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Finn tapped his fingers on the desk and decided that violence would be counterproductive. “Okay, wonderful,” he said, with remarkable but completely fake patience. “So—Thierry went from St. Petersburg to Sweden.”
“No,” Delgado said. “He came to Sweden from Perth.”
Finn ground his teeth, but he kept his cool. “That’s in Australia, isn’t it?” Delgado nodded again. “Good, that’s settled. Thierry went from Perth to Sweden to Dallas, am I getting this? And you knew he was in Dallas but you went to Sweden anyway. Why?”
Again, Delgado took a report from his folder and put it on Finn’s desk. This time it was a case file from the Swedish Police Authority. It included several photos of a man who had been impaled on a statue of some kind. “Jesus,” Finn said. “That’s a bad way to go.”
Delgado nodded and said, “Impalement. Incredibly painful. And it can take a couple of days.” And to Finn’s mild astonishment, he added, “It’s known that the Assyrians used it, and the early Romans—and actually, the historical figure that Dracula is based on made impalement famous.”
“Good to know,” Finn said. He flicked the Swedish report with a finger. “Who’s the victim?”
“Arvid Ekstrom,” Delgado said. “A fisherman.” He shrugged. “Interpol says he did some smuggling on the side.”
“Huh,” Finn said. He frowned and then made the kind of connection that got him an SAC position by the age of forty. “You think he smuggled Thierry out of Russia after he stole the egg?”
“Yes,” Delgado said. “Airline records show Thierry arriving in St. Petersburg but never leaving.” He shrugged. “But the records show him leaving Perth a month later.”
Finn frowned. “Okay, so, what—the Swedish guy smuggles Thierry out of Russia. And then Thierry goes to Perth for a couple of weeks and flies back to Sweden, kills Ekstrom. Why, Frank? To cover his trail?”
“No,” Delgado said. “I believe Ekstrom betrayed Thierry.”
“Okay,” Finn said, nodding. “And now you want to go after him. After Thierry.”
“No,” Delgado said. “Thierry doesn’t exist.”
Finn closed his eyes and counted to ten. It didn’t help. He opened his eyes and flung the report across the room. “Goddamn it, Frank!” he said. “What the fuck does that mean, he doesn’t exist? Is he a ghost? A video-game character? What?!”
r /> “The security officers at the Hermitage found this,” he said. He slid another photo across the desk. “In the room where the Fabergé egg was displayed.”
Finn barely glanced at the picture. “A pile of clothes,” he said. “So what?”
“That’s the suit Thierry was wearing,” Delgado said.
“All right, so we have a naked burglar?”
“Probably not,” Delgado said. “He usually wears something underneath.”
“Thierry wears something underneath?” Finn said, and he could feel that he was on the verge of a major eruption.
“No, Thierry was just the disguise,” Delgado said.
“For who?”
For the first time ever, as far as Finn knew, Delgado smiled—just a fraction of an inch, but a smile. “Riley Wolfe,” he said.
“Motherfuck— No. No way,” Finn said. He should have known. This was the bug in Delgado’s head, the unicorn he kept chasing, the thing that had nearly derailed Delgado’s career. And Delgado had been warned not to chase it again. “We’re not going there, Frank. We’re chasing arms dealers and terrorists, not thieves.”
Unbelievably, Delgado’s smile got slightly bigger. “Perth,” he said, “is where Bailey Stone is.”
Finn actually felt his jaw drop. “Fuck me dead,” he said. Bailey Stone was very high on his task force’s wanted list. Stone had recently made an enormous sale to an offshoot of ISIS that the FBI believed planned to target American facilities across the Middle East and Europe. If it would get him Stone, Dellmore Finn would help Delgado chase UFOs. He leaned across the desk, and his face showed that for the first time, he was truly in this conversation. “Talk to me, Frank,” he said.
Delgado closed the manila folder. “Bailey Stone wants Riley Wolfe to do something—”
“To do what?” Finn interrupted.
Delgado shrugged. “Something impossible.”
“But what, Frank?”
