A Magnificent Crime

by Kim Foster

  “East on Rivoli . . . ,” came the announcement.

  Jack’s heart sped up. He could interfere with that. “We’re close,” he said. It was time to step things up.

  Somewhere along rue de Rivoli, Jack spotted Ethan on his Ducati. He could see the other vehicles in pursuit, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Jack sped up, attempting to head him off. Then he pretended to miss the turn by a fraction. Which blocked the other pursuing vehicles.

  “Let me drive!” Hendrickx shouted as Ethan flew far ahead.

  “I can’t pull over now!” Jack said. “We’ll lose him completely.”

  Ethan’s motorcycle drove up and onto the Pont des Arts, the pedestrian bridge of steel and wood glittering with the thousands of padlocks tourists had attached to it.

  Jack’s car came careening around the bend and screeched to a halt just beside the pont, unable to follow. This was good. Exactly as planned. This was how Ethan was to make his getaway, because the cars could never follow him onto this bridge. And any officers on the other side would be too slow. As soon as they heard he was on the Left Bank, he would be long gone.

  The motorcycle bumped and roared across the planks. It stopped midway, and Ethan leaped off. Jack frowned. What the hell was he doing? He was supposed to keep going. He put something down on a bench in the middle of the bridge. Jack couldn’t quite make out what it was.

  Hendrickx was screaming for units on the Left Bank to come to their side of the bridge and cut off his retreat. Jack could see flashing lights flying along the quai d’Orsay, the road beside the opposite side of the river.

  He quickly judged Ethan’s chances. If Ethan got on his motorcycle right now, he’d make it off the bridge. Another second passed. Jack’s abdomen tightened. It had to be now.

  Hendrickx was hollering down the phone line. And then he was out of Jack’s car, dropping his phone and running toward the bridge, reaching for his firearm.

  At that instant Ethan leaped back on his motorcycle and sped off toward the far side of the bridge. Hendrickx continued running.

  Jack stayed with the car. Hendrickx’s phone lay on the passenger seat.

  “Need a heading. The Left Bank team will pick him up. Can you confirm the suspect’s direction . . . ?”

  Ethan’s bike flew off the end of the bridge, bumping down the steps on the other side. Jack could see the flashing lights of the Left Bank team just a few blocks away from Ethan and closing fast.

  At that moment, Jack realized he was in a position to help them catch Ethan. He could fix things so they would actually get him on the other side of the bridge. Ethan headed straight off the bridge and up the road ahead.

  If Jack gave them the correct heading, Ethan would be caught. He would be charged. He would go to prison.

  It would solve a lot of problems for Jack. But it would be betraying Cat big-time.

  Jack rubbed the back of his neck. He picked up the phone. “South on rue Mazarine,” he said. “The suspect is going south on Mazarine.”

  Jack watched the gendarmes turn up the road he’d sent them on, as Ethan sped off in the opposite direction. Nobody was anywhere near him, and he disappeared into traffic.

  He was gone. And Jack, an FBI agent, had just helped an art thief steal a Rembrandt.

  Meanwhile, Hendrickx had reached the middle of the bridge. He bent down and plucked something off the bench in the center. It was a long cylinder. Hendrickx stared at it with bewilderment, then opened it up. As Hendrickx withdrew the contents, Jack could see what it was at last.

  A canvas, tightly rolled.

  Chapter 63

  “Okay, Cat, dear, you have twenty minutes before the system is recalibrated,” Gladys said in my earpiece.

  I had been waiting for the go-ahead, worrying about Ethan and whether he would be able to get away, concerned about Jack and whether Hendrickx would figure out he was playing the role of double agent tonight.

  But now there was no more time to think about anyone else’s job. I just had to have faith that they would all be fine. And get down to my own task.

  I set my stopwatch for twenty minutes. And then faced the door that led to the vault, the door I’d already unlocked. I knew the infrared was off, but still, I held my breath, terrified of a miscalculation or some other unexpected factor that would trip the system, fire the alarm, and fill this chamber with water.

