by Ronan Frost
He thought about it for a moment. “A Tibetan assassin?”
“Assassin? Way to bury the lead.”
“Did I forget to mention that not content with getting the painting first Dawa was dispatched to kill us? Yeah, that. It would be really nice if the boss would tell us what the fuck is going on.”
“He will,” Byrne reassured him. “But it’s a face-to-face conversation. Trust me.”
“It doesn’t look like I have a lot of choice in the matter,” Rye said. “Okay, text me the address. Let’s go and get this painting, and I can get my life back.”
“Don’t pretend you’re not enjoying this. I can hear it in your voice. You’re just as damaged as the rest of us.”
More so, he thought, but didn’t answer him.
He killed the call.
“Okay, we’ve got an address,” he told the other man. “Let’s finish up here and—” The roar of a car engine firing up in the courtyard stopped him midsentence.
Rye reached the door in time to see the silver Mercedes churn up the gravel as its rear end swung around, a dead man at the wheel. Vic was ten steps ahead of him, running uselessly after the car as it tore up the long driveway back to the country roads beyond the gates.
He stopped, doubled over, hands on knees, watching it disappear.
TWENTY-SIX
Tenzin Dawa’s corpse was gone, but there was plenty of blood.
“I thought he was dead,” Rye said.
“Obviously not,” Vic contradicted him, coming up the stone steps to join Rye at the chateau’s door. “The question is: did he hear us? Because if he did, he knows we know where he hid the painting.”
“Meaning we’ve got to beat him to it.”
A slashed tire put an end to any thoughts of a high-speed chase. It would take at least ten minutes to change the wheel out, and that was ten minutes they’d never make back on the road no matter how fast Vic pushed the big Volvo SUV. Now, had they been in his Vanquish or Vic’s Lavoisier it might have been a different story, but the SUV topped out at 132 mph against the Mercedes’s 198 mph. If it came down to a footrace, they didn’t stand a chance in hell.
But they weren’t alone.
Vic called Rask.
He could only hear half the conversation, but it was obvious that he was bringing the rest of the team into play. It wasn’t their race anymore. Success or failure would be down to Zima and Carter Vickers, who were half a day behind them. Half a day meant they should be touching down at Charles de Gaulle in the next hour.
It was going to be close.
All they could do was replace the ruined tire and follow as quickly as they could.
“No, no, no, Jesus I’m an idiot,” Rye said. They’d been on the road to Bussy-Saint-Georges for no more than twenty minutes, meaning Dawa was probably halfway there if he was pushing the Mercedes to the limit. He fished his cell phone out of his pocket and hit redial. Byrne answered a couple of seconds later. “Don’t tell me, you need me to do something for you?” he said. “It’s all a bit one-sided, this new relationship of ours.”
“The LoJack,” Rye said, like that explained everything going on inside his head.
“Do you want to elaborate?”
“Can you trigger the LoJack so it starts sending its stolen car signal to all of the local receivers?”
“I like the way your mind works,” Byrne said. “You know I can.”
Every Gendarmerie car within a five-mile radius would pick up the signal, their tracking units showing the make, model, and registration of the stolen car, including the color, and an approximate distance and direction, painting a target on Dawa’s back. Arial support from police helicopters would pick up the signal, too.
“With a bit of luck, having to dodge half of the police force in Paris will slow him down, even if it doesn’t stop him completely,” he said.
“And slowing him down might just buy us enough time to make a difference.”
Vic didn’t need telling twice, he pressed the pedal flat to the floor, gassing the engine and pushing the Volvo up into the red line.
TWENTY-SEVEN
The church looked down from the hill, its catholic guilt dominating the skyline of Bussy-Saint-Georges.
Vic drove the length of the holy quarter. The Tibetan temple was easy to see, even among the many pantheons gathered along the strip. There were three cars parked in the lot outside, none of them the silver Mercedes. Vic pulled up alongside another nondescript people carrier and killed the engine. Three people emerged from the other car: Iskra Zima, Carter Vickers, and Olivia Meyer. The thief carried a backpack slung across one shoulder.
There was no sign of Rask, but when did someone like him ever get their hands dirty?
“Anyone inside?” Vic asked across the top of the SUV.
“Place is locked up tight,” Ice said. It was hard to imagine her as the ex–Soviet intelligence agent Rask had introduced her as, she just seemed so normal, but that was all part of the deception, wasn’t it?
He nodded to the thief.
Rye asked, “So who’s going in?”
“You and me,” Carter Vickers said.
“Okay, so what do we know about this place?”
“Here,” the thief said. He handed Rye a small earbud and inserted an identical one in his own ear. Rye followed suit. “Push it in deep,” the thief told him, and he heard the faint click of the comms coming online.
“Nice of you to join us,” Byrne said in his ear.
“Oh god, he’s everywhere,” Rye said.
