[JJ06] Quicksand

by Gigi Pandian

  A burst of cold air hit me as we opened the metal door. It was apparent why the door below had been unlocked. Dozens of cigarette butts lined the space next to the door.

  Though the roof was flat, it was covered with chimneys and other obstructions. Lane took a few minutes to circle the roof. I didn’t know if he was making sure we were alone or looking for surveillance devices.

  Standing near the ledge, I could see for miles across an overcast Paris. The city was full of so much life and so much history. A living history I was now part of. I was so entranced by the sweeping views of the snaking Seine river with its stone bridges, the modern buildings mixed with ancient ones, and the famous Eiffel Tower rising lower into the heavens than I’d imagined, that I was surprised by Lane’s presence back at my side.

  I was even more surprised when he pulled me into a kiss that I felt through my whole body. My shoulder bag nearly fell to the ground as he swept me into his arms. The scent of his aftershave and the feel of his strong lips took me back to where we’d left off all those months ago. My lips welcomed his, and I felt myself lost in this moment I’d fantasized about for all these months.

  But at the same time, I felt a small tinge of uncertainty stir within me. The last man I’d kissed had been Sanjay, under circumstances that had never been resolved. He was drugged, and he didn’t remember kissing me. Before that accidental kiss the previous summer, I never imagined I could have romantic feelings for my best friend. I knew I loved Sanjay, but I was almost certain it was in the same way I loved my brother.

  As Lane continued kissing me, all thoughts of Sanjay faded away. I was vaguely aware there was something else I should have been thinking about, but at that moment I didn’t care. It was Lane who pulled away, snapping me back to reality.

  “I believe we have twenty three minutes,” he said, “before North joins us.”

  “I can barely believe we’re here together on this rooftop.” A cold burst of wind blew my bob of black hair around my face. It was colder than it was when I’d arrived. Being ten flights from the ground made a difference. “You’re all right?”

  “Better now.”

  “That’s not what I meant, you know. I mean you, life—everything that’s been going on the last five months! I didn’t know what to think.”

  “I hoped the Ganesha figurine would put your mind at ease.”

  “You mean the statue that barely fit through the door.” I couldn’t suppress a grin. “He’s perfect.”

  Lane cleared his throat. “I wish we had more time to catch up, but North—”

  “I know, I know. Scratch that. I don’t know. What exactly is going on?”

  “Since we don’t have much time, before you look at these documents, you need to understand something.” He was no longer smiling. “North is a very dangerous man—”

  “Then why don’t we use a phone in the restaurant below us to call the police? God, unless he’s got spies everywhere...Why don’t we find a fire escape and climb down?”

  “Let me finish. North isn’t dangerous in the way you’d expect. He doesn’t hurt people—not physically. He’s much more clever than that. He ruins people’s lives.”

  “What do you mean, he ruins people’s lives?”

  “Exactly that.” Lane swallowed hard. “I know one man who’s living out his days in a Moroccan prison because North tipped off the authorities. North was displeased with the man’s perceived disloyalty, so he planted extra evidence to be sure he’d be convicted. Another one of our associates had every single one of his hidden bank accounts disappear and his identity erased—aside from a few damning pieces of false evidence left for his wife to see. You need to trust me that the police can’t do anything. No, I should clarify that statement. The police can’t do anything to help us. They might very well arrest me if I don’t do as North asks, based on ‘evidence’ North charitably provides.”

  “Wait,” I said slowly, the implication sinking in. “You’re going to be an indentured servant thief for the rest of your life?”

  “Of course not.” He ran his hands through his hair, visibly frustrated. “This is a one-time deal. If I do one last job for him, he’ll leave us both alone.”

  “What could he possibly do to ruin my life? I’m not a criminal, and I don’t have a family to embarrass.”

  “If you look at the papers he handed you, you’ll see what he’ll do to you if I don’t cooperate.”

  Pulling the stack of papers from my bag, I noticed that there was a stapled set of typewritten papers separate from the historical documents inside protective sleeves. It was these papers that made up the bulk of the stack North had given me.

  A gust of wind threatened to steal the papers from my grasp, so I led us to a nook that provided some shelter. I sat down and looked over the peculiar assortment for a minute, confused. They were copies of the front pages of research papers I’d written, but my name wasn’t on them. Not only that, the dates and sources were all wrong. In addition, notes about other people’s work in my handwriting, only I didn’t recall writing those notes. Taken together, the collection appeared to be my work, but attributed to other people long before I’d written it.

  “This doesn’t make any sense,” I said. “This makes it look like I’ve plagiarized everything I’ve ever written.”

  “It could be worse,” Lane said. “North created a trail that makes it look like you’re a plagiarist, not a criminal. You won’t have criminal proceedings against you, but you’ll lose your position at the university. And you’ll lose any credibility to be a historian anywhere.”

  “This will ruin my life,” I said, speaking the words slowly as my confusion turned to discomfort, and above all—panic. He couldn’t be serious, could he? If North hadn’t created such an elaborate ruse to get me to Paris, I wouldn’t have believed it. But now? Lane sensed my fear. He took my hand in his.

