The Double Eagle (13 page)
Authors: James Twining
“The Mafia?” Green ventured. “Or someone in the Far East, maybe the Triads?”
“Or Cassius?”
As Corbett had spoken there had been a sudden lull in the conversation and his voice had echoed across the room’s sudden calm. Young looked at him blankly.
“Who?”
“A man; more of a shadow really,” Corbett explained slowly. “He allegedly heads up an international crime syndicate that is involved in almost every aspect of the art and antiques underworld. We never get any closer than rumors. Every time we do, somebody dies.”
“I thought all this talk of a Captain Nemo figure, of some controlling mastermind in the art world had been ruled out,” Green interjected.
“None of the experts will talk about it, the insurance companies least of all. It would be too much for them to admit that one man can manipulate and influence the global art market. But people forget that art crime is a three-billion-dollar-a-year global business.”
“Three billion dollars?” Young was clearly shocked by the number.
“It’s the world’s third-largest area of criminal activity after drugs and arms dealing,” Corbett confirmed with a nod. “And the really big scores don’t come from stealing a work and selling it to a
new
buyer, but in stealing it and ransoming it back to the original owners. The insurers call it a finder’s fee, of course, but they’d rather offer ten percent to the thieves than pay out the full value to the owners. It happens all the time. From the consistency in how and where these jobs are financed and structured, our view is that there is a sophisticated and coordinated global operation behind the vast bulk of the high-end heists.”
“So do you think that this Cassius is involved or not?” Young leant forward in his chair. He was clearly used to dealing in yes or no, in buy or sell. He wanted an answer. Corbett, though, was noncommittal.
“A job like this would have needed a lot of planning and funding. Not many people would have the resources to pull it off. He’s definitely one of them. But even if he is behind this, he wouldn’t have actually done the job himself. People like him hire others to do their dirty work. Most often, they probably don’t even know they’re working for him. What we need to find is the person actually in the vault. That person will lead us back to whoever set the job up and hopefully the rest of the coins.”
Piper leaned toward Young and whispered something in his ear. Young, for the first time since Jennifer had been in the room, stopped chewing. He looked at Piper and whispered something back. Piper nodded and, getting to his feet, walked to the back of the room. Here, Jennifer noticed for the first time, a large mirrored panel was set into the wall. Piper tapped on the glass and then drew his hand across his throat twice. The signal made it clear to Jennifer that this whole meeting had been taped. Now, for some reason, Piper wanted it off the record. Why?
“I think perhaps it would be appropriate for Browne and Brady to leave at this point,” Piper suggested to Young. Corbett shook his head firmly.
“Whatever is about to be said, Browne should be here. She’s point on this case. Whatever I know, she knows.” Piper looked at Young questioningly, who nodded slowly. Jennifer flashed Corbett a grateful smile, her curiosity mounting.
“Wait for me outside, Chris,” said Young.
“How come she gets to stay?” whined Brady. “I’m being set up. I know it.”
“Just wait the hell outside,” Young snapped back. “And leave that file here.” Muttering under his breath, Brady slapped the file down onto the table, scooped up his jacket, and stumbled to the door.
“Okay, John. This had better be good,” said Young. Piper blew slowly through his lips before speaking.
“On July sixteenth there was a breakin in New York City at an Upper West Side apartment block. The thief rappelled down from the roof to the seventeenth floor, broke in, and stole a nine-million-dollar Fabergé egg. NYPD got lucky and found a hair sample next to the safe. They sent it to the FBI lab in Quantico to run it through their system just in case it wasn’t the maid’s. They got a hit and following the on-screen protocol alerted me immediately.”
“You’d put some sort of security trigger on this guy’s file?” Corbett asked.
“Yeah. Because as far as we knew, he died ten years ago.”
“But why you? What’s your connection?” asked Green.
“My connection? I recruited him into the CIA fifteen years ago. His name’s Tom Kirk.”
9:21
A.M.
P
iper reached into the slim leather briefcase that was resting against his chair leg and drew out four files, one for himself and one each for Young, Green, and Corbett.
