Killers of a Certain Age(69)

We came to a stop when Natalie had to catch her breath. Her color was bad and she was holding her side like she had a stitch. My sweatshirt was soaked in blood from the wound in my shoulder and Nat pointed, gasping out the words. “You . . . okay?”

“Graze,” I said shortly. I looked around, but nothing about this spot was familiar. “Do you know where we are?”

She shook her head and I would have cursed but I didn’t have the energy. Instead I shoved a power gel into her mouth and we started again. We came into a tunnel which was wide enough for a small road with lots of doors leading off of it. I pushed through the first one and found a flight of stairs. I dragged Natalie up until we came to a locked door. She was nearly spent, but she rallied, rubbing her hands together to get some warmth back into them until she was able to maneuver the wires in her fanny pack to pick the lock.

The door led into a stone hut, small and windowless, a few rusted hand tools sitting with a stack of flowerpots in the corner. “It looks like a groundskeeper’s shed,” I said. There was a door on the opposite wall, but this one wasn’t locked. I wasn’t surprised; there was nothing inside worth stealing. We opened it and icy cold air rushed in, but it was fresh. We emerged into an otherworldly landscape, a sea of pale stone crosses as far as we could see. In the center, on a low rise, was a circular tower.

I grinned.

“Welcome to Montparnasse Cemetery,” I said, looping an arm around her shoulders. “We made it.”





CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO


JULY 1981


Wearing their darkest clothes and rubber-soled shoes, they slip out of their tents and into the excavation pit. The entrance to the tunnel has been shored up with lumber, and they ease inside. Thierry Carapaz is carrying a small backpack; the rest have flashlights and a few tools small enough to fit into a pocket. The air in the tunnel is stuffy and damp, and they are all rolling in sweat by the time they reach the cellar. They are moving in silent single file by the light of the miner’s torch Vance Gilchrist has strapped to his head. He turns it off when they emerge into the cellar of the main house and they wait for several minutes, crouching in the cool darkness and letting their eyes adjust. This is the third time they have been in the cellar on reconnaissance. Apart from a stack of empty olive oil cans and a flurry of dead flies, there is nothing in the stone-walled room. The telephone line snakes down one wall, and Mary Alice snips it. The baroness’s villa is cut off now from the outside world.

A short flight of steps ends at the door into the house, and Natalie is dispatched with a set of tools to gently oil the hinges and pick the lock. She works by touch, and when she finishes, she gives a soft whistle. They join her on the steps and wait for Vance to give the signal, another whistle that mimics the birds in the garden. At his mark, they slip, one by one, into the kitchen, where a low night-light is burning. The kitchen is small and grimy, carved out of the dining room by a flimsy partition wall. The stove is tiny, tethered to a tank of gas by a cord, and Carapaz kneels next to it. He silently begins to unpack his tools while Vance and the women separate. Mary Alice is to provide any backup that Carapaz requires, and Helen and Natalie wait for the signal to begin removing the art.

Three months earlier, a Provenance agent posing as a plumber gained access to the house and drew a map from memory—a map they have all memorized. Billie has walked these shadowy rooms a thousand times in her mind, and she counts off the steps as she follows Vance through the dining room and down a low, wide hall to the baroness’s bedroom. Vance pauses, his hand on the knob, waiting until they hear the squeak of bedsprings and a low, rattling breath.

He eases open the door and steps over the threshold. Instantly, the bedside light snaps on. The baroness is awake, holding a revolver in one hand and the telephone in the other.

Vance holds up his hands, smiling. “Good evening.”

He doesn’t reassure her with lies or pretend everything is going to be okay, and Billie respects him for it. The baroness unleashes a litany of German, spitting the consonants as she shouts at the phone, at her caretakers. But no one is coming, and at the last moment, she seems to understand that.

She drops the phone, cupping her free hand under the revolver to steady it. She points it squarely at Vance, and Billie moves into the room. It is standard procedure in such situations, and it is how they have been trained to respond. Two possible places to shoot confuses a target, buying them extra time.

“It’s alright,” Vance says confidently. “If she hasn’t shot yet, she won’t.”

He almost finishes the last word before the baroness fires, clipping his collar. “I’ll be damned,” he mutters, clapping his hand to where the bullet has skimmed his skin, burning it before burying itself in a painting on the wall behind.

Before she can pull the trigger again, Billie puts her hand over the baroness’s. It feels like a collection of bird bones in Billie’s palm, the skin cold and lifeless, the spare flesh winnowed away until only the brittle framework remains.

She looks up at Billie with eyes that are black and bright with hatred. She says something that Billie barely hears, her ears still ringing from the sound of the shot in the small room. In the time it has taken Billie to reach the baroness’s side, she has swept the night table and seen the basket of knitting, balls of wool impaled by a pair of long steel needles.

Billie raises her hand and the baroness feels nothing, only a small punch angling down behind her collarbone. Then Billie removes her fist and the warmth comes, gushing wetly. The subclavian artery, nicknamed “the well” for how much liquid it pumps, is severed cleanly. A young and healthy person will bleed out in as little as two minutes from such an injury, but the baroness is already sinking. Her mouth opens several times but she says nothing else. She does not close her eyes but watches Billie as the life drains out of her, and the last thing she sees is a blond girl smiling in satisfaction at a job well done.