Paris, France
7:00 p.m.
In his long and lucrative career as an art dealer, Pierre Lafontaine had enjoyed many coups, many profitable sales and lucky purchases, but this latest acquisition beat them all.
An oil painting of War, one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by Jan Mertens, a Flemish painter of the 17th century.
Lafontaine stood at a long worktable of scarred wood in the back room of his gallery, which he had closed early. He had just acquired the War painting, and he itched to study it.
So, standing at the worktable amidst various old frames, paintings wrapped for shipping, and some secondary artworks he didn’t have room for in the front room, he studied the high point of his career.
It showed War as a fully armored figure, the visor of his helmet pulled up to reveal a skull instead of a face. He had his arm raised high, preparing to strike with a longsword at a crowd of pleading men and women. All wore wealthy clothing and symbolized the various elites of the day. In front, about to get cut down, was a fat burgher in an ermine cloak. Just behind him cowered his young trophy wife bedecked in jewels. A pot-bellied priest tried to flee, looking over his shoulder in horror at the grim fate sweeping into the scene.
Kneeling on the ground, the only person with his back turned to War, was a scholar. He hunched over a book as if in prayer.
But the book was no Bible or psalter. It was an astronomical text. Tiny stars could be seen on one page, almost too small to make out with Lafontaine’s age-weakened eyes.
Lafontaine was seventy-five years old, and if his eyes weren’t what they had once been, his mind was as sharp as ever. He knew the book was the key.
Pulling out a powerful magnifying glass and switching on a spot lamp, he bent over the painting, peering at the tiny page.
“Yes, yes. Of course,” he murmured. “Why didn’t I think of it before?”
Yes, the book was the key.
Or one part of the key. This was one of four paintings, all done by different Flemish artists. Four friends who had each painted one-fourth of the puzzle for the same wealthy client.
A puzzle he would solve.
Because he knew where at least one other painting was. He would leave in the morning to get it.
The sound of movement at the doorway to the front room did not make him look up.
“Your tea, sir,” his assistant Guillaume said.
“Set it on the side table,” Lafontaine said, still peering through his magnifying glass.
Tea? This calls for champagne!
Still studying, he heard Guillaume leave. Then there was a thud from the front room. Lafontaine shook his head. Guillaume was a sharp student, but a bit clumsy.
He heard footsteps at the door again.
“What did you bump into this time, Guillaume?” Lafontaine grumbled. “Nothing valuable, I hope.”
“Step away from the painting.”
This command came in English, a language Lafontaine did not speak well.
It took him a second to process it. Then, with a chill running through his body, he looked up.
A man stood in the doorway wearing a full suit of armor, a sword gripped in his left hand. He lifted his visor up to reveal a face twisted with rage.
“Step away from the painting,” he said again.
Lafontaine did as he was told, raising his hands to calm the man.
“Guillaume!” he cried in a shaky voice.
The intruder gave him a smug smile and shook his head.
Lafontaine tried to remember his English.
“I … have money. In the, um, box. I give thousands.”
The man clanked toward him.
“Wait! No! I give money.”
The man in the suit of armor raised his sword up high.
Lafontaine turned and ran. There was no back door in this room, but there was a bathroom. Maybe if he barred himself inside, he could hold off this maniac until help came. Guillaume, if he was still alive, must be out on the street screaming for the police this very instant.
The clanking behind him grew in pace. While the maniac looked half his age, the armor slowed him down and terror sped Lafontaine up.
He got to the bathroom, slammed the door behind him, and put the ridiculously tiny metal hook through the eye on the doorframe to lock it.
Then he backed up to the far wall, only a couple of steps away. He reached for the mobile phone in his pocket to call the police, only to remember he had left it on his desk.
Lafontaine stared at the door, ears straining.
For a moment, silence.
Then the door cracked as the top half of the sword blade bit through the flimsy wood.
Lafontaine screamed. The madman wrenched the sword free, taking a large hunk of the door with it, then hacked at it again.
The door splintered, allowing enough room for the killer to bend over and step through.
Still screaming, Lafontaine picked up a ceramic soap dish and threw it with all his might.
It shattered on the metal helmet.
In the enclosed space of the bathroom, the killer didn’t have room to swing his sword. Instead, he jabbed Lafontaine in the stomach.
The art dealer gasped as the cold steel sunk several inches into his middle.
The killer yanked it free. Lafontaine slumped against the sink, holding his gut, eyes half closed as he groaned in pain.
He didn’t even see the next stab, which got him in the side.
Lafontaine’s knees buckled, flashing with pain as they hit the tile floor. The killer stepped back as far as he could, reversed the sword, and jabbed down.
The blade bit into Lafontaine’s neck.
His head spun. The pain began to recede as the room around him grew dim. Lafontaine fell flat on the floor, and his last vision in this life was of the killer stepping through the hole in the door and walking out of sight.