Page 44 of In Too Deep

“And then what? The owners are in Russia. How do they know if someone is trapped in the house? And if they do know, what do they do? They can’t fly back, surely. Do they have someone local to take care of it?”

“They don’t need to do anything.”

“They do. Or…oh.”

“Exactly. The door is blocked. The windows are barred. I’m guessing there’s no food in the fridge. The water will be shut off.”

“So…my God, that’s awful. Think of it. You can’t eat. You can’t drink. You can’t even flush the toilet. You’d go mad, if you didn’t die first.”

Knight was still for a moment. She was silent. Then she hit the spacebar again. A slide appeared that showed a pair of floor plans. One was for the first floor. The other was for the second floor. The layout was unremarkable, but some of the rooms were labeled with colored stars. There was a blue one in the first bedroom on the right-hand stretch of the landing. Green, orange, and purple stars all together in the first room on the left-hand stretch. A yellow one downstairs in the living room. And a red one in the dining room. The colors were all rich and bold, apart from the red, which looked pale and washed-out.

The next slide showed a table with three columns. For each color of star it gave a category and a value. Yellow represented paintings. They were worth $480m. Blue was statues, $27m. Green, industrial diamonds, $124m. Orange, precious metals, $13m. Purple, jewelry, $41m. Red was for wine, $19m, and it was shown in the same weakshade as its star on the floor plan. A pale asterisk matched up with a date. It was for the following Tuesday.

Knight sat for a minute in silence, staring at the screen with her arms hanging down by her sides.

Reacher said, “You OK?”

“I’m fine. It’s just…look at those numbers. How can a bunch of art be worth half a billion dollars? You know what a police department could do with that kind of money? A school? A hospital?”

“I hear you. But it’s not art we’re talking about.”

“It is. It’s paintings. Statues.”

“But it’s not on display. No one can see it. It can’t provoke thought. Emotion. Any of the things art is supposed to do.”

“So it’s not art because it’s hidden away? What does that make it, then?”

“A financial parachute. Metaphorically speaking. It’s there so that if the guy who owns it gets shot down, he won’t crash and burn. He can flee Russia. Come here. Liquidate the assets. And continue to live in obscene luxury. The question isn’t how much it costs. It’s what did the guy do to be able to afford it. Nothing legal, I guarantee. And now it’s here, taking up space in a perfectly good house, at the same time we have veterans sleeping on the street.”

“Damn. You’re right. Almost makes me wish someone would steal it. Anyone but Kane, anyway.”

“Someone should do something with it.” Reacher nodded toward the screen. “Is there more?”

“Just a bunch of detail about how the valuations add up. Screenshots of spreadsheets, mostly, based on the peek I took in the kitchen. Want to see them?”

“Not especially. How did Fletcher get all this detail?”

“Best guess, he has a hacker working for him.”

“Vidic said Paris was good with computers.”

“If she’s good enough she could have started with the buyer and worked back from there. Dug through the shell companies that are bound to be involved. Got into the guy’s personal records. Found out what he owns. Where it is. Where he’s moving it to. And when. Weird that he’d keep the codes to the gate and the front door locks somewhere so vulnerable, though.”

“I doubt those got hacked.”

“Then where did they come from?”

“Think how the operation must work. There are three hurdles. Getting the goods into the country. Getting them across the country. And getting them into the house. The first two are easy. You can pay customs guys. You can pay transport guys. But, assuming you’re not there to open the door in person, what are you going to do to grant access to the building? You don’t want to mail a key. Keys can be stolen. Copied. Sold. Reused. You’d be asking to get ripped off. So you use a keypad in place of a regular lock. Its code can be changed. Probably remotely. Activated a minute before the delivery guys arrive. Updated the moment they leave.”

“So Paris hacked the delivery guys? No. That doesn’t work. They wouldn’t keep that kind of information on a computer. And if the code is changed the minute they’re done delivering, what use is it, anyway?”

“Fletcher’s guys didn’t hack anyone for the code. They used their home field advantage.”

“I don’t follow.”

“They steal art, and similar valuable things. They use other people to transport it. Stealing and transportation is a symbiotic relationship. They’ll have been working together for years. A new player shows up, especially a foreign player, they hear about it. They find out about the deal with the code. Then they look for someone at thelock company who has a sick kid. A gambling debt. Some other urgent need for money.”

“They hack, and they bribe. New school, and old school.” Knight glanced across at Reacher. “Could be a good combination.”

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