by Eva Hudson
“Plus I don’t have a couch in my office.” She stood up and stretched. She badly needed to do some yoga. “Now can we get downstairs and get Natalya’s things? I’ve got to be in Buckinghamshire in two hours.” She headed toward the door.
“Why do you need Natalya’s things?”
She turned back. “I am assisting the New York art team in the handover of a stolen painting.”
His eyes bulged. “What the heck, Ingrid.”
“They had intel and asked for my help.”
His nostrils flared. “And how did they get this intel?”
“Marshall?”
“Yes?”
“Can we go to storage now? I need to get ready.”
“I swear I don’t know what to make of you, Ingrid Skyberg.”
“You sound like my mother.”
“I tell you not to do something, but you find a way of doing it anyway.”
“Still sounding like my mother.”
They marched toward the elevators.
“This deal you’ve done with Aslan Demir’s Art Crime Unit is, on the one hand, a demonstration of the kind of rebellion an organization like ours can’t tolerate.”
“But on the other hand?” She waited for him to press the button. She crossed her arms in order to force him to do it.
“On the other hand, you go hammer and tong for Rybkin and you might just get him.” The door slid open. “Am I going to have to write up a censure notice and a commendation?”
“Hope so.”
They rode down in silence for two floors before Marshall spoke. “Who do you think is going to turn up for it?”
The doors opened into the chilly basement. She explained who Leo Marx was as they walked. While she was certain he could rustle up the five million dollars they were asking for, she doubted he was the final purchaser. “Obviously Demir’s team want to track the painting and Marx to see where they both end up. They’ll also trace the money, of course.”
“So are they going to chase Marx’s plane back across the Atlantic?” Marshall asked.
“I haven’t been told what his plan is. Natalya just needs to turn up with the Picasso and take the cash. The rest is up to Demir. It’s an art team case now, and I am only offering on-the-ground assistance.”
They arrived at the storage facility, and Marshall gave the authorization for Ingrid to access Natalya’s possessions. Ingrid handed over the release code to collect Les Prêteurs d’Argent.
“How are you getting to this airfield?” Marshall asked, turning to go back upstairs.
“Embassy car. You got a problem with that?”
He sniffed loudly. “Keep me updated.”
“What about security?”
“Thought I’d attract less attention if I went alone.”
Once Marshall had left, the storage officer glanced up from her monitor and handed Ingrid several documents to sign, then ushered her towards a bank of shuttered bays.
“Bay twenty-six. Your code is six six nine four. You got that?”
“Yes.”
“And your other item is in bay thirty-four. I’ve made it the same code for both.”
“Thank you.”
When Ingrid raised the metal shutter, she was taken aback at how much stuff Natalya had accumulated. On the racks were her bedside lamp, her coffee maker, her makeup mirror. There were clear plastic crates labeled ‘clothing,’ ‘intimates,’ ‘sundries,’ ‘kitchen’ and so on. Abel had been thorough.
She grabbed the clothing box and found one of the Donna Karan dresses. It was creased, but there was no time to get it pressed. She reached for the intimates box and selected the Simone Perele lingerie that God knows how many people had handled since she’d last worn them. Then the Louboutins, the hair straighteners, the Stella McCartney bag, the perfume, the makeup and the gel nails. She threw everything into one box, then picked up the painting from the other bay. She headed for the restroom to perform the transformation one last time.
The transformation to become Natalya Vesnina always took longer than she anticipated. Using the straighteners and fixing the false eyelashes in unfamiliar surroundings slowed the process further. It was eight fifty when she strode into the undercroft parking lot to pick up her car.
“I didn’t recognize you,” Steve, the man in the garage, said.
“That’s the idea,” Ingrid said, feeling awkward. “You got keys for me?”
He looked puzzled. “Your driver already collected them.”
Ingrid furrowed her brow. “I didn’t ask for a driver.”
“Over there.” Steve nodded.
