Chasing the White Lion

by James R. Hannibal

  Risky.

  On the plus side, daytime burglary took the break out of breaking and entering. Alarms were shut down for employee movement, especially the alarms on roof access doors in a country like the Czech Republic, where smoking was the national pastime.

  The door opened with the tap and turn of a bump key. Finn adjusted his tie and walked down the steps as if he owned the place. He carried his backpack in plain sight—a young stockbroker with a twenty-first-century briefcase. “I’m in.”

  VAL WENT ON about the gorgeous copper conference table, but Atan fixed his gaze on Talia.

  “Your sister,” he said when Val allowed him to get a word in, “does not say much.”

  “Nat’s the introspective one. Know what I mean?” Val gave her an accusing look. “Ditched me after high school and ran off to a fancy Ivy League school in DC. Got so edumacated she don’t even talk right anymore.” The anymore sounded like any-mo-ah. “But Nat’s my research queen. She traced Kidd’s treasure to that cemetery in Flatbush. And she’s the one who traced the Bavarian Thalers to the Czech Republic.” Val slapped Talia’s arm again. “Nat. Say somethin’. Don’t be rude.”

  Talia swallowed. “I—”

  “See. Introspective. That’s my little Nattie-pie.”

  A second mention of the Bavarian Thalers shifted Atan’s focus. “So, you think you have found Maximillian’s gold.”

  “We don’t think. We know.” Val nudged Talia. “Show him, Nat.”

  The nickname didn’t bother Talia all that much. She had been ribbing Val, but all this nudging and slapping scraped at her patience, character or not. She tried not to growl. “Show him what, Valerie?”

  Val lowered her chin. “The coin, Sis. You know, the one I gave you for safekeeping?”

  Maybe Val’s mind worked on a different level. Or maybe she’d purposely failed to tell Talia the coin she’d flipped across the table on the jet would play a principal role in the con.

  Talia dug the coin out of her purse, grateful she still carried it. The fake gold made a lovely tink as she set it on the copper table.

  Atan’s nostrils flared. “The Duchess Maria?” However ugly and malformed the engraving of the Bohemian duke’s niece-wife looked to Talia, Atan treated it like the image of a beauty queen. He drew a monocle from his breast pocket and held the coin to his eye. “It cannot be.”

  “Oh, it is, sweetums,” Val said. “It most certainly is.”

  He let the monocle fall. “And there are more?”

  “Thousands, Mr. Atan.” Talia kept her diction slow and precise to cover the Ivy League New Yorker backstory Val had given her. “Perhaps tens of thousands, depending on how many coins history and the elements have stripped away. My research confirms Maximillian the Great had at least forty thousand minted.”

  A notion—perhaps a suspicion—seemed to strike the Albanian. He placed the coin on the table. “If you have the location, why do you need my help?”

  “We don’t,” Val said.

  “But . . . you need me to move them, correct?”

  “Ver-ry good. This guy don’t miss a trick, right, Nat.”

  Talia conjured up a smile. “No, he doesn’t.”

  “But, ladies, you could simply report this find—enlist the help of the Czech authorities.”

  Val laughed, ending it with a snort. “Okay, maybe he’s not such a smart cookie after all. Treasure hunters and governments don’t get along, Mr. Atan. Everyone knows this. Take the South African kayaker who found the Boer Krugerrands, for instance. This law-abiding zero finds billions in gold and dutifully reports every penny to the authorities.” She smacked Talia’s arm again. “Nat, tell the man how much the kayaker paddled away with.”

  Talia had never heard of the Boer Krugerrands, but Val had given her a clue—the same way a fortune-teller’s shill passed information. Law-abiding zero. “Nothing,” she said with absolute confidence.

  Atan nodded. “Yes, I followed this affair. A shame.”

  “Same thing happened to us,” Val said. “The press got wind of it, and once the cat was out the bag, the government pounced. State, local, federal. Taxes, fees, tariffs. The Historic Preservation Act. We barely got outta there with our Louis Vuittons.”

  Talia glanced at her, beginning to find the rhythm of her academic-sister-to-the-flamboyant-Brooklyn-girl character. “I don’t wear Louis Vuitton.”

