“The Magi,” announced the auctioneer, up on his platform, behind the wide wooden podium with Sotheby’s written across it in gold. He was young, tailored, arrow-straight. Prim, thin-lipped, arrogant. A boy whom his colleagues called promising. “Lot ninety-four, a panel of Rhinehart’s Nativity triptych, recently rediscovered in the former East Germany and offered as an anonymous donation to the Children’s Resource Fund.”

It was now thirteen minutes before eight.

Storm scanned the crowd. Still standing amidst the people clustered at the doors, he slowly moved his eyes over the buyers leaning against the white wall to his left. Next he passed his gaze over the audience in their seats, checking off one coiffure after another. Finally he examined the girls at the phone table one by one. No Sophia.

“I’ll take an opening bid of twenty-five thousand pounds.” The auctioneer went into his practiced drone. Nasal, hypnotic, seemingly slurred, deceptively precise, the words flowed from his thin lips. “Opening at twenty-five thousand, twenty-five, I have twenty-five thousand, do I have thirty? Thirty, thirty thousand from the phone. Thirty-five. I have thirty-five thousand.”

It started happening that fast. Storm tried to see where the bids were coming from. He remembered Sophia had said that her gallery might buy the panel. He tried to follow the auctioneer’s eyes, but the auctioneer barely moved his eyes. And yet the guy seemed to see everything, everywhere in the room.

“Forty, I have forty thousand from the phone,” he said.

From the phone. Storm looked to his right just in time to catch the slightest gesture from the table. A noble swan of a young woman in the regulation cardigan was looking up from her handset to raise one eyebrow, one finger.

“Forty-five thousand,” the auctioneer went on. “I have forty-five, forty-five thousand, forty-five, I have fifty …”

The green lights of the electric toteboard winked all down the column. Fifty thousand pounds, seventy-five thousand dollars, one hundred ten thousand deutschmarks, incalcuable yen, eight million something. The price of the Rhinehart panel had doubled in just two minutes. It was eleven now before eight o’clock.

The auctioneer massaged his gavel—a heavy disc of wood—as he hummed right along. Now a barely perceptible jut of his chin made Storm turn his attention to the left-hand wall. Yes: another signal. The flutter of a slender white hand, the glint of a gold bracelet, as the price of the panel went up again. Storm nudged his way through the crowd of people around him. He edged along to the right behind the last row of seats. Trying to get a better look at the standing bidder.

Now he could see her in profile. No, it was not Sophia. Some cuddly blonde, hardly twenty. Pouting with effort, her forehead shining too much in the overhead lights.

Storm was about to turn away from her when he remembered who she was. The girl in Sophia’s gallery, the receptionist.