A Triple Thriller Fest (104 page)

But first, he wanted Borisenko. Would Black Horse give him that opportunity?

Sweating, cold, broken thumb and angry where Kirkov and Henri had tortured him, he still wondered the same thing.

“You’ll get Borisenko,” Kirkov said with a nod. “I swear it.”

Dmitri picked up his underwear and started to put them on. His broken thumb was swollen and throbbing and useless. Kirkov took his arm to steady him while Dmitri started awkwardly on his pants.

“But Borisenko is just a start.” Kirkov helped button Dmitri’s shirt and it was incredible that just a few minutes earlier he’d been watching Dmitri’s torture. “When we’re done, the world will be cleansed of all its Borisenkos.”

Chapter Ten:

Tess’s fear turned to anger at the sight of the man on the other side of the table. He folded his copy of Le Figaro, then took off his hat and set it on the paper, seemingly oblivious to her glare. She put a hand on Lars’s wrist to warn him not to draw his gun.

“Nice,” Tess said. “Months of silence, refusal to take my calls, and here you show up out of the blue? You know that was a really shitty thing to do.”

“I know it was. I was going for the band-aid approach. Just rip the damn thing off and it hurts less.”

“Well maybe I didn’t want the band-aid taken off at all? And did you ask Nick what he wanted?”

“Mind telling me what’s going on?” Lars asked.

“This is Peter Gagné,” Tess said.

”
This
is your ex-boyfriend?”

“Yeah, take your hand out of your pocket. If anyone is going to shoot him, it will be me. How is he, anyway?” she asked Peter.

“Nick is fine. He misses you, of course. I think he really loved you, Tess.”

“Nice. Is that supposed to make me feel any better?”

Peter looked pained. “Would you rather I told you he’d never mentioned your name again? Would that make you happier?”

“Jesus, Peter. Can we back up to the part where you cut the two of us off?”

“Maybe you can catch up later,” Lars said. “While someone tells me what is going on.”

“That is a good question,” Tess said. “Why don’t you start with this, Peter. Where is Borisenko?”

“Probably in Moscow. He’s got some new items for his collection.”

“So this is what your friendship is about,” Tess said. “The two of you go plundering together, or are you just his wingman?”

“Tess, calm down for a minute,” Lars said. “Let him talk. I want to hear this.”

Tess was breathing heavily and she felt lightheaded with anger and the aftermath of the adrenaline that had flooded her as they’d approached the presumed-Borisenko’s table.

“Here,” said Lars, “let’s get coffee, talk about this.” He waved for the waiter, then made Tess order. As soon as the waiter was gone, he said, “What I want to know, is this a setup?”

Peter gave his disarming smile. “Isn’t that what you were up to, a setup? You were going to rip off Sasha. So your outrage is hypocritical, wouldn’t you say?”

Sasha. Not Borisenko, or even Alexander, but his familiar name. Whatever else Peter was, she couldn’t believe he’d be friends with someone like the Russian oil minister. But maybe Peter had finally found a use for his father’s billions. A private collector.

The coffee came and she took a sip, grateful for something to calm her. “But what’s this all about, Peter? I mean, is it all a lie?”

“No, it’s not a lie. Borisenko bought a bunch of artifacts in Damascus and Beirut. He didn’t steal any of it, you know. It was already stolen, during the sack of Baghdad.”

“Second time I’ve heard that excuse,” she said.

“It’s not an excuse. Borisenko was safekeeping it.”

“Safekeeping? Right, whatever,” Tess said. “The Iraqis would love to have their history back. They’ll give you a medal. In fact, I can make the call if you’d like.”

Peter said, “There’s no rush, let him keep it for a few months, then he can return it.”

“I can’t believe you, you’re justifying him. That stuff belongs in the Baghdad Museum, where it can be appreciated, and protected.”

“Did you go to the Bardo when you were in Tunisia? You know, to get your story straight. They’ve got so many mosaics, half of them are right on the bloody ground.”

She knew it. There was only wall space for the spectacular mosaics with gods or animals, or Roman historical figures. A friend at the museum—the one who’d tipped her to the bad curator—had pointed out that the mosaics were flooring, meant to be walked on. Sure, but they wouldn’t last forever. They’d survived two thousand years of abandonment, but how many decades would they last under the feet of a thousand tourist feet a day?

