He was breathing fast, so mad now he was nearly shouting. “I’m to blame here? You’re the one who put my bank accounts in the hands of the FBI. You’re the one who gave me a key to open that rigged safe-deposit box. You would have blown me up!”
His voice dropped; he was struggling for control. “Damn you, you bitch, you sliced my throat in Paris. Consider this payback. You’re going to do exactly what I tell you. Bring me the diamond, and you get your precious mentor back.”
She was shaking, she was so furious. She yelled, “You idiot! That was not a fake key! You let Mulvaney go right now, or I will disappear with the Koh-i-Noor forever. You won’t be able to unite the three stones.”
She heard the sharp intake of his breath. She knew he was planning something crazy with the diamond, she knew it. She’d shaken him; now it was time to press her advantage, to be calm and take control again.
“Yes, Saleem. I know what you think you can do. Why else would you want the Koh-i-Noor? All the men in your family have tried and failed. What makes you think you are any different?”
Saleem ignored her words, and went for the jugular. “You’re killing him, Kitsune. Every word, every minute that ticks by, Mulvaney dies a little more. A finger, an ear, so much I can do. I am serious. You bring me the diamond at nine p.m., to my home, or I will cut him into little pieces.”
He hung up.
Kitsune buried her face in her hands. She felt hollowed out with failure.
She’d bested the father. Somehow she would best the son. She had to regain the upper hand. Lanighan was mad if he thought she would now hand the diamond over in person—he’d kill her without hesitation, and Mulvaney as well. She patted her backpack. The diamond was safe. Now she had to find out where he was holding Mulvaney, and end this.
She put the Fiat in gear and got back on the road, thinking furiously.
This was not the first attempted double-cross she’d faced. But it was the first time a job had ruptured into her real life. Again, she couldn’t believe Lanighan had managed to find and take Mulvaney. He was the most careful man she’d ever known.
They’d worked together for more than half her life, more than twenty years now, and never been linked. Anyone who knew their names saw them only as rivals, and she and Mulvaney had laughed, toasting each other with the Krug he so loved to drink. Tears stung her eyes. She was afraid, not for herself, but for him. Had she done something to allow this to happen? Or maybe she’d been naïve, trusting their measures were infallible? It didn’t matter now. She had to stop Lanighan, had to, no choice.
She wanted to kill him, she wanted to feel the point of her blade sink into the thin flesh of his throat. She wanted to watch him realize he was dead.
A righteous killing, but first she had to figure her way through this.
Think, Kitsune.
Lanighan had driven from Paris to Geneva so there would be no record of his face at the airports or train stations while this hubbub about the diamond raged on in the news. His car would have been searched at the border, which meant Lanighan hadn’t held Mulvaney in Geneva.
Where, then?
In Paris. Lanighan’s empire was run out of the City of Light. His first and only meeting with her had been at the Paris Ritz. Before their first meeting, she’d done a property records search. Lanighan had four private holdings where a covert operation could take place. Mulvaney was surely being held at one of them. She needed more information.
Saleem Lanighan was not the man his father was. He was arrogant and sloppy and cared only what happened to himself. He thought money solved everything. Nor was he comfortable operating far away from his base, which meant he kept precious possessions close. And at this point, Mulvaney was precious.
79
Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
Saturday, early evening
Nicholas’s computer chimed. He opened the secure teleconference, and Savich’s face popped up on the screen. Mike recognized the furniture from the FBI’s conference room, which meant they were on the CIVITS secure videoconference network. They could say anything without worry of eavesdropping. Even the screens were pulled on the picture windows—they could see out, but no prying eyes could see in.
Nicholas said, “Hello, Savich. Good timing.”
“You have Mike now?”
Nicholas shifted so Mike’s face appeared over his shoulder. “She’s right here.”
“Hi, Dillon.”
“Hey, Mike. I’ve been at it all morning with MAX, and here’s what I’ve found. The numbers you sent were wire transfers for a variety of banks. I’ve emailed the file to you, Nicholas; you should have it now.”
“I have it open.”
“All right. I didn’t find all the money yet, but I narrowed down three possible buyers for the stone. As you guys know, the banks are hard to crack; numbered accounts are the best way to stay under the radar when you’re moving large amounts of money. It’s not like anyone will funnel millions of dollars through Western Union.”
Nicholas laughed. “Life would be so much easier.”
“It would. Based on everything we’ve compiled so far, I’d pay special attention to the first person on your list. I’m going to keep at it, see if anything else matches. We’re putting all three men under surveillance immediately. I’ll call you back if I find anything more.”
Nicholas closed the chat and looked at the email from Savich. The top entry was a man named Saleem Lanighan. Mike scrolled through the attached photos. He was a handsome man, dark hair and direct brown eyes, a square jaw, but he wasn’t smiling, and Mike thought he looked cruel.
Mike said, “Dark hair, dark eyes. Remember what the kid from Sages Fidelité said? None of the other three match the physical description. Lanighan could be the one.”
Nicholas read Savich’s dossier aloud.
