Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz
Engadine, SwitzerlandThe men were watching again.
There were two of them, up by the monastery on the hill overlooking the athletic field. They stayed in the shadows of the gallery, popping out to take a photograph, then ducking back again. The boy could tell they thought he hadn’t spotted them.
But he had.
He always did.
“Look out!” someone shouted. “Robby! Tackle him!”
Robby returned his attention to the scrimmage in time to see the scrum half—it was Karl Marshal, the best player on the team—lower his shoulder and plow into him. Robby’s feet left the ground and he landed flat on his back, his wind knocked out of him, sure he’d never take a breath again. The other players ran past, laughing.
“Might as well make a mud castle while you’re down there.”
“Only one you’ll ever have.”
He heard a whistle. Karl Marshal had scored a try.
Robby climbed to his feet and wiped the dirt from his face. When he’d regained his breath, he set off down the field, limping at first, then shaking it off and running as fast as he could. He was small for a sixth former and thin, with pale skin, a mop of curly blond hair, and questioning blue eyes. His size didn’t bother him. His father was tall. One day he’d grow. He might not be as big as the others yet, or as strong, but he was no quitter. One of his teachers had remarked upon his determination and called him “Das Krokodil.” For a few days, the nickname stuck. He liked being called “Krok.” A week later, everyone had forgotten it.
He caught up to the game in time to run into a ruck. He got knocked down two more times, but he caught a pass and almost tackled Karl Marshal. Robby was practical. He knew it would be foolish to expect anything more. Finally, the whistle blew. The scrimmage ended.
Walking back to the athletic center, he glanced at the monastery. It was nearly dusk, the gallery cloaked in shadow. The men were nowhere to be seen. Robby wasn’t concerned one way or the other. People had been watching him his entire life. The best thing to do was simply to ignore them.
It wasn’t until later that night as he got ready for bed that he thought about the two men again. He realized that this was the fourth time in the past week or so that he’d seen them. One had a large nose that looked like an eagle’s beak and black hair. The other was bald and never took his hands out of his pockets. Robby had exceptional vision. It ran in the family. It bothered him that they stayed so far away. Farther than the distance prescribed by the school for journalists and photographers. This was odd, Robby concluded, in his methodical manner. “Rum,” Mr. Bradshaw-Mack, his English teacher, would say. “Very rum, indeed.”
Robby went to the window and peered outside. Down the hill, the lights from the village of Zuoz glowed warmly, a spot illuminating the tall, rectangular spire of the Protestant church. A crescent moon sat low in the sky and he could just make out the silhouette of the jagged peaks all around. The Piz Blaisun, the Cresta Mora, and, further west, near St. Moritz, the Corvatsch.
He closed the window, secured the lock, then crawled into bed. His roommate, Alain, was reading an Astérix comic book his father had sent him from Paris. Robby wished he had a father to send him comics, or, preferably, a book about rugby, which was his favorite sport. It was hard to be too sad, though, because he’d never really known his dad, and besides, he had a wonderful mother.
Robby picked up his phone and considered calling her. The more he thought about the watchers, the more they bothered him. He refused to use the word “scared,” because people like Robby were not allowed to be scared. It was a question of setting the right example. He heard Alain snore and decided against calling. Good manners were part of that example, too.
Robby turned out the light and laid his head on the pillow. There was math first period tomorrow, then history, and rugby again after school. As he drifted off to sleep, his eyes opened for a second, even less, and he thought he saw a shadow in the window. The watchers. Maybe it was just a dream or a figment of his imagination. Either way, the image didn’t register. He turned over and fell into a deep slumber.
It had been a long day and a twelve-year-old boy got very tired.
*****
Les Ambassadeurs
London, England
Simon Riske did not like losing money.
Seated at the center of a card table in the high rollers’ room at Les Ambassadeurs, London’s most exclusive gaming establishment, he peeked at his cards, then lifted his eyes to the dwindling stacks of chips before him. He wondered how much longer his bad luck could continue.
“Well,” said Lucy Brown, seated at his shoulder so she could view his cards. “What do we do?”