  “With one word from North,” Lane said, “your life as you know it will be over.”

  CHAPTER 6

  “If you cooperate,” I said, “how do you know he’ll do what he promises and forget about these faked papers?”

  “He gave his word.”

  I laughed bitterly. “Because of his posh British accent, you think he’ll keep his word? That’s a pretty stupid reason to think—”

  “I’m not even sure it’s his real accent.”

  I groaned.

  “But that’s not why I trust him,” Lane continued. “He’s a gentleman who always keeps his word.”

  “A guy who laughs the moment before he says he’s going to destroy our lives is a gentleman?”

  “Keeping his word is how he’s amassed so much power in this business over the years. He’s always done so. Always. He’s both respected and feared. In a world where you don’t always know what to expect, North is a constant. It’s rather refreshing.” He cleared his throat. “At least I used to think so. If a member of his crew holds up their end, they get paid regardless of whether the job is a success—”

  “Back up,” I said. “Who is this guy?”

  “Though he’s a forger and thief, his greatest skill is being a con man. It allows him to be powerful behind the scenes without getting his hands dirty, and to pull all of this off. He doesn’t get involved with the most dangerous parts of a job.”

  “That’s where people like you come in.”

  “Exactly. My mentor, John, always knew better. He warned me against working with him, but I was young and cocky. North is incredibly well-connected in the world of art theft. And incredibly good at convincing people to do things. He makes you feel like you’re the one making the decision, when really you’re doing exactly what he wants.”

  “Coercing you doesn’t feel like that.”

  “He doesn’t usually resort to such coercive measures. Normally he can get things done without in
volving outsiders.” Lane paused. He closed his eyes and shook his head. “He found me through a mutual acquaintance. I met with him a little over a week ago, as a courtesy, to avoid any ill will. If I’d just done as he asked, he wouldn’t have had to resort to this. He wouldn’t have involved you.”

  “But you aren’t a thief anymore.”

  Lane opened his eyes and looked at me as if he was looking through me. “I can’t escape it. I thought I could, but—” He shook his head and broke off, looking out at the ancient city for a few moments, lost in his own thoughts.

  “Nobody is sure exactly where North is from,” he continued, “but he claims to be English. He appeared on the scene before I was in the game, and has continued to be a force. Unlike a lot of other thieves, he has vision. Not only grand ideas, but he thinks so many steps ahead of anyone I’ve ever known. Think having two contingency plans is good? He’ll have five. But he plans so well that he rarely has to use them. Before people are contacted, the whole job is figured out with exacting precision. He knows who he wants for every single part of the plan. That’s why it’s so important for him to be good at convincing people to go along with what he wants them to do. He needs the exact team of people he’s envisioned in place. He’s smart. He knows the best way to get cooperation is to be fair and generous.”

  “By paying well and following through on his word.”

  “Only as a last resort does he use coercion. But he never uses violence.”

  “What is this, a Cary Grant movie?”

  “He doesn’t need to use violence, Jaya. He doesn’t have to. I doubt it’s for moral reasons. It’s simply what makes most sense. Violence is messy. You can instill fear much more effectively through other means. Especially if you want people to continue to work with you. People were always in control of their destinies with him. But I was never really part of his network.”

  “I remember what you told me in Scotland.” I thought back to that night in the moonlight in front of the Dunnottar Castle ruins. It felt like it was last week, not nearly six months ago. “How you started stealing to get back at your father, his rich friends, and their whole way of life.”

  “And everything they stood for. I never wanted to steal anything that would hurt people who didn’t deserve it.”

  “But somehow you got caught up with North?”

  “If you’re any good, it’s hard not to.”

  “And you’re good,” I said, my head spinning. “That’s why he needs you now.”

  I stood up hastily, pressing the papers into Lane’s hands and sucking in the cold air as I hurried to the edge of the roof. I needed to be reminded of reality. Watching tiny people going about their daily lives below reminded me that Paris was a city like any other. And like the Eiffel Tower’s iconic iron peak, Notre Dame Cathedral’s gargoyle-covered spires were smaller than I’d imagined. Paris was simultaneously exactly and nothing like I thought it would be. The scariest thing, I realized, was that standing high above Paris with Lane, I felt more alive than I had in months.

  “Jaya, I—”

  “I know we don’t have much time. Let me look at the documents North asked me to authenticate.”

  Lane knew me well enough not to argue or try to placate me. He followed me back to our rooftop nook that shielded us from the wind, and I turned to the plastic-covered historical documents.

  There were only two pages, both handwritten letters. The bottom of one was missing—ripped off. If that was North’s doing, I would wring his neck.

  Looking more closely, though, my anger was quickly forgotten. The substance of the letters demanded my attention. Dated in 1793, these were letters written home by an Englishman named Trenton Smith, a clerk from the British East India Company stationed in Pondicherry, India.

  I didn’t recognize the name, but the date placed the letters shortly after the British retook control of the territory from the French. Control of Pondicherry ping-ponged back and forth between the British and the French for centuries, changing hands seven times between 1700 and 1954.