“Lanighan is thirty-eight, educated at Oxford, a resident of Paris. He has a second home in the Loire Valley. He took over his father, Robert Lanighan’s, art and antiquities business, plus the man’s huge art collection, when he died five years ago. Lanighan was in ArtReview’s top one hundred three years running, is known for his philanthropic work on behalf of new artists and new galleries.
“He sits on the board of three separate companies, employs almost a thousand people in Lanighan Enterprises—they do international import-export—and regularly travels to China, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Tokyo in search of treasures. If this is our guy, there’s a good chance the Fox is here, too.”
Mike said, “He’s entirely too respectable, don’t you think? But rich as Croesus.”
“Well, without the money, none of this would work. Lanighan sounds like the winner to me. On the surface, he’s exceptional, but the man’s father was suspected of orchestrating several art thefts. Where does Savich find this information?”
“Didn’t Dillon tell you he used magic dust?”
Nicholas nodded. “I really didn’t believe him. Would you look at this. Lanighan’s mother was Amelia Thomas-Collins.” He sat back, lost in thought. “Now I know why the name Lanighan sounds so familiar.”
Mike raised her eyebrows. “Why?”
“Last summer, there was a rumor about the lineage of the Lanighan family; the rags ran stories for three weeks. The gist of it was the Lanighan line was illegitimate, the issue of—” He stopped speaking, his eyes suddenly very far away.
Mike said, “Issue of who? Nicholas, what is it?”
He said, slowly, “Lanighan must believe he’s the last descendant of Duleep Singh. The last Lion of Punjab.”
“The safe-deposit box in Geneva was rented in the name Duleep Singh.”
“Just so. Remember when Singh was brought to England to give Queen Victoria the Koh-i-Noor, he became the toast of Britain and Scotland? He was on the social circuit, and society loved him. Queen Victoria even stood a
s godmother to several of his kids.
“He had eight children with two wives, but none of them had children of their own, so the line died out. Some said in the day that this is the true curse of the Koh-i-Noor.”
“The end of the line. I see.”
“The big scandal from last year came about when a historian realized one of Singh’s sons supposedly fathered a child with Lady Grace Lanighan, Countess Wiltshire. A bastard child, who in turn sired his own line. He wasn’t given a title; he was a second son, and clearly illegitimate. Though supposedly he looked exactly like his father, much to the earl’s dismay.”
He stood up and started to pace the room. “It wasn’t spoken of publicly then, mind you, not at the turn of the last century. I believe the child was born in 1898 or ’99, and no one wanted to accuse the countess of getting a leg over with someone other than her husband, the earl.
“Historically speaking, the child was of no consequence. His older brother married and produced a son, a proper heir, and no more was spoken of it. However, the family line died out after all the sons were killed in the war, and the title became extinct.”
“Gotta love primogeniture.”
He glanced at her coldly, and she shrugged. “What? I watch Downton Abbey.”
“To continue. Now, if Saleem Lanighan is the child of the illegitimate Wiltshire line, he could be an actual blood relative of the Lion of Punjab, the last true owner of the Koh-i-Noor diamond before it was taken.”
“That would be incredible. What if he is a blood heir? Who would care?”
Nicholas sat back on his chair, crossed his arms over his chest. “We’re dealing in conjecture, and legends. If Saleem Lanighan is the son of the line, then he is the rightful heir to the Koh-i-Noor. Not that it matters, because the British will never give it up. I know there’s more to this. But what?”
“I don’t know, but we better order some coffee. It’s going to be a long night.”
80
Paris, La Défense business district
Tour Areva, Lanighan Enterprises
Saturday evening
Kitsune walked into the black skyscraper known as Tour Areva like she owned the place. The lobby was quiet, only a single security guard sat behind a half-moon desk. He was leaning back in his chair with his feet up, watching a video on his monitor, some high Hollywood production in the middle of a battle, from the screams and explosions and screeches coming from the computer. He snapped to when he saw her approach but didn’t turn off the movie.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
“Bonsoir.” She didn’t stop walking, merely flashed a pass at him, too quickly for him to read. “My boyfriend left his phone in his office. I’m going to run up and grab it for him.”
“I’ll need you to sign in.”
She abruptly turned, grabbed the pen from his hand, and scribbled on the white sheet of paper, then kept moving.
“I can’t read this. Where are you going?”
“Twenty-third floor. I’ll only be a moment.”
He nodded—how much of a threat could this small woman be, after all—and went back to his movie.
She smiled as she reached the elevator. She’d talked her way past hundreds of security guards in her day.
She took the elevator to the twenty-third floor, then ran up the stairwell to twenty-five.
Lanighan’s offices were down the hallway, and his state-of-the-art security system didn’t hold out long against Kitsune’s deft tools. She put the rake in the lock and pulled the trigger, listening to the tumblers whine, then clunk open.
When the latch on the door opened, the security system began giving off a quiet beep every second. She slapped a counter up on the wall, attached two metal butterfly clips to the alarm, and within moments, the counter had identified the numbers of the system’s passcode, inputted them, and bypassed the system. The alarm turned off with a small squawk, and all was silent.
She would have approximately three minutes before the alarm company registered the system at Lanighan Enterprises had been turned off and notified Lanighan of the breach. With luck, the guard downstairs wouldn’t be notified for five minutes, but just in case, she needed to work quickly.