  “Ain’t that the truth.” Val touched Atan’s hand. “The Boer Krugerrands, the Odyssey Pieces of Eight, Kidd’s Gold—when governments get involved, treasure hunters lose. We’re looking to move these coins quietly on multiple continents. You’re our guy for Eastern Europe and Asia.”

  Atan scratched his chin, eyes on the coin.

  Val tapped his hand twice with her finger before drawing back. “You’ll be paid, of course.”

  The hard set of Atan’s jaw worried Talia. Val liked to flirt with the edge of believability to throw off a mark. She might have flirted too much.

  “I keep my collection here in the office,” Atan said, “along with a few tools for authentication. May I take a closer look at your sample?”

  Talia pushed back from the table. “By all means.” Finn had told them he needed less than three minutes to breach the keypad lock on the coin room door. She and Val had given him five. She threw Finn a hint over the comms. “Your coin collection is one of the reasons we came to you. We’d love to see it.”

  Before she finished the statement, her earpiece buzzed with a desperate whisper from the thief. “Negative. Negative. Stall him. I haven’t made the switch.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-

  NINE

  ATAN INVESTMENTS

  PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

  TO FINN’S KNOWLEDGE, no real thief had ever used a Hollywood hacker box—the kind with analog numbers rolling through pass codes at a thousand numbers a second to defeat keypad locks. Sure, a few YouTubers had built working replicas, but such boxes were overkill.

  The keypad lock was the biggest con in the security industry, including its prettier cousin—the biometric lock. Experts called them security theater. Thieves adored them. High-end tumbler and bolt locks were bump key–proof and unpickable. Defeating mechanical cipher locks required a cutting torch. But keypad locks were electric, and therefore vulnerable. To defeat them, a pro need only carry a multi-tool and a stun gun.

  Or so Finn had thought. Atan’s lock shattered this illusion.

  The keypad lock on the coin room door looked like a medium-range model—decent internal shielding but nothing more than a sixty-second job. The hardest part should have been popping off the cover and removing the shielding to get a better hit with the stun gun.

  All keypads appeared inaccessible from the outside. But Finn knew where to look for the hidden screws. He found them behind a piece of aluminum trim, easily pried loose with his flathead. Thirty seconds later, the cover was off and the guts exposed. He checked the hall, pulled the rubber shielding free, and zapped the lock with his stun gun.

  The overload should have triggered the electric motor to throw the bolt, mimicking the result of an electric pulse from the keypad.

  It didn’t.

  The motor whirred and whined, but the bolt never clicked back. Finn tried again. Another whir. More whining. No click. The steel door wouldn’t budge.

  “Huh.”

  Finn knew other ways to defeat a keypad lock or a vault door. None were quiet or left no trace. This job required both. In moments, Atan had to open that door with his own code, believing no one had tampered with it.

  When Talia hinted they were coming, panic set in.

  “I can’t do it.”

  “Talk to me, Finn,” Tyler said. “Is someone in the hall, blocking the way to the door?”

  “Negative. I’m at the door. I can’t beat the lock.”

  A moment of silence. “You . . . what?”

  “This lock has some secondary defense mechanism I’ve never seen. I don’t know the trick.” Voices d
rifted down the hall from the reception desk. Val, in her loud Brooklyn persona, admired the furnishings in Atan’s foyer. She was stalling, clearly tracking Finn’s struggles through the comm chatter. She couldn’t keep it up for long.

  Tyler pulled the plug on him. “Get out of there.”

  “But—”

  “Now, Finn.”

  “Right.” He scrambled to replace the shielding and cover. In the process, he dropped a screw. It vanished into the carpet.

  TALIA HEARD FINN’S FRANTIC BREATHING, followed by a Got it! and the kerchunk of a door closing.

  Trailing Val and Atan, she rounded the corner past the reception desk and walked by his office—which included a king-size bed, complete with zebra-striped duvet.

  Atan winked at Val when she commented on his choice in decor. “What can I say. I am one with my animal instincts.” His leer dropped to her leopard-print pumps.

  Talia wanted to be sick.

  Val laughed and snorted. “Oh, Mr. Atan. You’re so funny.”

