“Oh, they’re awful.” The redhead giggled. “I was rattling around like a coin in a jar last night in my bunk. You should see my bruises.”
“I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours,” Jeff quipped.
“I don’t believe we’ve met.” General McPhee looked at Jeff with all the warmth of a nuclear winter.
“I don’t believe we have. Thomas Bowers.” Jeff extended a hand.
“Mr. Bowers is an expert in antiques,” said Tiffany.
“Antiquities,” Jeff corrected. “And I wouldn’t say an expert, exactly. I’m a dealer.”
“Is that so?” The general’s expression shifted. “Well, Mr. Bowers, we should have a drink later. I have something in my cabin that I think may interest you greatly.”
Jeff allowed his eyes to linger on Tiffany Joy’s quite spectacular bosom. “I’m sure you do, General.”
“It’s not for sale,” the general snapped. “Not that you could afford it even if it were. It’s priceless.”
“Oh, I believe you, sir.” Jeff’s eyes were still fixed on Tiffany’s, and hers on him.
Thomas Bowers really was disconcertingly good-looking. Tiffany knew she shouldn’t flirt. It upset Alan. Married or not, General Alan McPhee was a wonderful man, noble and brave and lionhearted. It was his strength and integrity that had attracted Tiffany to him in the first place. Well, that and the power, if she was honest. But she couldn’t let him down, just because a handsome stranger paid her some attention. She blushed, ashamed of herself.
“I’ll take you up on that drink tomorrow, General, if that’s all right,” Thomas Bowers was saying brightly. “Unfortunately I have some work I need to catch up on tonight. Sorry to have intruded, Miss Joy.”
He nodded gallantly and took his leave.
Tiffany Joy’s blush deepened. “Mr. Bowers.”
Well, Jeff thought, grinning all the way back to his cabin. That should put a fox in the henhouse. Step one completed.
JEFF’S CABIN WAS CHARMING but minuscule. Tracy had once pulled off a spectacular jewel theft aboard the Venice Simplon-Orient-Express traveling from London to Venice and had compared her room to “the inside of a candy box.”
This was similar, a riot of red velvet and brocade with a single armchair, tiny table and foldout bunk bed that Jeff suspected had been shipped in especially from Guantánamo Bay, so torturous was it to attempt to sleep on. The decor was certainly nostalgic, and had a certain Art Deco glamour to it. But Jeff’s enthusiasm for the romance of the Pullman car was fading almost as fast as his appetite. Roll on, Bangkok.
Having attempted to shower in a stall so cramped Houdini would have thought twice before entering it, Jeff lay on his bunk rereading Gunther’s encrypted file on General Alan McPhee.
In 2007, the general was in command of U.S. forces in the holy city of Nippur, about 160 kilometers southeast of Baghdad between the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. Since 2003, Coalition forces had been charged with preventing looting at archaeological sites like Nippur, a treasure trove of pre-Sargonic, Akkadian and old Babylonian artifacts. A statue of King Entemena, a Mesopotamian monarch from around 2400 BC, similar to the one looted from the National Museum of Iraq in 2003 and of equivalent value, was discovered in a tomb in Nippur by a French ground unit. It went missing from a “secure” Coalition safe house six weeks later, days before it was due to be transferred to the Louvre. Extensive local searches produced no result, although a wealth of circumstantial evidence pointed to a local man, a petty thief named Aahil Hafeez. Hafeez was arrested, but before he could be tried, he was abducted and hanged by an angry mob. He always protested his innocence. The statue was never seen again.
Reliable sources now suggest that General McPhee himself commissioned the theft. The much-decorated general has in fact for years been running a profitable sideline in looted treasures and war spoils, although nothing quite as spectacular as this. Having paid off his local accomplices, the general wisely waited some years before searching for a suitable buyer for the Entemena statue. He has agreed to sell it for two million U.S. dollars to a Thai drug lord by the name of Chao-tak Chao. Chao is an exceptionally corrupt and ruthless individual, responsible for countless abductions, murders and incidents of torture. Illiterate and uneducated, he is nevertheless a collector of statuary in all its forms.
