Текст книги "The Final Cut"

Автор книги: Catherine Coulter

Соавторы: J. T. Ellison
сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 27 страниц)

24

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jewel of the Lion gala

Thursday evening

The streets around the Met glittered under the lightly falling snow and the abundance of jewels and fabulous dresses lighting up the place. Limousines and taxis crowded Fifth Avenue. Some brave souls had defied the elements and were walking in. The paparazzi’s flashbulbs were going a mile a minute, making it look like a disco ball spinning outside the doors.

Mike watched the guests drift in, a steady line of Manhattan’s elite, plus celebrities and their acolytes, and several flamboyant arty-looking types—models, most likely—showing highlights from the latest fashion lines.

Nicholas said behind her left shoulder, “Your dress is quite lovely.”

She turned, nearly cocked a hip, and almost said, “This old thing?” but stopped, since it was too close to the truth.

“Satin keeps well in closets, thankfully. You’re quite dapper in your tux as well.” Understatement of the century. His tux fit him perfectly. Fact was, he looked hot and dangerous and very 007. She wanted him to shoot his cuffs and order a dry martini. She said, “At least we don’t look like Feds on the hunt.”

“Speak for yourself, Agent Caine.”

“And there’s really nothing for us to hunt, just keep our eyes open. Not that I’m whining—we don’t get to attend hoity-toity events like this very often. Nicholas, there’s my boss, Milo Zachery, over by the stairs. In the red bow tie, with sandy hair? You need to meet him.” She clicked her comms unit in her ear and said, “Sir, I’m sending Nicholas Drummond to you right now.”

Mike watched him thread his way through the crowds, all smooth grace and focus, and saw women double-take as they saw him, and she couldn’t say she blamed them.

Nicholas came to a halt beside Zachery and his red bow tie. “I’m Drummond, sir. It’s good to meet you.”

“Ah, Drummond, excellent,” Zachery said, and shook hands. “I’m so sorry about Inspector York.” He bent his head closer and said quietly, “I heard Andrei Anatoly had an absolute fit when you asked him about having planned to steal the diamond. Ben told me he thought the old buzzard was clear of this crime. You agree?”

Nicholas nodded. “As Mike said, it doesn’t mean he didn’t want to run the race, he simply didn’t make it out of the starting gate in time.”

“Your uncle’s in the comm center. Ah, there’s Agent Sherlock by the bar. I bet Agent Savich isn’t far away. Bo tells me you’ve already met them online.”

Sherlock’s gorgeous red hair was done up on top of her head with curls hanging down over her ears. Along with dangling black earrings and a nicely fitting black dress, she presented a picture that made her stand out in the crowd. Nicholas thought she looked more dramatic in person, more vibrant.

As for Savich, Nicholas thought he was simply more in person, a big, tough man who looked hard as nails, a man he’d want at his back in a dark alley. He looked like he could brawl with the best of them.

Sherlock caught them watching and waved. He nodded in return. Zachery said, “Go fill them in.”

Nicholas nodded. “I wanted to thank you, sir, for letting me help.”

“If I’d said no, Bo would have grilled me like a steak,” Zachery said, “and I’m scared of your uncle.”

Nicholas said, “I am, too.” He went back to Mike and held out an arm. “Come on, let’s go talk to the computer king of the universe.”

“I want to worship at Sherlock’s feet. I still can’t get over how she nailed the crime scene.”

Savich saw them coming and held up his hand to the bartender for two more Pellegrino with lime.

Sherlock greeted Mike with a hug. “Mike Caine, lovely to see you, again, after what—sixteen hours. The red gown suits you.” She held her back. “I got a solid eight hours sleep, but you didn’t, I know. How are you feeling?”

“Jazzed, really. So much is happening and so quickly. What will the next minute bring?” Her eyes went to Savich. “I gotta say, Dillon in a tux is something else.”

She heard Nicholas say to Savich, “Whenever Uncle Bo talks about your laptop MAX, he lowers his voice to a reverent whisper. I swear he thinks there’s magic involved.”

