The Art of Possession Read online

  I kissed the side of his neck, then his shoulder. “Let’s be terrible, then.”

  “Not that I don’t want to—oh, you bastard—” Because I’d just started stroking him, easy, so it didn’t chafe in the water. “I just want to—have something to look forward to after—this—”

  “You can still have that,” I said, pressing my lips against his ear. “It’s called round two.”

  “Fuck, Alex, yes—”

  WE WERE thirty minutes late to dinner at a Michelin-starred French restaurant in Covent Garden. A perfectly frosty hostess delivered us to a table in the back of the main dining area, where Lord Thorburn sat waiting for us in a turquoise-blue pinstriped suit, with an amethyst-colored tie and a matching pocket square. Beneath his peacock coloring, Gerard was visibly annoyed. The line between his eyes only slightly relaxed at the sight of the case in Mal’s arms.

  “I thought perhaps you’d been gone from London for so long that you’d forgotten your way around,” he said to Mal, his voice overflowing with false joviality. “Please, do sit, do sit down. I took the liberty of ordering a bottle of wine, since I had time to spare.”

  “Sorry about that,” Mal said lightly.

  Gerard frowned. That clearly wasn’t the response he was anticipating. He looked between us for a moment, and his lips thinned. “Ah, I see. Something else was keeping the pair of you occupied, then.” He shook his head at Mal. “That’s not exactly the level of professionalism I was expecting from you, Malcolm.”

  “If I’ve learned anything over this past week, it’s that sometimes professionalism can go hang,” Mal replied.

  Gerard’s frown deepened. “You really shouldn’t speak to your employer like that.”

  “About our employer,” I interjected. “Why did he flee to Morocco?”

  Gerard blinked at me. He looked like he’d only just remembered I was there. “I beg your pardon, flee? Dante didn’t flee anywhere. This is a business trip; he’s looking into opening another boutique in Casablanca.”

  “That couldn’t wait for us to finish this job?”

  “Time is money. I believe it was your Benjamin Franklin who coined that phrase.”

  “Actually, it was a Croatian merchant in the fourteen hundreds,” Mal offered. “Benedikt Kotruljević, I think.”

  Gerard picked up his wineglass and took a long swallow. “I’d forgotten what an absolute joy you are to banter with,” he said. Mal seemed to shrink a little, so I stepped in.

  “Our contract states that with Mr. Ashad out of the country, you’re acting as our contact in his stead. Do you want to see this thing or not?”

  “I suppose we might as well get to the point, since so much of the evening has already been wasted.” Gerard flicked his fingers at Mal. “Hand it over.”

  Mal passed over a flash drive first. “That’s got copies of all the authentication reports I could gather on it.”

  “You could have just emailed it to me.”

  “I did, but I wanted you to have more than one copy, just in case something was to go amiss in your inbox,” Mal said innocently. “I sent it to the new director as well, so he’ll be well-informed in advance and you’ll have less work to do getting it in place before the opening tomorrow.”

  I could hear Gerard’s teeth grit. “How forward-thinking of you.” He grimace-grinned. “Especially considering that I didn’t ask you to do anything of the sort. This is a private contract. It has nothing to do with the museum or its staff.”

  “It does given the stipulations Mr. Ashad put in about the eventual return of the scepter to the Malian government,” I said. “Like it or not, as of this minute the scepter is public property, not private property. You have to treat it accordingly.”

  “Delightful.” He looked back at the case. “Well, give it here.”

  Mal frowned but handed over the scepter. “I really don’t recommend revealing it in such a public place. Who knows who might be watching?”

  “Are you as paranoid as your American friend now?” Gerard asked, unzipping the case. To his very small credit, he didn’t take it out, just opened the top flap enough to see the edge of the flower. He sighed happily, a brief moment of contentment that Mal seemed to share. “Beautiful. Just as I remember it. You’re quite sure it’s the real thing?”

  “As sure as I can be without further testing and analysis by true experts in the region and time,” Mal said. “And given how bloody difficult it was to get, I’m feeling quite confident that it’s authentic. No one would go to that much trouble over a fake.”

