Page 11 of Vienna Bliss

Alexander frowned. He didn’t like the idea of her in danger.

“But the risk is worth the reward.”

“A five-percent finder’s fee, out of the five million dollars?” he guessed.

“The five million dollars is my percent. And it’s ten percent. The dagger was insured for fifty million.”

“You get ten percent?” That genuinely shocked him. Given the cost of art, and the kinds of pieces that were even worth bothering to retrieve, having to pay out ten percent for recovery would be a huge financial burden for an insurance company. That she was able to charge that much meant she was very, very good at what she did.

“I may not be a billionaire…” Alena winked. “But I always fly first class.”

“First class commercial,” Alexander said with a sniff.

She chuckled but reached out and shoved his leg before continuing with her story.

“I found a few other items in that particular crate. I had expected just the dagger—given the size, it should have been only the dagger in that particular box, but there were other things tucked in the packaging.

“Usually I take the art, and either leave an empty box, or replace the original with a replica. That way no alarms are sounded until the item reaches its destination.

“But in this case, I decided to take the whole thing. I didn’t have a lot of time, or the materials to safely transport anything but the dagger. I needed the carefully, if over-packed box. I damaged a few other crates on my way out to give the impression the dagger box had been lost in transport.”

“Making my company seem irresponsible.”

“A bit, yes. So sorry.” She grinned at him.

“What else was in the box?”

“Here’s where it gets interesting. The other pieces weren’t stolen from private collections. One was the cuneiform tablet, last seen in the Iraqi National Museum.”

Alexander’s jaw clenched. “Reported looted after the U.S. invasion?”

“Exactly.”

“The last was a small statue with no known records. If I just pulled it out of the box, I might have wondered if I missed a piece—only the bottom two-thirds of a standing male figure remained, but again there was cuneiform writing around the bottom.

“I took it to a friend at the Smithsonian. Her best guess was that it was from the city of Ur. It was probably looted from the archaeological dig in 2003 around the same time that the museum was being robbed.”

“An Indian dagger stolen from a private collection doesn’t seem to have a connection to looted Iraqi artifacts.”

“That’s what I thought also. The dagger was returned to its owner, I collected my fee from Beijing Global so that was done, but now I was technically in possession of stolen goods. Those I took to my friends at Interpol.”

“Friends.”

“They’ve hired me a time or two for help with art crime.”

“You steal things for governments.”

“Excuse you. I retrieve them.”

“Of course.”

“When I walked into the art crimes office in Paris, I unknowingly provided a break in an ongoing case.”

“A case against me?”

“Against Wagner Global. You’re powerful enough that they didn’t dare do anything that might attract the attention of your legal team. Not until they were very sure.”

“What does Absolon have to do with this? And terrorism?”