The Final Cut

by Catherine Coulter

  She gave him a long look. “Ah, the pizza’s done.”

  “Want to tell me about Timmy?”

  She gave him another long look. “Timmy’s sort of like my Afghanistan. Come on, Nicholas, time to chow down. We’re only going to get maybe three hours of sleep, max, and I want every minute.”

  43

  Naples, Italy

  Twenty-two years ago

  The day was fine, blue skies and bright yellow sun, the weather tourists to the Amalfi Coast prayed for. She’d hopped the cruise ship in Valencia, Spain, posing as a Taiwanese banker’s daughter, taken up quarters in a small, empty cabin, and sailed across the Mediterranean without a care in the world. Cruise ships were full of wealthy women and their jewels, and she was getting good practice befriending them, then lifting their valuables. Coming into dock in Naples, the crew knew there was a thief on board, but no one looked twice at the beautiful teenager.

  And then she made a mistake and nearly landed herself in a Naples jail cell, known locally as the ninth circle of hell.

  But she was young then, and foolhardy. She thought herself infallible, as did all kids her age.

  If not for Mulvaney, she might have gone straight to the ninth circle and died there.

  She’d roamed the piazzas with the others, dodging in and out of unventilated tourist traps, keeping an eye out for possibilities. The stores in this part of Naples were full of kitschy treasures, designed to suck in tourists and overcharge them for souvenirs made in China.

  She spied one decent piece, a square sapphire ring surrounded by brilliants, and she made up her mind on the spot it would be hers. Once everyone had left for lunch and the proprietor had gone to his daily siesta, she went back, easily picked the lock, and waltzed inside.

  Unfortunately, the store owner came back to fetch a hat, for the day was warm, and caught her in the act. Despite the fact his stock was mostly fakes and junk, he wasn’t going to be ripped off, especially by a teenager who didn’t even have the common sense to break in after dark. After screaming at her in unintelligible Neapolitan Italian, the local security showed up, an ape of a man, possibly the man’s brother or cousin, but instead of taking her to jail, he dragged her around the back of the jewelry store, the owner following closely, cursing at her.

  She saw the building’s sidewalk abruptly stopped and the chalky cliffs plunged down into the Bay of Naples. Two more men were waiting there, unsavory men. She began to doubt the ape was a police officer. He held her arm in an iron grip while they all argued among themselves. She finally caught a few words. They were arguing about whether to toss her over the cliff or have some fun first. The owner wanted to strip her down, see if she had any cash hidden in her underwear.

  She was debating the wisdom of trying to kick one where it counted and dive off the cliff herself when she heard a man’s voice.

  “Kitsune? Kitsune? Where are you? The boat is leaving. Come, my dear, where are you? We really must go.”

  She saw a tall beautifully dressed stranger wearing a panama hat come around the building and stare at the four men surrounding her. He paused, then said, “What’s this, then, lads?” His Italian was impeccable, and he spoke in the Neapolitan dialect. But he wasn’t Italian, she thought, he was too fair, too tall, despite his jacket draped casually over his shoulder, hooked on a finger, like all the European men’s. Maybe he was American. Or British. His pale skin was slightly sunburned, and despite the shock of too-long white hair covered by a straw fedora, she made him in his early forties. Old enough to be a father, but this man didn’t look like anyone’s beloved daddy.

  The four men stood stock-still, wondering what to do.

  The man turned to her with an avuncular smile and said in charming English, “Kitsune, what have you done, my dear? Didn’t I tell you to join us for lunch at Palazzo Petrucci? You shouldn’t be out wandering the piazzas by yourself.”

  She shook her head, unsure of his game, cursing herself for her stupidity. To get caught over an insignificant trifle, she was disgusted with herself. She’d been thinking about running, she was fast, really fast, but the apes had formed a half circle in front of her. Her back was to the sea, so if she jumped, she’d be swimming, not running, if she survived at all.

