“Didn’t Dillon tell you he used magic dust?”
Nicholas nodded. “I really didn’t believe him. Would you look at this. Lanighan’s mother was Amelia Thomas-Collins.” He sat back, lost in thought. “Now I know why the name Lanighan sounds so familiar.”
Mike raised her eyebrows. “Why?”
“Last summer, there was a rumor about the lineage of the Lanighan family; the rags ran stories for three weeks. The gist of it was the Lanighan line was illegitimate, the issue of—” He stopped speaking, his eyes suddenly very far away.
Mike said, “Issue of who? Nicholas, what is it?”
He said, slowly, “Lanighan must believe he’s the last descendant of Duleep Singh. The last Lion of Punjab.”
“The safe-deposit box in Geneva was rented in the name Duleep Singh.”
“Just so. Remember when Singh was brought to England to give Queen Victoria the Koh-i-Noor, he became the toast of Britain and Scotland? He was on the social circuit, and society loved him. Queen Victoria even stood as godmother to several of his kids.
“He had eight children with two wives, but none of them had children of their own, so the line died out. Some said in the day that this is the true curse of the Koh-i-Noor.”
“The end of the line. I see.”
“The big scandal from last year came about when a historian realized one of Singh’s sons supposedly fathered a child with Lady Grace Lanighan, Countess Wiltshire. A bastard child, who in turn sired his own line. He wasn’t given a title; he was a second son, and clearly illegitimate. Though supposedly he looked exactly like his father, much to the earl’s dismay.”
He stood up and started to pace the room. “It wasn’t spoken of publicly then, mind you, not at the turn of the last century. I believe the child was born in 1898 or ’99, and no one wanted to accuse the countess of getting a leg over with someone other than her husband, the earl.
“Historically speaking, the child was of no consequence. His older brother married and produced a son, a proper heir, and no more was spoken of it. However, the family line died out after all the sons were killed in the war, and the title became extinct.”
“Gotta love primogeniture.”
He glanced at her coldly, and she shrugged. “What? I watch Downton Abbey.”
“To continue. Now, if Saleem Lanighan is the child of the illegitimate Wiltshire line, he could be an actual blood relative of the Lion of Punjab, the last true owner of the Koh-i-Noor diamond before it was taken.”
“That would be incredible. What if he is a blood heir? Who would care?”
Nicholas sat back on his chair, crossed his arms over his chest. “We’re dealing in conjecture, and legends. If Saleem Lanighan is the son of the line, then he is the rightful heir to the Koh-i-Noor. Not that it matters, because the British will never give it up. I know there’s more to this. But what?”
“I don’t know, but we better order some coffee. It’s going to be a long night.”
80
Paris, La Défense business district
Tour Areva, Lanighan Enterprises
Saturday evening
Kitsune walked into the black skyscraper known as Tour Areva like she owned the place. The lobby was quiet, only a single security guard sat behind a half-moon desk. He was leaning back in his chair with his feet up, watching a video on his monitor, some high Hollywood production in the middle of a battle, from the screams and explosions and screeches coming from the computer. He snapped to when he saw her approach but didn’t turn off the movie.
“May I help you, ma’am?”
“Bonsoir.” She didn’t stop walking, merely flashed a pass at him, too quickly for him to read. “My boyfriend left his phone in his office. I’m going to run up and grab it for him.”
“I’ll need you to sign in.”
She abruptly turned, grabbed the pen from his hand, and scribbled on the white sheet of paper, then kept moving.
“I can’t read this. Where are you going?”
“Twenty-third floor. I’ll only be a moment.”
He nodded—how much of a threat could this small woman be, after all—and went back to his movie.
She smiled as she reached the elevator. She’d talked her way past hundreds of security guards in her day.
She took the elevator to the twenty-third floor, then ran up the stairwell to twenty-five.
Lanighan’s offices were down the hallway, and his state-of-the-art security system didn’t hold out long against Kitsune’s deft tools. She put the rake in the lock and pulled the trigger, listening to the tumblers whine, then clunk open.