Behind the wheel of an Audi Q7 was a smartly dressed FBI agent with blond, slicked-back hair and a nervous smile. Ingrid opened the passenger door. “What the hell are you doing here, Marshall?”
“I figured you needed protection. I was the only available agent.”
“It’s better if I go alone,” she said, leaning through the open door.
“It’s an order, Agent.”
Ingrid’s mouth curled. “I would rather go alone.”
“You had someone try to kill you last night.” He paused. “You’re having an escort and that escort is me. Besides, you’re not the only one who wants Rybkin.”
She didn’t move. “Really? Now you decide you’re on my side?”
“I always was. Get in, Agent,” he said. “Demir’s plane lands in twenty minutes. We need to get on the road.”
She looked to the ceiling and silently screamed. Getting ready to play the part of Natalya took work, it took concentration, it took time alone. This was not ideal preparation.
She opened the rear door and placed the Picasso on the backseat, then climbed in. Blackbushe was already on the satnav.
“You look really hot in that dress,” he said and put the car into gear.
50
“Stop the car,” Ingrid said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t think the broker in an underworld art sale would arrive with an FBI escort.” Irritation was etched on every syllable.
He drummed his fingers on the wheel.
“You have to walk the last bit,” she said.
He didn’t respond.
“Marshall! You need to stop this car now. You can’t go any further.”
“Maybe I’m your driver?”
“What if they’ve got the place under surveillance? You look like a textbook G-man. Stop the car and get out.”
Without saying anything, he indicated and pulled over. She unclicked her safety belt and looked at him. “By the way, I only have Natalya’s phone. I couldn’t risk bringing my own.”
Marshall stared out through the windshield. “Hardly ideal.”
They had stopped on a stretch of busy road with a sixty-mile-an-hour speed limit that most cars were ignoring. “It’s only a few hundred yards,” Ingrid said. “You shouldn’t get too wet.”
“I don’t have an umbrella.”
Ingrid suppressed a smile. “Hardly ideal.”
Marshall sucked his teeth, then unbuckled and got out. Ingrid walked round the front of the car and slipped into the driver’s seat.
“Good luck,” Marshall said, closing the door.
“Thanks.” She didn’t make eye contact.
Ingrid adjusted the mirrors and seat position. She closed her eyes, breathed in slowly and deeply through her nose. “Menya zovut Natalya Vesnina.”
She checked the car for any signs that might give away her true identity, checked Marshall had not left anything behind, then rejoined the traffic. She didn’t wave as she overtook him. A security guard signaled to her when she turned into the airport.
“Your name, miss,” he said through her lowered window.
“Natalya Vesnina.”
“Thought so. Please follow the road round past the terminal building and wait at the big metal gate.”
The terminal building looked like a medium-sized branch of Staples in an out-of-town shopping complex. There was a café in an actual gar
den shed with a hand-painted sign. It was not the glamorous five-star location she was expecting a private airfield to be. From what she could see, Blackbushe was mostly a center for training helicopter and microlight pilots. Vinyl banners flapped in the wind, offering five lessons for the price of four.
When she reached the metal gate, another security officer opened it and waved her through onto the apron. She drove slowly, not sure where she was meant to park. Her phone started ringing in her bag. She stopped and fished it out. Her heart was beating unusually fast.
“Natalya Vesnina,” she answered.
“Ah, so you’re using this phone. You not answering the other one?” It was unmistakably Aslan Demir.
“This is Natalya Vesnina.”
“Oh, I get it. Nice accent. Sexy, even. So, you need to turn left. Can you see a couple of hangars? We’re in the one with Maynard Aviation written on the side.”
Ingrid followed his instructions and parked outside the hangar. She pulled the pashmina over her head before ducking inside the giant, flimsy-looking shed made of corrugated iron panels screwed onto metal rafters. It looked like it had been made from a kit. The roof was fifty feet high, and the wall facing the runway was missing. Inside the hangar were the carcasses of several small planes that wouldn’t be going anywhere soon.
