Blowback

“I know,” said Harvath, “but what if the Carthaginians only used the Arthashastra as a base or a jumping-off point of some sort? What if they came up with an Azemiops feae hybrid? What if they duplexed it and came up with an illness nobody had ever seen before?”

“Also possible,” said Jillian as she paused to think about it, “but where does that leave us? We have no idea where all of those artifacts came from, much less who gave them to Sotheby’s in the first place, and nothing short of a court order or official government request is going to get that auction house to open their doors again for us.”

“Suppose we didn’t need them to actually open their doors for us?” suggested Harvath as he reapplied the ice pack to the bruise on his side.

It didn’t take a genius to intuit what Harvath was contemplating. Jillian sensed he wasn’t the type to give up easily. “We were lucky enough to get out of there once without being arrested,” she said. “I don’t think the odds will be very heavily in our favor for a second go around. Especially if you’re contemplating breaking in.”

Harvath smiled.

She had pegged him correctly. He was definitely a hammer.

“I think you’re wrong about today,” continued Harvath. “There was no way they were going to arrest us. Davidson can’t be sure the artifacts didn’t come from an illegitimate source, and she’s wary of bad press.”

“Even so, how do you propose we get back inside? From the security I saw, it has to be next to impossible.”

“Magic,” replied Harvath with a smile.

“What kind of magic?”

“We’re going to walk through walls.”

THIRTY-ONE

When Jillian came down to the Hotel Gare du Nord’s lobby, she was dressed in the second-hand clothes Harvath had sent up to her room earlier in the evening. She couldn’t figure out if he’d incorrectly guessed her sizes or if he had purchased the black turtleneck and black jeans slightly snug on purpose. Regardless of what his intentions had been, with the battered, secondhand leather jacket she felt that she looked perfectly Parisian. She was also glad to have the warm clothes, as a second storm front had moved in and the rainy night air was bitterly cold.

At exactly midnight, Harvath appeared in the lobby and motioned for her to follow him. Outside on the street, he hurried her through the rain to a tiny, windowless van. He had left it running, and though the wheezing heater was cranked all the way up, its effect was barely noticeable.

“How do the clothes fit?” he asked as they pulled away from the curb.

“Strangely enough,” replied Jillian, “the boots are a perfect fit, but everything else is a little tight.”

Harvath glanced over at her before turning right onto the boulevard de Magenta and said, “No they’re not. They’re just right.”

Jillian should have known better. Anyone who could nail her shoe size after having only spent two days with her certainly knew what he was doing with everything else. “Where’d they come from?”

The tires of the tiny van wobbled as they splashed through puddles making their way south. “I got them at a flea market.”

“And the van?”

“I know a guy who knows a guy.”

Jillian looked into the cargo area behind their seats. “And I assume everything in back is from-”

“The same guy,” said Harvath, hanging a right onto the boulevard de Strasbourg and speeding up in order to make the light at the next corner.

“So what is all that stuff?”

“Skeleton keys.”

“Skeleton keys?” repeated Jillian, looking behind her at the duffel bag and two plastic Storm-brand cases. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“I couldn’t be more serious. Trust me. You’ll see.”

Ten minutes later, they had threaded their way through the bustling Les Halles neighborhood and had managed to find a parking space around the corner from the Sotheby’s annex. Walking around to the back of the van, Harvath opened the double doors and leaned inside to get his head out of the rain. He slid the two Storm cases and heavy black duffel toward him, opened them, and checked their contents one last time.

“I thought you said you had a set of skeleton keys in there,” said Jillian, who had darted behind the van and was now leaning inside next to him.

“I do,” replied Harvath as he withdrew a small sledgehammer about a foot long from the duffel. “This one unlocks the downstairs door.”

Jillian looked at him as if he was nuts. “You realize that when I said you were like a hammer and that you approached all your problems like nails, I was speaking metaphorically, right?”

Harvath ignored her and tucked the sledgehammer beneath his coat.

“I’m serious,” said Jillian.

“I know.”

“So tell me what your real plan is.”

“I told you. I’m going to use my skeleton key to open the downstairs door.”

“What about the security guards?”

Harvath zipped up the duffel and then slung it over his shoulder. He grabbed the larger of the two Storm cases and indicated that Jillian should take the other. As he closed the rear doors of the van, he said, “If we do this right, they won’t have any idea what we’re up to.”

“And if we don’t do this right?”