The Double Eagle (21 page)
Authors: James Twining
4:36
P.M.
T
hey had stepped into the bedroom, and the contrast with the apartment they had just come from could not have been more marked. It was immaculately arranged, the dark blue bedspread coordinating perfectly with the elaborate Chinese wallpaper and the cream rug on the polished wooden floor. A few framed photographs had been arranged on the bedside table and the mirrored doors that ran down the far wall opened to reveal a wardrobe of suits, shirts, shoes, and ties, all sorted by color, alongside the paraphernalia of Ranieri’s ecclesiastical dress. Clearly whatever he did, it paid well.
The bedroom led onto a large kitchen, with the front door set into the right-hand wall. An archway opposite gave onto an office with a large desk at one end. Here, the darkness was lifted by a synthetic red glow as the late-afternoon sun filtered in through the closed curtains. Tom and Jennifer stood on the threshold and peered inside.
“Here you go,” said Jennifer. She had found a switch beside the entrance and turned it on.
“Let’s see what we’ve got.”
Tom made his way to the desk and began leafing through the papers on it before moving to the drawers. There was nothing there. Invoices, faxes, orders. It seemed that Ranieri had been running some sort of wine-importing business as a cover.
In a way, he was surprised he was bothering looking at all, given his natural aversion to working with any sort of cop, especially a fed, although Jennifer was clearly not the sort of thick-skulled flatfoot that he was used to dealing with. Quite the opposite, in fact. But Tom was also the sort of person who liked a challenge. And, if truth be known, he was also rather intrigued by these coins and how they had found their way from Fort Knox into Ranieri’s hands, although he would never say as much to Jennifer.
“This is what we need,” said Jennifer, picking up an electrical cable that led from the desk to a socket in the wall. “His laptop. Maybe someone else has been here before us and taken it?”
“Maybe it’s been hidden somewhere here?”
“I’ll go and take a look in the bedroom,” she volunteered.
Tom sat down heavily in one of the chairs and let his eyes play over the room, looking for something, anything that could help. The furnishings were uncompromisingly modern. The coffee table and desk matched, smoked glass laid on a brushed steel frame. The black leather sofa and chairs were stiff and stubby, their backs set at a steep, uncomfortable angle that pushed Tom’s knees up to his chest. The walls were white and punctuated by a series of black-and-white photographs of New York landmarks. The triangular wedge of the Flatiron building, the streamlined chrome of the Chrysler building, the granite thrust of the Empire State.
Faced with the monochromatic masculinity of the room, Tom’s eyes were irresistibly drawn to the red wastepaper basket that nestled in the curve of the desk’s legs. He picked it up distractedly, noting its ragged and chipped surface that suggested an old and familiar possession, still pressed into loyal service despite its bold variance to the overall color scheme.
Reaching in, he pulled out a newspaper. Nothing strange in that. Except…maybe the date?
“When did you say Ranieri was killed?” he called through to Jennifer.
“The sixteenth. Why?” her voice echoed back through the silent apartment.
“I might have something here.”
Jennifer walked back into the room, her face expectant.
“I just found this paper. It’s dated the twentieth. That’s four days after Ranieri was killed. So someone else
has
been here.”
“And probably destroyed or taken anything useful,” she said, her voice disappointed.
“Except…” Tom indicated the room around them. “Take a look at this place. It’s not been trashed like the decoy apartment, has it?”
“Meaning?”
“That whoever it was, they knew this place and didn’t need to tear it apart. They knew how to get in, where things were kept, everything.”
“Maybe he had a partner?” Jennifer grimaced at the unforgiving rigidity of the chair as she sat down opposite Tom. “Someone who’d been here before with him.”
“Someone German, perhaps?” Tom suggested, holding up the paper he had retrieved from the trash. “Our mystery guest reads the
Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung.
In fact…” Tom examined it more carefully. “Don’t you think it looks like he folded it open at this article in particular?”
The paper had been neatly folded into four, forming a large rectangle that opened much like a book. One article dominated the middle of the front page, while the other pages were dissected and broken by competing articles, ads, and photos.
“What does the headline say?” Jennifer got up and moved over to Tom, sitting next to him on the arm of the sofa.
“
Suche geht weiter für Schiphol Flughafen-Diebe,
” Tom read out. “Search continues for Schiphol Airport thieves,” he translated.
