The Geneva Deception

by James Twining

  ‘How do you know that?’ Allegra asked sharply.

  ‘When you’ve been around as long as I have, you get to hear about most things.’ He winked. ‘Now, I can’t really let you sign it out, but…’ He paused, clearly trying to decide what to do. ‘Wait there.’

  A few moments later there was the sound of bolts being thrown back and the steel door opened. Gambetta stuck his head out into the corridor and, having checked that it was empty, ushered her inside.

  ‘Are you sure I’m allowed to…?’ she began, frowning.

  ‘I won’t tell if you won’t,’ he whispered, as if afraid of being overheard. ‘But I need to show somebody. Are you carrying?’

  ‘Yes.’ She swept her jacket back to reveal the gun holstered to her waist.

  ‘Pick it up on your way out.’ He tapped his desk, the determined look on his face telling her that this was one rule he clearly wasn’t prepared to turn a blind-eye to.

  ‘Of course.’

  The room was divided into five narrow aisles by a series of floor-to-ceiling metal shelving units. Waddling unsteadily, Gambetta led her down the second aisle. Allegra blinked as she followed him, her eyes adjusting to the anaemic glow of the overhead strip lighting that was competing for ceiling space with a snaking mass of heavily lagged water pipes and colour-coded electrical cabling. Even so, she could see that the shelves were crammed with hundreds, if not thousands, of cardboard boxes and plastic evidence bags, each one sealed and diligently identified by a white tag.

  ‘They think that all we do down here all day is sit on our arses and read the paper,’ Gambetta moaned, grabbing hold of a small set of steps and wheeling them ahead of him, one of the wheels juddering noisily on the concrete. ‘They forget that we have to check every piece of evidence in, and every piece out.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Allegra nodded, wondering how on earth he managed to bend down to tie his shoes every day, until she realised that he was wearing slip-ons. Not that that accounted for his socks.

  ‘Most of the time they barely know what the people in their own teams are doing, let alone the other units,’ he called back excitedly over his shoulder. ‘That’s why they missed it.’

  The neon tube above where he had stopped was failing, the light stuttering on and off with a loud buzzing noise, creating a strange strobing effect. Climbing up the steps, he retrieved a box that Allegra could see was marked Cavalli and dated the fifteenth of March.

  ‘It’s the Ricci and Argento cases I’m interested in,’ she reminded him impatiently, but he had already placed the box on the top step and ripped the seal off.

  ‘Three murders in three days. They may have me stuck down here in the dark with the rats and the boiler, but I’m not stupid.’ He tapped the side of his head with a grin.

  ‘Three murders?’ She frowned.

  ‘I left the details on Gallo’s answer machine: Luca Cavalli. A lawyer from Melfi they found hanging from the Ponte Sant’ Angelo with this in one of his pockets -’

  He reached into the box and handed her a clear evidence bag. It contained a small lead disc, the plastic slippery against its dull surface as if it had been coated with a thin layer of oil. And engraved on one side, just about visible in the flickering light, was the outline of two snakes and a clenched fist.

  TWENTY-THREE

  J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI headquarters, Washington DC

  18th March – 10.31 a.m.

  Tom had given them half an hour or so before making his move. Long enough for Ortiz, Stokes and whoever else had been lurking on the other side of the two-way mirror to have dispersed, but not so long for them to feel the need to check up on him again.

  Stepping quickly to the door he flashed Jennifer’s pass through the reader. The device beeped, its light flashing from red to green as the magnetic seal was released. The FBI was good at many things but, as he had suspected, operational efficiency wasn’t one of them. News of Jennifer’s death would still barely have reached the Bureau’s higher grades, let alone filtered down to the foot soldiers who manned the IT and security systems. That gave him a small window of opportunity that would last until someone joined the dots and triggered whatever protocol disabled her access rights and log-ons.

  Tom found himself momentarily clinging to this thought. In a way, it was almost as if she wasn’t really dead yet, kept alive instead in a sort of digital limbo. Not that it would last, he realised with a heavy heart. Soon a remorseless and faceless bureaucracy would see to it that the delicate electronic threads to Jennifer’s life were severed. One by one, bank accounts, driver’s licence, social security number, email addresses would all lapse or be cancelled, each heavy keystroke and deleted file wiping a little more of her from the world, until all that would remain were his fading memories.

