The Gryphon Heist

by James R. Hannibal

  thirty-

  two

  SAN PIETRO CATACOMBS

  CAMPIONE D’ITALIA, SWITZERLAND

  TALIA HAD NO INTENTION of lowering her Glock. The young man she had chased into the cathedral reached down and opened his jacket, revealing a shoulder holster, but he didn’t bother drawing the Beretta secured there. If she fired at him, the other two would gun her down. She would duck and turn, firing at those two first, and then make for the cover of the nearest tunnel. She gave herself a seventy-thirty chance, unless the guy behind her was armed as well. In that case, her odds of survival dropped to nil.

  “Signorina, please. Lower the gun.”

  She was out of time. Talia’s finger tightened around her trigger.

  “Don Marco, what is happening in here?” Tyler came walking in through an arch beside the altar, hands spread wide. “I send my protégé in ahead of me, and you greet her with a firing squad?”

  “Your protégé?” The older Italian walked past Talia as if she wasn’t there. “My boys caught her sneaking through the labirinto, and you know how cautious they are.” Broad in both the chest and waist, he clapped Tyler hard on the shoulders, kissed him on both cheeks, and wrapped him in a crushing bear hug. “Adam, il mio angelo custode, my guardian angel, where have you been these last few months, eh?”

  Grunting under the constriction of the hug, Tyler shot Talia a look that said, Put your gun away.

  She hesitated, then made a show of tucking the Glock into the holster at the small of her back. Once her hands were empty, the men to her left and right lowered their Berettas. The one she had chased said something obviously snide in Italian and let his jacket fall closed.

  Talia answered with a frown and a chin lift. “Right. You got me. Good for you.”

  “Please forgive her, Don Marco.” Tyler smoothed out his sport jacket as the Italian released him. “Natalia is often . . . overzealous in her efforts to keep me safe.”

  You wish. Talia didn’t say it out loud, however much she wanted to. She played along with Tyler’s protégé story and positioned herself at his shoulder.

  Don Marco assessed her, raising one half of a snow-white unibrow. “I still struggle to believe that this little topolina is your protégé.”

  Talia didn’t know what topolina meant, but she didn’t take it as a compliment.

  Tyler held out a hand for her to let it go. “She may be small in stature, Don Marco, but she is highly capable.”

  “And yet you and the highly capable mouse have come to me for help.” Don Marco strolled along the pillars, examining their spiraling Latin inscriptions.

  Tyler followed, with Talia keeping pace a step behind. “I need to contact Valkyrie.”

  The don stopped beside the last of the pillars, and Talia thought she caught a tensing of his great shoulders.

  He snapped his fingers.

  The security detail faded back into the tunnels, out of sight.

  Once the three young men were gone, Don Marco spoke, but he kept his eyes on the pillar. “I have kept you two apart for a reason.”

  “I know,” Tyler said, lowering his gaze in a respectful manner Talia had never observed him use before. “But lives are at stake.”

  “How many lives?”

  “Thousands.”

  Finally Don Marco turned. “And so Valkyrie’s life, too, will be at risk. Do you understand what you are asking?”

  Talia opened her mouth to speak, but Tyler touched her arm to quiet her. “I do. And I cannot guarantee Valkyrie’s safety.”

  “I saw you coming. Can you believe that?” Don Marco started walking again, hands clasped behind his back. “This morning in my meditations, I saw you walking toward me out of the shadows with hand outstretched like a begging child. And I swore I would grant whatever you asked.”

  “So you’ll do it? You’ll pass the message, offer Valkyrie the job?”

  Tyler’s question went unanswered for a long while. The don reached the altar and bowed his head. After a time, he raised his eyes to the crucifix and then turned to face the other two. “No message. You want Valkyrie’s help? Then you must ask for it in person.”

  Tyler took a step forward, hand coming out like the begging child the Italian had described. “Don Marco, I have much to do, I can’t—”

  “Those are my terms, Adam.”

  Talia studied the faces of both men, wheels turning. Their whole conversation felt strangely familial.

  “All right,” Tyler said. “Give me a location.”

  “No location. Only a name—Khafra. If that is not enough, then you are not worthy of Valkyrie in the first place.”

