“He sounds like a wonderful man.”
Wiping away her tears, Vera nodded. “Do you think you can, um…”
Kate reached into her bag for a Kleenex. “Yes. I’ll find whoever did this.”
OXFORD—12:37P.M.
Medina pulled out of Christ Church’s visitor parking area.
“Sothat’s what Andrew wanted to tell me,” he said, after listening to Kate’s description of the file labeled Moor. “He left me a phone message a few days ago, and I’d been trying to reach him, but…”
“A colleague of mine is getting hold of his emails and recent phone records. They might show us who he did tell and who’s responsible for his death.” After speaking with Vera, Kate had abandoned the idea that Rutherford might have been dishonest with Medina. Someone so adored by his students did not strike her as capable of what she’d initially suspected.
“I’m sick about drawing him into this,” Medina said softly, his voice uneven. “When I was here last week, we had dinner together, catching up. I didn’t tell him to keep quiet about the manuscript, or anything. I—”
“You had no way of knowing, Cidro,” Kate said, touching his arm.
“You really think you’ll find the guy? This Jade Dragon?”
“Yes. Not many people could have learned of your discovery. And if I can’t trace him through your tutor, there’s still the thief. As soon as I find out who he is, I can look to see who contacted him in the past week. And then, of course, there’s the manuscript. If the crime scene details don’t get us there first, I believe one of Phelippes’s pages will.”
“Have you found anything in it since yesterday?”
“Yeah, but definitely nothing someone would kill for,” Kate answered.
“Tell me?”
“I came across evidence that the conviction of Mary Stuart went way beyond entrapment. It was rigged.”
“Oh, that Scottish queen. Walsingham’s bête noire, right?”
“Yeah,” Kate said, sliding her laptop from her backpack and powering it on. “As a Catholic and the great-granddaughter of Henry VII, she was the legitimate queen of England in the eyes of Catholic Europe. A serious threat. Even so, Elizabeth kept refusing to have her cousin executed, in spite of Walsingham’s urging. She thought imprisoning Mary was enough.”
“So what’d he do?”
“Set up a scheme to intercept Mary’s mail without her knowledge. Used double agents to convince her that a supposedly secret post—a waterproof pouch in her beer keg deliveries—was really secure. That way, as a plot to rescue her gathered steam, Phelippes was able to read all of her correspondence. Eventually, with enough coaxing from Walsingham’s double agents, the conspirators decided to assassinate Elizabeth. Phelippes waited eagerly for Mary to authorize that plan, but she never did. So he forged the incriminating letter himself. Which has long been suspected but never proven.”
“What’s the proof?” Medina asked.
“Mary’s real letter to one of the conspirators,” Kate said, clicking open a document. “The letter Phelippes and Walsingham suppressed. Until now all we’ve had is a copy, so no one could agree as to whether it was simply rewritten or heavily embellished.”
Kate reached into her bag and took a pair of dark red cat-eye glasses from their case. Slipping them on, she told Medina, “Dated July 17, 1586, it’s from Mary to Anthony Babington, a young Catholic who’d served as a page in the household of her earliest English captor, years before. He was definitely smitten with her—she’s supposed to have been bewitchingly beautiful—and he yearned to rescue her. Anyway, he’d written to Mary about the plan, which included assassination, and asked for her blessing. In response—in the letter Phelippes included in hisAnatomy —Mary authorized Babington to free her, but she begged him not to murder her cousin.”
Pushing her glasses firmly up to the bridge of her nose, Kate read, “Elizabeth may have held me prisoner these long years, but I cannot take her life. She shares my blood, my royal blood. I cannot do it. I am afraid of hell.”
“So Phelippes and Walsingham convinced everyone she was a would-be murderess?” Medina asked.
“Not just would-be. They also suppressed evidence proving she wasn’t behind the murder of her first husband.”
“Poor woman.”
