Kate opened her eyes, relieved that she was conscious and in one piece. The windshield was shattered. She could hear alarms ringing. She drew her gun, unbuckled her seatbelt, and got out of the car. Dust was settling like snow. Four store employees were backed up against the far wall in terror. The guard, dressed in a suit like a secret service agent, was rising from the floor near the door and reaching for the gun in his shoulder holster in the same motion.
“Don’t do it,” Kate said, aiming her gun at his forehead. “Drop the gun and kick it under the car.” He did as he was told and she gestured to him to join the others against the wall.
Nick smashed display cases with a pickax, scooped up the diamonds, and dumped them into an open backpack that he wore on his chest instead of his back. Kate kept the five employees covered and glanced at the watch on her wrist.
By her estimate, unless something incredible was done, they had less than thirty seconds before the police officers from the Ministry of Justice took them down.
—
A few moments before the two Audis crashed into the two jewelry stores, two large dump trucks full of rubble that had been parked beside the colonne simultaneously pulled out into the rue de la Paix and turned across it, blocking the street and sealing off the plaza from traffic. The drivers leaped out of their trucks and ran away as their vehicles emptied their loads into the street.
At that same instant, a dozen police officers poured out from the Ministry of Justice and ran across the plaza toward the jewelry stores on the two ends of rue de la Paix. That was when a series of carefully timed small explosions started going off like a sequence of fireworks. The blasts released the massive scaffolding around the colonne, which unpeeled itself like a giant banana. The poles and scrim tumbled to the plaza and forced the police officers to scramble back to avoid being crushed.
It was in the midst of that smoke, chaos, and destruction that Nick and Kate ran out of the jewelry store, jumped onto two motorcycles parked on rue de la Paix, and sped northwest toward place de l’Opéra, one of the busiest and most crowded intersections in Paris. Seven streets branched off the plaza outside of the grand gilded Paris opera house, creating an enormous churn of man and machine.
They snaked through the traffic, making a hard right onto rue du Quatre-Septembre, then a sharp left onto a narrow one-way street. They came to a sudden stop at the intersection with the broad boulevard des Italiens, where there was a long line of motorcycles parked on the sidewalk in front of the Gaumont Opéra multiplex movie theater. Nick and Kate parked their motorcycles with the others, left their keys in the ignitions to encourage theft, and went to the ticket window. They were ten minutes early for the 4:15 showing of the latest Mission Impossible movie.
Nick removed his helmet, holding it at an angle that obscured the view of the ticket window security camera. Kate took her helmet off as well, her back to another camera pointed at the entrance to the theater.
“Deux billets pour Mission Impossible, s’il vous plaît,” Nick said, passing some euros through the slot to the female cashier. She passed back two tickets. Nick and Kate entered the theater and immediately split up to go to the restrooms.
As Kate went into the women’s room, Litija emerged from one of the four stalls, leaving a large Galeries Lafayette shopping bag and a purse behind. Kate went into that stall and closed the door while Litija washed her hands at the sink.
She set her helmet on the floor, unzipped her jumpsuit, and opened the shopping bag, which held a sundress and flip-flops. She quickly changed into the new clothes and stuffed her helmet, gloves, and jumpsuit into the bag. Kate dropped the Glock in the purse, hung the strap on her shoulder, and walked out.
Litija took the shopping bag and left without saying a word. Kate approached the mirror and checked to see if, in her professional opinion as an FBI agent, she looked like someone who’d just robbed a jewelry store.
The dress and the flip-flops said no. The expression of horror said yes. She forced herself to relax and smile. For the greater good, she thought, checking her watch. It was 4:09. In one minute, the sold-out 2 P.M. showing of La Dernière Vie, a World War I epic and the most popular movie of the week in France, would be letting out.
She knew that Nick was in the men’s room changing his clothes and handing off the diamonds to the Road Runner who’d been waiting for him just like Litija had been waiting for her. Those two Road Runners would dispose of the two thieves’ jumpsuits and helmets and then transport the diamonds to the next person in the relay race to get the loot out of the country as fast as possible.
