“We’ll have two armed Pendragon operators on the perimeter, two of us with combat training inside with the non-lethal kit, plus Merlin in overwatch.” Arthur stretched a leg out. “Yeah. It’s enough.”
“What if the authentication runs long? Into overnight?”
“If Caulfield needs a second day, we pull the egg back to the hotel tonight and go back tomorrow.” Arthur would have been planning things from the moment I called him, so he didn’t miss a beat. “We don’t leave the authentication open-ended on someone else’s property. Too many staff rotations, too many unknowns.”
“Okay.” She sat back again, apparently satisfied.
Arthur’s phone buzzed on the table. He checked the screen, then tapped a button to put it on speaker. “I’ve got you on speaker, Morganna.”
“Who’s in the room?” came a female voice.
“Hey, Marj.” Merlin waited a beat before continuing. He was the only one who called her by her real name.
Morganna Vale hated her legal name—Marjorie—but Merlin had recruited her from the Agency before Task Force Legacy, and before he’d given us all our stupid Arthurian call signs. She was one of the few who preferred hers, just like John preferred being called Merlin. After the task force broke up, she’d insisted on using it everywhere.
When she didn’t bite and tell him not to call her Marj, Merlin continued. “We’ve got a full house, including Arthur, Galahad, Radek Horvácek from Pendragon, and Grace Laurent.”
“Perfect. Let’s talk about Kessler first.”
“Go.”
“He’s high-profile, so I had a lot to comb through. The most interesting part was the attendance records from auction houses and private exhibitions going back eight years. Kessler and Henri Dubois keep turning up in the same rooms. Sotheby’sRussian sales in London and Geneva, I expected—they’re both well-known collectors in that space—but he’s shown up at events that don’t fit his profile. A European decorative arts preview at Christie’s last spring where Dubois purchased a vase. A private antiquities viewing in Vienna two years ago hosted by a friend of Dubois. Nothing in Kessler’s collecting range. He wasn’t buying.”
“You think he’s been watching Dubois?” I asked.
“That’s what the pattern’s telling me, although I don’t have proof.”
Patterns were her specialty. Lots of people knew how to find information, but her superpower was finding the connections. A photograph might have her recall a document she’d read two years ago, and shejust knewthe two went together. And she was always right.
“Add to that the reward the Dubois family has for the lost Hen with Sapphire Pendant egg?—”
“What?” Grace’s feet unfolded from underneath her and landed on the floor. She practically tipped over, aiming herself at the phone. “Henri said he’d pay me for it, but didn’t mention a reward.”
“Five million,” said Morganna. “The egg’s been missing for some time, and they stopped broadcasting the reward a decade ago. The money’s sitting in escrow.”
Grace looked at me. She would have given the egg to the man because she thought it was the right thing to do, wouldn’t she have? Quietly, almost to herself, she whispered, “Five million?”
What was she thinking? About all the things she could do with five million? Or how much less it was than what Caulfield had told her it was worth? Was he aware of the reward?
“What about Caulfield?” I asked.
Morganna hummed aloud. “This is where things start getting interesting. His credentials as an authenticator are impeccable:Christie’s, peer-reviewed publications, industry endorsements, some work for the Hermitage, and our sources who’ve vouched for him professionally—Samantha Ferraro, Jean Dupont, and I suppose Henri Dubois. I didn’t find anything to dispute his qualifications.”
“But?” I said. There had to be a but.
“But the downstream pattern doesn’t match. Items Caulfield personally authenticates end up in private collections more often than I would have expected. Not always, but over half of the ones I could track went to private sales rather than auction. At his level, industry average is closer to fifteen to twenty percent.”
“What does that mean?” asked Grace.
“He owns a four-bedroom flat in Chelsea, but his stated income doesn’t account for it. It’s not a dramatic gap, but I couldn’t find any other evidence of how he afforded the flat, so it stood out.”
“You think he’s front-running,” Grace said as more of a statement than a question.
Front-running? I stared at Grace as she settled back in her seat, the surprise over Henri Dubois’ reward already gone.
“In securities,” Grace said, looking at the phone, “if you know ahead of time that your firm is going to recommend a stock, you buy it for favored clients before the recommendation moves the price. It’s a federal crime.”
“Not in the art market, though,” said Arthur, with all the familiarity of the art world as the son of a billionaire. “Not enough regulation.”
