The Rembrandt Affair

notice when the lanky blond-haired man deposited the same tray on a counter and mounted the back staircase as if it were an everyday occurrence.
    Through the magic of global positioning technology, Mikhail knew the route down to the inch. At the top of the stairs, he turned to the right and proceeded thirty-two feet along a dimly lit corridor. Then it was a left, to a pair of double doors leading to the small alcove outside Martin’s office. As expected, the doors to the alcove were closed but unlocked.
    Mikhail opened one of the doors, slipped through it, and closed it again quickly. The alcove was in pitch-darkness, precisely what he needed to perform the first step of the break-in. He removed a small ultraviolet light from the pouch at the small of his back and switched it on. The ghostly blue beam illuminated the pad for the keyless entry system. More important, the UV light revealed Martin’s latent fingerprints on the pad. Five of the numerical keys bore fingerprints—2, 4, 6, 8, 9—along with the unlock button.
    Mikhail quickly removed the cover of the keypad, exposing the electronic circuitry, and took a second item from his pouch. The size of an iPod, it had a numbered keypad of its own and a pair of wires with small alligator clips at the ends. Mikhail powered on the device and attached the clips to the exposed wiring of Martin’s keyless lock. Then he pressed the same five numbers—2, 4, 6, 8, 9—followed by the enter key. In less than a second, the device fed every possible combination of numbers into the memory chip, and the lock instantly snapped open. Mikhail unclipped the device and replaced the cover on the keypad, then stepped into Martin’s office and quietly closed the door. Mounted on the wall was an identical keypad. Mikhail illuminated it briefly with his UV light and pressed the lock button. The dead bolts slammed home with a solid thump.
    Like the alcove, the office was in complete darkness. Mikhail had no need of light. He knew that Martin’s computer was located precisely thirteen feet away, at roughly two o’clock. Martin had shut it down before leaving the office earlier that evening. All Mikhail had to do was insert his Sony flash drive into one of the USB ports and hold down the F8 key while pressing the power button. With a few keystrokes, the contents of Martin’s hard drive were soon flowing through cyberspace at the speed of light. A dialogue box appeared on the screen: TIME REMAINING FOR UPLOAD: 1:14:32 …Nothing to do now but wait. He inserted the earpiece of his miniature secure radio and stared at the screen.
    “Are they getting it?” Mikhail asked.
    “They’re getting it,” Gabriel replied.
    “Don’t forget about me here.”
    “We won’t.”
    Gabriel clipped out. Mikhail sat alone in the darkness, watching the countdown clock on the screen of Martin’s computer.
    TIME REMAINING FOR UPLOAD : 1:13:47 …

    T HE COMPUTER receiving the feed from Villa Elma was located in the glass-enclosed conference room of the London ops center known as the fishbowl. On its screen was a message identical to the one on Martin’s. Shamron was the only one in the room who did not think it was cause for celebration. Experience would not permit it. Nor would the status boards. He had one operative locked in Martin’s office, seven operatives sitting in a luxury Geneva hotel, and a Mercedes sedan parked at a gas station in one of the world’s most secure neighborhoods. And then, of course, there was the small matter of a famous British reporter who was watching a movie about global warming at the side of a Saudi prince. What could go wrong? Shamron thought, his lighter rotating nervously in his fingertips. What could possibly go wrong?

64
    ZURICH
    I t had been a humbling few months for the tiny Swiss Confederation, as evidenced by the ghostlike silence hanging over Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse that same damp December evening. Having been brought to the brink of insolvency, Switzerland’s largest banks had been forced to suffer the indignity of a government bailout. Sensing weakness, foreign tax collectors were now clamoring for Swiss financial institutions to lift the veil of secrecy that had shielded their clients for centuries. The gnomes of Zurich, among the wiliest of God’s creatures, had instinctively taken shelter and were waiting patiently for the inclement weather to pass. They did so secure in the knowledge that America’s bankers could no longer hold steadfast to