27. Galahad
Galahad
As I raised my fist to knock on Arthur and Merlin’s door at the hotel, Ale? took position next to it without being asked. When the door swung open, Radek came in with Grace and me.
Arthur nodded as we rolled our bags into the suite.
After we finished our briefing, Grace and I would check into our adjoining rooms down the hall, which wouldn’t be as posh as this suite.
Two burgundy brocade couches faced each other across a low table, with wing chairs at either end.
A wide archway opened to a television room beyond, with leather armchairs and a cream-colored plush couch for lounging, and what must have been the bedroom doors past that.
Two laptops and one tablet sat on the table. Merlin rose from his chair and placed his tablet next to the other. “Grace. Galahad. Good to see you both.”
Arthur shook Radek’s hand. “Arthur Penn.”
“Radek Horvá?ek. Pleased to meet you, Mr. Penn.”
“Mr. Penn is my father. Call me Arthur.”
“And you can call me Merlin.” John shook Radek’s hand, then turned to Grace. “How are you holding up?”
She parked her bag by the door and gave him her signature smile. “It’s been an interesting week, to say the least.”
“Isn’t that a Chinese curse?” asked Arthur as he took one of the wing chairs.
Merlin took the other chair, leaving the two couches. “So the saying goes, but it’s more likely a British saying.”
“Really?” Arthur stroked his short beard, as though the two men were about to get into a philosophical debate about British expressions.
As Radek sat on one of the couches, I said to Grace, “This is going to be the boring part. You may want to skip it.”
“I’m good.” She sat on the vacant couch and tucked her feet underneath her.
Which left me with a strategic choice. If I sat next to her, Arthur and Merlin would grill me about my proximity later.
If I sat too close, they’d suspect something happened between her and me.
If I sat too far, they’d know I was trying to hide that I wanted to sit next to her. If I sat next to Radek…
Fuck. I sat next to Radek. It was the least complicated spot.
“We have a stocked minibar,” Arthur told Grace. “Can I get you anything?”
“No, thank you.”
Her desire to sit through a tactical briefing rather than wait in the next room was unexpected. Most principals wanted distance from the operational details. Grace wanted the opposite.
A vision of holding her on the train flashed through my memory. There hadn’t been any distance from the operational details last night. I’d imagined doing so many things with her that crossed every professional boundary, let alone every personal boundary I had.
Merlin picked up his tablet. “Tristan called from Brenton this morning. He spoke with his contact at the police department to confirm they got an international hit on the prints from your apartment. The intel was off-the-record, but he confirmed it was Conrad Richter.”
Grace went very still. “He was the one in my home?”
Merlin nodded slowly and grimaced, in an obvious attempt to soften the words. “Yes, he was.”
It didn’t surprise me, and it shouldn’t have surprised her, but when her gaze unfocused, my arms started getting itchy. But there was no hugging in team meetings, no matter how much I wanted to cross the room and pull her in.
“Okay,” she said after a beat. “At least we know now.”
At least. There was that phrase again, the signal she was reshaping the narrative in her head so it was better than the shit reality that Conrad Richter had been in her bedroom.
“You won’t have to worry about him much longer.” Arthur pulled his tablet from the table. “Before we discuss what’s happening tomorrow, I need to mention the operational costs.”
Grace straightened. “I should be paying for this.”
“That’s not why I brought it up.” Arthur said it easily, as though it were already settled.
“We need real operations in our portfolio, and a significant artifact recovery with a security component and international cooperation is exactly the kind of work I want us known for. It’s all covered by our startup marketing budget. ”
“Thank you,” she said.
“The Pendragon contract alone is substantial.” Arthur didn’t look at me as he spoke, but he held the tablet at enough of an angle for me to spy the total. It wasn’t anywhere near the value of the egg, but it was a large sum.
He’d done it intentionally. I’d told Tristan any company competing with White Spring Security for my services would need serious money. Arthur wasn’t making casual conversation. He was making sure I’d seen the number because it was part of his pitch.
“Can we get into tomorrow?” I said.
Arthur swiped to a new app on his tablet. “Let’s.”
I walked them through the intel I’d gathered at Henri’s that afternoon.
The cobblestone court, the two approaches to the front gate, the walled kitchen garden, the garden doors off the dining room, and the angles from inside.
