Chapter 23

23

W ith the imminent rain, it was a good night for another attempt. For days, the moon had been bright in the cloudless sky, and although that was not what had stopped him from coming, he preferred the cover of darkness. He walked around to the back of the school, looked both ways, then climbed the chain-link fence and leaped to the other side. He hurried to the line of trees, but he was not worried. No one had seen him.

He made his way to the main building and jogged down the cement steps, which led to the basement. The lock was easy to pick, but it had been even easier to ‘borrow’ the key and make a copy of it. He slid it into the lock and turned the knob, grateful the school hadn’t installed an alarm system. There was nothing to steal, he supposed, but he also credited his luck to the centuries-old building that housed Fenley. It had been there for so many years, and the school administration had every reason to believe it would be there for many more.

Cutting through the music room, he bumped into the edge of the table, which screeched against the tiles and made his heart thud. He stopped and listened, but there were no answering footsteps coming to investigate. This tomb of a building was a dream entrance to the tunnel, and he wondered how much it had been used in its day.

He crossed the computer lab and walked down the two steps leading to the boiler room, laundry room, and old servant’s quarters that were unfit for public viewing. In the laundry room, there was an ancient stone sink at the far end, a relic from a different era. He bent down and removed the trappings beneath it that hid the tunnel. It was a simple matter of removing the frayed tarp, hooked to the underneath of the sink, and unscrewing the crumbling bolts that held the grate in place. When he crawled through the opening, he turned and propped the grate back in place. Even if someone discovered the fallen tarp, the grate afforded little view. It went a few feet before coming abruptly up to a stone wall.

He took his time. His habit was to arrive at the school around one in the morning, and finish his work by four. That way he was long gone before even the earliest caretaker arrived. He had not yet had a problem, not even a close call. With the bolts unscrewed and the gate down, he crawled through the hole over to the stone wall. He felt with his fingers along the edge of it until he heard a soft click, and he gently pushed the wall sideways so he could squeeze through. Once he was past the swiveling section of the wall, he made sure to turn it back in the unlikely event someone came into the laundry room. He had learned the hard way never to take any chances.

It was a relief to move past the section with the low ceiling and get to where he could stand and stretch. He hated being cramped in that small corridor and was glad the rest of the tunnel was not like that. He walked briskly now, no longer needing a map to find his way, despite the few tunnels that shot off from the main one. He had never bothered to see where they led, but maybe one day he would.

In a short ten minutes’ walk he was there. The tunnel crossed from the school to the chateau directly, avoiding the detours a pedestrian was obliged to take because of the pattern of streets. He came at last to his handiwork—the wall he had been patiently chipping away at, removing the smooth rectangular stones one by one. He didn’t dare risk making any noise, so he had to work away at the mortar by hand. Then, when he was finished with his night’s work, he couldn’t leave the stones lying in a pile, but had to put them back in place. Otherwise a draft would form in the tunnel and tip off that head butler who seemed to be aware of everything that went on in the chateau. Jean had done his homework, and he knew these things.

It was Etienne who sent him on this mission, reluctant as he had been at first. The former gardener was not likely ever to leave jail with murder on his record, even if he swore he had never set eyes on the prostitute. He latched on to Jean as the only other French inmate in a New York prison. Looking back, Jean realized the friendship had been staged with a goal in mind. He should not have been surprised.

They were sitting at a picnic table surrounded by barbed wire in place of trees, and prison guards standing in towers in place of birds, when Etienne first spoke of it. “The tunnel has been in place ever since the chateau and residence were built, but it’s been condemned for the past couple of decades. People don’t even know it exists anymore.

“You’ll have the easiest time on the end where the school is. You can slip in and out of there easily. On the end where the chateau is, there’s a wall.” Etienne gestured, glancing up to see that the police officer in the tower nearest to them was smoking and not paying close attention.

“Anyway, I should’ve worked harder to break through the wall, since I had the only key to the gate, instead of relying on getting out through the door.” He scowled at the memory. “You’ll need to take it down, stone by stone, and that’s going to take some time. The good news is that it’s not visible from the cellar in the chateau. So your only risk is the noise. Be careful. Paltier—if he’s still alive and working there—has eyes and ears everywhere in that place.”

Etienne continued in a subdued voice. “So there’s the gate, and I already told you how to get the key. That was the one smart thing I did before leaving.” He glanced up again compulsively in a way that was sure to attract the guard’s attention, Jean thought, before continuing. “There’s a room around the corner of the gate, but you don’t need anything in there. I can only imagine it’s still boarded up since I would have heard if there had been an uproar.” Jean didn’t dare ask for clarification.

