Page 24 of The Picasso Heist

PIERRE HEADS OFF with Terrance, leaving me alone. I’m now invisible.

I slip through the back exit, quietly go up the stairs, and find a spot next to a pillar where I can view the auction floor.

If anyone turns around and looks up, I’m just the new girl watching and learning.

But no one’s turning and looking. The works of art, the objects of their desire, hold their attention like superglue.

All the action’s in front of them. That’s what they think.

From the moment Anton Nikolov told me in his limo parked outside MoMA that he wanted the dead man’s Picasso for himself, the calculus changed. Instead of trying to jack up the price, we’re now trying to limit it. We want to suppress the action, do whatever it takes to prevent a bidding war.

“Skip, can you hear me?”

My brother doesn’t respond. I casually reach up under my hair as if I’m scratching the back of my neck, but I’m actually tapping my earpiece for more volume.

“Skip?” I whisper more loudly. Still nothing.

Panic sets in. The only thing I can hear is my heart pounding faster and faster, about to explode through my chest. “Skip, are you there? Skip?”

“Gotcha,” he says finally.

I’m too relieved to curse him out. “Seriously?”

“It never gets old.”

“And if it ever gets funny, I’ll let you know,” I say. Okay, it’s a little funny, but I’m not about to admit it. “How’s my level?”

“You’re good, coming in clean,” he says. “How’s the room?”

“Over two hundred billion in net worth.”

“Big turnout, huh?”

“Huge,” I say.

“Any surprises?” he asks.

“Only the one you just gave them.”

I can see Terrance and Pierre off to the side of the stage talking intensely to Charles Waxman, CEO of Echelon. What rhymes with charm? Smarm. That’s Charles Waxman. His slicked-back hair says it all. Technically I work for him but he has no idea who I am. That will change soon.

In the meantime, with the clock ticking, Waxman’s trying to figure out how the hell Echelon’s encrypted VPN phone lines just went down. Surely there’s a little sweat building at the base of that slicked-back hair.

Like falling dominoes, Waxman grabs Terrance, and Terrance grabs Pierre, because while Echelon’s clients stretch worldwide, it’s the heavy hitters from France who will be out in droves for this auction—or, rather, sitting in droves in their giant chateaus and bidding on the phone.

French billionaires have a very proprietary view of all things Picasso.

Never mind that the artist was Spanish-born; he created in France, and this newly discovered masterpiece landing in foreign hands would be un désastre.

That’s why I needed that small key in Pierre Dejarnette’s office.

Pierre’s old-school ways don’t end with wine and women.

Although he reluctantly accepted the technological age, he has never fully embraced it.

The cloud? Letting his golden list of clients and secret sources just float around in the ether for anyone to steal as if it were some nude selfie of a celebrity?

Not a chance. Pierre backs up everything with pen and paper, an actual handwritten directory that he keeps locked in a desk safe.

I saw him open it once when he invited me for a tour of the valuations department during my internship.

What I didn’t see was where he kept the key.

As it turns out, it’s the bottom drawer on the left, tucked underneath a ceramic ashtray with the logo of his beloved Paris Saint-Germain football club.

Score.

“How much longer?” I ask Skip.

“I can’t see the overlay patch in real time but I’m guessing another minute or so.”

Step 1: Create a problem that Echelon’s IT department can solve but only in a MacGyver kind of way, the digital equivalent of a paper clip and chewing gum.

For example, rerouting their VPN phone lines through a single-source entry point via a temporary overlay patch.

In layman’s terms, allowing overseas Echelon clients to call in on their personal phones without any encryption.

Step 2: Make the IT department think they’ve saved the day—or night—by having that paper clip and chewing gum hold up through the early part of the auction. Until…

Step 3: All hell breaks loose during the Picasso sale.