kiss her on the cheek. “Maybe we can meet up tomorrow
when things have died down so I can get it back?”
“I’ll call you in the morning,” she agreed.
“And I’m really sorry about this—” He nodded at Lewis’s
slumped and moaning body. “I hope you don’t get into too
much trouble.”
“So do I.” She pursed her lips ruefully, already knowing
how Green would view this latest turn of events.
With a final wave, Tom took off toward the river. She
shook her head at his retreating back. This wasn’t exactly
how she’d pictured the eve ning ending: a fight and Tom on
the run.
“I’ll sue you for this,” Lewis groaned as he staggered to
his feet, supporting himself against the car. “You and your
boyfriend. I’ll sue you both.”
For one glorious moment, Jennifer seriously considered
hitting him again.
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y- T W O
RUE DE CHARENTON, 12TH ARRONDISSEMENT, PARIS
21st April— 11:02 p.m.
Dumas had found them this place, a small end-of- terrace
house, its render sloughing away like dead skin from
the dry brick walls underneath. It overlooked the railway,
and the sound of the trains was ever-present, a clanking
shriek of metal and sparks that flowed down the broad scar
formed by the rusty tracks. From the top floor it was even
possible to see the gleaming outline of the Palais de Bercy
sports and music arena rising uneasily above the festering
streets and leaking chimneys that encircled it, as if it knew it
had no right to be there.
“You been scrapping?” Archie grabbed Tom’s arm accus-
ingly as he stepped through the front door. Tom glanced at
the split on his knuckles where they’d connected with Lew-
is’s unshaven chin.
“Don’t start,” he muttered. “J-P here?”
“You just try and keep him away.” Archie winked, gestur-
ing toward the rear of the house.
They made their way through to the kitchen. A fl oor plan
of the fi rst floor of the Louvre had been pinned to a couple of
the pine-effect wall cabinets. Dumas was sitting with his feet
up on the chipped melamine table, smoking.
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
1 6 7
“What happened to coffee back at her place then?” he
growled disapprovingly.
“This wasn’t about that. Besides we’ve got work to do.”
“Beautiful girl. The city of light . . .” Dumas sniffed. “You
wouldn’t get far in French politics with an attitude like that.”
“I’m trying to play her, not sleep with her.”
“Why not do both?” Dumas insisted.
“She’s got the briefcase. That’s all that matters.”
“What did you do? Ask her to look after it for you?”
“Pretty much,” said Tom, not yet quite sure how to tell the
others about punching Lewis.
“We were just wondering what Milo’s take might be on a
job like this,” Archie mused distractedly.
“Depends how many copies Rafael did for him,” said Tom,
grateful for the change of subject. “Eighty, a hundred million
each?”
“Fuck me!” Archie swore. “That much?”
“The original was insured for a hundred million bucks
when it went on loan to the States in 1962,” Tom pointed out.
“Adjusted for inflation, that’s six or seven hundred million
today. If you ask me, a hundred million’s cheap.”
“What about the security set- up?” Archie rinsed a glass,
helped himself to some wine and accepted a cigarette from
Dumas.
“State of the art, as you’d expect,” Tom said with a sigh,
holding his own glass out for Dumas to fill. “Getting into the
building is easy. The problem’s going to be getting close to
the painting itself. Even if we go in at night, there are cameras
here, here and here—” he pointed out the locations on the
floor plan. “With laser trip wires all the way along the Grande
Gallerie, not to mention at least ten guards on random patrol
patterns.”
“And the room where the painting is?” Archie pressed.
“Even worse.” Tom tapped the relevant section of the fl oor
plan. “It’s been purpose built to house the
Mona Lisa,
and
they haven’t missed a trick. Two cameras on each door, three
on the painting itself.” Again, he traced their location on the
map. “Titanium gates. All the windows alarmed and bolted.
And don’t forget the two, maybe even three, armed guards.”
