The Geneva Deception by James Twining Read Free Book Online Page A

was a long silence.
    ‘Why did you agree to come?’ Jennifer eventually asked him, her eyes locking with his.
    ‘Because you said you needed my help,’ he said with a shrug.
    ‘You were going to say no,’ she pointed out. ‘Then something changed.’
    ‘I don’t really…’
    ‘It was because I said I would handle the exchange myself if you didn’t, wasn’t it?’
    A smile flickered across Tom’s face. He’d forgotten how annoyingly perceptive she could be.
    ‘What do you know about this painting?’ Tom picked up the photo from the table between them and studied it through the plastic.
    ‘It was one of four that Caravaggio completed in Sicily in 1609 while he was on the run for stabbing someone to death,’ she said. ‘We have it down as being worth twenty million dollars, but it would go for much more, even in today’s market.’
    ‘What about the theft itself?’
    ‘October sixteenth, 1969,’ she recited from memory. ‘The crime reports say that the thieves cut it out of its frame over the altar of the Oratory of San Lorenzo in Palermo with razor blades and escaped in a truck. Probably a two-man team.’
    ‘I’d guess three,’ Tom corrected her. ‘It’s big - nearly sixty square feet. I’m not sure two men could have handled it.’
    ‘At the time, people blamed the Sicilian mafia?’ Her statement was framed as a question.
    ‘It’s always looked to me like an amateur job,’ Tom replied with a shake of his head. ‘Couple of local crooks who’d thought through everything except how they were going to sell it. If the Sicilian mafia have got it now, it’s because no one else was buying or because they decided to just take it. The Cosa Nostra don’t like people operating on their turf without permission.’
    ‘And no one’s ever seen it since?’
    ‘I’ve heard rumours over the years,’ Tom sighed. ‘That it had surfaced in Rome, or maybe even been destroyed in the Naples earthquake in 1980. Then a few years ago, a mafia informer claimed to have rolled it up inside a rug and buried it inan iron chest. When they went to dig it up, the chest was empty.’
    ‘What do you think?’
    ‘If you ask me, it’s been with the Cosa Nostra the whole time. Probably traded between capos as a gift or part payment on a deal.’
    ‘Which would mean that the mafia are behind the sale now?’
    ‘If not the mafia, then someone who has stolen it from them,’ Tom agreed. ‘Either way, they’ll be dangerous and easily spooked. If we’re lucky, they’ll just run if they smell trouble. If we’re not, they’ll start shooting.’ A pause. ‘That’s why I came.’
    ‘I can look after myself,’ she said pointedly; irritated, it seemed, by what he was implying. ‘I didn’t ask you here to watch my back.’
    ‘I’m here because I know how these people think,’ Tom insisted. ‘And the only back that will need watching is mine.’

EIGHT
    Amalfi Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas
    17th March - 9.27 p.m.
    Ever since going freelance, Kyle Foster had never met or even spoken to his handler. It was safer that way. For both of them. Besides, what would have been the fucking point? All he needed was a name, a photograph and fifty per cent of his fee in his Cayman Islands account. Why complicate things with a face or a voice when he could just email the details through and save them both the trouble? Assuming the handler was a guy, of course. There was no real way of knowing. A broad in this line of business? Not unheard of, but rare. Maybe he should suggest a meet after all?
    His PDA vibrated on the glass table in front of him, breaking into his thoughts. Swinging his feet to the floor he sat forward, muting the TV so he could concentrate on the message rather than thesqueals of the girl being screwed by her twin sister wearing a strap-on.
    It was the photo he noticed first, his boulderlike face breaking into something resembling a smile at life’s occasional burst of comic irony; he knew this person, or rather