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“The tailor should be here in a few minutes,” Linney said. “Grab some food. There are breakfast sandwiches in the oven.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled. “What else is on the agenda today?”
Ziv typed noisily at the kitchen table. “We got some translation back from our team at the home office. There was some chatter about a housekeeper who’d been caught stealing things. Didn’t sound like something huge though. Still, it could have been enough reason to alarm the tunnel exit.”
Mouse stood by the coffee maker. “Did you sleep okay?”
I couldn’t help but glance over at Falcon. If it was possible, his concentration was even more focused on whatever was on the laptop in front of him. I cleared my throat. “Yeah, good. You?”
“I was too excited to get back to sleep. I kept wondering what else we missed. Did Elek ever steal something else important and display it in his home?”
I thought for a minute. He had plenty of art on the walls of our apartment, but much of it was forged. I remembered something. “He had a dagger. It wasn’t a forgery. The Shah Jahan dagger. Have you heard of it?”
Mouse shook his head. Linney’s forehead crinkled in thought. I forged ahead. “It’s worth millions. And he was very proud of it in the short time between when we stole it and when he sold it. It was in a display case in the living room. Some of my assumptions about the security on the crown are based on how he had the dagger displayed, but I have to assume that he would go all out on the security of the crown in a way he wouldn’t for a lesser piece.”
Falcon turned to me. Our eyes met for the first time since last night. Heat rush through my stomach, but I tried to ignore it. “King, did he ever have an item he put round-the-clock guards on? Maybe something like the Van Gogh that he only owned for a little while until he could fence it?”
I opened my mouth to say no before I remembered one instance. “Wait, there was one time… We had stolen…”
I paused, unused to just putting it out there. Confessing to a massive art theft in front of several FBI agents wasn’t easy. Falcon waited patiently. He must’ve understood my hesitation.
“Um, we had stolen the John Singer Sargent from the Imperial War Museum in London.”
Before I could say anything else, Linney sucked in a breath. “That was you?”
Mouse put his hand over his mouth. Ziv got a knowing smirk on his face. Falcon’s nostrils flared and he looked away from me.
I nodded at Linney and continued. “Obviously, we were terrified of being found out. We would have been killed. So Elek arranged for additional security until we were out of danger. I thought of it as more protection for us than for the painting, but I can’t be sure. That’s the only time I can remember having more security than just Tibor.”
Ziv pulled up something on his computer. “Tibor Varga, Elek’s manservant?”
“Yeah,” I said before taking a quick sip of coffee. “He’s sort of a jack-of-all-trades. Part butler, part personal security, part driver, and I guess whatever else Elek wants from him.”
Falcon turned back to his own computer and clicked a few keys. “According to our intel, Tibor is still there. The reports say he’s quiet but intimidating. I wonder where he falls in the security team now. Do you think he would be in charge of the newer agents?”
“I’m not sure. There’s a security consultant Elek would have brought in on the security implementation for the house. He’s Serbian, but he lives in Paris. Now that man made me nervous as hell.”
Falcon turned to Ziv, but the hacker spoke before Falcon opened his mouth. “On it.”
Falcon nodded and turned back to me. At this point it was an unspoken agreement that we were both all business. It was time to go to work. “Do you have a name?”
I shook my head. “Elek only ever referred to him as the security consultant.”
Falcon nodded. “What else can you think of? Did you give the information on the security brackets you mentioned to Mouse?”
I nodded before grabbing a breakfast sandwich and joining him at the table. “All of the manufacturers and parts I’ve ever seen used in Elek’s home are on the list I gave to Mouse. I also made a list of all of the things that I’ve learned about since then that Elek’s security consultant may have implemented in the new house. But, keep in mind, I don’t have the kind of resources that an agency like Interpol, CIA, MI5, and the FBI have. So I’m sure there are plenty of things I’m unaware of. My specialty is museum-level security. Residential level is easy by comparison.”
While Falcon went over my lists with Mouse, I ate my sandwich and got to work. It seemed like the tailor arrived only a few minutes later.
