The Double Eagle (3 page)
Authors: James Twining
J. EDGAR HOOVER BUILDING, WASHINGTON, D.C
.
18 July—7:00
A.M.
S
he knew what would happen as the door opened and the dark shape came through it. She fought to stop herself, but it was no use. It never was. She raised the gun in front of her in a classic Weaver stance. Her stronger left arm was slightly flexed, pushing the gun away from her. Her supporting arm was bent and pulling the weapon in to create a properly braced grip, her feet apart with her weak-sided right foot slightly forward.
She fired three shots right in the kill zone—a perfect equilateral triangle. He was dead before he hit the floor, his white shirt billowing red like a bottle of ink spilled onto blotting paper. It was then, as the light hit his face, only then, that she saw what she had done.
Jennifer Browne woke with a jump, peeled her cheek, sticky with sweat, off the desk’s laminate surface and fumbled for the clock. Blinking hard, her eyes adjusting to the glare of the overhead neon, she checked the time. Seven
A.M
. Shit. Another all-nighter.
She stretched and flexed her neck, her back clicking into place. Yawning, she reached down and pulled out the bottom desk drawer, reached inside, and took out a cellophane-wrapped white blouse identical to the one she was wearing. It was resting on two others.
Placing it on her desk, she began to unbutton the one she had on, her fingers stiff as she worked the buttons. Eventually, when it was undone, she stood up and slipped it off, dropping it into the open drawer, which she then nudged shut with her foot.
She was strikingly beautiful in that effortless, double-take way that some women are. Five feet nine, milky brown skin, slender yet curving where it counted, rounded cheeks, and curly black hair that just kissed her bare shoulders. She wore no jewelry, never had, apart from the Tiffany’s twisted heart necklace that her sister had given her on her eighteenth birthday that nestled in the smooth curve of her breasts.
As she buttoned the blouse and tucked it into the waistband of her black trouser suit, she looked around at the windowless, painted concrete walls that encircled her and smiled, the dimples creasing into her soft brown cheeks. Even though it was small, she had still not quite gotten used to having her own office. Her own space. Her own air. After only three months back in D.C., the novelty had certainly not worn off yet. Not by a long way. Not after three years down in the Atlanta field office, afraid to breathe out too far in case the cubicle walls collapsed. She was glad to be back; this time she was planning on staying.
There was a knock at the open door and Jennifer’s thoughts were interrupted. She looked up reproachfully but relaxed her frown when she saw that it was Phil Tucker, her section chief, right on time. He’d told her yesterday that he wanted her in early, that he needed to talk to her. Wouldn’t say why, though.
“Hey there,” she called.
“You okay?” He walked up to the desk and squinted down at her through frameless glasses in concern, his double chin flattening over the top of his tie. “Another late night?”
“Is it that obvious?” Jennifer self-consciously smoothed down her hair and rubbed the sleep out of the corners of her eyes.
“Nope.” He smiled. “Security told me you hadn’t gone home…. Just so you know, I appreciate it.”
That was Tucker all over. He wasn’t one of these bosses who just expected everyone to stay late and then never noticed when they did. He kept track of his people and made sure they knew it. She liked that. It made her feel like she was part of something again, not just an embarrassment that had to be explained away.
“No problem.”
He scratched his copper-colored beard, then the top of his head, his scalp pink and raw where the hair was thinning.
“By the way, I spoke to Flynt, and the Treasury boys are going to handle everything from here on in on the Hammon case. They were very grateful for your help. He says he owes you one. Good job.”
“Thanks.” She gave an awkward shrug, never having been good at accepting compliments. She changed the subject. “So what’s all this about? Why the early start? Some congressman lose his dog?”
Tucker levered himself into a chair, his hips grazing its molded plastic arms.
“Something came up yesterday. I volunteered you.” He grinned. “Hope you don’t mind.”
She laughed.
“Would it make a difference if I did?”
“Nope! Anyway, you won’t want to. It’s a good opportunity. Chance to get back on the inside track.” He paused and looked suddenly serious. “A second chance, maybe.” His eyes dipped to the floor.
“You still trying to earn me my redemption?” With her dream still fresh in her thoughts, something bitter rose to the back of her mouth and made her swallow hard.
“No. You’re doing that all on your own. But you and I both know that it’s hard to change people’s minds.”
“I’m not looking for any handouts, Phil. I can make my own way back.” Her eyes shone with a fierce pride. Tucker nodded slowly.
“I know. But everyone needs a break once in a while, even you. And I wouldn’t have suggested you if I didn’t think you’d earned it. Anyway, I told him to swing by here about now, so it’s too late to back out.”