The general is traveling by boat and train to avoid the more intrusive customs searches prevalent throughout Asian airports. He is also clearly protected to a large degree by his status, both in the United States and abroad, as a military hero, much decorated for his valor and admired for his charitable endeavors.
Jeff thought, Everybody loves this guy. Almost as much as he loves himself. But he’s a fraud. Worse than that, he’s a killer.
Jeff closed his eyes and tried to imagine the terror of the young Iraqi man as he was dragged to some makeshift gallows by his own people. Strung up like an animal and choked to death for a crime of which he knew nothing. General McPhee could have stepped in and saved him. He didn’t need a scapegoat. The crime could have remained unsolved, like so many others in the chaotic aftermath of the war. But in order to cover his own tracks twice over, that powerful, guilty man had allowed the powerless, innocent man to die a horrific death.
And that was when Jeff changed his mind.
Stealing the statue’s not enough.
This bastard deserves a taste of his own medicine.
IT DIDN’T TAKE LONG for Thomas Bowers to engineer his next meeting with Miss Tiffany Joy.
He’d observed that the general always went to breakfast before his “secretary,” and alone. Once he’d gone, Miss Joy would slip back into her own cabin, making sure it looked as if both berths had been slept in; there she showered and dressed, then joined her boss after a suitable interval. It was the easiest thing in the world to bump into her as she emerged into the corridor.
“Miss Joy. You look lovely this morning, as ever. How are the bruises?”
“Mr. Bowers!”
Tiffany blushed despite herself. She wished she didn’t enjoy these encounters with the antiques dealer, or whatever he was, quite as much as she did. But Thomas Bowers was so young, and handsome, and Alan, bless him, was so old. Quite the antiquity himself, come to think of it!
“Is something funny? You know you’re frighteningly pretty when you smile.”
“And you’re a terrible flirt.”
“I’m crushed. Here was I thinking I was rather a good one.”
Tiffany laughed. “I mean it. Alan . . . General McPhee . . . he wasn’t too pleased last night. He said you bumped into me on purpose.”
“He was quite right.” Jeff moved closer. The train corridor was so narrow, his nose and Tiffany’s were almost touching. “Not that I see what business it is of his. Isn’t there a Mrs. McPhee somewhere? Keeping the home fires burning and all that.”
“Well . . . yes,” Tiffany admitted. “I’m just not sure she keeps the general’s fires burning, though. Not anymore.”
“What about your fires, Miss Joy?” Jeff’s hands slid around her waist, then down over her deliciously pert bottom.
“Oh, Mr. Bowers!”
“Thomas.”
“Thomas. I want to but I . . . we can’t. He’s my boss.”
“You know what they say about all work and no play . . .”
The boring Swedish couple emerged from their cabin. Reluctantly Jeff released the general’s secretary—“under” secretary—and let them pass.
“Your boss was boasting last night about having something priceless in his cabin,” he said nonchalantly, once they were alone again. “He wasn’t only talking about you, was he?”
“No. But I can’t talk about it,” Tiffany said primly.
“Why not?” Lunging forward, Jeff kissed her suddenly and passionately on the mouth.
“Thomas!”
“He obviously wanted me to know. Come on, I won’t tell. What’s he got stashed in there? The world’s biggest bottle of Viagra?”
“Don’t be mean.”
“A toupee spun from threads of pure platinum?”
“Stop it!” Tiffany giggled. “If you must know, it’s some sort of statue. Between you and me, it’s quite hideous. It was a gift from a grateful Iraqi gentleman, after the liberation. Apparently it’s very old and very rare.”
“Just like Alan’s erection,” Jeff couldn’t resist saying. “Look. It’s the boat tour of the River Kwai this afternoon.”
“I know.” Tiffany sighed. “The general’s an expert on World War Two history. I’ve been hearing all about it since Singapore. He really is an incredibly learned and eminent—”
“Get out of it. Say you’re not feeling well.”
“But he knows I’m—”
“Fake something. Come on, Miss Joy. Live a little! I’ll make sure your boss and I are on different boats. Then I’ll duck out early and come and take a look at the general’s priceless treasure.”
“I assume you’re referring to the statue, Mr. Bowers?” Tiffany threw back her hair coquettishly.