  The stranger began speaking again, directly to the foursome. Bless the gods, within moments, they were all laughing like old friends. She saw money pass among the men, a larger amount to the owner.

  The stranger turned to her. “Come with me, you naughty girl.” He took her arm and led her away. What should she do? Fight? Run? Come along quietly?

  No, better to wait. One man, this was much better odds. When they were a block away, she began to struggle, and he stopped abruptly. He turned to her, his smile gone. “Listen to me, you silly girl. You owe me your life. You must trust me.”

  “I owe you nothing. I would have jumped and swum back to the ship. No problem.”

  He’d stared at her, his thumb cutting into the soft flesh under her biceps. And he laughed. “Sorry, my dear, but you would have landed in a heap of rocks.” He snapped his fingers. “Then there’d be no more Kitsune.”

  “Maybe so, but I won’t go with you. You’ll rape me like those men wanted to.”

  He looked sad for a moment, then shrugged and knocked her on the head with his fist. She was out cold, then she was floating, rocking. She slowly awoke. She was on a small sailboat, baking in the afternoon sun.

  Now she knew what he was. He was a slaver and he was going to sell her to some sheik. She rolled to her feet and dove off the side of the boat into the Bay of Naples.

  The man was above-decks, drinking an espresso and reading. He heard her go in, dashed to the side of the boat, and called after her, “It’s more than a mile back to shore. I’m not going to hurt you. Swim back. I have a business proposition for you. See the white villa up there? It’s my home. We’ll go up and eat. If you don’t like my idea, you may leave. I want nothing from you but an hour of your time. You have my word.”

  There was humor in his voice, and the fact was, she wasn’t the best swimmer. She looked up at the house he’d pointed to—a huge sprawling monolith, all white stucco, four stories, set into the cliff. She assumed this was Capri, seventeen nautical miles west of Naples.

  She swam back and climbed the ladder. She sat her dripping self on the deck and stared at him.

  He threw her a towel.

  She said, “No sex.”

  He touched his chest as if wounded. “Certainly not. I am an honorable man. I could be your father.”

  Father? Yeah, right. “Then what do you want?”

  He smiled. “Lunch. Are you hungry?”

  She nodded. She was still young enough to be bribed with the offer of food, particularly after her very busy morning.

  “Good. My name is Mulvaney.”

  He closed the book, and she saw the title. She didn’t realize the significance until much, much later. He was reading Invisible Man.

  44

  It was an unlikely friendship, but every mentor needed a protégée, every master needed an apprentice, every Svengali needed an acolyte, so Mulvaney told her.

  She stayed the hour on his veranda, listening to him talk while they ate olives and bread and cheese and drank wine. He gave her a glass of limoncello when they were finished, and by then she was hooked, and maybe a little drunk.

  Mulvaney was rich, and bored. He was also best known for his alliance with some French nationals involved in a failed attempt to assassinate François Mitterrand, and so was in a kind of pseudo-retirement on Capri until the hubbub died down. Being known, being recognized, was anathema to his purposes. This was his home base, the place he brought no one. No one but Kitsune.

  He told her he needed a partner, and a female of her tender years, with a lovely face and figure, would be perfect for what he had in mind—namely, to distract the guards of a Russian industrialist while he went into the man’s crude computer and moved his files onto a computer disk, then made his escap
e.

  Was she interested? He’d asked her in fluent Russian. She said yes, in fluent Russian. When his eyes flew open in shock, she casually told him languages came easily to her. He clapped his hands together and laughed.

  “I had a feeling about you. Standing there, spitting like an angry cat, caught in the act, the ring in your hand—you did manage to keep it, didn’t you?”

  She fished the ring from her pocket and set it on the table.

  He nodded, and she caught the tone of respect when he said, “Very good, Kitsune. You kept your priorities straight.” The smile on his face made her feel warm and happy. It had been a very long time since anyone approved of anything about her. Her parents had been shocked when she’d stolen a watch at the tender age of nine. Ah, well, they were gone, had been for three years now. And she’d been off on her adventures, she liked to call them.