“What do you think?”
“Both cards are different.”
“So they are.”
“Neither match the cards in front of the dealer.”
“And so?”
Lucy screwed up her face and Simon allowed her a moment to figure things out.
It wasn’t normal for players to discuss their hands, especially when large sums of money were at stake. But Lucy was young and blond and pretty, and upon sitting down, Simon had explained to all present that he would be teaching her a thing or two about poker. The other players—all male—had taken a peek (some discreet, some not so) at Lucy’s black dress, her figure, and her blue eyes. If anyone had voiced an objection, Simon hadn’t heard it.
“Fold?” said Lucy.
“Fold,” he said, sliding his cards to the center of the table.
“Darn,” said Lucy.
Simon had a more colorful word in mind. Instead, he offered his best “not to worry” smile and signaled for a drink: a Fanta for Lucy and a grapefruit and soda for himself. Alcohol and gambling were as combustible as matches and gasoline.
It was an ordinary evening at Les A (as the club was known to habitués). Downstairs, a lively crowd milled about the gaming tables, the atmosphere one of a posh Georgian country house. The play was spread evenly among roulette, blackjack, and baccarat. Slot machines were the province of the lower classes and strictly verboten.
But the real action took place in the private rooms on the second floor.
It had been Simon’s plan to observe from afar while explaining the rules of the game to Lucy. The idea vanished approximately five seconds after he witnessed a player win a five-thousand-pound pot on a weak hand. Being a modest and unassuming sort, Simon had reasoned that he could do better. That was two hours and twenty thousand pounds ago.
“Another hand,” said Lucy, cheerily. “Our luck’s bound to change.”
Simon looked at her expectant gaze, her adventurous posture. Lucy was twenty-three and gifted with what some might, in the polite confines of Les Ambassadeurs, call a curvy figure. Like most women her age, she liked showing off her assets. Simon’s relationship with her was purely platonic, somewhere between father and friend. It was nebulous territory. In fact, he was her employer. Lucy worked as an apprentice in his automotive repair shop, where she was learning to restore vintage Italian sports cars, primarily Ferraris, with a Lamborghini thrown in here and there. In a sense, she was his own restoration project. But that was another story.
As for himself, Simon was dressed in a black suit and white open-collar shirt, both fresh from the cleaner. His nails were neatly trimmed and he’d spent ten minutes scrubbing them with steel wool to clean the grease from beneath them. He collected cuff links, and tonight, for luck, he’d chosen his favorites, a pair he’d been given by MI5, the British security service, as a thank-you for a job undertaken on its behalf a year earlier. His eye fell on his puny stack of chips and he scowled. So much for talismans. His hair was in the sleekest order, cut short so in need of a brush, never a comb, which was the polite way to say that it was receding faster than the Greenland ice shelf. Unlike the man a few places to his left—a wan unsavory sort who’d taken too much of Simon’s money—he’d shaved and treated himself to a splash of Acqua di Parma. His bespoke lace-ups were polished, and only his beryl-green eyes shone brighter.
But all his finery couldn’t disguise his true nature. Simon had spent too much time on the wrong side of the tracks to ever be a real gentleman. Some things you could never wash from beneath your nails.
“Well?” Lucy demanded, her lip thrust out petulantly.
“That’s plenty for tonight,” said Simon. “We’ve done enough damage.”
“But you still have some chips.”
“The idea is to leave with a few in your pocket,” he said. “More rather than less.”
Lucy appeared crestfallen.
“There’s just enough to buy us a fancy dinner,” he continued. “How about the Ivy?”
“That’s for old people.”
“It’s the princes’ favorite place.”
“Exactly.”
Simon considered this, realizing that “old” for Lucy meant anyone over twenty-five. “How about fish-and-chips at the pub round the corner?”
“I’m not hungry.” Lucy crossed her arms and pouted. It was an inviting pout and Simon felt sorry for her boyfriend.
“One last hand,” he said. “But I mean it.”
