“Not ever,” Jessup said.
“You’re no fun,” Nick said, dropping the accent.
“I just let you rob a bank and go on a high-speed chase through downtown Los Angeles in a police car, which reminds me—” Jessup held his hand out to Nick, palm up. “Have you got something for me?”
Nick reached into his pocket and dropped a thumb drive into Jessup’s hand. “Here are all the dirty photos and videos that Fred Bose was using to blackmail regulators to get his company’s flawed but wildly profitable medications approved. I don’t think Fred will be declaring this thumb drive among the items missing from his safety deposit box.”
Jessup put the drive into his coat pocket. “What happened to everything else you stole from the bank vault?”
Nick placed the servings of sole onto plates and spooned on lemon caper sauce. “I left them in the squad car. Even the uncut conflict diamonds.”
“What was Bose doing with those?” Jessup asked.
“Not him,” Nick said. “You might want to check out whoever kept safety deposit box number 7210. They have been very naughty.”
“Those diamonds are untraceable,” Kate said. “I’m surprised you didn’t keep them.”
Nick smiled at her. “I’m on the side of the angels now.”
“And thanks to your effort in downtown L.A. today, nobody will ever suspect it,” Jessup said. “Or question that Kate is absolutely committed to catching you. It was a win-win all around. I just wish you hadn’t caused so much property and vehicle damage.”
“We had to make it exciting for the viewers at home,” Nick said. “Or they might have switched to Judge Judy instead.”
“TV ratings weren’t one of my concerns,” Jessup said.
His biggest concern was that Nick would get caught, and it would be revealed that the FBI had sprung him from jail and was using him to help nail major crooks, even as he’d become one of the Bureau’s Ten Most Wanted criminals. Kate’s job was to be Nick’s handler and protector while, at the same time, leading the FBI’s manhunt for him. Only Jessup and Deputy Director Fletcher Bolton, who picked their targets and ran the secret slush fund that financed Nick’s swindles, knew the truth. And if any of it ever became public, they’d all end up in prison.
They took their plates of Dover sole and went to the table. Nick brought the fruit, cheese, and deviled eggs, and Kate took the white wine from the stoneware cooler.
Jessup helped himself to iced tea, selected an egg with caviar, and slid a file across the table to Kate. “This is for you. It’s the details on your next assignment.”
Kate poured a glass of wine for herself and one for Nick. “Who are we going after this time?”
“No one,” Jessup said. He glanced at Nick. “We want you to break into the Smithsonian.”
“Always a pleasure,” Nick said.
Kate raised an eyebrow at Nick. “You’ve done it before?”
Nick shrugged. “Nobody goes to D.C. without visiting the Smithsonian.”
“Most people go when it’s open.”
“I don’t like crowds.”
Jessup took a sip of his iced tea. “In 1860, British and French forces sacked the Old Summer Palace outside of Beijing and pillaged the twelve bronze animal heads from a century-old Zodiac fountain in the Imperial Gardens. Each of those Qing Dynasty heads is worth about twenty million dollars. The Chinese are determined to retrieve all of them.”
“We have the rooster in this country,” Nick said. “It’s been on display in the Smithsonian for over a hundred years.”
“I’m surprised you know about it,” Jessup said.
“Of course he does,” Kate said. “It’s a one-of-a-kind piece worth twenty million dollars. I’m more surprised it’s still in the Smithsonian and not a doorstop in Nick’s house.”
“During the financial meltdown, China became our government’s biggest lender,” Jessup said. “So now they are demanding the immediate return of the bronze rooster as a sign of good faith.”
“Give it to them,” Kate said.
“There’s a complication,” Jessup said. “Actually, that’s not accurate. It’s more like a ticking bomb.”
“The Smithsonian won’t give it up,” Nick said. “And now you want us to steal it from them and give it to the Chinese.”
Jessup shook his head. “The Smithsonian has already agreed to return it, at the president’s personal request. The problem is that neither the president nor the current director of the Smithsonian knows that the bronze rooster on display is actually a fake. The real one was stolen from the Smithsonian ten years ago, something the museum and the FBI never disclosed and have diligently covered up ever since.”