“You two will have to share.” He nodded in Jennifer’s direction.
Jennifer edged her seat closer to Corbett’s as he took the file and broke the paper band that was wrapped around it with his hand, the seal ripping right between the words
TOP
and
SECRET
. Corbett opened the file, revealing some loose-leaf black-and-white photos and a thick wedge of bound documents.
“These photos were taken yesterday in London by the CIA. They show Tom Kirk, or as we knew him, Thomas Duval. Caucasian male, thirty-five years old, five foot eleven, no distinguishing features.”
Jennifer studied the photos. Even though the images were slightly blurred, she could see that Tom was an athletic-looking man, with a strong jaw and striking, intelligent eyes.
“He has dual British and U.S. citizenship from his parents, Charles and Rebecca Kirk. Both parents are now deceased, the mother in an MVA when Kirk was thirteen and the father earlier this year in a climbing accident in Switzerland.”
Jennifer looked up and saw Corbett eyeing Piper with a strange look, as if he suspected that this was leading some place that he’d rather not go.
“Following his mother’s death, Duval was sent to live with his mother’s family in Boston, while his father moved to Geneva.”
“Boston?” Green queried. “Any relation to Trent Duval?” Piper nodded.
“He’s Senator Duval’s nephew. That was another factor in his favor when we recruited him. After high school he won a scholarship to Oxford but was kicked out after a year and moved to Paris. That’s where I met him.”
“You were stationed in Paris?” asked Corbett with surprise.
“Three years. Normal diplomatic cover,” Piper confirmed with a nod. “I met Duval through a guy we had on the staff of the Sorbonne. He had signed up for an art history course. He was ideal material for us. Young, single, highly intelligent, no real family ties, looking for something to believe in. It took a while but I reeled him in. We put him through the Farm and then gave him some more specialist training for the program we’d recruited him for.”
“Which was?” asked Green.
“Industrial espionage. Code name Operation Centaur.”
“Industrial espionage?” Green repeated in disbelief.
“Computer files, blueprints, photos of prototypes, chemical formulas—you name it. The Europeans have been accelerating their efforts to reduce their reliance on U.S. and Japanese defense, technology, and biotech suppliers for years. Their investment was beginning to tell, costing us billions of dollars of lost revenue a year, not to mention potentially undermining our own national security. Duval and others like him were the cutting edge of our efforts to ensure we didn’t lose out.”
“Jesus Christ,” muttered Green. “I thought they were meant to be our allies.”
“Duval was the best agent we had. There wasn’t a safe or a security system he couldn’t deal with. And he blended in. He spoke five languages, had read the right books, knew the right people, could get an ‘in’ to anywhere he wanted. None of the agents we’d recruited in the States could do that. It gave him a real edge.”
“So what happened to him?” Green again.
“About five years in, he went bad.”
“What do you mean,
bad
?” Corbett now.
“Refused to take orders, started behaving erratically, backed out of jobs. We tried to bring him in but he refused. Said he was working for himself from now on. Then he went right off the reservation and murdered his handler. After that, he just dropped off the grid.”
“But you said you thought he was dead.” Green again.
“A year later Interpol provided a DNA sample of a man the French police had shot dead trying to break into the Ministry of Finance. It matched Duval’s. By then the whole operation had been shut down anyway, so we just closed his file and stopped looking.”
“But you still tagged his DNA profile,” said Corbett. “You weren’t convinced?”
“Let’s just say I had my doubts. Duval was too good to get caught out in the open by a bunch of cops. But that’s all they were. Doubts. I tagged his profile just in case and then forgot about it until a few days ago.”
“So what the hell happened to him?” Young replaced the gum in his mouth with a fresh piece, folding it between his teeth with a single, pudgy finger.
“Interpol suspect that Duval, or Kirk as he apparently now calls himself again, has been operating as an art thief for the past ten years based out of London. Goes by the name of Felix. They rate him as the best in the game.”
“What makes him so good?” Young again.