Lucy brightened, clutching his arm and scooting closer. “We’re going to win. I know it!” She kissed his cheek and Simon said that was close enough and scooted her back a few inches.
It was then that the tenor of the evening took a dramatic turn.
Simon ponied up his chips. The cards were dealt. Simon’s were as miserable as usual. The players called and raised and called again. The dealer tossed out the last cards.
And that was when Simon saw it again. A flick of the wrist. A rustle of the sleeve. A flash of white. The player two seats to his left—the unkempt man who’d been winning the entire evening—was cheating. Twice now—Simon had caught it. The man was good, a professional, or “sharp,” in the parlance, but Simon knew a thing or two about cards himself, and about unfair advantages.
“What is it?” Lucy nudged him, sensing something amiss.
“Nothing.”
Lucy held his gaze and he gave her the subtlest of looks—eyes harder, jaw steeled—and she looked away, knowing better than to ask any questions. If he ever had a daughter, he hoped she’d turn out something like Lucy, though he’d never in his life allow her to go out dressed as she was.
Simon signaled to the server. “Jack Daniel’s,” he said. “Straightaway.”
Lucy tugged at his sleeve. “You said only a fool drinks while gambling.”
“Did I?”
Lucy nodded urgently.
“That was before we lost your annual salary.”
“Maybe we should go.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Not when we’re just starting to have fun.” He turned to the dealer. “Five thousand pounds…no, make it ten.”
The dealer shot a discreet glance at Ronnie, the casino boss, who stood at the door. Ronnie was a friend. He and Simon played on the same rugby team on Saturdays during the fall. He was forty, tall, and dapper in a white dinner jacket, red carnation in his lapel. A black Clark Gable with the same gambler’s mustache and rakish air. Ronnie nodded, shooting Simon a cautionary look, then left the room.
Ten stacks of chips came Simon’s way.
The server arrived with his cocktail. Simon stole it off the tray and downed it. “Another,” he said, returning the empty to the tray, flipping the server a fifty-pound chip for good measure. “And one for my friend, too.”
Lucy took a judicious step away from Simon. She’d worked with him for three years. She knew his moods. She knew when a bomb was about to go off.
Simon noted the cheat shift in his chair, the corners of his mouth lift in anticipatory delight.
The dealer called for bets. Simon ponied up five hundred pounds, the minimum.
There were two ways this could go. He could wait and take matters into his own hands, or he could act now, expose the cheat, and let Ronnie sort things out.
Simon preferred the first choice. A confrontation in the alley followed by a full and frank exchange of views. He would take back his money and the cheat would pick himself up off the ground and get to the hospital to look after his missing teeth and broken bones.
But, of course, there was Lucy to think of.
The game progressed. For once, Simon had a decent hand. He called and raised and called and raised.
The dealer turned over the last card, known as “the river.” An eight of spades.
Simon was holding two kings and an eight of hearts. The eight of spades gave him two pair. His best hand all evening.
The room went quiet, the only noise the clack clack clack of the roulette ball skipping across the wheel in the outer room.
The player next to Simon tossed in his cards. “I’m out.”
“Raise two thousand pounds,” said Simon.
The man next to him tossed in his cards. “Out.”
“Call,” said the cheat, picking up four blue chips and tossing them into the pot.
It was the moment of truth.
“Two pair,” announced Simon. “Kings and eights.”
Simon’s eyes went to the cheat, who coolly deflected the gaze. To his credit, the man didn’t flinch. One hand went to his kingdom of chips, fingers racing between spires, touching each in turn. It was a distraction, a motion to lure the eye. He lifted the cards off the table. Fanned them deftly. And in the downward motion he made the switch. A flick of the wrist. A rustling of the cuff. A flash of white, though this time his motion was so expert that even Simon, eyes trained on him, did not catch it.
“Full house,” the cheat announced, spreading his cards on the table.
Shouts went up. Exhortations of amazement and disbelief.
“Damn,” said the player to Simon’s right. The other players simply shook their heads.
