Chapter 2: Under Suspicion

Paris. September 7, 2007. Friday morning.

Klaus knotted his tie in front of the mirror of their bedroom. He paused at the thought. This was their bedroom. It still felt like a dream that Chantal had given him another chance.

He turned to smile at the photo on the dresser. She wore an ivory silk suit for their second wedding. She'd never looked so beautiful. Their marriage was a grand reunion. Her parents traveled from Reims to attend, his from Frankfurt. Among the friends attending were Neal, Sara, June, Henry, and Eric. Marcel and a few others from his new office also came. They provided all the validation he needed that despite the odds being stacked against him, he was finally on track.

Today was his thirty-seventh birthday. When Chantal asked him what he'd like, he told her the baby she carried was the best gift he could possibly receive. On a Friday night, the bistro would be packed. He planned to work in the kitchen along with the other help as he did most evenings. She'd let him take over the sommelier's responsibilities. He hoped to eventually expand the wine bar.

Chantal had hired an excellent sous-chef, allowing her to have more evenings off. There was even talk of her hosting a cooking show for children similar to what Peter's wife was doing in New York. Chantal would be wonderful with kids—especially their own.

But enough of daydreams. It was time to leave for his day job. This morning, he was scheduled to meet with the security team at the Louvre. As he slipped on his jacket, he heard the door buzzer. His first thought was that Chantal had returned early from the produce markets and needed his help with bringing in supplies.

He raced down the stairs and opened the door.

"Hello, Klaus."

He stared in shock at his brother. "Rolf?" He wore a beard and his hair was gray, but there was no mistaking that voice. Ever since he heard about his escape, he knew this might happen. He'd formulated a strategy. Could he make it work?

Scima Gameworks. Thursday evening.

"Reporting for duty," Neal announced when he entered the Red Sands workroom.

He wasn't expecting much of a welcome, and he didn't get it. Richard had already warned him that the frenzy of putting together the trailer for the upcoming game had everyone working in crisis mode. Ian had imposed a deadline to finish the trailer by no later than Monday morning. That was to allow time for the footage to be reviewed, processed, and prepared for release. Up to now, Neal thought he would never experience as exhausting a process as when they prepared the Yellowface short for the sci-fi convention.

But this was worse.

The motivation was huge. Their trailer would be shown on gaming websites throughout the world on the weekend of the test launch. It had to be perfect.

He already knew he'd spend the entire weekend at Scima. The basement of the building had sleep cubicles for exhausted programmers, and he'd take advantage of them. With Sara gone, there was no need to return home.

He looked forward to the frenzy. For now, there was nothing he could do about Rolf. He wasn't overly concerned about Rolf targeting him, but Peter and Henry were. Their relief when they heard about his weekend plans was touching. For the next few days, Scima was his safe house.

As he headed for his workstation, he checked on the others. Mozzie was tweaking the script. Travis was huddled with Richard as he worked on spaceship designs. Aidan appeared to be in a world to himself as he wrote code while Keiko was demonstrating an alien fighting technique to a group of enthralled developers. Working with them were two developers Neal had gotten to know during a sting at Scima last year—Raven and Blair.

For that op, he'd pretended to be a concept artist at Scima. Now he wasn't faking it and he had the paychecks to prove it. The job wasn't something he'd want to do for very long, but for a brief period, it was a fascinating change of pace. The best part was working with his friends from Columbia. This was a chance to pay them back for their participation in the amber music box con.

He settled into his cubbyhole. He had a stack of revisions to make in the concept art. For this assignment, his easel was digital, a medium he'd grown more comfortable with over the past year. As soon as he finished a modification, he passed it to Raven who would update the game code.

He occasionally thought about his initial vow to keep his university life separate from the Bureau. Even before the start of his first year, his advisor had presented him with a case. He should have taken that as an omen that his goal simply wasn't possible. He'd later realized it wasn't even desirable.

Now Richard was often called upon to mastermind disguises. Aidan's programming expertise was an essential tool in the art crimes task force toolkit. As for Mozzie, he'd always straddled multiple worlds with aplomb, and never more so than now.

During a break in the early hours of the morning, the musketeers commandeered a huddle room for sashimi—both vegan and seafood. Thanks primarily to Keiko, pizza was no longer the sole item on the menu.

"Is Marta still on the loose?" Aidan asked.

Neal nodded. "We assume she was involved in freeing Rolf, but there's no evidence to prove it."

