“Why aren’t you dead?”
“Luck of the Irish.”
“But you’re not Irish.”
“Figure of speech, René.”
“Mind if I ask one more question, Monsieur Allon?”
“If you must.”
“What really happened to your headlight?”
* * *
There was no embarrassing recurrence of the incident that morning, for once again Don Casabianca’s obstreperous goat allowed Gabriel to drive past the three ancient olive trees unmolested. Two of Don Orsati’s men were now standing watch outside the villa at the end of the dirt-and-gravel track. René Monjean dropped his duffel bag in the entrance hall and went into the sitting room. His sharp eye was caught by the Monet landscape hanging on the wall.
“Is it real?” he asked Gabriel.
“You tell me.”
The art thief leaned in for a closer look. “It’s definitely real.”
“Not bad, René.”
“I have no formal training, but I’ve managed to develop a pretty good eye for paintings.”
“I would advise you to forget that you ever saw that one.”
“The owner is a friend of Don Orsati?”
“You might say that.”
They went into the kitchen, where Ingrid and Lambert were staring at laptops. Gabriel once again saw to the introductions, but this time they left nothing to the imagination. Ingrid rose to her feet in order to properly shake Monjean’s hand, or so she made it appear. The art thief regarded her warily.
“Monsieur Allon assures me that you’re a professional.”
“He says the same about you. In fact, he says there’s no one better than René Monjean.”
“He’s right about that.”
“I think you’ll find that I’m rather good myself.”
“We’ll see.”
Ingrid returned the mobile phone she had plucked from Monjean’s pocket. “We will indeed.”
* * *
With a total area of just two square kilometers, the Principality of Monaco was the world’s second-smallest sovereign country, larger only than Vatican City. Its primary attractions were its historic cathedral, its aquarium and exotic gardens, and, of course, the Casino de Monte-Carlo. Some thirty-eight thousand people lived in the city-state, but fewer than ten thousand were Monégasque citizens. They were protected by a highly professional security force numbering 515 officers, which meant that tiny Monaco had the largest per capita police presence anywhere on earth.
The boulevard des Moulins stretched for just five hundred meters through the heart of the principality and was lined with elegant, butter-colored apartment buildings where sixty thousand euros would buy exactly one square meter of real estate. Harris Weber & Company occupied two floors of the commercial building located at Number 41. On the ground floor was a hair salon—exclusive, of course—and a branch of Société Banque de Monaco. Directly opposite was a café called La Royale.
“It’s the perfect place to kill a few minutes while you’re getting to know the neighborhood,” said Lambert. “But don’t worry, the lawyers of Harris Weber would never dream of setting foot there.”
The other tenants of 41 boulevard des Moulins, he continued, were medical professionals, accountants, financial advisers, and architects. Visitors were admitted remotely by the tenants’ receptionists, but those who worked in the building unlocked the street entrance with their personal cardkeys. The same keys operated the lift, with access to floors carefully restricted. Harris Weber’s lobby and reception area were on the fourth floor, but the offices of the founding partners and senior associates were upstairs on the fifth.
“Along with Trevor Robinson’s,” added Lambert.
“What about the file room?” asked Gabriel.
“It’s down on four.”
Lambert was logged on to the system. He tapped a few keys on his laptop, and a shot of the file room appeared on his screen, courtesy of Harris Weber’s internal security cameras. An attractive young woman was at that moment crouched next to the open drawer of a metal filing cabinet.
“Mademoiselle Dubois. She’s one of the secretaries. Anyone in the firm can access the paper files stored in those cabinets, but access to the secure room is strictly limited.” Lambert pointed out a vaguely out-of-focus doorway on the left side of the shot. “The lock is numeric and biometric, but I can override it.”
“Is there a surveillance camera in that room?”
“Yes, of course. Trevor Robinson trusts no one.”
Lambert worked the keys on his laptop, and a small windowless room appeared on his screen. It contained a table, a swivel chair, a desktop computer, a printer, and a double-doored executive safe.
“The computer is air-gapped,” Lambert continued. “If one of the senior lawyers needs to review sensitive attorney-client documents, he removes the storage device from the safe and attaches it to the desktop. If he needs to print the documents, he keeps them only as long as necessary. Trevor Robinson handles the shredding personally. If he had his druthers, he’d burn the documents instead. It’s just like an intelligence service.”
Gabriel pointed out the electronic lock on the safe. “I don’t suppose you know the combination.”
“I’m afraid not. Whenever someone punches in the passcode, they block the view of the camera, which is by design. Trevor Robinson changes it every few weeks, much to the chagrin of Herr Weber, who has a dreadful memory.”