  “It is enough.” Tyler squared his shoulders and spoke the words with confidence.

  Talia caught herself chuckling inside. Like he gave you a choice. Despite the eerie setting and the armed men lurking nearby, she was starting to enjoy herself. She liked watching this old gentleman put Tyler in his place.

  Don Marco crossed the chamber to clasp Tyler’s hand. “And you understand that when this is over, you and Valkyrie will come and see me. Together.” He held the hand fast, squeezing a little tighter. “For dinner, of course.”

  Talia watched Tyler swallow. It seemed his throat had gone dry.

  “Of course.”

  After a long hard look, the don released him. “Good.” He snapped his fingers, and the three young men returned. “Then I believe this meeting is over.”

  TALIA AND TYLER WALKED down the grassy hill from the churchyard together. “So . . .” she asked. “Are we going to talk about the fact that we just had a meeting with a mafia don?”

  Tyler was playing on his phone, only half paying attention. “Don Marco is a term of endearment used by the locals, because they often see him praying.”

  “Praying?”

  He sighed and lowered the phone. “This is Il Campione, not Hollywood. Here the term don is used for nobility and priests. In the eyes of his friends, Don Marco is a little of both.”

  A holy man with an armed escort. Right. Talia didn’t press. She had other bones to pick. “You ran off to this meeting without me, Tyler. Why didn’t you want me along?”

  “So you wouldn’t get shot.”

  “By the holy noble’s armed escort?”

  “Correct.” Tyler returned to his phone and kept walking.

  She stopped, dropping her arms and watching him go. “No. It’s more than that. I was getting a family vibe down there, like a father-son thing.”

  Talia didn’t get an answer. Tyler held out an open palm. “Give me the keys to the Alfa. If it has so much as a hairline scratch, I’ll send Brennan a bill, and you can explain what it’s for.”

  She caught up to him and handed over the keys, and he gave her the Tesla keys in exchange.

  “So . . . I can’t touch the Alfa, but I can drive the Tesla home?”

  “No, the Tesla is driving you home.”

  They reached the bottom of the hill, and the Tesla’s door opened of its own accord. Tyler pointed at the flawless white leather. “Sit there. Keep your hands off the wheel, they’re filthy.”

  As she dropped into the driver’s seat, Talia stole a glance at Tyler’s phone. She expected to see the controls for the Tesla. Instead, she saw he’d been running a search for the name Don Marco had given him. “Khafra,” she read out loud. “Sounds Egyptian.”

  “It is.”

  “Okay. Does that mean we’re flying to Cairo to find this Valkyrie?”

  “Nope.” Tyler clicked a link in the search engine and held the phone low so Talia could see what came up—an advertisement for an exhibition at a museum called the Gallerie dell’Accademia. “We’re flying to Venice.”

  Chapter

  thirty-

  three

  CHATEAU TICINO

  CAMPIONE D’ITALIA, SWITZERLAND

  AFTER THE MEETING in the catacombs, Talia and Tyler found Eddie asleep in Mission Control, facedown on the couch with a list of names and faces on the screen—the job li
stings he and Talia had been working on earlier.

  Tyler woke him with a kick to the cushions. “Hey. Where’s my hacker? I don’t see a hacker here.”

  “You’re . . .” Eddie sat up, yawning and stretching. “You’re looking at him.”

  “How’s that, exactly?” Talia asked.

  The geek rubbed the sleep from his eyes and reseated his glasses. “I’ve been inside Avantec’s server rooms—touched the hardware. I know their infrastructure. I’m your guy.”

  “No. You’re not.” Tyler swatted Eddie’s legs out of the way and sat down beside him on the couch. “You have no criminal history. You have no rep. How can I convince our thieves to trust you with their lives when no one’s ever heard of you?”

  “Oh, but they have. Look.”

  Eddie pulled a keyboard from under a couch pillow and police mug shot—Eddie doing his best smolder—came up on the big screen, followed by rap sheets in four languages and a series of articles covering unsolved cybercrimes. He zoomed in on an alias in the English rap sheet and deepened his voice. “I’m Red Leader.”

  Tyler dropped his head into his hands. “And I’m a dead man.”