  The hallway ahead was empty. Had Finn gone inside the vault?

  Tyler must have had the same thought. “Got what, Finn? Did you beat the lock? Finn, answer me.”

  “Sorry. I’m at the roof. I couldn’t talk in the stairwell. Atan might’ve heard.”

  “Fine. What about the XRF?”

  “Never made the switch. The one he’ll be using is real.”

  As Atan and the girls reached the coin room door, Talia tried another delay tactic. Tyler had insisted the team set the hook tonight, but if Atan spied their fake, they’d lose this whole game in the first round. No Boyd. No Archangel. No Hla Meh. “It’s late, Mr. Atan. I’m sure a man like you has plans for the evening. We can come back in the morning.”

  “Nonsense. You are here now. Let me test the coin. Otherwise, the curiosity will deny me my beauty sleep.”

  His next motion caught her off guard. Atan rested a shoulder against the door and offered an embarrassed smile. “Forgive me. My coin vault is all steel construction, and I made the error of choosing the lowest bidder.” He entered his pass code. The lock whirred and whined until he gave the door a shoulder-check worthy of a hockey team enforcer. The bolt clicked back. “My installer set the door out of plumb. Since the steel wall is a seamless unit, this will cost me thousands to fix.”

  If not for the danger of exposure, Talia might have laughed. Finn, despite all his skill and cockiness, had been defeated by a sticky door.

  The vault was an Aladdin’s cave of silver, copper, and gold. Mostly gold. Val whistled. “Niiiiiice.” Talia could hear real interest in her voice. “Not to tell you your business, Mr. Atan, but one lock and a sketchy vault door ain’t enough to protect a trove like this. You need lasers and such. I’ve got a guy in town right now for this Bavarian Thaler hunt. Australian. Really knows his stuff.” She shot a sidelong glance at Talia. “Most of the time.”

  “I can still hear you,” Finn said over the link. “I’m not laughing.”

  Atan would not be distracted so easily. He brandished the coin. “Let us focus on the task at hand and worry about my security later.”

  The center display case served as Atan’s worktable. Worn coins labeled with dates in the early Roman period sat on velvet pillows inside. But on top, on polished wood trays, were instruments and tools similar to those Darcy and Finn had used in their demonstration.

  “I am a discerning, if not neurotic, collector.” Using a ruler and calipers, Atan took width and diameter measurements. He jotted down his findings on a notepad, then set the thaler on a digital scale and punched in a few numbers, eyeing the readout. “Mmm-hmm. Good.” With casual flair, he let the coin fall down a magnetic slide. “Yes. Very good. But only one test will tell if this gold came from the old Bohemian mines.”

  The XRF gun sat unmolested on its own swiveling stand. Atan waved Val away from the business end. “Step over there, please.” He patted the gun. “The XRF works by displacing electrons at the atomic level. I’d hate to scramble yours. They are so beautifully placed.”

  A quick pull of the trigger, a hum from the XRF, and it was over.

  Atan frowned at the screen. He lifted his gaze to meet Val’s. “Now you have my full attention, Miss Macciano.” He swiveled the XRF so his guests could see the readout.

  GOLD 97.1%.

  If Val was fazed at all by the real analyzer’s positive result, she didn’t show it. “Ninety-seven point one. The percentage found in most Bohemian gold of the period, right, Nat?”

  When Talia didn’t answer, Val prodded her with an elbow. “Earth to Nat. You with us?”

  “Uh . . . Right.” Val had done something—some sleight of hand. How had Talia missed it?

  The conversation went on without her.

  Atan set the XRF on its stand. “I am happy to move these coins for you. Honored, in fact.”

  “Good. Use your contacts here, and in the Far East. Private auctions, quiet and simultaneous so the buyers won’t know there are others on the market. Rarity drives up the price. We play this right and we can pull in more than a million per coin. Your commission is 20 percent, plus one coin for your very own.”

  “Perhaps I misunderstood.” The Albanian gave her a flat and fleeting smile. “I believe you meant to say my commission is 50 percent . . . plus five coins.” He raised a finger. “And I will be present at the dig site when you unearth the duke’s treasure.”

