The Geneva Deception

by James Twining

  ‘I don’t do it for the money, my dear. Not for a long time now. Archaeology is my sickness, my addiction,’ he explained, his eyes shining, his hands conducting an unheard symphony. ‘The thrill of finding a tomb, the smell of a freshly opened chamber, the adrenaline rush as you crawl inside, the fear of being caught…’

  ‘What you do is not archaeology,’ Allegra snapped. ‘It’s rape. You take innocence and corrupt it, turning beauty into a bauble for the rich to decorate their mantelpieces with.’

  ‘I bring history back from the dead,’ he shot back, his face hardening. ‘I restore artefacts from thousands of years of neglect. I provide them with a home. A home where they will go on display and be appreciated, rather than languish in some museum’s basement storeroom. Now tell me, is that rape?’

  The same tired old excuses, the same selfserving justifications.

  ‘What about your basement and the fresco we saw there, hacked into pieces?’ she retorted. ‘Or the fingers ripped from the dead, or the remains of tombs that have been gouged clean like a backstreet abortionist scraping out a womb. Is that archaeology?’

  Contarelli, face now like thunder, eyed her coldly, then turned to face the front.

  ‘Stop the car,’ he ordered the driver tonelessly. ‘We’ll walk from here.’

  FIFTY-TWO

  19th March – 10.31 p.m.

  They had parked at the end of a rutted track and then set out across the fields on foot, Contarelli leading the way, his two men at the rear. One of them had a pair of infra-red binoculars that he held to his face every few minutes to scan the horizon, presumably on the lookout for a possible Carabinieri patrol. Tom and Allegra, meanwhile, had been roped together by their wrists; Tom’s tied behind his back, Allegra’s fixed in front of her so that she could follow behind.

  Contarelli was grasping a spilloni, a long metal spike that he had explained was used to identify a site’s size and entrance. He was still smoking, Tom noted, although he had turned the cigarette around so that the lit end was inside his mouth, to mask its glow when he inhaled. For the same reason no one was using a flashlight, relying instead on the low moon to light their path.

  ‘The most important thing is to be able to read the land,’ Contarelli expounded, having decided, it seemed, to focus all his attention on Tom after Allegra’s outburst. ‘You see how the grass is drier there?’ He pointed out a patch of ground that, as far as Tom could see, didn’t look any different from the rest of the field. ‘The earth above a hollow space has less moisture. And those brambles there -’ he gestured to his right – ‘when they grow tall and yellowish like that, it means that their roots are leaning on a buried wall.’

  Tom nodded, struggling to keep up – Contarelli was proving to be surprisingly nimble over the rough terrain, although unlike Tom he didn’t have to cope with his arms being forced up behind his back every time he stumbled.

  ‘Wild fig trees are a give-away too,’ he continued. ‘And fox and badger tracks can often lead you straight to the entrance.’

  ‘Where are you taking us?’ Tom demanded, the hopelessness of their situation growing with every step. Over this rough ground, roped together, they had no chance of escaping.

  ‘Don De Luca told me you were interested in understanding what we do.’ Contarelli shrugged, turning to face him.

  ‘I think I’ve got the general idea, thanks.’ Tom gave a tight smile. ‘We can make our own way back from here.’

  Contarelli gave one of his booming laughs and strode on, leaving one of his men to prod Tom forward.

  ‘It takes us two nights to break into a tomb normally. On the first night we clear away the entrance and let whatever’s inside oxidise and harden. Then on the second night we come back and take what we can before dawn. Usually I never come back a third time. It’s too risky. But I’ve made an exception for you.’

  He stopped and signalled at someone standing beneath a low hillock covered in trees. The man was leaning wearily on a shovel and had clearly been waiting for them. As they approached him and the dark passage he had uncovered, he waved back, jumping down to greet them.

  ‘It’s an Etruscan burial chamber,’ Allegra breathed.

  Contarelli turned, smiling.

  ‘You see,’ he said with a pained sigh, as if he was wearily scolding a small child. ‘That’s the type of cleverness that’s got you both killed.’

