The Heist
Daniel Silva
Gabriel Allon, master art restorer and assassin, returns in a spellbinding new thriller from No.1 bestselling author Daniel Silva. For all fans of Robert Ludlum.
Gabriel Allon art restorer and legendary spy is in Venice when he receives an urgent call from the Italian police. The art dealer Justin Isherwood has stumbled upon a chilling murder scene, and is being held as a suspect.
The dead man is a fallen spy with a secret a trafficker in stolen artwork, sold to a mysterious collector. To save his friend, Gabriel must track down the world’s most iconic missing painting: Caravaggio’s Nativity with St. Francis and St. Lawrence.
Gabriel’s mission takes him on exhilarating hunt from Marseilles and Corsica, to Paris and Geneva, and, finally, to a private bank in Austria, where a dangerous man stands guard over the ill-gotten wealth of one of the world’s most brutal dictators…
The Heist
Daniel Silva
Copyright (#u7d0e8eb7-9bbe-56a1-a425-bf1463536686)
Harper
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Copyright © Daniel Silva 2014
Cover design layout © HarperCollinsPublishers 2014
Cover photographs © Nik Keevil/Arcangel Images (man); Lorenzo Montezemolo/Getty Images (Venice scene); Joe Beynon/Plain Picture (staircase); Shutterstock.com (http://www.shutterstock.com) (sky)
Daniel Silva asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Designed by Leah Carlson-Stanisic
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Ebook Edition © JULY 2014 ISBN: 9780007552276
Version: 2015-01-07
Dedication (#u7d0e8eb7-9bbe-56a1-a425-bf1463536686)
As always, for my wife, Jamie, and
my children, Nicholas and Lily
Most stolen art is gone forever … The lone bit of good news is that the better the painting, the better the odds it will someday be found.
— EDWARD DOLNICK, THE RESCUE ARTIST
He that diggeth a pit shall fall into it; and who so breaketh a hedge, a serpent shall bite him.
— ECCLESIASTES 10:8
Contents
Cover (#ub6b7986a-3c47-5c81-b273-9561e45a126c)
Title Page (#u9c00d703-08b5-528f-a62c-ad6267547563)
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph (#u17f72fb7-5c5e-50ae-8e62-f971a940bfad)
Preface
Part One: Chiaroscuro
Chapter 1: St. James’s, London
Chapter 2: Venice
Chapter 3: Venice
Chapter 4: Venice
Chapter 5: Venice
Chapter 6: Lake Como, Italy
Chapter 7: Lake Como, Italy
Chapter 8: Stockwell, London
Chapter 9: Stockwell, London
Chapter 10: Rue De Miromesnil, Paris
Chapter 11: Jardin Des Tuileries, Paris