  I put my hand on the lever and opened the door.

  Nothing happened. No water, no alarm, no drowning. Just blessed silence as the door swung open. I entered the vault chamber. First on my to-do list: apply a thick layer of hair spray over the infrared sensor in here. It was a precaution—in case it came back on sooner than I expected. The hair spray would stop the sensor from detecting any increase in body heat. I pulled out the strongest, firmest helmet-hair version of Aqua Net and did the job. It might buy me a few extra minutes, should I need them.

  I breathed fractionally easier after that.

  I faced the foot-thick steel door to the vault. With a combination lock right in the center and the small etched name in the right-hand corner: Stratford & Black.

  It was going to have to be the safecracking job of my life to get in.

  Surprisingly, I got past the first two tumblers with relative ease. And then I reached a problem. Something didn’t feel right. I didn’t know what it was, but something was definitely off about this vault.

  I paused, breaking my rhythm, taking a wider view of the vault, trying to see what was different. But there was nothing. Maybe it was my imagination?

  After checking my watch, I returned to the job. That momentary distraction had cost me several precious seconds.

  I immediately reimmersed myself in the task. And quickly found my groove again. I paused only once more, to wipe the sweat from my forehead, and then, after several more minutes . . .

  I was in.

  I did it. I breached the combination. My heart burst open with triumph. I placed a hand on the vault handle to open the door, grinning as I did so. But then I noticed that the light hadn’t turned green.

  The door remained locked.

  But I was through. I had gone through the combination. I was positive of that. So what was going on? I double-checked everything about the vault door. And then I noticed something that hadn’t been on the Geneva vault door. A slot for a key card. On the very far side of the vault door.

  They had doubled up the locking mechanism. A combination and a key card. But I didn’t have a key card.

  My stomach dropped into my knees. I had come so far, and now, to be thwarted by a key card.

  “A key card. Oh my God, I need a key card. They added that,” I said.

  There was a faint crackling on the line and then a response. “Oh dear,” said Gladys. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I’m sure.”

  “Do you know how to get through a key-card lock?” Gladys asked.

  I looked at my watch again. Eight minutes left.

  “You can jumper it, Montgomery,” came Ethan’s voice, muffled by lots of background noise from the traffic and the motorcycle engine. He must be on the streets of Paris, enacting his getaway.

  Yes, I could totally jumper it. I looked back at the key-card slot.

  But how could I do that and open the door at the same time? The handle was on the other side of the vault door, farther away than my arm span could reach. Clearly, this was designed as a two-person open. Both mechanisms needed to be unlocked simultaneously for the door to open.

  It was enough to make me gnash my teeth.

  “Okay, I have some bad news,” Gladys then said. “They’re resetting the infrared already. It will be online in about thirty seconds. I don’t know how they cleared things so fast, but they did. Do you have the hair-spray layer in place?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Okay, that should hold and buy you a couple of minutes. But not much longer than that.”

  “You should get out, Cat,” Jack said. In the background there were si
rens and car engines and shouting. I was desperate to know how things were going on their end, but I had no time to ask.

  I sized things up again. There had to be a way.

  It could be done with a rope. I could tie a rope to the handle and open the door from a distance while I jumpered the key card. But I didn’t have a rope—I’d left one on the ceiling, the other in the elevator shaft. I didn’t have a wire or anything like that, either.

  What I did have was my portable scuba tank. It contained a rubber hose. I pulled on the hose, testing its flexibility. It would work. It was strong and had only a little elasticity to it.

  But I’d have to dismantle the scuba tank. Which would mean I wouldn’t be able to use it if I got into trouble.

  It took me a second to make the decision. It was the only way. I was not coming this far to give up now.

  I ripped the hose off the scuba tank and wrapped it around the handle. Holding on tight, I moved to the other side of the door and, tucking the hose under my arm, used the magnet to begin jumpering the key-card lock.

