“Ouch.”
Frowning she released his unstiffened flesh. “I can do better.”
“No, no. That one was fine. I know you’re angry, but I am happy to find your sense of humour is still intact.”
“I’m not angry with you about this.” She sniffled. “I’m confused, hurt, exhilarated, and shattered. I’m all over the place with you. I could laugh, cry, cut you into pieces and feed you to Felix.”
“Well, that’s gruesome. And angry.” He reached up and pulled her hand, kissing the heel of her palm. “I’ve drunk too much. The altitude takes a little getting used to and I’m tired. I’m perplexed and frightened, very frightened. You frighten me. You being here scares the living daylights from me. My manhood notwithstanding, it’s a matter o—”
“Notwithstanding? Aren’t you clever.” She sniffled, slipping her hand from his, savagely wiping her running nose with the back of a fist. “How are you hurt, exactly?”
“I cannot tell you how pleased I am to know you still want me, inoperative as I am.”
“You’re so bleedin’ arrogant.”
“It’s part of my charm.”
“You know what I would find charming? If you would shut up, hold me, let me fall asleep, and feck off in the morning.”
“And that sort of honesty is part of your charm.” Gently, he drew her down to his chest and she tucked her head against his shoulder, sniffling, slipping alongside his body.
“Why are you at a private wine tasting? Where did Reed get the Jefferson bottle?”
“He borrowed it to get us in. I thought you wanted to go to sleep.”
“I’m too awake now. Tell me a story.”
“I’m not sure where to start.”
Mae lifted her head and squinted. “Start with when you left me with a Christmas tree.”
Chapter 8
Kitt reached over Mae and switched on the bedside table lamp. He needed light in the room to tell her what had happened. He slipped beside her again and played with her hair. “The Foreign and Commonwealth Office asked us to assist in a matter of antiquities that went astray from the Government Art Collection. Not our usual fare, but one goes where one is assigned, particularly when the curator of the collection goes missing.”
“You were investigating theft, kidnapping, or both?” Mae nestled her head into the pillow.
“Both and more. Dr Vida Zora went to visit family in Beirut and never arrived. A portion of the antiquities she oversaw were not stored in the museum vaults, rather the items were kept in what was considered a secure location in Geneva. Normally, art crime squads collaborate with local authorities over theft of this sort, but this involved British Government assets—one of which was a Byzantine Maronite icon. Museums and private collectors often consulted Dr Zora for conservation advice. My colleague and I went to meet with her former associate, an expert on Aramaic and Hebrew artefacts, Sir Walter Molony. You may have heard of him.”
“He’s a professor or something with a position at the British Museum?”
“Yes. I’ve worked with him before. This time we met him in Singapore, went on to Beirut, the Syrian border, and back to Singapore, trying to find Dr Zora—”
Her head came up from the pillow. “You went to Syria in the middle of a civil war?”
“Just the other side of the border for a very brief stretch. And you know it’s not the first time I’ve been to a country engaged in civil war. Didn’t you ever think about where I went or where I’d been after I came home banged-up from a trip abroad? Didn’t you want to ask what happened or where I’d been?”
“Yes, but I knew that you wouldn’t tell me. And once I knew what you were, what you are, I didn’t want to think about it. What can you tell me?”
Kitt was quiet for a moment. “Once upon a time, bad people stole things and no one lived happily ever after. The end. What do you know about freeports?”
Mae yawned and snuggled her cheek to his chest. “They’re secure places fine art services like Christies, museums, and wealthy people store valuables, art, wine, cars, and such. Some people use them to avoid paying tax on very expensive things or hide assets from spouses they’re about to divorce.”
“Exactly. About five years ago, a man named Mikhail was accused of hiding hundreds of millions of pounds worth of paintings and antiquities at the Luxembourg Freeport, to conceal them from the executors of his deceased partner, Freudenstein. It was all over the news. Do you remember that?”
