Final Offer

by Eva Hudson

  “It is a one-off.”

  “Naturally, but I will try to source you the closest thing. Perhaps you could tell me about it? You are such a valued client, and I am sure I have the contacts to find you something suitable. And there will be no fee. It will be my pleasure to assist you.”

  He lowered his head by the tiniest of increments, a tiny nod of assent. “I would appreciate that. It was a present from a friend. I would not like him to know I did not value his gift.”

  There was something about the way he said ‘friend’ that made Ingrid think the friend was someone who exerted enormous influence over him. And the only person she could think of who could affect Vitali Shevchenko’s life in any meaningful way occupied the big chair in the Kremlin.

  They looked up similar items on her phone—it was Etruscan and rumored to have once been owned by an emperor, though he couldn’t remember which one—and she listened intently to everything he had to say, while Barney moved almost silently about the room, considering the position of each work of art.

  Ten minutes later, Ingrid breathed deeply and rolled the dice. “How are you feeling, Vitali Shevchenko? Would you like to continue? I can come back at your leisure, but we are very lucky to have Barney with us today. I would recommend doing the rehang with him over anyone else in Europe. He is a master.”

  Shevchenko nodded.

  Game on.

  Barney was good, but no one was as good as she had made out. The three of them repositioned his work, leaned the pieces up against walls and furniture, held them up for each other to look at, and agreed on the order in which the pieces would hang.

  “You make a statement when you hang your work with such purpose,” Ingrid said to him. He seemed to like that. “Now there is the small matter of where you should put the Picasso.”

  23

  The rain trickled down the windshield of the van. At five o’clock in the afternoon on the fourth of November, it would be dark anyway, but the heavy clouds cushioning the city made it feel later.

  Ingrid and David Rennie were in a surveillance vehicle parked on the opposite side of Bolton Square from Shevchenko’s mansion, their view partially eclipsed by the Londongrad film crew setting up another shot. Bright arc lights illuminated the house doubling as the home of a fictional oligarch. Actors, or possibly stunt doubles in wet weather gear, repeatedly ran out of the front door and down the steps as the shot was set up. Ingrid tried not to let herself be distracted. Somewhere out there in the mist and the murk was Barry Jones, the thief who promised to retrieve Picasso’s Les Prêteurs d’Argent from one of the most heavily protected properties in London. Correction, the world.

  “So when this all goes tits up over the next few hours—”

  “‘Tits up’?” Rennie asked.

  “A rather brilliant Britishism. When it goes horribly wrong, I am hoping you’ll write in support of my assertion that I always thought this was a lousy idea.”

  Rennie looked up from his book. “It’s all about the size of the prize. Just imagine for one moment that you’re getting the Medal of Freedom from the president.”

  “Which one?”

  “The Medal of—”

  “I meant which president.”

  They fell silent, contemplating the election in four days. The oppressive sounds of the city—tires on wet roads, vibrations from diesel engines, and the incessant, interminable rain on the roof—seeped into the vehicle.

  Ingrid took a glug of water. “Want to bet on how long we’ll be here?”

  “I brought a book, didn’t I?”

  David Rennie, annoyingly, was not a betting man. Which was a little odd, given his passion for all things numbers. She tried to remember what the nerd in the passenger seat had said on his Tinder profile. Skiing. And woodworking. Nothing about reading, yet he was absorbed by his book. She wanted to ask him if he’d had any dates while he’d been in town, but then she’d have to confess to seeing his profile. Heat bloomed in her cheeks: had he seen hers? Then she remembered he’d mentioned a wife, instantly cooling her blushes.

  Ingrid stared out through the mist and drizzle toward Shevchenko’s place, its edges disappearing into the mist. According to her research, the man himself was not in residence—shooting in the Highlands, apparently—and his wife was still in New York. The only family member in the house was Shevchenko’s elderly mother, Irina. Virtually bedridden, she was attended twenty-four seven by private nurses and assistants. She guessed the bulk of Shevchenko’s personal army would travel with him, but Jones would still have to bypass the electronic surveillance.