  “Whoa there, horsey.” Val waved her hands. “Nat and I weren’t born yesterday. We give you the dig site, what’s to stop you from sweeping in with a small army and cutting us out?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Your word ain’t enough. But money talks. Our other fences paid well for dig site privileges.”

  “Other fences?” He glanced at Talia. “What other fences?”

  Talia wanted to ask the same question. “Er . . . moving the coins is my sister’s department. She’ll tell you about our other arrangements.”

  Val picked up the coin. “Mr. Atan, we’re moving these babies on a global scale. A guy named Tyler is covering the American end, and we’ve got a Brit covering the UK and Western Europe—last name Smythe.”

  “Malcom Smythe?”

  “Oh good. You know him.”

  “I know of him. Mr. Smythe is a show-off, a press hound in a gaudy waistcoat.” Atan pressed his lips together in distaste. “You are bringing this Willy Wonka of coins to your dig site?”

  “He and Tyler paid half a mil each for the privilege.”

  “Done.”

  Val placed the coin in Talia’s hand, signaling her to put it away, a method of pushing a mark to pursue his goal. “What’s done, Mr. Atan?”

  “Five hundred thousand US. I will wire the money on the way to the site.” But when Val went to shake on the deal, he pulled his hand back. “You have presented one coin while claiming to know the location of thousands. You must have more. Show me.”

  “No problem.” She slapped a fistful of matching coins on the display case.

  The Albanian drew a breath. “Deal. I will prepare your money and make the transfer en route to the dig site.” He pulled out his phone. “All I require is the when and where.”

  Val took the phone, Atan’s hand included, and typed an address into a time slot on his calendar. “Meet us here tomorrow at nine a.m. sharp. We’ll take you to the spot.”

  “That’s it,” Tyler said into the comms. “Good work, team. All of you.”

  All of you. Talia knew that last part was for Finn. She hoped it would help.

  CHAPTER

  THIRTY

  RIVER VLTAVA

  PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC

  MAC PILOTED THE RUNABOUT for the return trip to the castle-slash-baronial-hunting-lodge. The moment he silenced the engines to drift through the stone arch beneath the lodge, Talia lit into Val. “You jeopardized the mission.”

  “You got it all wrong, sweetums. I saved the mission after Finn blew it.”

  “You threw me a curveball
in front of the mark.”

  “You’re overreacting.” The grifter let Mac lift her up to the dock like a stage trapeze, smirking as her leopard-skin pumps alighted on the stones. “I like to keep you on your toes.”

  “The gold coin,” Talia said, climbing out on her own. “You gave it to me fully intending to use it to fool the XRF.”

  “I gave it to you as a plan B, in case Finn dropped the ball.” She pronounced ball as boowall.

  “Would you quit with the accent, Val?”

  “She can’t.” Tyler, seated on a stool beside the van, folded a Czech newspaper. “Val’s maintaining her character for the con. To be honest, you should do the same.”

  Val gave him a wink. “I think she is.”

  “Whatever. She still could’ve told me about Plan B.” Talia walked to the dressing area and checked her hair in the mirror. She no longer liked the new look Val had given her. She preferred the Agency’s way of running games on a mark. Simple. Straightforward. CIA officers coerced, stole, lied, and paid. But they didn’t do drama.

  Val appeared behind her in the reflection. “Fun’s over, sweetums. I’ll take the coin back.”

  “Yeah, okay.” Talia dug the coin out of her pocket, went to place it in the grifter’s waiting palm, then stopped and drew it back. “On second thought, no.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You called me Nat.”

  “So.”

  Talia rolled the coin between her thumb and forefinger, watching how the scalloped edges caught the glow of the mirror’s ring light. She had a new respect for the ugly image of Duchess Maria, knowing her face was real gold with a dash of silver. “You had this thing minted to mimic seventeenth-century Bohemian gold, right?”

  Val canted a hip, maintaining the affectations of a Jersey Shore darling. “Maybe. Why?” Her eyes darted to the thaler. Her shoulder twitched.

  She obviously wanted the coin back for reasons more than she was saying, and Talia wanted to make a point. The whole Nat argument gave her an excuse. Talia dropped the thaler into her purse. “I said you’d pay. Now you have.”