Wanted (Leopold Blake Series) Page 3

  A timid hand rose slowly at the back of the room.

  “Yes?”

  The hand’s owner, a small, mousy woman with thick spectacles, stood up. “There are hundreds of employees who might have access to any area of the collections,” she said. “Why ask only us to the meeting?”

  “Good question,” said Leopold. “Director Dubois informs me that your division is most likely to personally interact with the artwork, so naturally I wanted to get your feedback first. I understand the restoration department, the acquisitions team, and the archive group are all here?”

  A few members of the audience nodded.

  “Would the senior managers from each department please raise their hands?” asked Leopold.

  Four hands shot up in the air.

  “Excellent. Tell me, when was the last time anything was stolen from the museum’s collections?”

  One of the managers got to his feet, a balding man with a crumpled suit and a gray goatee.

  “Nothing has been stolen from the Louvre for over a century,” he announced, his accent German. “Not since the Mona Lisa debacle forced us to lock her up behind bulletproof glass. This is a secure facility, Mr. Blake. You should not come here and accuse us of being incompetent.”

  Taking a step forward, Leopold met the man’s stare and raised his palms. “Believe me, accusing you of anything is the last thing I would want to do. I only want to use your expertise to help improve security, nothing more. I’m sure all you fine people only want to help make your nation’s prized collections just a little bit safer.”

  The manager sat back down. “What do you want us to do?”

  “This is the fun part,” Leopold replied, smiling. “I want you to tell me how you would steal something from this museum, and exactly how you would expect to get away with it.”

  After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, several hands flew into the air at once and Leopold listened to his audience’s suggestions. Most of the ideas were too outlandish to reveal any useful leads, including one proposal that a would-be thief might simply swap out the real painting for a print from the gift shop while nobody was looking.

  After twenty minutes, Leopold gave up. “Okay, okay, I think I’ve heard enough for now. There were some great ideas today, which I’ll be sure to include in my upcoming report.”

  “Will we get to read it?” asked the mousy woman, getting up from her seat again. “Or maybe we could act it out, non? We could form a team, and try to steal something ourselves?” She was practically bouncing up and down with excitement.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Leopold. “I have everything I need for the time being. Merci, tout le monde, for all your help. You can get back to work now.” He gestured toward the door.

  With a groan of disappointment, the employees got to their feet and shuffled out the main doors back to their offices. Once alone, Leopold took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and rubbed his temples.

  As a plan began to form in the back of his mind, the consultant felt a heavy weight on his shoulder. Turning, he looked up into the eyes of an impossibly tall man, dressed in a well-tailored suit almost as dark as his coal-black skin. Despite the excellent cut of the jacket, Leopold could make out the outline of a handgun holstered to the man’s ribs.

  “Dammit, Jerome. I told you not to sneak up on me when I’m thinking,” said Leopold, trying to recover his train of thought. You’re paid to be my bodyguard. You don’t get a fat paycheck every month in return for giving me a heart attack.”

  Jerome smiled. “It’s all part of my training program. Find out anything useful?”

  “Maybe. While this particular group might not be master criminals in the making, they did offer some insight into how the museum handles its more valuable pieces.”

  “Such as?”

  “The most important works, like the Mona Lisa, for example, are visually inspected at the beginning and end of each day for damage. The painting in question, ‘The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne’, is inspected once every week.”

  “One of the inspection teams is responsible?”

  “No, that would be too obvious. Although I’m sure the French police will want to question them, I’m certain they weren’t the ones to make the switch. The real importance of the inspection schedules is that the thief must have known the counterfeit would have been discovered at the next check. After all, the difference in the color palette is quite obvious to anyone familiar with the story behind the botched restoration, which the inspection teams are sure to be.”

  “Meaning that whoever stole the original knew they’d get found out eventually?”

  “Exactly. And, as I said to the director, this has to be an inside job,” said Leopold, starting to move toward the exit. “And anyone working for the museum will want this whole affair to stay under the radar for as long as possible, which can only mean one thing.”

  “Always one for the dramatic, aren’t you?” said Jerome, following his employer through the doors and into the corridor. “And what does it mean?”

  “That the thief was planning to switch out the counterfeit painting with a more up to date knock off. One that the inspection team wouldn’t notice is a fake.”

  “Let me guess; you’ve got a plan to track this person down?”

  “It’s quite simple. At least, it is now I’ve had chance to think. All we need to do is figure out who would routinely come into contact this particular piece while unsupervised and we’ve got enough evidence to start asking questions.”

  “Are you going straight to the police with this?”

  “My contract is with the Musée du Louvre,” said Leopold. “They can decide what to do with the information. I need to speak to the human resources department first, and then I’ll give the director a call with my recommendations. Hopefully he’ll be finished with his lunch date soon.”

  The bodyguard stepped up the pace a little and the pair hit the main lobby, illuminated from above by the sunshine streaming through the enormous glass pyramid that formed part of the museum’s roof. After a muted conversation with one of the reception desk employees, the two men set off in the direction of the personnel offices, weaving their way though the tourists toward the HR department at the far end of the east wing.

