Her heart pounded in her chest. Not from the physical exertion of the firefight outside but from the realization that the person she was trying to protect was gone. She scanned the space, a studio apartment with a kitchen, bedroom, and office all in one place. The only separate quarters in the immediate area was the bathroom. Of course, there was more below. Adriana wondered if the villains who’d broken in had made their way to the more secure lower levels. Her pace quickened as she neared the corner. Once she’d rounded it, Adriana saw that the door to the armory and information hub in the basement was still intact, completely unmolested.
She frowned despite being slightly relieved. If they weren’t here for guns and top secret information, what else could they have wanted?
The thought escaped her when she turned and stared at the tidy little workstation on the side. It was tucked against the outside wall. A sheet of paper rested on the glass top, along with something small, slender, and black. Her eyes narrowed, and she stepped with renewed vigor, striding across the distance until she reached the desk.
The note was written in sloppy print. A black Sharpie, apparently the writing tool of choice for the intruders, lay nearby, next to the wireless keyboard. Resting beside the computer was a note with a black flash drive sitting on top of it. The message simply read, Watch the video on the disk.
She tossed the paper aside and plugged the drive into the side of the enormous flatscreen computer. A couple seconds later, the device icon appeared on the monitor,and she clicked it. There was only one file listed, an MP4 video. She clicked the video, and the file expanded into a larger window. The still image featured a white background with a dark silhouette of a man. Adriana clicked the play arrow and sat down in the desk chair, watching and listening intently.
“Hello, Adriana. Since you are watching this, you know what has happened. You do not know who I am, and I intend it to stay that way.”
The man’s voice had been slightly altered. Even so, the accent was bizarre. She thought French, Dutch, maybe Belgian. But with the voice modification software, she couldn’t be sure.
“I have need of your services,” the man continued. “I collect extremely rare pieces of art. You find and recover the same sorts of items. There are three works that I am desperately in need of adding to my collection. If you do as instructed and are successful, you will be paid ten million dollars in U.S. currency for each piece. In addition, the prisoner will be returned to you safely, but only upon delivery of all three paintings. Of course, if you fail, the prisoner will be executed.” This sent a chill through her body, raising the hair on the back of her skull.
“I realize that we are dealing with items that quite possibly may have been destroyed decades ago. If that is the case, I will need to see proof. However, we have enough information to believe that the three works are still in existence somewhere.”
A lump caught in her throat. Whoever this guy was, he was ready to pay a ridiculous amount of money for three paintings, which meant his worth was probably in the high hundreds of millions. More likely, billions. Her mind involuntarily started filtering through Europe’s elite who fit that bill. There were more billionaires now than ever before, but it was still a small group. Her own assets were nearing half a billion, which gave her access to social functions and networks commoners couldn’t have. Still, there were too many faces to consider. For now, she needed to focus on what this guy wanted.
“The first piece you are to retrieve is a Bellini, known as Madonna and Child.”
Adriana frowned upon hearing this. Setting the bar low, huh? The sarcastic thought flitted through her head. That painting was one she’d researched before but only found a few cold leads.
The video continued. “The only name we have to get you started is Sonya Zaragova. She’s an old woman who lives in Moscow. Rumor has it, her father was one of the Russian soldiers who took the painting. It disappeared near the end of World War II.”
She shook off the distracting thoughts and tuned back in to the shadowy figure.
“After you bring in the Bellini, we will fill you in on the details of the second painting. As you may or may not know, the Madonna and Child disappeared, we believe, into Russian hands in the final days of the war. It was reportedly seen being held by Russian soldiers in a tower outside Berlin. However, finding any sort of helpful information as to its whereabouts has been difficult.”
Yeah. That’s because it’s a stolen piece of priceless art.
The man went on. “In addition to your search, you’ll have one additional hurdle. Another collector is after the same three pieces of art. He has employed one of your contemporaries, a thief known as the Chameleon. I wish I knew more about this person,but unfortunately, details are thin at best. Just be aware that at any moment you could potentially run into this other thief. It is highly likely that they also know about you. Good luck. I sincerely hope you succeed. There is a screenshot of the drop-off point on the last screen of this video. I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of the price for failure. Again, I wish you luck.”
The screen blipped for a second and then froze on an address in Marseille. A few other details had been typed out below the address as to how she was to deliver the painting.
Adriana clenched her teeth, staring at the monitor. The image of the man in the video was burned into her memory. He asked the impossible. The Bellini he wanted had been missing for over half a century. She remembered giving up on the same quest a few years ago, opting instead to follow a promising lead with a Monet that disappeared at the onset of the war.
Now, giving up wasn’t an option. Her father’s life hung in the balance.
2
A loud bang sounded outside the building. It wasn’t a gunshot; something more mechanical, probably a dump truck unloading its cargo at one of the nearby construction sites. Adriana brought her mind back to the task at hand. She sat at the computer, scouring the Internet for information on the missing painting. Her cell phone sat next to her on the desktop, the timer counting down the five days she had left to deliver it.
She was accustomed to being in tense situations, working against the clock. The difference was that most of the time, she set the deadlines. This time, the stakes were much higher. Her father was the only family she had left.
Adriana’s mother had died years ago, leaving her father, Diego Villa, alone and depressed. He’d immersed himself in his work, sometimes spending twelve hours at a time doing remote intelligence work for various governments of the world. Their family vineyards and other sparse businesses basically ran themselves. They provided both legitimate income and the perfect cover for what he did.
Doing intelligence mercenary work had never seemed like a job to him. It was more like a mission he felt was penance for sins of his earlier life, sins Adriana never knew about nor needed to. She had her own thoughts about why her father was riddled with regret and guilt, but she never bothered him about it. It was his burden to bear, and if he wanted to unload a little of it, she would be happy to listen.
He’d withdrawn — preferring not to admit to retirement — to Ecuador in recent years. Everything seemed to be fine. He was happy and keeping busy. Then yesterday, she got a message from him. It was a text message. The words on the screen simply read safe house. Had it been a trap? It sure felt like it. But at the moment she had more pressing issues to worry about.