Radek filled in the local picture, including response times for Czech police near Henri’s estate, jurisdictional lines, and which neighbors had views of the access road.
Grace followed all of it. After Radek finished, she asked, “Are any of you carrying weapons tomorrow?”
“Myself and Ale? only,” Radek said. “Czech carry permits are strict.”
“And the rest of you?” she asked.
“I looked into it, but we don’t have enough time to obtain the right documents,” Arthur said. “Merlin, Galahad, and I can’t carry firearms, but we’re allowed to carry stun guns, knives, batons, or even pepper spray.”
“Do you have vests or plate carriers on the jet?” I asked.
“Our inaugural flight was supposed to be for meetings.” Arthur huffed out a laugh. “No, we’re not stocked, but I expect Pendragon can help us out?”
Radek nodded. “I’m more comfortable in a plate carrier. I’ll check some out from our office for you. Some of the other items, though?”
“I guess I’ll have some shopping to do.” Arthur jotted some notes on his tablet. “We can purchase items locally and start building our mobile supply.”
Having a whole private jet as a storage locker? Was that a flex or another part of the recruitment pitch?
“Is that enough?” asked Grace.
“We’ll have two armed Pendragon operators on the perimeter, two of us with combat training inside with the non-lethal kit, plus Merlin in overwatch.” Arthur stretched a leg out. “Yeah. It’s enough.”
“What if the authentication runs long? Into overnight?”
“If Caulfield needs a second day, we pull the egg back to the hotel tonight and go back tomorrow.” Arthur would have been planning things from the moment I called him, so he didn’t miss a beat.
“We don’t leave the authentication open-ended on someone else’s property.
Too many staff rotations, too many unknowns. ”
“Okay.” She sat back again, apparently satisfied.
Arthur’s phone buzzed on the table. He checked the screen, then tapped a button to put it on speaker. “I’ve got you on speaker, Morganna.”
“Who’s in the room?” came a female voice.
“Hey, Marj.” Merlin waited a beat before continuing. He was the only one who called her by her real name.
Morganna Vale hated her legal name—Marjorie—but Merlin had recruited her from the Agency before Task Force Legacy, and before he’d given us all our stupid Arthurian call signs.
She was one of the few who preferred hers, just like John preferred being called Merlin.
After the task force broke up, she’d insisted on using it everywhere.
When she didn’t bite and tell him not to call her Marj, Merlin continued. “We’ve got a full house, including Arthur, Galahad, Radek Horvá?ek from Pendragon, and Grace Laurent.”
“Perfect. Let’s talk about Kessler first.”
“Go.”
“He’s high-profile, so I had a lot to comb through.
The most interesting part was the attendance records from auction houses and private exhibitions going back eight years.
Kessler and Henri Dubois keep turning up in the same rooms. Sotheby’s Russian sales in London and Geneva, I expected—they’re both well-known collectors in that space—but he’s shown up at events that don’t fit his profile.
A European decorative arts preview at Christie’s last spring where Dubois purchased a vase.
A private antiquities viewing in Vienna two years ago hosted by a friend of Dubois.
Nothing in Kessler’s collecting range. He wasn’t buying. ”
“You think he’s been watching Dubois?” I asked.
“That’s what the pattern’s telling me, although I don’t have proof.”
Patterns were her specialty. Lots of people knew how to find information, but her superpower was finding the connections. A photograph might have her recall a document she’d read two years ago, and she just knew the two went together. And she was always right.
“Add to that the reward the Dubois family has for the lost Hen with Sapphire Pendant egg?—”
“What?” Grace’s feet unfolded from underneath her and landed on the floor. She practically tipped over, aiming herself at the phone. “Henri said he’d pay me for it, but didn’t mention a reward.”
“Five million,” said Morganna. “The egg’s been missing for some time, and they stopped broadcasting the reward a decade ago. The money’s sitting in escrow.”
Grace looked at me. She would have given the egg to the man because she thought it was the right thing to do, wouldn’t she have? Quietly, almost to herself, she whispered, “Five million?”
What was she thinking? About all the things she could do with five million? Or how much less it was than what Caulfield had told her it was worth? Was he aware of the reward?
“What about Caulfield?” I asked.