"Gus!" It came out like "Gueusse,"which only made him hate Lucien even more, every damn time he heard it.
Turning his back to him, Gus set the lock on the door, then walked over to the table. "Anyone out back?" he grunted.
Lucien shook his head rapidly from side to side. "Mais non, mais non, voyons, there is no one here but me." He also had an annoying habit of repeating his faggoty French expressions several times.
Maybe they all did that.
"I wasn't expecting you, you didn't say—"
"Shut the fuck up," Gus spat back. "I've got something for you." He grinned. "Something special."
From beneath his coat, Gus pulled out a paper bag and laid it on the table. He glanced back at the door to make sure they were out of any passerby's sight line and took something out of die bag. It was wrapped in newspaper. He started to unwrap it, looking up at Lucien as he did.
Lucien's mouth opened and his eyes suddenly flared wider as Gus finally brought out the object. It was an elaborate, jewel-encrusted gold cross, around a foot and a half long, breathtaking in its detail.
Gus set it down onto the open newspaper. He heard die hiss as Lucien sucked in his breath.
"Mon dieu, mon dieu." The Frenchman dragged his eyes up to Gus's and all at once die sweat was popping across his narrow forehead. "Jesus, Gus."
Well, he had that right.
He looked down again and, following his example, Gus looked and saw that the newspaper was open at a photo spread of the museum.
"This is from the ..."
"Yeah," Gus smirked. "It's something, isn't it? One of a kind."
Lucien's mouth was twitching. "Non mats, il est completement tare, ce mec. Come on, Gus, I can't touch thus."
It wasn't as if Gus wanted Lucien to touch it, he just needed him to sell it. And he couldn't exactly wait for a bidding war either. For the past six months, Gus had had a seriously bad run at the track.
He had been in the hole before, but never like this, and he had never before been in the hole to the people who were now holding his markers. Throughout pretty much all of his life, since the day he grew taller and heavier than his old man and had beaten die crap out of the drunken bully, people had been afraid of Gus. But right now, for die first time since he was fourteen years old, he knew what it meant to be afraid. The men who held die markers for his gambling debts were in a different league from anyone else he had ever known. They would kill him as readily and as easily as he would step on a roach.
Ironically, the track had also provided him with a way out. It was how he'd met die guy who got him in on the museum job. And now here he was, even though he'd been given clear instructions not to attempt to sell any of his hoard for at least six months.
The hell with that. He needed money and he needed it now.
"Look, don't worry about where it's from, all right," Gus ordered Lucien. "You just work out where it's going and for how much."
Lucien looked like he was about to have a seizure. "Non mats . . . listen to me, Gueusse, this is not possible. It's not possible at all. It's too hot to touch right now, it would be crazy to—"
Gus seized Lucien around the throat and dragged him halfway across the table, which rocked precariously. He thrust his face within an inch of Lucien's. "I don't care if it's thermo-fucking-nuclear," he hissed. "People collect this shit and you know where to find them."
"It's too soon," Lucien's voice squeaked from the pressure around his throat.
Gus let go and the Frenchman dropped back into his seat. "Don't talk to me like I'm some kind of retard," he barked. "It's always gonna be too soon for this shit, there's never gonna be a right time.
So it might as well be now. Besides, you know there's people who'll buy this because of what it is and where it came from. Sick fucks who'll pay a small fortune to be able to jerk off at the idea of having it locked up in their safe. All you have to do is find me one of them and find him fast. And don't even think of trying to dick me on the price. You get ten percent, and ten percent of priceless is nothing to piss on, is it?"
Lucien swallowed, rubbing his neck, then pulled out a taupe silk handkerchief and wiped his face.
His eyes darted around the room nervously, Ms mind clearly taking another tack now. He looked up at Gus and said, "Twenty."
Gus looked at him, bemused. "Lucien,"—he always said it like "loo-shin" just to annoy him
—"you're not growing balls on me all of a sudden now, are you?"