He checked his watch, shook his wrist, held it to his ear, and then checked it again.
“Is that the right time?” he asked, pointing at Jennifer’s desk clock. She ignored the question.
“Told who to swing by here?”
There was a knock at the open door before he could answer and a man walked in. Tucker leapt up.
“Jennifer, meet Bob Corbett; Bob, meet Jennifer Browne.” All three of them stood motionless for a few seconds and Tucker’s eyes flicked anxiously to Jennifer’s, as if he were worried she might do or say the wrong thing.
They shook hands. Tucker breathed a sigh of relief.
“Here, take my seat.” Tucker pointed eagerly at his chair before perching unsteadily on the edge of Jennifer’s desk. Corbett sat down. “Bob heads up the Major Theft and Transportation Crimes unit here.”
“We were introduced in the elevator once.” Jennifer nodded with a curious smile. From the times she’d seen him around the building, she knew that Corbett always looked immaculate, from his smoothly shaved chin to his polished black shoes, thin laces neatly tied in a double knot. But now she immediately noticed that something was different. The knot on his woven silk tie was much smaller than usual, as if he had loosened it and then retightened it several times. As if he were worried.
Corbett frowned and looked at her quizzically before nodding slowly in sudden recollection. When he spoke, his voice was strained, as if he had just run up several flights of steps.
“Sure. I remember. Hi.” He spoke in short, sharp bursts and there was something in the precise urgency of his machine-gunned words that suggested a military background. They shook hands again.
Corbett often passed for a man much younger than his forty-five years, although the deepening creases around his eyes and mouth suggested that time was at last beginning to catch up with him. Next to Tucker certainly, he looked fit and healthy although that was possibly an unfair comparison. There was something streamlined about him, from his slicked-back steel gray hair to the rounded contours of his chin and cheekbones that gave him the chromed elegance of one of those 1930s Art Deco locomotives that look like they were powering along at two hundred miles an hour, even when they were standing still. Above the sharp angle of his nose, the cold light of his close-set gray eyes suggested a very clever and very determined man. He reminded her, in a strange way, of her father. Hard but fair.
“You know, Bob’s got the best cleanup rate in the Bureau.” Tucker continued. “What is it now? Only five unsolved cases in twenty-five years? That’s outstanding work.” He shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite come to terms with it.
“Actually Phil, it’s two. And I haven’t given up on them yet.” He smiled, but Jennifer could tell he wasn’t joking. He didn’t look like the sort of man who did.
“Bob needs someone to work on a new case for him. I suggested you.”
Jennifer shrugged awkwardly, her face suddenly hot as two pairs of eyes focused in on her.
“Thank you, sir. I’ll do my best. What’s the case?”
Corbett slid a large manila envelope toward her and motioned with a wave that she should open it. Warily, Jennifer lifted the tab and pulled out a series of black-and-white photos.
“The man in that photo is Father Gianluca Ranieri.” She studied the picture carefully, taking in the man’s contorted face and the large gash in his chest.
“They found him in Paris yesterday. River cops fished him out the Seine. As you can see, he didn’t drown.”
Jennifer flicked through the rest of the photos, her mind focused. Close-ups of Ranieri’s face and the knife wound flashed past her large hazel eyes. A quick scan through the translated autopsy report at the back confirmed what Corbett had just told her—stabbed and then presumably thrown in the river. A single blow through the xiphisternum, aimed up toward the left shoulder blade, had caused a massive, almost instant heart attack.
As she read, she flashed a quick look at Corbett. He was studying her office with a faint smile. She knew that some of her colleagues found it strange that she kept the stark green concrete walls bare. Truth was, she found the lack of clutter helped her keep her mind clear.
“Any thoughts?” Corbett asked, his eyes snapping back round to meet hers.
“Judging from the injury, it looks like a professional job. Some sort of hit.”
“Agreed.” Corbett nodded, his eyes narrowing slightly as if he were reappraising her in the light of this quick diagnosis.
“And it was public. The body dumped where they knew it would be quickly found.”
“Meaning?”
“That they’re not worried about getting caught. Or that maybe they wanted to send someone a message.”
Corbett nodded his agreement.
“Perhaps both. Best guess is that he was killed round about midnight on the sixteenth of July, give or take three or four hours either way.” He got up and padded noiselessly over to the filing cabinet, Jennifer noticing now that he seemingly kept his pockets empty of change and keys or anything else that might give away his position, like a cat who had the bell on its collar removed so that it might be better able to stalk its unsuspecting prey. She continued to leaf through the file.
“From what we know, Ranieri trained as a Catholic priest and then worked at the Vatican Institute for Religious Works.”
Jennifer looked up in surprise.