“Schiphol? Schiphol in Holland?”
“You know another?” asked Tom.
“Cute.” Jennifer made a face. She extracted her mobile phone from her purse and dialed a number. “Max Springer, please.” There was a pause. “Max, it’s Jennifer. Fine, thanks. Are you at your desk? Great. I want you to check something out for me. Can you see what you’ve got about a theft from Schiphol Airport a few weeks ago. Yes, of course Schiphol in Holland.” She winked at Tom. “You know another?”
“What are you thinking?” Tom asked. She cupped her hand over the mouthpiece.
“We get daily crime reports from Interpol. They’re filed into our databases. Whatever happened at Schiphol should be in there somewhere.” She snatched her hand away from the mouthpiece. “Yeah, hi, I’m still here. You found something, okay, great. Run me through it. Slowly.” She jotted down some notes on a scrap of paper that she grabbed from the desk. “Okay…okay. Is that it? Great. What’s that? I can’t talk to him right now.” Her eyes flicked to Tom and then back down to the ground. “Tell him I’ll call him tonight. Thanks, Max.” She hung up.
“So?”
“There was an armed robbery from the customs warehouse at Schiphol Airport on July eleventh. Three guys snatched a fortune in vintage wine and jewelry in a hijacked UPS van. Killed two guards. Then ten days later on the twenty-first, a man was stabbed in a phone booth in Amsterdam. Dutch police identified the victim as Karl Steiner.” Jennifer looked down at her scribbled notes as she spoke. “An East German with a record as long as your arm for armed robbery and handling stolen goods. When they got to his place they found several cases of vintage wine and what was left of the jewelry.”
“In other words, he pulled the airport job,” said Tom, standing up.
“It gets better. It turns out he was arrested on the fourteenth. In Paris. Apparently he’d started a fight outside a nightclub. Guess who bailed him out the next morning?”
“Ranieri?” His tone was more hopeful than questioning.
“You got it.” Jennifer smiled triumphantly.
Tom rubbed his right temple, his forehead creased in thought.
“Well, that’s it, then. You’ve been trying to work out how Ranieri got the coin, haven’t you? How this carefully constructed Fort Knox robbery went wrong. Now we know.”
“We do?”
“Amsterdam’s a major trade hub. All sorts of valuable merchandise comes through there, some of it legally, some not. Let’s say Steiner decided to help himself to a piece of the action. He knocks off the airport and steals a vanload of wine and jewels. But what if he got lucky? What if when he unpacked it all, he found the coins hidden in one of the boxes?”
“You mean it was all just an accident? Months of planning, hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment ruined because some hood got lucky?”
“Why not? A courier would have been too risky, given how tight airport security has been recently. Cargo was a much safer option since most of it never even gets unpacked. I should know, I’ve used it myself. Steiner probably had people lined up to take the wine and the gems off him. But the coins—they were unusual. He needed help for those.”
“Right.” Jennifer could see where Tom was heading. “So Steiner came to Paris to see his old friend Ranieri. Maybe gave him one of the coins to get him started. But before Ranieri could sell it, someone tracked him down and killed him. When Steiner heard what had happened he came back here, grabbed his stuff, threw his newspaper in the trash, and ran back to Amsterdam, presumably with the other coins.”
“And wound up dead a few days later himself. Stabbed, just like Ranieri.”
“Didn’t Harry say that there were only a small number of people in the world who would be interested or able to buy coins like these?”
“What’s your point?”
“That it’s just possible, you know, that both Steiner and Ranieri ended up trying to sell them back to the same people who’d had them stolen in the first place.”
Before Tom could answer, the edges of the newspaper fluttered, the pages lifting and then settling again with a faint rustle. Jennifer’s eyes snapped to the open doorway.
“Did you shut the window behind you?” she whispered.
“I think so, yes,” Tom whispered back.
He slid off the sofa and flicked the switch, plunging the room back into darkness before stepping toward the doorway, pressing his back to the wall, Jennifer standing behind him.
They waited and listened, the silence strangely amplifying the sounds drifting in over the rooftops. A distant siren, a window slamming, a squeal of brakes, a baby crying. But then, through all these, a different noise. A faint creak, followed a few seconds later by another. Noises that could only be coming from inside the flat itself. From someone treading on the floorboards.
