The surveillance team assigned to Reagan went on high alert. Wil said he half-expected the man to bolt. I wasn’t that worried about it. In two more days, he had the chance to stand up in front of the cream of Irish society and accept an honor. The corporate aristocracy might normally look down on him, but in his mind, I was sure he felt the award elevated him to their level. He wouldn’t miss the chance.
It did worry me that we didn’t have a single reported sighting of Gavin O’Bannon. That evening, Wil had a conference call with his subordinates in North America, so I took a stroll.
O’Bannon’s townhouse appeared as deserted as the first time I’d seen it. Bypassing the alarm, I entered and browsed through the place. Still no food in the refrigerator or any dirty laundry. But when I checked the gun safe, two of the pistols and the sniper rifle were gone. The missing rifle told me that he had plans. The chances of me using the Suri persona for anything plummeted past zero.
The investigation inside the Chamber ramped up to full-blown witch-hunt status. Everyone who might have spoken to anyone who knew about Kieran was interrogated in the presence of someone who was described to me as an empath-telepath.
I stayed as far away from the woman as I possibly could.
It turned out that one of the maids was sweet on a handsome young security guard and told him about the beautiful redhead hidden away on the fifteenth floor. He, in turn, told his buddy over a drink at the pub.
When Chamber security searched for the buddy, they didn’t find him either at his home or work addresses. The guard was arrested for the security breach. The maid was sacked from her job, which was a type of prison sentence in itself. The chances she would ever find another corporate job with healthcare and other benefits were very slim. I knew she would probably lose her place to live, and the only jobs open to her would be those offered by independent businesses, paid hourly, with no benefits or protections at all.
Such personnel actions were always very public. The corporations, and especially the Chamber of Commerce, wanted employees to understand what complete loyalty meant.
“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked Wil concerning the security guard.
His expression said that he wished I hadn’t asked. “It depends. If they decide he was just young and stupid, he’ll probably get a year in prison. If they decide he expected to profit from betraying us, then three to five years in a labor camp. If they charge him with conspiracy to commit murder, he’ll get a needle.”
Chamber headquarters had a few holding cells in the basement, but the main gaol, as the Irish called their prisons, was on the southern outskirts of the city. I wasn’t there when the loose-mouthed guard was transported to the gaol, but later I learned that when he got out of the van at the gaol, he had his head blown off by a high-powered rifle.
I had strong suspicions as to who pulled the trigger.
The following day, the body of his friend from the pub was found in a rubbish bin in an alley in one of the poorest parts of town.
Reagan obviously didn’t like loose ends.
Chapter 26
Wil dropped me off at the edge of the residential neighborhood near Reagan’s estate in a light drizzling rain. I moved into the woods, blurred my form, and made my way to the wall surrounding his house. Clinging close to the wall, I slid along until I could see the gate.
Dropping down, I hugged the angle where the wall met the ground and crawled within a few feet of the opening. And then I waited. I didn’t know when Reagan would leave for Dublin, but I knew what time the reception started. That would be followed by a dinner, a couple of speeches, and then Reagan would receive his award. An orchestra would play afterward so people could dance and arrange assignations, then he would come home. I would have about five hours.
Half an hour after I moved into position, the gates opened. Reagan’s limo drove through, and then the driver slammed on the brakes to keep from hitting the motorcycle that suddenly appeared on the road.
That was my cue, and I wormed my way forward until I reached the driveway. The limo driver and guards at the gate watched as five more motorcycles drove by. And while they watched the motorcycles, I crawled through the gate and back along the inside of the wall. When I got about ten feet past the gatehouse, I stopped.
Looking back over my shoulder, I saw the limo disappear beyond the gate, then the gate closed. The guards meandered back to the guardhouse and shut the door against the rain.
Since Reagan installed his own security system, no plans were on file. I didn’t know if there were pressure plates buried under the lawn inside the wall, but there would have been if I had designed the security. I crawled back along the wall, past the guardhouse, and along the edge of the driveway.
It was a long crawl in the rain. Halfway there, the sun set, and dusk fell. I stood and trotted in a crouch until I reached the house. Working my way around to the right, I came to the door on the right side, the one we had watched Kieran use when she went horseback riding.
It wasn’t locked.
The sound of a vehicle off to my right caused me to crouch down and wait. A large truck with a twelve or fifteen foot covered back drove down the drive without its headlights. The guards opened the gate, and it left the compound.
Sneaking into the house, I cautiously made my way from room to room. The place was huge, but I had studied the floor plan. Each room was large, but the total number of rooms was small. Three rooms in particular had been designed for displaying art: the Pink Drawing Room, the Green Drawing Room, and the Long Gallery upstairs.
I crept down a long, dimly lit hallway, sliding along the wall to keep my silhouette from showing. I slipped through the door at the end and glanced to my left at the grand entrance hall. My townhouse in Toronto would have easily fit in the space.