"I am serious. For something like this, it has to be twenty percent. Au moins. I will be taking a big risk on this."
Gus reached out again but this time Lucien was too fast, sliding his chair back so that his neck was out of reach. Instead, Gus calmly took out the Beretta and moved closer, jamming it into Lucien's crotch. "I don't know what you've been snorting, but I'm not really in a negotiating mood here, princess. I've made you a generous offer and all you do is try and take advantage of the situation.
I'm disappointed, man."
"No, look, Gus . . ."
Gus raised his hand and shrugged. "I don't know if you caught the best part on TV that night.
Outside. With the guard. It was something.
And I've still got the blade, you know, and, let me tell ya, I'm kinda getting into that whole Conan shit, you know what I'm saying?"
For a moment, while he let Lucien sweat it, Gus was thinking hard. He knew that, if he had all the time in the world, Lucien's fear of him would work in his favor. But he didn't have all the time in the world. The cross was worth a small fortune, maybe even seven figures, but right now he would take what he could get and be happy about it. The up-front cash he had made by signing on for the museum raid had bought him time; now he needed to get those leeches off his back.
"I'll tell you what," he told Lucien. "Make this worth my while, and I'll go to fifteen."
He saw a flicker in Lucien's weasel eyes. He was hooked.
Lucien opened a drawer and pulled out a small digital camera. He looked up at Gus.
"I need to—"
Gus nodded. "Knock yourself out."
Lucien took a couple of pictures of the cross, clearly doing a mental run through his client list already.
"I'll make some calls," Lucien said. "Give me a few days."
No good. Gus needed die money and the freedom it would give him. He also needed to get out of town for a while until the dust settled around the museum job. All of these things he needed now.
"Uh-uh. It's got to be quick. A couple of days, max."
Once again, he could see something working away behind Lucien's eyes. Probably trying to figure how he could work a deal with a buyer, a fat fee for promising to barter the seller down, even though the seller had already agreed. The slimy little shit. Gus decided that a few months from now, when the time was right, he would really enjoy paying Lucien another visit.
"Come back at six, tomorrow," Lucien said. "No promises, but I'll do my best."
"I know you will." Gus picked up the cross, grabbed a cleaning rag that was lying on Lucien's desk, and wrapped it around the jeweled relic before tucking it into one of the inside pockets of his coat.
He then put the gun into another. "Tomorrow," he said to Lucien, and grinned hu-morlessly before he went out into the street.
Lucien was still shaking as he watched the big man walk all die way to the corner and disappear from sight.
Chapter 10
"You know, I could've done without this right now," Jansson growled as Reilly dropped into a chair across from his boss. Already seated at the table in the assistant director in charge's office at Federal Plaza were Aparo and Amelia Gaines as well as Roger Blackburn, who ran the violent crimes/major offenders task force, and two of Blackburn's assistant special agents in charge.
The complex of four government buildings in lower Manhattan was just a few blocks away from Ground Zero. It housed twenty-five thousand government employees, and was also home to the New York field office of the FBI. Sitting th
ere, Reilly was relieved to be away from the incessant noise in the main work area. In fact, the comparative tranquillity of his boss's private office was just about the only thing about Jansson's job that was even remotely tempting.
As ADIC of the New York field office, Jansson had been shouldering a huge burden over the last few years. All five areas of major concern to the Bureau—drugs and organized crime, violent crime and major offenders, financial crime, foreign counterintelligence, and, the latest black sheep of that odious herd, domestic terrorism—were firing on all cylinders. Jansson certainly seemed built for the task: the man had the imposing bulk of the former football player he was; although beneath his gray hair, his solid face had a detached, distant expression. This didn't throw the people working under him for long, as they quickly learned that one thing, beyond the proverbial death and taxes, was certain: if Jansson was on your side, you could count on him to bulldoze anything that came in your path. If, however, you made the mistake of crossing him, leaving the country was definitely worth considering.
