“Financial advice, of course. The first thing I’ll need is access to SBL’s balance sheet, along with all its underlying assets, liabilities, loans, and the accounts of its major clients.”
“Why?”
“Art is money, Gabriel. Never forget that.”
26
Kandestederne
At the tip of Denmark’s Jutland peninsula lies a slender, sandy spit of land formed by the ceaseless clash between the North Sea and its smaller rival, the Baltic. Ingrid Johansen lived a few kilometers to the south in the bleak, windswept dunes of Kandestederne. Though it was one of Scandinavia’s most popular summer resorts, she much preferred the winter months, when she had the place largely to herself. Yes, the weather was dreadful and the days were short, but her cottage was fully winterized and filled with distractions, including an enormous collection of books, a high-end Norwegian-made audio system, and her computers. She did not mind the solitude; indeed, she actively sought it. The director-general of the Danish security and intelligence service was one of the handful of people in the world who knew how to reach her. The ground rules of their relationship required Ingrid to notify the director each time she returned to the country. She had done so a fortnight earlier, having spent most of the autumn lying low at her villa on Mykonos.
She had purchased her Greek hideaway with the proceeds of a summerlong crime spree in Saint-Tropez. A number of large scores in Switzerland, including a cash-stuffed briefcase she snatched one afternoon in the elegant lobby bar of the Hôtel Métropole in Geneva,had financed the wholesale renovation of her cottage in Kandestederne. The director of Danish intelligence was well aware of Ingrid’s criminal past, as were his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice. They had nevertheless granted her official absolution when, at the behest of a legendary spy named Gabriel Allon, she agreed to slip into Russia and steal a secret Kremlin plan to wage nuclear war in Ukraine. The operation had ended violently at the Finnish border. Ingrid had only a vague memory of how she had managed to survive. Eleven officers of the Russian Border Force had not been so fortunate.
Under her arrangement with the Danish government, she had been allowed to keep her sizable personal fortune, much of which was hidden at Banca Privada d’Andorra, and all of her property and assets. She was also permitted to carry a firearm, though the Danish National Police insisted she surrender the Glock 26 subcompact she had purchased from the Black Cobras street gang in Malmö. Her new weapon was a Heckler & Koch USP9. It was not as concealable as her old Glock, but it was highly accurate and packed enough of a punch to stop even the most determined Moscow Center assassin.
At present the weapon was tucked into the rear pocket of her fleece-lined winter cycling jacket. She was headed westward across the peninsula on the Skagensvej, sailing along at just under forty kilometers an hour. According to her onboard computer, her cadence was a brisk ninety-seven pedal strokes per minute. Her heart rate was only slightly higher.
She stopped for coffee at a café near the ferry terminal in Hirtshals, then started toward the Baltic port town of Frederikshavn. By the time she arrived, the clouds had moved in, and a light rain was beginning to fall. She headed north to Hulsig, then turned directly into a fierce headwind for the five-kilometer stretch run back to Kandestederne.
Her cottage stood at the northernmost edge of the settlement, at the end of a narrow lane. She arrived there to find a petrol-powered Audi sedan parked next to her all-electric Volvo EX90. The ground rules of her relationship with the director of Danish intelligence required her to report any and all suspicious activity around her place of residence. Instead she flung open the front door and hurried inside.
***
“Nothing?” asked Gabriel.
“Zilch.”
“Surely you’ve picked a pocket or two.”
“Only one, Mr. Allon.”
He patted the front of his cashmere sport jacket and realized that his billfold was missing. Ingrid must have stolen it during their brief embrace. “You certainly haven’t lost your touch.”
“But I’ve definitely lost the craving to steal.” She returned the plundered booty with a frown. “That crazy Corsican witch doctor is to blame. She’s ruined me.”
The Corsican woman in question would have been appalled to hear herself described in so disparaging a manner. She was not a witch doctor, she was asignadora, a healer of those afflicted with theocchju, the evil eye. She also possessed the power to see the past and foretell the future, as Ingrid had discovered during a visit to the old woman’s parlor.
She pulled the cork from a bottle of Sancerre and poured two glasses. Rain was hurling itself against the soaring windows of her sitting room, blurring the remarkable view of the North Sea. The furnishings were modern and Scandinavian, as was the artwork adorning her walls. One of the canvases, a winter seascape with twodistant figures walking along the water’s edge, looked curiously out of place. Gabriel had made the painting on the beach below Ingrid’s terrace and given it to her as a peace offering. Seeing it hanging on her wall, he regretted not having burned it.
“And what about your other pastime?” he asked, accepting a glass of the wine.
“My charitable endeavors, you mean?”
“No,” he answered. “Click, click, click.”
It was how Ingrid referred to her uncanny ability to penetrate even the most sophisticated computer network as though she were walking through an open door.
“My last hack was that bank in the British Virgin Islands.”
“If memory serves, you didn’t break much of a sweat.”
She smiled. “Candy from a baby.”
“Do you think you can hack SBL PrivatBank of Lugano?”
She rolled her pale blue eyes. Her hair was the color of toffee and streaked with blond. Parted in the middle, it framed a face of straight, even features. There was nothing out of place, not a line or mark.
“I’m insulted that you would even bother to ask. But why SBL?”