  Ingrid had done everything she could to help him. Once she had persuaded Shevchenko his drawing room should show entirely Russian art, she had to suggest somewhere else for the Picasso.

  “The great art critic John Berger,” she had told him, “said this painting, almost above all others, is about private enjoyment.” He had called it Picasso ‘at his most masturbatory, the tumescent columns of coins fecund with power,’ but Ingrid couldn’t bring herself to say ‘masturbatory’ in front of a client. “People think this painting is about commerce, about money, but it is actually about the pleasure of money. There is almost a perversion to it. To truly understand it, to feel its potency, one must view it in private, where one’s response is not mediated by the gaze of others.”

  Sometimes she appalled herself with how easily she could spew nonsense about art. But it had worked. The Picasso was now in his dressing room on the fourth floor of the house, away from guests, even away from his wife, but most importantly sequestered from the electronic eye of the CCTV cameras. Now it was all down to Barry Jones.

  Ingrid and Rennie were only on hand to create a distraction if called upon, or to dial 999 if things went spectacularly wrong. “But if you have to call the cops,” Jones had told them, “you can also call the undertaker, cos it’ll kill my reputation.”

  Jones hadn’t explained how he would get the Picasso; in fact, he had refused to on the grounds he had to protect his methods from law enforcement. While she didn’t fault his logic, it meant she had less reason to believe he could pull it off.

  Her phone illuminated in her hand. A text from Carolyn.

  Sorry about today. Will be out of here in the morning. Feeling much better.

  Skepticism pushed one of Ingrid’s eyebrows upwards. She’d believe it when she saw it. Another message came through.

  And I will replace the coffee.

  Maybe the kid was serious. She’d find out in due course. A light went on on the top floor where the staff slept. She nudged Rennie, who glanced up from his book, then returned to his reading.

  “I reckon there must be at least twelve people in the building,” Ingrid said, just to make conversation. “There’ll be a skeletal security crew, several household personnel, plus the nurses and the mother. So closer to fifteen?” She paused to see if Rennie was paying attention. He wasn’t. “How the heck is Jones going to get past all of them while carrying a goddamn painting?”

  After a few minutes of slightly uncomfortable silence, Ingrid ventured back out into conversational waters. “Did I tell you I found Kashlikov, the dead lawyer, on that spider site I was talking about?”

  Rennie didn’t answer.

  “Seems he had the same idea as me. He was in the forums trying to find out how you acquire brown recluses. Guess that means he really didn’t know who killed Yelena Rybkina.”

  “Assuming he was looking after her death and not before.”

  “Duh. Apparently spider smuggling is dead easy. You just put ’em in a box and throw them in your bag. Scanners don’t pick them up. Sniffer dogs can’t smell them. They’re practically the perfect murder weapon.” She took another gulp of water.

  “You drink all that, you’ll only need to pee.”

  What was up with him tonight?

  “What are you reading, anyway?” she asked.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Well, just so long as you know that ‘nothing much’ has
turned you into bad company.”

  He looked up at her. “Really? Shit. That doesn’t bode well.”

  She didn’t understand.

  He flashed her the book he was reading: The America We Deserve by the Democratic candidate Richard Pryce.

  “That’s a surprise. Didn’t think it’d be your sort of thing”

  “Found it in a charity shop for fifty pence. It’s in case he wins.”

  “Marilyn Banner’s twenty points ahead, isn’t she?”

  He shrugged. “Pollsters won’t have a clue how to predict this one if the hackers have gone deep.”

  Ingrid thought about the office sweepstake. She couldn’t remember how many points she’d opted for Banner to win the electoral college by. A bang exploded, the sound waves pulsing through the air.

  “What the hell was that?” Rennie asked.

  They both looked at Shevchenko’s, thinking they’d heard a gunshot, only to see the fading pink sprinkles of a firework in the sky above.

