The Heist

worked together. And now the city is thriving. That could be us.”
    “What you’re trying to do is smooth-talk me,” she said.
    “How’s it working?”
    “I’m not one of your marks. You want to impress me? Tell me your plan for getting Burnside to reveal where Griffin is and retrieving the half a billion dollars that he embezzled.”
    “It’s simple,” Nick said, breaking into a warm chocolate cake with his fork. “As long as you don’t mind getting killed.”
    Nick watched Kate eat chocolates while she listened to him explain the con. She didn’t interrupt him with questions and objections, as he’d been expecting, and he worried that her focus was more on the dessert display than on him. The woman could really pack it away. An ordinary woman would be having a chocolate-induced seizure by now, but Kate looked fresh as a daisy.
    “And?” Kate said. “Why did you stop talking?”
    “I wasn’t sure you were listening.”
    “Of course I’m listening. Where do we go from here?”
    “I’ve got to put my crew together.”
    “
Our
crew,” she said.
    “Right. Our crew. Then we have to gather our resources, scout locations, build our sets, and select our wardrobe.”
    “It sounds like we’re putting on a show.”
    “We are,” he said. “For an audience of one.”
    He relaxed back into his seat while Kate polished off a plate of petits fours. This was the first time they’d met face-to-face, outside of that one encounter in the interrogation room, that didn’t begin with her pointing a gun at him. They were actually sitting at a table, like two old friends, not like the hunter and the hunted. And it wasn’t especially awkward. They were comfortable together, despite the fact that they didn’t trust each other or that she’d hit him with a bus. Maybe his scheme would work.

They left the café and walked side by side out of the Gendarmenmarkt and up Markgrafenstrasse in the general direction of Unter den Linden, the wide, tree-lined boulevard that ran from the Brandenburg Gate to the Spree River. As they walked, Nick briefed Kate on the potential crew members he’d found, what their skills were, where they were now, and what he and Kate would have to do to recruit them.
    Three of the four prospects were civilians with no serious brushes with the law in their pasts. But they all had problems, pressing needs, or unfulfilled desires that Nick could exploit to make them receptive to participating in their con.
    Kate shook her head. “I don’t like it. We’re enticing innocent people into participating in a crime. It’s entrapment.”
    “You have to stop thinking like an FBI agent. It’s only entrapment if you intend to arrest them,” Nick said. “Besides, what we’re doing isn’t a crime. I’d say it’s more like an elaborate practical joke.”
    “That could get us all ten to twenty years in prison.”
    “You worry too much,” Nick said. “If there wasn’t any risk, it wouldn’t be any fun.”
    Markgrafenstrasse ended at a T-junction with Behrenstrasse. The buildings there were all the same height, clad in polished stone and glass, and flush with one another, creating an unbroken roofline that made the structures seem to blend into one solid wall. It made Nick feel like a rat trapped in a labyrinth, and he didn’t like it because he was pretty sure they were being followed. He quickly went to their right, where Behrenstrasse spilled into the Bebelplatz, a wide-open square that was bordered on three sides by the monumental Baroque and Neoclassical architecture of the Old Palace, Saint Hedwig’s Cathedral, the Old Royal Library, and the State Opera House. Unter den Linden ran on the fourth side.
    They’d just stepped into the square when Kate slipped her arm around his, drew him against her side, and laid her head gently against his shoulder. She did it as smoothly and naturally as if she’d sought the warmth and comfort of his closeness a hundred times before.
    Nick would have been less shocked if she’d shot him. Just moments ago she was worried about going to jail, and now she was cuddling up to him. Never underestimate the power of chocolate, he thought. And, he had to admit, he liked the feel of her breast pressed against his arm. Still, it would be awkward if she thought he was boyfriend material. Sure, he was attracted to her, but women always had to go beyond that. Women got nesting fantasies. It wasn’t long before they were redecorating your apartment and