Lanighan was first and foremost an art lover, like his father. On his computer was a comprehensive list of all the holdings of Lanighan Enterprises, and where each piece of art was kept.
Since he was holding Mulvaney hostage, she’d take his art away. Most of his net worth was tied to the collection. Wipe it out, and she’d take his fortune with her.
He’d left his desktop computer in sleep mode to save energy, and, luck of all luck, it didn’t have a password on it.
“Stupid man.”
While Kitsune’s talents lay in physical extractions—it was said she had the softest hands in the business—Mulvaney was getting older, and his natural aptitudes had become slightly more cerebral. Corporate espionage paid very well, and Mulvaney designed many of the tools he used to gain information himself. Kitsune made heavy use of them in her jobs as well.
She inserted a thumb drive into the terminal and copied over Lanighan’s hard drive. The thumb drive contained a nifty little virus Mulvaney had cooked up that deleted the master files and all the backups from the host computer as it transferred. Not only would she have the information on the art collection, her thumb drive would be the only link to his company’s files. Payroll, insurance, assets, everything. It would take great effort to re-create—effort, time, and money.
She counted down as the files deleted themselves from his system, whispered to herself, “Come on, hurry, hurry.”
Two minutes to go.
She took a lap around his spacious office, bigger than her flat in London, with a spectacular view over the city. She stopped to admire the paintings on the walls. He had a small Cézanne she was tempted to cut from its frame, just to be spiteful. It would serve him right.
The thumb drive beeped, and she pulled herself away. Maybe another time.
Back out the door, silent and careful. She reset the alarm, relocked the glass doors, ran down the two flights of stairs, and grabbed the elevator down.
Less than three minutes, all told. Not bad.
She walked out the front door, waggling her own mobile phone over her head as she walked past the guard. He ignored her, and she was gone into the night.
81
Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
Saturday, early evening
Nicholas was deep into rereading Lanighan’s file when there was a knock at the door to the suite.
Mike was combing the files from the French authorities on the elder Couverel’s mugging and murder. She set her laptop aside and said, “There’s the coffee. I’ll get it. I’m telling you, Nicholas, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing useful in these files. The case went cold thirty years ago, and no one has done any work on it since.”
She crossed the room and opened the door. Nicholas heard a strangled cry and bolted from the couch to see Mike hurled backward into the living room and slammed against a chair. A dark-skinned man burst in after her, a suppressed Beretta 92S in his hand.
The man ran into the suite, his eyes on Mike, his Beretta aimed at her head. Nicholas came in hard from the side, buying him a moment of precious surprise. He kicked out at the man’s knee, but the man whirled about and leapt back, only taking a glancing blow to his thigh. He grunted in pain, but it barely slowed him. He brought his gun to Nicholas’s chest, Mike forgotten.
Nicholas whipped his leg up to kick the gun out of his hand, but the man pulled his arm back in time. Nicholas jumped into him, slammed his fist into the man’s neck. The man’s head flew back, and as Nicholas spun around he grabbed the man’s arm and sent his elbow into his gut, once, twice. He grabbed the man’s wrist and clamped his fingers hard into the soft flesh. The man screamed an
d the gun went off, an obscene sound, then fell and skidded across the floor. The man’s fist hit Nicholas’s forehead, and he staggered back, seeing lights.
Nicholas heard Mike shout, “Get away from him, Nicholas!” He knew she wanted to shoot the man. And the man did, too, because he grabbed on to Nicholas, trying to use him as a shield, dragging him toward the door of the suite. But he couldn’t hold him.
Mike watched the fight turn into a vicious brawl. She had her Glock out, but the men were moving too fast to get a clear shot—blocking and countering each other’s strikes as they destroyed the furniture in the suite, and themselves.
Nicholas took a hard blow to the shoulder. He pivoted and grabbed the man’s neck with one arm as he punched him in the kidneys, vicious blows that would fell a giant, but the man managed to squirm away—how, Mike didn’t know, he was that good. He stared at Nicholas for a split second, then took off at a dead run out of the suite. Mike fired once, twice, but missed him.
Nicholas yelled to Mike, “Call it in, I’m going after him,” and ran out the door.
The man was at the end of the hall, going through the emergency door to the stairwell. Nicholas sprinted after him, made it through the door in time to see a black-sneakered foot running up toward the roof. He squeezed off three shots, but the man didn’t stop.
Up three more flights, and the man threw open the door to the roof and slammed it shut behind him, slowing Nicholas for a moment.
When he eased open the roof door, Nicholas was met with a deep silence. It was dark, but there was enough ambient light from the streets below and the rising full moon to make out shadows and shapes.
There were plenty of places to hide up here. The housings for the air-conditioning units acted as dividers down the length of the roof; the man could be behind any of them.
Nicholas held himself perfectly still, listening. There, labored breathing coming from about twenty feet away. He edged forward, his steps light on the gravel. Ten feet, five, then the door to the roof opened, light flooding the dark, and the man jumped up like a quail flushed from the brush. He ran hard down the roof.