“We trained him, for a start. And let me tell you, the guy’s a real pro. Believe it or not, most art thefts are carried out opportunistically by small-time criminals who don’t really know what they’re doing. They just see something on a wall and grab it.” Corbett nodded in a rare show of agreement. “Kirk’s smart. He focuses on jewelery that can be recut or on B-list artists that don’t attract so much publicity and so can be more easily sold. And over the years either he, or someone working with him, has somehow assembled a network of private collectors who are prepared to pay big money for the right items and don’t ask questions about where they’ve come from.”
There was a pause as everyone let this new information sink in. Then Young asked the question that was in all their minds.
“Knocking off a museum is one thing. Hitting a government installation, well, that’s a whole different ball game. What makes you think he’s involved in the Fort Knox job?”
Piper shrugged.
“I know this guy. He always liked the difficult, spectacular jobs. A job like this has got his name all over it.”
“I think we’re going to need a bit more than gut feel,” Corbett observed dryly. “You got anything solid to back this up?”
Piper nodded firmly.
“Canadian INS has a record of a Mr. Felix Duval flying into Montreal from Geneva on June twenty-eighth, one week prior to the date you’ve just given us. You think that name and the timing and the fact that his DNA showed up in New York is all a big coincidence? He hit Fort Knox, then stopped off on Fifth Avenue for a bit of shopping. He’s laughing at us.”
“Jesus, how could you guys let something like this happen? One of our own people ripping us off!”
Piper responded swiftly.
“As far as anyone outside this room is concerned, none of this did happen. So we’re going to have to handle this investigation very carefully.”
“What are you hiding, John?” Corbett asked, his head angled quizzically to one side. “What aren’t you telling us?”
“Oh, fuck!” Young, who had been frowning into the desk for the past few minutes as if trying to remember something, gasped, the color draining from his face. “You said you recruited this guy fifteen years ago, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Piper answered
“Wasn’t…?” Young raised his thin blond eyebrows into a question.
“That’s my point,” said Piper with a nod of his head.
“Wasn’t what?” asked Jennifer, looking from Young to Piper and then back again.
“Wasn’t the president the director of the CIA back then,” Corbett said tonelessly.
“Good God.” Green had gone an even deeper shade of red than normal.
“You can imagine the diplomatic shit storm if this gets out. He wouldn’t survive. I doubt many of us would.” Piper made eye contact with every person around the table, even Jennifer. “I can’t allow that to happen.”
For the first time, Jennifer saw a flicker of fear in Piper’s eyes. His family had bet big on the president winning the election and Piper was already reaping the benefits. Now, he was faced with the possibility of it all crumbling away underneath him.
“So what are you suggesting?” asked Green. “That we just drop the whole thing.”
“No, of course not.” Piper shook his head emphatically. “We can’t just drop a criminal investigation. Not without making the situation a whole lot worse. I’m just saying we gotta be real careful. If the coins lead to Kirk, then Kirk could be traced back to Centaur. We need to find a way to make sure that doesn’t happen.”
“So what
are
you suggesting?” Corbett insisted.
“That we offer Kirk some sort of deal. Return the four coins he still has, tell us who commissioned the theft, and promise to keep his mouth shut and we’ll wipe his file clean and forgive what he did to us ten years ago. From then on, as far as we’re concerned, Thomas Duval or Kirk or whatever he wants to call himself never existed. The whole issue of the president’s involvement just won’t come up.”
“Think he’ll go for it?” Green asked skeptically.
“Kirk plays the percentages. Always has. He must have spent every day for the past ten years wondering if the next knock at his door was going to be us finally catching up with him. This is a onetime offer to start over. Yeah, he’ll go for it.”
“Well, it sure works for me,” Young confirmed with a nod and a smack of gum against teeth. “This way, everyone wins. This administration’s looking good for a second term. Ah don’t want to be the guy who screws that up.”
“Then there’s no time to lose, Mr. Secretary,” said Corbett, his voice strained and urgent. “We recovered one coin by chance. The longer we leave it, the harder the others will be to track down. We need to get someone over to London to get Kirk on board.”
“Agreed.” Young nodded. “Who do you have in mind?”