  “Looks like I’ve got some signal,” announced Leopold, inspecting his cell phone as they crossed the cavernous atrium. “But the director’s not picking up. We’re on our own for now.”

  Jerome smiled as they passed through the reception area and into another long corridor. “Just the way you like it,” he said, closing the door behind him.

  SEVEN

  Jean Dubois had forged a respectable career in the Paris art community over his forty two years in the business, and he was damned if he was going to let today’s slipup tarnish his legacy. Something about the American consultant’s sudden appearance just didn’t sit right with him – after all, the museum hadn’t run into issues for decades and Dubois couldn’t fathom why the Louvre chairman would think some foreign stranger would know any better. The whole thing stank to high heaven, but, fortunately, the Musée du Louvre’s ill-conceived bumblings wouldn’t be his problem for much longer.

  Having failed to flag down a taxi during the lunch time rush, Dubois resigned himself to taking the metro. Now, crammed into one of the city’s many underground trains, the old director kept his eyes down and tried not to breathe in the stale, sweaty air as the carriage rumbled through the tunnels beneath the Le quai de l'Hôtel-de-Ville.

  Glancing at his watch, he tried to keep himself from panicking. This is not the time to be late, he thought to himself as the train rounded a corner and forced him up against the window. Not today. Not with everything that’s going on.

  The news had come through only weeks earlier. The board of directors had voted in favor of Dubois’ retirement at the end of the year, a move that forced him to reconsider his plans. The state pension from the French government was hardly enough to keep the old man in the
lifestyle he had grown accustomed to, so drastic action would be needed to pad out his portfolio. And if that weren’t enough, the American’s recent discovery would cause an uproar once the news hit the national media. Dubois wasn’t so naïve to think he’d escape the lion’s share of the blame, meaning there was a strong chance he would find himself forced to resign, cutting his retirement funds even further.

  They always need a scapegoat, he mused, bitterly.

  Still, after his lunch meeting, things would start to look a little better. The director gripped the handrail a little tighter as the train rattled through a particularly dark tunnel before squealing to a halt at the Saint Michel – Notre Dame station. He shuffled his way through the packed carriage toward the doors, which slid open with a reluctant groan. Stepping out onto the busy platform, he dodged his way through the station with a renewed sense of urgency.

  As he reached the concrete steps that led up to the main road, Dubois took a moment to compose himself before following the crowd up the stairs. Out on the streets, the director could make out the twin towers of Notre Dame Cathedral just a few hundred feet away, reaching up beyond a line of tall trees. Dubois stepped out onto the sidewalk and made a beeline for the plaza, where his meeting companions would no doubt be waiting for him.

  Glancing down at his watch once again, the old man saw something from the corner of his eye. He squinted up at the cathedral, noticing a glimmer of light at the top of one of the towers, a tiny pinprick of light that was nonetheless bright enough to draw his attention.

  What the hell?

  As the high velocity round passed through his skull, Dubois experienced only a nanosecond of regret before his life vanished into blackness.

  EIGHT

   

  The recoil from the .338 Lapua Magnum round was mostly absorbed by the rifle’s sturdy seventeen pound frame, but Reiniger could still feel the kick as the bullet tore out of the muzzle at three times the speed of sound. Within seconds of his first target hitting the floor, the panic had already started – meaning his next shots would be all the more difficult to make in the noise and commotion.

  From his position at the top of the cathedral, Reiniger had a decent view of the plaza below and the metro station’s subterranean stairwell a little further beyond. Taking a split second to catch his breath, the assassin peered through the scope for a second time and located his next target; a middle-aged woman wearing a frumpy summer top who was screaming at the top of her lungs next to the corpse of the first victim.

  Allowing the air to leave his lungs in a slow, controlled exhale, Reiniger lined up his shot and felt himself moving in precise rhythm with the woman, feeling her movements curse through his body as though they were his own. He caressed the trigger and felt a jolt in his shoulder as the round left his weapon. Almost instantly, he saw the frumpy woman’s head explode in a shower of crimson, her lifeless body twirling in mid-air before hitting the sidewalk.

  Shutting out the noise of the crowd two hundred feet below him, Reiniger reloaded the bolt action AX338 in one quick, smooth motion, sliding a fresh round into the chamber. Through the scope, he saw his next target emerge from the station stairwell, bobbing up and down as he walked. The man wore a cheap suit and his face dropped to the floor as he stepped out into the sunshine. With a careful breath, Reiniger ended his life with a gentle squeeze of the trigger. The target buckled as the bullet tore through his chest and punched a hole in his abdomen the size of a basketball. Next, Reiniger felled a Japanese tourist who tried to run away. He hit the mark squarely in the neck, almost severing the man’s head from his shoulders.

  Ignoring a policeman who had sprinted onto the scene – it was always a bad idea to kill a cop – Reiniger spotted his final target emerge from the staircase, a skinny woman dressed in expensive clothes. He made the shot and she hit the ground hard, dead before she even realized what was happening. The assassin had brought his total to five kills in less than a minute.

