Four

With the help of an internet search, it took less than twenty minutes to translate the note. Finn ordered their usual beef with broccoli, chicken cashew, and steamed pot stickers, while Hollis sat at their kitchen table, typing in the words she could make out. Some of the note was scribbled, as if the author were in such a hurry that he couldn’t be bothered to make it legible.

“Here’s what I think it says: Oscar Solari is in trouble. A murder in our Buenos Aires group. You owe him. Listen only to me. Twenty-four hours. Tomas Silva,” Hollis read. “Beware Jorge Videla.”

“Oscar Solari,” Finn repeated. “That’s Xul Solar’s real name.”

Hollis looked at him, completely blank.

“Xul Solar was an Argentinian painter. Very surreal work. He was into astrology and tarot, invented languages. Very revolutionary and uncompromising.”

“He means Declan Murphy,” Hollis said. “Revolutionary, uncompromising, artist. It’s him. Plus, the line about how we owe him. It has to be Declan.”

Declan was an art thief and forger, but he had also saved Hollis’s life, so it was true that they did owe him. But to Hollis’s mind, they had nearly paid him back already by not turning him in to Interpol, and by giving a description that would make him almost impossible to identify.

Finn, though, focused on a different line in the note. “He said ‘our group.’ Does he think we’re part of The Common Treasury?”

“He might be referring to himself and Declan.”

“I hope so.” Finn said. “This Tomas, he wants us to use fake passports to go to Argentina and help Declan? No. Absolutely not.”

“Maybe it isn’t TCT,” Hollis said.

“Of course it is. They’re a group of forgers, aren’t they? Forgers and hackers and art thieves and anything they can think of to upend the world financial system. Who else would send us fake passports?”

She didn’t have an answer. “I wonder why he thinks we could help.”

“We’re not doing it.”

“I’m not arguing with you,” she pointed out. “There’s nothing we can do to help unless Declan needs to identify an obscure sixteenth-
century poet or understand the intricacies of diplomacy during times of undeclared war.”

“I think we’re more useful than that.”

She laughed. “Now who wants to help?”

Finn grabbed the note and the passports off the table, put them back in the envelope, and threw them in the trash.

“I’m not sure that solves the problem.”

Finn grunted. “You want to go along with what this fellow is asking?”

“That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that someone went to a lot of trouble to create fake passports for us, to give us assumed identities. I don’t think just tossing them in with used teabags is going to get us out of this.”

He grunted again, then lifted the envelope out of the trash and threw it on the kitchen counter. “So how do we get out of this? Because—and I want to be as clear as I can—we’re not getting mixed up with a bunch of killers again.”

Hollis tried not to smile because she knew it would only annoy him further, but the edges of her mouth turned up of their own accord. “You know I’m not on the opposing team, right? I don’t want to do it, either. Besides, there’s something more concerning in the note. Beware Jorge Videla.”

Now it was Finn’s turn to look blank.

Hollis and Finn had so many separate interests that she had once wondered what kept them together, but teaching was what they had in common. They loved being smart for each other, each bringing their own area of expertise to the table, each respecting the other’s knowledge. It was something that certainly came in handy at moments like this one.

Finn took a deep breath. “I’m guessing Videla is a bad guy.”

“Very. He was a senior commander during the period of state terrorism in Argentina, when anyone who disagreed with the government just went missing with no explanation to the families. Students, journalists, really anybody who spoke out against the government. They’re referred to as The Disappeared.”

Finn nodded, making the connection to a frightening time in that country’s history. “Thousands of people, right? For about ten years from the mid-seventies.”

“Yes. But Videla is dead. He was convicted of human rights violations. He died in a prison cell.”

“Well, just like Xul was a clue to Declan’s identity, obviously Videla is meant to be a clue to someone else.”

It was a terrifying thought that someone would be compared to such evil, someone that they were being warned against. “Okay, so someone very bad, someone monstrous, is after Declan and he thinks that we can help. Or at least this Tomas Silva thinks we can.”

“But we’re not going to.” Finn’s voice was firm. “I won’t allow it.”

This only annoyed Hollis. “Okay, man of the house, aside from you putting your foot down, do you have any ideas?”

Finn walked out of the room, coming back a few minutes later with two more passports, their real ones. He tossed them on the table, sat down, and opened his, then opened the fake one and examined them both.

“What are you looking for?” Hollis asked.

“I want to see how good they are.”

“Are you an expert in passports?

“As a matter of fact, I have read quite a lot about it when I was doing research on a Thai forger named The Doctor,” Finn said. “He was the best there was until his arrest a few years ago.”

“Why were you doing research on him?”

She noticed a slight blush coming up from his neck. “I thought I might be able to turn our recent experiences into a book, or even just a paper,” he said. “Haven’t you thought about it?’

“I’ve been researching Blue,” she admitted.

“You can’t do anything on those guys.”

“No, I know. I was just researching. You can’t write about them, either.”

“Not touching on anything we’ve actually been through,” he said, “but on the subject of forgeries.”

“I wonder if The Doctor was TCT?”

