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He continued through the shop, the wooden floor freshly cleared of the debris that had coated it, until he reached the two doors at the rear of the room. Opening the one to his left, Tom stepped through onto the narrow platform that ran along the back wall of the large warehouse.
On the left hand side, a metal staircase spiralled tightly down to the dusty floor some twenty feet below. A steel shutter in the opposite wall opened onto the street that ran down the hill and around the back of the building. There was a faint buzzing from the neon tubes that lined the warehouse ceiling and their primitive light made the flaking and stained white walls come out in a sickly sweat.
‘How are you getting on?’ Tom called out as he came down the stairs, the cast iron staircase vibrating violently with each step where it had worked itself loose over the years. The girl looked up at the sound of his voice, brushing her blonde hair aside.
‘There’s still a lot to do,’ she took her glasses off and rubbed her blue eyes. ‘How does it look?’ Her English was immaculate, although spoken with the slight tightness of a Swiss-French accent.
‘Great. You were right, the gold does look better than silver would have.’
She blushed and put her glasses back on. Still only twenty-two, Dominique had worked for Tom’s father in Geneva for the last four years. After the memorial service, she’d volunteered to help him move all his father’s stock back to London and get the business up and running there. She’d done a great job. He was hoping she would agree to stay on.
‘Is everything here?’ Tom nodded towards the piles of crates and boxes that were stacked across the warehouse floor.
‘I think so, yes. I just need to check those last few boxes off against my list.’
‘These?’ asked Tom walking over towards the three crates she had pointed at.
‘Uh-huh. Read off the numbers on the side will you?’
‘Sure.’ He went to the first one and bending his head slightly, read the numbers back to her.
‘131272.’
She turned back to the laptop she was sitting in front of.
‘Okay.’
Tom moved to the next crate.
‘1311…’
He was interrupted by a clipped, nasal voice that sank heavily from the platform above.
‘My, my – we have been busy, Kirk. You must have knocked off Buckingham Palace to get your hands on this little lot.’
‘Detective Constable Clarke,’ Tom said flatly without bothering to look up. ‘Our first customer.’
Clarke robotically lit another cigarette from the one already in his mouth before flicking the sputtering butt over the railing and wedging the new cigarette between his teeth. It landed harmlessly at Tom’s feet.
‘It’s Detective Sergeant Clarke now, Kirk,’ he said as he took a drag on his cigarette and made his way down the stairs to the warehouse floor, the staircase strangely silent under his lazy step. ‘While you’ve been away, there’s been a few changes around here.’
‘Detective Sergeant? They really must be desperate.’
A muscle in Clarke’s neck began to twitch. He was quite a tall man, although his rounded shoulders made him seem shorter. He was also distressingly thin, his grey skin drawn tightly across his sharp cheekbones, his mouth pulled into a permanently grudging grimace, his hair fine and brushed forward to disguise how far it had receded. His wrist bones, especially, jutted out under translucent skin and seemed so delicate that they might snap if you shook his hand too firmly. The only colour came from the broken blood vessels that danced across his sunken cheeks.
‘I heard you were back, Kirk. That you’d crawled out from whatever hole you’ve been hiding in for the last couple of months.’ His watery eyes flashed as he spoke. ‘So I thought I’d come and pay you a visit. A social call. Just in case you thought I’d forgotten about you.’
‘Well, if it’s any consolation, I’d certainly forgotten about you.’
Clarke clamped his mouth shut and Tom could see from the colour rising to his face that he was focusing all his energies on not losing his temper. Eventually he turned away from Tom and indicated the room around him with his head.
‘So, all this shit yours then?’
Tom stole an anxious look at Dominique, but she was staring at the computer screen as if nothing was going on behind her.
‘Not that it’s any of your business, but yes.’
‘You mean it is now,’ said Clarke laughing coldly. ‘But God knows which poor sod you nicked it off.’ He kicked the crate nearest to him, his clumpy, thick-soled shoes at odds with his delicate frame and making his feet seem huge. ‘What about this one. What’s in here?’
‘You’re wasting your time, Clarke,’ said Tom, his own mounting frustration giving his voice a slight edge now. ‘I’ve moved my father’s business from Switzerland and I’m re-opening it here. I have import papers in triplicate from both the Swiss and British authorities for everything.’
Clarke turned back to face him and smirked.