  Swallowing hard and trying to clear his head, Tom ripped the fire evacuation instructions off the back of the door and stepped out into a white corridor. Not wanting to appear lost amidst the thin trickle of people making their way along it, he immediately turned to his right and followed the arrows on the map at the top of the laminated sheet towards what looked like the main fire escape stairwell.

  Just before he reached it, however, he came across an open doorway. Glancing inside, he could see that it appeared to be some sort of storeroom – a photocopier idling in the corner, pens, paper and envelopes carefully sorted by type and size stacked on the shelves. More promising was the blue FBI jacket that someone had left hanging over the back of a chair and the internal phone screwed to the wall. Darting inside he slipped the jacket on as a rudimentary disguise, then dialled the operator.

  ‘I’m trying to find Jennifer Browne’s office,’ He explained when the call was answered. ‘She’s normally based in New York with the Art Crime Team, but she’s been spending some time here lately. I wanted to swing by and surprise her.’

  ‘Let’s see,’ the voice came back, her fingernails tap-dancing noisily on her keyboard in the background. ‘Browne, Jennifer. Oh yeah, she’s got her calls diverting to Phil Tucker’s office up on five while he’s on leave.’

  Memorising the room number, Tom slipped back out into the corridor and headed for the stairwell. He knew that this was a long-shot, that the odds of him getting out of this building undetected and with what he needed were slim. But he’d rather take his chances out here, where he at least had some say in the outcome, than sit in a dark room while Jennifer’s killer slipped even further over the horizon. He owed her that at least. He wouldn’t allow her to fade away.

  Clearing the call, the operator immediately dialled another extension.

  ‘Yes, good morning, sir, it’s the switchboard. I’m sorry to bother you, but you asked that we should let you know if anyone asked for the location of Special Agent Browne’s office. Well, someone just did.’

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Headquarters of the Guarda di Finanza, Viale XXI Aprile, Rome

  18th March – 4.36 p.m.

  ‘When was this?’ Allegra asked, returning the bag containing the lead disc with a puzzled frown.

  ‘The fifteenth,’ Gambetta replied, placing it carefully back in the box.

  ‘The fifteenth?’ she shot back incredulously. ‘He died on the fifteenth of March? Are you sure?’

  ‘That’s what it said in the case file,’ he confirmed, looking startled by her reaction. ‘Why?’

  The fifteenth was the Ides of March, the same day that Caesar had been killed over two thousand years before. Cavalli and Ricci’s murders weren’t just linked by the lead disc. They were echoes of each other.

  ‘What was he doing in Rome?’ she asked, ignoring his question.

  ‘He owned a place over in Travestere. Was probably up and down here on business.’

  ‘Who found him?’

  ‘River police on a routine patrol. He was hanging from one of the statues on the bridge – the Angel with the Cross, from what I can remember. Their first thought was that it was a suicide, until some bright spark pointed out that his wrists were
tied behind his back. Not to mention that the rope would have decapitated him if he’d jumped from that height.’

  ‘You mean he was deliberately lowered into the water?’ Allegra asked in a sceptical tone.

  ‘The current there is quite strong. Whoever killed him clearly wanted to draw it out. Make sure he suffered.’

  She detected the same hint of horrified fascination in Gambetta’s voice that she’d noticed in herself when she’d first caught sight of Ricci’s body.

  ‘Why’s the GDF involved? It sounds more like one for the local Questura.’

  ‘It was, until they impounded his Maserati near the Due Ponti metro and found fifty thousand euro in counterfeit notes lining the spare wheel. Anything to do with currency fraud gets referred here.’

  She nodded slowly, her excitement at this unexpected breakthrough tempered by the depressing thought that this was probably going to make an already difficult case even more complicated. Something of her concern must have shown in her face because Gambetta fixed her with a worried look.