Turning right into the Green Room, I immediately recognized that something was wrong. Paintings hung on about half of the available wall space. I continued through to the Pink Room, which obviously also had been stripped of artwork. I didn’t see any paintings that looked newer than the eighteenth century, but Reagan was known for collecting late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century works.
I moved through the study and up the stairs to the Long Gallery. The murals there were famous, but there was plenty of wall space to hang paintings. I found only three.
After skulking through the rest of the house, I had to conclude that Reagan had fooled us. I hadn’t seen a single painting that I could identify as stolen or a forgery. I also hadn’t seen any people.
The bottom two floors seemed to be a nineteenth-century showplace. Like a museum. I knew the building to the west—connected by a portico—contained the kitchen and some servants’ quarters. Like many Irish great houses, it didn’t have a basement due to the high-water table. The third floor held bedrooms and bathrooms.
I had heard some noises from up there. That might be where O’Bannon was, but he wasn’t an encounter I was ready for. I wanted a bazooka the next time I faced him.
I remembered Wil saying, “There hasn’t been a truck large enough to carry a bunch of paintings leave Reagan’s place.” One had left that night, without lights, and I hadn’t given it a second glance.
Making my way out of the house, I found a comfortable bench on the other side of the stables, under an eave out of the rain, and called Wil.
“Is everything okay?” he asked.
“Oh, yeah. Great. I haven’t found any of the art I was looking for, but it’s a very pretty house. Did you see a truck leave here?”
“No. Hang on a minute, let me check. Can you call me back in five?”
“Yeah, sure.”
When I called him back, he said, “A truck drove past and onto the highway about an hour ago. Why?”
“It came from the compound. It drove out with its lights off, and I just thought the driver was an idiot.”
“Wait, it came from the house?”
“Yeah, and I’ll bet it had all the art that isn’t here. It lo
oks as though the art on the walls came with the house when he bought it. If you raided this place right now, Reagan would sue your ass off.”
Wil’s cursing didn’t hold a candle to my dad’s, but he was a lot younger. I was still impressed. “So, what do we do now?” he asked after he wound down.
“I sit here and wait for them to open the gate again. I hope Reagan doesn’t decide to spend the night in town.”
Reagan must have had a good time, because he didn’t leave the museum until midnight, and didn’t get home until one o’clock in the morning. Wil called me when the limo pulled off the highway, and I slipped through the yard to the gate. When Reagan pulled into the compound, I crawled out.
After I trudged for half an hour through the woods, Wil picked me up and took my sorry butt home. My clothes were waterproof, but the temperature was in the sixties, and I was chilled to the bone. I lay in a hot bath and drank tea until I warmed up, then crawled into bed and let Wil warm me up some more. I couldn’t remember spending a more miserable night.
“Wake up, Libby.”
“Huh?”
“C’mon. Wake up. Kieran escaped.”
“What? How?” I struggled to sit up and open my eyes. Wil pressed a mug of coffee into my hands.
“I’m not sure. I just got the call. She’s gone.”
I took a sip of the coffee and tried to figure out what that meant for me. “Did she take her bags?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Why?”
“Did anyone ever search her stuff?”
“I don’t know. Didn’t you?”
“No.”
We got dressed and drove downtown. As soon as Wil parked the car, his phone rang. He listened, then turned to me. “Reagan just left Celbridge. According to the people monitoring the drone we have over there, O’Bannon and two of his chief enforcers were with him.”
“You’ve got another leak. Either that, or she called him. But that doesn’t make any sense.”
Wil shook his head. “She couldn’t get away from us the last time she ran. Maybe she thinks she can sweet talk him.”
“He tried to kill her.”
I sat around while Wil met with the Irish operatives engaged in the investigation. Wracking my brain, I couldn’t figure out any kind of logic behind what was going on. Kieran’s actions were so crazy that I couldn’t even try to foresee what she would do next.
Wil found me while I was eating breakfast in the Chamber’s cafeteria.
“It seems that no one ever searched Kieran’s luggage,” he said in greeting. “Everyone thought that someone else must have done it.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, how did she escape?”
“She might have been kidnapped. Someone gassed the gym with a non-lethal gas this morning. Kieran and the security guard regularly stationed there are gone.”
“Male guard?”
With a disgusted expression, he said, “Yes.”
“What took so long last night?” I asked. “I thought the festivities were supposed to be over around ten.”
“They were.”
“So, why did Reagan hang around until twelve? Did a lot of people stay after?”
He looked thoughtful. “I don’t know. I didn’t ask.” Pulling out his phone, he called someone, and they spoke for about fifteen minutes.
“The only people still there were Reagan and the director, Madison McCrory. They left at the same time.”
“Oh, crap. No wonder she was so accommodating. He’s doing her.”
Wil opened his mouth as though to protest my statement, but decided not to say anything.
Reagan went to his waterfront home in North Dublin. An hour later, his limo left, heading toward the airport. Half a dozen other cars also left, all going in different directions. The total number of cars overwhelmed the number of people and drones the Chamber had allocated to their surveillance.