And as the cheat extended his hands for the pot, Simon lashed out and grabbed one wrist, closing his fingers around it in a vice. Their eyes met. Instead of protesting, of calling out Simon, the man stood, wrenching his hand free, the violent motion knocking over his chair. He stumbled backward, head turned, plotting a way out.
Simon was up, too, and a half step behind. A dozen people ringed the table. All remained glued to the spot, their expressions as immobile as their feet. The cheat shoved the man nearest him hard enough to topple him into the woman behind him. The two fell unceremoniously to the floor. He dashed through the gap between them and out the door, heading toward the staircase that descended to the main floor. Simon gave chase, leaping over the two, pausing at the top of the stairs before vaulting the balustrade and landing in the center of the blackjack table eight feet below. He jumped to the floor, cutting off the cheat’s path. Seeing his escape ruined, the man slowed. He started left, then went right, then stopped altogether.
Simon crashed into him before the man could make it a step. Simon led with his shoulder, aiming for the sternum but striking the man’s collarbone, feeling it crack as they hit the floor. The man grunted, his face inches from Simon’s, and Simon saw that he had bad teeth and worse dental work, and his breath reeked of the brandy Alexanders he’d been drinking all night.
But if Simon expected him to give up, he was mistaken. A knee to the groin signaled his resistance, followed by a head butt glancing off the bridge of Simon’s nose. Stunned, breathless, and momentarily paralyzed, Simon was unable to stop the man from climbing to his feet. In desperation, Simon threw out a hand and grasped hold of his ankle. Unfortunately, it was the wrong ankle and belonged to a horrified Asian woman. The woman screamed and her cry roused Simon. He was on his feet as the cheat navigated his way through the crowd of gamblers.
By now security had mobilized in response to the incident. Two men in maroon jackets blocked the only path out of the casino. The cheat spun and pointed at Simon. “It’s him,” he said in accented English whose origin Simon would only place later.
The guards hesitated long enough for the cheat to lash out with a cosh, striking the first man squarely on the jaw, dropping him, before backhanding the second, the cosh caroming off his temple. His route to the entrance clear, the cheat bolted. He grabbed at the door handle, pulling it toward him, unaware that Simon was close behind. In England, exit doors pivot outward. The door didn’t budge. At that moment, Simon had him. He grabbed the collar of his jacket and yanked the man backward. Ready for a blow, he ducked as the cosh cut a path above his head, noting that a nail extended from the business end of the leather cudgel. Simon thrust an open palm upward, landing it on the man’s jaw, snapping his head backward. His other hand latched on to the man’s wrist. He dropped to a knee, wrenching the wrist and the arm attached to it, with all his might. There was a pop—loud as a champagne cork—as the shoulder dislocated. The man cried out. The cosh dropped into Simon’s hand and he spun it so the nail was facing outward. It was a killing weapon.
“No!” a man shouted. “Simon, stop!” It was Ronnie, the casino boss, emerging from his private office across the floor, barreling toward him.
Simon didn’t hear him, or didn’t want to. He wanted to punish the man, to hurt him badly. Turning, he lashed out toward the cheat’s undefended face.
A woman screamed. It was Lucy. He saw her from the corner of his eye.
The nail stopped a millimeter from the man’s eye.
“You got lucky,” said Simon, throwing the man against the wall. “Say thank you to the lady.”
The cheat said nothing. His silence riled Simon all over again and he hit the man in the stomach. “I won’t ask again.”
The man fought for his breath, his eyes cursing Simon. His gaze shifted, focusing on something…or someone.
Simon began to turn as a fist slammed into his kidney. It was a professional punch, knuckles first, delivered with force and accuracy. A second punch followed to the opposite side, harder still.
Simon bent double at the waist, tears fouling his vision. That was that. He was officially out of the game. TKO.
He dropped to one knee, aware of a commotion around him—Ronnie going after the cheat and his secret accomplice—but not much else. He tried not to move, the pain exquisite and relentless. He heard Lucy shout, “Stop him! Don’t let him leave! Come back, you fucking thief!”
