There was story after story about “PR man Greg Palmer.” He’d been arrested in London, had known links with mobster Joe Russo and was awaiting extradition to the USA.
Cara threw her head back and laughed hard enough to startle not only the backpackers and locals seated at the terminals, but the people who worked out the back of the internet cafe.
An Indonesian man in his sixties popped his head round the door.
‘Natalie, you okay?’
Cara beamed. ‘Sorry Joyo. Something incredible has happened that I never thought I’d live to see.’
Joyo beckoned her. ‘I have it here for you.’
Joyo held the door ajar and she followed him inside the cave-like space. The room was a treasure trove of fake IDs, travel documents and passports, in piles of various nationalities.
Joyo sat down at his desk and pulled out the seat opposite. As Cara sat down, Joyo peered at every last detail on a newly made passport through a jeweller's monocle. Beside him was a high-tech scanner and printer.
‘Irish, okay?’
‘Yeah, Irish is great, thank you.’
‘A thousand dollars as agreed.’ Cara pulled out a wallet of US dollars and counted them out. The forger held each one up to the light.
‘You know I’m pretty good at telling what’s real and what’s fake, don’t you?’ he chuckled. ‘Everything’s in order,’ he said as he passed over the newly created passport.
Cara flicked through the pages. Her picture showed her with her new long bob.
‘Thanks Joyo. Know where I can buy a reconditioned laptop? I need one for my travels.’
Joyo looked up.
‘Right here.’
‘How much?’
‘Three hundred and fifty because it’s you. I throw in my labour for free. Ready for you in an hour.’
‘Thanks,’ Cara said. ‘I’ll be in here,’ she gestured, as she opened the door back into the internet cafe area.
While she was waiting for the laptop, she went back online. Who had Tariq tipped off? If it was Stephen, she wanted to find him again, tell him what it meant to her to have the man who she held responsible for her kidnapping to be behind bars. Where was Stephen now?
She did an internet search and up popped a newspaper article with a photograph of him, in a story from Italy about looted treasures recovered from a tomb. He was smiling broadly, standing next to a pile of old pots, alongside a female colleague.
“The priceless artefacts were recovered in a joint operation with the London Metropolitan Police,” the piece said. Then there was another report, this time about artworks stolen from the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston in the 1990s. Twelve works of art were found in the home of notorious underworld gangster Joe Russo, thanks to another anonymous tip-off.
Cara couldn’t take credit for that one, but nonetheless, felt satisfaction that she had played a small part in stopping evil in its tracks.
Greg Palmer, once the king of spin, would forever more find his name associated with the mafia boss who had committed the world’s biggest art heist. Could life get any better?
‘Natalie, I’ve finished,’ Joyo called.
She walked back in, with a spring in her step. She held out her hand and whispered, ‘Thanks for everything. But I think it’s safe for me to go home now.’
The old forger looked up at her and patted her arm.
‘You stay safe, Natalie,’ Joyo said, gruffly. He turned away, but she’d already seen the tears in his eyes.
Rome, Italy
Paolo climbed down his stepladder, paint pot and brush in hand. ‘What do you think happened to Fat Tony?’
Geppo, who was cleaning his paintbrushes, turned to his nephew. ‘He was too greedy. He got what was coming to him.’
Paolo stared at his uncle. ‘What do you mean?’
Geppo looked straight into his nephew’s eyes.
‘I had nothing to do with it. So don’t ask me again,’ Geppo said.
Paolo was speechless.
‘Why do you think we were offered witness protection and a chance to make a new life in Australia?’
Paolo shook his head. ‘You’re not going, are you? You turned them down.’ He looked at his paint-splattered overalls. ‘For this. Where we make a third of the money we did back then.’
‘I did it for you. To make you proud of your old uncle. We could have taken that offer up but there’d be no going back. We’d be cut off from our old life forever.’
Paolo shot back. ‘You’re not going because you’re scared.’
‘I’m not going because I’d be stuck with you and all that shit about left-wing billionaires and celebrities running the world.’
‘Alright, I get it Uncle.’ Paolo sulked.
