“Not long to go now, sir.” The driver’s voice rang out through the intercom. Irritatingly. Klimt’s usual driver, Angelo, would never have been so impertinent as to interrupt his master’s thoughts with an unsolicited comment. Roberto Klimt wondered where his security chief had dug up this specimen. “We’ve been lucky with the traffic.”
At exactly that moment, two police cars, their sirens wailing, drew up behind them.
“What on earth . . . ?”
Klimt gripped the car door for dear life as his driver accelerated, so suddenly that the bowl almost flew onto the floor.
“Are you out of your mind?” he roared. “Pull over! It’s the police.”
Ignoring him, the driver weaved insanely across two lanes of traffic, setting off a cacophony of beeping.
“I said pull over, you imbecile!”
Klimt caught the panicked expression on the driver’s face as he turned sharply right off the autoroute. They were going so fast that for one awful moment Roberto Klimt thought that the car was about to flip over, killing them both. Instead, one of the police cars shot past them and pulled directly in front, forcing the driver to brake. They skidded to a halt on the side of the road.
“The bowl!” yelled the driver. He’d opened the partition to the backseat and was leaning through it menacingly. “Give me the bowl.”
“Never!” Klimt cowered on the backseat, covering the bowl with his body like Gollum protecting his precious ring.
“For heaven’s sake. Give it to me! We don’t have much time.”
A huge policeman yanked open the driver’s door. After a brief struggle, the driver was knocked out by a sharp blow to the back of the head. Roberto Klimt let out a frightened squeal as the unconscious man slumped down on top of him.
“Are you all right, Mr. Klimt?”
Two other policemen had appeared at the window. There were three of them in all.
Klimt nodded.
“Sorry to panic you like that,” said the giant. “But we learned at the last minute that Jeff Stevens had changed his plan. Your driver’s real name is Antonio Maldini. He’s a con artist, quite brilliant. Interpol has been after him for a decade.”
“But my security people are the best in Italy . . .” Klimt spluttered. “This man was thoroughly vetted.”
The policeman shrugged. “Like I say, Maldini’s a pro. Faking a background check’s nothing for this dude. Nor is hard-core violence. Antonio Maldini’s a known sadist. He’d have beaten you to a pulp and left you for dead before he took that bowl.”
Roberto Klimt shivered.
“We picked up his accomplice, Marco Rizzolio at dawn this morning,” said the giant policeman.
“And Jeff Stevens?”
The big man glanced at his partners and frowned.
“We don’t have him yet, sir. We raided his hotel this morning, but it appears he was one step ahead of us.”
“He won’t get far, Mr. Klimt,” one of the other cops added, watching the art dealer’s expression darken. “Chief Valaperti has set up roadblocks around the city. We have an alert out at the airport.”
Antonio Maldini made a low, groaning sound. He was clearly beginning to come around. One of the cops handcuffed him and, with his colleagues’ help, bundled him into the back of one of the police cars.
“Chief Valaperti’s asked us to escort you back to the city,” said the giant. “We’ll need you to make a statement. And I’m afraid the artifact the gang was after will have to be impounded as evidence.”
“I don’t care about that,” muttered Klimt. “Just catch that bastard Stevens.”
“Oh, we will, sir. Don’t worry. His entire plan’s just blown up in his face, Mr. Klimt. He won’t get away now.”
THE DRIVE BACK TO Rome took less tha
n forty minutes. Antonio Maldini, still handcuffed to the door, slipped in and out of consciousness beside Roberto Klimt as they pulled up in convoy outside the police headquarters building on the Piazza di Spagna.