They left Les Ambassadeurs an hour later. Simon walked out the front door, pushing it, not pulling, under his own power. His car was brought up and he held the door for Lucy, declining her offer to drive. Once behind the wheel, he made a circuit of Sloane Square and headed east toward Lower Grosvenor Place.
“You’re not taking me home,” said Lucy. “Not after all that.”
Simon kept his eyes on the road. He was in no mood to take orders. His side ached like hell. He’d washed up and used the men’s room. As expected, there was blood in his urine. It wasn’t the first time. If it persisted, he’d see a doctor. His head throbbed and there was a noticeable knot above the bridge of his nose. Hoping to keep it from swelling, he’d pressed an old fifty-p coin against it for a minute, then given up. Que será, será. But it was his pride that hurt worst of all. He’d brought the operations of London’s best gaming house to a halt only to allow the cheats who’d robbed him of twenty thousand pounds to escape. The loss was hypothetical. The cheats hadn’t been able to pocket their ill-gotten gains. Ronnie had returned his original stake. Somehow, the thought did little to console him.
“I’m too excited to sleep,” Lucy went on. “We absolutely must do something. Where shall we go?”
“It’s eleven o’clock,” said Simon. “You’re twenty-three years old. You have work tomorrow. If I hear you set foot outside your door before six a.m. tomorrow, you can find yourself another job.”
Lucy looked at him as if he’d slapped her. “What?”
“You heard me.”
“You have no right,” she exclaimed. “I can do whatever I choose.”
“Feel free.”
Simon continued across town, thankful that traffic was only bad, not miserable. All the way Lucy carped and complained, but he said nothing more until they arrived at her flat. “Here we are. Go upstairs. Get into bed and go to sleep. It’s been enough of a night for both of us.”
Lucy unclasped her safety belt. She motioned as if she was going to start up again, then thought better of it. “Not fair,” she said, then climbed out of the car.
To her credit, she did not slam the door.
Maybe she was finally growing up.
Simon waited until she was inside and had disappeared into the vestibule before slipping the car into first and making a U-turn. His home and business lay in southwest London, a stone’s throw from Wimbledon. It was a thirty-minute drive in the best of conditions. Tonight, it would be double that. But traffic didn’t play into Simon’s thinking. Not a whit.
He was too jacked up to go home. Nothing revved his juices more than a little physical violence, even if he had been on the losing end of it. All measure of good sense had gone out the window the moment he’d given chase to the cheat. At that instant, his world had boiled down to him versus the bad guy, good versus evil, though it was a question of his ego run riot, not anything so grandiose as maintaining the universe’s order. Mess with me and you’re going to pay. It was as simple as that. It was not a motto by which to live any kind of successful life. But at that moment, Simon hadn’t cared about mottoes, or, to tell the truth, anything, except catching the thief and inflicting punishment upon him.
Two hours later, those same wild and ungoverned impulses raced through his blood. If he’d been hard on Lucy, it was because he feared she shared his affinity for mayhem. He couldn’t control himself, but he could control her. He was a hypocrite. So what?
Simon pointed the car north toward Covent and the City. He rolled down the window, enjoying the warm, fetid air, the scent of the River Thames hidden somewhere inside the exhaust and grit of central London. He was navigating to that part of the map where borders lay undefined and lands undiscovered, to the dangerous and beckoning area labeled “Where Dragons Lie.”
Simon Riske headed into the night.
*****
Eight hundred miles to the south, on the rocky shoreline of a postage stamp–size country, in a casino far larger and far more famous than Les Ambassadeurs, a team of twelve professional criminals entered the Casino de Monte-Carlo between the hours of nine and ten p.m. Nine were men and three women, at least to look at.
Every casino in the world deployed facial-recognition software. In cases of suspected cheating, customers’ faces were compared against photographs contained in criminal databases, both national and international. Prior to arrival, the team members had spent hours altering their appearances. They employed the finest in makeup and disguises: hairpieces, facial prostheses, false mustaches and beards, contact lenses, dental implants. A professional makeup artist with twenty years’ experience in the motion picture industry oversaw their transformation. It was not the team’s first visit.