"I wonder if she's in charge of Phoenix's hacking operation," Keiko mused.

"Even if she wasn't earlier, she most likely is now," Travis agreed. "The accounts have been pilfered for several years. Rolf could have set up the system and then had her run it for him while he was in prison."

Richard turned to Neal. "Now that Rolf's on the loose, Phoenix may reach out to you."

"Possibly," Neal agreed. "If Phoenix commissions a Vermeer, the odds of him being Rolf will skyrocket." Their plans to use The Geographer to trap Rolf had fizzled on the launch pad. Neal had worked with John in London to negotiate the sting. Klaus contacted his parents on their behalf. The museum agreed in principle, and as a preliminary step conducted a thorough review of the painting. They discovered much to everyone's dismay that the Vermeer was yet another forgery. This one had been marked with Leonardo's lion pinprick.

The one consolation prize was that this was another circumstantial bit of evidence pointing to Rolf's involvement. Klaus said that Rolf had never discussed the painting with him. That in itself implicated Rolf. For a man who was so taken with The Astronomer, wouldn't he have wanted the companion piece? But he wouldn't have mentioned it if he already had the original.

When Neal's phone began to play "La Vie en Rose," the others turned to look at him. "That's Chantal," he explained. "I'll take it in another room."

As he stepped outside, he rifled through options for her call. It was Klaus's birthday, but she wouldn't call during the midday lunch rush unless it was important. He had a sinking feeling she didn't have good news.

He answered as he stepped inside a vacant huddle room.

"Klaus has disappeared! His microchip isn't working. Marcel just left. He'll probably call you." Chantal's words poured out in a tumble of French. Her voice was trembling so hard, she didn't sound like herself.

"Take a breath, Chantal. When was the last time you saw him?" His immediate goal was to reduce her anxiety by focusing on whatever details she could supply, but his own was ratcheting up by the second. The microchip couldn't be found by ordinary detectors. Klaus must have told someone, willingly or unwillingly, to have it removed.

Chantal had very little else to tell him. Klaus hadn't shown up at the Louvre for a meeting but nobody became suspicious till the chip stopped broadcasting. It had been designed to stop automatically if it was removed from its location in Klaus's right armpit.

"Marcel's not saying much, but he probably thinks Klaus fled to be with his brother," Chantal said. "I refuse to believe it. Three days ago, I discovered I'm pregnant. Klaus is overjoyed. He wouldn't leave me. Rolf must have abducted him."

Marcel called while Neal was still on the phone with Chantal. He reported that he'd notified John in London. Interpol agents in addition to the French police were searching for Klaus. Marcel didn't speculate about whether Klaus left voluntarily, but he didn't realize Chantal was pregnant. Neal was convinced that Klaus didn't leave willingly, but how to prove it?

Henry and Peter might not be so confident, and he understood their reasoning. One could argue that Klaus had been conning them all along. Even Chantal's pregnancy didn't prove much. He knew how much she wanted a baby. The argument could be made that Klaus left her a farewell present.

He didn't call Peter and Henry as they would be asleep at this hour. He already could hear their comments in his head. There was only one person he wanted to talk with at the moment, and for her, it was midday.

"You sound exhausted," Sara said.

"No, just drained . . . and frustrated." Neal glanced around the bare-bones huddle room. It was crammed with electronics but no amenities. "I have much more sympathy for what Peter went through when I was accused of a theft. He had to wait till others made a move."

"I'm glad you'll be at Scima. The others will keep you so busy, the time will pass quickly till that breakthrough comes, and you know it will."

Her confidence roused his languishing spirits. "What do you think is most likely?"

"Rolf's ego is so large, he'll want to make a big splash," she predicted. "His first coup was seizing Klaus. The next act won't be far off."

"Do you believe Klaus is innocent?"

"I do," she said. "I wasn't as confident as you were at first. But seeing him at his wedding convinced me. What do you think Klaus would have done if Rolf showed up at his door?"

"He might have played along, hoping that he'd find out what Rolf was up to so he could expose him. That's what I would have done."

"I bet he's also looking for a way to contact you or Chantal."

Neal nodded, his worry increasing. Any move Klaus made would place him in much greater danger. "How's your sting coming?"

"I believe we have a go for next Thursday. You can tell Mozzie we hope to send him his instructions in a few hours."

"By then, he'll enjoy a break from his script," he said. "I know I will. It's too late to make any more revisions, but Aidan hasn't gotten the message."

