Heist Society

by Ally Carter

  Her uncle stopped at the door. Marcus was there, waiting silently with his coat.

  "You may go back to school if you wish, Katarina." Uncle Eddie put on his hat as the butler reached for the door. "I'm afraid this is beyond even you now."

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  CHAPTER 13

  K at didn't watch her uncle go. She stayed seated on the couch, vaguely aware of Gabrielle saying something about spending the winter working the ski chalets in Switzerland. She realized at some point that Hale had sent Marcus out for food. She was wondering briefly how he could eat at a time like this, when he turned to her and said, "Well?"

  Kat thought she heard Gabrielle talking on the phone in one of the bedrooms, explaining that she might be arriving in town and "Oh, Sven, you are a flirt. . . ."

  But Uncle Eddie's voice was still echoing in Kat's ears-- It is beyond even you now --resounding with the things he did not say.

  Someone very, very good had gone after Taccone's paintings. Someone very, very connected had known enough to

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  call into play one of the oldest rules of their world.

  Someone very, very greedy had allowed her father to stay alone in Taccone's spotlight.

  Only someone very, very foolish would disobey Uncle Eddie and try to do something about it now.

  That is, if there was anything left to do.

  "You know we could always..." Hale started, but Kat was already up, already moving toward the door.

  "I'll be back. . . ." She stopped and studied Hale. The look in his eyes told her that if her father's safety were something he could have purchased, he would have written her a check, sold his Monet, his Bentley, his soul. She wanted to thank him, to ask why someone like him would choose to be halfway around the world with someone like her.

  But all she choked out was a pitiful, "I'll be back soon." And then she walked away, into the cold.

  Kat wasn't sure how long she'd been gone, or where she was going. Hours passed. The surveillance video Arturo Taccone had given her played in a constant loop in her mind until, finally, she found herself in the doorway of a bakery. She savored the smell of bread and realized that she was hungry. Then, just as suddenly, she realized she wasn't alone.

  "If you die of pneumonia, I'm pretty sure there are at least a dozen guys who'll try to kill me and make it look like an accident."

  Kat studied Hale's reflection in the bakery window. He didn't smile. He didn't scold. He simply handed her a cup of hot chocolate and draped his heavy coat around her shoulders.

  All around them, the snow was falling harder, covering the streets like a blanket--a fresh start. But Kat was an excellent

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  thief; she knew not even an Austrian winter could help them hide their tracks.

  She turned and looked up and down the street. A trolley car ran silently across a cobblestone square. Snowcapped mountains and ornate eighteenth century buildings stretched out in every direction, and Kat felt extraordinarily small in the shadows of the Alps. Especially young in a place so old.

  "What do we do now, Hale?" Kat didn't want to cry. She willed her voice not to crack. "What do we do now?"

  "Uncle Eddie said not to do anything." He placed his arm around her and steered her down the sidewalk. For a second, Kat felt that perhaps her legs had frozen; she'd forgotten how to move. "Do you trust Uncle Eddie?" he asked.

  "Of course. He'd do anything for me."

  Hale stopped. His breath was a foggy, fine mist. "What would he do for your dad?"

  Sometimes it takes an outsider, someone with fresh eyes to see the truth. Standing there, Kat knew that was the question she should have been asking all along. She thought of Uncle Eddie's order and Arturo Taccone's cold eyes.

  Arturo Taccone wasn't going to get his paintings back.

  Arturo Taccone was never going to see his paintings again.

  She brought the cocoa to her lips, but it was too hot. She stared into the swirls of chocolate as the snow fell into her cup, and, in her mind, the video kept playing.

  "We're crazy," Hale said, shivering without his coat. He took her arm, tried to lead her into the shelter of a nearby cafe. But Kat stood staring at the snow as fat flakes melted into her steaming cocoa. Suddenly, she remembered a red door. She recalled playing among stacks of books and sitting quietly on her mother's lap.

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  "What is it?" Hale asked, stepping closer.

  Kat closed her eyes and tried to pretend she was back at Colgan, taking a test. The answer was in a book she'd read, a lecture she'd heard--all she had to do was go into the vault of her mind and steal the truth that lay inside.

  "Kat." Hale tried to break through her concentration. "I said--"

  "Why doesn't Taccone go to the police?" she blurted.

  Hale held his hands out as if the answer should be obvious. And it was. "He doesn't like the police. And he doesn't want them getting their nasty fingerprints all over his pretty pictures."

  "But what if it's more than that?" she prompted. "Why keep them hidden under the moat? Why not have them insured? What if. . ."

  "They aren't really his!"

  Around them, shops were closing for the night. She looked at the darkened windows, still looking for the red door that was hundreds of miles away.

  "Kat--"

  "Warsaw." Church bells began to chime. "We need to go to Warsaw."

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  8 DAYS UNTIL DEADLINE

  WARSAW, POLAND

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  CHAPTER 14

  Abiram Stein was not unaccustomed to teenagers arriving on his doorstep. Most were students, they'd tell him, there to search for a better grade somewhere among his rows of files and stacks of books. A few were treasure seekers, convinced that they had seen a misplaced Renoir or a Rembrandt tucked inside their grandmother's attic and were curious to know what--if any--finder's fee might be coming their way.

