James Twining - The Geneva Deception

A shot rang out. Santos fell back with a cry, clutching his arm.

‘Sit the fuck down. Don’t nobody move,’ Archie bellowed.

Tom pushed past him to Allegra, pulling the gag out of her mouth, then slicing her wrists free.

‘Are you okay?’ he breathed as she fell gratefully into his arms.

She nodded, gave him a weak smile. Turning, Tom scooped Santos’s weapon off the floor and quickly searched the others.

‘I’m bleeding,’ Santos shrieked.

‘It’s a graze. You’ll live,’ Tom snapped.

‘Pity,’ Archie intoned behind him. Looking up, Faulks’s eyes widened in shocked recognition, although the others didn’t seem to notice his expression.

‘You have no idea what you’ve done,’ Santos hissed though clenched teeth, holding his arm to his chest. ‘You’re both dead men.’ He snatched a glance towards the entrance.

‘Who are you?’ Moretti demanded.

‘He’s Tom Kirk,’ De Luca said slowly, greeting Tom with a half-smile. ‘Also risen from the dead, it seems.’

‘Kirk?’ Moretti gasped.

‘Tom Kirk?’ Faulks gave a disbelieving smile, his face turning grey.

Tom frowned, confused. Some people, criminals especially, knew who he was, or at least who he had been. But that didn’t usually warrant this sort of reaction.

‘What do you want?’ Santos demanded.

‘The same as you,’ Tom said simply. ‘The Caravaggio.’

‘You’re robbing us?’ De Luca seemed to find this almost amusing.

‘I’m borrowing it,’ Tom corrected him.

‘You’ll never get it out of there,’ Faulks scoffed. ‘Not without destroying it.’

‘Even with these?’ Tom asked, holding up the monogrammed case he’d taken from Faulks’s safe. The dealer went pale, his eyes bulging. ‘Here, you might as well collect them all up,’ said Tom, tossing Allegra the box. ‘Although it is only the three watches I need, isn’t it?’

Moretti and De Luca swapped a dumbfounded look.

‘How did you know?’ De Luca asked as Allegra loosened his watch and then Moretti’s, before finding the sixth in Santos’s top pocket. ‘Did your…’

‘Santos has struck a deal to sell your painting,’ Tom explained. ‘We overheard him negotiating the terms yesterday in Monte Carlo. He let slip about the watches.’

Santos rose from his seat.

‘ Stronzata ,’ he spat, his face stiff with anger.

‘Bullshit. Really?’ Tom smiled. ‘Dom?’ he called out.

A few moments later Dominique appeared, ushering Santos’s three sullen-faced men ahead of her. Eyes narrowing, Santos slumped back into his seat as she forced them on to the ground and made them sit with their hands on their heads.

‘These men work for Santos. We found them next door. You were the only people standing between him and the fifteen million dollars his Serbian buyers have promised him for the painting.’

‘He’s lying,’ Santos seethed, his eyes fixed on Tom. ‘It’s a trick. We all know to come to this place alone. I would never break our laws.’

‘Can you open it?’ Tom called across to Allegra, who was crouching in front of the case.

‘There are six plates,’ she said, pointing at the brass roundels set into the wall under the painting. ‘Each one’s engraved with a different Greek letter.’

Opening the box, she took out the first watch and carefully matched it to the corresponding plate, the case sinking into the crafted recess with a click. Then she repeated the exercise with another two watches and stood back, glancing across at Tom with a hopeful shrug. For a moment nothing happened. But then, with a low hum, the thick glass slid three feet to the right, leaving an opening that she could step through.

‘I’ll give her a hand,’ Archie volunteered, handing Tom his gun. He followed her through the gap into the narrow space behind the glass, and then helped her lift the unframed painting down. Carrying it back through with small, shuffling steps, they leaned it gently against the wall.

Tom stepped closer. He recognised the scene. It was exactly as he remembered it from the Polaroid Jennifer had shown him in her car. But there was no comparing that flat, lifeless image to the dramatic energy and dynamism of the original. The angel swooping down from heaven like an avenging harpy, the boy’s taunting face creased with a cruel laughter, Mary’s exhaustion and exultation, the fear and anticipation of the onlooking saints. Light and darkness. Divine perfection and human fallibility. Life and death. It was all there.

‘Let’s take it off the stretchers so we can roll it up,’ Archie suggested.

‘Be careful with it,’ Moretti warned him.

Tom fixed him with a questioning look, detecting a proprietary tone.

‘Is it yours?’

‘Not any more,’ he admitted. ‘We donated it as a gesture of good faith when the League was founded. The De Luca family contributed this villa.’

‘I’ll return it,’ Tom reassured him. ‘You have my word.’

‘Then why take it?’ De Luca demanded.

Tom paused before answering, not wanting to give Santos the pleasure of hearing him stumble over his words.

‘You know the FBI officer I asked you about, the one who was shot in Vegas three nights ago?’ De Luca nodded with a puzzled frown. ‘A few weeks back she got a tip-off about one of your US-based distributors. An antiquities dealer based in New York. Under questioning, he volunteered Luca Cavalli’s name.’

‘I knew Luca,’ Moretti frowned. ‘He was careful. He would never have revealed his name to someone that far down the organisation.’

‘He didn’t,’ Tom agreed. ‘Faulks did.’

‘What?’ Faulks gave a disbelieving laugh.

‘Remember that photo of the ivory mask we came across in Cavalli’s car?’ Allegra glanced up at De Luca from where she was helping free the painting from the wooden stretchers. ‘We found it in Faulks’s safe. It’s worth millions. Tens of millions.’

‘My guess is that Cavalli had been secretly bringing you pieces for years,’ Tom said, turning to stand in front of Faulks, whom he noticed had slid his chair a little way back from the others. ‘Pieces his men had dug up and that he had deliberately not declared to the League, so that you could sell them on and share the profits between you. But then one day he unearthed something really valuable, didn’t he? Something unique. And you just couldn’t help yourself. You got greedy.’

‘Cavalli sent me the mask, it’s true,’ Faulks blustered, looking anxiously at De Luca and Moretti. ‘A wonderful piece. But my intention was to split the proceeds with the League in the usual way after the sale. And not just the mask. I have the map showing the location of the site where he found it. Who knows what else might be down there?’

‘Can you prove any of this?’ De Luca challenged Allegra, fixing her with an unblinking, stony-faced stare.

‘Who told you that Cavalli had betrayed you?’ Tom shot back.

De Luca paused, then pointed a wavering finger towards Faulks. ‘He did.’

‘I had no choice,’ Faulks protested. ‘It’s true that Cavalli wanted me to deal with him direct. But when I refused he threatened to go public with everything he knew. What I told you was the truth. He was planning to betray you. He was planning to sell us all out. You know yourself that your informants backed me up.’

‘The FBI had Cavalli’s name,’ De Luca acknowledged, turning his gaze back to Tom. ‘They wanted the authorities here to arrest him.’

‘Cavalli was ripping you off, but I doubt he was going to go public with anything,’ Tom said with a shrug, thinking back to the moment in front of Faulks’s open safe when this had all clicked into place. ‘The simple truth is that Faulks wanted him out of the way so he could have the mask for himself. So he came up with a plan. First feed Cavalli’s name to the New York dealer. Then sell the dealer out to the FBI to make sure he would talk. Finally accuse Cavalli of betraying you, knowing your police informants would confirm that the FBI was investigating him and that you would think he was collaborating.’