“Vaguely. Mikhail was cleared, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, but that case led to an audit of donated pieces to the Government Art Collection and the discovery that certain pieces of art and antiquities from the collection recorded as housed in the secure freeport, were in fact not housed in the secure freeport. For example, last year, customs agents outside Paris recovered the missing Maronite icon on a tour bus. No one on the bus claimed the piece. After that, the audit continued. Other items were found to be missing. Then goods one usually doesn’t expect to be stored in a freeport turned up. Do you know much about smuggling?”
“People move goods in and out of countries illegally, drugs and such.”
“The merchandise smugglers move varies. Every network is different, but an arms smuggler isn’t going to also deal in Dutch master paintings unless something goes awry. Something goes awry once, it’s an accident, three times is a pattern. The goods, schemes, and agents shift, but cash still changes hands, cash is still king, and cash is hard to trace. Merchandise, however, can leave a trail, one that’s often easier to follow.”
“And that’s where you come in.”
His fingers stroked through her hair. “I’m more interested in where you come in. And why.”
“You said you wanted to have a happy Christmas, asked me to marry you, and then died, remember?”
Kitt gave a small, dry laugh. “I began working on this case last year, just after the audit on the storage units in Geneva began.”
“You were in Geneva last February.”
“I was pulled off the Geneva posting in May.”
“You went to Turkey in May.”
“I was reposted, but the assignment was the same. I came home in July, just before Sal Tornatore tried to kill you in my kitchen, and you exposed corrupt bankers and an international money laundering ring.”
“Did I interrupt your little investigation?”
“Not exactly. I had to update and file the bloody paperwork. At the end of September, Swiss Customs contacted Special Operations Division. Llewelyn put me back on task. I went back to Geneva and you knocked out a wall in the flat downstairs.” Kitt paused. The path of this investigation was convoluted and so was his explanation. “Are you following this?”
“Go on,” Mae said in a voice anything but sleepy.
“Customs carry out checks at Freeports. It varies from site to site and it’s based on risk analysis and resources. The Freeport companies and fine art storage services, like Christies, have their own employees, their own security measures. Security is tight at freeports, there’s a customs office entrance at the front, turnstiles, keypads, locks, safes, bunkers. Places are temperature controlled.”
“Yes, for the works of art and wine.”
“Precisely. Delivery vans come and go from these facilities. The curious thing is that yes, some pieces went missing, while others were left behind, or replaced with items that didn’t match what owners claimed to be part of their storage inventory.”
“Somebody was picking and choosing what they wanted?” Her fingers trailed across his chest.
“Possibly. Stranger still, found within one of the Geneva Freeport units was a crate full of handicrafts, decorator tile samples, reproduction Persian rugs and knockoff Omega watches packed inside knockoff Chanel handbags. Knockoff handbags and watches contravene intellectual property laws, but the focus was on Swiss authorities uncovering evidence of theft of the artefacts, on looking for corruption in freeport companies, FreeSuissePort in particular and their suppo
sedly airtight security. We wanted to find Dr Zora. The Swiss team believed there was some kind of criminal syndicate at work, a very well organised syndicate, and the British and Swiss Governments were inclined to agree. There was speculation that Dr Zora might be the head of the group. That seemed a logical hypothesis, until more handbags turned up.”
Mae’s fingers circled the lumpy scar on his shoulder, the one she’d made with a broken broom handle last July. “These things are always about money, aren’t they?”
Kitt glanced at her. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“Why haven’t you bored me?”
“It’s impossible to bore you when you find me so fascinating.”
“And frustrating.”
“I do love you. Very much.”
She stopped tracing the scar, her words brittle. “What does all this have to do with you dying in Singapore?”
“I don’t exactly know. You’re multilingual. Have you ever heard the word chichiltic?”
“No. It sounds Hungarian, and I don’t speak Hungarian.”
“It’s not Hungarian, it’s Nahuatl, an Uto-Aztec language. It means red.” Kitt slid his fingers from her hair, tucked his hands beneath his head, and stared up at the squared moulding around the ceiling light. He shifted his gaze to the head on his chest. “Are you sleeping?”
“No. Tell me the rest.”