  Gerard waved a hand. “Yes, you had a little adventure out there, didn’t you? Lovely. Well.” He drained his glass dry, then pushed back from the table and closed the case up again. “I believe that’s almost all our business taken care of. That envelope”—he pointed at a white square beneath his plate—“contains a pair of tickets for both of you to attend the opening tomorrow afternoon. Your people specifically requested that,” he added for my sake. “Dante should have your final payment taken care of within the next week, I daresay. I really ought to get going, I’ve got a lot to do before the show and not a lot of time to laze about, like you two, but please—” He smiled his gleaming smile again. “—do stay for dinner. It’s on me.” He walked out without a second glance, the case bobbing against his leg from where he held the straps.

  Mal watched him go with a conflicted expression, then turned vengefully to the menu. “I’m ordering the most expensive thing on here twice,” he muttered.

  Chapter Fourteen

  I HATE to say that I was poor company the next morning, but it was true. I woke up content, lying in bed with my head turned to touch Alex’s hip as he worked quietly on his tablet, but then I remembered what we had to look forward to and careened into a combination of anger and helplessness so quickly I felt like my brain suffered whiplash. Alex, being the understanding person that he was, didn’t call me out on my abrupt descent into angst, just said, “I called down for breakfast. It should be here in about ten minutes.” Long enough for me to get ready for the day.

  “Thank you,” I said, forcing myself out of bed and into the bathroom so I could prepare myself for the absolute hell that awaited us in… I checked my phone… about two hours. Goodness. I’d slept in.

  I heard the knock on our door, listened to Alex take the food and tip the server—a very American habit he didn’t seem able to break—and finally emerged to hot black tea, toast that wasn’t quite cold yet, and eggs that had fared better than the toast. I wasn’t really hungry after our dinner last night, not after ordering an enormous platter of fresh seafood and a side of beef Wellington, so I just took the tea. “What are you working on?” I asked, nodding toward Alex’s little computer.

  “I’m digging through some info Robert dug up for me, trying to see if any of it’s actionable enough to bring to the police,” he said, pausing to sip his coffee.

  “Information on Gerard?” I set my cup down eagerly. “Is there anything good?”

  “There’s plenty of circumstantial evidence that he’s a thieving son of a bitch, but no smoking gun.” Alex sounded regretful. “It’ll take more time to find something concrete enough for the cops.”

  I sank back against my chair, feeling like a deflated balloon. “He’s quite clever,” I said dully. “Gerard. You would think after so much time, it wouldn’t just be me who’d come close to catching him out, but he has too many friends in high places who wouldn’t even dream of thinking ill of him.”

  “More like they wouldn’t dream of turning on someone who knows their own dirty laundry,” Alex said. “I bet there are plenty of people who have some idea of what’s going on but would never bring their suspicions to the police for fear of their own sordid stories coming to light. That’s one of the biggest problems with being born into privilege—those who have it usually end up working to protect it at all costs, even if it means letting people get away with shit that someone with less privilege would be locked up or killed for.”
/>   “So it seems.” I knew he was right too. I hadn’t quite been one of the privileged few at the top, but adjacent to them, complicit in many ways in supporting a sense of moral superiority over others that had no grounding in fact. Gerard had shoved my own culpability for that support in my face when I denounced the fake Chinese bowl, and now I got to watch him rise above the fray like fresh cream once again, everyone’s darling for bringing in such a treasure.

  “Hey.” Alex got my attention and gave me a little half-smile. “It’s not over yet, all right? I’m going to keep working on this the whole time I’m here. I’m no Sherlock Holmes, but I’m a decent investigator. I’ll find the evidence we need to take him down.”

  My throat tightened, emotions rising at the implicit promise in his words. “It might take a while,” I managed.

  “Then it takes a while. I’ve got time.”

