The Black Sun (3 page)

“Didn’t play. Decided to go to that auction instead.”

“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.” Tom laughed. “See anything good?”

“A pair of Louis XV porphyry and gilt-bronze two-han-dled vases.” Her English was excellent, with just a hint of a Swiss-French accent.

“Made by Ennemond-Alexandre Petitot in 1760.” Tom nodded. “Yeah, I saw those in the catalog. What did you think?”

“I think two million is a lot to pay for a couple of nine-teenth-century reproductions made for the Paris tourist market of the day. They’re worth twenty thousand at most. It’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.”

Tom smiled. Sometimes he found it hard to believe that Dominique was still only twenty-three.

She

had

an

instinct

21 the black sun

for a deal, coupled with an almost unnatural ability to retain even the most incidental detail, that rivaled all but the most seasoned pros. Then again, Tom reminded himself, she’d had a good teacher. Until he died last year, she’d spent four years working for Tom’s father in Geneva. When Tom had relocated the antiques dealership to London, she’d readily accepted his offer to move with it and help run the business. The antiques store itself was a wide, double-fronted space with large arched windows, vital for attracting passing trade, although most visitors to Kirk Duval Fine Art & Antiques called ahead for an appointment. At the rear were two doors and a staircase. The staircase led to the upstairs floors, the first floor currently empty, the second floor Dominique’s apartment, the top floor Tom’s. It was supposed to have been a short-term arrangement, but the weeks had turned into months. Tom hadn’t pressed the point, sensing that she would move out when the time was right for her. Besides, he valued her company and, given his pathological inability to form new friendships, that gave him his own selfish reasons for keeping her around.

The left-hand door opened onto a warehouse accessed via an old spiral staircase, while the right-hand door gave onto the office. The office was not a big room, perhaps fifteen feet square, the space dominated by the partners’ desk. There was a single large window, which looked out over the warehouse below, a low bookcase running underneath it. Two comfortable armchairs were positioned on the left-hand side of the room as you went in, the brown leather faded and soft with age. Most striking, though, was the wall space behind the desk, which was taken up with Tom’s glittering collection of safe plates—an assortment of brass and iron plaques in various shapes and sizes, some dating back to the late eighteenth century, each ornately engraved with the safe manu-facturer’s name and crest.

“How are you getting on with the crossword?” she asked with a smile, peering down at the unfilled grid in front of him. “Any easier?”

“Not

really,”

he

admitted.

“I

mean,

take

this:

‘Soldier

got

22 james twining

into cover for a spell.’ Five letters.” He shook his head. “I just don’t see it.”

“Magic,” she answered after a few seconds’ thought.

“Magic,” Tom repeated slowly. “Why magic?”

“A soldier is a GI,” she explained. “A cover is a mac. Put
GI
into
mac
to get a spell. Magic.”

She tapped her long, graceful finger playfully on the tip of Tom’s nose as if it was a wand.

“I give up.” Tom, defeated, threw his pen down onto the desk.

“You just need to keep at it.” She laughed. “One day it’ll all just click into place.”

“So you keep saying.” Frustrated, he changed the subject: “When’s Archie back?”

“Tomorrow, I think.” She picked at a frayed piece of cotton where her jeans were ripped across her left thigh.

“That’s twice he’s been to the States in the last few weeks.” Tom frowned. “For someone who claims to hate going abroad, he’s certainly putting himself about a bit.”

“What’s he doing there?”

“God knows. Sometimes he just seems to get an idea into his head and then he’s off.”

“That reminds me—where did you put those newspapers that were on his desk?”

“Where do you think? I threw them away along with all his other rubbish.”

“You did what?” she exclaimed. “They were mine. I’d been keeping them for a reason.”

“Well, try the bottom left-hand drawer then,” Tom suggested sheepishly. “I stuffed a bunch of old papers in there.”

She slipped off the desk and opened the drawer.

“Luckily for you, they’re here,” she said with relief, pulling out a large pile of newspapers and placing them down in front of him.

“What do you want with all these anyway?” Tom asked. “Are you collecting coupons or something?”

“Do I look like I collect coupons?” She grinned. “No, I wanted to show you something. Only

you

might

not

like

it

.

.

.”

23 the black sun

“What are you talking about?” Tom frowned. “You can tell me anything, you know that.”

“Even if it’s about Harry?” she asked.

“Harry?”

Harry Renwick. The mere mention of his name was enough to make Tom’s heart rise into his throat. Harry Renwick had been his father’s best friend, a man Tom had known and loved since . . . well, since almost as long as he could remember. That was until it transpired that dear old Uncle Harry had been living a double life. Operating under the name of Cassius, he had masterminded a ruthless art-crime syndicate that had robbed and murdered and extorted its way around the globe for decades. Only last year, Renwick had tried first to frame Tom for murder and then to kill him. The betrayal still stung.

“You told me he’d disappeared after what happened in Paris. After the—”

“Yeah,” Tom cut her off, not wanting to relive the details. “He just vanished.”

“Well, wherever he’s gone, someone’s looking for him.” Dominique unfolded the top newspaper, the previous day’s
Herald Tribune
. She turned to the Personals section and pointed at an ad she’d circled. Tom began to read the first paragraph.

“
Lions may awake any second. If this takes place alert me via existing
number.
” He flashed her an amused glance. She indicated that he should read on. “
If
chimps stop their spelling test within one or so hours
,
reward through gift of
eighty bananas.
” He laughed. “It’s nonsense.”

“That’s what I thought when I first saw it, but you know how I like a challenge.”

“Sure.” Tom smiled. Among her many attributes, Dominique had an amazing aptitude for word games and other types of puzzles. It was partly this which had driven Tom, never one to be outdone, to attempt the crossword. Not that he was making much progress.