‘Get used to it. Come on let’s load the van before we get a parking ticket.’ Geppo started carrying cans of paint through the empty shop and onto the street where a white van with a painted sign, Corri & Nephew Painters and Decorators was parked. He unclicked the doors, which swung open and started loading paint pots and step ladders into the back while Paolo was cleaning up.
‘The dust sheet comes out last,’ Geppo called out.
Paolo yelled back. ‘You don’t have to tell me.’
As they were talking a Lambretta scooter roared around the corner.
Paolo jumped up as he heard the noise. He ran outside.
The driver and the pillion passenger were in full visors and black leathers.
‘Uncle,’ Paolo screamed. ‘Get back.’
Geppo swung around, bewildered.
Paolo grabbed Geppo and pushed him down next to the kerb, with the van between them and the bike riders as the pillion passenger raised a pump-action shotgun and sprayed the van with bullets. The scooter stopped, its engine still running.
Paolo crept around the side of the van, pounced and pushed the scooter over, unseating the two riders. He grabbed the gun.
The gangsters picked themselves up and ran straight into the path of two police cars, sirens blaring which flew around the corner and into the street. There was a screech of tyres as the car in front hit one of the assassins a glancing blow and the other flew over the top and landed on the windscreen of the police car behind.
Geppo sat on the side of the pavement, cowering. Paolo had his arm protectively around his uncle.
‘You saved my life.’
‘I didn’t mean what I said before,’ Paolo said.
‘I know you didn’t, son.’
‘But these guys, they don’t give up.’
Geppo looked at his nephew, tears in his eyes.
‘I’m too old. Australia is for the likes of you. I’ll take my chances.’
‘But, Uncle. You’ll have to run the business on your own.’
Geppo went in for one last hug.
‘I’ll manage. I’m going to sit here and talk to the cops. You better make yourself scarce.’
Paolo was about to say something more. Geppo interrupted him.
‘I know. You don’t have to say it. On your way, kid.’
Paolo turned and called out one last time, ‘watch out for the deep state,’ before he shuffled off sorrowfully through the growing crowd.
London, England
Stephen had chosen the long way round to get to Tottenham Court Road tube, via Soho Square, rather than along the busy main road. He loved the square at this time of year. He had barely been back a couple of days and was still surprised to be fielding calls from daytime TV and chat shows to come in and talk about his part in discovering looted artworks.
He must have been talking too loudly on his phone to the last journalist who called him, as out of the corner of his eye he could see a woman with a bemused expression on her face, looking at him. He finished the call and then rang Tariq.
Headphones jammed into his ears, he walked along, listening to his friend.
‘Can you make your next jaunt closer to home? Where your disabled mate could visit, without having to battle tourists waving sel
fie sticks at every ancient monument?’
Stephen stopped and paused for a moment, leaning against a gap in the railings.
‘Where to next, Steve?’ Tariq asked.
‘Don’t know exactly, yet. Organised crime? People smuggling? I haven’t made up my mind.’
‘The boss gave you a choice?’
‘Reynolds is the one who doesn’t have the choice. I’m officially back in the fold. I didn’t screw up or make her look bad in front of her Europol pals. She even told me I’d finally pulled my head out of my arse, which is as close to a compliment as she’ll ever get.’
As Stephen was talking, he saw in his peripheral vision the same woman who had been looking at him before. He hadn’t noticed she was a cyclist and was now waiting to park her bike in the very spot he was leaning against.
‘Steve, are you there?’
‘Sorry mate, hang on.’
The woman called out, her tone light-hearted.
‘There must be a law against that, isn’t there?’
He recognised her voice in an instant. Stephen tried hard not to stare. She was the right height, around one sixty-five to one seventy centimetres and looked about the right age. But a shoulder-length bob and a fringe? And then there was the bicycle—beige with white tyres and a basket in the front, more suited to carting a baguette and a small dog around a French village than travelling city streets. And her outfit of grey tapered trousers, white shirt and short grey jacket would have drawn a pithy comment from the woman from his past who she resembled, the gamine, spiky-haired courier who always dressed in top-to-toe black.
‘Tariq, can I call you back?’
The cyclist grabbed his phone.
