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encompassed the master suite. Caproni lived alone, except for three servants who commuted daily from Pont-Saint-Martin. Tonight, Caproni was entertaining, the cream-colored Mercedes parked out front probably still warm from a drive made earlier from Venice. His guest was one of many expensive working women. They would sometimes come for the night or the weekend, paid for their trouble in euros by a man who could afford the price of pleasure. Tonight’s excursion had been timed to coincide with her visit, and he hoped she would be enough of a distraction to cover a quick in and out.
    Pebbles crunched with each step as he crossed the drive and rounded the château’s northeast corner. An elegant garden led back to a stone veranda, Italian wrought iron separating tables and chairs from grass. A set of French doors opened into the house, both knobs locked. He straightened his right arm and twisted. A stiletto slipped off its O-ring and slithered down his forearm, the jade handle nestling firmly in his gloved palm. The leather sheath was his own invention, specially designed for a dependable release.
    He plunged the blade into the wooden jamb. One twist, and the bolt surrendered. He resecured the stiletto in his sleeve.
    Stepping into a barrel-vaulted salon, he gently closed the glasspaneled door. He liked the surrounding decor of neoclassicism. Two Etruscan bronzes adorned the far wall under a painting,View of Pompeii, one he knew to be a collector’s item. A pair of eighteenth-centurybibliothèques hugged two Corinthian columns, the shelves brimming with antique volumes. From his last visit he remembered the fine copy of Guicciardini’sStoria d’Italia and the thirty volumes of Teatro Francese. Both were priceless.
    He threaded the darkened furniture, passed between the columns, then stopped in the foyer and listened up the stairs. Not a sound. He tiptoed across a wheel-patterned marble floor, careful not to scrape his rubber soles. Neapolitan paintings adorned the faux-marble panels. Chestnut beams supported the darkened ceiling two stories above.
    He stepped into the parlor.
    The object of his quest lay innocently on an ebony table. A match case. Fabergé. Silver and gold with an enameled translucent strawberry red over a guilloche ground. The gold collar was chased with leaf tips, the thumbpiece cabochon sapphire. It was marked in Cyrillic initials,N .R . 1901. Nicholas Romanov. Nicholas II. The last Tsar of Russia.
    He yanked a felt bag from his back pocket and reached for the case.
    The room was suddenly flooded with light, shafts of incandescent rays from an overhead chandelier burning his eyes. He squinted and turned. Pietro Caproni stood in the archway leading to the foyer, a gun in his right hand.
    “Buona sera,Signor Knoll. I wondered when you would return.”
    He struggled to adjust his vision and answered in Italian, “I didn’t realize you would be expecting my visit.”
    Caproni stepped into the parlor. The Italian was a short, heavy-chested man in his fifties with unnaturally black hair. He wore a navy blue terry-cloth robe tied at the waist. His legs and feet were bare. “Your cover story from the last visit didn’t check out. Christian Knoll, art historian and academician. Really, now. An easy matter to verify.”
    His vision settled as his eyes adjusted to the light. He reached for the match case. Caproni’s gun jutted forward. He pulled back and raised his arms in mock surrender. “I merely wish to touch the case.”
    “Go ahead. Slowly.”
    He lifted the treasure. “The Russian government has been looking for this since the war. It belonged to Nicholas himself. Stolen from Peterhof outside Leningrad sometime in 1944, a soldier pocketing a souvenir from his time in Russia. But what a souvenir. One of a kind. Worth now on the open market about forty thousand U.S. dollars. That’s if someone were foolish enough to sell. ‘Beautiful loot’ is the term, I believe, the Russians use to describe