“It only took me a few minutes. It’s a jump code.”

“A

what?”

24 james twining

“A jump code. Jewish scholars have been finding them for years in the Torah. Did you know that if you take the first
T
in the Book of Genesis, then jump forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter, then another forty-nine places to the fiftieth letter after that, and so on, it spells a word?

“What?”

“
Torah
. The book’s name is embedded in the text. The next three books do the same. Some say that the whole of the Old Testament is an encoded message that predicts the future.”

“And this works in the same way?”

“It’s a question of identifying the jump interval. In this case, it’s every eighth letter.”

“Starting with the first letter?”

She nodded.

“So that makes this
L
”—Tom counted seven spaces— “then
A
. . .” He grabbed a pen and began to write down each eighth letter: “Then
S
. . . then
T
.
Last
!” he exclaimed triumphantly.

“
Last seen Copenhagen. Await next contact.
I decoded it earlier.”

“And there are others like this?”

“After I found this, I looked back through earlier editions. There have been coded messages using the same methodology every few weeks for the last six months or so. I’ve written them out here—” She handed Tom a piece of paper.

“
HK cold
,
try Tokyo
,” he read. “
Focus search in Europe
. . .
DNA sample en
route
. . .
Reported sighting in Vienna
. . .” He looked up at Dominique. “Okay, I agree that someone seems to be looking for someone or something. But there’s nothing to say it’s Harry.”

Dominique handed him a newspaper from the bottom of the pile and opened it at the Personals page.

“This was the first and longest message.” She pointed at a lengthy ad she’d circled in red.

“What does it say?”

“
Ten million dollar reward. Henry Julius Renwick
,
a.k.a. Cassius
,
dead or alive.
Publish interest next Tuesday
.”

Tom was silent as he tried to digest this news. “Did anyone reply?” he asked eventually.

25 the black sun

“I counted twenty-five replies in all.” “Twenty-five!” “Whoever’s behind this has got a small private army out

there trying to track Harry down. The question is why.” “No,” Tom reflected, “the question is who.”

FBI HEADQUARTERS, SALT LAKE CITY DIVISION, UTAH

January 4—4:16 p.m.

Where had it all gone wrong? When had he passed from being a high achiever to an average Joe, a stand-up guy, but one who, according to his superiors, didn’t quite have what it took to go all the way? How was it that people almost half his age were accelerating past him so fast that he barely had time to spit their dust from his mouth before they were a speck on the horizon? When had hanging on long enough to max out his pension become his only reason for getting up in the morning?

Special Agent Paul Viggiano, forty-one, slipped a bullet into each of the five empty chambers of his shiny silver Air-Lite Ti Model 342 .38 Smith & Wesson as each question registered in his mind.

The gun loaded, he snapped it shut and stood contemplating it for a few seconds before raising it to eye level. Again he paused and took a deep breath. Then, breathing out slowly, he emptied the gun into the target at the far end of the indoor shooting range as fast and as loudly as he could, each successive bang magnifying the noise of the one before it, until it seemed that the whole room was echoing in sympathy

with

his

plight.

27 the black sun

“Sounds like you really needed that,” the woman in the booth next to him said with a smile. He managed a tight grimace in response as she turned to take aim. And how was it, her intervention reminded him, that in some misplaced drive for gender equality, the bureau was falling over itself to promote
women
? Women like that bitch Jennifer Browne, who’d got moved upstairs while he’d been posted here. Wherever here was. One small oversight, that’s all it had been. One little slip in an otherwise spotless career. And here he was, drowning in mediocrity.

He shook his head and hit the button to retrieve the target from the other end of the gallery. It whirred toward him, the black silhouette ghosting through the air like a vengeful spirit, before jerking to a halt just in front of him. He examined it for holes. To his disbelief there were none. Not a single one.

“Nice shootin’, Tex.” The FBI armorer smirked, sneaking a look over his shoulder.

“Hell, you’re as liable to blow your own balls off as hit the bad guy.”

“Screw you, McCoy.”

Viggiano’s distinctive New Jersey drawl somehow suited the Italian ancestry suggested by his thick black eyebrows and hair and permanent five o’clock shadow. His dark looks were complemented by a firm, unyielding jaw that jutted out like a car bumper, giving the impression that, if you threw something at him, it would bounce off like a rock hitting a trampoline.

The woman next to him squeezed off her shots one by one with a plodding, rhythmic monotony, confirming Viggiano’s impression that she probably ironed her husband’s socks. She then carefully placed her gun down in front of her and retrieved her target. Viggiano couldn’t help but peer over.

Eleven holes. She had eleven holes in her target. How was that possible unless . . . unless it was her six and his five? He’d been so worked up he’d fired at the wrong target. The woman had obviously come to the same conclusion. She looked up at him, her eyes dancing, her laughter only seconds behind. He threw his ear protectors down on the 28 james twining

bench and stalked out of the room before she could show

anyone else.

“Oh, sir, I was kinda hopin’ I’d find you down here.”

Byron Bailey was an African American from South Central L.A., a bright kid who’d made it the hard way, winning a scholarship to Caltech on the back of good grades and an evening job packing shelves in his local 7-Eleven.

He had bad acne, which had left his ebony skin pitted like coral, while his nose was broad and flat and his eyes wide and eager. What struck Viggiano most, though, was his tail-wagging enthusiasm, a sickening trait that he shared with most rookies and one that only served to make Viggiano feel even older than he already did.

“So, you found me.” Viggiano marked his indifference by fastidiously picking invisible pieces of lint off the lapels of his immaculately pressed suit.

“Er, yessir.” Bailey seemed momentarily unsettled by Viggiano’s irritable tone. “We got a tip-off about that heist from the NSA complex in Fort Meade. You know, the one the boys back in DC are all choked up about. It sounds like it might be for real.”