The Final Cut

by Catherine Coulter

  “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.

  29

  New York, New York

  George Washington Bridge

  Late Thursday evening

  She didn’t have much time. They knew who to look for now, but she’d still made the call to Nicholas’s cell phone—she pictured their surprise, their gut-wrenching fear—she had to admit, it was fun. She knew exactly what Mike Caine and Nicholas Drummond would do next—put a trace on the phone, try to pinpoint the last known location of the call. They’d find it eventually, but in the Hudson River. Smack themselves on the forehead a few times before they figured out exactly how Dr. Victoria Browning, the dedicated, knowledgeable museum curator, had pulled off the theft of the century.

  She laughed aloud. Too bad she couldn’t stick around and watch the FBI go in circles, the way she intended, but she had a plane to catch.

  Her Ducati Streetfighter maneuvered smoothly through the evening traffic as she drove across the bridge. She chucked the phone over the railing and glanced at her watch. She was five minutes out from Teterboro Airport. One advantage to working for Saleem Lanighan was she could afford everything a woman might need to succeed, including a Gulfstream, fueled up and waiting for her.

  She gunned the bike, enjoying the kick of power, the engine growling between her legs. It was too early to celebrate, but she would, and soon. Things had gone like clockwork so far.

  She frowned. There was one fly in the ointment. She hadn’t planned on Drummond. Not only was he was cunning and smart, she knew he wouldn’t follow FBI procedures unless they suited him. No, Drummond would go on the hunt. He’d been a spy with the Foreign Office, did whatever it took, broke whatever rules he needed to break in order to get the job done. He was coming after her, she could feel it.

  She could see him now, organizing, planning, systematically searching. Very intense. Very attractive. Very much like Grant. No, she wouldn’t think about him now.

  At last she was here. With a wave at the guards at the airport entrance, she pulled through the gates and around to the back of the departure building. Money had changed hands, enough money that no one even noticed her, because, as arranged, the airport cameras had been shut down for a ten-minute interval. She’d found a thick stack of hundreds to be the ultimate motivator.

  She’d had the tail number of the Gulfstream altered so it would be very hard to trace ownership. The captain was the only one aboard, and he’d filed a flight plan for Vancouver, though he was fueled for a journey across the Atlantic instead. He was awaiting her instruction as to where to go when she got on board. Both precautions would assure anonymity, lay a false trail for the FBI to follow.

  She knew, of course, the FBI would eventually figure out the subterfuge, but by the time they found out where she was headed, she hoped it would be too late.

  She left the bike on the tarmac but kept her helmet on. No sense taking chances, not yet. Her backpack was a welcome weight on her shoulders. She grabbed another, smaller bag from the bike’s storage box. She climbed the stairs, and once inside, the captain raised them and secured the door. Only then did she remove her helmet, pull the ponytail holder from her hair, stretch her shoulders, her back. She needed rest. She’d been too keyed up to sleep last night. A long flight was the perfect remedy.

  The captain was young, fit, eye candy with big brown eyes. He greeted her with a blinding grin. She supposed it must be fun for him, jetting around the world, never knowing where he would be from one day to the next. She hoped he was competent.

  “Bonsoir, mademoiselle.” He had a slight Parisian accent. He motioned for her to have a seat in one of the luxurious tan leather chairs.

  “I’m ready. Let’s get going.”

  “Where to?”

  “Vancouver, remember? I’ll give you exact coordinates when we’re in the air.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Yes, she was. When she heard the engines roar, felt the plane rolling, she knew she’d made it. Five minutes later, the lights of New York winked up at her.

  Wishing her well. Bidding her adieu. She waved, laughing.

  The phone rang at her elbow.

  “We’ve cleared the New York airspace. Where to?”

  “Paris. Alert me when we’ve crossed into European airspace; I’ll give you coordinates then.”

  “Roger that. There is champagne in the refrigerator, as you requested.”

  “Thank you, Captain.”

  A ’54 Dom Pérignon, very nice. She poured herself a glass, then snuggled deep in the seat, inserted a small earpiece and took out her iPad. A few taps, and the screen turned an eerie green. She saw shadowy mannequins in shades of grays moving about. She’d used a small cellular repeater that wirelessly boosted the microphones’ range, and she could easily hear all the voices from the microphones she’d hidden along the Met’s fifth-floor hallway and in the communication center itself.

  She turned up the volume in time to hear Mike Caine say, “I’m going to personally punch that bitch when we catch her.”

  Kitsune raised her glass and toasted the small screen.

  “Bonne chance.”

  Next she called her employer.

  30

  Paris

  Avenue Foch

  Friday, 6:00 a.m.

  A soft voice in his ear interrupted a most delicious dream.

  “Monsi
eur Lanighan? Monsieur Lanighan, sir?”

  He came awake immediately, jerked upright, nearly hitting Colette, his secretary. She was naked at his side.

  “Monsieur Lanighan, the private line. You have a call.” She handed him an encrypted mobile phone, one he’d never used before, because only she had that number.

  At last, at long last.

  “Merci, Colette. You may return to your quarters for the rest of the night. That is all.”

  She slid from his bed and disappeared without a word, closing the bedroom door behind her. He took a deep breath and answered.

  “Oui?”

  “Bonjour, Saleem. I trust the impending dawn finds the Lion snug in his den? Perhaps with a mate for warmth? I hear Paris is cold tonight.”

  His heart leapt to his throat. “Kitsune. Do you have my diamond?”

  “Where are your manners, Saleem? We’ve not spoken in nearly two years, and you have no proper greeting for me?”

  He touched the scar on his throat. “I will greet you properly if you tell me you have my diamond.”

  Her voice was light, indifferent. “I am offended, Lion. Your father was much more polite. Yes, I have your precious diamond. Meet me at midnight, l’Arc de Triomphe. Repeat, l’Arc de Triomphe. As soon as I confirm the money has been wired into my account, I will give you your prize.”

  The coded delivery point meant she had encountered problems, making her delivery dangerous. “What has happened?”

  “Nothing at all. Everything went smoothly. Any time now the world media will report the theft of the Koh-i-Noor diamond, right from under the FBI’s nose. Still, I don’t wish to take any chances. There is a wild card in the deck now, and he is good, very good.”

  “Who is this wild card?”

  “His name is Nicholas Drummond, a chief detective inspector with New Scotland Yard.”

  “So what? He’s only a policeman.”

  “More than that, Lion. He used to be in the Foreign Office. He was, I have heard, a very successful operative.”