“Why would the Bureau and the museum do that?” Kate asked.
“Pride,” Nick said. “They can’t admit that the nation’s most prestigious and secure museum, standing in the shadow of the White House and the U.S. Capitol, was broken into and that the FBI, the nation’s top law enforcement agency, doesn’t have a single lead in the case. Can you imagine how humiliating that would be?” Nick smiled and shook his head. “It’s one of the most successful art thefts in criminal history. The bragging rights alone make it the score of a lifetime.”
Jessup and Kate stared at Nick.
“Is the rooster a doorstop in your house?” Kate asked.
“I don’t have any doorstops. I’m not a doorstop kind of guy,” he said.
Kate and Jessup stared at him.
“C’mon, really? You think I stole the rooster?”
“You said that you’ve broken into the Smithsonian before,” Jessup said. “In fact, you implied that you’d done it many times.”
“I was thinking about stealing the T. rex,” Nick said.
“How could you possibly steal a T. rex?” Kate asked.
“I have no idea,” he said. “That’s what makes the idea of actually doing it so intriguing to me. I still haven’t figured it out. But I didn’t steal the rooster. Somebody beat me to it.”
Jessup sighed and dabbed at his lips with his napkin. “That’s a shame, because that’s going to make things a lot harder. We need you to find the real rooster and switch it with the fake one before we have to give it to the Chinese.”
“How much time do we have?” Kate asked.
“Two weeks. That’s when billionaire businessman Stanley Fu is coming to D.C. in his own Airbus 380 to personally transport the artifact to Shanghai. Once his plane lands, the Chinese government’s antiquities expert will inspect the rooster and discover it’s a fraud, which will spark a major diplomatic crisis, infuriate the Chinese, and humiliate the United States.”
“You need to buy us more time,” Kate told Jessup.
Nick stabbed a small wedge of New Zealand cheddar and dropped it onto his plate next to a slice of melon. “Two weeks is plenty.”
“The FBI has been trying to find the rooster for a decade,” Kate said. “What makes you think we can do it in two weeks?”
“Because I know who stole it.”
Nicolas Fox and Kate O’Hare couldn’t risk being seen traveling together on commercial flights or walking through airports, train stations, and other key choke points where they might be recognized by law enforcement officers or captured on surveillance cameras.
So at nine the next morning, Nick flew first class to London under a pseudonym, using one of his many impeccable fake passports. He was served a fairly edible meal and a glass of decent champagne, and arrived rested and relaxed at Heathrow at seven A.M. the following day. He then took a short flight to Inverness, Scotland, where he rented a Range Rover and drove south in the pouring rain, his journey interrupted on two occasions by sheep crossing the road.
Kate, meanwhile, flew economy class to Newark, New Jersey, and then on to Glasgow. For a woman who’d spent years in the military riding in the cargo bays of transport planes, economy class commercial air travel still felt comfortable to her. She even liked the food. On arrival at Glasgow Airport, she rented a c
ompact Vauxhall Corsa and headed northwest, to a village so tiny that it consisted of just one building, a lopsided centuries-old tavern.
Kate and Nick arrived at the tavern within a few minutes of each other and got together at a table by the stone fireplace in the dining room. They stripped off their jackets, settled down in front of the roaring fire, and ordered a late but heavy lunch of minced mutton Scotch pies, mashed potatoes, and Belhaven ale.
“I schlepped all the way over here on faith, Nick. It’s time to tell me who we’re seeing and where we’re going. I’m not going any farther in the dark.”
“We need to have an understanding first. You can’t use anything you might learn today against the person we’re going to meet. You’re granting him blanket immunity.”
“I can’t do that, but I can promise that anything I learn will be confidential and that I won’t share it with anybody. You have my word on that. But if you ever break the deal you have with us, and try to run, I’ll use everything I know to hunt you down and arrest you and all your known associates.”
“You’re so sexy when you get tough,” Nick said. “Your little nose wrinkles up and your eyes get smoky.”