  Hearing Alex’s gentle vow helped, but by the time we got to the museum, I was a wreck of nerves, anxious about the reception I was going to receive, angry about feeling anxious, and generally underwhelmed about the prospect of watching Gerard receive accolades he hadn’t remotely earned. I wasn’t going to back out now, though. I would see the scepter installed, and if my effort at redemption had earned me any time with the director at all, I’d urge him to begin discussions with the Malian government immediately.

  For a soft opening, this one was remarkably well attended. The point of an event like this was to build buzz, check the flow, and get a general sense of whether anything in an exhibit needed to be changed before opening it to the general public. I could already tell, however, that the curators had done this one right. Only one side of the Reading Room was open for entry, and groups of ten were allowed in at five-minute intervals. There was ostensibly no time limit for how long you could stay, but the flow of traffic tended to get people through the exhibit in under half an hour. It might clog in places, but adjustments in timing would handle that.

  It was beautiful. The entire exhibit was exquisite, and the royal scepter of Mansa Musa was one of the most radiant pieces of all, carefully lit to highlight the warm luster of the gold and the delicate engravings on the copper. Dremel marks… I’d been lucky Corday hadn’t thought to bring Minister Adjoukoua up to look at the scepter close. He would have known immediately that it was period-perfect.

  I felt a pang of guilt thinking about him. Sure, he’d threatened my life several times, but he’d also moved to save it. I’d left him with a wounded-and-possibly-dying bodyguard, surrounded by people who had no reason to help him and probably several reasons to hurt him.

  Jesus, I was a piece of crap.

  “How do you deal with it?” I asked Alex quietly, stretching a hand out toward the glass case in front of me. I didn’t touch it—of course I didn’t, that would be terribly bad manners—but my body remembered the heft of it in my hands, the smooth glide of it in sweaty fingers, how awful I had felt after it was ripped from my grasp. The convulsion my heart had undergone handing it over to Gerard last night was nothing compared to how much I’d loathed giving it up to Fawkes.

  “Deal with what?” he asked, just as quiet.

  “The guilt. It’s so…. In my mind, I know it’s irrational, but I still hate how it felt to leave Minister Adjoukoua behind. He wasn’t our friend, I know that; he had his own goals but….”

  “You might never get over it.” His words and tone were frank, not unemotional but not feeding my own emotions either. “Sometimes a mission—a job—has collateral damage. You can take as many steps as possible to mitigate it, and you still might end up being party to someone else’s pain, or worse, getting them killed. And it’s….” He shook his head. “It changes you. It sticks with you, for a while at least. You don’t forget it, and hopefully you learn from it, but you can’t hold on to it too tightly either. Otherwise, you feel so bad about the lives you couldn’t save that you forget to live your own. It’s one reason I took so many jobs back-to-back out of the US. The last one I took back home went badly, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I made the amends that I could, but”—he shrugged—“in the end, it was better for me to leave.”

  I wanted to beg him for more information, urge him to tell me everything. I wanted to help make it right, whatever this thing was that he had failed at, whatever he had done or not done. I wanted to share his burden, in whatever way I could, but now wasn’t the time for such a conversation. Later. We have later, now. We have as much of it as we like.

  “Ahem,” an elderly woman with a jeweled brooch the size of a goose egg on her collar tutted. “If you wouldn’t mind making a little room, gentlemen?”

  “Of course, my apologies.” I led the way through the rest of the exhibit, then out into the Great Court where the folks who had already gone through were mingling. It was like a replay of the Director’s Dinner the week before, only without the acrobats or fancy lighting.

  And there was Gerard, this time very close to the new director, laughing while holding a glass of champagne. He must have been in a very good mood—or else he hadn’t gotten the bill for our dinner last night—because as soon as he saw us, he waved us over. “There they are! Director, here are the people my dear friend hired to find his scepter. You might remember Professor Armstrong; he worked here for a time.” He didn’t even bother to introduce Alex properly.

  “I do seem to recall him.” The director addressed us with all the polite near-indifference I’d expected. “I hope you both enjoyed the exhibit.”

  “Greatly. It’s a masterpiece. I’m sure your patrons will enjoy it.”