“I know. A lot of historians would love to get their hands on these pages. Her descendants might be interested, too, might like the idea of exonerating their royal ancestor. One of them’s a big shot in the Knights of Malta, you know, one of those Catholic secret societies, but—”
“I agree,” Medina cut in. “Doesn’t strike me as a motive for murder.”
Kate scanned the document titles of the other reports she’d deciphered on her flight the night before. “There was one other good scandal,” she said. “About an English spy named Anthony Bacon.”
“Any relation to Francis?”
“His brother. Both dabbled in espionage. Anthony ultimately rose quite high in the Earl of Essex’s intelligence network. But long before that, he ran afoul of French law.”
“Caught spying?”
“No. He was pretty discreet in hisprofessional life.”
“A dalliance with an angel-faced French boy?” Medina guessed.
“Right, an illicit affair. Literally. The French king shared Anthony’s fondness for young boys, but French law was not as sympathetic. Sex between men was a capital crime at that time, punishable by burning at the stake.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, Anthony had good connections. Hushed it up pretty well. Word of the incident reached very few English ears. It seems that Phelippes was one of the ones protecting him.”
Closing the document, Kate looked up and saw that they’d left the town of Oxford. Medina was turning onto the motorway back toward London. She craned her neck around for a moment to watch Oxford’s famous “dreaming spires” recede in the distance.
“I’ve been meaning to look more closely at those photos you gave me,” she said, opening a set of images Max had emailed her the day before. “You know, of the thief. My colleague digitized them.”
The first few were of the blown safe. Looking for anything she might have missed in the Pierre, Kate made a mental note to ask the Scotland Yard detective on the case for details about the explosive supplies.
Perusing the next several images, she saw the dead thief sitting in an armchair by a window, blood oozing from his forehead. He wore only one glove, on his right hand, and a small hole in the fabric—as well as a fair amount of blood—suggested he had been shot through the wrist. That hand had fallen, along with his pistol, to the small round table before him. His left hand lay on his left thigh. Glass shards were scattered, a few across the table, most of them on the floor by his feet.
Looks like one of the bullets tore through his glass, Kate thought to herself. Then the thief’s ring caught her attention. She clicked on it, and courtesy of Max’s programming efforts, the section of the thief’s left hand tripled in size.
“That’s strange,” she murmured aloud.
“What?”
“I think the gemstone on his ring is dislodged.”
“Maybe he damaged it while cracking my safe.”
After a moment, Kate replied, “You know, I think I might recognize it.” Opening her cell phone, she asked Medina, “Will you excuse me for a minute?”
“Sure.”
She dialed Max’s home number. “You awake?”
“Drinking coffee and skimming theTimes ’s website.”
“Oh, good. I’m in a car for another hour—mind doing a quick search for me?”
“No sweat.”
“Okay, for key words usePortofino, cat, cocaine, andruby ring.”
“Gotcha. Here we go:Cat Strikes Again, Cat Pounces in Portofino, A Ruby in the Cat’s Paws…”
“Can you find a photo of the stolen ring?” Kate asked. “Or scan the articles for a description of it?”
“Uh, let’s see…no, no, no�
�okay, got a picture. Pretty thick gold band with a pattern carved into it. The ruby’s damn big…”
“Square-cut?”
“Yeah. Gimme a minute…okay, nine years ago there was a heist at the Splendido…”
Kate recognized the hotel’s name. It was the priciest one in Portofino.
“The thief broke into the suite of Peregrine James, Marchioness of Halifax,” Max continued. “He stole a ruby ring with a hidden cavity, where, an unnamed source says, Lady Halifax kept an emergency stash of coke.”
“Thanks, man.”
“Sure thing.”
Hanging up, Kate turned to Medina. “Well, I think I know who your thief was. Or his nickname, at least.”
Medina glanced at her. “Then why do you sound so disappointed?”
“There’s a man the press call ‘the Cat.’ He’s the most notorious burglar in Europe since Cary Grant inTo Catch a Thief.”
“Good movie. There’s really a living counterpart?”
“Yeah, and I think this is him. You saw the ring your thief was wearing, right?”