  “How does he get things like this?” I asked, glancing up at Lane.

  He shrugged. “North is creative. I’ll give him that much credit. A lot of things he acquires legitimately, through auctions or estate sales, when he sees value in things that others miss. And a lot of other ways, too. I heard he recently acquired a hoard stolen during WWII by the Nazis.”

  Looking at the weather-worn letters written centuries ago, I was in my element. For a few moments, the world around me dropped away. I felt myself smiling as my fingers traced the narrow, uneven handwriting of the man telling his brother of his adventures in the southern Indian territory.

  Trenton Smith was homesick. He wrote of the mechanical automatons that were all the rage back at home, and how he’d heard they were catching on in India, too, in the form of tiger and elephant automatons, some of them made of gold. I looked again at the date, 1793. He couldn’t be referring to Tipu’s Tiger, could he? It was around that time that the tiger automaton was commissioned by Tipu Sultan, AKA The Tiger of Mysore. His wooden automaton was famous for its macabre display of a Bengal tiger mauling an Englishman, so it made sense Trenton Smith would know of it. But as far as I knew, nobody outside Tipu’s court had seen the automaton until the sultan was defeated by the British in 1799 and they divided up his treasures. How could Smith have heard of Tipu’s Tiger in 1793?

  Tipu was a captivating figure in part because of his fierce hatred of the British, which caused him to form an alliance with the French to drive the British out of Mysore. I’d included him in my first lecture of the semester as an example of the complex relationships local Indian rulers had with foreign powers. In one of Tipu’s characteristically colorful acts, he hired a French engineer to build his legendary wooden automaton of a tiger eating not only a man, but a man identifiable as an Englishman. With the turn of a hand crank, the tiger roared and the Englishman moved his arm in an ill-fated attempt to shield his neck from the sharp teeth of the tiger.

  Shortly before the end of the torn letter, Smith began to tell his brother of the alcohol and opium available. Perhaps it wasn’t North who ripped up the bottom half of the letter, after all. It might have been destroyed by a prudish family member who wanted to save only the better memories of their young relative. That would also explain his delusions of automatons made of gold. I’d never heard of such a thing existing.

  Why had North wanted me to look at these? Was it a test? Or was there something else in these pages beyond the stories?

  “Would these be valuable?” Lane asked, reading my face.

  “To me, yes.” I forced myself to pull my eyes from the letters. “To be studied as a historical document. But for monetary value? I can’t imagine it would be worth more than a few thousand dollars, if that.”

  “I wonder if he’s testing you,” Lane said, “to see if you’ll tell him the truth about a document relating to your expertise that he’s already had appraised.”

  “That’s what I was thinking. But in case he really needs to know if these letters are authentic, I’m certainly not going to be the one to tell him so.”

  “Have I mentioned how much I missed you?”

  The sound of a squeaking door pulled the smile from his face.

  “Thank you,” an English voice said. “That’s exactly what I needed to know.”

  A feeling of dread washed over me as North appeared in our line of sight. Lane swore under his breath, and a smile spread across North’s face.

  “How did you do it?” Lane asked. “You didn’t get close enough to Jaya to slip a surveillance bug into her bag. I’d have noticed.”

  “I didn’t have to. Jaya already had the bug with her.”

  My mouth went dry.

  “You’re a smart one,” North said, studying my face. “You’ve figured out what I’m talking
about now, haven’t you?”

  “The invitation,” I whispered, reaching into my bag and pulling out the envelope. The envelope with lining so thick it could easily disguise a small piece of electronic equipment.

  I’d had the surveillance bug on me this whole time.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I’m afraid this particular model doesn’t have much range,” North said, “so I wasn’t able to hear your reaction to my masterpiece when you received it in San Francisco. But here at the hotel, that’s quite another story.”

  Lane’s shoulders shook as he took shallow breaths. His jaw was clenched so tightly that I was worried he’d leap up and throttle North.

  “It’s quite brisk up here,” North continued. “I took the liberty of getting us a private table in the restaurant below, so we can continue our conversation under more civilized surroundings. The view won’t be as nice, but I’d rather you two not freeze to death before you help me with my little job.”

  By the time we were seated in a private room of the restaurant, Lane had regained control of himself. I think. At least his shoulders were no longer shaking.

  North rested his elbows on the table. “Thank you, Jaya, for completing my little test with such precision. I had to be sure I’d judged your intelligence and your moral compass correctly, as well as your relationship with Lane. Aren’t you hungry? The food here is quite good.” He picked up a piece of bread from the center of the table and dipped it in olive oil and vinegar. “Mmm. The French know a thing or two about cooking, don’t they?”

  I stared at him, at a loss for words. I couldn’t imagine eating, but I took a long drink of water. My mouth still felt dry, but somehow I managed to form a coherent sentence. “These other documents—the ones that make it look like I plagiarized all of my work. These weren’t part of the test, too, were they?”

  “Unfortunately not,” North said. “Lane here will assure you I’m quite serious about using them. It wouldn’t do to have all that evidence of your plagiarism surface at your university, would it?”