‘Tell me, was it the drink or the shame over having you for a son that finally did him in?’ Tom’s body stiffened, the muscles in his jaw bulging as he clenched his teeth together. He could see Clarke savouring the moment, his eyes narrowed into fascinated slivers of grey.
‘I think it’s time you left,’ said Tom, taking a step forward.
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘No, I’m asking you to leave. Now.’
‘I’ll go when I’m ready.’ Clarke thrust his chin out in defiance and folded his arms across his chest, the material of his grey suit, shiny on the elbows, acquiring a new set of creases.
‘Dominique,’ Tom called out while keeping his eyes firmly fixed on Clarke’s. ‘Could you please get me the Metropolitan Police on the line and ask to speak to Commissioner Jarvis. Tell him that Detective Sergeant Clarke is harassing me again. Tell him that he has illegally entered my premises without a warrant. Tell him that he’s refusing to leave.’ She nodded but didn’t move.
Clarke stepped forward until he was so close that Tom could smell the smoke on his breath.
‘You’ll slip up, Kirk. Everyone does eventually, even you. And I’ll be there when it happens.’
Flicking his cigarette to one side, sparks scattering in its wake, Clarke marched back up the stairs and through the door.
Dominique fixed Tom with a questioning stare. He cleared his throat nervously. Although he had known that he would have to have this conversation at some stage, he had planned to do it on his own terms when he was good and ready. Certainly not like this.
‘I’m sorry you had to sit through that,’ he began. ‘It’s not what it looks like.’
‘Sure it is.’ She gave him a half smile and then looked away.
‘What do you mean?’ His eyes narrowed.
Silence.
‘Your father used to talk a lot, you know, when he drank,’ she said eventually. ‘He said some things about you. I got the picture. Your policeman friend just filled in a few gaps.’
Tom sat down on the crate nearest her and rubbed the back of his head.
‘Well, if you knew that, what are you doing here?’
‘You really think I expected you to be the only honest person in the art business? Everyone’s got some sort of angle. Yours is better than others I’ve seen.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Partly.’ She smiled and tilted her head to one side. ‘You know, I put a lot of time into this business with your father. By the time he died, things were going really well. When we first met, you said you were serious about trying to keep it going. I guess I wanted to believe you.’
‘I am serious about making it work. More now than when we first spoke about it.’ He looked at her earnestly.
‘So what about…?’
‘That’s over. This is all I’ve got now.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded slowly.
‘Okay?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘You sure?’
‘Okay.’ She put her glasses back on and turned back to the computer.
EIGHT (#ulink_024c57f7-7d9a-58e6-bbe5-b1460595aca9)
The Smithsonian, Washington DC19th July – 09:06am
‘And unofficially?’
Baxter leapt up from his desk and gripped the back of his chair.
‘Unofficially, ten coins survived.’ He breathed excitedly, his upper lip beginning to bead. ‘It turned out they were stolen from the Mint by George McCann, the former chief cashier there, before the melting. He denied the accusations, of course. But it was him.’
‘And the coins?’
‘A couple started surfacing at numismatic auctions in 1944. A journalist alerted the Mint who brought in the Secret Services. It took them ten years, but eventually they tracked them all down and destroyed them. All apart from one.’
‘They couldn’t find it?’
‘Oh, they knew where it was. Only problem was that they couldn’t get to it. You see, it had been bought by King Farouk of Egypt for his coin collection and the United States Treasury, not realising what it was, had issued him with an export license. There was no way he was going to hand it back just because they’d screwed up their paperwork.’
‘Even though he knew it was stolen?’
‘As far as he was concerned, that probably just added to its value. In any case, after the Egyptian Revolution in 1952 he was out of the equation. The new government seized the collection and auctioned it off, including what had by then become known as the ‘Farouk coin.’
‘So somebody else bought it.’
‘No.’ Baxter’s eyes flashed, mirroring the excitement in his voice as he seemed to relive the events he was describing. ‘The coin just disappeared.’
‘Disappeared?’ Jennifer found herself edging forward on her seat, excited by Baxter’s fevered account.
‘Vanished.’ Baxter bunched his fingers into a point and then blew onto them, stretching his hand out flat as he did so. ‘For over 40 years. Until 1996, when Treasury agents posing as collectors seized the coin from an English dealer in New York and arrested him.’ Baxter’s eyes glistened. ‘Only he then sued the Treasury, claiming that he’d bought the coin legitimately from another dealer. It went to court and eventually the Treasury agreed to auction the coin and split the proceeds with him.’