Steam rose off the hot engines of a recently arrived Gulfstream G150, and standing on the damp concrete was the unmistakable figure of Aslan Demir. He looked like a tourist who’d won big in Vegas. He had a dated haircut that gave him a vintage porn actor vibe. Or maybe a failed north African dictator. White teeth gleamed beneath a bushy mustache that looked as dyed as the black hair on his head. He was surrounded by younger agents in suits. Ingrid felt she was looking at a real-life publicity shot for a new series on Fox. One that would get canceled after its first season.
“So pleased you could join us.” He extended his hand toward her.
“My name is Natalya Vesnina,” she said pointedly, making sure he knew not to blow her cover.
“We’ve come all the way from New York City and we still beat ya.” He was wearing a cloak. Possibly it was a cape. Who the hell wears a cape?
“I apologize,” she said, maintaining the accent. “Things have been hectic in London. Plus, the traffic.”
He looked over her shoulder. “You are alone?”
“Yes. But Agent Claybourne is coming.” She wondered where Marshall had gotten to and if anyone would know to show him where they were.
“And you have the painting?”
“Yes.”
He raised a disbelieving eyebrow.
“In the car.” She was finding it strange meeting new Bureau people while pretending not to be herself.
“Let me introduce you to my colleagues.”
Demir’s team had been on the ground for forty minutes. They all seemed remarkably refreshed after a night’s rest of taxpayer-funded luxury. With the time constraints and the location of the handover, flying with a scheduled airline hadn’t been possible. Ingrid noted that none of her assignments had ever involved a private jet.
Ingrid shook hands with the four of them: a digital surveillance expert with Joan Jett hair, a hostage negotiator who looked like Beyoncé’s more matronly big sister, a muscled agent with a pilot’s license, and an overly confident, deeply tanned agent with an MFA in twentieth-century art called Nyberg. Ingrid’s ears always pricked up when she heard another Swedish name. There was also a fifth operative, an aviation expert, who was in the control tower ensuring Marx’s flight received the correct instructions.
“I don’t know which of these fine specimens we’ll need the most,” Demir said, “but you can’t say I didn’t come prepared.” He flashed her a cheesy smile.
Ingrid felt like the new girl on the first day of school. “It’s a wonder you need me,” she said, trying not to sound too unsettled.
“Oh, honey, you’re the bait.”
Rarely had the word honey been more alarming than bait.
“Have any of you dealt with Leo Xavier Marx before?” she asked.
Nyberg had met him at a party in SoHo hosted by a Wolf of Wall Street type. “The idea is for me to stay out of sight,” he explained, elongating his vowels. Ingrid suspected it was a deliberate affectation to make people listen to him more intently. “Unless he needs an arbiter he can trust, in which case I shall just happen to be in the UK.”
Ingrid took an instant dislike to him.
“And what is the plan?” Ingrid asked, maintaining Natalya’s accent. “For the handover?” She started rubbing her hands together. The hangar was unheated and drafty.
Demir took her through it. “Air traffic control will guide the pilot to park outside this hangar, then Agent Naylor will board the plane alongside the customs and border force.”
Agent Naylor was the Beyoncé type with hair extensions and a Botox forehead.
“Board the plane?”
“When you’re as rich as Leo Marx, the immigration department comes to you,” Demir explained. “She will stamp the documentation provided with invisible ink—yes, you are in an episode of Inspector Gadget—to flag up the participants to immigration when they fly back home. She will also, assuming it is operationally sensible to do so, leave listening devices on board the aircraft.”
Ingrid didn’t like this arrangement. “No, Agent Naylor is not the right one.”
“It’s all been worked out,” Demir said.
Beyoncé looked nonplussed.
“I’m sorry, Agent Naylor, but the truth is there is no way you could be anything other than American. No one who looks like you would be working for the British border agency.”
Agent Naylor’s head shook with a tremor of indignation. Ingrid realized they thought she was being racist.
