They were halfway to shore when Steve asked her the question he already knew the answer to. He could see it from the expression on Athena’s face. “Blanks again, right?” She waited until they were out of the speedboat before she answered in a low voice.
“They’re on the boat. Now all we need to do is get a warrant. I’m not going to tell them who told me. I’m just going to tell them I know. I don’t want to put her at risk. He could hurt her, or worse.” She was deeply concerned for Natasha and sensitive to the position she was in. If Vladimir knew Natasha had betrayed him, there was no telling what he would do to her. Athena felt honor bound to protect her, and somehow Natasha had felt that, which had allowed her to speak.
Steve looked shocked. “Wait a minute! She told you they’re on the boat?” Athena nodded. “You have to tell them how you know. They’re not going to give you a warrant for a guy like him on a hunch. He’s never been in trouble before. You’ll have to reveal your source,” Steve said with a determined look, stunned that Athena had a lead and had gotten it from Natasha.
“He’s just never been caught. We’d probably be horrified if we knew what he’s done in his own country. If I reveal my source, he’ll kill her. I’m not taking that chance. I don’t care how much the damn paintings are worth. I’m not trading her life for them, at any price. And God knows what he’s capable of. He’ll chain her to a wall for the rest of her life, or throw her overboard. He won’t take it lightly if he finds out.” She was dead serious as she said it, and Steve knew she could be right about Natasha, and what Stanislas might do to her.
“He’ll be in prison,” Steve said calmly, if what his partner had said was true, and they found them on the boat. “That would protect her.”
“Maybe not. Or maybe he’ll have someone else kill her. It’s my way or no way, and that goes for you too. She’s my source! If you put her life on the line, I’ll kill you.” And Athena looked as though she meant it.
“Okay, okay. Relax. But you’re not going to get a warrant out of anyone with hocus-pocus like that. And he’ll get away with it if you don’t get a warrant.”
“Watch me,” she said with a determined look in her eye.
She went straight to her chief inspector later that afternoon, and he told her there was no way he was going to get a warrant on flimsy information from an informant she wouldn’t identify. He didn’t believe her, and was afraid she was just guessing, since she had refused to reveal her source. “You’re going to have to get me more than that,” he said.
“I can’t. This is the best I’ve got. But it’s solid, I can swear that to you. Are you going to let him get away with it, because everyone is too chicken to give me a warrant?”
“That’s how it is,” he said stubbornly. “Get me more. No judge is going to give us a warrant with what you’ve got.”
She argued with him for three days and got nowhere. And by then, Vladimir was back from London, and the chief purser had told him about Athena’s visit, and Vladimir asked Natasha about it at dinner the night he got back. He had told Natasha he’d seen their new Monet in London and it was spectacular.
“What did she want to know?” he questioned her about Athena. He watched Natasha carefully as he asked her.
“She wanted to know about the portrait and the painting you bought and if we know the Lucas, and I said we didn’t, we just saw them at the restaurant. I told her about the pirates off Croatia, and she said it could have been very dangerous for us. And she said they don’t have any clues about the art theft yet. She said sometimes paintings like that just disappear.” He nodded, and seemed satisfied with her answer. Natasha looked as innocent as ever, and far more concerned about the pirates than the art.
“Did she ask anything else?”
“Not really. She seems smart. Maybe she’ll find the paintings and who took them.”
“She is smart,” he confirmed. He didn’t like that she had visited Natasha while he was away. “You don’t have to see her if she shows up again.”
Natasha nodded obediently. “She asked to see you. She only asked to see me because you weren’t here. And I thought I had to, because she’s the police.” She sounded childlike as she said it.
“You don’t,” he informed her. “We don’t know anything about it. She’s been here twice. That’s enough. We have nothing to tell her. She’s just fishing, and she wants to say she’s been to the boat. You know how people are.” Natasha nodded again, and played with her food. She wasn’t hungry. It had been three days since Athena’s visit, and nothing had happened. She wondered what they were going to do. She had been a nervous wreck since then. She said she had a headache that night and went to bed, but she couldn’t sleep. Vladimir was in his office, working, and she heard one of the tenders leave after midnight, which was unusual. She wondered who was going ashore, probably some of the crew, although it was late for them too, or maybe they were picking some of them up from shore. But she never heard the tender come back, and she was asleep when Vladimir came to bed. He didn’t wake her to make love to her. He just kissed her, and she smiled in her sleep.
Chapter 12
Theo was asleep when the police called him at seven A.M. He was used to being woken up now. There was always something, some problem, some crisis, some question. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a month, and hadn’t set foot in his studio for as long. He ran a restaurant now, he didn’t paint.
The call was from the chief inspector, who asked him to come to the restaurant immediately and wouldn’t say more. Theo was panicked that there had been another robbery, and they’d lost more paintings. He drove to Da Lorenzo as fast as the deux chevaux would go.
The chief inspector was waiting for him outside the restaurant and got right to the point. He told Theo that both security guards had been shot with tranquilizer guns and tasered the night before, and had been unconscious for several hours but were unharmed. They had called the police when they woke up and were being tended to by paramedics in an ambulance parked outside. Theo braced himself for what he was going to hear next, that the rest of the paintings were gone. He followed the inspector inside, and stared at the walls in disbelief. The stolen paintings were back, in their right places, bolted to the wall. Everything was immaculate. None of them were damaged when he examined them. It was as though they had never left.
“Do they look like forgeries or the real deal?” the inspector asked him, and Theo looked at them closely. He hadn’t even thought of that. They could have been stolen to be replaced by forgeries, but they weren’t. He was sure of it.