, three, seven, and eight. That gave several possible combinations. I just needed a little time to find the right one.

The last time I'd done this, I was trying to break out of the Westin in Seattle, and I was in full-blown panic mode. Things were very different now.

I tried a few combinations, with no success. I methodically went through the sequences, substituting and swapping numbers. I wasn't worried. I would get the right combination eventually.

I was about to enter my sixth attempt when my earpiece crackled. “Cat, dear,” came Gladys's voice. “The floor patrol changed direction, and they're now starting to come your way. Two guards.”

I entered a seventh attempt. Nothing.

“How much time do I have?”

“Judging from their speed and route, I'd say about one minute.”

Okay, that was still enough time. If I hit on the combination soon.

I kept trying. No luck. I bit the inside of my cheek hard. This panel was proving to be a real son of a bitch.

“Cat, you've got about thirty seconds now.”

If I could just disable the floor sensors and hide in the alcove beside the door, the guards would simply stroll by without seeing anything amiss. If I was still dangling on this rope, however . . .

“I'm going to have to retract back up and wait on the roof and then try again,” I whispered.

“Okay,” began Gladys. And then, “
Wait.
Don't go back up right now. The guards doing the perimeter sweep are just outside your wing. They'll see you if you pop up on the roof right now.”

The air left my lungs. I couldn't go back up, and I couldn't stay here. My only option was to disable the sensors and hide. But I had to do it
now.

I sped up my attempts, still trying to keep the numbers straight in my head.

“Ten seconds.”

I had fifteen combinations to go. And then, suddenly, I thought,
Three, seven, eight, two.
I just realized what that sequence of numbers could mean. It was Severin's home address, his street address in Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

I punched in that combination. There was a pause, then a soft beep. The panel illuminated, showing the word
désactivé.
Disabled. Then it clicked off.

“Five seconds.”

In an instant, I unclipped myself and dropped down to the floor of the gallery. No alarm sounded. I pushed
AUTO-RETRACT
on the rappel rope and watched it zip up to the open ceiling glass high above. My heart was in my throat as I slipped into a dark alcove right beside the iron gate that blocked the gallery entrance. I pressed myself back into it, standing stock-still.

The guards approached, talking about the soccer match from last night and bemoaning the dismal performance of the Paris team against the Marseille team.

My heart pounded in my ears. It was almost a surprise that they couldn't hear it. My hand went reflexively to the spot where there would be a lower edge of my Kevlar vest. If I had been wearing one, which I wasn't.

Their boot steps stopped outside the gate, right beside my hiding spot. Their flashlights shone through the gallery, and I held my breath.

Then they continued talking and walked on. They'd seen nothing amiss.

I exhaled with relief. I held my position for several more seconds and then moved out. For the time being, I was safe.

I now had the small issue of my retracted rope. I turned my face up to the ceiling thirty feet above, my one and only getaway route. My plan had been to tuck the rope away somewhere that was easily accessible, not to get rid of it altogether. Now I'd have to find another way out.

But I couldn't worry about that just now. One way or another, I was going to need a new exit strategy. But I'd be damned if I was going to do it without the Hope Diamond.

I focused on the next phase of the operation: descending to the underground area where the vault was. Elevator shafts were familiar territory for me. Sometimes it felt like I spent half my life in spots like that. But it was just part of the job description. Some people's offices were cubicles and meeting rooms. Mine were elevator shafts and air vents.

I had my harness and the spare rope, but I'd lost my favorite carabiner—it was sitting on the ceiling right now. I'd have to use a knot instead, which was more dangerous but still doable. I tightened my jaw as I tied the rope. It would have to do.

My stomach flipped as I began the descent. I moved smoothly, my muscles remembering these maneuvers. The dark elevator shaft smelled of cable grease and rubber and steel. A faint light clipped on my belt illuminated my immediate surroundings without throwing too much light around. There was something beautiful about sailing down, like an explorer descending into a diamond mine.

I reached the bottom and touched down on the ground level of the shaft. I arrived in the foyer right outside the vault chamber. It looked exactly like the one in the Geneva Freeport.

Except the foyer was hewn out of stone. And that stone was somewhat damp.