Eyes back on the road, Medina nodded. “If real, it’s one hell of a ruby.”
“I’m pretty sure it’s the same ring the Cat’s thought to have stolen a while back. Plus I know his M.O., and everything fits. Your safe, for example. If he can’t manipulate a lock, the Cat always uses a shaped charge, just as your thief did. Places it with expert precision. He’s not the kind of guy to tolerate the racket of a drill or the blinding light of a cutting torch. He’s neat, and he’s quiet. Elegant, you might say. Not many out there like him.”
“You got all that in a three-minute phone call?”
“No, I’ve been reading about him for years. I was an armchair crime and espionage buff before I set foot in the P.I. world, and he’s particularly interesting. Only steals from the very rich and, rumor has it, donates the bulk of his proceeds to charity.”
Kate didn’t add that she admired him and wished she were wrong about his death. She kept a file in her bedroom crammed with newspaper clippings about the Cat’s exploits and eagerly awaited the next installment.
Turning back to her computer screen, Kate looked at the shattered remains of the glass. Resting on Medina’s table, it would have been at least a foot beneath and away from the thief ’s raised gun arm, she realized.That’s strange. The other shots showed far better aim—the bullet to the wrist was right on target, and the two to the head and chest were just an inch or two off.
Wanting to take a closer look at the thief’s pistol, she clicked on it. From what she could see—it was partially covered by his right hand—the pistol was made of wood, steel, and mother-of-pearl and was unusually small, with a very slender barrel. But still fairly heavy, which meant that it should probably have…“Did you notice any nicks on the surface of your table?” she asked Medina.
“Ah, I don’t think so. Why?”
“If that gun crashed down to your table when the thief was shot, it would probably have done a little damage—some chips in the wood or something. I wonder if he was raising the glass of cognac and not the gun, when your guard found him, which would explain why the glass was hit. You know, in a dark room, it would have been easy to mistake one for the other.”
“Sounds possible,” Medina said slowly. “I hope it didn’t happen that way.”
But was he lifting the glass to his lips or making some kind of toast? Kate wondered.A toast would make more sense. The arm position would more closely resemble a raised gun, and if that were the case… “Actually, he might already have been dead when the bullets hit him.”
“What?”
“Well, if the ring is the same one the Cat stole, it has a hidden cavity, and since the gem was dislodged, I would think—”
“You’re not suggesting he had poison in his ring.”
“I am. In case he ever got caught. You know, to avoid the dishonor of failure, of jail.”
“But that’s so…old-fashioned.”
“Exactly,” Kate said. “Perfectly appropriate for a gentleman thief.”
Medina seemed intrigued but still doubtful. “The detective didn’t mention any of this.”
“Well, he didn’t know about your manuscript’s enormous value. To him your break-in was just an ordinary B and E. No reason to link it to the Cat.”
Medina remained skeptical.
“Why don’t you ask him to check into the ring and have the body tested for poison?” Kate asked. “And how about asking for the composition of the plastique? We can see if it matches the kind the Cat always uses.”
“You’re on,” he said, reaching for his phone.
“Oh, and while you’re at it, can you ask him for some morgue photographs? Can we send a messenger to pick them up and drop them at my hotel? And the label inside the thief’s suit jacket. Let’s see what that says, too.”
Listening to Medina ask for Detective Sergeant Colin Davies, Kate closed her eyes.
“I’m holding,” he told her.
“I’m sorry, but I couldn’t sleep on the plane. I think I’m about to pass out,” she sighed, fumbling for the lever to crank back her seat.
“First time in a Ferrari, huh?”
“What makes you say that?”
“The seats don’t recline.”
“Useless bucket o’ bolts,” Kate grumbled. “Pretty sad how much cash you wasted on it.”
“I know. You don’t seem impressed.”
MAYFAIR, LONDON—1:55P.M.
The Connaught Hotel is nestled on a quiet, triangular intersection in theheart of Mayfair, a perennially fashionable neighborhood in central London filled with smart shops, luxury hotels, and expensive offices and homes. A redbrick Georgian mansion with pale stone trim, it has a pillared entrance and miniature ivy hanging from the wrought-iron balcony above. The same ivy, along with yellow pansies, filled boxes resting on the three-foot-high outer wall.