  ‘Is everything okay? I hope I haven’t…’

  ‘You did the right thing,’ she reassured him. ‘I’m sure Colonel Gallo will want to come down here in person to thank you.’

  Gambetta beamed, a vain attempt to pull his stomach in and push his chest out making his face flush.

  ‘Do you mind if I have a quick look through the rest of Cavalli’s stuff?’

  ‘Of course not. Here, I’ll move it over there where you can see properly.’ He scooped the box up and led her a short way further down the aisle to where a battered angle-poise lamp decorated with the small stickers found on imported fruit had been arranged on a folding table. ‘That’s better.’

  ‘Much,’ she smiled. ‘You’ve been incredibly -’

  There was a rap against the counter window at the far end of the room. Gambetta placed his fingers against his lips.

  ‘Wait here,’ he whispered conspiratorially. ‘I’ll get rid of them.’

  He lumbered back towards the entrance, leaving Allegra to go through the rest of the contents of the box. Much of it was what you’d expect to find in someone’s pockets: a mobile phone – no longer working – some loose change, reading glasses, a damp box of matches and an empty pack of Marlboro Lights. His wallet, meanwhile, as loaded with the standard everyman paraphernalia of cash, bank cards, identity card and an assortment of disintegrating restaurant receipts.

  There was a nice watch too – round and simple with a white face, elegant black Roman numerals and a scrolling date. Unusually, apart from the Greek letter Gamma engraved on the back of the stainless steel case, it seemed to have no make or logo marked anywhere on it, featuring instead a distinctive bright orange second hand which stood out against the muted background. Finally there was a set of keys – house and car, judging from the Maserati key fob.

  An angry shout made her glance up towards the entrance. Gambetta seemed to be having an argument with the person on the other side of the window, his voice echoing towards her. As she watched, he stepped away from the window, unclipped his keys from his belt, and waved at her to get back.

  Allegra didn’t have to be told what to do. Still clutching Cavalli’s keys, she retreated to the far end of the aisle and hid. Gambetta had done her a favour by letting her in here and the last thing she wanted to do was get him in trouble. Even so, she couldn’t quite resist peering around the edge of the pier as he unbolted the door.

  She never even saw the gun, the rolling echo of the shot’s silenced thump breaking over her like a wave before she’d even realised what was happening. The next thing she knew, Gambetta was staggering back, his arms flailing at his throat, legs buckling like an elephant caught in a poacher’s snare. He swayed unsteadily for a few moments longer, desperately trying to stay on his feet. Then, with a bellow, he crashed to the concrete floor.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  J. Edgar Hoover Building, FBI headquarters, Washington DC

  18th March – 10.37 a.m.

  The fifth floor was much busier than the one he had just come from. Even so, Tom wasn’t worried about being recognised. Of the eight thousand or so people who worked out of this building, he doubted whether any more than five knew who he was. And rather than hinder him, the floor’s bustling, largely open-plan configuration made it easier for him to blend in and move around unchallenged.

  What was immediately clear, however, was that here, news of what had happened last night in Vegas had already spread. There was a strained atmosphere, people going about their usual business with a forced normality, judging from their sombre faces and the irritable edge to their voices. Tom, it seemed, wasn’t the only one who was finding comfort in anger’s rough-hewn arms. And yet, amidst the bitterness, he detected something else in people’s eyes, something unsaid but no less powerfully felt. Relief. Relief that it hadn’t been them. He wondered how many people had called up their wives or boyfriends or children this morning upon hearing what had happened, just to hear the sound of their voice. Just to let them know that they were okay.

  As the operator had suggested, Tom found the room Jennifer had been camping out in the northeastern quadrant of the building. Like all the other offices that lined the perimeter of the floor, it was essentially a glass box, albeit one with a view of 9th Street and a nameplate denoting the identity of its rightful owner – Phil Tucker. Unlike the rooms which flanked it, however, its door was shut and all the blinds drawn in what Tom assumed was a subtle and yet deliberately symbolic mark of respect. Less clear was whether this was a spontaneous reaction to Jennifer’s death or part of some well-defined and yet unwritten mourning ritual that was observed whenever a colleague fell in the line of duty. Either way, it suited him well, concealing him from view once he had satisfied himself that no one was watching him and slipped inside.