The footsteps drew irresistibly toward them like the steady beat of a muffled drum, only accompanied now, so close were they, by a faint rustle of fabric. Then, just as suddenly, they stopped and Tom knew that whoever it was must be standing just on the other side of the doorway. Readying themselves.
A gun barrel edged into the room, black and polished and snub-nosed. And then a man’s hand, white and pudgy, with large gold rings on each of the fingers and a spider’s web tattooed onto the soft mound of skin between the thumb and the forefinger.
Without hesitating, Tom reached forward and grabbed the man’s wrist, locking his fingers over the top of the man’s thumb and tightening his own thumb over the lower wrist joint. In the same movement, he spun the man’s hand round so that it went through 180 degrees and then snapped it back up toward his body. Tom immediately felt the connective tendons and ligaments rupturing and snapping all along the wrist joint as the gun dropped from the man’s fingers to the sound of his screaming. Tom loosened his grip on his wrist and scooped the gun off the floor. The man, whose face neither of them had yet seen, leaped back from the entrance, howling in pain.
“I’ll shoot the next person that tries to come into this room,” Tom shouted.
There was silence and then the sound of retreating footsteps and then two muffled voices that seemed to be coming from the bedroom.
“They’re probably deciding which is worse,” Tom whispered. “Trying to take us on in here or going back empty-handed to whoever sent them.”
The doorbell suddenly rang out, a shrill medley of electronic chimes that flooded the apartment with noise. In the deep silence that followed, they heard the sound of running feet fading away across the rooftops.
5:06
P.M.
T
he bell rang again, more insistently this time. Tom crept out into the kitchen and then, keeping close to the wall, made his way to the front door. Again the sound of the bell rolled through the empty flat, only this time it was accompanied by the dull thud of someone banging a fist against the wood. Tom edged his eye toward the chrome peephole that had been drilled into the middle of the door.
“Shit,” he whispered through his teeth. “Shit, shit, shit.” He screwed his eyes tightly shut and leaned his head against the door, shaking it slowly. This was the last thing he needed.
“Who is it?” Jennifer mouthed, still standing in the doorway to the living room, a curious look on her face. Without answering, Tom slipped the gun in his pocket, reached down, unbolted the door and opened it. The light from the corridor billowed into the room like a dense fog and made him squint.
“
Ah, Felix, mon ami.
I hope we did not disturb you?” A broad man with a cheery face and long curls of oily hair that were tied into a thick black ponytail peered into the darkness of the room, his arm extended. Jennifer recognized
Felix
as the name that Piper had claimed Kirk had operated under for the last ten years.
“
Bonjour Jean-Pierre.
You’d better come in,” said Tom grudgingly, shaking his hand. The man signaled at the two policemen standing on either side of him to wait. Jennifer flicked the lights back on, as Tom shut the door behind the man. “Jennifer, this is Jean-Pierre Dumas, from the DST—the French domestic secret service. Jean-Pierre, meet Special Agent Jennifer Browne of the FBI.”
“
Enchanté.
” Dumas shook Jennifer’s hand, his breath pure Lucky Strike. “These must be yours.” He glanced at her still-naked feet and held up her shoes in his left hand.
“Thank you.” Jennifer glared at Tom as she brushed the dirt and dust off each of her feet before slipping the shoes back on.
“Do you have any papers, mademoiselle?” Dumas asked when she stood up.
Jennifer reached into her jacket pocket, pulled out her FBI badge and handed it to him. He wedged his cigarette in his mouth and examined it skeptically, his eyebrows raised in surprise.
“So, Felix really is working for the FBI.
Maintenant j’ai vraiment tout vu.
”
“I’m not working for the FBI,” Tom said tersely. “We’re cooperating, that’s all.”
“That’s right,” Jennifer interjected. “Mr. Kirk is here as a private citizen. Nothing more.”
“He always is,” Dumas said with a wave of his hand. “Come. Let’s sit down and we can discuss all this properly.”
He led them through to the sitting room and sat down reluctantly on one of the sofas, his weight barely depressing the cushion’s stiff springs, while Tom and Jennifer sat opposite. Dumas was dressed in a new pair of jeans, blue shirt over a white T-shirt and a heavy black leather jacket. He looked strong, although not particularly fit or fast. His brown eyes twinkled above his large, blunt nose, his face slack from alcohol and nicotine.