  “I think Eddie’s right.” Talia scanned the articles on the screen. Her instincts had cringed at Eddie’s fake handle, but using him as the hacker would limit the number of real thieves she and Tyler would have to con. “I vote yes. You’re bringing in Valkyrie. I get Eddie.”

  Tyler lifted his head from his hands and gave her an incredulous look. “We’re not picking kickball teams on a playground.”

  “Take it or leave it.”

  He gritted his teeth and growled, “Fine. Eddie, you’re in. Show me the others.”

  There were four—two options for the high-flying cat burglar, one demolitions expert, and a Scottish pilot built like a professional wrestler. Tyler thrust his chin at the second face in the cat burglar column. “We’ll go with the Australian, Finn.”

  “Ehhhh.” Eddie bobbled his head. “Finn’s okay, but he’s a loner. The other guy, Garrett Mason, works with crews. He’ll be Lukon’s first choice, so he should be ours.”

  “Wrong. Lukon and Mason have a history. Put those two in a room together, only one will walk out alive.”

  This was news to Talia. “Our file on Lukon doesn’t mention Mason.”

  “Then your file is incomplete.” Tyler offered no further explanation. “We grab Finn, leaving the real Lukon no option.” He gave Eddie a commanding nod. “Send Finn a message. Wow him with a dollar figure.”

  “I can’t.” Eddie’s cursor jumped to an empty black space beside CONTACT in the information column. “Like I said, Finn only works for himself, so he doesn’t bother hanging out a digital shingle.”

  Tyler sat back against the couch cushions, crossing his arms. “What about a location?”

  “All I have are rumors.”

  “Good enough.”

  TALIA AND TYLER flew out early the next morning, leaving Eddie to continue his work in Mission Control. His rumors concerning Finn’s location came with a narrow time window, so Venice would have to wait. “Welcome to St. Moritz,” Tyler said, taxiing the Gulfstream clear of a snow-dusted runway, “the highest commercial airfield in Europe.”

  They bought clothing appropriate for the cold at the airport shops and rented a car with studded snow tires. Tyler insisted the vehicle be a BMW, citing no reason for the excess, and paid in cash, promising to send the Agency a bill. Talia answered him with a flat laugh. Brennan would never sign off on the charges.

  After a breakfast in a local café, they drove up into a high-mountain valley on the Swiss-Italian border, well above the last of the misty green pines. Tyler parked on a field of white among a hundred Porsches, Jags, and Aston Martins.

  Talia pulled herself up from the BMW’s passenger seat and looked around at all the extravagant cars. “This is why you wanted a Beamer.”

  “It’s important to blend in, right?”

  A pair of thirteen-thousand-foot peaks rose into the deep blue on either side of them, and light aircraft buzzed overhead. A banner stretching across a makeshift exit from the parking area welcomed them to the Bellavista Glacier Airshow.

  “And speaking of blending in.” Tyler frowned at the snowsuit Talia had chosen from the airport shops. “Why did you have to pick black?”

  “I like black.” Talia let the Beamer’s door fall shut. “And it was cheap.”

  “You look like a cop.”

  Out on the glacier, small packs of wealthy tourists gathered around exotic snow trucks and propeller-driven sleds, and bought hot chocolate from roving vendors. The whole crowd let out a prolonged Oohhh! as Talia and Tyler passed under the welcome banner. She shielded her eyes and looked toward the grandstand to see a pair of biplanes flying low, one inverted above the other, along a runway carved into the top of the glacier. They split up, circled, and touched down, bouncing on oversize tires.

  Tyler whooped and applauded with the rest of the crowd. When Talia did not, he nudged her. “Come on. It’s okay to be impressed. And not just with the aerobatics.” He pointed at the taxiing biplanes with his program. “Those aircraft are feats of mechanical brilliance, highly modified to perform in thin air. Did you know most aerobatic shows take place a thousand feet or more below the altitude of the ice you’re standing on?”

  “And that’s why we’re here, right?” Talia eyed the expensive toys and experimental planes on display. “High-altitude heists are Finn’s specialty. You and Eddie think he’s planning to swipe some special aircraft?”

  “Who said anything about a heist?”

