And then there was her and Danny. At first, it had felt like betrayal. He’d lied to me, lied right to my face. My best friend. Now, that was beginning to fade. I could see he was serious: he really cared about her. But did he really love her? This was Danny: I wasn’t sure he’d ever been in love. And if he was wrong, Erin was going to get her heart broken all over again. I couldn’t let that happen.

Bradan was leading the way, since he was the stealthiest. He suddenly stopped and we all froze where we were, weapons up. But after a moment, he waved us forward and pointed to something leaning up against a wall. I played a flashlight over it and saw a gold frame, then an image of a man. There were more next to it. “Oil paintings?” I muttered.

Gabriel moved up alongside me and gave a half-groan, half-sob. “That’s Portrait of a Young Man!” He looked around at our blank expressions. “By Raphael, you philistines! This has been missing for nearly eighty years! It’d sell for millions. And God, that’s Harlequin Head, by Picasso, everybody thought this was destroyed!” He reached out and touched the frame lovingly. “Do you know how much money we could make, if we just grabbed one of these?”

I drew him gently away. Gabriel was reformed…but not all the way reformed.

Around the next corner, we found dust-covered bottles of wine nestled in boxes of straw. Then, at the bottom of a ramp that led up to ground level, the gleaming curves of cars: a Lamborghini, two Ferraris and a Nissan GTR. Piled next to them were about twenty long, olive-green metal cases. We opened one and found a shoulder-mounted missile launcher. Gabriel cursed. “I know what this place is.”

A footstep echoed from around the next bend. We immediately backed into the shadows, crouching behind the piles of military gear. Seconds later, a woman in a cream suit stalked past us, her heels click-clacking on the stone floor. She was issuing orders to a couple of armed guards at a ferocious pace. “Make sure the Chinese have refreshments and show them into the Great Hall. Then use the library for Mr. Becker and his buyers.”

When the group had passed, Gabriel turned to the rest of us. “That’s Selina Kirk-Hughes! This must be one of her fairs.” He looked wistful. “I sold a Dali and a sapphire necklace at one of these.” He indicated the castle above us. “She organizes these events. Hires a big place, out in the country, brings lots of buyers and sellers together. Stolen art, cars, arms, information…it all gets traded in one place, in one day. You have to be invited and the invitations are little cubes of glass, etched by laser, impossible to tamper with.”