4:03 P.M.

THE WHITE COLONIAL HOUSE on Maple Avenue was just one of several homes owned by Shamus Hennicot, who, for the past thirty years, had summered with his family at their home on Martha’s Vineyard. The house had traditionally remained vacant during July and August but for Julia Quinn, who would stop by upon request to attend to any matters concerning Hennicot’s art collection and charitable contributions.

Unofficially known as Washington House, Hennicot’s home had been built at the beginning of the twentieth century, long after George Washington could ever have slept there. While it was considered a historic landmark of the town, a home from the hamlet’s infancy, in actuality, it retained only two exterior walls from its original design.

At the time of its construction in 1901, at just over ten thousand square feet, it was the largest house in all of the county. What was once the centerpiece of the quaint town of Byram Hills had, like the town surrounding it, become lost in a myriad of development over the last century. But unlike many of the neighboring homes and buildings that had been torn down for the sake of progress, Washington House had adapted with the times. With the advent of cars, garages were added. It had been the first home in town with hot and cold running water. The sixties brought air-conditioning and insulated, double-paned windows. The interior was in a constant flux, walls built, removed, expanded; rooms added, subtracted, combined; modern kitchens designed, starting with 1930s dishwashers and moving on to present-day Sub-Zero refrigerators and Viking stoves.

Wireless broadband, satellite television, energy-efficient heating, and multiroom entertainment systems were installed, all of which saw little use by the elderly Shamus Hennicot and his family.

But its greatest modification, one not known by the town planning board, or by the utility companies, or by any local contractor, was the elaborate renovation of the lower level, fondly referred to by the family as Dante’s Vault-reinforced concrete walls, a half-inch steel ceiling and floor, all covered in a dark walnut sheathing of coffered ceilings, wainscoting, and ornamental trim. It was an elegant vault of enormous proportions, giving an aesthetically pleasing English Manor feel to a fortress that was thought to be impenetrable.

The securing of the basement was the brainchild of Shamus Hennicot. While he was considered the most benevolent and charitable of a long line of misers, making frequent anonymous gifts and loans from his father’s art collection, it was he who had thought there were some things too tempting to modern man, things that needed to be hidden away for reasons that only he could explain.

Nick parked his Audi at the back of the house, grabbed his flashlight off the seat, and used Julia’s keys and pass card to open the heavy steel fire door in the back. Once in the small vestibule, he used the magna-card to gain access to the magnetically sealed inner door. All the lights were out, the batteries on the emergency lights having died out hours ago, while the basics of the security system remained operational with a twenty-four-battery backup continuing to operate the pass system and locks.

Nick made the once-over of the first floor, the afternoon light more than sufficient to see by. It had all the trappings of a modern home: living room, dining room, kitchen, family room while in a separate wing was a library, billiard room, and music room.

Nick bypassed the upper level and, using the encrypted pass card, opened a large, heavy cellar door, its whitewashed wood veneer covering a three-inch steel core, that led to a dark set of stairs. Nick flipped on his flashlight, surprised to see the expensive green fleur-de-lis wallpaper and thickly carpeted stairs. Nick headed down the fifteen steps, arriving at another door. But this one was different, made of brushed steel and lacking doorknobs and hinges. He pulled out the oddly shaped key from Julia’s purse. She had told him of the eight-sided key and explained the security system earlier-or later, depending on which time line he was riding on.

Octagonal in shape, the key could be inserted eight different ways, with only one providing access. Each face was labeled with a letter that corresponded to a rotating specific date of the year. If the key was inserted the wrong way twice you would be locked out for twenty-four hours. But even worse, the door behind you would seal shut, trapping you until someone arrived. The entire basement was truly worthy of being called a safe.

Nick punched in Julia’s Social Security number on the keypad below the card reader, swiped the magna-card three times, and inserted the key with the D side up as Julia had mentioned. Finally, with a turn of the key, the door silently swung open.

Nick was greeted by a table-case display in the center of a large museum-like lobby, the beam of his flashlight refracting off its clear surface, its glass top conspicuously violated by a large perfect circle cut out of its center. The case, no doubt once the repository for some of the antique weapons Julia had described to him, was empty.

What struck him as odd was the picture of water lilies on the near wall. There was no question whose hand had rendered it. With its visible brush strokes and blurred images of flowers upon the water, the piece had a strong impressionist flavor. And while its beauty was beyond compare, it stood out like an albatross as it stared down upon the broken glass. For while the antique weapons snatched from this level were of staggering value, they no way near approached the value of one of Claude Monet’s finest pieces, a work whose sister had recently sold for $80 million.

Going through the lower level, he found conference rooms, art restoration labs, humidity-controlled storage spaces filled with hundreds of crates with addresses to and from the world’s finest museums: the Smithsonian, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Louvre, the Vatican. Crates of all shapes and sizes containing who knew what.

Shamus’s elegantly appointed private office lacked the character and feeling of frequent use, as evidenced by the absence of a single picture or memento.

Nick stood at the desk and noted an odd six-inch-square box, a red half-moon dome on top. He’d seen similar ones on the wall by the Monet and in the hallway approaching the office and had thought them to be security-related, but he now realized they had been placed by the thieves and were the devices that had disabled the cameras.

Looking to gain some understanding of Shamus, Nick shined his light about the room, at the desktop, the wall shelves filled with encyclopedias, books on philosophy and religion, Dante’s Divine Comedy, treatises on world hunger and poverty.

He turned and opened the drawers of the credenza and found an array of plaques and honoraria, medals and testimonials. But unlike the trophies Nick kept hidden away in his library, these were not for sports, but were of actual significance for deeds whose merit far outweighed hockey championships and swim races. The simple plaques were for actions whose value could not be assessed. UNICEF, the Wildlife Trust, Habitat for Humanity, Doctors Without Borders, and Environment Rescue had all seen fit to bestow their highest honors on Hennicot.

Without ever meeting the man, Nick gained more insight into his character with this one glance. This was a man embarrassed by his charity, who chose to hide away the recognition bestowed upon him.

Nick turned the flashlight on the windowless room and was about to exit when a slight crack in the wall was illuminated. He ran his hands down the darkly stained walnut and found the seam of the panel, something that shouldn’t have been accepted in this finely crafted space. Nick laid his hand upon the wall and with a gentle push, it swung inward on whisper hinges. The narrow door, without handles or knobs, revealed a small room, eight feet square. There were no finishes here, no effort to mask the concrete construction. Three simple lights, which, like all the other lights, lacked power, hung from the ceiling. Another red-domed box was affixed to the wall. The two objects in the center of the room were as cold and plain as the room itself. Built in 1948, the two Harris safes had centered flywheels and brass bar handles. They were two blocks of steel four feet high and square looking to weigh over a thousand pounds each, but the weight wasn’t the only deterrent to removing them, as they were bolted to the floor, probably sunk into the granite foundation. They were identical in appearance but for one distinction: The door of the one on the right hung conspicuously open. Its three-foot interior was covered in black felt so as not to damage whatever had once resided within. The safe lay empty, cleaned out, as the saying goes.