  Before Tom could move, a plastic hood was placed over his head by one of the men standing behind him and he was forced to his knees. Working quickly, they deftly passed a length of duct tape several times around his neck, sealing the bag against his skin.

  He felt himself being lifted and then dragged along the tomb’s short corridor into the Stygian darkness of the burial chamber. Moments later, Allegra was thrown down on to the damp earth next to him, struggling furiously.

  ‘Compliments of Don De Luca,’ Contarelli intoned from somewhere above them, his disembodied voice echoing off the tomb’s domed roof.

  For a few moments Tom could hear nothing apart from the rattle of his own breathing and Allegra’s muffled shouts as her heels scrabbled in the dirt. But then came the muted sound of steel against stone.

  They were filling the entrance in.

  FIFTY-THREE

  19th March – 11.06 p.m.

  They didn’t have long, Tom knew. Each breath used a little more of the oxygen sealed within the bag. He could already feel the plastic rubbing against his face, warm and moist; hear it crinkling every time he inhaled, growing and shrinking like a jellyfish’s pulsing head. In a few minutes the air would all be gone and then the CO2 levels in his blood would rise, shutting down first his brain’s cerebral cortex and then the medulla.

  It was a cruel death – light-headedness, followed by nausea, then unconsciousness. And finally oblivion. But then that was hardly a surprise, given that they were here at the orders of the same man who had, by his own admission, ordered Cavalli to be slowly choked by the Tiber’s strong current and Argento to be partially decapitated and left to bleed out like a slaughtered lamb.

  Lying next to him, Allegra had stopped struggling but was still shouting, using up her air far more quickly than she should. He’d have to get to her first. He shuffled back towards her, feeling for her with his hands, which were still tied behind his back. Touching her arm, he bent forward and pulled himself round with his feet until he made contact with the hood’s slippery surface. She seemed to guess what he was doing, because she went quiet and bent towards him until he was able to feel the outline of her mouth.

  Digging his finger hard into the shallow depression formed between the hard edges of her teeth, he gouged the thick plastic with his nail, weakening its surface until it suddenly gave way. There was a loud whistling noise as Allegra sucked air greedily through the small hole.

  But the effort had cost Tom more than he’d expected. He felt light-headed, almost as if he was floating outside of himself. He didn’t have long before he went under. Thirty seconds at most. He shuffled down, bending his head towards where he guessed Allegra’s hands had been retied behind her back so that she could feel for his mouth. With her longer nails, it took far less time for her to rupture the plastic, the chamber’s stale air tasting sweet to Tom’s starving lungs.

  ‘You okay?’ Tom called through the darkness when his head had cleared, the plastic hood both muffling and amplifying his voice.

  ‘Not really,’ she answered, coughing.

  ‘Where are your hands?’

  Feeling for her wrists, he carefully picked away at the knot, the rope resisting at first, until little by little he was able to loosen it and then undo it completely. Sitting up, Allegra returned the favour. As soon as he was free they felt for each other in the darkness and hugged with relief – relative strangers brought unexpectedly close by the intimacy of fear.

  ‘Which way’s the entrance?’ Tom asked as he broke away and ripped the remainder of the plastic hood from his neck.

  ‘We should be able to
find it if we feel our way along the walls,’ she replied. ‘Perhaps if we…what’s this?’

  A light clicked on, forcing Tom to shield his eyes as it was pointed at him. Allegra snatched it away with an apology. Unless it had fallen from Contarelli’s pocket, it appeared that he had left them a torch. Perhaps he had anticipated that they might free themselves? Perhaps he was trying to help them escape? The thought filled Tom with hope.

  He glanced around excitedly, noting the low domed roof above them and the earthen floor littered with pottery fragments. Lying discarded in the corner was a bundle of rags that Tom suspected marked what was left of the tomb’s original occupant.

  ‘That way -’ Allegra pointed towards the low tunnel that led to the entrance.

  He crawled hopefully down it, but soon found his path blocked. As the shovelling sound earlier had suggested, the entrance had been filled in. And not just with earth, but with a massive stone plug that they must have brought there with this single purpose in mind.

