“Don’t worry, there won’t be one.”
Gabriel rang off and immediately dialed a number from his contacts. The woman who answered spoke English with a pronounced Danish accent.
“Do you have any idea what time it is?”
“Late,” answered Gabriel.
“Is it urgent, or can it wait until morning?”
“It can’t, I’m afraid.”
“Another missing painting?”
“Missing girl, actually.”
“When and where?” was all she said.
She claimed she was visiting a friend in Luxembourg, but Gabriel never knew quite what to believe where Ingrid Johansen was concerned. The more likely story was that she had ventured to the small but exceedingly wealthy country for professional reasons. Poor Ingrid suffered from a lifelong compulsion to acquire objects that did not belong to her. Gabriel had made her acquaintance while searching for a long-lost Vermeer, which Ingrid had pinched from the Amalfi Coast villa of a corrupt South African shipper. Sometime later, at the request of a colleague from the Central Intelligence Agency, he had sent her to Moscow to steal a secret Kremlin plan to wage nuclear war in Ukraine. The operation had ended at the Finnish border. Ingrid had only a vague memory of how she had managed to survive. Gabriel, for his part, recalled every awful detail.
Lately Ingrid had provided him with services of a different sort, namely her ability to penetrate even the most well-defended computernetwork as though she were walking through an open door. Her most recent hack involved an ethically challenged bank in Lugano, which collapsed as a result of the scandal she had helped to bring about. Attempting to determine the authenticity of a photograph was beneath her. At the very least it could be done remotely. Gabriel nevertheless prevailed upon Ingrid to join him in London. He had a feeling he would need her again before this was over.
He was back at the Adams Row mews house by half past ten the following morning. Ingrid arrived an hour later, dressed in black jeans, a black pullover, and a stylish houndstooth check jacket. Her shoulder-length 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.
They embraced in the entrance hall, then Gabriel automatically patted the front of his jacket to make certain he was still in possession of his billfold. His old friend Ingrid had the best pair of hands he had ever seen.
“You have something for me?” she asked.
He showed her the USB flash drive.
“Please tell me you didn’t stick that thing into your computer.”
“I didn’t really have a choice in the matter.”
She plucked the flash drive from his grasp and surveyed the interior of the mews house. “Nice.”
“It can be yours for a mere fifteen million.”
“Rental?”
“Borrowed.”
“From whom?”
“The Knight Group Limited of Berkeley Square.”
“Is he watching us, your friend Mr. Knight?”
“He’s my client, not my friend. And he swore he wouldn’t.”
“Do you believe him?”
“Not quite.”
She tugged a laptop from her luggage and hacked her way onto the Wi-Fi network. Then, after checking the upload and download speeds, she inserted the flash drive and clicked on the icon. Her expression darkened as she contemplated the image on the screen.
“Hello, Alice,” she said quietly.
“Are you sure about that?”
