“Let’s go,” he said, steering Dumas toward the door. “We’ve
done what we can.”
“I think that’s probably best,” Levy agreed, laying a hand
on Troussard’s quivering shoulder.
She waited until the door had closed behind them and then
turned on Troussard with a reproachful look.
“Was that entirely necessary?”
1 2 2 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
“What do you mean?” He jutted his chin at her defi antly.
“I mean, what’s the story with you and Dumas?”
“There is no story,” he retorted a little too quickly and
forcefully to be convincing. “Apart from the one he just spun
for us. He’s a drunk, for God’s sake. I could smell it on him.
A plot to steal the
Mona Lisa
? Pah! He probably dreamed the
whole thing.”
“He seemed pretty convinced to me,” she refl ected. “His
friend too. Why would they make it up?”
“What else has he got to do all day? He probably thinks it’s
funny to have people like me running around in circles. Prob-
ably makes him feel more important.”
“I think I’m going to mention it to Ledoux all the same.
Just to be safe.”
“There’s no need to involve him.” Troussard frowned in
annoyance. “Not based on what we’ve heard today. I can deal
with this.”
“I can’t risk being wrong.” Her face blanched at the
thought. “He’s the Museum Director. Let him decide.”
“He’ll only make me change the guard rotas and walk
through the security set- up again,” Troussard huffed.
“Do you think we should tell the police?”
“If we called them every time we heard a story like that,
we’d never get off the phone,” he insisted. “Besides, security
is my responsibility, no one else’s. I don’t need anyone inter-
fering. Certainly not the police.”
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y- F O U R
JARDIN DU TUILERIES, PARIS
20th April— 5:02 p.m.
The round pond was encircled by trees. As arranged,
Archie was sitting on one of the park benches sheltered
under their swaying branches. Here and there gravel paths
led off from this central area like spokes, cutting through the
formal parterres. Another pond lay at the end of the wide,
unbroken vista that ran along the garden’s main axis, and
beyond that rose the granite spear of the ancient obelisk in
the Place de la Concorde, deliberately positioned close to the
site of one of Revolutionary France’s most active scaffolds.
“How did it go?” Archie asked as they slumped on the
bench beside him. A pile of discarded cigarette butts at his
feet suggested he’d been waiting a while.
“Imbéciles,”
Dumas swore, producing a hip flask from his
jacket and taking a swig.
“Idiots,” Tom agreed with a sigh, grabbing the fl ask off
Dumas and downing a mouthful himself.
“How bad?”
“They laughed.”
“That’s bad.” Archie grinned, the gold identity bracelet on
his left wrist glinting in the sun. “Well, I told you. They’re up
1 2 4 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
their own arse, that lot.” He jerked his head in the direction
of the Louvre. “Always have been.”
“It’s Troussard.” Dumas shook his head, his jaw set fi rm.
“
Petit salaud
. He’s never forgiven me for . . .” He completed
the sentence with a small hand gesture. “Well now, my life’s
in the gutter. He’s finally won. The only reason he saw me
was to rub it in.”
“What about the police?” Tom suggested. “We could try
them.”
Dumas dismissed the idea with a wave.
“First thing they’d do is call Troussard. He’ll just laugh at
them the way he laughed at us.”
“So what do we do? We can’t just sit back and watch Milo
walk in and take it.”
“Assuming he
can
take it,” Dumas observed. “Troussard
was right about one thing. The security back there is bullet
proof.”
“You were right too. There’s a risk. Whatever systems
they’ve got in place, you can be sure that Milo’s fi gured out
some way around them. I would if I was going in for it.”
In front of them, a couple of children leaned over the
pond’s rounded edge and placed a small sailboat on to the
water. The wind caught its handkerchief- sized yellow sail
and gently propelled it across the pond’s dark waters. The chil-
dren jumped up with an excited shout, running around the
basin to keep up as it accelerated toward the opposite side.