  That got me a small smile. “I believe they shall. That scepter is quite the coup. We’re fortunate that Lord Thorburn was able to persuade his friend to part with it.”

  Lord, it was as though our near-disastrous hunt had never even happened. “Less persuaded and more paid off, I believe, but yes indeed, he did gamble on a winner there.”

  Gerard narrowed his eyes at me. “If I gambled on anyone, it was the two of you. You barely managed to return the scepter on time.”

  “Yes, well, dealing with a posse of international art thieves would give anyone a run for their money. I daresay you know how difficult such criminals can be to deal with,” I continued recklessly. “Seeing as how you’ve done so much business with them.”

  Alex was looking at me like I’d just hauled off and slapped Gerard across the face, half admiring and half astonished. The director looked perturbed, like an owl whose feathers were being ruffled by a cross-breeze. Gerard’s nostrils flared dangerously.

  “You’d better mind the slander that comes out of your mouth,” he all but hissed, “or no museum in this country will hire you once I’m done with you.”

  “You know what? I don’t care.” And I didn’t; I really didn’t. I’d almost been killed by someone twice as smart and ten times more ruthless than Gerard not two days ago. He could threaten me all he wanted, try to destroy my reputation, do what he liked, and it still wouldn’t evoke the kind of terror I’d felt at Corday’s hands. There was more to my life than work now. I could afford to be bold—and if not now, when? After he’d struck again, defrauded the museum yet again? I turned to the director. “I highly recommend that you continue with your assessment of everything this man and his poisonous family have ever donated here. I have no doubt that some of the pieces will be fake.”

  “Trying to cover up your crimes after the fact?” Gerard asked with a sneer. “You could have made any number of switches over the regrettable course of our relationship. Don’t start something you can’t afford to see through, Malcolm. You won’t like where it takes you.”

  Of course he would try to shift any blame onto me. It had worked last time, after all. The director was staring between us like we were playing full-contact tennis, back and forth, bloodying each other more with each and every blow. I bit back my next reply, trying to maintain some degree of professionalism.

  “That’s what I thought,” Gerard sneered. “Now, if you don’t mi
nd, I’d rather not have to make security throw you out.”

  “And I’d rather not have to break a guy’s arm just for doing his job,” Alex said. “So sure, we’ll go. But we’re not going far, and we’ll be back soon. Real soon.”

  “Spare me your melodramatic, Hollywoodesque threats and—”

  A sudden furor by the main doors caught our attention. Three men were entering: one in a dark suit that had seen better days, the other two in their Metropolitan Police uniforms. One of the staff tasked with keeping uninvited people out tried to turn them away, but the man in front bowled right past her with a “police business, ma’am, step aside.” He glanced around, honed in on the four of us, and walked up with a brisk pace. “Lord Thorburn?” he inquired with an air of impatience.

  “Yes… th-that’s me,” Gerard stuttered.

  “Excellent. I’m Detective Chief Inspector Walker, and I’m here to place you under arrest, sir.” He motioned his men forward. “Do us all a favor and don’t try to run, right? I’d hate to knock you into something breakable.”

  One of the constables took Gerard’s arm, but he furiously shook the man off. “This is outrageous! I demand to know on what grounds you’re arresting me! If it’s anything these two buffoons attested to”—he waved a hand at Alex and me—“then you’re as big an idiot as they are!”

  The DCI’s eyes narrowed. “As it happens, I’ve been chatting with a friend of yours all morning, sir. A Mr. Alastair Weir. That name ring a bell?” It must have, the way Gerard’s face suddenly went pale, but he tried to stand his ground.

  “It sounds like you’ve been talking to a criminal. How can you trust anything he tells you?”

  “Oh, I don’t trust a single word that comes out of his mouth, sir. I do trust the evidence I found in his workshop, though. Lots of pretty things there, including a ledger filled with names and numbers. You feature quite heavily in it, in fact. Mr. Weir really should have gotten with the times, stopped keeping his records longhand. But”—he shrugged—“what’s bad for you is good for us.”