When the latch on the door opened, the security system began giving off a quiet beep every second. She slapped a counter up on the wall, attached two metal butterfly clips to the alarm, and within moments, the counter had identified the numbers of the system’s passcode, inputted them, and bypassed the system. The alarm turned off with a small squawk, and all was silent.
She would have approximately three minutes before the alarm company registered the system at Lanighan Enterprises had been turned off and notified Lanighan of the breach. With luck, the guard downstairs wouldn’t be notified for five minutes, but just in case, she needed to work quickly.
Lanighan was first and foremost an art lover, like his father. On his computer was a comprehensive list of all the holdings of Lanighan Enterprises, and where each piece of art was kept.
Since he was holding Mulvaney hostage, she’d take his art away. Most of his net worth was tied to the collection. Wipe it out, and she’d take his fortune with her.
He’d left his desktop computer in sleep mode to save energy, and, luck of all luck, it didn’t have a password on it.
“Stupid man.”
While Kitsune’s talents lay in physical extractions—it was said she had the softest hands in the business—Mulvaney was getting older, and his natural aptitudes had become slightly more cerebral. Corporate espionage paid very well, and Mulvaney designed many of the tools he used to gain information himself. Kitsune made heavy use of them in her jobs as well.
She inserted a thumb drive into the terminal and copied over Lanighan’s hard drive. The thumb drive contained a nifty little virus Mulvaney had cooked up that deleted the master files and all the backups from the host computer as it transferred. Not only would she have the information on the art collection, her thumb drive would be the only link to his company’s files. Payroll, insurance, assets, everything. It would take great effort to re-create—effort, time, and money.
She counted down as the files deleted themselves from his system, whispered to herself, “Come on, hurry, hurry.”
Two minutes to go.
She took a lap around his spacious office, bigger than her flat in London, with a spectacular view over the city. She stopped to admire the paintings on the walls. He had a small Cézanne she was tempted to cut from its frame, just to be spiteful. It would serve him right.
The thumb drive beeped, and she pulled herself away. Maybe another time.
Back out the door, silent and careful. She reset the alarm, relocked the glass doors, ran down the two flights of stairs, and grabbed the elevator down.
Less than three minutes, all told. Not bad.
She walked out the front door, waggling her own mobile phone over her head as she walked past the guard. He ignored her, and she was gone into the night.
81
Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendôme
Saturday, early evening
Nicholas was deep into rereading Lanighan’s file when there was a knock at the door to the suite.
Mike was combing the files from the French authorities on the elder Couverel’s mugging and murder. She set her laptop aside and said, “There’s the coffee. I’ll get it. I’m telling you, Nicholas, I’m pretty sure there’s nothing useful in these files. The case went cold thirty years ago, and no one has done any work on it since.”
She crossed the room and opened the door. Nicholas heard a
strangled cry and bolted from the couch to see Mike hurled backward into the living room and slammed against a chair. A dark-skinned man burst in after her, a suppressed Beretta 92S in his hand.
The man ran into the suite, his eyes on Mike, his Beretta aimed at her head. Nicholas came in hard from the side, buying him a moment of precious surprise. He kicked out at the man’s knee, but the man whirled about and leapt back, only taking a glancing blow to his thigh. He grunted in pain, but it barely slowed him. He brought his gun to Nicholas’s chest, Mike forgotten.
Nicholas whipped his leg up to kick the gun out of his hand, but the man pulled his arm back in time. Nicholas jumped into him, slammed his fist into the man’s neck. The man’s head flew back, and as Nicholas spun around he grabbed the man’s arm and sent his elbow into his gut, once, twice. He grabbed the man’s wrist and clamped his fingers hard into the soft flesh. The man screamed and the gun went off, an obscene sound, then fell and skidded across the floor. The man’s fist hit Nicholas’s forehead, and he staggered back, seeing lights.