Kate took a pair of large sunglasses out of the purse, put them on, and walked out of the bathroom just as the audience for La Dernière Vie spilled out of one of the auditoriums. She slipped into the middle of the exiting crowd and so did Nick, who now wore a lightweight gray hoodie, jeans, and tennis shoes. He came up beside Kate and put on a pair of Ray-Bans as he stepped into the sunshine outside.
“Formidable,” Nick said, referring to the film they’d supposedly just seen. “Marion Cotillard était incroyable.”
“Oui,” Kate said. That was the extent of her French, and she had no idea who Marion Cotillard was. Inspector Clouseau was the only French character she knew, and a Brit had played him.
Nick took her hand and together they turned right on boulevard des Italiens toward place de l’Opéra. Traffic was gridlocked. The air was alive with the sound of sirens and horns. There was a palpable, urgent energy on the streets. Something had happened. Kate picked up a word here and there from the people they passed.
“Diamants!” “Voleurs!” “Place Vendôme!”
When they reached place de l’Opéra, everyone was looking down rue de la Paix toward the helicopters and smoke in the sky over place Vendôme. Nobody had any reason at all to notice Nick and Kate, who darted across the street and took the stairs down to the metro station.
There was a southbound train arriving as they reached the tracks, and they took it. They didn’t care which line it was. The more transfers they had to make between metro lines to their destination, the better it was. It would be harder to follow their tracks. Nick and Kate settled into a seat. It wasn’t until that moment that Kate felt that they’d made their escape.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t stay for Mission Impossible,” Nick said. “We probably missed an exciting heist.”
After two metro transfers, Nick and Kate got off at the Mouton-Duvernet station and climbed the stairs to the street. They emerged on avenue du Général Leclerc beneath a distinctive green cast-iron archway and a Métropolitain sign written in a florid art nouveau script that screamed “You’re in Paris!”
They were in the heart of the fourteenth arrondissement, a neighborhood known primarily for the massive Montparnasse Cemetery crammed with ornate tombs and for the fifty-nine-story office tower that rose over it like an enormous black headstone.
Nick and Kate walked a half block south on avenue du Général Leclerc, then turned right on rue Brézin, a one-lane street that ran only a single block from east to west. They were just another anonymous, unremarkable couple out for an evening stroll on a street lined with apartment buildings and a wide assortment of shops. Nick gestured across the street to Picard, a store with a giant snowflake in the window.
“That’s a grocery store made just for you,” Nick said. “All it sells is frozen food.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” Kate said. “I’m too busy chasing bad guys to cook.”
“That’s why restaurants were created,” Nick said.
“I go to restaurants.”
“I’m talking about the kind without a drive-through window.”
“They’re too slow and overpriced,” Kate said. “Speaking of food, should we pick up something at Picard’s to heat up for dinner?”
“I’d rather turn myself in to the police and eat whatever the jail is serving.”
“You’re too snooty about food,” Kate said.
Nick
smiled. “I can see this is going to be a major stumbling block in our relationship.”
“We have a relationship?”
“You haven’t noticed?” Nick asked.
“I hadn’t given it a name.”
“Relationship is a broad term. It can mean most anything.”
“What does it mean to you?”
“In our case? Partner, lover, pain in the ass.”
Kate nodded in agreement. “That covers it.”
They took rue Brézin to its end at a T-intersection with avenue du Maine. It was just a half block shy of the spot where five other streets hit the wide tree-lined boulevard from various angles, creating a whirlpool of traffic.
Nick and Kate’s destination was a six-story apartment building directly across from rue Brézin on the wedge-shaped corner of avenue du Maine and rue Severo. The building looked like the bow of a ship, heading due north through a sea of cars to the Montparnasse office tower. On the ground floor, there was a pharmacy and a business that sold coffins and headstones. Kate pointed to the plush coffin in the window as they approached the door to the apartment building.
