‘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 he’d written the words Delian League and then sketched out a sort of symbol underneath. Two snakes wrapped around a clenched fist.’

‘Means nothing to me,’ Tom shook his head.

‘Well, it means something to him because he’s clammed up since we showed it to him. Won’t even talk to his attorney. But we found his bank records too and I think that the Delian League is -’

She broke off as Stokes ended his call and shuffled back down towards them.

‘The money’s ready and Metro are playing ball. Looks like we’re all set.’

They turned on to Las Vegas Boulevard, a grinning cowboy on an overhead billboard welcoming them to the home of the seven-day weekend, the streets teeming with nocturnal creatures who, like vampires it seemed, were only now venturing outside to feed.

It was Jennifer’s first time in Las Vegas, and even as they’d circled prior to landing she’d found herself struck by the almost unnatural way that this concrete oasis seemed to have been cut out of the desert’s soft belly, its neon heartbeat pulsing hungrily, its wailing lungs breathing expensively chilled air.

The view from the ground wasn’t much better, the different hotel resorts galloping past in a single garish streak of light, like an overexposed photograph of a merry-go-round. The Pyramids, Arthurian England, New York, Paris, Lake Como, Venice – she had the sudden, disorientating sensation of travelling without moving, of time and space having been folded in on itself so as to meet at this one point in the universe.

The strange thing was that while there was something undeniably intoxicating, perhaps even gorgeous, about the multi-million-dollar light shows, the balletic fountain displays and the smell of sulphur from the half-hourly volcanic eruptions, she had the strong sense that if she were to reach out and try to grasp anything, it would dissolve under her touch. She realised then that this was a city of hyper-reality, of carbon-fibre monuments, plastic trees and contrived experiences. A copy of everywhere and yet nowhere all at once, the desperate striving for authenticity only serving to reveal its essential falsehood. A non place. She hoped they wouldn’t have to stay here long.

‘We’re here,’ Stokes called as the limo turned in under a monumental arch topped by two rearing lions.

Despite its name, the Amalfi seemed to have been inspired by Florentine rather than Neapolitan architecture, although rendered on such a scale as to make the Duomo look like a concession stand. It was the Palazzo Strozzi on steroids, a massive, fortress-like structure made from Indiana limestone and Ohio sandstone, the soaring arched windows covered with portcullis-like iron grilles that only added to its impregnable appearance.

Rather than pull round to the covered main entrance, their car headed to the left and then dipped into an underground car park.

‘The high-rollers’ entrance,’ Stokes explained. ‘Some of these guys don’t want to risk getting jumped between the car and hotel.’

Tom laughed.

‘They’re more likely to be robbed inside than out there.’

The Pantheon, Rome

18th March – 6.58 a.m.

Different day. Different place. And yet it seemed to Allegra that there was something strangely familiar about the way things were playing out – the unexpected, and unwelcome, phone call. The barked summons. The police barricades across the streets. The swelling crowd. The fevered wailing of the sirens. The helicopter wheeling overhead. The TV crews prowling like hyenas around a kill. Her being late.

Even so, there was a subtle difference from the previous evening’s events too. For if yesterday she had seen shock and curiosity on her way to the Area Sacra, today she had sensed outrage from the officers manning the barriers and mounting anger from the swelling crowd.

Returning her ID to her bag, she crossed the Piazza della Minerva and made her way on to the Piazza della Rotunda. Compared to the zoo she had just walked through, the square seemed eerily peaceful to her – the gentle chime of the fountain echoing off the massed walls, the hushed conversations of the officers and the muted fizz of their radios generating a faint hum that sounded like electricity on a power line on a wet day.

There was also a sense of dignified order here, perhaps even respect. For rather than being casually abandoned on the cobbles as appeared to have happened last night, the assembled police and other emergency service vehicles had been neatly parked next to each other along one side of the square.