Free The Heist by Daniel Silva Page B

it was no good; the case would not leave his thoughts. A promising British spy gone bad, a Syrian intelligence asset blown to bits by a car bomb, three stolen paintings covered by high-quality forgeries, a vault in the Geneva Freeport . . . The possibilities, thought Gabriel, were endless. It was no use trying to force the pieces now. He needed to open another window—a window onto the global trade in stolen paintings—and for that he needed the help of a master art thief.
    And so he lay sleepless on the stiff little bed, wrestling with memories and with thoughts of his future, until six the following morning. After showering and changing his clothes, he left the embassy in darkness and rode the Underground to St. Pancras Station. A Eurostar was leaving for Paris at half past seven; he bought a stack of newspapers before boarding and finished reading them as the train eased to a stop at the Gare du Nord. Outside, a line of wet taxis waited under a sky the color of gunmetal. Gabriel slipped past them and spent an hour walking the busy streets around the station until he was certain he was not being followed. Then he set out for the Eighth Arrondissement and a street called the rue de Miromesnil.

10
RUE DE MIROMESNIL, PARIS
    I N THE INTELLIGENCE BUSINESS , as in life, it is sometimes necessary to deal with individuals whose hands are far from clean. The best way to catch a terrorist is to employ another terrorist as a source. The same was true, Gabriel reckoned, when one was trying to catch a thief. Which explained why, at 9:55, he was seated at a window table of a rather good brasserie on the rue de Miromesnil, a copy of Le Monde spread before him, a steaming café crème at his elbow. At 9:58 he spotted an overcoated, hatted figure walking briskly along the pavement from the direction of the Élysée Palace. The figure entered a small shop called Antiquités Scientifiques at the stroke of ten, switched on the lights, and changed the sign in the window from FERMÉ to OUVERT . Maurice Durand, thought Gabriel, smiling, was nothing if not reliable. He finished his coffee and crossed the empty street to the entrance of the shop. The intercom, when pressed, howled like an inconsolable child. Twenty seconds passed with no invitation to enter. Then the deadbolt snapped open with an inhospitable thud and Gabriel slipped inside.

    The small showroom, like Durand himself, was a model of order and precision. Antique microscopes and barometers stood in neat rows along the shelves, their brass fittings shining like the buttons of a soldier’s dress tunic; cameras and telescopes peered blindly into the past. In the center of the room was a nineteenth-century Italian terrestrial floor globe, price available upon request. Durand’s tiny right hand rested atop Asia Minor. He wore a dark suit, a candy-wrapper gold necktie, and the most insincere smile Gabriel had ever seen. His bald pate shone in the overhead lighting. His small eyes stared straight ahead with the alertness of a terrier.
    “How’s business?” asked Gabriel cordially.
    Durand moved to the photographic devices and picked up an early-twentieth-century camera with a brass lens by Poulenc of Paris. “I’m shipping this to a collector in Australia,” he said. “Six hundred euros. Not as much as I would have hoped, but he drove a hard bargain.”
    “Not that business, Maurice.”
    Durand made no reply.
    “That was a lovely piece of work you and your men pulled off in Munich last month,” Gabriel said. “An El Greco portrait disappears from the Alte Pinakothek, and no one’s seen or heard of it since. No ransom demands. No hints from the German police that they’re close to cracking the case. Nothing but silence and a blank spot on a museum wall where a masterpiece used to hang.”
    “You don’t ask me about my business,” said Durand, “and I don’t ask you about yours. Those are the rules of our relationship.”
    “Where’s the El Greco,