Sweet Revenge

New York, 1989

Stuart Spencer hated his hotel room excessively. The only advantage to being in New York was that his wife was in London and couldn’t hound him about sticking to his diet. He’d ordered up a club sandwich from room service and was savoring each bite.

He was a portly, balding man without the jolly disposition expected from one with his looks. A blister on his heel plagued him, as did a persistent head cold. After he’d gulped half a cup of tea, he decided with cranky British chauvinism that Americans simply couldn’t brew decent tea no matter how much they tried.

He wanted a hot bath, a cup of good Earl Grey, and an hour of quiet, but, he feared, the restless man standing by the window was going to force him to postpone all of that… perhaps indefinitely.

“Well, I’m here, dammit.” Scowling, he watched Philip Chamberlain twitch back the curtain.

“Lovely view.” Philip gazed out at the wall of another building. “Gives such a cozy feel to this place.”

“Philip, I feel compelled to remind you that I dislike flying across the Atlantic in winter. Moreover, I have a backlog of paperwork waiting for me in London, and the bulk of it is on account of you and your irregular procedures. So, if you’ve information for me, please pass it on. At once, if that’s not too much to ask.”

Philip continued to look out the window. He was edgy about the outcome of the informal meeting he’d demanded,
but nothing in his cool manner so much as hinted at the tension he felt.

“I really must take you to a show while you’re here, Stuart. A musical. You’re getting dour in your old age.”

“Get on with it.”

Philip let the curtain fall back into place and moved smoothly toward the man to whom he’d reported these last few years. His occupation demanded confident, athletic grace. He was thirty-five, but had a quarter of a century of professional experience behind him. He had been born in London’s slums, yet even when young he’d been able to finesse invitations to society’s best parties, no small accomplishment in the days before Britain’s rigid class consciousness had broken down under the onslaught of the Mods and the Rockers. He knew what it was to be hungry, just as he knew what it was to have his fill of beluga. Because he preferred caviar, he had made certain he lived a life that included it. He was good, very good, at what he did, but success hadn’t come easily.

“I have a hypothetical proposition for you, Stuart.” Taking a seat, Philip helped himself to tea. “Let me ask you if over the last few years I’ve been some help to you.”

Spencer took a bite of his sandwich and hoped it, and Philip, wouldn’t give him indigestion. “Are you looking for a salary increase?”

“A thought, but not precisely what I have in mind.” He was capable of producing a particularly charming smile which he could use to great effect when he chose. And he chose to do so now. “The question is, has having a thief on Interpol’s payroll been worthwhile?”

Spencer sniffed, pulled out a handkerchief, then blew. “From time to time.”

Philip noted, wondering if Stuart had, too, that this time he had not used the qualifier “retired” before “thief,” and that Stuart had not corrected the omission. “You’ve gotten positively miserly with your compliments.”

“I’m not here to flatter you, Philip, merely to learn why the devil you thought anything was important enough to demand I fly to New York in the middle of the damn winter.”

“Would you care for two?”

“Two what?”

“Thieves, Stuart.” He held out a triangle of the club sandwich. “You really should try this on whole wheat.”

“What are you getting at?”

There was a great deal riding on the next few moments, but Philip had lived most of his life with his future, with his very neck, riding on his actions in a matter of moments. He’d been a thief, and an excellent one, leading Captain Stuart Spencer and men like him down blind alleys and dead ends from London to Paris, from Paris to Morocco, from Morocco to wherever the next prize waited. Then he’d done a complete about-face and begun to work for Spencer and Interpol instead of against them.

That had been a business decision, Philip reminded himself. It had been a matter of figuring the odds and the profit. What he was about to propose was personal.

“Let’s say, hypothetically, that I knew of a particularly clever thief, one who’s managed to keep Interpol jumping for a decade, one who’s decided to retire from active duty, and would offer services in exchange for clemency.”

“You’re speaking of The Shadow.”

Philip meticulously brushed crumbs from his fingertips. He was a neat man, by habit and by necessity. “Hypothetically.”

The Shadow. Spencer forgot his aching heel and jet lag. Millions of dollars in jewels had been stolen by the faceless figure of the thief known only as The Shadow. For ten years Spencer had tracked him, dogged him, missed him. For the past eighteen months Interpol had intensified its investigations, going so far as to set a thief to catch a thief—Philip Chamberlain, the only man Spencer knew whose exploits exceeded those of The Shadow. The man, Spencer thought on a sudden wave of fury, he had trusted.

“You know who he is, dammit. You
have
known who he is and where we can find him.” Stuart braced his hands on the table. “Ten years. Ten years we’ve been after this man. And, damn you, for months you’ve been paid to find him while stringing us along. You’ve known his identity and whereabouts all the time!”