“I wonder if Dragan gets a discount on those,” Kate said.
Nick waved a digital key over the scanner beside the door, unlocking it. “He probably owns the shop.”
They entered a lobby facing another locked door, this one made of glass, allowing them to see the spiral staircase in the foyer that led up to the apartments. Nick waved his key over the scanner beside the list of apartment buzzers, and they heard the telltale click of the second door unlocking.
The building was hundreds of years old and was in relatively good shape, but the spiral staircase that led up to the apartments was too tightly wound to fit even a tiny elevator. So they climbed the stairs to the sixth-floor apartment where they were meeting Dragan Kovic. It was a long climb up on wooden steps bowed from centuries of use. Kate couldn’t imagine living there and having to lug groceries, or anything else, up those stairs every day. But then maybe this was how French women stayed thin. That and smoking instead of eating.
The creaking steps announced their arrival long before they got to the sixth floor. The door to the apartment was partly open. They stepped inside a large room that was unfurnished and painted bright white. The ceilings were trimmed with elaborate crown moldings, cornices, and rosettes, the walls with half-height wainscoting. Against all that whiteness, black-clad Dragan Kovic stood out dramatically, as if he were illuminated from every angle. He sat in one of three folding chairs in the center of the living room, a bay window behind him overlooking the busy street below.
“Did we pass the audition?” Dragan asked.
“You did,” Nick said, closing the door behind them. “Your team was precise, disciplined, and professional. I’m very impressed.”
“Likewise,” Dragan said. “You were briefed on the plan only last night and yet, without any prior location scouting or dry runs, you performed flawlessly. I commend you.”
“I take it the other team got away safely,” Kate said.
“They did. And the ten million dollars in diamonds we acquired from the two robberies are already being dispersed for cutting and resale,” Dragan said. He then shifted his attention to Nick. “So now you are at a crossroads. You are free to leave with your share of this robbery and the one in Antwerp. You are also welcome to join us in our biggest endeavor. But if you agree to participate, there is no backing out. I need your decision now.”
“The way I see it, you and I are the best at what we do, but together, we could reach heights neither one of us could on our own,” Nick said. “So yes, I’m in, for the challenge as much as the profits.”
Dragan shifted his gaze to Kate. “And you?”
“I go where he goes,” Kate said. “I’m good, but I need direction.”
“I admire a person who has an objective view of their own skills,” Dragan said, “as well as their limitations.”
“There’s one more thing we have to settle,” Nick said. “I won’t go into another heist blind, like the Antwerp job. Before I sign on, I need to know what the objectives really are.”
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Dragan said.
Nick sighed with disappointment. “Our partnership hasn’t even started yet and already you’re lying to me. I know about the vial of smallpox.”
Dragan jerked at the mention of the deadly virus. It was as if he’d been given a small electric shock.
“How did you know about the vial?” Dragan asked.
“Because I am very, very good at what I do,” Nick said.
“That’s not an acceptable answer.”
The two men were staring at each other eye to eye, so neither of them noticed Kate slip her hand into her purse and grab her gun. She’d be ready if things quickly went bad.
“I’ve had my eye on that vault for years and I’ve tried to learn as much as I could about what was in those safe-deposit boxes,” Nick said. “Before the police grabbed me in the vault, I noticed that box number 773 was open and on the floor next to me. That box belongs to diamond merchant Yuri Baskin. His cousin was Soviet bioweapons expert Sergei Andropov, who died in Antwerp before he could sell a vial of smallpox he’d smuggled out of Russia. The vial was never found. It’s been assumed for decades that the vial was in Yuri’s box. If it was, I’ve got to ask myself, ‘What does a diamond thief want with one of the most lethal viruses on earth?’ ”
Dragan continued to stare at Nick for a long moment before coming to a decision. “If I tell you, and then you decide to walk away from this, I’ll have to kill you.”
Nick laughed. “You’ll kill me now if I walk away, so what have you got to lose? I was a dead man the moment I admitted that I knew about the smallpox.”
