Dead Girl Running (Cape Charade #1)(39)
“Smuggling…what? Drugs?” Kellen’s new security job got more and more onerous by the second.
“That. Immigrants. Anything the bad guys can carry, really. That’s what interests the Coast Guard.” His dimples disappeared. “But not the MFAA. Not me.”
“No, I suppose not. Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives… We’re talking about antiques, cultural treasures.”
“Exactly. There’s a lot of money involved in moving stolen art and looted treasure. Enough to kill for.”
“Kill who?”
“That girl you found today. And Jessica Diaz. The MFAA director.” The kettle started whistling. He lifted two mugs off their hooks. “What do you want? Coffee? Tea? Hot chocolate? Don’t even bother with herbal. You’ll need some kind of caffeine. You’re not going to get any more sleep tonight.”
“What’s going to happen tonight?”
“We’re going to talk. I’m going to fill you in on the situation.”
She latched the door with her heel. Maybe she was that woman in the movie, but she didn’t think so. She might not trust him, not yet, but for some reason she didn’t yet know, he needed her. She placed her Glock on the end table, peeled off her rain gear and hung them beside his and seated herself in a chair facing him. She picked up her pistol and let it rest on the seat beside her hip, pointed it toward the floor.
He watched from the kitchen. “Your trust in me is touching.”
“And easily revoked. I’ll have broth. My body needs at least the pretense of nutrition.”
“Smart.” He used hot water and two dry packets to make two cups of broth. He picked them both up, so his hands were full, and gingerly placed one at her elbow. He backed away and seated himself across the room. “There. Far enough away for you to relax a little, close enough for you to shoot me if you need to.”
That smile, those dimples, that charm irritated her. “I hope I don’t need to. Now—tell me why the government would revive an agency dead for so many years.”
“Look it up. You’re not going to believe anything I tell you, so look it up.”
Fair enough. She pulled out her phone, went online and typed in MFAA. Lots of World War II history, a brief note of its dissolution in 1946 and an even briefer note on its recent revival.
So it wasn’t a secret agency. It was an underreported agency. Suspiciously underreported.
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely. “Are you aware of what’s happening with the world’s treasured historical sites?”
“They’re being looted.” Kellen searched for Jessica Diaz, head of the MFAA.
“More than that. The way it used to work was—local people would search out tombs, archaeological sites, strip them of artifacts and sell them at the market for whatever they could get. The practice supplemented what was usually a poverty-stricken existence, and the pieces of art moved through a chain of resalers to end up on the shelves of wealthy collectors.” He made that all sound like a good thing. “The whole operation was inefficient.” He paused. “How’s the research going?”
“I found Jessica Diaz, first head of the MFAA, but information gives only her date of death in the line of duty.” A pretty Hispanic woman, thirty years old, soft-looking and smiling.
He nodded. “Keep researching.”
Kellen typed in Who is Jessica Diaz’s MFAA successor?
He continued, “Terrorist groups realized what a gold mine—sometimes literally—the antiquities trade could be. They could fund their armies with the money they made stripping every historical site of every ancient piece of art, literature and relic. The previously random looting became organized. The locals were either pushed out or conscripted and forced to find valuable artifacts and hand them over to the terrorists.”
Google showed no answer to her question, nothing but the usual hodgepodge of internet weirdness. “You, um, don’t seem to be a member of the MFAA.”
“I didn’t choose to post my unfortunate promotion. That would be stupid, wouldn’t it?”
It would. But she didn’t have to admit it out loud.
“Search for the Brooks family of Charleston, South Carolina,” he said. “I’ll come up.”
She did as he suggested and found an old and formidable dynasty—and there he was, part of a family shot that included an elderly matriarch, a nervous-looking mother, six languid uncles, no father and enough cousins to populate a small island. Which apparently they did and had for generations among varying amounts of scandal.
Kellen flicked a glance at Nils’s photo and then at his face.
NILS BROOKS:
MALE, 30S, 6’, 180 LBS., BROWN HAIR (BLOND ROOTS?), BROWN EYES (COMPELLING), LONG LASHES, MILITARY HAIRCUT. NARROW JAW. DARK-RIMMED GLASSES (USED AS DISGUISE). CUTE. HANDSOME. NERDY. CONFIDENT. CLOTHING: EXPENSIVE, WELL-WORN. MEMBER OF SOUTH CAROLINA’S DISTINGUISHED BROOKS DYNASTY. GRADUATE OF DUKE UNIVERSITY. LEADER OF NEWLY RE-FORMED MFAA (AS REPORTED BY HIM).
Perhaps her background made her too suspicious.
Maybe she was smart to be suspicious. Her first impression of Nils Brooks had proved to be massively inaccurate. He had set out to deceive, and he had succeeded. In so many ways, he reminded her of Gregory… “You’re saying the terrorists don’t care how they achieve their goals or who or what is hurt in the process.”