  But when he woke to the sound of knocking that Monday morning, he pulled on his robe and moved through the dark house, completely unsure what he might find.

  "Wer ist da?" he said, throwing open the door, expecting to have to squint against the light, but he had misgauged the time. The sun was still too low to shine over the bookstore across the road. "Was wollen Sie? Es ist mal smach

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  ehr fruh," Mr. Stein snapped in his native German.

  The pair of teenagers standing on his stoop wore backpacks like the students, and had nervous, hopeful eyes like the treasure hunters. But Mr. Stein could not determine to which group they belonged. He only knew that his bed upstairs was warm and soft while that stoop was cold and hard, and he was quite certain which one he preferred to see before the sun.

  "Ich entschuldige mich fur die Stunde, Herr Stein."

  The girl spoke German with the faintest hint of an American accent. The boy didn't speak at all.

  More than anything, Mr. Stein wanted to close the door and go back upstairs, but something had taken a hold in him, a curiosity about this girl. And the boy, too, he supposed. Because, of all the backpacks and wide eyes he had seen on his small stoop, none had ever come before the sun.

  "You would prefer English, would you not?" he asked.

  Kat had thought she was using her best German, but the man had placed her accent too easily. Colgan, she feared, might have taken more from her than she knew.

  "I'm fine either way," the girl said, but Mr. Stein nodded at the boy beside her.

  "I believe your companion would not agree."

  Hale yawned. His expression was vacant. And Kat remembered that despite the chauffeurs and private jets, there were some things even Hales could not buy, and a proper night's sleep was one of them.

  "We're sorry for the hour, Mr. Stein," Kat said, her (apparently rusty) German abandoned. "I'm afraid we've just arrived in Warsaw. We would have waited--"

  "Then wait!" the man grumbled, starting
to close the door.

  He may have been sleepy, but Hale was still quick, and he

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  silently leaned against the red door as if he simply needed a way to stay upright.

  "I'm afraid we don't have the time to wait, sir," Kat said.

  "My time is valuable too, fraulein. Almost as valuable as my rest."

  "Of course," Kat said, glancing down. Despite the freezing wind, she pulled her black ski cap from her head. In the glass of the door's small window she saw her hair standing on end, felt the static coursing through her--a charge that had been building for days. She knew answers lay behind that red door. Not all. But some. And she feared that if she turned to walk away now, gripped the metal railing of the stairs, the charge might stop her heart.

  "We have some questions, sir . . . about art." She paused, waiting, but the man merely stared at her with sleepy eyes. Behind him, rows of filing cabinets lined the wall in front of several windows, blocking out the early morning light. Stacks of papers ran through the space like a maze.

  "Try the Smithsonian, pretty American girl," he said with a faint smile. "I'm just a crazy old man with too much time and too few friends."

  "Sir, I was told that you could help me."

  "By whom?" he snapped.

  Hale looked at Kat as if he had the same question. Mr. Stein stepped closer. The first rays of the sun were just peeking over the buildings across the street. They illuminated the features of a small girl with a mane of dark hair, and before she even spoke, he knew what her answer would be.

  "My mother."

  "You look like her," Abiram Stein said, handing Kat a cup of

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  coffee. "You have been told this before, I suspect."

  Kat had often wondered what was more cruel: to so closely resemble a mother who had left too soon, making you equal parts daughter and ghost, or to have nothing of your parent in your features--to be, aesthetically speaking, more than one generation removed. But Kat liked the way Mr. Stein was looking at her. It was different from the way Uncle Eddie seemed to be measuring her against her mother as a thief. It was nothing like the moments when her father seemed startled by her, as if his eyes had mistaken her for his long-lost wife.

  But when Mr. Stein sipped his hot coffee and watched Kat drink hers, he smiled the way he might if he saw a replica of his favorite childhood toy in a shop window--happy that something he loved wasn't entirely gone from the world.

  "I thought you might come to see me again someday," he said after a long silence.

  Beside her, Hale was coming awake, taking in every aspect of Abiram Stein's cluttered existence. "Don't you have a computer?"

  Mr. Stein scoffed. Kat answered for him. "He is the computer."

  Mr. Stein eyed her again and nodded appreciatively.

  "I manage to maintain a good deal of my research"--the older man tapped his head--"in safe places." He leaned on his cluttered desk. "But I have a feeling that my organizational systems are not why you're here."

  "We were traveling and we had some questions--"

  "About art," Mr. Stein said with a roll of his hands, gesturing for Kat to get to the good stuff.

  "And my mother always spoke highly of you."

  "You remember your visit here?" he asked.

  Kat nodded. "My cocoa was too hot, so you opened a

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  window and held the cup outside until it caught some snow-flakes." She smiled at the memory. "I drove my parents crazy for a month after that, refusing to take anything but fresh snow in my hot chocolate."

  Mr. Stein looked as if he wanted to laugh but had forgotten how. "You were so little that day. And so much like your mother. You lost her too soon, Katarina," he said. "We. We all lost her too soon."

  "Thank you. Your work was very important to her."