Savich said, “Truth is, your uncle’s right. MAX gets a daily dose of fairy dust.”

Nicholas laughed. “If you swear by it, send me some.”

Mike said to Sherlock, “I’ve never heard of two married agents working together. However does that work?”

Savich settled an arm around Sherlock’s waist. “So long as she calls me sir every once in a while, we get away with it.”

“He likes to spread this fiction,” Sherlock said, and poked him in the ribs.

Nicholas said, “Uncle Bo tells me you have a little boy.”

Mike said, “Not just any little boy, Nicholas. Sean is currently the most famous kid in the world—his marriage proposal to Emma Hunt in San Francisco is all over YouTube. When this is all over and done with, I’ll show you.”

Sherlock said, “He’s given us a new challenge. Sean is madly in love with three girls, and a fourth is hovering. I fear he wants to marry all of them, not the thing for a mother’s peace of mind.”

Nicholas raised a black eyebrow. “Don’t tell me all of them are at your breakfast table? Shall I speak to him?”

Sherlock laughed. “Dillon might call you for reinforcements. I hear your uncle Bo and his dad were longtime friends and partners.”

Savich nodded. “Bo and my dad used to whoop it up. They’d throw barbecues and invite all the agents over to their houses. I remember all of us kids having a ball. I understand your dad works for the Home Office, which is like our FBI, but you bucked the familial trend and went to work for the spooks in the Foreign Office instead. What made you leave spook world to join New Scotland Yard?”

Nicholas’s expression didn’t change, but Mike felt it—he’d stepped back, withdrawn. He didn’t want to talk about it. What had happened? But he said easily, “For a while all the traveling was fun—shutting down bad spooks, brokering compromises—but to be honest, the constant upheaval, trying to thwart terrorist attacks, got to be brutal. In the end, I wanted to come home, be closer to my family, get my hands dirty on the streets. And London, well, it’s quite a challenging environment.”

That wasn’t the whole truth, Mike could tell. Interesting. She looked down at her watch. “Nicholas and I need to get up to the exhibit room before the crowds are allowed up. Two of our top techs are there with Dr. Browning, collecting evidence. I’m hoping our forensic team has turned up something concrete.”

Savich said, “Why don’t we join you? I want to visit the heart of the museum, see if Bo and his people have spotted any more bad guys.”

The four of them headed toward the elevator, weaving through the crowd, the buzz of their voices droning like bees in a hive. Hundreds of beautiful people were tipping back flutes of champagne, accepting hors d’oeuvres from the dozens of caterers who glided smoothly through them, silver platters held high. The cocktail party was well under way, everyone seemed happy and excited, looking for British royalty, not Prince William and Kate, who’d canceled because of a family obligation that hadn’t been explained, but perhaps a stray duke or foreign minister accompanying the British ambassador, Sir Peter Westmacott. Wisely, no media or paparazzi with their cameras had been allowed in.

Mike glanced back over her shoulder to see a tall, elegantly thin woman in a form-fitting black gown making a beeline toward Nicholas. What was this about?

25

Nicholas hadn’t seen the woman yet. Mike watched him stand to one side to allow Sherlock and Savich access to the elevator first. As he stepped into the elevator, the woman called his name in a cultured British accent, not unlike Nicholas’s own.

“Nicky? Nicky Drummond? Is that you?”

Nicholas had only a moment to think You must be joking before she was on him. She threw her arms around him, then stood back, both hands on his arms.

“Nicky, it is you. I had no idea you were in New York.” She looked him up and down. “You look edible, darling. I always liked you in that tux.”

He said, voice expressionless, “Pamela. It’s been a while. These are my friends.” But he realized she wasn’t looking at him now, she was staring dead on at Savich. “I am Lady Pamela Caruthers, the founder of Beauty in Nature, a very upscale online magazine. I’m doing a spread on the Jewel of the Lion exhibit; I’m simply mad for the Koh-i-Noor, aren’t you? And you are?”

Savich smiled at the beautiful hard-edged woman standing in front of him. He introduced himself and Sherlock and shook her lovely white hand, her index finger sporting a ruby the size of his knuckle.

