“HI, IT’S VINCENT.”
“Hi. Is it true what I’ve just heard?”
“What have you heard?”
“That you’ve stolen the Van Gogh.”
“Have the police been informed?”
“No, he can’t risk that, not least because our shares are still going south and the picture wasn’t insured.”
“So what’s he up to?”
“He’s sending someone to London to track you down, but I can’t find out who it is.”
“Maybe I won’t be in London by the time they arrive.”
“Where will you be?”
“I’m going home.”
“And is the painting safe?”
“Safe as houses.”
“Good, but there’s something else you ought to know.”
“What’s that?”
“Fenston will be attending your funeral this afternoon.”
The phone went dead. Fifty-two seconds.
Anna replaced the receiver, even more concerned about the danger she was placing Tina in. What would Fenston do if he were to discover the reason she always managed to stay one step ahead of him?
She walked over to the departures desk.
“Do you have any bags to check in?” asked the woman behind the counter. Anna heaved the red box off the luggage cart and onto the scales. She then placed her suitcase next to it.
“You’re quite a bit over weight, madam,” she said. “I’m afraid there will be an excess charge of thirty-two pounds.” Anna took the money out of her wallet while the woman attached a label to her suitcase and fixed a large FRAGILE sticker on the red box. “Gate forty-three,” she said, handing her a ticket. “They’ll be boarding in about thirty minutes. Have a good flight.”
Anna began walking toward the departures gate.
Whoever Fenston was sending to London to track her down would be landing long after she had flown away. But Anna knew that they only had to read her report carefully to work out where the picture would be ending up. She just needed to be certain that she got there before they did. But first she had to make a phone call to someone she hadn’t spoken to for over ten years to warn him that she was on her way. Anna took the escalator to the first floor and joined a long line waiting to be checked through security.
“She’s heading toward gate forty-three,” said a voice, “and will be departing on flight BA two-seven-two to Bucharest at eight forty-four. . . .”
Fenston squeezed himself into a line of dignitaries as President Bush and Mayor Giuliani shook hands with a select group who were attending the latest service at Ground Zero.
He hung around until the president’s helicopter had taken off and then walked across to join the other mourners. He took a place at the back of the crowd and listened as the names were read out. Each one was followed by the single peal of a bell.
Greg Abbot.
He glanced around the crowd.
Kelly Gullickson.
He studied the faces of the relations and friends who had gathered in memory of their loved ones.
Anna Petrescu.
Fenston knew that Petrescu’s mother lived in Bucharest and wouldn’t be traveling to the service. He looked more carefully at the strangers who were huddled together and wondered which one of them was Uncle George from Danville, Illinois.
Rebecca Rangere.
He glanced across at Tina. Tears were filling her eyes, certainly not for Petrescu.
Brulio Real Polanco.
The priest bowed his head. He delivered a prayer, then closed his Bible and made the sign of a cross. “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” he declared.
“Amen,” came back the unison reply.
Tina looked across at Fenston, not a tear shed, just the familiar movement from one foot to the other—the sign that he was bored. While others gathered in small groups to remember, sympathize, and pay their respects, Fenston left without commiserating with anyone. No one else joined the chairman as he strode off purposefully toward his waiting car.
Tina stood among a little group of mourners, although her eyes remained fixed on Fenston. His driver was holding open the back door for him. Fenston climbed into the car and sat next to a woman Tina had never seen before. Neither spoke until the driver had returned to the front seat and touched a button on the dashboard to cause a smoked-glass screen to rise behind him. Without waiting, the car eased out into the road to join the midday traffic. Tina watched as the chairman disappeared out of sight. She hoped it wouldn’t be long before she called again—so much to tell her, and now she had to find out who the waiting woman was. Were they discussing Anna? Had Tina put her friend in unnecessary danger? Where was the Van Gogh?
The woman seated next to Fenston was dressed in a gray trouser suit. Anonymity was her most important asset. She had never once visited Fenston at either his office or his apartment, even though she had known him for almost twenty years. She’d first met Nicu Munteanu when he was bagman for President Nicolae Ceauşescu.