“Let’s get back to the stuff from the Baghdad Museum,” Lars said. “Where is it?”

“I can get it all,” Peter said. “I convinced Sasha to turn it over.”

“Where? Here in France?”

Peter nodded. “You’ve got the dagger already. I’ve got more of the same on the way, including the bronze head.”

“You’ve got the Akkadian King?” Tess asked. “But what are you going to do with it?”

“Give it to you, of course,” Peter said. “It’s a peace offering.”

“Come on,” she said. “I don’t believe that. Borisenko was supposedly going to pay seventeen million bucks for the lot.”

“I’ll have to check with my guy, but that sounds about right,” Peter said.

“We could have shot you,” Tess said. “Or you could have come to find the police waiting. Just what are you playing at here?”

“And what about the middleman who is going to meet you here, any minute. What happens when he shows up?”

“The middleman is a Belgian guy named Henri. He works for me.”

“Ah,” Tess said.

“There’s no shipment, so he’s not coming. He’s only there to distract Dmitri, give him something to do.” Peter hesitated. “I’m not sure about your friend, I wanted to talk to the two of you, first.”

Only Dmitri was coming. He’d called in the middle of the night and left a message. He had an in. He was on his way to Arles. Which meant that Peter was lying or hiding something.

“Let me get this straight,” Lars said. “You’ve got the Baghdad artifacts, and you’re going to give them to us?”

“Everything I could get my hands on. And I’ve got something else to offer you, but let’s start with the artifacts. Then you’ll know I’m serious.”

“What do you want, Peter?” Tess asked.

He moved aside his copy of
Le Figaro
to reveal another copy of her book,
Engine of Destruction.
He opened to a page marked with a sticky note and turned it around to show the same drawing with the trebuchet.

“Can you build this?”

She gave it barely a glance. “Of course I can build it. So what?”

“And can you operate it? I don’t mean like at La Baux, shooting the occasional stone for adoring tourists. Could you build your so-called engines of destruction under duress and use them to bring an enemy to ruin?”

“Peter,” she warned. “Quit screwing around and get to the point already.”

He leaned forward. “Tess, I need you to win a war for me.”

Chapter Eleven:

Peter produced a sheaf of papers and pictures as soon as the helicopter lifted into the air and thumped northward with a roar. Lars flipped through the pictures and the papers, letting out an occasional whistle.

“You got the relief of the lion eating a man, and all these coins, too? And this. Fantastic.”

Peter pointed to some sheets. “It was an insider job, no question. Bet half the museum staff was in on the looting. They probably didn’t even wait until Saddam fled Baghdad before setting off for Damascus with their haul.”

“Wow, this is amazing.” Lars said. “I never thought we’d see any of this stuff again.”

Tess looked out the window while the two men talked. The Provincial countryside sprawled beneath them, stone and field, but also villages and olive groves and country estates. It gave way to the rugged uplift of the Massif Central. The pilot picked his way between bare granite peaks and along rocky valleys. The highest peaks already had snow.

She’d lost all interest in the artifacts. All she could think about was Peter and Nick and this frustrated her. She’d moved on, she’d stopped recounting the last days and hours before their breakup to figure out what she’d done wrong. Those early weeks had been such a raw edge of emotion that it wasn’t hard to turn sorrow to anger and love to hatred. And eventually she’d managed to dull those emotions, too.

But she couldn’t give up on Nick. That boy had worked his way into her heart. He’d been so vulnerable when she’d met him, mother dead, father an important and busy man. And Tess, finding herself single and childless in her thirties, her life not quite unfolding as she’d planned, had needed him, too.

Nick was a hassle at first. Peter had a nanny, but only part-time, since he said he didn’t want her to be raising his child, and this meant that the baby was always around. Peter had him when she met him at a museum showing in London, and later, on half their dates in Manhattan. She liked Peter, so she tolerated him at first, then come to enjoy his delighted shout, “Tess!” whenever he saw her.

Nick had an earache one night when he was two and she was spending the night at the penthouse. It was Christmas week and the nanny was back in France with her family. Peter gave him medicine, but Nick kept screaming.