“So, my friend.” He turned to Tom. “What brings you back to Paris?”
“You two are friends?”
“Well, maybe not friends,” Dumas agreed. “Tom never likes to get too close to anyone, do you? But we have an understanding that is as close to friendship as I expect Tom will ever get.” Dumas smiled.
“I want you to tell her, J-P,” Tom said, insistently. “Tell her how we met.”
“Are you sure?” Dumas looked uncertain but Tom gave a firm nod of his head. Shrugging, Dumas continued. “Felix was having some problems a few years ago now. He had become, how you say, surplus to your government’s requirements. He came to me and we helped him disappear on the understanding that he would help us recover an item of national importance.”
“So you were telling the truth about that?” Jennifer said softly with a shake of her head.
Dumas turned back to face Tom, his face suddenly serious. “But now you are in trouble again, yes?”
“Why, what have you heard?”
“Do you know a Detective Sergeant Clarke? He certainly seems to know you.”
“That bastard,” said Tom, darkly. “Does he know I’m here?”
“No. And don’t worry. I won’t tell him.”
“Thanks, J-P.” Tom smiled gratefully.
“Anyway, when I heard that he wanted you for murder, I knew it was a mistake. Self-defense is one thing, but you are no killer.”
“How did you find us?” Tom asked.
“We have been watching your friend Van Simson for several months now. We suspect him of involvement in money laundering, bribery, blackmail, maybe even murder…he’s a dangerous person to know.”
“So you followed us from there?”
“
Oui.
I put someone on it. But you surprised us all when you came here. Nearly as much as when
mademoiselle
’s shoes fell out of the sky and just missed my head.”
Tom held his hand up.
“My fault. Sorry.”
Dumas waved it away.
“The
gendarmes
have been staking this place out for about ten days now. They are investigating the murder of an Italian priest. But I expect you already knew that.”
“They know about this apartment?” asked Tom in surprise, secretly impressed that they had found it, too.
“They are not complete idiots,” said Dumas, his smile contradicting him.
“Well, we’re not the only people to have been here. Someone’s already been and taken anything that might have been useful.” Tom indicated the laptop cable dangling from the desk. Dumas rolled his eyes.
“
Plus ça change.
They probably wouldn’t have seen you come in, either, if we hadn’t told them to look out for you both. Which leaves the question.” He turned his gaze to Jennifer. “What
are
you doing here?”
“Mr. Kirk is assisting the FBI with an inquiry that we are conducting.”
Dumas’s jaw set firm.
“And that gives you the right to break into a private apartment, does it? To impersonate a police officer? To contaminate a crime scene?” Jennifer was silent. “Let me ask, Agent Browne, has your embassy requested assistance from the Ministre de l’Intérieur?”
“I would have to check with Washington.”
“Well, let me save you the trouble. They haven’t. So effectively, you are here as a private citizen, too. An illegal immigrant, in fact, since my colleagues in customs don’t seem to have any record of you entering the country.”
“I can assure you—” Jennifer began but Dumas cut her off.
“There is a French word for that sort of behavior that I think translates well.
Espionage.
You may think the rest of the world is yours to do as you like, but here in France, we do not appreciate foreign agents operating unofficially. A small matter of national security.” Dumas’s eyes flashed and as far as he could while sitting down, he had pushed his chest out and straightened his back to emphasize his point.
“Mr. Dumas, I apologize for any offense caused.” Jennifer was respectful but firm. “My visit here was unplanned and so I was unable to go through the usual channels. However, I am sure that the American ambassador would be able to vouch for me and allay any concerns you might have about my intentions here.”
Dumas snorted.
“I’m sure he will. Meanwhile, I want to know why you’re interested in Ranieri? And what he’s got to do with Van Simson?”
Jennifer smiled and shook her head.
“That’s classified information that I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to disclose to you.”
“He’s a very dangerous man.”
“When I want to be patronized I’ll let you know.” Jennifer’s response was terse. “Believe me, I’ve dealt with far worse. I can look after myself.”
“Then there are two ways of doing this, Agent Browne,” Dumas said slowly. “Either you share what you’ve got with me and I’ll do the same in return. Or I let the two gendarmes who are waiting outside arrest you.”
“We both know that my embassy would have me released in hours,” Jennifer said with a shrug. “It would achieve nothing.”