  Without pausing to observe the chaos, Reiniger wiped down the rifle with a rag and a squirt of ethanol before disassembling the weapon and zipping it up in the carry case. He repeated the cleanup job on his luggage, making sure to thoroughly scrub his DNA from every surface. Satisfied any trace of him had been removed, the German pulled a small metallic case from his pocket and opened the clasp to reveal a thin strip of transparent film. Holding the strip up to the sunlight, Reiniger could see the fingerprint branded onto the plastic. He knelt down next to the abandoned rifle and pressed the strip against one of the smoother pieces of stonework, hoping the porous surface would allow for a satisfactory impression. 

  With no time to inspect his work, Reiniger dashed across the roof of the tower and through the makeshift entryway into the cathedral’s interior, making his way down the stairs to the belfry with the rifle case slung over his shoulder. He descended into the bell tower and caught the scent of old timber and iron as the cool air hit his nose. Thankful that the tour groups were restricted to the other tower, the assassin strode quickly and silently across the dusty floor toward the main stairs that led down to ground level, keeping his eyes locked ahead as he went.

  His heart rate barely elevated, Reiniger reached the spectacular main hall in a little over thirty seconds, glad that his level of fitness kept him from looking out of breath. Ignoring the cathedral employees urging everyone to stay inside, the assassin strode toward the main doors and stepped out into the hot sun, keeping his eyes down. He wove in and out of the panicked crowd of tourists toward the Rue du Cloître, a quiet road that ran parallel to the cathedral.

  The street was deserted, as expected, the majority of the pedestrians having run in the direction of the commotion – a human trait that Reiniger had never quite understood. The assassin kept moving, putting as much distance between him and the commotion as he could without breaking into a run.

  “Arrêtez!” a voice shouted from somewhere behind him as he reached a shadier part of the road.

  Reiniger slowed his pace and turned his head to see a policeman running in his direction, the same policeman he had seen in the rifle scope minutes earlier.

  “Ou allez vous?” the cop demanded as he drew close: where are you going?

  Reiniger noticed the policeman was unarmed, but he was wearing a radio. “You speak English?” the assassin asked, attempting to hide his German accent. He eyed the policeman’s name tag, which read “Laurent.”

  The cop nodded. “Oui. Please stop walking, sir. I need to ask you to come with me please.”

  “I’m late for a lunch meeting, I’m afraid I need to be on my way. What’s this all about?”

  “Most people are trying to see what is going on, and you’re worried about a lunch appointment? And what is that?” Officer Laurent pointed to the black carry case.

  “Nothing important.”

  “I’ll need to see your I.D. please.”

  “I don’t have any on me, I’m sorry.”

  “Then you will need to come with me to the station. I can’t have –”

  Officer Laurent never had a chance to finish his sentence. With practised speed, the assassin whipped out the KA-BAR clippoint knife hidden beneath his jacket and drove the steel blade into policeman’s throat, twisting the handle as he withdrew. Reiniger wasted no time in shoving the cop into the bushes before the arterial blood could start spurting. Laurent’s body fell silently through the foliage, hitting the soil with a muffled thump as Reiniger slipped the knife back to its sheath.

  Glancing around to make sure nobody was watching, the assassin checked his clothes for any blood spatter and started walking once again, keen to get out of sight as quickly as possible. At the end of the block, Reiniger spotted his car – a black VW Passat with tinted windows and a fake license plate.

  Climbing into the driver’s seat, the assassin started the engine and rolled the car out onto the Rue du Cloître, keeping the speed under thirty. Reiniger crossed the nearby bridge onto Île Saint-Louis and soon found himself cruis
ing along the main highway that led toward Charles de Gaulle Airport, a thirty minute drive away. As the dominating view of the cathedral recessed into the distance, Reiniger allowed himself a flicker of a smile.

  Just one more loose end to tie up.

  NINE

   

  The scruffy Montmartre backstreets were overlooked by the white dome of the Basilica of the Sacré Cœur, which sat atop the highest point in the whole of Paris. Most of the summer crowds were milling around the grassy lawns at the base of the hill, while others sat on the steps, taking advantage of the sunshine and fresh air while they finished their packed lunches and watched their children run up and down the stairs.

  Leopold and Jerome trekked deeper into the trendy neighborhood, grateful for the cool shade offered by the terraced apartment buildings. Most of the architecture was old, slightly worn, but nonetheless possessing a charm that was unique to the French capital.

  “It should be just up here,” said Jerome, inspecting the GPS display on his cell phone. “Less than a minute’s walk.”

  The discussion with the personnel department at the Louvre had been quicker than Leopold had expected, and the information they needed had been handed over without much fuss. Apparently, namedropping director Dubois opened a lot of doors. Having an armed bodyguard along for the ride didn’t hurt, either. The clerk had printed out a short list of names based on the consultant’s criteria, and Leopold had picked the most likely match: an employee with the art restoration department who had called in sick for the last few days.

  “We’re looking for the number nineteen,” said Leopold, wiping his brow with the back of his sleeve. “Apartment number three.”

  “Sophie Bardot,” nodded Jerome. “We got a picture?”

  “No, the clerk only printed out the name and address. If she doesn’t answer, we’ll camp out and wait for her.” He pointed at a café a little further down the street, nestled on the corner with the familiar Parisian canopy and outdoor chairs.