Lot Zero

The Offer The clock on Hugo Montfort’s mantel had been dismantled, and somebody had arranged its innards on the dining table as though a particularly small animal had suffered a complicated accident. ‘It was gaining nine seconds a day,’ Montfort said. ‘Nine. The man who sold it to me called that character.’ Mabel Keen put her gloves beside a plate of apricots and looked at the clock. The movement was no larger than a biscuit, although the table holding it could have seated sixteen. Montfort had placed a jeweller’s loupe beside a silver serving fork, with the pieces separated according to no principle she could see. ‘Did you take it apart?’ ‘Naturally.’ ‘Can you put it back?’ ‘We’ll find out when we’re older.’ He had invited her to lunch, and lunch had apparently been removed to make room for the deceased timepiece. A woman in a dark suit arrived with coffee, surveyed the table without comment and cleared a space for the tray. Montfort thanked her by name. Mabel noticed that the woman did not look at the clock again, which suggested this sort of thing happened often enough to have lost its novelty. Montfort was in his early sixties, with silver hair brushed straight back and the pleased, alert expression of a man who rarely had to tolerate his own boredom. He wore a deep yellow waistcoat embroidered with tiny hunting dogs. The waistcoat was absurd; the fabric and workmanship were not. Behind him, a long window overlooked the roofs of Mayfair, where two workmen on an adjoining building were handling a sheet of lead in the drizzle. ‘I assume the fee was sufficient to make you curious,’ he said. ‘It was sufficient to get me into the room. You still haven’t told me what you want.’ ‘I want to hire you to acquire an item on my behalf.’ ‘You have people who do that.’ ‘They use chequebooks. I’m hoping for something with greater distinction.’ He pushed an envelope across the cleared patch of table. Inside was an invitation printed on heavy cream stock: a private auction at an island fortress off the Croatian coast. Mabel had heard of the restoration, largely because the building had been bought and restored by people who appeared to understand very little about the price of either. There would be an advertised sale of objects from the estate of a recently deceased collector. The catalogue photographs were circulating already among people rich enough to regard an entire country house as a storage problem. ‘The public sale is real,’ Montfort said. ‘Proper auctioneers. Proper guests. Very dull people with proper lawyers. Alongside it, a smaller transaction. Invitation only.’ ‘You’re invited.’ ‘I am. So is Elias Harcourt.’ Mabel looked up from the invitation. Montfort had been waiting for that; he took the opportunity to rescue a tiny screw which had reached the edge of the table. ‘Is he selling something?’ she asked. ‘He’s trying to buy the lot. Which, in this instance, is almost literal.’ From a second envelope he produced a photograph of a folded document lying against dark velvet. The original bore an old warehousekeeper’s mark, a narrow border and several lines of small print. No convenient map, no mystic device, no bloodstained wax seal. Mabel had seen important papers that looked less impressive than the guarantee inside a washing machine. ‘The private transaction concerns a fortune of identified objects held under an independent Swiss custody arrangement,’ Montfort said. ‘Paintings. Jewellery. Gold. Several pieces that haven’t been seen outside professional records for decades. This is the bearer document associated with the deposit. In the old correspondence they call it Warrant Zero.’ ‘Why?’ ‘The collector had a taste for numbering things. You’ll find no great poetry in him.’ ‘And you want the paper.’ ‘The original, yes.’ ‘Are you asking me to steal it from the auction?’ ‘That’s the shortest possible description.’ Mabel returned the photograph to the table. In the background someone had left a ruler near the velvet to show scale; she appreciated the restraint of whoever had taken the picture. The actual document was small enough to fit inside a slim book. ‘If Harcourt buys the collection, you take away the means of completing the transfer,’ she said. ‘That your idea?’ ‘An inconvenience, at the very least. A serious one, I hope.’ ‘You hope the estate will come to you.’ ‘I hope the estate will discover that my rival’s quite heroic bid is less useful than everybody imagined. At which point reasonable people may discuss a more practical number.’ ‘Reasonable people.’ ‘They exist in the better restaurants.’ Mabel drank some coffee. Montfort understood that stealing the document would not make him the legal owner of anything, which put him ahead of several supposedly well-informed clients she had met. He appeared to have accounted for the theft, the rival’s inconvenience and his own subsequent offer, leaving comparatively little room for the decisions the estate and Harcourt might make without consulting him. ‘The buyer will have a contract,’ she said. ‘The estate can pursue whatever lawful means are available to resolve a missing document. Your theft might delay completion. It might make everyone furious. It may give you nothing you can use.’ ‘They could replace it eventually.’ ‘Perhaps. And Harcourt may simply hold the estate to its bargain.’ ‘He may.’ Montfort poured coffee into a second cup he had forgotten was already full. He stopped before it overflowed, transferred the cup to its saucer and gave her a cheerful look. ‘You see why I didn’t employ my solicitor to conduct this conversation. He’d have said exactly what you’ve said, only with invoices.’ ‘He’d be right.’ ‘Frequently. It’s a dreadful habit.’ She looked again at the photograph. Someone had authenticated the instrument recently enough for it to be central to a sale of this size, and someone else would have responsibility for it during the event. The place would be full of cameras, staff, guests and people with the sort of professional responsibilities that did not vanish because a billionaire found an outcome appealing. She could see the size of the challenge without yet seeing a way through it. ‘My deliverable would be the original document,’ she said. ‘You take the commercial risk. I won’t pretend I’ve sold you an estate simply because I’ve delivered you a piece of paper.’ Montfort leaned back. ‘That is why your work interests me. So many people tell me what I want to hear that it becomes rather difficult to get anything done.’ ‘You’ve hired the wrong people.’ ‘I probably have. Will you look at the rest?’ ‘You can show me.’ He pushed aside a clock spring, found a remote control under a folded linen napkin and brought up a series of images on the wall. The fortress rose from a narrow Adriatic island, stone walls following an irregular headland. A harbour had been restored below the principal terraces. In another photograph there were tables set beneath a covered loggia, and behind the terraces a modern service building had been finished in sympathetic local stone. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Montfort asked. ‘The access roads are peculiar.’ He laughed. ‘You really are as advertised.’ ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told.’ ‘That you dislike anyone calling you a genius, pay your people on time and once spent three months solving a problem a conventional burglar would have settled with a brick.’ ‘A brick would have broken something that belonged to a woman who’d done nothing wrong.’ ‘And the three months?’ ‘Worth it.’ Montfort closed the images and rose to stretch his legs. There were hundreds of valuable things in the room, yet he moved among them without the caution owners sometimes displayed. Mabel wondered whether he had ever had to save for anything, and dismissed the thought as irrelevant. He was paying for a service. She needed to find out what assumptions came with the money. ‘Who else is aware of this commission?’ ‘My private secretary knows I arranged a meeting. She does not know its substance. You may use whatever cover is necessary.’ ‘Necessary to whom?’ ‘To you. You’ll be the expert.’ Mabel moved the invitation clear of the clock parts. ‘Then I decide the people and the approach. If I take it.’ She had seen clients agree to that condition and then begin offering instructions the moment they were frightened of losing control. ‘I expected no less.’ ‘And no interfering with the auction or the estate’s staff on your own initiative. No last-minute brilliant ideas. No side orders to somebody else.’ ‘You wound me.’ ‘It sounds survivable.’ His smile grew wider. For a moment he looked like a boy being offered permission to watch a firework from much too close. ‘There is one thing,’ he said. ‘I’m told you prefer not to involve weapons.’ ‘Depends what you mean by involve.’ ‘Would you refuse the job if it required an unpleasant person to be restrained?’ ‘You’ve got a particular person in mind?’ ‘No. I’m asking a general question.’ ‘Then I can give you a general answer. We don’t injure innocent people to make the job easier. We don’t threaten them into doing our work, and we don’t give the police some blameless employee to arrest because we need an explanation for a missing object.’ Montfort moved a loose gear away from his cuff. The embroidery on his waistcoat had caught the edge of it; he inspected the thread for damage and left the gear on the napkin instead. When he spoke again he had changed the question. ‘What about someone who is not innocent?’ ‘You haven’t hired a judge.’ ‘Suppose a guard insists upon being heroic.’ ‘Then we have planned badly if the only answer is to hurt him. And if we find ourselves in that position, we stop.’ ‘Whatever the cost?’ ‘Whatever the cost to your job. We still charge expenses.’ He broke into a laugh that startled the woman in the doorway, who had returned with a tray of sandwiches. She placed it on the sideboard. Montfort waved her towards the table and immediately realised there was no room. ‘Leave them there, please, Marta. I'll sort this out.’ ‘That would be unusual, sir.’ She disappeared before he could answer. Montfort looked after her with considerable affection. ‘She’s been with me eleven years,’ he said. ‘There are things she considers beneath explanation.’ Mabel picked up the loupe and set it beside the other pieces. ‘Then she understands the job better than you do.’ ‘How much?’ Mabel took a sheet from the stack of stationery and wrote down a preliminary fee, a separate amount for delivery of the authenticated original and the conditions under which the first payment would fall due. Montfort read it without smiling. He asked two sensible questions about exposure and indemnity, then made a counteroffer in which several generous-looking numbers concealed a change to when most of the money would actually be paid. ‘No,’ Mabel said, and pushed the paper back. ‘You haven’t considered it.’ ‘I have.’ ‘You’re extremely quick.’ ‘You moved most of the risk into the final payment. That's your opening offer. Mine stands.’ The argument occupied another twenty minutes. Montfort kept returning to the size of the final payment; Mabel kept bringing him back to what happened if the job had to be abandoned for a reason outside the crew’s control. Once he proposed that expenses be deducted from the delivery fee, and she handed him the sheet without answering until he had read that clause back to himself. Between objections he attempted to refit the clock’s minute hand, which would not stay where he put it. Mabel wanted a clear fee for each person she might bring aboard, expenses that did not depend upon success and explicit authority to refuse a method without losing the preliminary payment. Eventually Montfort put down the minute hand and asked, almost pleasantly, ‘You really do mean to leave if I keep arguing?