  ‘We should have left the bags on,’ Allegra said in a shaky voice. ‘I’d rather suffocate quickly than starve down here.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about starving,’ Tom said with a grim smile. ‘I’d say we have six hours of air, eight max.’

  ‘That’s reassuring.’ She gave a short laugh, then frowned as her torch picked out a dull metal object lying near the entrance.

  It was a Glock 17. Tom picked it up and checked the magazine. It contained two bullets.

  Contarelli, it seemed, was offering them a way out after all.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Avenue Krieg, Geneva, Switzerland 20th March – 12.02 a.m.

  ‘This can’t be it,’ Dominique whispered.

  Normally Archie would have agreed with her – a half-empty building with a broken lift, shabbycommunal areas, half the light bulbs blown and the name plate hanging loose, certainly didn’t seem to fit with what he’d seen of Faulks. But the porter he’d bribed in the Sotheby’s loading bay had been adamant that this was the right address, floor and suite number for the company who’d sold the Artemis. In fact, he’d proved it.

  ‘He showed me the bloody receipt,’ Archie grunted as he tried to force the final locking pin out of the way. ‘Galleries Dassin is registered here.’

  ‘It just doesn’t feel right,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘We should have spoken to Tom first.’

  ‘I’ve been trying to get him on the blower all day,’ Archie reminded her sharply, his tone reflecting both his irritation at being secondguessed and his concern. It wasn’t like Tom to be out of touch this long. Not deliberately. ‘Besides…’ With a final effort, the pin fell into place and the lock clicked open. ‘…We’re in now. We might as well have a butcher’s.’

  Pulling their masks down over their faces, they slipped inside and gently closed the door behind them. The suite consisted of a large open-plan space with perhaps four desks in it, a small kitchen, a meeting room, and what Archie guessed was the owner or manager’s personal office.

  ‘Still sure this is the right place?’ Dominique whispered as her torch picked out bookcases overflowing with legal and tax reference books, stacks of paperwork secured by treasury tags, filing cabinets, printers and shredders, and a series of insipid paintings of a yacht sailing across the lake. Archie sighed. He hated to admit it, but it looked as though she might be right after all.

  ‘I’ll have a quick shifty in there,’ Archie suggested, nodding towards the manager’s office. ‘You have a look through this lot.’

  The office was dominated by a vast, monolithic desk whose primary purpose could only have been to intimidate anyone standing on the other side of it. Behind this ran thick-set, mahogany shelves loaded with books, photo frames and various stress-busting executive toys. Archie couldn’t help himself but set off the Newton’s Cradle, his eyes dancing to the metronomic click-click-click of the balls as they swung back and forth. Glancing up with a smile, he absent-mindedly picked up one of the photo frames, then frowned. Rather than be confronted by Faulks’s patrician scowl as he had expected, he instead found himself staring at a heavily overweight man in swimming trunks trying to pour himself into a wetsuit.

  Replacing it with a shudder, Archie turned his attention to the two filing cabinets lurking in the corner. Opening the drawers in turn, he walked his fingers along the tabs until he found one marked Galleries Dassin.

  ‘I’ve got something,’ he called in a low voice, carrying it to the entrance. Dominique looked up from where she had been leafing through the papers arranged on one of the desks. ‘Galleries Dassin,’ he read, flicking through a few of the pages. ‘Registered address, 13 Avenue Krieg. That’s here. Fiduciary owner, Jérome Carvel.’ He glanced up at the door and saw the same name picked out on it in black letters. ‘That’s him.’

  ‘What’s a fiduciary owner?’ Dominique asked.

  ‘Someone who deals with all the administrative bollocks, as opposed to the beneficial owner, who calls the shots and makes the serious wonga and who in this particular instance is…’ He’d found a shareholder contract and flipped to the signature page, then looked up with a grim smile. ‘Earl Faulks. Carvel’s a front.’

  ‘Why bother?’

  ‘Fuck knows. But if I had to guess, to hide…’ Archie paused, struck by a thought. ‘Who bought the Artemis again?’