“Do I have to?”
“Yes.”
He went back to staring at the ceiling. “As in Geneva, an inspection of units at the FreeSingaport in Singapore revealed further missing fine art, paintings, jewellery, antiques. Singapore’s CAD—Commercial Affairs Department—had a different theory. They believed legitimate and undisclosed assets were being moved from place to place as a matter of tax avoidance or insurance fraud. Paperwork for one unit led us to shipping containers in the Port of Singapore, where, instead of turning up priceless goods taken from freeport units, we found moth-eaten Persian carpets, cheap artwork, and decorating samples of mosaic wall tiles. There were boxes of handicrafts and crates of knockoff Louis Vuitton, Prada, and Chanel handbags, sunglasses, watches. Reproduction luxury goods are a violation of intellectual property law and big corporations like their money. Usually, for a haul that size, Singapore Customs would contact Interpol, but this case was driven by Singapore’s CAD cracking down on ill-gotten gains. The matter was kicked to Singapore Customs who traced the shipments back to the Port of Beirut’s container terminal.”
“Did Dr Zora turn up in Beirut or Syria?”
“Neither. Unsurprisingly, Beirut discovered a missing painting, some jewellery, pieces from a unit in Switzerland hidden in a load of junk ready for shipment to Singapore, however Lebanese Customs were rather alarmed by what they found in one container, all mixed in with birdbaths and garden statues.”
“Let me guess, knockoff Gucci shoes and drugs?”
“No, late Soviet-era weapons.”
“Define late Soviet-era weapons,” she said, and her fingers tickled through the hair on his chest.
Kitt watched the absent movement of her fingers. “Lebanese Customs Administration believed they’d found missing nuclear weapons, stolen by an Afghani Mujahedin commander in the late eighties, buried in Syria, smuggled out and into Lebanon. It looked a lot like one, was very detailed, but again, most smugglers don’t mix merchandise; they don’t mix drugs with pirated sunglasses, or trade merchandise for weapons. Weapons smugglers want cash, not a swap for handbags, and crates of weapons make people nervous.”
Her fingers stopped tickling. “Nuclear weapons, you went to recover nuclear weapons?”
“Well, I am a spy and it is the stuff of spy stories.”
“It’s the stuff of a clichéd spy story where one man saves the world.”
“I couldn’t be that one man?”
She gave a little laugh of disdain, fingertips resuming tickling strands of hair. “How many bombs were there?”
“I think you’ve hurt my feelings.”
“So, you’re not going to tell me?”
“Are you ever going to nod off?”
“Nuclear bombs, it’s a nice try, but I don’t believe you.”
Kitt chuckled. “You didn’t believe I had a ring either and—what is that you’re wearing on your left hand?”
“I’m still waiting on the sister and the brother.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“About the sister, the brother, or the bombs?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know what to believe. You’re the spy who came back from the dead.”
“We do it all the time in film and fiction.”
“Yes, my only frame of reference. Is this fiction, Kitt, or fact?”
Kitt stuffed his hands beneath the pillow and laughed again, the sound hollow and cheerless. “I’ve told you what I can. The bomb was a prop from a film set that a collector in Kuala Lumpur had purchased at auction. Once we ascertained it was a prop, we let the shipment go and followed it back to the Port of Singapore. My colleague Dalton, Professor Molony, and local Singaporean port and customs workers opened shipping containers. The last two containers made it plain that we were looking at something more than tax avoidance, insurance fraud, and hidden luxury assets, more than theft of works of art and historic artefacts. This was, this is about corruption, inadequate safeguards, weak inspections, the counterfeiting and piracy of intellectual property, money laundering, and terrorist financing. The first thing I did was notify a contact at Interpol. Two minutes later it became obvious that the two dock workers assisting us in Singapore weren’t really dock workers and all hell exploded.” He breathed in softly, deeply and exhaled without a sound. “I’m afraid can’t tell you anything more than that.”
She huffed. “Jaysus, you and Bryce and your whole gobshite feckin’ spy ‘need to know’ mantra.”