1 6 8 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
“So you’re saying that, even if we do get close to it, we’ll
be trapped as soon as we try to take it off the wall?” Dumas
said with a mournful shake of his head.
“Pretty much,” Tom agreed.
“That’s why Milo will have to make his move when they
shift it up to the lab,” Archie explained. “All those systems
will count for shit once it’s off the wall.”
“Systems can be fooled. The trick is getting close enough
to fool them,” Tom observed.
“I can get you close. In fact I can get you within touching
distance. But I don’t see how that’s going to help get it out,”
Archie said in a cautious tone.
“What do you mean ‘close?’ ”
“The display case.”
“What case?” Dumas frowned.
“The
Mona Lisa
sits in a bulletproof plexiglass case,” Ar-
chie explained.
“A gift from the Japanese when it went on tour to Tokyo in
the mid seventies, right?” Tom recalled.
“Yeah, 1974,” Archie confirmed. “It’s designed to main-
tain a constant temperature of sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit
and fi fty-five percent humidity to stop the wood cracking.”
“There’ll be an infrared grid around it,” Tom said slowly.
“And it’ll be alarmed and secured to the wall.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” said Dumas.
“It isn’t.” Archie smiled. “The good news is that the case
has a built-in air-conditioning unit. They service it once a
year, every year. It takes a couple of hours. You can even
book tickets to watch it happen.”
“And this is happening tomorrow?” There was a spark of
excitement in Tom’s voice.
“No,” Archie sniffed. “It’s not due for a few months.”
“Then I don’t see . . .”
“The air-conditioning unit is remotely monitored by an
outside firm. It’s got some fancy internal diagnostic system
that tells them when there’s a problem. As soon as a fault is
detected they get on the blower and arrange to come in.”
“What’s the response time?”
“Thirty minutes. An hour max.”
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
1 6 9
“And to allow them to work on the unit, the Louvre would
have to switch off the alarm systems and let them into the
case,” Tom guessed. “You’re right, it does get us close.”
“What about the cameras and the guards?” Dumas re-
minded them.
“We could cut the video feed.” Tom dismissed his objec-
tions with a wave of his hand. “And the guards could be
distracted, even disabled if necessary.”
“Disabled?” Dumas shot him a concerned look.
“Gas. Tranquilizer darts. Don’t worry, J-P, I’m not plan-
ning to kill anyone. I leave all that to Milo.”
“But we still don’t have an exit,” Archie reminded him.
“We don’t need one,” Tom smiled. “Because we won’t
even be inside.”
“You’ve lost me.” Dumas, clearly confused, shook his
head.
“You and me both,” Archie agreed.
“Get me a plan of the sewerage system that runs under the
Louvre, and I’ll show you exactly what I mean.”
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y- T H R E E
FOUR SEASONS HOTEL GEORGE V, 8TH ARRONDISSEMENT,
PARIS
21st April— 11:33 p.m.
Jennifer had been on hold for almost fifteen minutes before
Green came on. Judging from the delay and the muffl ed
background noise, she guessed that he was on a plane.
“Browne, I’ve got three minutes so make it quick.”
“It’s Razi, sir. I’m almost sure of it. He’s been buying
paintings, making copies and then selling them in the Far
East, before reselling the originals through auction houses in
Europe and the U.S. He’s probably been at it for years.”
She ran through the details of the scam as Tom and she
had discussed it. The use of certificates of authenticity, the
targeting of Japanese buyers, the code of
Omertà
that seemed
to blanket the New York dealer community.
Green took a deep breath.
“We’re going to have to go through every major Impression-
ist auction over the past ten years and check it against whatever
Razi’s bought and sold in that same period.” She smiled; like
her, he sensed that the net was closing. “There could be mil-
lions of dollars at stake here. Hudson and Cole will go nuts.”
t h e g i l d e d s e a l
1 7 1
“But that still leaves Hammon,” she continued. “I don’t see
how he fi ts.”