Nicholas said, “And Pamela, this is Special Agent Mike Caine.”

Pamela gave Mike a cursory look, then moved on. “This is fascinating. All of you are FBI. Why are all of you here, in a law enforcement herd? What’s going on?”

“It’s a perk,” Mike said easily. “Nothing more than a very nice perk. Who are you exactly?”

Pamela laughed and tossed her head back so the rubies around her white throat glimmered. Mike caught the sparkle of diamonds in her hair. “A perk? Come now, dear, that lie will make your nose grow. You ask who I am? Darling, I’m Nicholas’s wife, more’s the pity.”

Nicholas’s wife? Mike heard the snark clearly. What was this about?

Nicholas said, “Ex-wife, actually. As I recall, Pamela, there was never any pity involved.”

Sherlock saw the glitter of anger in Lady Pamela’s eyes and threw herself into the breach. “I’ve read several of your articles, Pamela. The holistic approach to beauty and fashion is a big hit right now.”

Pamela stared a moment at Sherlock’s hair. “An FBI agent who is into the holistic approach? Isn’t that a lovely surprise. One simply never knows who one’s audience includes, does one?”

“No, I suppose one doesn’t,” Savich said.

“Did you know about my magazine, Nicky? Perhaps you’ve checked it out after pounding the pavement all day? Maybe talking about me to your mates over a Guinness at the pub?”

Nicholas said, “I really don’t do much pounding, Pamela. And my mates aren’t the holistic type.”

“Such a humiliation for your family, Nicholas, you now a common copper. Now, the Foreign Office—” She gave a sparkling look to Sherlock and Mike. “That’s when I met him, in Istanbul, right outside the Blue Mosque. Imagine, a spy for a husband, it was all so exciting at first—” She gave an elegant shrug.

“But you were so busy, Nicky. Then after Afghanistan, well, your moods, darling, they became such a trial.” She shrugged, her smile brilliant now. “Do you know my magazine has tripled its subscribers since we launched two years ago? The Jewel of the Lion special edition goes online tomorrow, and I expect it to be our biggest hit yet.”

No one had anything to say about that.

She turned back to Nicholas. “I hope your family does well.”

“They do very well, thank you.”

She patted his cheek. “Life moves on, Nicky. One of these days you must learn to move along with it. I read about Inspector York’s murder. It’s all over the news, on the Internet. Everybody wonders what’s going on. You’re here to find out what happened, aren’t you?”

Nicholas said nothing.

Pamela said, “Oh, yes, my father told me he saw your father at the club last week and—he’s the Earl of Clarens, you know, and—”

Zachery’s voice came through loud and clear on Mike’s comms unit. “Bo wants Nicholas, Savich, and Sherlock upstairs. Mike, you stay put, keep an eye on things.”

Did her boss think one of the guests would pull the Koh-i-Noor out of his pocket and wave it like a red flag?

Nicholas looked relieved for the excuse to leave. He nodded to his ex-wife and stepped into the elevator with Savich and Sherlock, pressed the button to five. Mike’s last view of him was his stoic face as the doors closed.

“He could always run fast, when he wanted to,” Pamela said. She gave Mike an indifferent nod and sashayed off, her five-inch Louboutin stilettos clicking on the marble floors. Even when she moved into a crowd, Mike could still see her, she was so very tall and thin and exquisite.

Was he Sir Nicholas? No, he couldn’t be, Sir Nicholas was the nearly headless ghost in Harry Potter. Lady Pamela—his ex-wife. Life was like an onion, her mother had always said, you never know what you’d have when another layer peeled away.

What had happened in Afghanistan?

The lights flickered, once, twice. The crowd didn’t seem to notice.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Mike said aloud. “Now is not the time for the lights to go out.”

Zachery’s voice came over loud and clear on her comms unit. “Probably the snow, but our people up here are checking into it. What more could it be than a simple power surge?”

“I hope you’re right. Can you imagine, eight hundred people wandering around and the lights go out? Pandemonium.”

