The Geneva Deception by James Twining

it always?’ she replied, placing the typed pages down next to her.
    ‘Anything I can help with?’
    She paused, her eyes locked with his. Discussing a live investigation with a civilian, let alone a civilian with Tom’s flawed credentials, wasn’t exactly standard procedure. Then again, her case wasn’t exactly standard either, and she had learned to value his opinion. Besides, who would know? Certainly not Stokes, whom she could overhear noisily checking on the money and making sure that Las Vegas Metro weren’t playing their usual jurisdictional games.
    ‘A few weeks ago the Customs boys over in Norfolk got a tip-off about a shipment of car parts out of Hamburg,’ she began in a low voice, leaning in closer. ‘When they opened the container everything looked fine, but something weird showed up on the X-ray.’
    ‘A marzipan layer?’ Tom guessed.
    ‘Exactly. Car parts stacked at the front and round the sides. A smaller crate hidden in the middle filled with furniture.’
    ‘Furniture?’ Tom frowned.
    ‘Eileen Gray. Ten to fifteen million dollars’ worth.’
    Tom whistled, echoing her own surprise when she’d first understood what they were dealing with. Eileen Gray art deco furniture was apparently as rare as it was expensive.
    ‘They boxed it back up and then followed the shipment via a freight-forwarding service to an art dealer in Queens, an Italian who moved here in the seventies. He started squealing the minute they kicked down the door. It turns out he thought they were a hit squad. I don’t think anyone’s ever been so relieved to see a badge.’
    ‘Who did he think had sent them?’
    ‘It turns out that he’s been smuggling pieces for a high-end antiquities trafficking ring for years. The furniture was a little side-deal he’d cooked up for himself. He thought they’d found out.’
    ‘What sort of antiquities?’ Tom asked.
    ‘Statues, vases, plates, jewellery, even entire frescoes. Most of it illegally excavated from Roman and Etruscan tombs. One of their favourite tricks was to cover objects in liquid plastic and then paint them so that they looked like cheap souvenirs. That’s when they called me in.’
    ‘My mother used to be an antiquities dealer,’ Tom sighed. ‘I remember her once describing graverobbing as the world’s second oldest profession.
    ‘You’re talking about tomb robbers?’
    ‘In Italy they call them tombaroli, in Peru huaceros ,’ Tom nodded. ‘Mexico, Cambodia, China, Iraq - The truth is that as long as there are people prepared to buy pieces without asking difficult questions about where they’ve come from, there’ll be others only too happy to dig them up.’ But Italy is ground zero, the Terra Santa of the tombrobbing world. It’s got over forty UNESCO World Heritage Sites and the remains of about five different civilisations.’ A pause. ‘Did your guy ID any of his buyers?’
    She gave a firm shake of her head.
    ‘His job was just to get the stuff through Customs. He never had any idea where it was coming from or going to. But he did give us another name. Someone from within the organisation who had apparently broken cover a few weeks before, looking to bring something across. We passed it on to the Italians and they said they’d check him out.’ She tapped the file next to her in annoyance. ‘The State Department’s been working on them to make sure they keep us in the loop, but so far they’re playing hard to get.’
    ‘Does this outfit have a name?’
    ‘We’re not sure. Have you ever heard of the Delian League?’
    Tom frowned.
    ‘League as in club?’
    ‘When we went through his trash, we found two bags of shredded paper,’ she explained. ‘Most of it was unusable, but the lab were able to piece together one yellow sheet, because the coloured strips stood out from everything else. It was mainly covered in doodles and practice runs of his signature; the sort of thing you do when you’re on the phone to someone. But in one corner