“Maybe you
should
go in for it,” Archie suggested as the
children’s laughter blended into the sound of a South Ameri-
can pipe band that had started up somewhere on the Rue de
Rivoli.
“Sure. Let’s just wander over there now.” Tom laughed.
“I’m serious. If we had the painting, we could swap it for
Eva.”
“You
are
serious!” Tom exclaimed.
“Well, I’m not,” Dumas spluttered. “We can’t steal the
Mona Lisa
.”
“Why not?” said Archie.
“
C’est impossible!
”
“Milo’s planning to,” Archie reminded him.
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
1 2 5
“That’s different.”
“Not really,” Archie said evenly. “The way I see it, either
we walk away, or we beat him to it and then trade it for
Eva.”
“Trade the
Mona Lisa
?” Dumas snorted, his tone both
disbelieving and outraged.
“Not the real one,” Archie explained. “A forgery . . .” He
didn’t need to finish the sentence for Tom to see where he
was heading.
“We’d have to steal the real thing for Milo to believe that
we had it to trade,” he said slowly. “But if we traded Rafael’s
forgery for Eva, instead of the real painting, Milo wouldn’t
realize until it was too late. We’d be playing him at his own
game.”
“The painting’s been nicked before,” said Archie, his eyes
glinting. “We could do it again.”
“That was in 1911,” Dumas reminded him. “A lot’s changed
since then.”
“Maybe, maybe not,” said Tom, turning to Archie. “How
did they do it?”
“A guy called Eduardo de Valfierno was behind it,” Archie
explained, lighting another cigarette as he spoke. “An Argen-
tinian conman. They say he once managed to sell the Eiffel
Tower as scrap to some gullible punter.”
“A Belgian, I expect.” Dumas laughed.
“Valfierno teamed up with a forger called Yves Chaudron.
The plan was to pinch the
Mona Lisa
, have Chaudron knock
out and shift as many copies as possible while she was miss-
ing, and then drop her back at the Louvre so that the cops
would call off the hunt.”
“An art forger?” Tom said slowly. “Like Rafael?”
Archie locked eyes with Tom and nodded.
“Exactly like Rafael.”
“So that’s his plan.” Tom gave a low whistle. “Steal the
original, make some copies and sell off as many of them as
you can while it’s missing. Milo’s pulling the same stunt as
Valfierno tried to.”
“It’s a great con,” Archie conceded. “The buyers can
hardly go to the cops if they get suspicious. And he can
1 2 6 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
always let them think they’ve got the real thing by telling
them that he handed a fake back to the Louvre.”
Tom nodded slowly, part of him almost wishing he’d
thought of it himself.
“
Bravo, Milo
. Very clever. But I would still like to know
how Valfierno got the painting out of the Louvre without get-
ting caught,” Dumas insisted.
“He signed up Vincenzo Peruggia, a carpenter who worked
at the museum,” Archie continued. “Peruggia and two other
blokes went in one Sunday posing as tourists and then stashed
themselves in a storeroom overnight, knowing that the mu-
seum was shut the next day. The following morning they lifted
the painting off the wall, cut it out of its frame and walked out
dressed as maintenance men, cool as you like. When they saw
it was gone, the guards assumed it had been taken to be photo-
graphed. It wasn’t until over a day later that anyone twigged
that it was missing.
“They say it was the first ever truly global news story,” Tom
added. “There was a massive manhunt. It took them a week
just to explore the Louvre. The French shut their borders and
searched every ship and train leaving the country. The news-
papers hyped it endlessly. Rewards were offered. People were
arrested and released. If you ever wondered why the
Mona
Lisa
is the world’s most famous painting, it’s got nothing to do
with her enigmatic smile. It’s because she was stolen.”
“Where did they find it in the end?”