  Almost immediately, Tom’s heart sank. Perhaps without realising it until now, he had secretly been hoping to find a bit more of Jennifer here, even though he knew that this had only ever been a very recent and temporary home for her. Instead it boasted a sterile anonymity that was only partly lifted by Tucker’s scattered photographs and random personal trinkets. Then again, he couldn’t help but wonder if Jennifer’s hand wasn’t perhaps present in the clinical symmetry of the pens laid out on the desktop and the ordered stack of files and papers on the bookshelf, that he suspected had probably been littering the floor when she had first taken ownership of the room. And there was no debating who was responsible for the lipstick-smeared rim of the polystyrene cup that was still nestling in the trash. He gave a rueful smile. She had been here, after all. He was a guest, not an intruder.

  The safe was in a cupboard under the bookshelf. With a weary sigh, he saw that it was protected by both a password and voicerecognition software, two red lights glowing ominously over the small input screen. Tricky. Very tricky, unless…He glanced up at her desk hopefully. The light on her phone was glowing red to indicate that somebody had left her a voicemail. With any luck, that also meant that she’d recorded a greeting.

  He picked the phone up and dialled Jennifer’s extension, the second line beeping furiously until it tripped over into the voicemail system.

  ‘You’ve reached Special Agent Jennifer Browne in the FBI’s Art Crime Team…’ Tom’s stomach flipped over at the sound of her voice, as if he’d just gone over a sharp hump in the road. She sounded so close, so real that for a moment it was almost as if…It was no use, he knew. This was an illusion that would dissolve the moment he tried to warp his arms around it. He needed to stay focused. ‘Please leave a message…’

  He replaced the handset. That would do. Now for the password. He bent down and opened each of the desk drawers, guessing that the lipstick on the cup was a sign that Jennifer, for all her refusal to play conventional sexual politics at work, had still occasionally worn make-up. He was right. The third drawer down yielded a small make-up bag and within that, a powder brush.

  Kneeling next to the safe, he gently dus
ted the brush over the keys and then carefully blew away the excess. The result certainly wasn’t good enough to lift prints from, but it did allow him to see which keys had been most recently and heavily used, the powder sticking more thickly to the sweat left there.

  Reading from left to right, this highlighted the letters A, C, R, V, G, I and O. Tom jotted them down in a circle on a piece of paper, knowing that they formed an anagram of some other word, although there was no way of telling how many times each letter had been used. The key was to try and get inside Jennifer’s head. She would have chosen something current, something relevant to what she had been working on. A name, a place, a person…Tom smiled, seeing that the last three letters had given him an obvious clue. G, I, O – Caravaggio, perhaps? He typed the word in and one of the two lights flashed green.

  Reaching the phone down from the desk, he listened to Jennifer’s greeting a few more times to get a feel for the timing of exactly when she said her name. Then, just at the right moment, he placed the handset against the microphone before quickly snatching it away again. The second light flashed green. With a whir, the door sprang open.

  He reached inside and pulled out a handful of files and a stack of surveillance DVDs. Returning the discs to the safe, he flicked through the files, discarding them all apart from one that Jennifer had initialled in her characteristically slanting hand.

  Sitting at the desk, he unsealed the file and scanned through it, quickly recognising in the typed pages and photographs the details of the case that Jennifer had laid out for him on their way to Vegas. The anonymous Customs tip-off. The discovery of the Eileen Gray furniture hidden in the container. The tracing of the container to a warehouse in Queen’s. The raid on the warehouse and the discovery of an Aladdin’s cave of illegally exported antiquities. The panic-stricken dealer’s stumbling confession. A copy of his doodled sketch of the two snakes wrapped around a clenched fist, the symbol of the so-called Delian League that the forensic lab had reconstituted from strips of yellow paper recovered from his shredding bin. Bank statements. An auction catalogue. And, of course, the name provided by the dealer which Jennifer had passed on to the Italian authorities who had rewarded her with an address in Rome and a promise to follow-up: Luca Cavalli, Vicolo de Panieri, Travestere. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.