“You have no idea.”
“Then give me an idea.”
“I have no idea. There are things I can’t tell you because I can’t quite remember. I have a little...memory issue.”
She snorted. “First it was back from the dead, then nuclear bombs, now it’s a spy with amnesia.”
“James Bond and Jason Bourne had amnesia.”
“Then you’re playing true to type after all.”
“I’m not playing anything.”
“You expect me to believe this?” She lifted her head, rising on an elbow.
“It’s not exactly amnesia. I had a blow to the head, lost a lot of blood, and nearly died of heatstroke. It put Swiss cheese holes in my memory. I remember, but I don’t remember how it all unfolded, who did what exactly, but there are two things I can tell you for certain.”
She inhaled and exhaled with a shudder. “So, tell me,” she said through her teeth.
“I love you.”
Mae sat up, blinking back angry tears, scowling, bedclothes tucked under her arms. “And?”
“Reed.”
She huffed again and sniffled, wiping away wetness beneath her eyes. “He loves you and you’re using him.”
Kitt sat and considered his words. “Yes. Reed and I have a history. He’s a twat, the most trustworthy twat I know next to Bryce, and he’s keen to ferret out rot. IP, intellectual property, that’s his speciality within Interpol’s Trafficking in Illicit Goods and Counterfeiting Unit, but he’s currently seconded to an international consulting and investigative firm specialising in IP. He’s helping me follow up on a lead, an old informant who had a girlfriend from a family of smugglers in Malaysia.”
Her frown faded into a peculiar little smirk as she adjusted the blankets around her. “Grant. Grant told me he’d worked for a family in Malaysia.”
“Yes.”
“Who killed him?”
“I don’t know yet. I was just getting started, Mae. Meeting Grant was only the beginning and he didn’t seem like much of a beginning. Until Grant died, Reed thought I was grasping at straws. I arrived here late because it wasn’t certain if Grant would be he
re with Basil or in Canada with Mrs Basil. Once it became clear, Reed made arrangements to meet Grant on the rear patio, except someone else led or sent him to Lady Evelyn’s art studio. Did you see anyone inside the studio when you found the body, Mae?”
“No, I was preoccupied with his being dead and—Lady Evelyn? I had no idea Taittinger’s mother was titled.” Mae gave a groan. “Over Christmas I addressed her as Mrs Taittinger. How embarrassingly unprofessional of me.”
“Yes, you ought to be ashamed. Shall I continue?”
“Go on.”
Kitt grabbed the pillow and shoved it behind his back and the headboard. “What I need you to understand is that I had to be, and I have to be, careful. It may seem like a worn-out spy film plot, but after being ambushed, my being dead became a means of self-protection. I had to be certain everyone believed I was dead, so I could finish this.”
“Because you don’t quit anything.”
“Neither do you. I thought there was a rat inside. Well, that rat has made its way here. I tried to let you know, the best way that I could, that I was alive, despite what you were told. I thought you’d work it out. Truly, Mae, I haven’t used you, I haven’t lied to you, and I didn’t plan this in advance. Someone else did.”
“Who?”
“I have a thin little notion, a feeling my colleague Dalton is the rat and absolutely no proof, but I’m now seriously considering it might also be Llewelyn.”
“Why would you think any of this has to do with Llewelyn?”
Anger streaked into his chest. His voice softened to a near whisper. “You’re here. And it’s not a coincidence, there’s no such thing as coincidence in this kind of work. Before I left, I overheard Llewelyn ask you about dogs, if you liked them. He has two bloody dogs.”
“Bambi and Thumper.”
“Yes. At the time, I believed he wanted a new butler, that he was setting up a plan to try to lure you away from me.”
“Lure me away?”
“Not like that. I know the man. I know how he thinks. He phrased it like he wanted you to do him a favour. You held your own with the old codger, put him in his place, yet here you are. Imagine my shock when I arrived at this house, you were across the room, kissing Russell Grant, the man I travelled here to meet.”
Forever in Your Service Page 12