“Maybe Razi got greedy and Hammon threatened to talk.”
“Or maybe it’s something else altogether. Something that
involves the Louvre accession number we found on that piece
of paper in his offi ce.”
“I thought you were going to speak to someone there?”
“I had an appointment, but they blew me out. I’ll try again
tomorrow.”
“You should feed all this back to the NYPD. They might
have a view.” His tone suggested he thought this highly un-
likely. “Well done, Browne. It’s too bad—”
“There’s one other thing, sir,” she interrupted. “Lewis.”
“What about him?” She sensed his voice harden. He cer-
tainly wasn’t going to make this any easier for her.
“He’s in Paris. He followed me here.”
“You’ve got to be kidding!” Green exploded.
“I wish I was. The problem is . . .”
“You just steer clear of him, you hear?” Green barked.
“You don’t speak to him, you don’t even look at him. If he
walks in the room through one door, you walk out through
the other. That way there won’t be any problem. In fact, I
want you on the next flight home, just to be sure.”
“It’s a bit late.”
“A bit late for what? Please tell me you didn’t hit the guy
again.”
“I didn’t hit him, sir.” She paused, sensing that the conver-
sation had reached its tipping point but knowing that she
was too far along now to turn back. “But Tom Kirk did.”
“Kirk?” If Green was holding a drink, she guessed from
his tone that he’d probably just dropped it in his lap.
“The guy who helped us on the Double Eagle case.”
“I know who he is, Browne,” he replied icily. “What the
hell has he got to do with this?”
“It was a coincidence,” she explained, glancing over at
Tom’s briefcase, which she’d placed on the bed. “I ran into
him at the Louvre. We got talking and I thought he might be
able to help on the case. We carried on over dinner.”
1 7 2 j a m e s
t w i n i n g
“Dinner! Christ, this just gets worse.”
“Lewis was waiting for us when we came out. He picked
up where he’d left off in New York. Tom . . . Kirk, I mean,
punched him. Knocked him to the ground.”
There was a long silence from the other end of the phone.
When Green eventually spoke, it was in a strangely calm and
measured voice. She’d preferred it when he’d been angry.
“You understand that this doesn’t look good, Browne? The
optics, I mean.”
“Yes, sir, but I’ve not done anything wrong.”
“You think Lewis cares about right or wrong? He just
wants a story. And whether you meant to or not, you’ve given
him another headline.”
A long silence. Much as she hated to admit it, he was
right.
“What do you want me to do?” she asked, her stomach
turning over as she sensed all her good work over the past
few years slowly unraveling.
“I want you to take that vacation we spoke about the other
day. A couple of weeks. Maybe a month. Just long enough for
us to calm this whole situation down before it gets totally out
of control.”
“What about Razi?” There was a hint of desperation in her
voice now.
“That’s what I was about to tell you.” Green’s voice was
breaking up. “Razi caught a flight to Grand Cayman this
morning. Then took the shuttle to Cuba. We’re too late for
him now.” A pause before he added, almost as an after-
thought. “I just hope it isn’t too late for you.”
C H A P T E R T H I R T Y- F O U R
GINZA DISTRICT, TOKYO
22nd April— 1:22 p.m.
The edges of the room were wreathed in darkness, the
center weakly illuminated by parallel strips of sunken
LEDs running down the middle of the ceiling like landing
lights on a runway. Leo waited until he was summoned for-
ward, the dining table stretching fifteen, maybe even twenty
feet in front of him, a shimmering ebony bridge across the
cherrywood floor. The Dobermans, flanks scarred from fi ght-
ing, eyed him disdainfully from their vantage points on ei-
ther side of the room’s only chair, their silky ears pressed fl at
against their skulls.
The bald- headed figure seated in the chair glanced up
from the shadows at the far end of the table and called him
over with a fl ick of his chopsticks. As usual, he was dressed
in a black suit with a crimson lining, black shirt and crisp