Her cell rang; she saw Nicholas’s name on the caller ID. “Hang on, sir, it’s Nicholas.” She clicked off her comms unit and answered her cell.

“Mike, did you see the lights flicker? Zachery thinks everything is okay, but I know it’s not. Something’s not right. Get up here now.”

26

When the elevator doors finally opened, Mike looked out on chaos. People were stumbling around like the walking dead, coughing, eyes tearing, crying out. The hall was getting increasingly foggy and her own eyes began to burn.

Gas.

Nicholas ran out of the communication center with Sherlock tossed over his shoulder. She wasn’t moving. Mike rushed to her side, felt her pulse. It was, fortunately, strong and steady. Whatever was in the gas wasn’t deadly.

Nicholas coughed deeply, then turned back to the comm center. Mike shouted after him, “What’s happening?”

Nicholas called, “I don’t know yet. Tell Zachery everyone in the comm center is down.”

She fought panic, hit her comms unit. “Sir, we have an active attack on the communications center. Everyone’s down. Repeat, officers down. It feels like tear gas.”

An instant of silence, then, “Copy that, Mike.”

She took off after Nicholas, who was dragging more people from the room.

A deafening wail began. The fire alarm.

Nicholas swung the communication center doors wide, sending in fresh air to dissipate the gas. Soon people began staggering out under their own power.

Savich came out with Bo leaning on his shoulder, both of them gagging and choking, their eyes red, tears streaming down their faces.

Mike wiped her eyes and went back to Sherlock, who groaned and tried to sit up.

“Hey, sit still. You’ll be okay. What happened?”

Sherlock’s eyes were watering heavily. “Some sort of percussion grenade, with gas. Nick was out checking the power grid when it hit, so he escaped. Knocked us all out.”

Nicholas cupped her face in his hand. “Did you see who did this?”

“No, I didn’t. Where’s Dillon? Oh, there you are. You’re all right? Did you see anything before the gas blinded you? I had my back to the door, looking at the security feed from the exhibit room.”

“I didn’t see anything.” Savich slumped down against the wall next to her and touched his head to hers. “Are you all right? You’re all blurry.”

“I’ll be fine—my eyes are burning, that’s all. I was close to the door. All I remember was someone said Dr. something, and then the fun began.”

The elevator doors opened, and Zachery rushed out, barking orders to the five agents on his heels.

Nicholas said, “Your techs, Mike. We’ve got to get into the exhibit room.”

But she was already on her feet, running down the hall, the train of her dress flaring out behind her like a bullfighter’s red cape. He shouted to Zachery, “The exhibit room—we’re going to check.” And he ran down the hall after her.

27

Mike was banging on the thick metal door. “It’s locked and no one’s answering. How do we get in?”

“Bo,” he said, then ran back to the communication center, found his uncle in the hallway beside Savich and Sherlock, wiping his eyes and trying to draw in clean air.

“Bo, how can we get into the exhibit space?”

“I’ll let you in, but you’ll have to guide me,” Bo said. “I can’t see a damn thing.”

Nicholas walked him down the hall. He realized the fire alarm had been turned off. He hadn’t even noticed until now.

Bo said, “The pass is in my pocket. Put my hand in the reader, then swipe the pass.”

Mike followed his directions, and the door beeped. “Good job, okay, the code is 35767336.” She keyed in the code and the air lock clicked open.

“Stay here, Bo.”

“Ready,” Mike said, her Glock raised. She held up her fingers, one, two, three, and in they went.

No smoke or gas in here, just two FBI agents sprawled on the floor, unmoving.

“Paulie, Louisa?” Mike dropped to her knees by her people, felt for pulses. There was blood coming from the back of Paulie’s head. Both Paulie and Louisa had taken blows hard enough to knock them out.

She knelt up. “They’re not dead, thank the good Lord above, but knocked out cold.”

There was something wrong, Nicholas knew it. He heard something—

Tick. Tick. Tick.

“We have to them out of here, now!”

She didn’t waste her breath. They dragged Paulie and Louisa out into the hall where Bo was waiting, still blinded by the gas, Sherlock and Savich beside him.