Kate thought it was a good thing she didn’t have her Glock, because she might be tempted to shoot him. Nothing serious. Slice into his little toe, maybe. Of course she could always stab him with her fork.
“Who are we seeing?” she asked.
“Duff MacTaggert.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Of course you haven’t, he’s that good. Duff is the Obi-Wan Kenobi of thieves and was one of my mentors. He’s retired now and runs a pub in Kilmarny, a very small, remote village about three hours from here. But don’t be fooled by his charm or his age. If Duff suspects you’re a cop, he will kill us.”
“He can try.”
“Duff is going to smell your self-confidence. And if anything goes down and you go into fight mode, he’ll know you’re a pro. So rather than try to hide it, I’ve built it into your cover.”
“Which is what?”
“You’re my bodyguard and lover.”
She shook her head. “Just your bodyguard.”
“He’ll never believe I’m not sleeping with you.”
“You aren’t.”
“Even I find that unbelievable,” Nick said.
“What makes you think Duff will give us the bronze rooster?”
“He won’t, but I’m hoping he’ll give us the name of the person who eventually received it.”
“And then we’ll steal it from him.”
“That’s the plan,” Nick said.
Kate left her car parked on the street and tossed her bag into Nick’s Range Rover. She slid into the passenger seat, and they headed for Kilmarny.
There was a somber beauty to the misty peaks and the lush green rolling hills. They passed crumbling rock walls, ancient farmhouses, flocks of sheep, and dark, icy lochs.
“Where we’re headed is smack between Heaven and Hell,” Nick said.
“Aren’t you being a bit overdramatic?”
“I’m being literal. Kilmarny is on a cape between Loch Nevis and Loch Hourn. That’s Gaelic for Lake Heaven and Lake Hell. You can only reach Kilmarny by boat across Loch Nevis or on foot over sixteen miles of harsh, mountainous terrain.”
“Seems like a lousy place to retire.”
“Not if you’re a world-class thief who is still wanted for crimes in several countries.”
“And if you have a flair for drama.”
“That, too.”
“Is that something else that Duff MacTaggert taught you?”
“On the contrary. Drama is no fun. Theatricality and spectacle are more my thing.”
“I suppose we’re taking a boat to Kilmarny. I can’t picture you hiking through the wilderness.”
“We’re catching a ferry from Mallaig harbor. It’s about a forty-five-minute trip across Loch Nevis. I’ve called ahead to arrange a crossing.”
It was pouring rain when they arrived at Mallaig, a busy little fishing port overlooking Loch Nevis. The waters of the loch were choppy, and the Kilmarny ferry, a modified fishing boat, bobbed on the whitecaps that slapped against the pier. Nick and Kate were the only passengers.
By the time the ferry reached Kilmarny the rain had eased into a cold drizzle, and Kate squinted through the rain at whitewashed cottages tucked between steep green hills and the white-sand shoreline of the loch. Several weatherbeaten fishing boats were tied up at the ferry dock. A single road ran through the small village and up into the hills. Kate could see a farmhouse and, beyond that, the ruins of a castle in the mist.
Nick followed her gaze. “That’s Kilmarny Castle. This town was built for the workers who tended to the land and cattle in the days of yore.”
“Yore? Are we having a conversation, or are you narrating The Hobbit?”
“We’re in Scotland now. I’m fitting in.”
“I’m pretty sure the Scots don’t say ‘yore’ either,” Kate said, though all she knew about the Scots was what she’d learned from watching the Travel Channel.
“There are maybe forty people living in Kilmarny full-time. The rest are hikers and nature-loving tourists,” Nick said. “There’s only one store, one hotel, one restaurant, and the Hideaway, the most remote pub in the U.K. Duff owns it and lives upstairs. He’s the unofficial mayor of this place.”
Kate picked out the only building that could possibly be a pub. It was a low-slung, lopsided two-story cottage that hunkered down on a barren patch of land at the edge of the village. Several rustic picnic tables and benches had been placed out front. Smoke curled from the chimney.