“Perhaps I have.” Philip spread his long, artistic fingers. “Perhaps I haven’t.”

“I feel like putting you in a cage and dropping the key in the Thames.”

“But you won’t, because I’m like the son you never had.”

“I have a son, blast you.”

“Not like me.” Tipping back in his chair, Philip continued. “What I’m proposing is the same deal you and I made five years ago. You had the vision then to see that hiring the best had distinct advantages over pursuing the best.”

“You were assigned to catch this man, not negotiate for him. If you have a name, I want a name. If you have a description, I want it. Facts, Philip, not hypothetical propositions.”

“You have nothing,” Philip said abruptly. “Absolutely nothing after ten years. If I walk out of this room, you’ll still have nothing.”

“I’ll have you.” Spencer’s voice was flat, and final enough to have Philip narrowing his eyes. “A man with your taste would find prison very disagreeable.”

“Threats?” A chill, brief but very real, ran over Philip’s skin. He folded his hands and kept his eyes level, holding onto the certainty that Spencer was bluffing. Philip wasn’t. “I have clemency, remember? That was the deal.”

“It’s you who’s changed the rules. Give me the name, Philip, and let me do my job.”

“You think small, Stuart. That’s why you recovered only some diamonds while I took many. You put The Shadow in jail, you have only a thief in jail. Do you really think you’ll recover a fraction of what was taken over the last decade?”

“It’s a matter of justice.”

“Yes.”

Philip’s tone had changed, Spencer realized, and for the first time in this conversation, he lowered his eyes. But not from shame. Spencer knew Philip too well to believe for a moment that the man was the least abashed.

“It is a matter of justice, and we’ll come to that.” Philip rose again, too restless to sit. “When you assigned me to the case, I took it because this particular thief interested me. That hasn’t changed. In fact, you could say my interest has peaked considerably.” It wouldn’t do to push Spencer too far. True, they’d developed a grudging admiration for each other
over the years, but Spencer had always and would always stick to the straight and narrow. “Say, hypothetically still of course, that I do know the identity of The Shadow. Say we’ve had conversations that lead me to believe you could use this individual’s talents and that they would be given for the small consideration of a clean slate.”

“Small
consideration? The bastard’s stolen more than you did.”

Philip’s brows shot up. With a slight frown he brushed a crumb from his sleeve. “I hardly think it’s necessary to insult me. No one has stolen jewels with a greater total value than I did in my career.”

“Proud of yourself, are you?” Color swept alarmingly into Spencer’s face. “Living the life of a thief isn’t something I’d boast about.”

“Therein lies the difference between us.”

“Crawling into windows, making deals in back alleys—”

“Please, you’ll make me sentimental. No, better count to ten, Stuart. I don’t want to be responsible for an alarming rise in your blood pressure.” He picked up the teapot again. “Perhaps this is a good time to tell you that while I was lifting locks, I developed a strong respect for you. I imagine I’d still be in second-story work if it hadn’t been for you edging closer with every job I pulled. I don’t regret the way I lived any more than I regret changing sides.”

Stuart calmed enough to gulp down the tea Philip had poured for him. “That’s neither here nor there.” But he could acknowledge that Philip’s admission pleased him. “Fact is, you are working for me now.”

“I haven’t forgotten.” He turned his head to gaze at the window. It was an icy, clear day that made him long for spring. “To continue then,” he said, snapping around to level an intense gaze at Stuart, “as a loyal employee I feel it my obligation to recruit for you when I come upon a worthy prospect.”

“Thief.”

“Yes, and an excellent one.” His smile bloomed once more. “Further, I’d be willing to wager that neither yours nor any other law enforcement agency is going to get a glimmer of this thief’s real identity.” Sobering a bit, he leaned forward. “Not now, not ever, Stuart, I promise you.”

“He’ll move again.”

“There’ll be no more moves.”

“How can you be sure?”

Philip folded his hands. His wedding ring glinted dully. “I’ll see to it, personally.”

“What is he to you?”

“Difficult to explain. Listen to me, Stuart. For five years I’ve worked for you, worked beside you. More than a few of the jobs have been dirty, even more have been dirty
and
dangerous. I’ve never asked you for anything, but I’m asking for this: Clemency for my hypothetical thief.”

“I can hardly guarantee—”

“Your word is guarantee enough,” Philip said, and silenced him. “In return, I’ll even retrieve the Rubens for you. And, better still, I believe I can assure you a prize that will provide political weight to cool down a particularly hot situation.”