  My timing had to be perfect. I needed to open both mechanisms at the same time.

  I took a deep breath. If the alarm went off, this would be the moment. At the instant I breached the key-card lock, I yanked on the hose with my other hand to pull on the vault handle. And the door to the vault swung open.

  At last, I was inside. In front of me lay a jewelry case, a large, flat metal box like a safe-deposit box. I pressed my lips together and tasted sweat.

  I opened the smooth, cold case. Inside, cradled in the velvet-lined interior, resting in a perfect circle, was the Hope Diamond necklace.

  Ceiling lights inside the vault set the gem sparkling like it contained the North Star itself. I’d seen it before, of course, but up close and intimate like this was an altogether different experience.

  “The system is back online,” Gladys said. “Your hair-spray layer will hold for approximately two minutes, Cat.” Her voice sounded extremely worried.

  I shared her concern, to say the least. But this time, I needed to be sure this diamond was the real thing before doing anything else. It had the right degree of brilliance and fire, and the color was perfect. I stared at it as though hypnotized.

  And then I suddenly felt as though the Hope Diamond was gazing at me as much as I was gazing at it. An unfamiliar image flashed in my mind, then a carved Indian goddess, beautiful, ornate....

  I blinked, and the vision disappeared. I stared at the Hope. It was the real deal. No question.

  But I was out of time. I captured the necklace, stowed it inside the pocket sewn into my suit for just this purpose, and zipped it tight. I snapped the empty box shut.

  I slipped from the vault and reset everything. I worked backward, moving quickly.

  “Forty-five seconds,” said Gladys.

  If I could just make it into the elevator shaft.

  The infrared was designed to sense a rise in temperature, not absolute temperature. Although the temperature of the vault would be warmer than it was before, when the system came back online, it would not sense any ongoing increase. As long as I was out.

  I closed and locked the door to the vault chamber.

  “Ten seconds,” Gladys said.

  I sprinted straight across the foyer and clambered into the elevator shaft. I had no time to reattach the rope to my harness, so instead I started free-climbing upward, desperate to put distance between the vault and myself.

  “It’s back on,” Gladys said. “Are you out?”

  “I’m out,” I said breathlessly. I paused momentarily halfway up the shaft; there were no alarms, no signs anything had been breached.

  A few minutes later, I emerged from the elevator shaft, two stories up. Exhilaration fizzled my every nerve. I had the Hope.

  But I also had a problem: how the hell was I going to get out of the Louvre?

  Chapter 64

  I had no way of climbing back out the ceiling. Scrambling a few feet up an elevator shaft was one thing; getting myself to the middle of a glass ceiling thirty feet above in an enormous gallery was another.

  I was inside the Louvre, with the Hope on me. And most of the security systems were in place again. Much like wearing lip gloss with your hair down on a windy day, this was a bad plan.

  What the hell was I going to do? I needed to be able to walk out.

  And then it occurred to me: there was only one class of person who could do that at this time of night. A security officer.

  And I had an officer’s uniform stashed in this building, because that had been my backup plan for the gala. Could I get to the utility closet where I’d hidden the guard’s uniform? Could it possibly still be there?

  “Gladys, is the CCTV still out?”

  “Still frozen, yes. I am the only one receiving the correct images. You’re free to move about. Where are you going?”

  “To fight my way out of here.”

  I crept to the Richelieu wing, slipping silently through the hushed galleries and hallways, ever wary of encountering an unexpected security guard. Moonlight filtered in through the high leaded windows.

  I reached the end of the Richelieu wing, the remote section containing the utility closet, and opened the closet door. The hinges gave a squeak, which sent a blast of adrenaline through my veins. I froze, waiting, but there was no sign I’d been heard. I clambered into the closet, reached back behind the mop and bucket, and—yes—the uniform was sitting there. I quickly pulled it on over my Lycra suit.

