Josh held his tongue for most of the meal, letting Michael talk about the wood finish of the great canopy beds and the floors and moldings, as well as the tapestries and fine fabrics that decorated the rooms in King Ludwig’s celebration of being rich and comfortable and liking nice things.
It was hard—he had to stop himself from asking about security, or the Rothschild jewels, or the painting stolen by the Nazis and saved by the Monuments Men, but Carl caught his eye and shook his head.
Josh remembered that shining faith Liam had in him, that he was more than a buzzenteentwelve IQ, and calmed down.
Josh had been coming to Europe since he was a child, but Michael had grown up hard in the Texas panhandle, and for most of his life, he’d assumed that his marriage to a wife he loved but didn’t desire and their children would be the extent of his world.He was a criminal, so getting a passport would have been damned hard if they hadn’t had Tienne forge one for him, and kiting around the world as a member of the crew and Carl’s boyfriend was an adventure he hadn’t once dreamed about, not even when he thought he was reaching for the stars.
Carmichael Carmody had earned the right to babble on and on about a castle, because he’d never believed such a thing existed in the world.
Josh relaxed into the dinner and allowed Michael’s wonder to infect him, allowed himself to get happy about visiting a monument to love.
Finally Michael wound down and seemed to realize he’d talked through the entire meal.
“I’m sorry,” he squeaked in the middle of waxing rhapsodic about the topiary garden and the labyrinth in the grounds.“I’m… I bet you guys see this stuff all the time.”
“But never through your eyes,” Josh said earnestly.“It’ssomuch better listening to you talk about it than it was when I came here in high school with my class.”
“Your class took you to Germany?”Michael said, breathless with surprise.
“Our suburb isreallyrich,” Josh apologized.“I mean, the bad part of that is that we take things like Neuschwanstein for granted, and we shouldn’t.You were there for a couple of hours andlookat everything you loved.That’s really the way to do it, Michael.Did you take lots of pictures for your kids?”
Michael’s smile peeked out, revealing teeth that hadn’t been fixed with braces when he’d been a kid but so much heart.“Oh, I did.I bought them all teddy bears and reproductions of the carvings and the sculptures and the paintings.Carl’s going to post them tomorrow for me, since, you know.”His smile turned mischievous.“Not supposed to be here and all.”
“I’ve got a package I’ll need you to send to my mom,” Josh told him, thinking about the giant pink diamond Grace had stolen from the Louvre.“I’ll need to get one of those stuffed bears first, though,” he said.
Carl nodded placidly and took a lingering bite of schnitzel.Carl was forever watching his weight, but Josh noticed he’d slimmed downa lotin the last year and hoped he’d stop watching.Carl’s placid demeanor and absolute calm turned out to be one of the crew’s biggest cons—Carl was an outstanding boxer and tied for second for their best muscle, and he was nearly as smart as Josh, Grace, and Stirling, knew a number of languages and, best of all, how to navigate foreign legal policy and bureaucracy.A few extra pounds didn’t detract from his effectiveness in the least.
Now he swallowed and settled back from the table with a replete sigh.“You’re being very good,” he said, “but would you like to know about the security now?”
Josh closed his eyes in gratitude.“You really do love me, don’t you, Uncle Carl?”
“Never doubt it, kid,” Carl said kindly.“Now for starters, the security system around the sparklies isverymuch the same as it was with the Louvre.”
“Glass case, contact point alarm system—”
“Heat and touch activated,” Carl finished.“We can freeze the server monitoring the pressure points and the temperature, but it’s still going to take some real speed and sleight of hand to replace the fake with the real one.There’s a security guard at the entrance and exit to the bedroom where the jewels are showcased, and we need a plan to get their attention.The problem is….”He sucked air through his teeth, and Michael filled in the missing word.
“Ambience,” he said decisively, his twang sounding more pronounced than usual.
“Ambience?”Josh asked, blinking rapidly.It was a word he hadn’t been expecting.
“That’s the word,” Carl agreed, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out fliers and maps of their target.“Listen, the Louvre was better guarded and more public.We all know that.And their security system was top notch—that’s why your team was bigger.But this place isn’t onlysmaller, it’s less crowded and less noisy.And there’s not justfewerpeople, there’smuchfewer people.There were at least five minutes today when Michael and I were the only two people in a room, minus the security guards.Using Tienne as a shill and Grace as a simultaneous feint was brilliant, but that’s too noisy for this.There’s a hush around this place.It was built to be a refuge for King Ludwig, and also afantasy, his own personal mental vacay, but dreamy.We can’t have art students doing parkour through the hallways.It’s disrespectful.”
Josh grinned at him.“I agree.But while Ididn’tknow about the extra guards, Idohave an idea.”He smiled at Liam.“So, how game is Interpol?”
Liam squinted at him.“Game?”
“Well, we’re not technically taking anything—”
“A rather brilliant fake,” Carl said soberly, “of a casket of enamel painted on silver, surrounded by a king’s ransom—literally—of jewels.”He shuddered.“I can’t believe you put it in your luggage and brought it here.”
Josh grinned and glanced around conspiratorially.“Want to see it?”
Michael’s eyes almost bugged out.
Josh went to his luggage and found the special compartment holding the casket, which was about the length and width of a paperback book, with a depth of about four inches, in an elongated octagon.And itwasexquisite, encrusted with the brightest of jewels: rubies, sapphires, emeralds.It had been commissioned in the Victorian age by one of themanyRothchild heirs for his daughter and later stolen by the Nazis when they’d plundered Paris.
After it had been returned by the famed Monuments Men, American soldiers whose job it was to save the treasures of the world from the predation of monsters, the Rothchild family had gifted it to Neuschwanstein so it could belong to the public.It was part ofmanytreasures in the castle from the same bequest.