It certainly lent credence to the rumor that we were right next to the Seine, and that a small switch could trip a mechanism that would fill the chamber with water in a matter of seconds. I clutched my portable scuba tank, feeling the cylindrical outline in my fabric sack for reassurance.

I turned and studied the chamber door. This was the second to last layer of security before the vault itself, my next obstacle. I put all thoughts of water-filled chambers out of my head. The lock on the door could be opened with an electronic key card. This was something I didn't have. But what I did have was a magnet, and the lightest of touches.

After several seconds and a few attempts, I disabled it with little difficulty.

But I didn't open the door. Not just yet. I needed to hold off until I got the go-ahead. I looked around at the stone walls, the steel door . . . and waited.

Ethan was skulking through the corridors of the Louvre, schooling his breathing, keeping his peripheral vision wide. The corridors in this wing were ornately carved, every inch of them decorated. They smelled of old art and floor polish. His heart was beating fast—as much from excitement as nerves. This was a pure thrill for an art thief. The Louvre was the holy grail.

Too bad he wasn't able to enjoy it more. Ethan's concern for Cat was overshadowing much of his exhilaration.

He had climbed in through the roof, just like Cat, only in an entirely different wing. Ethan had a very specific goal. He was here to steal a Rembrandt,
Bathsheba at Her Bath,
in particular.

And botch the job. Just enough to trigger the alarm and get out.

One of the beauties of doing a job at the Louvre—and what they were using to their advantage—was the sheer number of treasures contained here. The security staff didn't know at any given time what someone would try to steal.

The door to the wing he'd wanted to enter was controlled by an electronic key-card panel. Getting through that had been virtually a nonissue. Now he was close to the inner gallery containing the Rembrandt, and it was guarded by much tighter security: there was a simple door, but once he opened it, he'd be in a zone monitored by infrared.

And as soon as he entered the zone, tripping the infrared sensor, his little jaunt in the Louvre would be over.

When Ethan was a lifeguard in high school, he'd learned a crucial concept, and it was this: not to abandon the rest of the pool just because one person over in a corner of the deep end was drowning.

Here the concept was the same. Once the alarm sounded because of his attempted theft, Louvre security would suddenly become very busy. And busy meant distracted.

The distraction alone might be enough to give Cat a chance. But she actually needed more than that.

“Thing is,” she'd explained when they were planning the heist at the clinic, “it was too expensive for the Louvre to install completely independent infrared systems. So they're all connected. Once the system has been breached, they'll have to turn it off, clear the area, and allow the sensor to recalibrate. So that will give me time to get into the vault, steal the Hope, and get out.”

The whole thing had been Cat's idea, but after she'd described what she wanted Ethan to do, she'd looked at him with concern. “I'm worried, though, because of the risk. What if you get caught?”

“Montgomery, that is not going to be a problem,” he'd assured her. “I'm not going to get caught.”

Jack had stood there, arms crossed, as he listened to the plan. “Ethan, the second you enter that room, the system will go off. You won't have time to do much. Just grab the closest painting and get out. Doesn't matter if it's the Rembrandt.” He'd nodded, looking at the blueprint. “It's a good plan. It can work.”

Ethan had raised an eyebrow at Jack, wondering about the man's motivations. Did he really think it could work? Or was it a matter of not caring if Ethan got caught?

Either way, here he was, ready to breach the door.

And this was where the finesse of his part of the job ended. Something that just about killed Ethan. He reminded himself he was doing it for Cat.

Even so, before he entered the gallery—just for a second—he allowed himself a momentary pause to savor the moment. To relish the fact that he was here in the middle of the Louvre itself. Then he readied himself to hear a deafening alarm and pushed open the door.

But there was nothing. Silence.

Ethan stood there for a second, confused. “Are you fucking
kidding
me?” he said under his breath.

Unbelievable.
Here he was inside the Louvre, poised to steal something, and he actually needed the alarm to go off. But it didn't.

And now the trouble was, he could take the Rembrandt if he wanted to. Get off completely free, because he hadn't been detected. But that wasn't the idea.

Shit.