Nicholas said, “There’s a bomb in the exhibit space, Uncle Bo. Savich, no, you and Sherlock stay put, you’re still half blind. Mike, get Zachery to evacuate everyone and call the bomb squad. I’ll see what we have so I can brief the bomb squad when they get here.”

Bo lurched toward him. “No, Nicholas, wait—”

But Nicholas cut him off, “I know what I’m doing, Uncle Bo. Mike, get everyone to safety.”

When he ran back into the exhibit room, he stopped cold and listened. He’d swear the ticking was louder in the now empty space.

He heard Bo shout, “You have two minutes!”

Nicholas ran to the vitrine cases that held the crown jewels. All looked fine. No, wait, the center vitrine case, the one that held the queen mother’s crown with the fake Koh-i-Noor gracing its center—the case was cocked open. The closer he went, the louder the ticking became.

The crown was tilted at an angle away from him. He expected to see the case wired, but what he saw instead was a gaping hole in the crown. The fake Koh-i-Noor was gone—no, it hit him. Not the fake, he thought. Bloody hell.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

No time to waste. He knelt and pushed under the case, saw the bomb attached to the glass.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

There was little light in the room, but still he could see there was no clock on the faceplate, so no way to know how much time was left before he and the room exploded into bits. He looked closer, saw the bomb had multiple wires attached to a cell phone. The sucker could go off at any second; all that was needed was a call to the number.

“Bloody, bloody hell.” He needed more light. He pushed himself out from under the case and ran back out into the hall to see Mike standing by the open elevator.

She grabbed his arm. “Everyone’s out. We’re last. Let’s go; the bomb squad’s close.”

“No time—the bomb’s set to a cell phone trigger. I’ve got to defuse it myself. You get out of here.”

He pulled away, ran into the comm center, grabbed a Maglite, and took off back down the hall.

28

Mike didn’t think, she simply ran after him. When she got to the exhibit room door, she saw him on his back under the center case.

“Nicholas, are you insane? Get out of there!”

“I should have known you wouldn’t do what you’re told.”

She shimmied under the center case to lie on her back beside him. “I’m here, I’m staying. Tell me what you’ve got.”

“It’s a standard cell phone–activated explosive, like they use for IEDs in Afghanistan and Iraq, and suicide bomb vests. Vibration sets it off; the ringer will be set to vibrate, and if the number is called, the movement will cause the trigger to go. I’ll use a jamming frequency, remove the phone’s faceplate, cut the wire to the ringer.”

“I sure hope you know what you’re doing. Give me the Maglite, you need both hands for this.”

“If I screw up, we’ll find out soon enough. Aim the light here. Good.”

He heard Tommy Magallan, the head of London’s bomb disposal unit, saying over and over, his voice soft and firm, No hesitation; hesitation means you die.

He worked with his mobile for a moment, activated the jamming signal, waited ten seconds for it to take effect, and pried off the faceplate with the screwdriver on his Swiss Army knife.

He set the faceplate aside, looked closely at the guts of the detonator. It was attached to a seven-by-twelve-inch gray paper-wrapped brick, most likely C-4, a couple of pounds of it, enough to take down a large section of the museum, not to mention destroy the priceless crown jewels.

He counted three, two, one, and snipped the small piece of wire running to the ringer. He used the flat of the blade to edge the battery away from the phone, and time started again.

Safe.

The ticking continued, unnerving and insistent. But that was all right. He knew it wasn’t coming from the bomb.

He and Mike pushed out from under the vitrine case and stood. He saw her face was pale, but she hadn’t panicked. He righted the queen mother’s crown, lifted it to see a small metronome in the shape of a skeleton.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

He used his finger to stop its motion.

Silence.

Where had he seen this skeleton before? He’d had very little sleep for more than a day, his adrenaline was still doing the rumba, and he wasn’t firing on all cylinders. But what? Then it came to him.

He said in the silent room, “The Fox.”

She was staring at the skeleton. “What fox?”

He handed her the small plastic skeleton.

“What is this?”