Nicholas heard Mike shout, “Get away from him, Nicholas!” He knew she wanted to shoot the man. And the man did, too, because he grabbed on to Nicholas, trying to use him as a shield, dragging him toward the door of the suite. But he couldn’t hold him.
Mike watched the fight turn into a vicious brawl. She had her Glock out, but the men were moving too fast to get a clear shot—blocking and countering each other’s strikes as they destroyed the furniture in the suite, and themselves.
Nicholas took a hard blow to the shoulder. He pivoted and grabbed the man’s neck with one arm as he punched him in the kidneys, vicious blows that would fell a giant, but the man managed to squirm away—how, Mike didn’t know, he was that good. He stared at Nicholas for a split second, then took off at a dead run out of the suite. Mike fired once, twice, but missed him.
Nicholas yelled to Mike, “Call it in, I’m going after him,” and ran out the door.
The man was at the end of the hall, going through the emergency door to the stairwell. Nicholas sprinted after him, made it through the door in time to see a black-sneakered foot running up toward the roof. He squeezed off three shots, but the man didn’t stop.
Up three more flights, and the man threw open the door to the roof and slammed it shut behind him, slowing Nicholas for a moment.
When he eased open the roof door, Nicholas was met with a deep silence. It was dark, but there was enough ambient light from the streets below and the rising full moon to make out shadows and shapes.
There were plenty of places to hide up here. The housings for the air-conditioning units acted as dividers down the length of the roof; the man could be behind any of them.
Nicholas held himself perfectly still, listening. There, labored breathing coming from about twenty feet away. He edged forward, his steps light on the gravel. Ten feet, five, then the door to the roof opened, light flooding the dark, and the man jumped up like a quail flushed from the brush. He ran hard down the roof.
Mike joined him, whispered fiercely, “Let’s get the bastard.” They could see the man bobbing and weaving, and fired.
There was a muffled grunt and the man stumbled. Good, Nicholas thought, one of them had hit him.
Mike peeled off to the other side to flank him. Three more steps and Nicholas tackled the man. They rolled to the ground, twisting, punching, kicking, trying to gain an advantage. Nicholas saw blood and realized a bullet had nicked the man’s rib cage. Why didn’t it slow him down? Nicholas flipped him onto his back, jammed his elbow in the wound, and wedged his forearm under the man’s chin.
“Who sent you?”
The man gurgled, and Nicholas eased off only to get a vicious hit in the back knocking him sideways. The man was up on his feet, his fists lashing out. Nicholas rolled over and up and went at him. He struck him in the face with his fist and saw blood spurt out. He’d broken the man’s nose.
Mike kicked out the man’s right knee from behind, and he collapsed forward. Nicholas clamped down tight on the man’s windpipe.
“Who sent you?”
The man shoved backward with all his strength, knocking Nicholas into the air conditioner’s housing, slamming his head into the metal unit, but Nicholas hung on. Still the man came at him, trying to slam his fist into his throat, a crushing blow meant to kill him, but Nicholas got his hands up in time.
The man kicked out again with his leg, blood dripping down his chin onto his chest. Nicholas was in a berserk fury now, punching and jabbing and kicking. Mike screamed, “Don’t kill him, Nicholas, we need him!” but the only noise he heard was his blood thundering in his ears.
Nicholas shoved the man backward, and as he lost his balance Mike shot him in the leg. He howled in pain, and his leg buckled. He was too close to the edge of the roof. Nicholas saw him stumble and fall, and grabbed for his wrist, but his palms were slick with blood and he couldn’t hold on.
With a scream, the man disappeared over the edge. His body struck the dormer window frame, then toppled down to the sidewalk onto the Place Vendôme below.
82
Nicholas and Mike looked over the edge. The man had landed facedown, arms spread-eagled out on the concrete, his neck clearly broken. She didn’t want to see his face.