  I experienced a moment of major doubt. Was this actually going to work? But I reminded myself there were more than a thousand security officers in the Louvre. There was no way any one individual could know them all.

  Right?

  I had to get moving. I had been good at covering my tracks thus far, but at any moment someone might discover there was an intruder. The hole in the ceiling, for one. The missing Hope, for another—if they happened to decide to take this moment to do an unscheduled spot check of the vault.

  I exited the utility closet and quickly changed my gait. I was no longer a thief trying to stay hidden. I was a guard on patrol.

  I managed to reach the atrium under the pyramid without encountering any guards, though, no small miracle. My heart was beating the rhythm of the headhunter tribe on Gilligan’s Island. I tried not to think about what was zipped inside my suit, underneath this uniform. Equally, I tried to avoid thinking too deeply about what the real guards held themselves: semiautomatic weapons, handcuffs, nightsticks, and so on.

  I stepped onto the escalator and rode it to the top of the pyramid entrance, and there two guards came into view. Good, just two. The rest of the team, I imagined, was still in the Denon wing, investigating Ethan’s break-in.

  I was hoping for a minimum of interaction. But I knew I wouldn’t be able to get away with no interaction at all. I prepared myself for my most flawless French ever. “Evening, gentlemen,” I said. “Just popping out for my break.” I held up the pack of cigarettes I’d stashed in the pocket.

  The first one, the taller of the two, looked at me with an expression as soft and warm as a sledgehammer. The other repositioned his hands on his AR-15.

  “I haven’t seen you before,” said the taller one. He tilted his head like a bird of prey scrutinizing a field mouse.

  “Yeah, I’m new. Just started last week. I was late for the start of shift tonight.” I knew the guards on night duty started their shift at midnight, and they all would have seen each other in the locker rooms of the central security offices.

  I left my explanation at that. The rule about lying was that you needed to give just enough details to make a thing sound plausible, but not so much that it smacked of overcompensating.

  There were a few moments of silence as they studied me. Those few moments stretched out and felt like three hours. My mouth was stone dry. I needed to break the stalemate.

  “Got a light? Either of you?” I asked, holding up a cigarette.

 
; The hard mask softened infinitesimally on the taller guard. He nodded and fished a matchbox from his pocket. The other guard stepped to the side, out of my way.

  I thanked them and walked forward, sidestepping the metal detectors, and out through the glass doors of the pyramid, into the cool night air. All around me the palace walls of the Louvre reached toward the sky, and dead ahead was the archway leading into the Tuileries Garden.

  I forced myself to walk casually, to stroll away and light my cigarette. I needed to know they weren’t watching me. I could tell through my peripheral vision that they hadn’t turned away yet. But surely I would get boring soon. And once I did, I’d be off like a jackrabbit.

  What if they changed their minds? What if the supervisor came back from his break and denounced me before I got out of view?

  I kept strolling, heart thundering. And then they turned their gaze away from me and continued their conversation.

  In an instant, I sprinted away. I stayed close to the shadows and moved as fast as my legs would spin. I felt the weight of the Hope cradled into my body.

  A thrill ran through me—I was escaping with the Hope Diamond. The actual Hope Diamond. A bubbly, giggly sensation threatened to burst out of me.

  I quashed it immediately. There was no reason to celebrate just yet. I was nowhere near the edge of the woods.

  In the streets of Paris just outside the Louvre, I ducked down an alley and found the dark, quiet alcove where I’d stashed a change of clothes. I pulled on a dark hoodie and jeans and tucked the Hope in one pocket and the tarot card in another—a silly urge, but at that moment I was thankful for every bit of protection I could get. Then I sent a message to Faulkner on the encrypted line he’d given me.

  My phone vibrated seconds later.

  “I have it,” was all I said when I picked up the call.

  “Good,” he replied. “Meet me at the Seine, underneath the Pont Alexandre III. Left Bank, right down by the river.”

  “I can be there in ten minutes.”