  Tyler raised his eyes to the sky, and Talia followed his gaze, slipping on her special sunglasses to fight off the glare. She saw a glint of silver above the western peak. “Is that . . . a weather balloon?”

  Metal music drowned out Tyler’s answer, blaring from the loudspeakers bracketing the grandstand. Thumping bass and whining electric guitars joined in crescendo while the announcer shouted an introduction.

  “Ladies annnd gentlemen. Like the arctic snow fox, our next guest appears without warning. We hoped he would show, and now he has. I give you . . . Michaellll . . . Fiiiinnnnn!”

  The crescendo ended with a thundering downbeat that threatened to knock the snow from the valley walls.

  The weather balloon exploded.

  Sparks flew from the fireball, and one large piece fell away, trailing red smoke. Fearing it might fall on the spectators, Talia touched her glasses to zoom in. The falling object was no piece of wreckage. It was a man in a silver wingsuit, diving toward the peak. The crowd roared with delight.

  “Finn,” she said under her breath.

  Tyler slapped the rolled-up program against his leg. “You have to give the kid credit. He knows how to make an entrance.”

  The red smoke traced an arc down the snowy face of the mountain. Talia zoomed out again to keep it all in view. “Are you seeing this, Eddie?”

  “I am,” he said through her earpiece. “Hold still. I’m taking a screenshot.”

  “For reference?”

  “No. So I can use it as my wallpaper.”

  The red streak drew closer and closer to the glacier, and still Talia saw no parachute. The crowd let out a collective gasp. At the last possible second, the thief flared his body and threw out a drogue. With a swack, a blue parasail snapped open behind him and he flew down the runway, touching down on short skis and skidding to a stop in a shower of glistening white. The crowd went wild.

  Talia felt bad for the sad little gyrocopter act that followed, because it seemed as if half the grandstand had emptied to get Finn’s autograph—the female half. Getting close to the rock-star jumper was no easy task. She and Tyler worked their way along the rope line, pushing through a mass of pink-and-white snow-bunny suits.

  “Let me do the talking,” Tyler said as they neared the center. “I’m supposed to be Lukon. He has to think I’m in charge.”

  Talia frowned up at him. “Right. Whatever.�
��

  Maybe it was Talia’s smaller size—or maybe she had fewer qualms about shoving giggly rich girls out of her way than Tyler—but she reached Finn first. There he was, at the corner of the grandstand, signing some blonde’s arm with a permanent marker. The ski goggles strapped to his forehead sent his bangs off in wild directions, but that did nothing to detract from his good looks. He had them—Talia couldn’t deny it. And from the way he handled that blonde, she half expected him to unzip the wingsuit and step out wearing a full tuxedo. Finn. Michael Finn.

  Exhausting.

  Talia glanced over her shoulder. Where was Tyler? She wouldn’t wait. Talia put her hands to her mouth and shouted over the giggling and squawking girls. “Hey! Finn!”

  The thief took one look at her and bolted.

  Chapter

  thirty-

  four

  BELLAVISTA GLACIER

  SWISS-ITALIAN BORDER

  FINN’S SILVER WINGSUIT evaporated into the forest of steel and aluminum beneath the stands while screaming girls in pink and white converged to block Talia’s view.

  Tyler strolled up beside her, shaking his head. “I told you to stop looking like a cop.”

  “I don’t look like a cop.”

  “Could’ve fooled him.” Tyler helped Talia duck under the rope and the two jogged along the front of the grandstand. “Finn’s not going anywhere. He can’t run in that wingsuit.”

  Finn, it turned out, was well aware of this. He crawled out through the fabric skirt, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and ridiculous toe shoes and took off at a sprint toward a cordoned-off arena. Three stuntmen on motorcycles with skis for front tires weaved in and out of one another, entertaining the crowd in the dead time between aerial acts. The leader was flying a big French flag. Finn vaulted over the fence and tackled him off his bike.

  The crowd let out a pained Ohh!

  More confident on the ice than Talia, Tyler spit out ahead. He jumped the fence just as Finn got a hand on the empty bike, hooked the thief under the arm, and spun. Finn’s feet went fully skyward before Tyler slammed him down. The crowd reacted with an even bigger Ohhhh!