“A metronome—a toy, really—meant to scare the crap out of us. It worked, too. When I saw the detonator was a cell-phone trigger, well, fact is, they don’t tick. I knew there was something else in the room making that noise. She’s a devious bitch. She set it up right under the crown.”

He shook his head and laughed. “Oh, you clever, clever girl.”

Mike said, “Who set it up? I’m clever? All I did was hold the Maglite.”

“An excellent job you did, too. Do you remember seeing Dr. Browning when you came upstairs?”

Her brain clicked into place. She said slowly, “No, I didn’t see her.”

Nicholas said, “Because she wasn’t in the comm center. Our curator stole the real Koh-i-Noor diamond ten minutes ago, right out from under our noses.”

“Browning? But that doesn’t make sense, I mean—what’s the fox?”

“It’s not a what, it’s a who. I had no idea the Fox was a woman.”

“Nicholas, has the gas gotten to you? You’re not making sense.”

He said, “The Fox is one of the most notorious jewel thieves in the world. Remember I told you I put together a short list of thieves who had the skill to pull off a job this big, and we wanted to see if they had any ties to the Anatoly crime family? Only a handful of thieves operate at this level, and the Fox is one of them. No one has any idea who he—excuse me, she—is. But now we know.”

“You’re saying the Fox is Victoria Browning? I’ve got to alert everyone, she might still be in the museum, we have to catch her.” She got Zachery on her comms unit, could practically see his brain compute what had happened, then heard him go into action. She switched off. “She can’t be far. It’s only been ten minutes.”

Nicholas said, “She’s long gone, and you know it. I’ll wager the video will show Paulie or Louisa freeing the diamond to fingerprint it, she whacked them on the head, rolled the canisters of gas into the comm center, and waltzed right out the Met’s front door, everything timed to the second.”

Mike said, “Maybe the gas is getting to me, because if I hear you right, you’re saying the real Koh-i-Noor was in the crown, snug in its case, this whole time? It hadn’t been replaced with one of the replicas?”

“Exactly what I’m saying. The stone wasn’t a fake. The only fake here is Browning. She fashioned herself an incredible identity and background, hired on at the museum and worked her way up until she was curating the exhibit itself. I’m amazed at her patience, and her brain.”

“Nicholas, why wait until tonight? She’s had four days to steal the diamond, after hours, or the first night the stone was in the building. Why this huge charade? Why wait for half of the New York Field Office and a thousand people to be in the museum to witness the crime?”

“She couldn’t do it, not without alerting security. This was her plan all along. She must have engineered the power surge on Wednesday—everyone would focus on those five precious minutes as the time when the Koh-i-Noor was stolen, only, of course, it wasn’t stolen. The whole purpose of the outage was to show herself on several cameras far away from the exhibit room, the perfect alibi. She’s quite brilliant. Your people did the hard part for her. All she had to do was pocket the diamond, blind everyone, and leave.” He took the skeleton from her, flipped it in the air, and caught it.

“And all of us went haring off, looking at anyone but her—looking at Elaine, who couldn’t defend herself—” He broke off, then continued, his voice angry now. “We trusted everything Browning dished out. And now she has the Koh-i-Noor. Brilliant,” he said again.

“We’ll need that for evidence.”

“I know.”

Mike said, “Do you think she killed Elaine?”

“I don’t know. Everything we’ve been told for the past two days was a web of lies designed to get your techs into the museum and remove the Koh-i-Noor from the crown to fingerprint it. It was the one thing she couldn’t do for herself. We have to go back to the beginning, look at everything with a fresh eye.”

She saw it now, the elegance of Browning’s plan. “That bitch tricked us all.”

Nicholas raised the skeleton metronome. “The Fox leaves behind a token at her crime scenes. Something to mock the investigators. I’d say it’s working.”

Mike touched the head of the skeleton, sent it to ticking again.

Nicholas’s cell phone rang, and they both jumped. Nicholas moved in front of Mike instinctively to shelter her from the blast, spreading his arms wide, in case he’d missed something, but nothing happened. He dropped his arms and answered with a curt “Yes?”

Nothing. Empty air. Then a click.