  At the end of the meal and drink, they made a bargain. She’d help him with the Russian job, and if they were successful, she would stay on, learn what he could teach, and he would send her out as his replacement until it was safe for him to return to France.

  Her role was to steal what she was hired to steal, do it cleanly, present the prize to the client, and return to him. And if she must, to kill. Whatever she had to do to complete the job.

  In return, he would keep her safe and pay her handsomely.

  She asked him why he called her Kitsune. He’d said simply, “Because you are as quick as a little fox, filled with cunning and guile, and you have the look of your ancestors, though few would be able to identify your family as being of Japanese descent. You have Indian in you, too. No matter, it is a good name for you. Together we will make it a legend.”

  He took Kitsune’s natural talents and honed her into a weapon more lethal than a bullet, or a knife. She had the touch. A gift. She had the best hands in the business, and no bourgeois morals to ever sway her opinions or her actions. She could disappear at will, switch languages from one word to the next, change looks to add or subtract a decade. She could blend in anywhere. She had no conscience, no qualms. A job was a job, and she was the very best. She took great pride in her skills. She always basked in his approval when she returned, flushed with triumph and money ready for distribution to private accounts.

  She remembered in particular the time she’d flown to Berlin to steal a Rembrandt from the foreign minister of Germany, Herr Joschka Fischer. Mulvaney had gotten her enrolled in an exclusive private school as Bettina Genscher from Vienna, and she soon became best friends with the minister’s very smart daughter, Liese. Kitsune was twenty-one at the time, yet no one knew she wasn’t the same age as Liese, an innocent and sweet sixteen. Soon, Bettina and Liese were best friends, and she was a frequent visitor at the Fischer house. The foreign minister in particular found her charming and well spoken for such a young girl, her German elegant.

  After the Rembrandt went missing, she finished the last two weeks in the private school, their top student in a decade, and bid Liese and her family a tearful good-bye.

  She would do anything necessary for money, but stealing art, that was her forte.

  Mulvaney taught her not only his trade but practical things as well: how to shelter her money, how to use weapons, how to utilize technology and explosives. She became proficient in martial arts. She learned how to cross borders without raising suspicion, learned how to pick the clients who would pay, and be discreet. And most important, he taught her how to stay apart, unemotional. She was never to feel pity for a mark. She was never to lose her heart, never leave herself vulnerable, because that way meant failure.

  He put her through university, giving her the vocabulary she needed to mingle among the world’s wealthiest men and women. If she were to move in the right circles, she must possess the proper pedigree. They decided archaeology was the perfect cover. After five years putting in the labor in dusty fields and catacombs, an inspired dissertation on ancient Etruscan art, at twenty-five she received her doctorate, a moment of great pride for them both.

  As Kitsune’s talent grew, so did her reputation. Mulvaney’s choice of the name the Fox was inspired. It was gender-neutral, and many of the clients she worked for had no idea she was a woman. She kept to the shadows, made deliveries without being seen.

  Mulvaney let her choose her own calling card, assuring her that someday a victim would see her token and know it was the Fox who’d taken his treasure, since she would become that famous. She chose a small plastic skeleton, which made Mulvaney laugh.

  At one point, Mulvaney set himself up as her chief competitor, allowing her to ace him out, and letting it become known in the right circles, to help her reputation spread. They shared the profits, and both got richer.

  She was soon sought after the world over. Art crime was her true love, though she’d take other jobs, if they paid well enough, and her small token, the plastic skeleton, became her trademark. No one guessed she was a woman.

  She had only one rule.

  No guns. Ever. She refused to tell Mulvaney why, simply said guns were too unpredictable in the wrong hands, and much too noisy.

