Honor Among Thieves

“You’ve done well,” came back the eventual reply. “But are you running on schedule?”

Cavalli looked out of the window. The exit sign for Route 395 South flashed past. “I’d say we’re about a couple of minutes from the airport. As long as we make our allocated time slot, I still hope to be with you around one o’clock.”

“Good, then I’ll have Nick join us so that the contract can be picked up and sent on to our client. We’ll expect you around one.”

Cavalli replaced the phone and was amused to find Angelo was dressed only in a vest and underpants. He smiled and was about to comment when the phone rang. Cavalli picked it up.

“Yes,” he said.

“It’s Andy. I thought you’d like to know it’s back on display to the general public and the lines are as long as ever. By the way, an Arab stood around in the crowd the whole time you were in the building, and then joined the line to see the Declaration.”

“Well done, Andy. Get yourself back to New York. You can fill me in on the details tomorrow.”

Cavalli put the phone down and considered Andy’s new piece of information as Angelo was completing a Windsor knot on a tie no lieutenant would have been seen dead in. He still didn’t have his trousers on.

The smoked glass between the driver and the passengers slid down.

“We’re just coming up to the terminal, sir. No one has followed us at any point.”

“Good,” said Cavalli as Angelo hurriedly pulled on his trousers. “Once you’ve changed your license plates, drive back to New York.”

The driver nodded as the limousine came to a halt outside Signature Flight Support.

Cavalli grabbed the plastic tube, jumped out of the car, ran through the terminal and out onto the tarmac. His eyes searched for the white Learjet. When he spotted it, a door opened and the steps were lowered to the ground. Cavalli ran towards them as Angelo followed him, trying to pull on his jacket in the high wind.

The Captain was waiting for them on the top step. “You’ve just made it in time for us to keep our slot,” he told them. Cavalli smiled, and once they had both clicked on their seatbelts, the Captain pressed a button to allow the steps to swing back into place.

The plane lifted off seventeen minutes later, banking over the Kennedy Center, but not before the steward had served them each a glass of champagne. Cavalli rejected the offer of a second glass as he concentrated on what still needed to be done before he could consider his role in the operation completed. His thoughts turned once again to Al Obaydi, and he began to wonder if he’d underestimated him.

When the Learjet landed at La Guardia fifty-seven minutes later, Cavalli’s driver was waiting by his car, ready to whisk them into the city.

As the driver continually switched lanes and changed direction on the highway that would eventually take them west over the Triborough Bridge, Cavalli checked his watch. They were now lost in a sea of traffic heading into Manhattan, only eighty-seven minutes after leaving Calder Marshall outside the delivery entrance of the National Archives. Roughly the time it would take a Wall Street banker to have lunch, Cavalli thought.

Cavalli was dropped outside his father’s 75th Street brownstone just before one, leaving Angelo to go on to the Wall Street office and monitor the checking-in calls as each member of the team filed his report.

The butler held open the front door of number 23 as Tony stepped out of the car.

“Can I take that for you, sir?” he asked, eyeing the plastic tube.

“No, thank you, Martin,” said Tony. “I’ll hold on to it for the moment. Where’s my father?”

“He’s in the boardroom with Mr. Vicente, who arrived a few minutes ago.”

Tony jogged down the staircase that led to the basement and continued across the corridor. He strode into the boardroom to find his father sitting at the head of the table, deep in conversation with Nick Vicente. The chairman stood up to greet his son, and Tony passed him the plastic tube.

“Hail, conquering hero,” were his father’s first words. “If you’d pulled off the same trick for George III, he would have made you a knight. ‘Arise, Sir Antonio.’ But as it is, you’ll have to be satisfied with a hundred million dollars’ compensation. Is it permissible for an old man to see the original before Nick whisks it away?”

Cavalli laughed and removed the cap from the top of the cylinder before slowly extracting the parchment and placing it gently on the boardroom table. He then unrolled two hundred years of history. The three men stared down at the Declaration of Independence and quickly checked the spelling of “British.”

“Magnificent,” was all Tony’s father said as he began licking his lips.

“Interesting how the names on the bottom were left with so little space for their signatures,” observed Nick Vicente after he had studied the document for several minutes.

“If they’d all signed their names the same size as John Hancock, we would have needed a Declaration of twice the length,” added the chairman as the phone on the boardroom table started to ring.

The chairman flicked a button on his intercom. “Yes, Martin?”

“There’s a Mr. Al Obaydi on the private line, says he would like to have a word with Mr. Tony.”