  "And does your appearance here mean that you've made a discovery relevant to our work together?"

  Kat shook her head. Hale shifted, and she felt his patience wane.

  "Unfortunately, I'm here on another matter."

  The man leaned back in his old wooden chair. "I see. And what sort of matter would this be?"

  Hale glanced at Kat--a quick look with only one translation: Can we trust him? Her reply was a simple: We have to.

  "The kind of matter my mother did when she wasn't researching here. With you."

  Kat had wondered off and on for the past few hours how much of her mother's life Mr. Stein knew about. But the answer, it turned out, was in Abiram Stein's eyes as he smiled. I see.

  "We need to know," Kat went on. "I need to know if these ... mean anything to you."

  Hale reached into his coat pocket and removed five sheets of paper. Five pictures--grainy images from odd angles captured from a piece of video footage. Mr. Stein laid them across the cluttered desk and sat for a long time, whispering quietly in a language Kat didn't understand. For a moment she was sure

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  he had forgotten that she and Hale were even in the room. He studied the images as if they were a deck of cards and he were a fortune-teller, trying to read his own fate.

  "These . . ."he said finally. His voice was sharper as he demanded, "How? Where?"

  "It's ..." Kat stumbled when she realized she had finally met someone to whom she didn't know how to lie.

  Fortunately, Hale never had that problem. "We saw a sort of home movie recently. Those were on it."

  Mr. Stein's eyes grew even wider. "They're together? All in one place?"

  Hale nodded. "We think so. It's a collection we--"

  "This is no collection!" Abiram Stein shouted. "They are prisoners of war."

  Kat thought back to the room hidden beneath a moat, guarded by one of the best security systems in the world, and she knew that he was right. Arturo Taccone had taken five priceless pieces of history and locked them away until the night Visily Romani set them free.

  "Do you know what this is, young man?" Mr. Stein asked Hale, holding up a photo of a painting: a graceful young woman in a pale white dress stood behind a curtain, peering out at a stage.

  "It looks like Degas," Hale answered.

  "It is." Mr. Stein nodded his approval of Kat's choice of companions. "It's called Dancer Waiting in the Wings." The man pushed himself out of his chair and crossed the room to a filing cabinet overrun with books and magazines and creeping plants that draped all the way to the dusty floor. He opened the drawer and removed a folder, brought it back to his desk.

  "I presume you are a well-traveled young man," Mr. Stein

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  stated. "Tell me, have you seen that painting before?" Hale shook his head.

  "That is because no one has seen it in more than half a century." Mr. Stein settled into his hard wooden seat as if he'd used all his energy crossing the room and no longer had the strength to stand. "Johan Schulhoff was a banker in a small but prosperous town near the Austrian border in 1938. He had a lovely daughter. A beautiful wife. A nice home."

  Mr. Stein opened the folder where a photocopy of a family portrait was taped inside. It showed a family of three in their best clothes, smiling their best smiles, while Dancer Waiting in the Wings looked on from the wall behind them.

  "This painting hung in their dining room until the day the Nazis came and took it--and every member of his family--away. None of them was ever seen again." He stared at the photo. Tears gathered in his eyes as he whispered, "Until now."

  Kat thought of her mother, who had sat in this very chair and sifted through these very files but had never come this close to finding something that was all but lost.

  "But you already knew this, didn't you, Katarina?" Mr. Stein asked. He held another photograph for them to see. "This is Renoir's Two Boys Running Through a Field of Haystacks." Kat and Hale leaned closer to the picture of two boys in a hayfield. One boy's hat had blown free and was tumbling through the meadow. They were chasing it.

  "It was commissioned by a wealthy French official and pictures his two sons playing a
t his chateau near Nice. It hung in the oldest son's home in Paris until the German occupation. One of the brothers survived the camps. This"--Mr. Stein stopped to wipe his eyes--"we had feared did not."

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  Kat and Hale sat quietly as Mr. Stein told them about a Vermeer called The Philosopher, and a Rembrandt of the prodigal son. And, if possible, he grew even more serious as he held the final image toward them as carefully as if he were holding the missing masterpiece itself.

  "Do you know this painting, Katarina?"

  "No." Kat's voice cracked.

  "Look closely," he urged again.

  "I don't know it," Kat said, sensing his disappointment.

  "It is called Girl Praying to Saint Nicholas," Mr. Stein said, gazing at the picture again and then at Kat. "It is a long, long way from home."

  Mr. Stein studied Kat closely.

  "Your mother used to sit in that very chair and listen to this old man rant about the lines on maps and laws in books that, even decades later, can stand between right and wrong. Countries with their laws of provenance," he scoffed. "Museums with fake bills of sale."

  Mr. Stein's sadness turned to fervor. "And that is why your mother came to this room.... She told me that sometimes it takes a thief to catch a thief." His eyes shone. "You're going to steal these paintings, aren't you, Katarina?"

  Kat wanted to explain everything, but right then the truth seemed like the crudest thing of all.

  "Mr. Stein." Hale's voice was calm and even. "I'm afraid it's a very long story."

  The man nodded. "I see." He looked at Kat in the way of a man who had long since given up trying to right all the wrongs of the world himself.