The room was laid out with an elegantly decorated gallery and sitting area at one end complete with Bauhaus and van der Rohe furnishings plundered from Willi Max’s home. At the far end were the working and staging areas for the art: workbenches with basic tools for removing canvases from frames, black lights to check for hidden restorations, alcohol, solvents and other chemicals for testing and cleaning, easels dressed with paintings, rows of tables scattered with statuary, reliquary, and the odd piece of jewelry.

Folding screens could be arranged to conceal the working area when prospective buyers were brought in to view and buy. Thalia had been coerced into overseeing the operation. To make sure she got the highest possible prices, her commissions had been earmarked to pay off her father’s debts. Some of the buyers who came here were respected curators from prominent museums or representatives of wealthy collectors who checked their morals at the door for a chance at fabulous new finds. They’d sip from decades-old bottles of expensive French wine looted from Max’s collection and browse the impromptu showings arranged for them. Checks would be written, greed satisfied, curatorial ambition sated. When Zoe came in the next morning, a few more pieces would be missing.

The whole thing was the stage for a drama she knew was nearing the finale. Zoe was certain that when all the art was gone, they would kill her. But tonight, her enthusiasm for the art had again banished the thoughts of death, at least until she could be alone with her thoughts again.

Zoe and Thalia made straight for a collection of easels and tables in the far corner of the room. Behind them, the door slammed shut as the Hulk made his exit. Moments later came the sounds of the double-keyed bolt being locked from the outside. It was the only door and the only opening into the room.

“I saved these for you,” Zoe said as they arrived in the corner that they had begun to call Forger’s Row. In front of them were a Vermeer, a very large silver tray depicting Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, two almost identical Renoirs, one obviously a copy of the other, a silver reliquary in the shape of an index finger, and a collection of a dozen Corots.

“The rest are marked, sold, and shipped.”

“They’ll ruin some pretty famous art careers if word ever gets out,” Thalia commented.

“They deserve to be ruined,” Zoe said sharply.

Thalia carefully surveyed the fakes.

“So what’s wrong with this?” Thalia pointed to the silver plate.

“It’s a beautiful piece,” Zoe said. “Exquisite, in fact, but it’s not from the early fifth century as it claims.”

“How can you tell?”

“The fig leaves covering their genitals.”

“So?”

“That sort of prudishness wasn’t common until the late Renaissance,” Zoe said. “It was unheard of when this was supposedly made. Sex hadn’t been turned into a dirty process until the Catholic Church really took it through the ringer after the first millennium.”