“I wonder if everyone is TCT. I like Declan, I really do, but if he murdered someone …”

“We don’t know that, just that there’s been a murder.”

“Okay, whatever he’s done, that’s his own problem. We’re certainly not going to be able to help him,” Finn said. “And what’s with the hand-delivered package and the cryptic note? Why not just ring the doorbell?”

“I think it’s self-explanatory.”

Finn’s eye twitched. “Okay, Professor, explain it to me.”

“He can’t just show up. Maybe someone’s watching him. Or us.”

Finn locked his jaw.

“Okay, him,” Hollis placated. “Tomas needs to reach out another way and he wants us to be ready, with the passports. Obviously, we’re supposed to get the word then head for the airport.”

“Obviously.” His fingers tapped the table, getting louder and angrier as he went. Hollis reached out and put her hand over his.

“We’ll figure it out.” Her voice was quiet and calm, but inside she was just as alarmed. It seemed impossible that they could help Declan out of a murder charge, or that he would even think to ask them.

“This all has to do with that break-in we had last week.”

Hollis resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “There wasn’t a break-in.”

“I had David Wootton’s The Invention of Science on the coffee table, opened to page 485. When I came back from class, the book was closed. You said you didn’t close it. You told me you weren’t even home.”

“I said I wasn’t home because I wasn’t. I didn’t close the book. You must have closed it and forgotten.”

“When have I ever closed a book I was reading without a bookmark?”

It was a fair point. And a little odd, if she was being honest, that he was such a stickler about bookmarks. But long-term relationships required putting up with odd on both sides. Still, she found herself saying, “You sound a little paranoid.”

“Do I?” His voice elevated before he could catch himself. “Fine. But the recycling was mixed up. The Tuesday paper was clearly under the Monday paper. And”—it was his summing-up-to-the-jury moment—“in our take-out menu drawer, the menu for the Mexican place was on top. That placed closed months ago, so obviously we haven’t ordered from it recently. Why was it on top?”

“Are you done?”

He hesitated a moment, then waved a hand of surrender.

“I could have moved the recycling and the menu drawer, and it’s possible, just possible that you absentmindedly closed your book.”

“I didn’t. And if you moved the menus around, you’d remember.”

She probably wouldn’t have, she knew, but there was no point in saying that. Neither of them was going to win this argument, so Hollis changed to the subject at hand. “Let’s just assume that whoever sent us this package has a bit more in mind than rearranging our menu drawer. What do we do?”

“What if it’s a trap?” Finn asked. “What we know about TCT is that it operates worldwide. The art forgery and all of that isn’t just some guy trying to make a few bucks faking a Helmut Ditsch. This is about upending the value of art, of gold, of anything that puts wealth into a few hands. It’s about rebalancing, or maybe just ruining, the world economy. To have that kind of power, you have to know people in high places, in government and law enforcement. And you have to be willing to do whatever it takes to reach your goals.”

“Except Declan gave the impression The Common Treasury was more of a loosely organized collaboration between criminal groups than one central power.”

“The mob in the 1930s could have been described the same way and look at the damage they did.”

He was right, not that it helped. “Let’s assume it is some kind of a trap,” she said. “Why would we matter enough for them to go after us?”

“Because we know they exist.”

They did know some of what TCT was about and had, perhaps wrongly, protected one of their members. That could make them allies, or it could make them liabilities. But there was a flaw in his theory, and it had to be said. “Sending us passports, a coded note that our friend is in trouble … it’s a lot of effort,” she said. “Why lure us to some foreign country if all they want to do is see us dead? They can kill us right here, right now, in our kitchen.”

Finn sat perfectly stiff, almost frozen. “I don’t know.”

Outside, someone leaned hard against their doorbell, and both of them jumped.

“Stay here,” Finn said. “Dial 9-1, and be ready to press the second 1, just in case.” He stopped after a few steps. “Not that I want to be putting my man-of-the-house foot down.”

She smiled even as she rolled her eyes. “All I’m saying is you don’t need to treat me like a little woman who needs you to decide everything,” she said. “But the usual exceptions apply. Spiders, heavy packages, and killers who are part of an international crime ring that come to our door ready to shoot us. Then you can go full testosterone.”

He smiled. “That’s a lot of pressure.”

She watched him head toward the door. For most of their marriage, the worst either had faced was eye strain from too much reading. But the positive side of all this spy business was that she had gotten to see another side of her husband. When the situation called for it, Finn was brave, protective. It was extremely sexy. Most marriages don’t get tested in dangerous situations. As Hollis watched him reach the front door, her hand ready to call for help, she felt a little sorry for those marriages.

The doorbell buzzed again, this time even longer. Hollis held her breath. She wondered why they didn’t have a stronger lock on the door, or a big, vicious dog ready to jump at the throat of anyone who might show up unannounced. They hadn’t thought they would need them, she knew. Ireland, and all that had happened there, was supposed to be behind them. Once they’d finished the mission, they never imagined the danger would follow them home.

But clearly that was naïve.

Finn looked out the peephole. Hollis waited. A moment passed before he turned back and smiled. He opened the door to the delivery guy from Sun Chinese.