  Ten years before, Mulvaney had retired from the game. She hadn’t understood why he chose to quit; he was vigorous, strong, agile. He had a fast and devious brain she admired. He was getting older, he told her; it was time for him to sit back in the sun and enjoy himself. No, he would never leave her. He would always be there to watch over her, to have her back. She’d come to love him with everything in her, a deep abiding love, a bond stronger than a daughter’s for her father. She couldn’t imagine him not being a part of her life, a part of her, and she told him so. He’d hugged her, patted her cheek, then kissed her forehead. She felt safe and secure with him. Only him.

  He gave her all his best clients; Saleem Lanighan’s father, Robert Lanighan, was one of them. Which led her to Saleem, and his fanatical desire to own the unownable. To steal the Koh-i-Noor diamond, possibly the most protected, revered stone in history, part of the very fabric making up the history of England. It would be the biggest, most elaborate job she’d ever attempted.

  And then she, too, could retire, perhaps to Capri, perhaps somewhere equally lovely and anonymous, and find a protégée of her own to train.

  45

  After Lanighan was in contact the first time, she debated long and hard about taking the job at all. Whether it could even be done. She weighed all the options, talked to Mulvaney at length. It took three months of convincing before she even agreed to discuss it with Lanighan, and opened the line of communication in a coded email.

  Lanighan’s desires were simple and clear. Get the Koh-i-Noor, at whatever cost. And he was paying her more money than even Mulvaney had ever earned on a single job. Of course, it was Mulvaney who’d told her to charge him through the teeth, and why not? For whatever reason, Lanighan wanted the diamond more than anything else in the world. Be audacious, he’d advised. And so she had.

  And she remembered a long-ago winter sun, beginning to slip into the sea, casting an unearthly glow in the sky. Mulvaney had roused himself, walked to the balcony, and stared out over the beautiful Mediterranean. He looked toward the harbor, watching the boats, watching the crowds gather in the outdoor restaurants, watching the shadows grow. Finally he’d turned and said in a meditative voice, “There is a rule you must never break, Kitsune. It is a rule you must never forget, and you must never question it. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  She’d never called someone sir willingly, and the word sounded strange in her mouth.

  “Good. Excellent. Here is your rule: never ask why.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When a client wants something, your responsibility is to make it happen. You never, ever ask why he wants the job done. It is not your business. Do you understand?”

  She nodded, though she didn’t understand. She couldn’t imagine it, actually, not knowing the why behind a theft, or a murder. And then she thought about what he said, and
saw the wisdom in his words.

  Asking why would bring her own morality, or lack thereof, into the equation, and could alter her course.

  Which could jeopardize the job.

  She nodded again, and this time he knew she meant it. And in all her years, she’d never asked a client why.

  But the Koh-i-Noor was different. Lanighan didn’t want it because he was a fanatic collector. No, it was more, it was an obsession and over-the-top. But why? The Koh-i-Noor was an awesome diamond, steeped in bloody history, but still—and when he’d agreed to pay her fifty million dollars, she wanted to know his reasons so badly she had to bite her lip to keep from asking him.

  But she put it aside, because she had a job to do.

  She’d long known she was both lucky and cursed with her looks. The pretty teenager had grown into a very beautiful woman. Beauty was a tool as valuable as her treasured lock picks, but it was also a hindrance, because she was easily remembered. Her greatest skill wasn’t her ability to steal with impunity, but her ability to camouflage her beauty when needed.

  And allow it to surface when it was needed, as well.

  When she took up residence in London to begin the greatest job of her career, stealing the Koh-i-Noor diamond from the queen mother’s crown, she quickly realized it was time to let her beauty shine through.

  His name was Thornton. Grant Thornton. He was a former noncommissioned officer in Her Majesty’s Royal Air Force, decorated, dedicated, and driven. He was handsome, and strong and kind. His new post would be in the Tower of London, as a junior member of the prestigious, sought-after Yeoman Warders.

  A beefeater.

  Guarding the crown jewels.

  He was fresh off his third tour of Afghanistan when she met him at a bar in London. He was to start his service at the Tower of London the following week. He was proud as a peacock, drunk and happy, out for a last fun night with his mates before his new post began.