"Keiko warned me about his lamentable perfectionism," Sara said with a soft chuckle. "How many landscapes do you have to modify?"

"You don't want to know." Discussing Red Sands helped to relieve his tension about Klaus, if only for a few minutes. Sara seemed to sense it and kept him busy answering questions about the trailer for several minutes.

"You're still coming to Amsterdam as planned?" she asked.

"Yes. Ian insists on having the trailer ready by nine o'clock sharp on Monday. Knowing Aidan, we'll probably be working on it till 8:59, but that will still give me plenty of time to get to the university." He'd depart that evening. He was scheduled to meet with the Dutch art crimes unit and present workshops for two days. The fact he'd chosen the same week that Sara and Diana were there was hardly a coincidence. Not that they needed him. Initially, he and Sara hoped to take a couple of days of vacation in the Netherlands after the completion of the sting. Now with Klaus's disappearance, he saw another advantage. He, Sara, and Diana could watch each other's backs.

#

Sara was in the lobby of the Diamond Exchange when Neal contacted her. Diana returned from her meeting with the Amsterdam Police just as Neal ended the call. Her jubilant face told Sara all she needed to know.

Diana dropped into a chair next to her. "We have full authorization! While I was there, the commander called security at Schiphol Airport, relaying his approval. We're to meet with security tomorrow morning."

Diana rubbed her hands together gleefully. The gesture reminded Sara of Mozzie. Had she picked up the habit from him? That made Sara wonder if she'd picked up anything too.

"I need to return to our hotel suite to contact Mozzie," Diana continued. "Do you mind?"

"Not at all. Now that the police have agreed, I expect the diamond merchants will fall in line."

"I know they will and you're so much better at schmoozing them than I am. Can you believe, we have a go for six days from now!"

The plan was the most audacious Sara had ever concocted. With Mozzie's help, they would spread the rumor that a diamond shipment worth $75 million was passing through Schiphol Airport on Thursday. They'd convinced the Diamond Exchange to cooperate with fake emails about the shipment. Tomorrow's challenge would be to prepare a plan with airport security to give the appearance they were providing extra security for the valuable shipment.

Diana had been the first one to notice a pattern in European jewelry heists. It led her to believe a single gang was responsible. She and Sara spent months tracking them and accumulating circumstantial evidence. One of the gang's primary tells was a sophisticated manipulation of software. Aidan had been brought in to analyze the malware.

When $100 million in diamonds and jewelry was stolen from the Antwerp Diamond Exchange a couple of months ago, Diana pounced on the case, betting that the same gang was involved. An analysis of how the security systems were overridden confirmed her hunch. In next week's sting, the container supposedly holding the gems would be loaded with electronics to capture the thieves red-handed.

If they showed up.

Diana rubbed her knuckles under her chin. "They are going to show, aren't they?"

"We're doing everything short of mounting a neon sign to alert the dark web about the shipment," Sara assured her. "My only concern is that the bait is so tempting, we'll have more than one gang target the haul."

Diana grinned. "Then we'll arrest both of them! I wish we could be part of the police force confronting them."

"I do too, but at least we'll get to watch the monitors."

The sting was being conducted in partnership with Interpol. John Hobhouse had been instrumental in cutting through the layers of red tape. Although not technically art crimes, some of the stolen jewels had historical value. Sara also argued that the same gang could have been responsible for the theft of the McNally Solitaire. As for who they might catch and what corroborating evidence they might find, there were absolutely no guarantees. But the sting wasn't expensive to set up, so in the end, the Dutch decided it was worth the gamble.

Should she ask for Neal's active participation? His workshop and meetings would be on Tuesday and Wednesday, but he'd still have plenty of time on his hands. Her request could give him an additional focus. She was glad Chantal had the bistro to keep her occupied. How did the French view Klaus's disappearance? Were they willing to consider he was being coerced?

"Sara?"

Diana's questioning voice brought her back to reality. "Sorry, life's gotten more complicated recently. Neal called while you were away."

"I saw you were talking to someone."

She nodded. "Klaus has disappeared. His microchip is no longer transmitting a signal."

Diana exhaled. "What everyone worried about has happened."

When Diana heard the details, such as they were, she was also convinced that Rolf had taken Klaus. He'd abducted Neal and Peter. Why wouldn't he treat his brother the same way? Diana agreed that this pinned Phoenix's identity squarely on their cyber-foe. All the elements fit. Anyone who could escape from prison so easily would have the means to run the investment club as well.