“The Vatican Bank?”
“As it’s also known, yes.” Corbett raised his eyebrows, clearly impressed now. “He was there for about ten years before going missing about three years ago, along with a couple of million dollars from one of their Cayman Island accounts.”
Jennifer swiveled her chair toward him, her forehead wrinkled in anticipation. She could see that Corbett was building up to something. Tucker sat enthralled with his arms crossed and resting on his belly, his mouth slack and half open. Corbett ran his finger along the top of the filing cabinet as if checking for dust. She knew there wouldn’t be any. Not in her office.
“He must have spent all the cash though, because he turned up in Paris last year. The French say he set himself up as a low-level fence. Nothing big. A painting here, a necklace there, but he was making a living; a good living, judging from the size of him.”
All three of them laughed and the tingle that Jennifer had felt slowly building inside her chest vanished like steam rising into warm air. Corbett moved back round to the chair and sat down again, Jennifer just getting a glimpse of the top of his shoes, where over the years the constant rubbing of his suit trousers had buffed the leather to a slightly deeper shade of black than the rest of them.
“I don’t get it.” Jennifer replaced the file on the desk and sat back in her chair, confused. “Sounds to me like he got whacked by someone he ripped off. Or maybe he had some sort of deal go sour. Either way, it’s got nothing to do with us.”
Corbett locked eyes with her and the tingle reappeared and instantly sublimated into a cold, hard knot.
“Our angle, Agent Browne—and you won’t find this in the autopsy report—is that when they opened him up, they found something in his stomach. Something he’d swallowed just before he died. Something he clearly didn’t want his killers to find.”
Corbett reached into his pocket and, leaning forward, slid something carefully sealed inside a small, clear plastic bag across the desk toward her. Against the desk’s veneered expanse an eagle soared proudly, its majestic flight etched in solid gold.
It was a coin.
CLERKENWELL, LONDON
18 July—4:30
P.M.
O
utside, the afternoon rush-hour traffic rumbled past, a never-ending river of rubber and steel that surged and stalled in tidy blocks to the beat of the traffic lights.
Inside, the shop windows glowed yellow as the sunlight fought to shine though their whitewashed panes. In a few places, the paint had been scratched off and here narrow shafts of light pierced the gloom, the dust dancing through their pale beams like raindrops falling across car headlights.
The room itself was a mess. The orange walls were blistered, the rough wooden floor suffocating in a thick down of old newspapers and junk food wrappers, while bare wires hung down menacingly from the cracked ceiling like tentacles.
At the back of the room, almost lost in the shadows, two tea chests rested on the uneven floor. Hunched forward on one of them, Tom Kirk was lost deep in thought, his chin in his hands. Although he was just thirty-five years old, a few gray hairs flecked the sides of his head and were more noticeable in the several days of rough stubble that covered his face, the hair slightly darker in the shallow cleft of his square chin.
He reminded everyone of his father, or so everyone told him, much to his annoyance. Certainly he shared his delicately angular face, messy brown hair, and deep-set blue eyes that nestled under thick brown eyebrows.
He was more athletic than his father, though; a lithe, sinewy five-foot-eleven physique that suggested someone both quick enough to steal second base and strong enough to crack a shot into the bleachers if he had to. The irony, of course, was that he’d never been much of a big hitter in high school, his signature play instead being a split-fingered fast-ball that had batters swinging at thin air as it broke violently downward. It fooled them every time.
Perched on the chest opposite him, a large backgammon board threatened to slide onto the floor at any moment. It was an intricately inlaid set that he’d picked up for next to nothing in some dusty side street off the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul years ago. It still smelled of glue and grease and spices. When he couldn’t sleep, he would sometimes play against himself for hours, checking the probabilities, shifting the pieces around the board, studying how different moves and strategies evolved. The half empty bottle of Grey Goose on the floor next to him suggested that it had been a long night.
But Tom wasn’t even looking at the board. Instead he was considering the black ski mask that lay in his lap, carefully cradled as if made from the finest Limoges porcelain. With a half smile, he slipped his right hand into the neck opening and then stuck a finger out of each of the eye holes, wiggling them playfully up and down like fish chasing each other in and out of a skull’s eye sockets.
He had long elegant fingers that made graceful, precise movements, each joint flexing like individual links in a chain, large white half moons at the bottom of each neatly clipped nail. And yet the back of his knuckles were covered in small white scars and his palms were rough and worn. It was almost as if he were a concert pianist who moonlighted as a bare-knuckle fighter.
Tom knew that he couldn’t avoid making the call any longer. He’d been out of contact for three weeks now and didn’t have a choice. But would Archie understand? Would he even believe him? Abruptly his smile vanished and he flung the mask as far as he could across the room, willing it to shatter into a thousand pieces against the opposite wall.
