Page 57 of The Picasso Heist

BERGAMO CAN’T BEAR the silence. I can tell from his body language again—he can hardly sit still. “So what the hell are we doing?” he asks finally.

“We’re waiting,” I answer.

“For what?”

“The window.”

This isn’t Shen Wan’s first rodeo at the Brooklyn Shipyard.

Money and power can get you a lot of things, and in this case, it’s three minutes of privacy.

That’s how long it takes for the surveillance cameras on the perimeter of the shipyard to reset after uploading the previous twenty-four hours of footage to the main server.

It’s a glitch in the matrix, something the outside security firm neglected to mention to shipyard management.

But for the right price, one of the firm’s technicians—supporting his family back in Gansu Province— was all too willing to share this intel with Shen Wan.

Shen has utilized the loophole on a handful of occasions for his “special imports.” The kind that don’t show up on any manifest.

Like a couple of very rare artifacts from the Qing dynasty.

“Here he comes,” I say.

Bergamo’s looking for a car. “Where?” he asks.

I point out at the water. “There.”

One if by land, two if by sea. The two vases.

They were stashed on a dock in the shipyard upon their arrival from China yesterday and are being brought to us by boat within the three-minute window starting exactly at three in the morning, which is when the cameras aren’t recording. I explain all this quickly to Bergamo.

“Well done,” he says.

“It’s not done yet.” I pop the trunk. “Let’s go.”

Bergamo carries the case with the Picasso, hanging back a few steps behind me as we walk. “I’m going to need to see the vases first,” he whispers.

“Second,” I whisper back.

“Huh?”

“You’re trading the painting for the vases. Not the other way around.”

“Fair enough,” he says. “First or second, as long as I see them.”

“You will.”

We get closer to the water, and the low hum of the motor on Shen Wan’s Boston Whaler slices through the silence of the deserted lot.

There’s no dock, only a ladder. Shen cuts the engine and ties a rope around one of the rungs, and I drop to a knee and take the two steamer trunks that are housing the vases from him.

I set them down on the wood slats of a discarded pallet and glance at Bergamo. He looks like a kid on Christmas morning. Pure anticipation.

Shen climbs the ladder, greets me with a smile, and points at his Rolex, keeping track of the three-minute window. “Seven seconds to spare,” he says. “Lucky seven.”

Shen and his boat are out of surveillance range when the cameras start rolling again at the shipyard, fresh off their reboot. We have all the time in the world now, if we want it.

We don’t. No one says it; it’s simply understood: Let’s be quick about this. Bergamo lays the case on the pallet and opens it for Shen.

He looks at the painting, gives Bergamo a nod. “Beautiful,” says Shen.

The word has barely left his mouth when the light hits his eyes.

It’s bright, blinding. I turn, trying to see where it’s coming from, but the light is all I can see, a piercing white halo.

No, make that two halos, side by side. They’re like headlights except this isn’t a car.

It’s two people. And, judging by their entrance, neither one is an angel.

“Beautiful indeed,” says the first.

He dims his headlamp. He’s still a silhouette but all any of us needs to see is the barrel of his gun as he steps forward.

We’re being ambushed.