“Italian, was he?”
“Definitely.”
“And the others?”
“They were the businessman’s bodyguards. Or perhaps the painting’s.”
“Is it a Leonardo?”
“Many careers have been ruined by mistaken attributions to Leonardo...”
“But?”
“I believe it’s him.”
“What sort of condition is it in?”
“Dreadful. I have a right mind to go back to Amsterdam and wring Peter van de Velde’s neck.”
“In all likelihood, Van de Velde had very little to do with it. He’s merely fronting the deal for the men who stole it from the Vatican.”
“But he knows the other players, though.”
“Some of them,” Gabriel admitted. “But he doesn’t have possession of the painting. And if we confront him, we will lose our greatest advantage.”
“Which is?”
“The men who stole the Leonardo are under the impression that they’ve gotten away with the greatest art heist in history. And their overconfidence has led them to make two critical mistakes.”
“The first?”
“Inviting you to Amsterdam.”
“And the second?”
It was Sarah, martini glass to her lips, who answered. “Putting you on that airplane.”
***
It was a mistake, Sarah continued, because international convention requires all civilian aircraft to have a unique alphanumeric identification code prominently displayed on their exterior. These codes allow air traffic controllers and airport authorities to track and record the movement of individual planes around the globe. But private citizens likewise have access to the data, as the CIA discovered when investigative reporters revealed that the Agency was using a fleet of private jets to secretly transfer captured members of al-Qaeda to so-called black sites for enhanced interrogation. The multibillionaire chairman of a French luxury goods conglomerate had recently unloaded his Bombardier 7500 because he had grown weary of climate activists posting his carbon emissions on social media.
“I should have such problems,” muttered Julian. “But who owns the plane that I was on this morning?”
“Eiger Air Transport,” replied Sarah.
“A shell company, I assume.”
“But of course. It’s Swiss registered, as is the plane itself. In fact, it headed to Switzerland after dropping you at Le Bourget.”
“Somewhere nice?”
“Lugano,” answered Gabriel. “Your perfectly presentable Italian businessman and his bodyguards then made their way by car to a bank in the Piazza della Riforma, Lugano’s main square.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because they foolishly took Peter van de Velde with him, and I was monitoring his phone.”
“And the name of this bank?”