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘How refreshing.’ ‘People must leave here quite often.’ ‘Not with the money.’ They reached terms with half the sandwiches untouched. Mabel wrote a limited acknowledgement on the back of one of his pristine stationery sheets, avoiding any description of the commission itself, and kept the agreed outline figures. Nobody signed a document describing a theft. Montfort asked whether she would at least put the name of the island on it, and she told him he already had a perfectly good invitation. He looked disappointed, as if he had imagined a parchment with flourishes and an alarming red seal. ‘There’s a condition from my side,’ he said as she collected her gloves. ‘Harcourt must never know I hired you. I want him to remember that he paid an obscene amount for a collection he may not be able to collect.’ ‘He may work out that somebody has stolen the warrant.’ ‘Of course.’ ‘That’s different from knowing it was you.’ ‘Quite.’ ‘Your secret lasts as long as you keep your mouth shut.’ He winced with exaggerated sincerity. ‘That is the most difficult thing anybody has asked of me all year.’ Mabel gave him no reassurance. He was entertaining, intelligent and conspicuously fond of the sound of his own ideas. A dangerous combination in a client, even one with money enough to absorb disappointment. At the door, he called her back to show her a tiny picture from the estate catalogue. It was an early twentieth-century brooch: a bird with wings folded against its body, the head picked out in enamel, sapphires occupying small points of the design. The caption identified it as the Nightingale Brooch. A better photograph would have been needed to judge the stones, though the setting showed unusually fine work. ‘That one belongs to the deposit too,’ Montfort said. ‘Harcourt once tried to buy it on its own. Collector wouldn't part with it.’ ‘Perhaps he liked it.’ ‘He liked being the only person who could refuse Elias Harcourt.’ Mabel held the image for a second before returning it. A jewel among many, small enough to vanish in the photographs of gold bars and paintings, but somebody had thought it worth including. She had no reason yet to remember it beyond the fact that Montfort had pointed it out. By the time she reached the pavement, a taxi was blocking the entrance and the man in the driver's seat was arguing amiably with a courier about the meaning of a loading bay. Mabel walked past them to the corner. Her phone buzzed twice with routine business she was already late answering. She dealt with one message and ignored the second until she was on the train. Her own workspace occupied two rooms above a firm that repaired antique lighting. The shop below had a permanent smell of solder and damp cardboard. Upstairs, Mabel kept a good table, two chairs that matched nothing, a wall of labelled reference folders and a kettle the size of a domestic appliance rather than a decorative object. There were no framed certificates. Several of the certificates she might legitimately have displayed would have encouraged questions she had no interest in answering. She spread the information Montfort had given her across the table. He had provided a public catalogue, the invitation, a preliminary outline of the private transaction and a list of people entitled to attend. Nothing that showed exactly how Warrant Zero would be handled. She would not have believed such a document if he'd produced one at lunch. The invitation gave her a date. The island's published guest information gave her the normal means of reaching it: launch, private boat, helicopter. The organisers had built a functioning luxury destination, which meant deliveries, kitchens, service shifts, maintenance and a great many honest people doing jobs that were harder when rich guests insisted on being amusing. Those facts mattered more to her than Montfort's photographs of the battlements. She wrote four headings on a sheet of paper. Under the first she put DOCUMENT. Under the next, PEOPLE. The others she left blank for the moment. She hated starting with a list, but she hated forgetting a practical question more. June would be interested in the way Montfort spoke about the theft as a performance. Ray would want the names of the people actually responsible for the island’s staff and the auction. Mabel had already heard both questions in their voices while she worked, and she had no satisfactory answers. She put their names at the top of a fresh page, where she could see them instead of pretending she had finished the research. The document needed someone who could distinguish genuine historical particulars from attractive printing. The island would probably demand a level of physical ingenuity beyond anything a generalist could promise. Neither problem should be assigned to June or Ray merely because she trusted them. She drew a line through the unfilled heading marked PEOPLE and wrote it again on a clean sheet, this time leaving space below for five names. Three were obvious. The remaining two would have to agree to join them on terms that made sense to the people taking the risks. When June answered on the fourth ring, there was a tremendous noise behind her. ‘Are you in trouble?’ Mabel asked. ‘I'm in a rehearsal room. Someone has hired eight people to pretend they can play trumpet. What do you want?’ ‘Dinner.’ ‘That bad?’ ‘Interesting bad.’ June told her where to meet and instructed her to bring a proper description, preferably one that did not begin with the words simple job. Mabel looked down at the photograph of Warrant Zero, still lying among Montfort's immaculate paperwork, and put it in a folder before reaching for her coat.