‘How do you know all this?’ Jennifer asked, puzzled at the level of detail that Baxter seemed to have at his fingertips. ‘This is just one coin – you must have hundreds of thousands here.’ Baxter threw up his hands.
‘Because this isn’t just any old coin, Jennifer. This is the holy grail of coins. It has been stolen from the Philadelphia Mint, owned by a king, vanished and then reappeared in dramatic circumstances. This is the forbidden fruit, the apple from the garden of Eden. It is totally unique.’
‘So how much are we talking?’
‘Twenty dollars for the paperwork to make it official US coinage,’ Baxter paused dramatically. ‘And just under eight million for the coin itself.’
Jennifer’s eyes widened. Eight million dollars for a coin? It was a crazy, reckless amount of money. It didn’t make any sense. Except that perhaps it did. It was certainly enough to kill for and, in Ranieri’s case, maybe even to die for.
‘You know, the National Numismatic Collection automatically receives examples of all American coins. We actually have two 1933 Double Eagles on display over in the Money and Medals Hall. They and the Farouk coin are the only 1933 Double Eagles in existence, although as museum exhibits they are clearly not available for private ownership as the Farouk coin is. We can go and take a look if you like.’ Baxter suggested eagerly.
‘Sure.’ Jennifer nodded. ‘That way we could at least compare them to this one.’
Baxter slipped out from behind his desk and over to the door which he held open for her.
‘After you.’
‘Thank you, Miles.’
It was only a short walk to the Hall which revealed itself to be a long narrow gallery, flanked on each side by wall mounted rectangular display cases, their contents glittering under the lights. Baxter headed to one of the cabinets in the middle of the room and stopped next to it. Two coins were set apart from the others and lay side by side in a specially constructed chemically inert plastic container, each displaying a different face against the green felt.
‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ Baxter’s hushed voice rippled through the empty room. Jennifer bent forward until she started to fog the glass, the ghostly fingerprints of earlier visitors materialising with each breath and then immediately vanishing.
‘The actual design was commissioned by President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 from the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. You can see his initials there, just below the date. He wanted to try and capture something of the majesty and elegance of the coins of the Ancient World. I think he succeeded, don’t you?’
She sensed Baxter lowering his face and staring at her as she gazed at the coins, moving his head closer to hers, almost whispering in her ear.
‘As you can see, one side features a large eagle in flight, while the obverse depicts Lady Liberty, a torch in her right hand and an olive branch in the left, symbolising peace and enlightenment. She’s beautiful isn’t she?’
She felt Baxter’s hand brush against her neck and instinctively drew away with an annoyed shrug of her shoulders. She immediately wished she hadn’t. The hurt look on Baxter’s face showed his realisation that this, rather than their earlier flirtatious exchange, perhaps better reflected her true feelings for him. When he spoke next, his voice was tinged with anger.
‘What is this really all about, Agent Browne?’
‘This is about whether my coin is a fake, Mr Baxter.’ Jennifer made no attempt to be friendly now. It was too late for that.
‘Well, it’s impossible to say without running some tests. It’s clearly the same design and looks real enough, but we would need to analyse the coin, take some samples, compare it to our originals. It could take days, weeks even.’ He tailed off.
‘I understand.’ Jennifer nodded. ‘Thank you for your time, Mr Baxter. It has been very useful. The lab will be in touch about those tests.’ She turned to leave but Baxter reached out and grabbed her shoulder, his fingers scrabbling against the black material.
‘Jennifer – wait.’ His voice was strained, pleading. ‘You can’t just go like that. Where did you get that coin? I have to know.’
She smiled.
‘I’m sorry Mr Baxter, but that information is classified. A small matter of national security; I’m sure you understand.’
NINE (#ulink_21e50b61-cefb-5570-a28c-b9a32ade8142)
FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia19th July – 12:30pm
‘So we still don’t know if it’s a fake or not? This guy, Baxter, he couldn’t help with that?’
Corbett sat down on one of the wooden benches that lined the shaded banks of the Potomac in this part of the FBI compound and placed a polystyrene cup full of thick black coffee down on the ground between his feet. Jennifer sat down next to him, her sandwich still in its plastic wrapper. Lunch could wait.