With Jansson being so close to retirement, Reilly could understand why his boss didn't particularly appreciate having his last few months in office complicated by something as high profile as METRAID—the robbery's imaginative new case name. The media had, quite rightly, pounced on the story. This wasn't a routine armed robbery. It was a full-blown raid. Automatic machine-gun fire had raked New York's A-list. The mayor's wife was taken hostage. A man was executed in plain sight; not just shot, but beheaded, and not in a walled courtyard in some Middle Eastern dictatorship, but here, in Manhattan, on Fifth Avenue.
On live television.
Reilly looked from Jansson to the flag and the Bureau insignia on the wall behind him, then back again as the ADIC rested his elbows on his desk and sucked in a barrelful of air.
"I'll make sure I tell those bastards how inconsiderate they've been when we book 'em," Reilly offered.
"You do that," Jansson said as he leaned forward, his intense glare sweeping across the faces of his assembled team. "I don't need to tell you the amount of calls I've gotten on this or from how high up they've come. Tell me where we are and where we're going with it."
Reilly glanced at the others and took the lead.
"Preliminary forensics don't point us in any particular direction. Those guys didn't leave much behind besides shell casings and the horses. The ERT guys are pulling their hair out at having so little to go on."
"For once," Aparo chimed in.
"Anyway, the casings tell us they were packing Ml 1/9 Cobrays and Micro Uzis. Rog, you guys are looking into that, right?"
Blackburn cleared his throat. He was a force of nature who had recently pulled off the dismantling of the biggest heroin distribution network in Harlem, resulting in over two hundred arrests. "Garden variety, obviously. We're going through the motions, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Not on something like this. Can't imagine these boys just bought them off the Web."
Jansson nodded. "What about the horses?"
Reilly picked up. "So far, nothing. Gray and chestnut geldings, pretty common. We're cross-checking them against records of missing horses and chasing down the saddles' points of origin, but again . . ."
"No brands or microchips?"
With over fifty thousand horses stolen each year across the country, the use of identification marks on horses was becoming more and more prevalent. The most popular method was freeze branding, which involved the use of a super-cold branding iron to alter the color-pigment-producing cells, resulting in white hair growing at the brand site, instead of colored hair. The other, less common, method involved using a hypodermic needle to inject a tiny microchip with an identification number programmed into it under the skin of the animal.
"No chips," Reilly replied, "but we're having them scanned again. The chips are so tiny that unless you know exactly where they are, it's not an easy find. Added to the fact that they're usually hidden in less obvious areas to make sure they're still there, if and when a stolen horse is recovered. On die plus side, they did have freeze brands, but they've been branded over and are now unreadable. The lab boys think they may be able to get something by separating the different passes to bring up the original mark."
"What about the outfits and the medieval hardware?" Jansson turned to Amelia Gaines, who had been following up that line of investigation.
"That's going to take more time," she said. "The typical sources for that type of kit are small specialists scattered across the country, especially when it comes to broadswords that are the real thing, not just party props. I think we'll get something here."
"So these guys just disappeared into thin air, is that it?" Jansson was clearly losing patience.
"They must have had cars waiting. There are two exits out of the park not far from where they dumped the horses. We're canvassing for witnesses, but so far, nothing," Aparo confirmed. "Four guys, splitting up, walking out of the park, that time of the evening. It's easy to go unnoticed."
Jansson sat back, nodding quietly, his mind collating the disparate chunks of information and ordering his thoughts. "Who do we like for this? Anyone have a favorite yet?"
Reilly glanced around the table before chiming in. "This one's more complicated. The first thing that pops to mind is a shopping list."
Art thefts, especially when the objects were well known, were often either stolen to order or presold to collectors who wanted to own things, even if they could never allow them to be seen by anyone else. But from the moment he had arrived at the museum, Reilly had pushed this angle to the back of his thinking. Shopping lists almost always went to smart thieves. Riding horseback along Fifth Avenue wasn't the action of smart people. Neither was the mayhem and least of all the execution.
