In the stillness of the room, only the cracking and popping of the fire made a sound. She wasn’t expecting Charlie to tell her it was okay. She had no hopes of comfort. Only truth.
“I got conned,” Kat admitted. “And for a long time I couldn’t see why. Why take the risk of angering Uncle Eddie and my dad and a whole bunch of people who are really good at revenge? Why use me when there are a half dozen crews who are just as good?”
“I don’t know her,” he said again.
“Yes you do, Charlie,” Kat told him. “Because the only way to pass the Cleopatra off as the Antony is if no one knows the Cleopatra is gone. The only way to run the con she’s running is if you have a fake Cleopatra. And the only person who can fake the Cleopatra is you.”
“I don’t know her, Katarina.”
“Yes.” Kat reached into her pocket and found the second photo—the one with ball gowns and tuxedos, really big hairdos, and an emerald at the center of the fair. “You do.”
Charlie’s hands didn’t shake when he reached for it. He stood by the mantel for a long time, staring down. “She got old,” he said softly, then in a flash, the picture was in the fire, dissolving in the flames. “But I guess she’s not the only one.”
Not for the first time, Kat wondered what had happened to Charlie, what made him stay at the top of that mountain, trapped inside the snow and the wind, hidden from his family and his world. Kat let herself wonder if Uncle Eddie was right—if she was still running—and maybe bound for a mountain of her own someday.
“What happened in ’67, Uncle Charlie?”
“Jobs go bad, Kat. You know that.” He tried to move away, but Kat grabbed his hand, held on for dear life.
“Bad enough to scare Uncle Eddie? To drive the two of you apart?” She gripped his fingers, stared into his eyes. “What happened in ’67?”
Charlie tried to pull away. “Ask your uncle.”
“I am,” she countered. “Whoever Maggie is, she used the name Romani. She used me. And you. She used us,” Kat said, pleading, but Charlie only laughed.
His eyes were dark, joyless, when he whispered, “It’s not the first time.”
Kat watched her uncle ease into the chair by the fire and take a deep breath. He seemed years older when he said, “In 1959, two brothers left Romania and struck out on their own. They made their way across Eastern Europe and the Baltics—London for a time. And along the way, they met a girl.…”
Kat took her place on a footstool, felt the heat of the fire burning through the back of her legs, thawing her from the inside out. It was almost like being in Uncle Eddie’s kitchen as she sat there, listening, learning, trying to understand more about their world.
“She changed us, Katarina. You wouldn’t have recognized Eddie—or me,” Charlie added with a laugh. “We were…drunk…on her. She was just the kind of woman it was hard not to love. Smart. Fearless. I never told anybody how I felt, but Eddie swore he was going to marry her. He even bought the ring. All he was waiting for was one big score to prove himself to her. The big score.”
“Like the Cleopatra Emerald,” Hale said.
Charlie nodded. “Exactly. The whole world was infatuated with that stone. Everyone said it was cursed, sure—but truth be told, that just made us want it more. All the best crews had tried for it—and failed. But the three of us…we didn’t listen.
We just watched and planned. And waited.”
“Until the World’s Fair?” Hale guessed. Charlie nodded.
“It had never been shown in public before, so I went to work on the fake. Eddie played inside. And she…” He trailed off. “Well, she played everyone.”
“What happened?” Kat said.
“Eddie planned it so that I could make the switch and get the real stone out, but she said I should give it to her instead—that she’d take the stone to Eddie and tell him…tell him that she and I were in love. She said we’d let him keep the Cleopatra to soften the blow. And then she and I would be free to be together.” Charlie looked down at the fire. “You were right, Katarina. She is good.”
“So you changed the plan,” Kat said, finally starting to understand. “Is that where the job went bad?”
“Honestly?” Charlie raised an eyebrow. “No. She’d thought of everything. It would have worked, but a guard messed up…a fluke thing. He left a window open and a bird flew in, set off all the sensors—brought an army down on us. Eddie and I barely made it out alive. That’s when we learned she’d planned on taking the stone and running away from us both. Brothers. She was willing to come between brothers.” Charlie sighed. “And we let her. So don’t feel bad, Katarina. As far as marks go, you are in excellent company.”
Hale was moving forward, leaning close. “In three days she’s going to sell the Cleopatra—pass it off as the Antony.”
“Of course she is.” Charlie reached out to stoke the fire, sparks and embers flaring. “That was the original plan.”
“But we can get it back,” Kat heard herself confiding.
“It won’t work.” Charlie shook his head in the manner of someone who has lived and learned and is content never to make the same mistakes again.