“Here we are,” Kate heard Medina say after she felt his car come to a stop. Opening her eyes, she turned to her right and saw a man dressed in a gray jacket and black top hat leaning toward Medina’s open window.Must be the doorman. “The lady will be checking in,” Medina said.
As a bellman took her suitcase from the trunk, Kate unfastened her seat belt with surprise. “Not exactly the Holiday Inn, is it?”
Medina shrugged. “Since it’s across the street from your office, I thought it made the most sense.”
Stepping from his car, Kate slipped on her backpack and followed him inside. Passing through a stone arch festooned with carved Grecian women, they headed to the concierge desk. Medina helped her check in, then turned to leave.
“Cidro?” Kate asked. “Will you be reachable this afternoon?”
He nodded. “I’ll be in the City for the next few hours, but home after that. By five, I’d say. Then I’ve got another meeting at seven, but you can ring and interrupt if you like.”
“Oh, no, I’ll call or stop by when you’re free. I think I’ll have an interesting update for you.”
Turning to the mahogany-paneled stairwell, Kate climbed the red-carpeted steps to the second floor. Wearily she stepped into her suite, turned to the right, and found herself in the living room. Her eyes widened. It was a luxurious space with ivory damask walls, golden sconces, an ornate gilt mirror hanging over a large fireplace, a glass chandelier, and a plush sofa and chairs upholstered in turquoise and yellow silk.
Spotting a manila envelope on the desk across the room, she walked over and took a seat. Positioned before a window, the desk offered a view of the turrets and chimneys of the buildings across the way. Looking down at the street below, Kate watched a man in head-to-toe black and red leather climb aboard a matching Ducati and roar off.
She then reached into one of her backpack’s outer pockets, withdrew a small transmitter, and pressed the power button. It remained silent—to her, at least. Designed to ward off electronic surveillance, the transmitter was actually emitting a high-frequency white noise inaudible to
human ears. Confident that she could make a secure call even if her room were bugged, Kate used her cell phone to dial Max at their office.
“Hi, I’m on my way out, but since Slade asked me to give regular updates, and I was with Medina earlier…”
“Yeah, what’ve you got?”
“Well, to find Medina’s thief, I was going to show the coroner’s photographs to his tailor,” Kate said, opening the envelope in front of her, which had come from Scotland Yard. “Unfortunately, I don’t know who that tailor is. His jacket didn’t have a label. But since I’m convinced he’s the Cat, I’ve got another idea. A better one, actually. Saves me from having to freak anyone out with pictures of a dead body,” she added, staring at the dead thief’s pale, slightly blue face.
Slipping the images back inside the folder, she finished, “Also, the professor Medina showed the manuscript to—he was murdered a few days ago by someone relatively sophisticated…using a silenced Hämmerli.”
“The Cat? Before he broke into Medina’s place?”
“No. Had to be someone else. The Cat never hurts anyone.”
“So Jade Dragon hired Europe’s top thief and a professional hit man? Shit, this is more serious than we thought. What are you carrying?”
“My usual,” Kate said, referring to a tube of red lipstick she always had with her that concealed a single 4.5-millimeter bullet. A tiny pistol known as the Kiss of Death, its prototype had been invented in the sixties by the KGB. She also had one with two tranquilizer darts instead of a bullet, made by the CIA’s Office of Technical Service, per her request. She called that one her Good Night Kiss. Kate liked them because anyone looking through her things would think she was unarmed.
“Okay, but it wouldn’t hurt to pick up a regular gun at the office.”
“Maybe. You know, I’m right across the street. Medina got me a suite at the Connaught.”
“Damn. And here I was feeling sorry for you—out there risking your life and all.”
“Thereare perks,” Kate said. “Hey, I almost forgot. How was your date last night?”
“Mmm, not enough going on upstairs.”
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