Tess called the doctor while Peter walked through the bedroom with Nick screaming in his arms. The phone rang several times, then a machine picked up. She had to plug her ear to hear what it was saying over the screams.

“He’s in Barbados,” she said. “Do you want to leave a message?”

“Dammit, I pay him to be available. What good is that if he goes halfway around the world without telling me?”

“He’ll call back if we leave a message.”

“What good is that going to do, he’s in Barbados.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe he’ll call in a prescription, or we could take Nick to the emergency room.”

“The emergency room? You know what kind of germs hang around that place? May as well play a game of Russian roulette.”

The machine had beeped and was now recording their argument. She hung up the phone and turned off the bedside lamp.

Nick stopped screaming, but now said, “No, no, no,” again and again. He arched his back and Peter made exasperated noises. “Come on Nick, just settle down, let the medicine work.” The boy cried out again.

She climbed out of bed and went over to Peter. “Why don’t you lie down, give me a turn? Peter?” She reached in and took Nick, who Peter released only reluctantly.

And as soon as she took him, the boy’s cries turned to whimpers. Peter looked both relieved and dismayed. “Just the medicine taking effect,” she said. “I’m sure that’s all it is.”

Except that Nick calmed so quickly as Peter returned to bed and Tess made soothing noises that she wondered if maybe he hadn’t wanted her all along. He continued to whimper for another ten or fifteen minutes as she carried him into the darkened front room. She sat in the chair next to the window and rocked him until he fell back asleep.

He was so beautiful with dark, curly hair, tears that dried on his eyelashes. She watched his face for a long time, then looked out the window to the snow that fell over Central Park below them. His body was warm, she could hear his breathing and feel his heart beating, and didn’t want to take him back to bed.

Tess was a strong woman and she’d made her own life. What did she need a baby for?

Peter asked her the next morning if she wanted to move in. She said yes.

The memory, as they flew in the helicopter across France, was so fresh that it made her ache. She couldn’t look at Peter for several minutes. She didn’t know if she wanted to hit him or tell him she loved him, beg him to take her back.

Tess’s phone vibrated. She took it out of her bag. It was Dmitri, she saw with relief. The helicopter was too noisy to hear and she saw that she’d missed three of his calls already. “Tess Burgess speaking.”

“Thank God I got through. Are you with Peter?”

“Yes, that’s right,” she said, surprised that he would know.

“And Lars is with you?” Dmitri asked. There was a fair amount of noise on his end, too. Sounded like he was driving. “He’s okay?”

“Fine, just busy. How are you?” She glanced back from the window to see Peter watching out of the corner of his eye, even as he continued to talk to Lars.

“I’ve got some weird information. You know what I’m talking about?”

“Not completely, no, but I’ve started the project,” she said. “I don’t have my laptop on hand or a connection, as you can probably hear. But the first spreadsheets are finished.” The spreadsheets bit was her code to Dmitri that she wasn’t fully free to talk.

“Got it. Look, listen to what Peter has to say. He’s got an offer. Don’t tell him no, not right away.”

“Why not? That’s my first inclination.”

“Let’s just say his Belgian friend gets loose lips when he’s had a few drinks. I’ve got some information about the castle that you and Lars will find highly interesting. But if you turn Peter down cold, he’ll cut you off. You know what I’m talking about?”

“No, not really. I’m still missing the numbers from that last report.”

“Doesn’t matter, just trust me on this. Don’t tell him no. Not yet.”

They hung up. She caught a quick glance from Lars. He’d picked up the bit about the spreadsheets, too.

“I take it that wasn’t your friends at La Baux,” Peter said. “Spreadsheets and all that.”

“No, that was Columbia. I’m on sabbatical, but I told them I’d help with some budget stuff for a big exhibit from the Hermitage.” She’d stirred in a little truth to take the edge off her lie. “Where are we going, anyway? You said a short ride.”

“The Loire Valley.”

“What? That’s got to be 700 kilometers from here.”

“Not so far by air,” Peter said. “But yeah, we’ll have to stop and refuel, maybe stretch our legs.”

“Not impressed, Peter. Not at all. Why don’t you set us down at the next town and we’ll find our way back.”