“Maybe not. But I can assure you that I would see to it that the incident attracted widespread media coverage. Your picture splashed over the newspapers. Your superiors in Washington compromised. It’s a situation that I expect is in everyone’s interest to avoid unless you wish your investigation to end early.”
There was an awkward pause during which Jennifer and Dumas stared stubbornly at each other until Tom broke the silence.
“Ranieri was found in possession of a valuable coin, which was stolen from the U.S. government.” His interjection earned him a furious look from Jennifer.
“Drop it, Tom.” she exploded. “That’s not for you to reveal and you know it.”
“I don’t think any of us have got time to play games. Jean-Pierre is not the sort of person to go shooting his mouth off and none of us can afford to have our asses dragged through the press. So why don’t you just tell him what you know?”
“If it helps,” Dumas said with a shrug, “I know of this coin. This Double Eagle.” Jennifer didn’t react. “Don’t forget that it was the French police who handed the coin over to the FBI in the first place.”
This time Jennifer glanced at Tom, who nodded his encouragement.
“He’s on your side. He already knows about the coin. Hell, he might even be able to help you. What have you got to lose?”
“You think that Ranieri was fencing the coins for whoever stole them?” Dumas prompted her gently.
“Yes.” She nodded, her voice initially hesitant but growing in fluency. “And we’re interested in Darius Van Simson because he’s a major collector of gold coins. In fact, he even owns a Double Eagle. I wanted to establish whether he knew anything about the theft or the current whereabouts of the coin.”
Dumas smiled.
“Let me guess. Mr. Van Simson knew nothing about either. He never does. It is like a religion with him.”
“Yeah, I did kind of get that impression,” Jennifer agreed.
“He did take us down to his vault, though,” Tom reminded her. “Showed us his collection and his coin.”
“Then you got further than most,” said Dumas, raising his eyebrows. “From what I hear he never takes anyone down there.”
Dumas’s radio frazzled loudly and he reached into his pocket with annoyance to turn the volume down.
“Patron?”
The muffled voice vibrated from inside his jacket. Dumas rolled his eyes, took the radio out and pressed it to his mouth.
“Oui.”
“Patron. On les a pincés en bas.”
“J’arrive.”
Dumas replaced the radio in his pocket and smiled at Tom.
“It seems my men have bumped into some friends of yours downstairs.”
“Oh, them.” Tom smiled. “You know who they are?”
“They followed you here from outside Van Simson’s. Of course he’ll deny having sent or even seen them before.”
“One of them dropped this on his way out. Perhaps you could return it to him.” Tom retrieved the gun from his pocket and placed it in Dumas’s outstretched hand. He accepted it with a nod.
“
Bon.
There is nothing more we can do here,” Dumas said, standing up, arching his back as he made his way to the door. He hadn’t noticed the newspaper lying on the coffee table and Tom managed to snatch it and slip it under his jacket just before he turned round.
“Where are you two staying tonight?”
Tom shook his head.
“We’re not sure yet.”
“I’ll book you something.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Jennifer. “We can take care of ourselves.”
“J’insiste,”
said Dumas without smiling. “And if you want any further cooperation from the French authorities”—he held her FBI badge up in one hand—“then I suggest you go through the official channels. Otherwise, tomorrow, I expect you both out of the country.” With a flick of his wrist he tossed her badge toward her and she snatched it out of the air.
“Go over to the Hôtel St. Merri in the Fourth,” said Dumas as they emerged onto the street. “Tell them I sent you. They’ll give you a couple of rooms.”
“
Merci,
Jean-Pierre,” said Tom, shaking his hand firmly as Jennifer got into the car.
“
De rien, mon ami.
It’s good to have you back.” Then in a quieter voice. “What are you doing mixed up in all this, Felix? The FBI?
C’est pas ton style.
”
“Like I said before, it’s a short-term gig. She gets her coin back, I get whoever killed Harry Renwick. That’s it.”
Dumas nodded and looked at Tom, then at Jennifer, then back to Tom.
“Be careful.”
“What? Of Van Simson? Don’t worry, if those two were the best he’s got, I’ll be fine.”
“No, I mean of her.” Dumas winked. “A woman like that can be dangerous. Make you do things you shouldn’t. Don’t forget how they treated you last time.”
Tom somehow mustered a smile.