The Good Thief. Judith Leon
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fell to his knees.
Clearly the old man intended to steal the painting back from his grandson. She pointed to the tube holding the original and shouted, “Sie konnen nicht mit dem Bild—”
She was going to tell them that she had placed an incendiary in the container, and she would incinerate the picture rather than let them take it again. Not true, of course, but she’d used the ploy before to get the upper hand. The key, after she calmed everyone down, was to offer more money.
Instead, Marko Savin, racing in a loud roar across the lawn, distracted everyone. Heinie’s driver, having regained his senses, pulled his gun and blew a hole right between the eyes of one of the old Nazi’s men.
Chaos! The old man and his remaining two guards sprinted to their car, each clutching a tube, as Heinie staggered to his feet. Lindsey ran after them, but had to duck behind the Alfa Romeo when both goons turned and started firing.
Marko brought the motorcycle to a sliding stop on its side with the motor still roaring. Ducking bullets, he dived behind her Fiat. The old Nazi and his goons made a U-turn, running up onto the lawn on the other side of the access road, and burned rubber as they headed toward the park’s exit. Both tubes were gone. Artemisia’s Cleopatra. Gone.
Chapter 3
Lindsey stood dumbstruck for a second and then turned to Marko, furious. “I didn’t give you the signal.”
“I consider drawn guns a signal.”
“They wouldn’t have hurt me.”
“How the hell can you know that?”
“Later! We have to catch them. Take the bike.”
He had the good sense not to argue. She leaped on behind him and hugged his waist. They reached the exit. No sign of the gray Daimler. They could go right, left, or straight ahead, heavy traffic in all three directions.
“What now?” he called back to her over the motorcycle’s noise.
She pulled out the BlackBerry, pushed three buttons, and picked up the signal from the GPS. “Left,” she said. “And hit it. Go through stops when you can.”
Her pulse raced as he wove in and out around cars, bicycles, pedestrians and buses. They started south on the Corso Amadeo Di Savola, but soon the GPS signal indicated that the Daimler turned west. She pointed right, toward the next cross street.
“I see them,” he called out. “Two blocks ahead.”
For agonizing minutes, they made headway, then traffic would interfere and they’d drop behind only to gain again. After fifteen minutes they reached the section of Naples called Vomero, an elevated area filled with views in all directions where they kept up the crazy cat and mouse in a heavily commercial area with all sorts of offices and pedestrians.
They sat waiting at a red light, the Daimler only a block ahead. “Hang on,” Marko called to her.
He gunned the bike and they blasted straight through the cross traffic, barely avoiding a truck.
The light turned green for the Daimler; it moved ahead. Marko skimmed the outside of their lane and then swung into oncoming traffic to go around two trucks blocking their way. She looked forward over his shoulder, right into the grill of an oncoming van whose driver was frantically honking his horn. She sucked in her breath as they zipped back into their own lane. She could hear the van’s driver cursing.
They were within a limousine’s length of the Daimler. “I’m going to stop their car,” Marko yelled, and she sensed he’d drawn his gun.
“It’s too dangerous for pedes—”
She heard the shot. The Daimler’s left rear tire blew, and the car jerked left and then back to the right. Normal traffic parted to flow around it. The driver pulled the Daimler to the curb and everyone bailed out, including the old man.
The three thieves ran into the cross street. Marko stopped the bike. Lindsey jumped off. Together they dogged the three men who suddenly veered left. The men ran past the ticket booth to the Via Toledo Funicular, and shoved their way into a car. Lindsey watched in horror as the door closed behind the three men, and the funicular began to descend. Another cable car would not arrive and then begin the steep descent, she knew, for at least ten minutes. All three men grinned back at her. One held up one of the tubes.
We’re going to lose them! I’m going to lose the Artemisia!
Her stomach twisted.
“Shit!” Marko said.
Lindsey scanned their surroundings, fighting disappointment, and saw that a long flight of stairs descended alongside the funicular. She pointed.
“The bike,” Marco exclaimed.
They ran back to the bike, and Marko drove them to the head of the sidewalk. “Hold on tight,” he said, stating the obvious.
They bumped their way down the stairs, which thankfully had few people coming up. Almost all the foot traffic was heading down and Marko stayed well to the left, yelling in Italian for them to clear out of the way.
She ignored the shocked stares of the people they passed. She accidentally bit her tongue, tasted salty blood. Too soon they had to detour to a side street, then an alley, but they didn’t lose sight of the funicular. Finally they caught up and as they passed the cable car, she took perverse pleasure in the amazed looks on the faces of the three men. She prepared herself for one hell of a fight.
“No gun,” she said to Marko, thinking of the hordes of people who would be waiting at the bottom to board.
Marko nodded.
When the three thugs entered the street, Lindsey and Marko sprang after them. The old man didn’t even try to run. She singled out the smaller thug, and Marko headed for the larger one. They were, apparently, woefully out of shape. Her man turned and charged her. She landed a forward kick to his diaphragm and he went down with the follow-up chop to the back of his neck. She kicked him over onto his side and, as he gasped for air, she grabbed the tube he carried, and took his gun.
Marko dispatched the man with the other tube, apparently with the same ease. He mounted the bike. Panting, laughing and flushed with a sense of triumph, Lindsey hopped on behind, clutched both tubes fiercely, and they took off. Hot damn, she’d done it again.
“Ooo-rah!” she whooped as they passed a row of plump elderly women in black dresses waiting in line at the funicular.
Given all the havoc they had left in their path, perhaps including a dead body in the park, witnesses might be describing a woman in black leather and red hair and a man also in black and looking like a criminal. The authorities might very well be watching all transport stations, so they ruled out getting onto a plane dressed as they were. She had used a fake ID and paid cash for the Fiat so she left it to the police to return it. She and Marko picked out a small, no-name store that sold men’s and women’s Levi’s jeans and sweatshirts. At another store they bought new clothes and duffel bags for their leather ones. She bought a cheap black wig and black eyebrow pencil and he bought reading glasses. At 4:30 p.m. they caught a flight back to Florence.
On the plane, with her treasure secure in the bin overhead, Lindsey ordered that Chianti she’d missed with her pizza, and Marko joined her. She explained what she had intended to do in case of trouble—threaten to incinerate the painting if the old Nazi and his gang thought they could take it from her, and offer them more money instead. “It’s worked for me before.”
“Tell you what. I apologize. I acted from the gut when I saw the gun.”
“Well, I admit that you saved my client any extra money.” She smiled. She liked a man who felt strong enough in his masculinity to actually apologize. She sipped the wine, thinking that Marko was earning points rapidly. He’d shown himself to be bold. Smart. Courageous. And a damn good fighter.
“Your dad told me you were tough,” he said and