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“And give up a chance for a five-million-dollar payday, not to mention solving the greatest art heist in history?” she said. “No way.”
They entered the club and were met by a huge bouncer.
“Club is closed until nine,” he said in English.
“I’m Beth Anders,” she said. “Udom is expecting us.”
The bouncer nodded and pointed to a flight of stairs at the back.
Udom was the first name of the Thai drug dealer that had set up the meeting. He didn’t give a last name, not that Beth had asked. Surnames had been required in Thailand after a law was passed in 1913, but many Thai still preferred to use just their first names when they could.
They went upstairs and were met by another guard, this one even bigger than the one at the front door. She gave her name again and was allowed in.
A spindly man in his forties, Udom was leaning against a desk. She hadn’t thought a drug pusher would use the crystal meth and ecstasy that he dealt to the tourists on their hedonistic holidays, but now, seeing his rail-thin frame and sunken eyes, she wasn’t so sure.
There were a dozen men in the expansive office. Half of them looked Thai, but the other half, who all looked jacked on steroids, were from some other South Asian country she couldn’t put her finger on.
“Come in, Dr. Anders,” Udom said with a smile. “Who is this lovely lady with you?”
“This is my assistant, Raven.”
“All right. Then let’s get down to business.”
Beth’s heart pounded when she saw what he was casually twirling in his hands. It was a ten-inch-high bronze eagle finial that fit on the top of a flagpole.
The finial she was looking at had been sought after for over twenty-five years, and this drug dealer was playing with it like it was a cheap paperweight.
Beth’s expertise was art history. She’d earned a Ph.D. in the subject from Cornell before attempting to secure a position in academia. But that plan was derailed when she was hired by an insurance firm to appraise a Picasso in a billionaire’s penthouse in New York City. She discovered that it had been replaced with an excellent forgery, and her help in the investigation led to the recovery of the ten-million-dollar painting.
When she found she had a talent for investigation, her unique skill set put her in high demand in the art world. Not only did she save insurance companies millions by recovering artwork, her knack for identifying suspected forgeries allowed her to supplement her income by authenticating art for prospective buyers and auction houses.
Beth had built up a reputation in the art black market as well. After being recommended to Udom by someone else she’d worked with, he had asked her to authenticate and appraise a very valuable painting, one she would immediately recognize. She didn’t work with just anyone, so to prove his seriousness, he had sent her a photo of the eagle finial next to a recent newspaper as a calling card.
“May I,” she said, reverently moving toward him with her hands outstretched.
He held it out for her. “That’s what you’re here for.”
She took it and suppressed a shiver of excitement at holding what was an almost mythical object in the art world.
In 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was robbed in the largest private property theft in history. Thirteen works of art were stolen, including paintings by the masters Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, and Manet. All told, the paintings were valued at five hundred million dollars, and a five-million-dollar reward for their return remained unclaimed. The eagle finial alone, which had topped a pole carrying a Napoleonic flag, would fetch a reward of a hundred thousand dollars.
For decades, it was feared that the artwork had been destroyed by the thieves, and many had given up hope of ever recovering the paintings, which still had their spots waiting for them in the museum. But the finial was proof that at least some of the art still existed.
It was breathtaking to hold the eagle Beth had memorized from photographs. The detail in person was even more striking, but she had to remember she had larger goals than this one object.
She opened her purse to take out a jeweler’s loupe to examine the finial up close, but she already had no doubt it was authentic. Her real goal was to attach the microtransmitter in her palm so they could track it back to the paintings.
It had been rumored for years that drug smugglers used valuable paintings as collateral in their trades. A painting was much easier to roll up and transport on an international flight than millions of dollars in cash, so the art supposedly made its way back and forth between the gangs as a sort of currency. The only problem was verifying that the art was real so that they wouldn’t be left holding a worthless counterfeit. The bronze finial was obviously being used to verify the provenance of the paintings to be used in the trade.
Beth had considered bringing Interpol in to carry out a raid, but she was afraid they’d lose their one shot at finding the paintings. So she’d come up with the plan to find the whole lot at once.
The transmitter was smaller than the tiny SIM card in her phone. It was flexible, almost transparent, and had a strong adhesive backing on it. All she had to do was place it inside the finial’s flagpole sleeve without anyone noticing, and then they could be on their way. Once the finial went back with its owner to its original storage location, she’d bring in Interpol for a raid to recover the paintings and her reward.
“Well?” Udom asked.
With her thumb, Beth pressed the transmitter into the sleeve of the finial, when she saw the men’s attention trained on Raven. It would go undetected unless someone were looking for it.
She looked up at Udom. “I can verify conclusively that this is the object stolen from the Gardner Museum.”