  “Oh yeah,” Ingrid said. “It’s November the fourth. Day before Bonfire Night.”

  Another firework exploded over the roof of the house.

  “Bonfire Night?”

  This would test how much Ingrid had taken on board about British customs in the four years she’d been in the country. “Something to do with a guy named Guy,” she managed.

  Rennie put his book down on the dash and looked at her. “Helpful.”

  “Dunno. Not sure. But years ago, this Guy tried to blow up the Houses of Parliament, and now every year the Brits let off fireworks.”

  “They’re not very good at it,” Rennie said as a third explosive rose and fell with the trajectory of a drunk bouncing off a diving board.

  “That’ll just be someone letting a few off in their garden. There’ll be big displays tomorrow. If I didn’t have a house guest, I’d invite you over to my place.”

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “I have a balcony. More of a roof terrace. Apartment’s not much, but I have this great view over the city. You’d see fireworks going off everywhere from Crystal Palace to Alexandra Palace.”

  He looked at her blankly. Not long ago those place names wouldn’t have meant anything to her either.

  “Neither of them are actual palaces,” she added. “But it’s very Fourth of July. Only cold.”

  “Hopefully they’ll have better weather tomorrow.”

  She looked out at the drizzle. “So tell me about the book. Ominous title.”

  He swiped it from the dash. “It’s old.” He checked inside. “2000. Reads like he was planning a presidential run then.”

  “And does he write better than he speaks?”

  “Well, he’s got a ghostwriter, hasn’t he?”

  Of course Pryce had a ghostwriter. He didn’t give the impression of someone capable of sitting still long enough to read a book let alone write one. She suddenly pictured a sweating, frazzled ghostwriter trailing him across a golf course, permanently holding out a Dictaphone. Something had gone very wrong with the electoral system for him to have ended up being the candidate. A thought hit her: maybe the hacking predated the election. Maybe the Pelicans and Rybkin had also manipulated things so successfully they had effectively appointed their chosen candidates?

  Her swirling thoughts were ripped apart when the street in front of them suddenly lit up.

  A second later the sound waves rocked the van. It was a bomb.

  Ingrid gripped the door handle, ready to help, but gunfire peppered the air.

  “What the fuck?” Rennie said.

  Car alarms activated by the blast burst into life, and two men in dark clothing sprinted across the square.

  Ingrid’s breathing deepened. “It’s the filming,” she said. “Look.”

  A camera mounted on a crane swooped over the running men. The crew huddled motionless under umbrellas.

  “Jesus,” Rennie said, gawping at a burning car. “Don’t they have to give a warning for that kind of thing?”

  Ingrid opened the steamed-up window, filling the van with the ak-ak-ak of the fake gunfight. The live-in guardians at the mansion next to Shevchenko’s leaned out their windows, iPhones in hand, filming the display. An actor screamed and their attention was drawn back to the house just as a body fell from a window onto an inflated mat below. A gunman stood at the window, firing down onto the actors in the square. Ingrid hadn’t taken a breath for several seconds.

  An ambulance, blue lights flashing, siren wailing, whizzed past them, whipping round the square.

  “Is that part of the scene?” Rennie asked.

  The ambulance stopped at a barrier erected by the film crew, preventing traffic down one side of the square. The EMTs opened their doors, grabbed their kit and barged past the security team in hi-vis vests. They ran toward number twenty-six. Shevchenko’s house. Ingrid’s jaw tightened.

  “You think we should do something?” Rennie asked.

  Ingrid wasn’t sure. Maybe those first few fireworks had been cover for gunshots. Maybe the blast had caused Shevchenko’s mother to have a heart attack. Or Jones had been discovered by the security detail.

  They weren’t armed. They didn’t have powers of arrest. Their options were limited.

  “We’re supposed to create a distraction, right?”

  “Um, yup,” Rennie said. “What do you suggest?”

  Her skin froze. A large cold stone turn over inside her belly. This was not good. This was not what they had planned. She had to do something. She grabbed the door handle, but before she could open it, there was a face at the window.

