Ernest Dempsey
War of Thieves
1
Adriana snapped awake, her head and torso shooting up from the soft hotel bed. Sweat poured down the sides of her face despite the room temperature being set at a cool 18 degrees Celsius.
The glare of lightning flashed through the gaps in the drawn curtains like an army of paparazzi following a celebrity. The searing white light was followed three seconds later by a crackle and boom as the thunder rolled through the soupy black clouds outside. Huge raindrops splattered against the window in quick succession, tapping a random, irregular rhythm.
Her breathing came rapidly in great heaves at first. As she reoriented herself with the surroundings, she remembered where she was — and she remembered what was going on.
She propped herself up on both hands and glanced over at the digital clock. The blue numbers told her it was still early in the morning: 5:30 local time. How long have I been out?
Adriana slowed her breathing and regained her faculties. She’d been in Marseille for almost two days. Everything came rushing back now as consciousness retook its hold in her mind.
Her father, Diego Villa, had been kidnapped just over a week ago. She’d found a video left in their safe house in Beirut. Nothing was on the footage to indicate the identity of the person or persons who’d abducted him. She’d killed one man in the process of trying to save her father, but he had nothing on his body to betray whom he worked for or what his motivation was.
The video did, however, reveal exactly what their intentions were. She was to steal three priceless pieces of art that had gone missing around the time of World War II. If unable to recover the paintings, she would have to provide proof of their destruction, a clause for which she had no plan whatsoever. That meant she would have to hope the three paintings had survived time and persecution.
So far, she’d recovered one of the three, a Bellini known as Madonna and Child. It hadn’t been easy, and she’d been forced to kill a cartel boss and several of his crew in Mexico to get the job done. Not that she cared. The death of a bad person like Espinoza wouldn’t even be a blip on her radar. The strain on her senses and her body were tremendous, though. She’d spent the last two days recovering, resting, and regaining her strength.
After depositing the Bellini at the drop point at one of the docks in Marseille, Adriana had disappeared, running from local authorities who’d been called about a woman in the shipping yard with a gun. The gendarmes had been easy enough to elude, and after an hour or so of taking cover in various cafes, coffee shops, and even an old bookstore, she made her way to the nearest hotel and booked a room for two days.
All day Saturday, she watched her phone intensely, waiting for the call from the man for whom she was indentured. No call ever came. She wasn’t surprised. He’d said he would call on Sunday.
Now, she glanced at the device on the nightstand. She leaned over and pressed the home button. Still no new messages.
Another flash of lightning erupted through the room. The thunder overhead shook the entire building. She pulled the sheets away and swung her legs over the side of the bed, pressing her feet to the chilly carpet. Her fingers automatically rubbed her eyes for a few seconds before she got up to walk over to the window and throw back the curtains.
It didn’t matter that she was in her underwear and a light T-shirt. No one would be out peeping through hotel windows at this hour of the morning, and in this monsoon.
The morning outside was far darker than normal, the clouds refusing to let any early hints of sunlight illuminate that corner of the world. Beyond the dark shapes of hotels, homes, apartments, and businesses, Adriana could see the black abyss of the sea reaching to its border along the French shore. In an hour, the coastline would be alive with activity. It was a rare moment when she wished she could be a part of that normal routine, the day-to-day work that came with a consistent home life and work schedule. She shook her head. Only one thing was causing those thoughts. If her father were there, he’d tell her to get her mind right, to be resolute.
He’d always told her to make her own way in life. Yes, she’d been given an exorbitant amount of money when her mother died years before, but that didn’t change the way Adriana went about things.
She craved adventure, mystery, excitement. Those things combined with a deep, internal sense of purpose that drove her to do something she’d never heard of anyone doing, save for a few Brits she’d met once.
She’d made a career of recovering lost or stolen works of art and returning them to their rightful owners or countries of origin. Some would call her the Robin Hood of the art world. She had no designs on any such fame or recognition. Adriana enjoyed the thrill and the fact that she was doing good on some level.
A dull pain throbbed slowly on the back of her skull at the point one of Espinoza’s men had struck her with his gun. She’d gone through nearly half a bottle of ibuprofen over the last thirty-six hours and would have to take at least two or three more now. At least the swelling had gone down considerably.
She spun around and padded back over to the bed. She'd rested long enough. No chance of going back to sleep anyway. She was awake, and nothing would change that until later in the evening. Adriana put out her hand and took the white bottle, unscrewed the cap, and poured a few more pills into the other hand. She popped them into her mouth and took a quick drink from a water bottle next to the phone to help wash them down.
They went down easily enough, and she replaced the cap and set the bottle back where it had been before. Her phone suddenly lit up, displaying the word Unknown on the screen.
Her eyes blinked rapidly, making sure she wasn’t hallucinating. She grabbed the device and hit the green button to accept the call. “Good morning,” she said sarcastically.
“It’s nice to hear you are in good spirits this morning. I trust you were able to get some rest?” The man’s voice was cold and uncaring. The words were merely a formal greeting, something she’d found the high-end business types did a lot of. They didn’t care about anything except money and power.
“I slept.” Her answer was callous and direct.
“Good. I trust your accommodations in Marseille were acceptable?” He asked the question as if he’d set her up with a place to stay. However, the fact that he knew she was still there meant someone was watching.
“No thanks to you. I’d say that if you’re going to have one of your goons keeping an eye on me, the least you could do is pay for my hotel.”
The man laughed. “Oh, but where is the fun in that? It’s important that you keep on your toes. If you’re worried about the money, as I said, you will be handsomely compensated for the paintings you deliver to me. Which brings me to the main point of my call.”
Yes, getting to the point would be good.
“The next one is quite difficult.”
Harder than the last one? Great.
“It is a painting that was lost at the beginning of the war. The artist was Peter Paul Rubens and is titled The Annunciation.”
Adriana fought the snort that came through her nose involuntarily. “The Annunciation?”
“That is correct.”
She walked back over to the window with a hand on her hip. The sky had lightened somewhat but only due to the sun coming up behind the encompassing, murky clouds above.
“You certainly know how to pick them. That particular Rubens painting has been researched and searched for by some of the best art historians in the world. The Americans even had their special military unit try to find it in the later stages of the war.”