“Up until this point, you’re not visible to anyone in the chateau. You need to open that gate, and you need to break—” Etienne started to reach into his pocket, but the guard was staring at them, so he pulled out a cigarette from his pocket and lit it.

When the guard lost interest, he reached into his pocket again and pulled out a hand-drawn map and resumed. “This.” He pointed to the rough sketch of a room with the gate on one side and a series of alcoves on another. “This is where you need to break the wall, and this is where you access the tunnel. Here. It’s yours.” He folded the map and handed it to Jean. “They had nearly finished plastering those alcoves when I was there. I hid the painting in the middle alcove when I heard everyone coming. I assumed I’d be able to get it before morning, but the investigation started right away, and I had to leave. Everything will have been sealed by now, and they obviously didn’t think to look there for the painting or I would’ve heard.”

Jean spoke for the first time after listening to this recital. “Why didn’t you just grab the painting and run out the back door? You had such a head start.”

“Pierre.” Etienne shook his head. “The old gardener I worked for. I liked him well enough, but he caught on to what I was doing. He was there, and he wasn’t going to let me go without calling for help.”

“Where is he now?” Jean lit his last cigarette and pretended not to care about the answer.

“Don’t worry about that. But it was enough of a delay. If I had left then, they would have found me right away. The smartest thing to do was to slip the painting through the hole in the alcove and act like I’d been standing guard at the door. In any case, it worked long enough for me to throw dust in their eyes, but not long enough for me to go back and get the painting.”

“Okay, so this Cyril guy you were working for. Why does he still care so much about this painting? Nobody’s gonna buy it since they could go to jail just for possessing it. Why does he want it so bad?”

Etienne blew out smoke as he shook his head. “It’s not an ordinary buyer. It’s a Russian who wanted to give it to his Dad, probably to get in good with him since he runs the mob. Anyway, the Russian guy had his agent contact the old viscount, but he wouldn’t sell, so he decided to use Cyril. He always had a reputation for delivering, and when he failed, the Russian guy didn’t let him forget it. Cyril is dangerous, but Vlad is worse.”

Etienne had told him about the job once before but Jean hadn’t yet committed to anything. Now that he had all the details, he wasn’t sure he wanted in. “I’m just not sure I’m your guy,” Jean had said. “I mean, I wouldn’t turn down half a mil’ that easily. But this doesn’t seem easy. I’m almost out of here. I want to get on with my life.”

Etienne stared across the yard as if he hadn’t heard what Jean said. “Cyril found me, even if it took him twenty years to do so. He’s got so many connections, I’d probably be dead already if I hadn’t let him know I could help him steal the painting and get back his reputation.” He looked straight at Jean. “I already told him you’d do it.”

“What? But I never—”

“You need to try. Now that he knows I gave you the information, he’s going to be after you no matter what you think you’ve decided. If you succeed, he’s good for the money, and you can settle down to something respectable. Or you may find you have a taste for the more sophisticated stuff since you’re not likely to get a job above minimum wage with your record. If you refuse, you may not have long to live and see what minimum wage is like. Cyril has no other way of figuring out how to get the painting except by using someone on the inside. He’s determined.”

“What if I just hand the map over to him when I get out and let him do it?” Jean’s urgency was beginning to attract the attention of the guards, and Etienne leaned away from him.

“If you’re that stupid, you don’t deserve to live. Cyril hires other people to do the dirty work and he hires people to make sure it gets done. Even if you give him the map, you’re the only one who can get the key to the gate. He doesn’t like involving too many people, and he doesn’t like loose ends. He’s gonna make sure you complete the project, or you’ll be the loose end.” Etienne stood, and Jean followed suit, his eyes fixed on Etienne’s face.

“And if I fail?”

“Don’t.” Etienne joined the line of convicts waiting to have handcuffs put back on. Jean stared after him for a minute before heading to take his place in line. Etienne was in for life, and Jean would do anything to make sure he had one.

He replayed this conversation in his head over and over in the weeks he spent scraping away at the mortar in the dark tunnel. He still hadn’t fully committed when he first met Cyril, but he soon accepted his role in the theft as the only way out of a life of crime—and with his life intact.

He was now working away at the stones close to his waist. He would be able to climb over them noiselessly after this night’s session, and the next step was to go unlock the gate and figure out how to retrieve the painting without waking up the household. He wasn’t going to attempt it tonight; his mind wasn’t in the game. However, the clock was running out. He had less than three weeks before Cyril had arranged to meet with the Russian buyer, and he needed to have that painting before then. Not so early that he was worried about someone finding it, but not so late that he missed the deadline. He would have to think this through more carefully.