James Twining - The Geneva Deception

Folding the sheet back over Argento’s face, Santos made the sign of the cross and then eased the drawer back into the wall and swung the door shut. It closed with a hollow metal clang, the echo reverberating around them as if a stone slab had been dropped over a tomb. Allegra turned to leave, then paused.

‘I wonder, did he ever mention an organisation or group called the Delian League?’

‘The Delian League? Not as far as I remember.’ Santos shook his head, frowning in thought. ‘Why, who are they? Do you think they…?’

‘It’s just a name I’ve come across,’ she reassured him with a smile. ‘It probably means nothing. Shall I see you out?’

A large Mercedes with diplomatic plates was waiting for Santos on the street outside. The chauffeur jogged round and held the rear door open for him.

‘A small perk of the job,’ Santos smiled as he shook her hand. ‘Saves me a fortune in parking tickets.’

He slipped inside and peered up at her through the open window, an earnest look on his face.

‘Gio had many faults, but he was a good man, Lieutenant Damico. He deserved better. I hope you catch whoever did this to him.’

‘We’ll do our best,’ she reassured him with a nod.

The windo hummed shut and Santos settled back into his seat. As the car drew away, he reached for his phone.

‘You know who it is. Don’t hang up,’ Santos said carefully when the number he had dialled was answered. ‘I need a favour. And then I’m gone. For good this time, you have my word.’

Hotel Bel-Air, Stone Canyon Road, Los Angeles

18th March – 7.12 a.m.

Verity always sat at the same table for breakfast. In the far left corner, under the awning, behind a swaying screen of bamboo grass. It was close enough to the entrance to be seen by anyone coming in, sheltered enough not to be bothered by anyone walking past.

‘Good morning, Ms Bruce.’ Philippe, the maître d’, bounded up to her, his French accent so comically thick that she wondered if he worked on it at home. ‘Your papers.’

He handed her meticulously folded copies of the Washington Post and the Financial Times , both still warm from being pressed. Politics and money. The cogs and grease of life’s little carousel, even if the deepening global economic downturn had rather slowed things recently

‘Your guest is already here.’

She pushed her sunglasses back on to her head with a frown and followed his gaze to where Earl Faulks was sitting waiting for her, absent-mindedly spinning his phone on the tablecloth.

‘He tried to sit in your seat,’ Philippe continued in an outraged whisper. ‘I moved him, of course.’

Faulks had just turned fifty but was still striking in a gaunt, patrician sort of way, his dark hooded eyes that seemed to blink in slow motion looming above a long oval face and aquiline nose, silver hair swept back off a pale face. He was wearing a dark blue linen suit, white Charvet shirt with a cut-away collar, Cartier knot cufflinks and one of his trademark bow-ties. Today’s offering was a series of garish salmon pink and cucumber green stripes that she assumed denoted one of his precious London clubs.

‘Verity! Looking gorgeous as always.’

He rose with a smile to greet her, leaning heavily on an umbrella, an almost permanent accessory since a riding accident a few years ago. She ignored him and sat down, a waiter pushing her chair in for her, the maître d’ snapping her napkin on to her lap.

‘Muesli with low-fat yogurt?’ he asked, his tone suggesting he already knew what her answer would be.

‘Yes please, Philippe.’

‘And a mineral water and a pot of fresh tea?’

‘With lemon.’

‘Of course. And for monsieur?’ He turned to Faulks, who had sat back down and was observing this ritualistic exchange with a wry smile.

‘Toast. Brown. Coffee. Black.’

‘Very well.’ The maître d’ backed away, clicking his fingers at one of the waiters to send him running to the kitchen.

Verity reached into her handbag and took out an art deco silver cigarette case engraved with flowers. Opening it carefully, she tipped the thirty or so pills it contained into a small pile on her side plate. They lay there like pebbles, an assortment of vitamins and herbal supplements in different shapes and sizes and colours, some of the more translucent ones glinting like amber.

‘Verity, darling, if you go on being this healthy, it’ll kill you,’ Faulks warned as their drinks arrived.

He was American, a shopkeeper’s son from Baltimore, if you believed his detractors – of which he had amassed his fair share over the years. Not that you could detect his origins any more; his affected accent, clipped way of speaking and occasional Britishisms reminded her of a character from an Edith Wharton novel. She’d always thought it rather a shame that he didn’t smoke – she imagined that a silver Dunhill lighter and a pack of Sobranies would have somehow suited the casual elegance of his slender fingers.

‘I mean, what time did your trainer have you up this morning for a run? Five? Six? Only tradesmen get up that early.’

‘I’m still not talking to you, Earl,’ she replied, watching carefully as the waiter strained her tea and then delicately squeezed a small piece of lemon into it.

‘You were the one who wanted to meet,’ he reminded her. ‘I was packing for the Caribbean.’

She ignored him again, although she couldn’t help but feel a pang of envy. Faulks seemed to ride effortlessly in the slipstream of the super rich as their sumptuous caravan processed around the world: Gstaad in February, the Bahamas in March, the La Prairie clinic in Montreux in April for his annual check-up, London in June, Italy for the summer, New York for the winter sales, and then a well-earned rest before the whole gorgeous procession kicked off again.

She began to sort her pills into the order in which she liked to take them, although she had long since forgotten the logic by which she’d arrived at this particular sequence. Satisfied, she began to take them in silence, washing each one down with a mouthful of water and a sharp jerk of her head.

‘Fine, you win,’ Faulks said eventually, throwing his hands up in defeat. ‘What do you want me to do? Apologise? Wear a hair shirt? Walk up the Via Dolorosa on my knees?’

‘Any of those would be a start.’ She glared at him.

‘Even when I come bearing gifts?’ He unfolded his napkin to reveal three vase fragments positioned to show that they fitted cleanly together. ‘The final pieces of the Phintias calyx krater that you’ve been collecting for the past few years.’ He smiled at her. ‘In our profession, patience truly is a necessity, not a virtue.’

‘The same fragments I seem to remember you wanted a hundred thousand for last year,’ Verity said archly. ‘Are you feeling generous or guilty?’

‘If I had a conscience I wouldn’t be in this business,’ he replied with a smile, although there was something in his voice that suggested that he was only half joking. ‘Let’s call it a peace offering.’

‘Have you any idea of the embarrassment you’ve caused me?’

‘You have nothing to be embarrassed about,’ he assured her.

‘Tell that to Thierry Normand and Sir John Sykes. According to them, I paid you ten million dollars for something that was at best “anomalous”, at worst a “pastiche”.’

‘Pastiche?’ Faulks snorted. ‘Did you tell them about the test results? Don’t they know it’s impossible to fake that sort of calcification?’

‘By then they weren’t listening.’

‘You mean they didn’t want to hear,’ he corrected her. ‘Don’t you see, Verity, darling, that they’re all jealous. Jealous of your success. Jealous that while their donors have pulled back as the recession has begun to bite, the Getty remains blessed with a three-billion-dollar endowment.’