First Thrills - Lee Child [68]
JOHN LESCROART
The Uffizi Gallery—Florence
Don Matheson, also known as Nishion der Matosian in Armenia and Nishi ibn Matos throughout the Arabian world, was starting to develop museum fatigue.
And no wonder. Every wall of the Uffizi was essentially wall-papered with masterpieces by Botticelli, da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, and (Matosian’s favorite, mostly because of his name) Fra Filippo Lippi.
All the art in one place wore a guy out.
Even if, like Matosian, you were a thirty-eight-year-old ex-Navy SEAL in perfect physical condition who ran six miles in under an hour every morning before the sun was up. And even if, as happened quite frequently, you’d enjoyed phenomenal, acrobatic, and oftentimes tantric sex the night before.
But conjuring up a deep artistic appreciation for fifty or sixty paintings should not be the work of an hour, or even of a day. Matosian much preferred the Rodin garden in Paris, where you could go outside and sit looking up at The Thinker and let the power and meaning of the sculpture get inside your head and heart and leave you, somehow, changed for the better.
Enriched.
In truth, he wasn’t here to enjoy the art, but to meet a contact who was driving up that morning from Rome. When that contact hadn’t arrived by the appointed hour, he’d decided—since he was here—to take advantage of the opportunity to check out the art, which he’d been doing now for nearly forty minutes.
It occurred to him that the late contact might not be the fault of Italy’s roads or the Florentine traffic, but a deliberate attempt to lull him into the semisoporific state in which he now found himself. Museum fatigue could not literally kill, of course, but it could leave you dull-witted and exposed.
And in Matosian’s life, these states were often the precursor to disaster.
Matosian tore his eyes away from Raphael’s Madonna of the Goldfinch and quickly but surreptitiously scanned the milling crowd of tourists surrounding him. Nothing untoward caught his eye on the first sweep, but then, in the limit of his peripheral vision, a flash of blond hair appeared and then disappeared behind the entrance to the next room.
He turned, but had only taken his first step in that direction when he heard a scream. In that first second the crowd around him froze, and he used that moment to push his way through the press of people. By now others had taken up the cries, but Matosian ignored them, getting over to where a beautiful young woman lay where she’d fallen.
Matosian was the first one at her side. He felt the slight pulse in her neck, noted the shiny pallor and heat of her skin. Clearly, she’d been poisoned, probably right here in the Uffizi while she was waiting to make contact with him. Now her eyes opened and even through her obvious pain, he detected a softening in her expression—she recognized him. “Veni,” she gasped. “Come.” And lifting her arm, she brought him down close to her lips.
“Gato,” she whispered.
The agreed upon password. Cat.
She pressed something now into his hand—it felt like an ancient key—and closed his fingers over it. “Gato,” she repeated.
And then she went still.
Hyde Park—London
There had been no time to search for the woman’s killer in Florence. It would have been a futile exercise in any event. No doubt, the assassin had done his damage and disappeared into the crowd even before Matosian had gotten out of the museum.
And there was no time to waste.
But the good news was that Matosian had received the key and immediately recognized it for what it was—as a youth, he’d been trained by traveling gypsies in the arcane art of lock picking, and now could not only pick any lock, ancient or modern, that he encountered, but he could identify by sight or touch any one of the