“Peruggia had it all along,” Archie said with an apprecia-
tive smile. “All Valfierno wanted was the story in the papers
long enough for him to shift his six forgeries. Once the news
broke, Peruggia never heard from him again. A few years
later, he tried to sell the painting to a dealer in Florence. The
dealer tipped off the Uffizi. When the police nabbed him,
they found that he’d been stashing it in a specially built trunk
with a false bottom.”
“So, based on that, all we need to do is hide in the Louvre
overnight, take it off the wall and walk out.” Dumas grinned.
“What are we waiting for?”
“What do you mean, ‘we?’ ” Tom frowned. “You’ve done
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
1 2 7
your bit, J-P. You got us in to see Troussard. Archie and I will
take it from here.”
“
Non,
you’re not freezing me out now, Felix.” Dumas’s
eyes fl ashed defi antly. “I was quite happily drunk in that bar
until you dragged me out. Now that I’m sober, you’re stuck
with me until the end.”
“You’re a government agent, J-P,” Tom insisted. “Archie
and I know what we’re getting into. This isn’t your thing.”
“What is my thing now, Felix? I’ve got no job. No wife . . .”
“Archie, you tell him,” Tom pleaded.
“We’ll need the extra muscle,” said Archie with a shrug.
“He’s a spy,” Tom reminded him. “You hate spies.”
“Ex-spy,” said Archie. “Same as you. Besides, I’ve always
thought J-P would make a good villain, if he put his mind
to it.”
“
Merci
.” Dumas winked. “Anyway, if by some miracle
you actually do manage to steal the
Mona Lisa
, someone
needs to make sure you two don’t accidentally decide to hold
on to it.”
“You see, he’s a natural crook,” Archie said solemnly. “He
doesn’t trust anyone.”
C H A P T E R T W E N T Y- F I V E
AVENUE DE L’OBSERVATOIRE, 14TH ARRONDISSEMENT,
PARIS
21st April— 9:02 a.m.
The elevator was enclosed in a black wire cage that rose
like a scorched tree up the central core of the winding
stone staircase. Hauling open the concertina- style gate, Jen-
nifer stepped inside, allowing it to spring shut behind her. The
date on the brass control panel, almost polished away over the
years, indicated that it had been installed in 1947. It seemed
older.
She pressed five and, after a few moments’ refl ection, the
cabin lurched skywards with an ominous clunking and shriek-
ing noise. The floors crept past like rock strata, and she had
the sudden sensation of being hauled up the side of a cliff in a
wicker basket.
Henri Besson, the forgery expert Cole had hooked her up
with, was standing waiting for her on the landing. At least
she assumed it was him, the elevator rising to reveal fi rst bare
feet, then brightly patterned knee-length shorts and fi nally a
loosely buttoned Hawaiian shirt sprouting silvery chest hair.
He held out his hand, his greeting immediately dispelling her
doubts.
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
1 2 9
“
Mademoi selle Browne? Enchanté. Henri Besson à votre
ser vice
.”
He had the tan to match his clothes, his dark blue eyes
twinkling out from an unshaven and surprisingly youthful
face, given he was fifty or so years old. Only his curly hair,
graying at the sides and thinning on top, gave some indica-
tion of his true age.
“Good morning.” She smiled. “Thank you for doing this at
such short notice.”
“The larger the client, the less warning they give you.”
He gave a disconcertingly lopsided smile and it took her a
few moments to realize that the entire left side of his face was
paralyzed. One cheek was slack and heavy, the other fi rm and
dimpled; one eye drooping, while the other twinkled. She
guessed that he’d had some sort of a stroke.
“Come in, please. The others are already here.”
Hudson and Cole had both insisted that somebody from
their respective Paris operations should be on hand to wit-
ness the initial examination in person. Partly this was to en-
sure that the tests were conducted to their mutual satisfaction,
but she suspected there was also an element of cold-war style
politics to it as well. Neither superpower was willing to con-
cede the slightest potential advantage to the other.
Ushering her into a small office dominated by a fl oor-to-