As I watched the various screens in the surveillance center, and watched people scurrying around, talking to each other and to phones, I realized that we didn’t know where Reagan was. The limo had pulled into a garage, and then back out again. No one saw Reagan get out of the car, or get back into it. The same applied to O’Bannon. It struck me that Reagan might know that Kieran was loose again, but he didn’t know where.
If that was the case, we had dozens of Chamber assets plus dozens of syndicate assets running all over Dublin looking for one small woman who didn’t want to be found. But Kieran really wasn’t my problem, and neither was Reagan. I needed to find one painting and a sack full of jewelry.
I told Wil I was going shopping for a winter coat, which was a pretty flimsy excuse, and left. The bus took me to the Museum of Modern Art, where I paid my admission, and entered with the families, students, and tourists.
The building was enormous—a square surrounding a central park and a sculpture garden. It originally was built as a military hospital, and small rooms off the long corridors faced the interior courtyard. I estimated the chances of getting lost there at close to one hundred percent. A quick tour through the building to see all the stairways and doors closed to the public gave me a basic idea of the layout. The north wing of the building appeared to be a non-gallery space.
A painting in one of the rooms drew me to inspect it more closely. It wasn’t one of Kieran’s better efforts, but I assumed it was done much earlier than the paintings I’d seen in Vancouver. Sure enough, the plaque said it was donated by Michael Reagan.
When I walked past the gift shop, café, and bathrooms, I came to two glass doors that said, ‘Administrative Offices.’ On the other side of the doors, a receptionist and her desk provided a blockade against further progress.
Depending on how I wanted to approach Director McCrory, I could say I was a representative of NAI, or I could say I was Michael Reagan’s wife, or I could sneak in. Option one, the legitimate way in, didn’t fit my plan. I didn’t want to give her any warning. And as much fun as the second option might have been, I chose option three.
Ducking into the ladies’ room, I blurred my image and snuck back out into the corridor. I didn’t know how often the door to the administrative wing opened, but I set myself up next to it and waited.
An hour later, a man walked out of the door, which swung outward, and I slipped through the opening. The receptionist barely noticed him leaving. I sidled along the wall around her desk. When I got behind her, I discovered she was chatting with someone via her computer. It must have been an interesting conversation, because her attention was riveted on her screen.
I wandered down the hall, checking the plates next to the doors. The center of that wing held a sumptuous ballroom and banquet room. I didn’t find the director’s office, so I climbed the stairs to the second floor. It kind of figured that she would have an office overlooking the fantastic gardens that spread out from the original main entrance.
I called Wil.
“Where are you?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to call you.”
I figured that, but I had the phone turned off. “I’m at the museum. I’m going to mute your side, but leave the phone on. Just listen.” I turned down the sound and put the phone in my pocket.
Morphing my clothing to a pink business suit, I unblurred and walked through McCrory’s door. She looked up, and I saw an immediate flash of irritation on her face, quickly smoothed over.
“May I help you?” she asked.
“Yes. I’m wondering if you have any comment on the allegation that Michael Reagan was the center of the stolen art scandal at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Considering your personal intimate relationship with Mr. Reagan, and the fact that you honored him with an award the other evening, I’m sure questions about the collection here will soon be forthcoming. I thought you might want to get ahead of the issue.”
“Who are you?”
“Dani Kildare, reporter for Irish News Tonight,” I replied.
“Get out of here!”
“I don’t think so.” I sauntered across the office and sat
down in a chair in front of her desk. “I assume you know what happened to Langston Boyle. Michael Reagan is rather ruthless in disposing of witnesses. And considering that he’s been using the museum to launder forged paintings, I think you qualify as a witness.”
She turned so pale I thought she might faint. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Are you really that naïve? You have forgeries hanging in your galleries. What happened to the originals? I assume he split the profits with you.”
I watched her hyperventilate, then suddenly she started scrabbling in her desk drawer. I leaped around the desk, expecting her to pull a gun, but when I grabbed her wrist, I saw she held a medicine bottle. Taking it from her, I shook one pill out and handed it to her. She stuck it under her tongue.
“I would imagine that prison or a work camp would be hard on someone with a heart condition,” I said. She was sweating and pale, and her hands trembled. “It would probably be a good idea to cut a deal with the Chamber. At least, that’s what I would do.”
McCrory stared at me. The look of terror in her eyes told me that all intelligent thought had shut down. I’d seen the same look when I held a gun to someone’s head. Time to back off. I walked around the desk and plopped back down in the chair.
We sat and stared at each other until her breathing slowed, and her face gained a bit of color.
The intercom on her desk buzzed. “Miss McCrory? Mister Reagan is here to see you.”
Chapter 27
Pulling my pistol out of my bag, I pointed it at McCrory and motioned to the other doors in the room. “Which one is the loo, and which one is the closet?”
She blinked at me, then pointed to one of the doors. “That’s the loo.”
Chameleon's Death Dance (Chameleon Assassin Book 4) Page 19