"I think we're all on the same page on this," he continued. "The profilers' prelims also concur.
There's more behind this than just grabbing some priceless relics. You want to get the pieces, you choose a quiet, rainy Wednesday morning, get in before the crowds, pull out your Uzis and grab what you want. Lower visibility, lower risk. Instead, these guys chose the busiest, most heavily guarded moment possible to stage their heist. It's almost like they wanted to taunt us, to embarrass us. Sure, they got the booty, but I think they were also out to make a statement." "What kind of statement?" Jansson asked. Reilly shrugged. "We're working on it." The ADIC turned to Blackburn.
"You guys agree?" Blackburn nodded. "Put it this way. Whoever these guys are, they're heroes on the street. They've taken what all these coked-out jackasses fantasize about when they're plugged into their PlayStations and actually gone out and done it. I'm just hoping they don't start a trend here. But, yeah, I think there's more going on with these guys than cold efficiency." Jansson glanced back at Reilly. "So it looks like it's your baby after all." Reilly looked at him and quiedy nodded.
Baby wasn't exactly the first word that sprung into his mind. It was more like a two-thousand-pound gorilla, and, he mused, it was indeed all his.
***
The meeting was interrupted by the arrival of a slim, unassuming man wearing a brown tweed suit over a clerical collar. Jansson got out of his chair and offered his huge paw to shake the man's hand.
"Monsignor, glad you could make it. Please, have a seat. Everybody, this is Monsignor De Angelis.
I promised the archbishop we'd let him sit in and help out in any way."
Jansson proceeded to introduce De Angelis to the assembled agents. It was highly unusual to allow outsiders in on a meeting as sensitive as this, but the apostolic nuncio, the Vatican's ambassador to the United States, had made enough well-placed phone calls to allow it.
The man was in his late forties, Reilly guessed. He had neatly trimmed dark hair that receded in perfect arcs at the temples, with flecks of silver around the ears. His steel-rimmed spectacles were slighdy smudged, and his manner was affable and quietly unobtrusive as he acknowledged the agents' names and positions.
"Please, don't let me interrupt
," he said as he sat down.
Jansson shook his head slightly, dismissing the thought. "The evidence isn't pointing us anywhere yet, Father. Without wanting to prejudice the matter—and I need to stress that this is purely an airing of ideas and gut feelings at this point—we were kicking around our thoughts about possible candidates for the raid."
"I understand," De Angelis replied.
Jansson turned to Reilly who, although uncomfortable with the idea, continued. He knew he had to bring the monsignor up to speed.
"We were just saying that this is clearly more than just a museum robbery. The way it was carried off, the timing, everything indicated more at play here than a simple armed heist."
De Angelis pursed his lips, absorbing the implications of what was said. "I see."
"The knee-jerk reaction," Reilly continued, "is to point to Muslim fundamentalists, but in this case I'm pretty sure it's way off the mark."
"Why do you think that?" De Angelis asked. "As unfortunate as it may be, they do seem to hate us.
I'm sure you remember the uproar when the museum in Baghdad was looted. The claims of double standards, the blame, the anger . . . That didn't go down too well in the area."
"Believe me, this doesn't fit their M.O.—in fact, it's nowhere close. Their attacks are typically overt; they like to take credit for their actions and they usually favor the kamikaze route. Besides, it would be anathema for any Muslim fundamentalist to wear an outfit with a cross on it." Reilly looked at De Angelis, who seemed to agree. "Of course, we'll look at it. We have to. But I'd put my money on another bunch."
"A bubba job." Jansson was using the politically incorrect shorthand for redneck bombers.
"Much more likely in my opinion," Reilly nodded with a shrug of familiarity. Individual "lone wolf extremists and violent homegrown radicals were as much a part of his daily life as were foreign terrorists.
De Angelis looked lost. "Bubbai'"
The Last Templar ts-1 Page 5
