Chapter 2: Clash at the Auction House

In a cafe in Prague's Old Town, Felix pushed the cheque back across the table. Rain slid down the window, twisting into a dark streak in the dim yellow light. Sophia held one corner of the cheque between her fingers without taking it, tilting her head to look at him.

Sophia raised an eyebrow. "Refusing? That sum would buy you a whole street in Zurich."

Felix shook his head. "I do not want money. You know antique restoration. Look at this half-page of the fragment for me."

Sophia took a magnifying glass from her handbag and bent over the ink, a sharp smile curling her lips. "The restoration is as crude as an apprentice's work. The ink is layered, the frayed edges uncleaned; even a forgery would be done with more care."

Felix tightened his grip on the cup. "Then why did you offer ten million?"

Sophia put the glass away, her fingertips brushing lightly along the edge of the fragment, her eyes flickering. "Because it is a key. The other one is in the underground archive of the Berlin bank. The truth you seek, I seek too."

Felix stared at her. "What you seek may not be the same key."

Sophia tore the cheque in half and pushed it back. "Then keep this half-sheet of paper and try your luck in Berlin. But a warning: Marcus's men have already surrounded this street."

Outside in the rain, three black cars stood at the street corner, engines humming low. Felix slipped from the kitchen passage into the sewer, the damp smell of mould hitting him in the face. He felt his way along the wall past three iron doors, and behind a rusted steel door, the dark hall of an underground black market glowed with harsh white light.

The hall was crowded, and a velvet-masked auctioneer on the stage was displaying an etched print. Felix squeezed into the crowd, his eyes sweeping the bounty boards on the wall, one of which read: Wanted, fifteenth-century parchment fragments, fifty thousand Swiss francs per piece, anonymous trust.

Felix's heart tightened, and just as he was about to look closer, a hoarse voice sounded behind him. "That bounty has hung there for a month. No one has taken it."

He turned to see an old man in a leather cap studying him. The old man lowered his voice. "Goods from Berlin arrive tonight. Marcus means to intercept them."

Felix was about to speak when the curtain of a second-floor box was lifted, and Sophia leaned on the railing, raising her wine glass to him. Her lips silently formed two words: Come up.

Felix crossed the crowd and climbed the side stairs to the box. Sophia closed the door and handed him a yellowed photograph. In it, a young man's back stood at the black-market entrance, beside him the same old man in the leather cap.

Felix clutched the photograph. "This is Hans."

Sophia leaned back in her chair. "An old friend from Zurich. Twenty years ago, he stole this half-page from the Milan family archive and later passed it to your grandfather. Now, behind Marcus stand people from the Vatican. He wants the whole key."

Felix sneered. "So you came to me for an appraisal, to confirm whether what I hold is genuine."

Sophia did not deny it. She merely took a pen from her bag and wrote a string of coordinates on the back of the cheque. "The Berlin bank's underground archive, cabinet three. If you arrive late, Marcus's men will get in first."

Before she finished, the box door was kicked open. Two men in black suits rushed in, and Marcus stood in the doorway, expressionless. "Mr. Felix, we have waited a long time."

Felix thrust the fragment into Sophia's handbag, turned, smashed through the back window, and leaped into the alley behind the black market. Rain struck his face as he ran wildly along the wall, footsteps closing in behind him. At the end of the alley, an old man in a leather cap stopped him and said in a low voice, "Hans sent me to take you to someone who can unravel the fragment."

Felix followed the old man through a hidden door, through the shadows of a wine cellar, into a wine-storage room. The old man removed his cap, revealing a stubbled face: it was Hans himself. Smiling, he poured two glasses of Riesling and pushed one across.

Hans swirled his glass. "The coordinates Sophia gave you are false. The real clue is in the Milan family archive. The goods Marcus is chasing are fakes too."

Felix took the wine but did not drink. "Why are you helping me?"

Hans set down his glass, his gaze darkening. "Because that half-page is one I stole from Milan with my own hands twenty years ago. Now it is time for it to return to its rightful owner."