He took his phone out of his back pocket and dialed, the high-pitched tones echoing back over the traffic’s low rumble. It was answered almost immediately, but there was silence from the other end. Tom coughed and then spoke, his voice smooth and soothing, his slight American accent more pronounced than usual as it often was when he was nervous.
“Archie, it’s Felix.”
“Jesus Christ, Felix!”
Felix. A name that he’d been christened with years ago when he had first got going in the game. A name that he was stuck with now.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“I got…held up,” Tom answered.
“Held up? I thought you’d been nicked.”
Archie. The best fence in the business. Tom had often wondered whether his was an invented name, too, a shield to hide behind. On balance, he thought that it probably wasn’t. Somehow it seemed to fit.
“No. Just held up.”
“Spot of aggro?”
For once Archie sounded genuinely concerned.
“No, but I’m not doing the States again. I’ve told you, it’s too risky doing jobs back there. I know I’m the last person they expect to see alive but one day they might get lucky.”
“How did it go?”
“Pretty much like we planned. Except they were having some construction work done and I was worried about extra security until it was finished. So I staked it out for about three weeks in the end before I went in, you know, just to be sure. I dealt with the pressure pads and the combination hadn’t been reset, so it was all pretty simple.”
“Nice one. Usual place, then?”
“My stuff already there?”
“What do you think?” Archie almost sounded offended.
“Fine. I’ll drop it off in a few days.”
“You’re going to have to get your skates on for the second one, though. You’ve not left yourself much time.”
There was a pause and the line crackled with static as Tom sat down on the tea chest, massaging his temple with his left hand. As he’d thought, Archie wasn’t going to make this any easier for him. But he’d made his decision and he was going to stick to it.
“I wanted to talk to you about that.”
“Oh, yeah.” Archie’s tone was immediately suspicious.
“Thing is, I’m not going to do the other job.”
“You what?”
“You heard me. I’m calling it off.”
“You having me on?”
“The truth is, Archie, I’m done with this shit. I just don’t want to do it anymore. I can’t do it anymore. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” The word was hammered back into Tom’s ear. “Sorry? What the hell’s that supposed to mean? You do me over and then you apologize? You must be having a laugh. Well, I’m sorry too, sunshine, but sorry just doesn’t bloody cut it. You’re sorry and I’m buggered because I’ve got to deliver two Fabergé eggs to Cassius in twelve days’ time or I’m a dead man. Capeesh?”
“Cassius?” Tom’s lips formed around the word. He stood up again, his feet sinking into the trash-strewn floor like it was quicksand, his voice a whisper. “That was never the deal. You said it was for some guy called Viktor. A Russian client. You never mentioned Cassius. You know I don’t work for people like that. For him especially. What the hell are you playing at?”
“Listen, when I took the job I didn’t know it was for him either.” Archie’s voice was calm, soothing even. But to Tom it sounded as if he’d practiced this speech many times, knowing how he would react. “And by the time I found out, it was too bloody late. We were already on the hook. You know as well as I do that you don’t muck Cassius about. Not now, not ever.”
“Especially if the money’s good, right?” said Tom bitterly. “Has a way of making you forgetful, doesn’t it?”
“Oh, do me a favor!”
“What’s your take, Archie? Did he promise you a few extra quid for keeping quiet?”
“The money don’t come into it. It’s a sweet deal for both of us and you know it. Straight in, straight out with a buyer lined up. You never even needed to know it was for Cassius.” Tom stood with one hand against the wall, his head bowed, the phone pressed to the side of his head. “Felix, I know it’s bang out of order but maybe we should meet.” Archie’s voice was gentle, almost pleading. “You know, go for a pint or something. We can plan the second job, deliver both eggs to Cassius and then move on. If you want to call it a day after that, fine, but we got to do this one thing and we got to do it right.”
What surprised Tom most was how quickly his answer came. He would have expected perhaps some silent deliberation, some internal dialogue as he considered Archie’s position and the implications of Cassius’s involvement on them both, weighed up the pros and cons of doing nothing or agreeing to follow through on this last job. But his answer was instinctive and immediate and had required no debate.
“I’m sorry, Archie.” Tom stood up straight, his voice hard. “You should have told me the truth. This is your problem now, not mine. You can have the egg I’ve got as agreed, but then that’s it. I’m out.” He snapped the phone shut and breathed out. There, it was done.
He looked up and flinched. When he had thrown it earlier, the ski mask had snagged on a nail. Now, as it hung there, the empty eye sockets seemed to be mocking him.