‘Tariq?’ A jolt of electricity shot through Stephen at the sound of her voice. He pictured Tariq’s face on the other end of the line.
‘He wants to speak to you,’ the woman said, passing the phone back. Their hands touched.
‘Am I hearing things?’ Tariq said.
‘No, you heard correctly,’ Stephen said.
‘It’s Natalie, now.’ Cara spoke before Stephen could say her name. ‘I’m back for a few days.’ She paused. ‘And I thought I’d look up a couple of old friends,’ she said with more than a hint of irony.
Before he could ask her back from where, and what was with the new identity, she was reaching for his phone. ‘Here she is again.’
‘Hey Tariq. How’s that office of yours? Are the windows still so dirty you can’t see out of them?’ As she was talking, Stephen thought of the last time he’d seen her, when he’d had to push her onto a plane at Geelong and told her to get herself out of Australia and harm’s way.
‘I’m on my way to Tariq’s as it happens,’ he said as Cara, (he couldn’t get his head around Natalie yet), handed him his phone. ‘Want to come?’
‘Yeah, I’d like that. It’s been too long.’
‘Let’s get a cab. Special occasion and all that.’ As Cara locked up her bike, Stephen glanced down at his phone and saw that Ginny had left a message. His Catholic guilt nagged at him. Not so long ago he’d have called her straight back. He still had work to do there. Elisabetta may have let him off the hook. Ginny wouldn’t be quite so forgiving. He put his phone back in his pocket.
‘You’ve been spying on me?’ Stephen said, his face breaking into a smile.
‘You didn’t make it easy. But then you went and found those missing artefacts and your face was splashed all over the newspapers.’
‘Then we’re even.’
Cara’s face fell.
‘You saw the broadcast?’
‘I wasn’t sure it was you. But I never gave up hope. You know, for Tariq.’
Cara turned away, tears in her eyes.
Stephen fumbled in his pocket for a tissue and passed it to her.
‘It’s grand to have you back.’
Cara dabbed her eyes and smiled at him.
‘Thanks for looking out for me.’
Once they’d flagged down a taxi and were inside, Stephen had a million questions to ask, where she’d been, how she’d coped. He knew that her disappearance had haunted Tariq. Every time they met for a drink she’d come up in the conversation. Although he’d never said it to his face, Tariq blamed him for abandoning Cara. And the guilt Stephen had felt was difficult to bear. But for now, he was grateful that at least Tariq might finally forgive him for that split-second decision back in Australia. She’d survived. And, he realised, so had he. That was all that mattered.
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Acknowledgments
At the end of 2017, when I was living in Boston, I realised this book would never see the light of day, unless I put my hand up and asked for help. I was looking for a mentor to help me shape the novel from the ground up. When I came across Jenny Nash and her book coaching company, Author Accelerator I knew I’d found kindred spirits. I started their intensive coaching programme in 2018 and with the help of book coach Kelly Hartog, came up with a first and final chapter. Once I knew the start and the end, I finally figured out how to get there. Averill Buchanan’s developmental edit helped me shape an early draft; Eden Sharp’s subsequent edit got me over the finish line. My beta reader Stephanie Light saved me from making more embarrassing mistakes. Thanks also to Sarah Carradine for both beta reading and proofreading.
Thank also to Andrew Brown of Design for Writers for his imaginative book cover which perfectly captures the tone of the novel.
About the Author
Lambert Nagle is the pen-name for Alison Ripley Cubitt and Sean Cubitt, co-writers of international thrillers, mystery and crime.
Alison is a former television production executive who worked for Walt Disney and the BBC before pivoting to become a multi-genre author and screenwriter. Her short film drama Waves (with Maciek Pisarek) won the Special Jury Prize, Worldfest, Houston.
Sean’s day job is Professor of Film and Television, University of Melbourne, Australia. He writes about film and media for leading academic publishers.
With six passports between them, they set their books in the far-away places they live and work.
Find us on social media and on our website: https://www.lambertnagle.com
Also by Lambert Nagle
Revolution Earth
Capital Crimes: with a foreword by Peter James
Nighthawks Page 26