Fenston’s primary responsibility during Ceauşescu’s reign was to distribute vast sums of money into countless bank accounts across the world—bribes for the dictator’s loyal henchmen. When they ceased to be loyal, the woman seated next to Fenston eliminated them, and he then redistributed their frozen assets. Fenston’s speciality was money laundering, to places as far afield as the Cook Islands and as close to home as Switzerland. Her speciality was to dispose of the bodies—her chosen instrument a kitchen knife available in any hardware store in any city and, unlike a gun, not requiring a licence.
Both knew, literally, where the bodies were buried.
In 1985, Ceauşescu decided to send his private banker to New York to open an overseas branch for him. For the next four years, Fenston lost touch with the woman seated next to him, until in 1989 Ceauşescu was arrested by his fellow countrymen, tried, and finally executed on Christmas Day. Among those who avoided the same fate was Olga Krantz, who crossed seven borders before she reached Mexico, from where she slipped into America to become one of the countless illegal immigrants who do not claim unemployment benefits and live off cash payments from an unscrupulous employer. She was sitting next to her employer.
Fenston was one of the few people alive who knew Krantz’s true identity. He’d first watched her on television when she was fourteen years old and representing Romania in an international gymnastics competition against the Soviet Union.
Krantz came second to her teammate Mara Moldoveanu, and the press were already tipping them for the gold and silver at the next Olympics. Unfortunately, neither of them made the journey to Moscow. Moldoveanu died in tragic, unforeseen circumstances, when she fell from the beam attempting a double somersault and broke her neck. Krantz was the only other person in the gymnasium at the time. She vowed to win the gold medal in her memory.
Krantz’s exit was far less dramatic. She pulled a hamstring warming up for a floor exercise, only days before the Olympic team was selected. She knew she wouldn’t be given a second chance. Like all athletes who don’t quite make the grade, her name quickly disappeared from the headlines. Fenston assumed he would never hear of her again, until one morning he thought he saw her coming out of Ceauşescu’s private office. The short, sinewy woman may have looked a little older, but she had lost none of her agile movement, and no one could forget those steel gray eyes.
A few well-placed questions and Fenston learned that Krantz was now head of Ceauşescu’s personal protection squad. Her particular responsibility: breaking selected bones of those who crossed the dictator or his wife.
Like all gymnasts, Krantz wanted to be number one in her discipline. Having perfected all the routines in the compulsory section—broken arms, broken legs, broken necks—she moved on to her voluntary exercise, “cut throats,” a routine at which no one could challenge her for the gold medal. Hours of dedicated practice had resulted in perfection. While others attended a football match or went to the movies on a Saturday afternoon, Krantz spent her time at a slaughterhouse on the outskirts of Bucharest. She filled her weekend cutting the throats of lambs and calves. Her Olympic record was forty-two in an hour. None of the slaughtermen reached the final.
Ceauşescu had paid her well. Fenston paid her better. Krantz’s terms of employment were simple. She must be available night and day and work for no one else. In a space of twelve years, her fee had risen from $250,000 to $1 million. Not for her the hand-to-mouth existence of most illegal immigrants.
Fenston extracted a folder from his briefcase and handed it across to Krantz without comment. She turned the cover and studied five recent photographs of Anna Petrescu.
“Where is she at the moment?” asked Krantz, still unable to disguise her mid-European accent.
“London,” replied Fenston, before he passed her a second file.
Once again she opened it and this time extracted a single color photograph. “Who’s he?” she inquired.
“He’s more important than the girl,” replied Fenston.
“How can that be possible?” Krantz asked, as she studied the photo more carefully.
“Because he’s irreplaceable,” Fenston explained, “unlike Petrescu. But whatever you do, don’t kill the girl until she’s led you to the painting.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“She will,” said Fenston.
“And my payment for kidnapping a man who has already lost an ear?” inquired Krantz.
“One million dollars. Half in advance, the other half on the day you deliver him to me, unharmed.”
“And the girl?”
“The same tariff, but only after I have attended her funeral for the second time.” Fenston tapped the screen in front of him and the driver pulled up to the curb. “By the way,” said Fenston, “I’ve already instructed Leapman to deposit the cash in the usual place.”
Krantz nodded, opened the door, stepped out of the car, and disappeared into the crowd.