Dragan flicked his gaze toward Kate for a moment. Long enough to notice the Glock pointed at him. Then focused back on Nick and smiled. “I’m not so sure about that. You like to take big risks with your life.”
“That’s what makes life fun,” he said.
“Please sit down,” Dragan said. “I have a story to tell you.”
Dragan took a cigar out of his pocket and lit it with a match.
“Does it have a happy ending?” Nick asked as he took a seat on a folding chair.
Kate remained standing, only slightly more relaxed, gun still in hand. She was dealing with a guy who’d had someone paint him as Zeus on the ceiling of his office. She thought either he had a sense of humor or else he was majorly nuts. She was going with the latter.
“That will be up to you,” Dragan said and blew a puff of smoke in his direction.
“In February 1972, a Yugoslavian went on a pilgrimage to Mecca and came back to Kosovo infected with smallpox. He had no idea that he was infected, of course, and since he’d recently been vaccinated, he only developed a slight rash and therefore didn’t see a doctor for treatment. He infected eleven people, just by being near them,” Dragan said. “One was a teacher who spread the virus to thirty-eight more people, mostly the doctors, nurses, and patients in the three hospitals in three different cities where he was treated and misdiagnosed. In his final days, the teacher’s eyes turned black. His skin broke out in blood blisters and split open. His internal organs disintegrated and blood poured out from every orifice in his body. That’s because smallpox destroys the membranes that hold the body together, inside and out. It’s like decomposing alive. A horrible, agonizing way to die.”
Dragan spoke in a detached way, a distant observer of a long-ago event. But as the story got bloodier, he leaned forward, his arms on his knees, bringing himself closer to his guests as he became more engaged. He flicked some ashes on the floor and continued.
“It takes two weeks after someone is exposed to smallpox before doctors can detect it or someone shows symptoms. But by then, it’s too late. The sick are already highly infectious, spreading the virus to anyone within ten feet,” Dragan said. “So the epidemic moves in waves, with the number of sick growing e
xponentially. The only way to stop it is to quarantine the sick and vaccinate everyone else. So that is what the government did. The army sealed off entire towns. Public gatherings were banned across the nation. Ten thousand people suspected of being infected were herded up and quarantined in apartment buildings encircled by barbed wire and armed soldiers. Eighteen million people were vaccinated. The epidemic was over in eight weeks. In the end, only about two hundred people were infected and thirty-five died. It could have been much worse.”
“Were you in Yugoslavia at the time?” Nick asked.
“I was nine years old.” Dragan pointed to his pockmarked face with his cigar. “That is how I got my lovely complexion. The lasting, parting kiss of smallpox to those it has abandoned. Ever since then, I’ve been enchanted by that demon.”
“I’d think after what you’ve been through, you wouldn’t want anything to do with smallpox,” Kate said.
“I’m immune now to her charms, but I remain in awe of her deadly power. I’ve finally found a way to harness that power for myself,” Dragan said. “I think that’s always been my destiny.”
“I’m a thief and a con man,” Nick said. “Not a salesman. If that’s what you are hoping to get from me, I’m afraid I wouldn’t know where to even begin looking for a smallpox buyer.”
“I have no intention of selling smallpox to anyone. I used half of the money that we’ve earned from our heists, prior to the Antwerp job, to recruit scientists and build a state-of-the-art weapons lab to develop my own cache of weaponized smallpox. What I was lacking until now was a start-up sample to work from.”
“If you don’t intend to sell the smallpox,” Kate said, “why build a lab to create more of it?”
“Because I want to unleash smallpox on an American city.”
“What will you gain?” Nick asked.
“I want to cash in on the massive drop in the stock market that is sure to follow the ‘terrorist attack.’ ”
“That’s where the rest of your money is going,” Nick said. “You’re going to invest two hundred million dollars on Wall Street betting against the market. It’s a safe bet, because you’ll know exactly when the market is going to plunge.”