  An angry face.

  Barry Jones’s face.

  Ingrid buzzed the window down further.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked. He had a rectangular package under his arm. “You got it?” Surprise inflected her voice.

  “Yeah, but it got damaged.”

  24

  ONE WEEK LATER

  Ingrid ducked into Marshall’s office on the way to their meeting.

  “How is she?” she asked.

  “I wouldn’t know,” he replied.

  “You’re not speaking to her?”

  Marshall pulled a face.

  “Marshall! She’s your kid sister! Do you even know where she’s living?”

  True to her word, Carolyn had moved out of Ingrid’s apartment, and other than a thank-you card and a packet of coffee, she hadn’t heard from the girl since.

  “Said she was moving in with someone called Lula.” The way Marshall pronounced the name suggested he thought Lula fictional. Or a drag queen. “What kind of name is that?” He picked up a notebook and iPad from his desk. “Shall we?”

  They made their way through the bull pen, now decorated with tattered Thanksgiving decorations, to the elevators. The banks of muted TV monitors were still processing the shock of Richard Pryce’s election victory. For the first few days, the FBI’s role in the result had been sidelined by a parade of pundits, but the need for the news channels to keep feeding the beast meant the scrutiny had started. The significance of Director Leery’s letter to Congress on October 28, and his follow-up letter just two days before the election saying there was no evidence the Banner campaign had used illegal donations, was bringing the Bureau heat. The FBI was supposed to be nonpartisan, to answer to the courts not politicians, so the twenty-four-hour news scavengers were now rightly feasting on the Bureau’s carcass.

  “Would you like me to talk to her?”

  “Nope.” He wasn’t going to elaborate, but realized he’d sounded harsh. “She idolizes you. Talking to you needs to be a reward for good behavior. You don’t give out the chocolate drops until the dog’s rolled over.”

  Did he really compare his sister to a dog? And her to a chocolate drop? They waited for the elevator. Ingrid held back from punching the call button, just to see if Marshall would do it. But he didn’t. She was his junior, and she was female, and that meant pushing a button was beneath him. His petty status games were as unsubt
le as they were infuriating.

  On the second floor, they were shown into briefing room B, where David Rennie was already waiting for them. Two screens on the wall showed connections to the DC and New York offices.

  “Like lambs to the slaughter,” Ingrid said by way of a greeting.

  Rennie gave her a half smile and nodded at Marshall.

  “Any sign of Usher?” Marshall asked.

  Rennie shook his head. Had he lost the power of speech?

  Ingrid and Marshall took their seats just as there was movement on the New York screen.

  “Hey, y’all,” Aslan Demir said. “How’s the news going down over there?”

  None of them knew how to answer.

  “Huge protest outside Pryce Inc headquarters. Republicans are wandering the city like zombies.” He was wearing a fuchsia silk shirt and had sunglasses propped on his head, like he was advertising pina coladas. “Don’t worry, darlings, we survived 9/11. I think the United States of America is big enough and beautiful enough to withstand four years of a President Pryce.”

  Frank Usher appeared on the screen in DC. “How we all doing?” He didn’t wait for a reply before continuing. “Great, so what the hell happened?” He looked like a man found at the side of the road in a state of confusion. Either he hadn’t slept, or he knew his career was over and there was no point in showering and shaving anymore. “In case you don’t realize, things have gone to shit here in the past couple of weeks, so we need to make this little fuckup in London seem as insignificant as an overeager expenses claim, okay?”

  “Yes, sir,” Marshall said.

  “So which one of you incompetent, career-threatening imbeciles wants to go first?” Usher’s tone more weary than combative.

  Everyone looked to Ingrid. Gee, thanks, guys.

  Ingrid pushed up her sleeves and leaned back in her chair. “For the record, I was always skeptical about this plan.” She searched the room but didn’t find any support. “But… it turns out I was unduly pessimistic because Demir’s contact, Barry Jones, did indeed steal the Picasso. The problem is that—”