Honor Among Thieves Read online

  “As long as no one realizes it’s been removed and I’m told well in advance where you want it delivered, that should be simple enough.”

  “You’ll get a week,” said Cavalli.

  “I’d prefer two,” said Vicente, raising an eyebrow.

  “No, Nick, you get a week,” the chief executive repeated.

  “Can you give me a clue what distance it will have to travel?” Vicente asked, turning the pages of the file Tony had passed across to him.

  “Several thousand miles. And as far as you’re concerned it’s COD, because if you fail to deliver, none of us gets paid.”

  “That figures. But I’ll still need to know how it has to be transported. For starters, will I have to keep the Declaration between two sheets of glass the whole time?”

  “I don’t know myself yet,” replied Cavalli, “but I’m hoping you’ll be able to roll it up and deposit it in a cylindrical tube of some kind. I’m having one specially made.”

  “Does that explain why I’ve got several sheets of blank paper in my file?” asked Nick.

  “Yes,” said Tony. “Except those sheets aren’t paper but parchment, each one of them 293/4 inches by 241/4 inches, the exact size of the Declaration of Independence.”

  “So now all I’ve got to hope is that every customs agent and coast guard patrol won’t be looking for it.”

  “I want you to assume the whole world will be looking for it,” replied Cavalli. “You aren’t being paid this sort of money for doing a job I could handle with one call to Federal Express.”

  “I thought you might say something like that,” said Nick. “Still, I had the same problem when you wanted the Vermeer of Russborough stolen, and Irish customs still haven’t worked out how I got the painting out of the country.”

  Cavalli smiled. “So now we all know what’s expected of us. And I think in the future we should meet at least twice a week to start with, every Sunday at three o’clock and every Thursday at six, to make sure none of us falls behind schedule. One person out of synch and nobody else will be able to move.” Tony looked up and was greeted by nods of agreement.

  It always fascinated Cavalli that organized crime needed to be as efficiently run as any public company if it hoped to show a dividend. “So we’ll meet again next Thursday at six?”

  All five men nodded and made notes in their calendars.

  “Gentlemen, you may now open the second of your two envelopes.” Once again, the five men ripped open their envelopes, and each pulled out a thick wad of thousand-dollar bills.

  The lawyer began to count each note.

  “Your down payment,” Tony explained. “Expenses will be met at the end of every week, receipts whenever possible. And, Johnny,” said Tony, turning to the director, “this is not Heaven’s Gate we’re financing.” Scasiatore managed a smile.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” said Tony, rising. “I look forward to seeing you all next Thursday at six o’clock.”

  The five men rose and made their way to the door, each stopping to shake hands with Tony’s father before he left. Tony accompanied them to their cars. When the last one had been driven away, he returned to find his father had moved to the study and was toying with a whisky while staring at the perfect copy of the Declaration that Dollar Bill had intended to destroy.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Calder Marshall, Please.”

  “The Archivist can’t be interrupted right now. He’s in a meeting. May I ask who’s calling?”

  “It’s Rex Butterworth, Special Assistant to the President. Perhaps the Archivist would be kind enough to call me back when he’s free. He’ll find me at the White House.”

  Rex Butterworth put the phone down without waiting to hear what usually happened once it was known the call had come from the White House: “Oh, I feel sure I can interrupt him, Mr. Butterworth, can you hold on for a moment?”

  But that wasn’t what Butterworth wanted. No, the Special Assistant needed Calder Marshall to phone back himself, because once he had gone through the White House switchboard, Marshall would be hooked. Butterworth also realized that, as one of forty-six Special Assistants to the President, and in his case only on temporary assignment, the switchboard might not even recognize his name. A quick visit to the little room that housed the White House telephone operators had dealt with that problem.

  He drummed his fingers on the desk and gazed down with satisfaction at the file in front of him. One of the President’s two schedulers had been able to supply him with the information he needed. The file revealed that the Archivist had invited each of the last three Presidents—Bush, Reagan and Carter—to visit the National Archives, but due to “pressing commitments” none of them had been able to find the time.

  Butterworth was well aware that the President received, on average, 1,700 requests every week to attend some function or other. The latest letter from Mr. Marshall, dated January 22, 1993, had evoked the reply that although it was not possible for the President to accept his kind invitation at the present time, Mr. Clinton hoped to have the opportunity to do so at some date in the future—the standard reply that about 1,699 requests in the weekly mailbag were likely to receive.

  But on this occasion, Mr. Marshall’s wish was about to be granted. Butterworth continued to drum his fingers on the desk as he wondered how long it would take Marshall to return his call. Less than two minutes would have been his guess. He allowed his mind to wander back over the events of the past week.

  When Cavalli had first put the idea to him, he had laughed more loudly than any of the six men who had gathered around the table at 75th Street. But after studying the parchment for over an hour and still not being able to identify the mistake, and then later meeting with Lloyd Adams, he began to believe, like the other skeptics, that switching the Declaration might just be possible.

  Over the years, Butterworth had served the Cavalli family well. Meetings had been arranged with politicians at a moment’s notice, words were dropped in the ears of trade officials from someone thought to be well placed in Washington and the odd piece of inside information had been passed on, ensuring that Butterworth’s income was commensurate with his own high opinion of his true worth.

  As he lay awake that night thinking about the proposition, he also came to the conclusion that Cavalli couldn’t take the next step without him, and more important, his role in the deception would probably be obvious within minutes of the theft being discovered, in which case he would end up spending the rest of his life in Leavenworth. Against that possibility he had to weigh the fact that he was fifty-seven years old, had only three years to go before retirement, and had a third wife who was suing him for a divorce he couldn’t afford. Butterworth no longer dreamed of promotion. He was now simply trying to come to terms with the fact that he was probably going to have to spend the rest of his life alone, eking out some sort of existence on a meager government pension.

  Cavalli was also aware of these facts, and the offer of a million dollars—a hundred thousand the day he signed up, a further nine hundred thousand on the day the exchange took place—and a first-class ticket to any country on earth, almost convinced Butterworth that he should go along with Cavalli’s proposition.

  But it was Maria who tilted the balance in Cavalli’s favor.

  At a trade conference in Brazil the previous year, Butterworth had met a local girl who answered most of his questions during the day and the rest of them at night. He’d phoned her the morning after Cavalli’s first approach. Maria seemed pleased to hear from him, a pleasure that became more vocal when she learned that he’d be leaving government service and, having come into “a reasonable inheritance,” was thinking of settling down somewhere abroad.

  The President’s Special Assistant joined the team the following day.

  He had spent most of the hundred thousand dollars by the end of the week, clearing his debts and getting up-to-date with his first two wives’ alimony. With only a few thousand left, there was now nothing to