  Dominique had approached the auctioneer after the sale and expressed an interest in buying the statue from its new owner. Sensing the opportunity to make another fee, the auctioneer had volunteered their name and offered to broker the deal.

  ‘It was a commission bid for Xenephon Trading.’

  Archie vanished back inside the office, returning a few moments later clutching another file.

  ‘Xenephon Trading,’ he read. ‘Fiduciary owner, Jérome Carvel. Beneficial owner…Earl Faulks.’ He looked up at her triumphantly.

  ‘He bought it from himself?’ Dominique exclaimed. ‘That makes no sense. Even if he’d negotiated special rates, he’d still be paying six to ten per cent commission on both sides of the deal.’

  ‘Are those the invoices?’ Archie nodded at the sheaf of papers she’d been sorting through.

  ‘Last month’s auction.’ She nodded.

  ‘Any where Xenephon is the buyer?’ Archie went to stand next to her.

  Gripping her torch in one hand and flipping the pages over quickly with the other, she quickly counted them up. ‘There’s one here. Two…three…four…five. And look who’s on the other side of the deal here and here: Galleries Dassin.’

  ‘Who’s Melfi Export?’ Archie tapped his finger on the page with a frown. ‘They show up a lot too.’

  Without waiting for an answer, he disappeared back into the office, returning a few moments later with a third file and a solemn expression.

  ‘Melfi Export. Fiduciary owner, Jérome Carvel. Beneficial owner…Earl Faulks. It’s the same story – he’s selling with one company and buying with another. It makes no sense.’

  ‘He must be getting something out it,’ she pointed out.

  ‘Well, I don’t see what, apart from a shit-load of paperwork.’ He slapped the pile of invoices with a shrug. Dominique turned to him with a smile.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The paperwork. He’s doing it for the paperwork.’

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’

  ‘It’s a laundering scam,’ she said excitedly. ‘First he puts an item up for auction. Then he buys it back under another name. Finally he sells it on to a real buyer, only this time with a manufactured provenance, courtesy of an official auction house invoice and valuation certificate.’

  ‘Maybe not just about provenance,’ Archie said with a slow nod. ‘Arms dealers get around embargoes by selling weapons down a network of shell companies and middlemen, so that by the time the shipment gets to the intended customer, no one can tie the final transaction back to the original seller. It’s called triangulation. Faulks could be pulling
the same stunt here to cover his tracks.’

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Nr Anguillara Sabazia, northwest of Rome 20th March – 1.13 a.m.

  They had both run out of conversation a while ago. Now they were sitting in silence, locked into their own thoughts, hugging their knees for warmth. The torch nestled on the ground between them in a puddle of light, their bodies huddled around it as if to shield it from the wind. Tom had the ominous feeling that once its fragile flame finally expired, they wouldn’t long survive it.

  He’d faced death before, of course. But never with the resigned acceptance and powerlessness he felt now. The walls were rock solid, the floor packed firm, the domed roof unyielding, the entrance sealed. They had no tools, no way of communicating with the outside world, no answers. Nothing except for the two bullets that lay side by side in the torch’s pale wash, like bodies awaiting burial.

  ‘How did you know?’ Allegra’s voice broke the cloying silence.

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘When we first met at Cavalli’s and you handed me the gun,’ she reminded him. ‘How did you know I wouldn’t just shoot you?’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Then why did you trust me?’

  ‘I didn’t.’ He shrugged.

  ‘Then what…?’

  ‘I took the clip out before I gave you the gun.’ Tom grinned. ‘You couldn’t have shot me if you’d wanted to.’

  ‘Why you…’ Allegra’s face broke into a wide smile as she reached across to punch Tom’s shoulder.

  ‘Ow.’ He winced, his arm still bruised from where she’d hit him that morning.

  ‘Still sore from being beaten up by a girl?’ she said, the clear bell of her laughter both unexpected and strangely uplifting in the darkness.

  ‘You landed a couple of lucky shots.’ Tom gave a dismissive shake of his head. ‘Another few seconds and I…’