“Not exactly Beverly Hills,” Kate said.
“And Duff isn’t Cary Grant.”
The path to the pub was uphill and slick with rain, but it wasn’t a far walk. Nick pushed the heavy wooden pub door open and they stepped inside. A massive fireplace with a stone hearth dominated one wall. A fire was roaring in the fireplace, and the surrounding wall was black with soot. Clearly the flue didn’t always work perfectly. The ceiling was low, with exposed beams supported by posts that were squared-off tree trunks. The tables and chairs were hand-carved from thick blocks of wood that had been smoothed by centuries of use. The bar seemed to have been constructed out of found objects, a mix of stone, brick, bottle glass, and mortar topped with a shiny, varnished wood counter. The temperature in the room was tropical, and the air was heavy with the smell of charred applewood.
There were three men in the room, two sitting at the bar and one standing behind it. The men looked like found objects themselves, as rough as the countryside, their skin weathered and tough from years of being lashed by the wind and sea. The man behind the counter, whom Kate judged to be in his late sixties, looked like the result of an insane scientific experiment to cross a Scottish terrier with a man. His brown eyes and bulbous nose peeked out from bushy eyebrows and a grizzly, overgrown mustache and beard, all of which combined to practically cover his entire face with hair. She figured this had to be Duff MacTaggert.
“Nicolas Fox. You’re the last man I ever expected to see walk through my door,” Duff said in a heavy Scottish accent. “I can still feel your knife in my back.”
“My God, you’ve become a fat, hairy old bastard,” Nick said, dropping his bag by the door and closing the distance to the bar.
The two men at the bar tensed. They were big and brawny, with hands like baseball mitts. Kate could see the faint bulge of guns tucked into their pants under their cable-knit sweaters. Apparently they thought that if trouble came, it would wait for them to lift up their sweaters to get at their weapons before it struck. She set her bag down beside Nick’s and stood ready by the door.
Duff marched out from behind the bar and got in Nick’s face. “You’ve become a soft, pretty boy with nice teeth.”
Nick smiled. “Life has been good to us both.”
Duff looked over Nick’s shoulder at Kate. “Who is she?”
&
nbsp; “My bodyguard.”
Duff cocked a bushy eyebrow. “That wee lass? You must be joking. Since when do you need protection anyway?”
“Since I became number ten on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.”
“I heard about your escape.”
“Way out here?”
“We’re remote, Nicky boy, but nobody can hide from Google. Speak your piece and make it quick. The ferry leaves in five minutes.”
“That isn’t very hospitable.”
“Neither is bringing to my doorstep all the law that’s hunting you.”
“They aren’t even close.”
“Says a man who got caught to a man who’s never been. Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill you now and bury you in the hills just to play it safe.”
“Me,” Kate said.
Duff laughed and looked at Nick. “I’ve got a mind to let the lads test her out to see what happens.”
One of the lads wore a turtleneck sweater, the other a crewneck, and they both looked at Kate like two dogs eager to fight over a bone.
Nick shrugged. “Go ahead. I’ve got a proposal to discuss with you, and some privacy would be nice.”
Duff waved his men away. “Don’t muss her hair too much, lads.”
Turtleneck and Crewneck slid off their stools, walked past Kate, and headed outside. Nick turned to her and nodded toward the door. Kate sighed and walked out, too, closing the door behind her.
“Make your pitch, Nicky boy,” Duff said, leading Nick to a table. “It better be a good one.”
Nick took a chair that had its back to the door. “I have a friend who’d like to add the bronze rooster to his art collection.”
“What’s that got to do with me?” Duff asked.
“You know who has it,” Nick replied.
“I can guarantee you that the rooster isn’t for sale.”
“I didn’t say my friend wanted to buy it.”
Suddenly, Turtleneck crashed through the window behind Nick and landed dazed in a heap on the floor beside the table. A moment later, Crewneck crashed through the other window and faceplanted on the floor not far from Turtleneck.
Kate walked through the door, brushing gravel off her clothes, and went to the bar. Duff looked down at the two men and shook his head with disgust.