“Seriously, no woman in this country has a weave like yours or nails like that.” Ingrid was aware her accent was faltering.
Agent Naylor crossed her arms and sucked her teeth.
“I’ve been living here for five years.” When she got angry, it was hard to maintain the Russian intonation. “You need to trust me. It could blow the entire deal.”
The five of them looked at Ingrid with a mixture of affront and contempt. She had dared to question the tactics of the fabled Bureau Art Crime Unit, and they didn’t like it.
“Hmm,” Demir said, circling a finger in the air like a bored witch casting a dull spell. “I’ll think about it. But if you want in on the plan, you really ought to get here on time.”
“There would not be a plan at all if I hadn’t called you.”
The group fell silent.
“And after the passport check,” Ingrid asked, “what then?”
“Well, then, darling, it’s over to you,” Demir said. “I imagine you’ll phone Mr X Marks-the-Spot and we’ll play it by ear.”
Ingrid checked her Patek Philippe watch. “How long until they land?”
“Next plane in, apparently. Tailwinds,” Joan Jett said, checking an app on her phone. “Should be on the runway at ten forty-five.”
A flutter of panic passed through Ingrid. She was woefully underprepared. “Do we know for sure Marx is on the plane?”
“We know nothing for sure,” Demir said.
“So it’s possible Rybkin himself will arrive?”
“Oh, honey, I love your optimism.”
A tinny blast of the ‘Ride of the Valkyries’ pierced the icy air.
“That’ll be me,” Demir said, pulling his phone out of his pants pocket, revealing a gelatinous belly pressing against his jersey. “Aslan Demir… Agent Claybourne… Well, yes, of course… I’ll send someone to fetch you.”
There was a very big piece of Ingrid that had hoped Marshall had got himself lost. She checked her watch again, unnecessarily. She was far more nervous than she had anticipated because Demir was calling the shots. This was his operation and she felt like a sacrificial pawn in a high stakes game of chess. She had no control over how the next hour of her life would pan out,
but maybe, just maybe, she would get one step closer to putting Igor Rybkin in an orange jumpsuit.
51
“Would you like a coffee?” Joan Jett asked.
“Thank you, that would be great.”
“There’s a galley kitchen at the back.”
Ingrid half expected her to say ‘mine’s white with two sugars.’ Though, actually, she looked more of the chamomile tea type. They had boarded the Gulfstream to keep out of the cold. Ingrid noted that Demir’s team had brought Remington 870P shotguns and AR-15s in addition to the standard-issue Glock 19s, all of which were illegal to use without permits in the UK. Their pilots had been checked into a nearby hotel for their regulation rest: whatever happened, the New York-based officers would not be flying home for another ten hours.
Ingrid headed to the rear of the plane, where Marshall was comparing war stories with Demir, attempting to make himself seem better connected and more important than the head of the Art Crime Unit. Agent Nyberg, the one with the MFA, inspected the Picasso. Ingrid eyed him nervously.
“It’s damaged,” he said. “The buyer know about that?”
Barry Jones had knocked the canvas when he removed it from Shevchenko’s mansion, leaving an unmistakable gouge out of the bottom right-hand corner near the signature. If that was all Nyberg was noticing about the Picasso, Ingrid was relieved.
“I doubt it,” Ingrid said. “But it does not really matter if he wants to haggle on the price.”
Joan Jett raised her voice, “Control tower says two minutes to touchdown.”
They all moved toward the cockpit door, which had a view out of the hangar and along the runway.
Ingrid’s four-inch heels meant she could see over the heads of her colleagues, even Mr Muscles, who crowded the cockpit doorway.
“I got some info on the plane he’s on,” Jett said, her voice drone-like in its consistency.
“Oh yeah, baby?” Demir said.
“It took off from Shannon in Ireland this morning, hasn’t crossed the Atlantic for over a week, so either Marx has been in Ireland, or he crossed the pond in a different plane. Maybe scheduled?”