For a moment he felt sorely tempted. But he couldn't do it to Cat. He couldn't leave her hanging like that. She was waiting for the alarm to sound and then the infrared to go off-line before she could get into the vault.

So with a curse to the patron saint of art thieves, he set his mind to getting caught. Somehow.

He was going to need a little help. “If you can bloody well believe it, the alarm didn't go off,” he said in a low voice to the others on the line.

“
What?
Oh God. Can you do something else to set off an alarm?” Cat said.

Everything Ethan could think of was riskier, with too many variables, not as firmly under his control.

“Don't the paintings have sensors on them? Will an alarm go off if you just grab one?” Jack said.

There was only one way to find out. Ethan grabbed the Rembrandt, pulling it off the wall. He flipped over the frame, checking for a sensor. Nothing.

And then, as he stood there, he made a decision. He detached the canvas from the frame, rolled it, slid it into the mailing tube he'd brought with him, and strapped the tube to his back.

He still had the problem of setting off the alarm, however.

“What about the window? The window foils?” Cat suggested.

Yes. Good idea.
Ethan raced to the window. All he had to do was smash it, and the entry alarm would go off. But then he checked the window's perimeter. No foils. He remembered why: this was the third floor. They had window foils only on the ground floor. Presumably, this was because they didn't expect anyone to scale and break into the third floor. Or out.

Okay. Next idea?
He couldn't just trip the alarm in any old room, because it wouldn't necessarily set off the infrared.

“Where's the next area with infrared?” Ethan demanded. “The closest one to here? I'll have to trip that alarm. Gladys?”

“Give me a moment . . . ,” said Gladys. “Ah. Here we are. The Denon wing. First floor, room six.”

“I'm sorry. Did you say what I think you said?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus,
really?
All right. I guess that's my only option.”

Room six in the Denon wing was otherwise known as the Mona Lisa Room. Because that was exactly what it contained.

Ethan had a floor map on his phone of the inside of the Louvre, so he turned it on and quickly planned his route. The danger now was getting busted in some other way before he managed to make it to the Mona Lisa Room.

As he moved, he pondered another problem. His getaway motorcycle was waiting outside the Rembrandt gallery. He would have to trip the alarm, then get back to the previous room and escape out that way.

He moved quickly through the corridors, staying ever vigilant. Encountering a patrolling guard at this point would be a bad development.

At last, Ethan stood outside room six. His fingers twitched, and his skin tingled. This would be the pinnacle job of his career—of the career of any art thief. And here he was, about to intentionally fuck it up.

He glanced at the electronic panel and wished he could hack into it and do this job properly. Instead, he simply opened the steel door. For a microsecond, time stood still as he stared at the
Mona Lisa
. . . and she stared back at him.

Then the alarm wailed like an air-raid siren.

“Another time, my dear. We shall meet again,” Ethan said, heavy with regret. Then he turned and raced away from the room as fast as possible. He had to get back to the Rembrandt gallery now. He flew through the corridors, expecting to encounter a guard at any second. If he could just make it to the Rembrandt room, all he'd have to do was slip in, out the window, and down to his waiting motorcycle.

Except when he got there, the door he'd previously hacked and opened had automatically swung shut and sealed. He would have to re-pick the electronic lock.

Then he heard guards thundering up the staircase.

No time to work on the lock. He would have to get out through another window, as close to the motorcycle as he could. What about the gallery one floor above this one? It was a higher fall than he'd planned, but that was the only option.

Ethan leaped onto the staircase and climbed fast. Boot steps clattered below him, getting closer. At the next level up, he lunged into the room he needed—this gallery was not as secure, so no lock to pick or door to hack. He raced to the window and looked down. There it was, the Ducati he'd stashed there earlier. Way down there.

Ethan pulled his mask down, opened the window, and clambered out with no hesitation. He used window ledges and carvings as foot- and handholds and scrambled four levels down to the waiting motorcycle.

His identity was hidden by the mask. He knew the external CCTV would pick him up and security would spot him escaping. But that was what he wanted.

Now, he just had to hope his motorcycle would be faster than the gendarmes. Fast enough to lead them on a bit of a chase, anyway.