“You get used to it,” Carter said. “Even if he likes to think of himself as the voice of god. Okay, several points of ingress: the front doors, which are pretty much a no-no; there’s a tiered roof garden around the back, which looks a lot less like a Walmart.” It was hard to argue with his comparison, though perhaps the temple had more in common with a state penitentiary than a supermarket. “Several windows on the ground, second, and third stories. There’s a service door you can get to from the ceremonial gardens over there.” He nodded toward the neatly trimmed rows of green and the last lingering flowers of summer. The true explosion of color came from the temple gardens, which were watched over by white elephant statues and three grinning Buddhas that looked like they ought to be carrying signs for General Tso’s chicken. “My vote is for the balcony through the temple gardens. Nine times out of ten, security is laxer when you leave ground level. Hence where your expertise comes in.”
“Works for me.”
“Guuleed, that means you, Olivia, and Iskra are our eyes and ears out here. Let’s get this party started before we have any unwanted visitors. We have to assume the Gendarmerie won’t keep Lazarus busy forever. We want to be out of here before he shows up.”
“Agreed,” Rye said.
They ran around the side of the temple building and stepped back to get a good look at the balcony. Unlike the Thai temple across the holy road, where the red-tile swoop of the multitiered roof and the decorative arches created the kind of temple he’d imagined, the Tibetan temple was, from this side at least, a square concrete block, although one entire side of the building had been given over to a trellis of climbing plants that cascaded down the wall like a brightly colored waterfall. Everything about the place was purely functional as opposed to aesthetic. At first, he assumed the rear of the temple was broken up into half a dozen smaller, staggered tiers that descended from the roof garden, but from this angle he realized it was actually an optical illusion and the drop was considerably less. Still, the roof garden was the easiest way down, and the trellis offered a short traverse to the balcony running along the side of the tier of stairs.
“Do what I do,” he said, and a couple of seconds later had started the climb down.
He was agile, and moved with practiced grace, scaling the trellis hand under hand.
Rye carried on all the way down to the concrete terrace rail, and leaning back slightly, reached up to curl his fingers around the tangle of climbing plants, knowing they would onl
y hold him for a few seconds before his weight tore them away from the wall. Moving fast, Rye swung his legs around, until his foot found the concrete railing. It took his weight, but was impossible for him to simply step off, so he was forced to lean back then pull himself forward, fast, in a crude jump over the balcony, letting go in the process.
He landed hard, rolling forward and dropped into a crouch. He waited for Carter to follow him down.
Carter was considerably less graceful, but he made it across the gap onto the balcony.
“Over to you,” Rye said, making room for the thief. He scanned the outline of the glass door, looking for alarm sensors. In this day and age of religious intolerance it stood to reason the temple was protected in some manner, but they’d seen no guards outside, and there was no indication the doors were alarmed, so Carter took a small diamond-headed single suction cup glass cutter from his pack and set to work.
He placed it alongside the handle and locked it into place on the glass. Less than ten seconds later the thief had scored a perfect circular hole in the glass and lifted the fist-sized piece away.
“Here goes nothing,” he said and reached through the hole. He looked at Rye as he felt around for the lock, then withdrew his hand and stepped back.
There were no alarms as the door swung silently open.
“Hi honey, I’m home,” the thief said, as they went inside, closing the door behind them.
Rye raised a finger to his lips, indicating silence.
There were several small lights glowing in sconces along the long galley they’d entered, all of them above curious paintings that weren’t at all what he’d expected. He wouldn’t have called any of them works of art. Some looked like they might have been dancing women, others possibly giant elephants made of cloud. There were statues in alcoves, Buddhas in various poses.
He heard movement down below.
His eyes darted toward the staircase at the far end of the gallery, but there was no sign of anyone coming to join them.
Glass cases in the middle of the gallery contained several older relics, though in truth none of them looked particularly old or holy.
There was no sign of the painting they were looking for, and the longer it took them to find it, the greater the chance of discovery.
He moved quickly from case to case, checking them, then turned to see his partner in crime shaking his head. “You got any better ideas?” he whispered. His voice carried alarmingly loud in the silence. Carter crossed the gallery to join him.
He nodded. “If Dawa left it here, it’s only been here for a few hours, no way it’s on display yet. There has to be some sort of safe where they store their treasures.”
“I’m not sure they have any treasures,” Rye said. “Look around you.”
They moved from the gallery into the contemplation suite behind it and the various rooms that served the needs of the monks. Without any real clue where Dawa might have stashed the painting, they were reduced to a room-by-room search, which turned up nothing of any interest.
“We need to be smarter about this,” Carter said, his obvious frustration growing. He pressed a finger to his ear, “Byrne, we’re coming up blank. Any ideas?”
The third man’s voice crackled inside Rye’s head. “Thought you’d never ask. Okay, according to the blueprints filed by the architect there’s a repository built into the basement that goes deeper underground. It appears to be some sort of natural cavern. Odds-on that’s where you’ll find it. Aren’t you glad you asked?”
TWENTY-EIGHT
They stopped on the stairs, listening.
Someone was moving about in the darkness below them.
The last thing Rye wanted to do was hurt someone, least of all a monk. But the road to hell was paved with those kinds of intentions.
The orange-robed holy man shuffled by, head down.
Rye willed him not to look up. To keep on walking.
He held his breath.