Nicholas slid down the wall, breathing hard. Mike eased down beside him, reached over and swiped the blood off his nose and mouth. She picked up his hand, saw the torn knuckles. “Not too bad.” There was blood all over his chest. “You’re bleeding!”
“No, no, it’s his blood. Sorry I couldn’t keep him alive, Mike.”
“I wish I’d shot him in both knees.”
Nicholas laughed, couldn’t help it. He got up and pulled her with him. “Damnation, woman, you’re the one covered in blood. Where did he hit you?”
She blinked at him, mute, then stared down at herself and passed out without a sound.
He eased her down onto the roof. Her nose was bleeding, and she had a cut lip. He ripped her shirt open and pulled it down. The man had shot her in the arm. A bullet to the biceps, through and though, into the meat of the muscle, not the bone, thank the good Lord above.
He ripped the sleeve off and used it as a tourniquet, then ran his hands over the rest of her body. No more injuries. She’d be okay. He pulled her against him for a moment, thankful and quiet, then stood up and hoisted her over his shoulder. He heard a whisper of a laugh.
“That tickles.”
“Stay still. I need to get you down the stairs.” She relaxed against his back, and he carried her down the stairs to their room.
Their suite looked like a war zone. At least the sofa was still in one piece. He laid her down, and she looked up at him and smiled.
“Aren’t we a pair? Do I look as bad as you do?”
He smiled back. “I don’t want to look. Stay still, Mike. I hear the sirens. We’re going to be crawling with cops any second now. Did you call it in?”
“Yes. Before I went up after you to the roof. Let me sit up.” She realized then she had a split lip from the man’s fist in her face when she first opened the door.
“Now who’s being the tough one?” he asked, but helped her up, loosened the tourniquet, happy to see that the wound was bleeding only slightly.
He said, “We’re going to have matching stitches.”
She wanted to tell him she would have more fun checking his stitches than he would hers, but she didn’t. She said, “Who was that man?”
“I don’t know. He’s dead. Look, it couldn’t be helped. I still can’t believe he wouldn’t give up.”
She couldn’t believe it, either.
“I’ve never seen anyone fight like you do. It’s brutal.”
Nicholas said, “It’s Filipino Kali with a bit of karate thrown in. I’ll teach you, if you’d like.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Maybe you’d better wait to see some of my moves first.”
83
Ritz Paris
15 Place Vendô
me
Saturday evening
Hotel security wasn’t happy to have a shootout on their roof and a dead man on the street at the front doors. The local flic from the commissariat de police, who introduced himself as Monsieur L’Agent Foulard, insisted on interrogating them for twenty minutes, despite their badges. It was only Menard’s arrival that put a halt to it.
After Foulard was gone, Menard said, “I was told your former suite needed a lot more than a simple dusting and clean towels. Do tell me how you managed to end up on the roof with an assassin.”
Nicholas said, “Fewer people on the roof than in the lobby.”
Menard grinned, showing a gold back tooth. He turned to Mike. “Agent Caine, I hear you’re being difficult. You should be treated at the hospital.”
Mike said, “I think we’re better off sticking together and staying here. Whoever’s after us isn’t going to give up simply because we’ve killed three of his men.”
Menard said, “We have an ID on the two men who ended up in Lake Geneva—César Arnault and Claude Soutane, local freelance bad guys.”
Nicholas said, “We think we know who hired them. A man named Saleem Lanighan, a British national who makes his home in France.”
“I know this man. He is big in the art world. What makes you think he is behind this?”
“Everything is pointing his way. If you could trace the men in Geneva to him, that would pretty much nail it. The man who went off the roof wasn’t local muscle, he was a pro. Tough, vicious, and committed to seeing us dead.”
“I heard the flics mention the name O’Brien. If this is the same man I know, you’re lucky to be alive. Talk about a pro—he’s never failed before tonight.”
Menard rose. “I need not remind the two of you to take care. Agent Caine, do as the doctor tells you. Keep your arm in a sling, and no more fights—at least for a couple of days.”
The Final Cut Page 28