They were six of the longest seconds of his life, but the monk kept his head down, oblivious, saving himself a beating that Rye didn’t want to have to dish out, so they were both happy, even if one of them didn’t know they were meant to be.
“Come on,” Carter said, when the monk was out of sight.
They ran deeper into the temple complex.
It was a curious building, to say the least, with a gift shop, an altar draped with shiny baubles like a Christmas tree, and the Tibetan equivalent of a fast-food restaurant all under the same roof. None of those interested the thief. He found a service stair and followed the concrete steps down. They made no attempt at stealth. Their footsteps echoed up through the curves of the stairwell.
The basement level appeared to be mainly storage, but beyond the man-made twists and turns of the cellar rooms, they found a doorway that had been hewn out of the natural rock itself. Rye followed Carter as he moved through the arch into a much older, deeper part of the temple. The air down here was so much colder, a good ten degrees or more below the outside temperature. The fine hairs along the length of his arms bristled as he saw the same three spheres surrounded by an aura of flame that had been rendered in the metal of Guérin’s gate.
Jing, the body essence, Chi, life force, and Shen, spiritual force.
“We’re in the right place,” he said, but Carter was already two steps ahead of him, and had found what looked for all the world like an old-school bank vault with capstan wheel lock and all. The entire thing was set into the bare rock.
“Guess we know where the painting is,” he said. “Can you open it?”
“Without bringing half the temple down on our heads? Probably not.”
“So, what do we do?”
“We bring half the temple down on our heads,” Carter said, with a smile. He swung his pack off his shoulder to retrieve a shaped charge.
He set it around the huge hinge where it was bolted into the rock, working it into position before he set the short-fuse timer. There was no finesse to it. He gave them five seconds to get the hell out of the way and dragged Rye back behind cover before the whole thing blew.
The explosion sent shivers through the bedrock.
The shriek of tortured metal sounded like the gateway to Hell opening up before them.
Smoke and rock dust filled the claustrophobic air.
The cacophony still rang in his ears as he struggled back to his feet. His eyes stung. He reached out blindly for support, stumbling over fallen rubble. Licks of flame curled through the smoke ahead of him. Rye covered his mouth with his left hand, not that it made any difference, and walked back into the aftermath of the explosion.
There was no denying it got the job done.
The flames offered light to replace the bulbs the explosion had shattered, but it was a fitful light that kept shifting and throwing shade over the interior of the huge walk-in vault.
They went inside.
The thick steel door had shielded the contents from the worst of the explosion, but even so, there was no escaping the fact that the huge fissures that had opened in one side of the wall undermined the entire vault’s integrity.
Rye could hear the rock straining under the incredible pressures acting on it.
He looked around for some sort of tube that might contain the stolen painting. Most of what was in the vault looked like worthless junk, but what was junk to one person was heritage to another. The Tibetans had suffered horribly in recent years at the hands of China, and that had culminated in monks burning themselves alive in protest, causing outrage across the world. Against this backdrop of brutality, the holy men had been forced to smuggle their treasures out of their homeland for fear that they’d be lost forever. And now, there in the smoking ruin, heritage became junk. He didn’t have time to worry about the niceties of it all, he needed to find the painting and get out of there before the vault came down around him.
He took one side, Carter the other.
Near the back of the room, Rye saw a black leather tube propped up
against the wall. It had a twist-off lid and a canvas strap; the kind of thing art students carried.
“Got it,” Carter said.
He turned to see him holding up an identical tube.
“Me too,” Rye said, showing him.
“Then we take both and worry about which is which once we’re out of here.”
But Rye wasn’t about to walk out of there without knowing for sure they had recovered the Blavatsky painting, so he uncapped the tube and teased the canvas out.
It only took a couple of seconds for visual confirmation. It was the stolen painting. But it was never going to be as easy as that. Carter showed him his. There was no denying the fact he was looking at a perfect copy of the painting in his tube, meaning Tenzin Dawa had collected at least one of the fakes before he’d stolen the original from the dealer in Stockholm.
Meaning there could be more tubes in here.
“Knife?” he asked.
Carter shook his head. “Next best thing?” He offered Rye a small electrical screwdriver from his pack.
Rye used the tip to peel away a small patch of paint from the corner of his painting. Beneath it, he saw the same faint grayscale shadow that had proved the first one a forgery. He didn’t waste time peeling away more and instead held out a hand for Carter’s.
This time the flakes of paint came away to reveal a tiny patch of bare canvas, not the faint grid of the copy, meaning his was the original.
“Okay, we’ve got what we came for. Let’s get out of here,” Carter said.
Rye nodded. “I’m right behind you.”
But he wasn’t. He waited until the thief left the vault before he pulled the switch.
He folded the original in two, not caring if it damaged the surface, and stuffed it down the front of his shirt into the waistband of his jeans and walked out of there with the tube containing the forgery in his hand.
TWENTY-NINE
Getting out was easier than getting in, but no less stressful.
They charged up the concrete stairwell, only to be confronted by frightened-looking monks at the top. Three robed men blocked their route to the front door. Rye looked at Carter, then remembered the earbud and pressed down on it. “A second way out wouldn’t hurt,” he said, earning a chuckle from Byrne.