At ten p.m., after the last of the team had entered, each member moved to a predetermined workstation in the high rollers’ rooms on the casino’s second floor, where the game of baccarat was played. Each player began with a bankroll of ten thousand euros. They played quietly and conservatively. They did not drink. They did not seek the attention of the beautiful women drifting in and out of the rooms. They did not on any occasion speak to the dealer. And never ever did they place wild or outlandish wagers. Nothing was remarkable about the players except one thing: they won.
And they won.
And they won.
By two a.m., the last member of the team had departed the premises. Once outside, members dispersed according to plan after discreetly turning over their winnings. Their combined initial stake of one-hundred-twenty-thousand euros had grown to four million.
A little after two, a thirteenth man entered the casino. His name was Ratka. Just Ratka. This was not his real name. He had taken it from a false passport he had used many years ago. In fact, the passport was so poor in quality it had attracted the attention of a border agent in Geneva, Switzerland. At the time, Ratka had just escaped from a prison in Orbe, in the mountains east of the city. During his flight, he had killed a guard and blinded another with his own fingers. He was arrested on the spot and returned to another, more secure facility. He escaped again but took on the name inscribed in that passport. Sometimes it was necessary to remember a mistake in order to prevent repeating it.
Ratka was forty-nine years old. He stood an inch over six feet tall. His hair was black, abundant, and swept off his forehead to reveal a violent widow’s peak. His face was doughy and pale, cleaved in two by a large crooked nose very much like a hawk’s beak. His eyes were narrow and deep set and so brown as to be black. He wore a blazer and an open-collar shirt left open to display a gold cross nestled in his chest hair. He was not an attractive man, but he radiated a dark energy.
Like the other members of the team, Ratka climbed the stairs to the second floor and made his way to the salle de jeux. He had not come to gamble, or at least not to win. One of the team had claimed that a dealer had recognized him and possibly another member. The dealer was a longtime casino employee, but not a friend of Tintin, who was in their pocket. Ratka needed to see the man to decide on a course of action. So close to the end—in spitting distance of more money than he had ever imagined possible—he could not allow anything or anyone to jeopardize their hard work.
Ratka found a seat at the dealer’s table. He ponied up a thousand euros and played a few hands. He won. He lost. He was as helpless to the fates as the others at the table. All the while, he kept his eye on the dealer. Time had given him an unbreakable faith in his ability to know a man’s heart. He needed only a few minutes to ascertain if a man was hard or soft, if he was loyal or traitorous, if he could be turned or if he could not.
The dealer was a black man. His name was Vincent Morehead and he was a native of Saint Croix, the Virgin Islands. All this Tintin had told them. Morehead was single with no family, either in France or at home. Not that any such sentimental considerations entered into Ratka’s decision-making. If you were not a Serb, he had no feelings for you.
After a while, it came time to reshuffle the shoe. The dealer offered it to Ratka. Ratka ran the cutting card along the deck, but his eyes remained on Vincent Morehead. He slid the card into the deck. Morehead pulled the shoe back across the baize tabletop. Their eyes met. In that instant, Ratka knew that Morehead knew, not only about the two men he’d recognized, but possibly more.
Ratka played awhile longer, then left the table, tossing Morehead a twenty-euro chip for his trouble. He ignored the dealer’s “Merci, monsieur.”
Outside, Ratka walked the short distance to the Café de Paris and took a seat in a booth at the rear of the restaurant.
“Well?” asked a colleague.
Ratka stared at the man. “Well,” he said.
*****
The club was called Libertine, if it had a name at all, and it occupied the underground premises of an abandoned abattoir and meat market in King’s Cross. It was a dank, cavernous space dominated by towering brick arches that divided the club into three areas: dance floor, bar, and pitch-black netherworld that all were advised never to set foot in. The music was too loud, driven by a relentless backbeat, and meant to turn even the most docile guest into a frenzied partygoer. Spotlights raked the entire floor like klieg lights policing a concentration camp.
It was a bad place in a bad part of town frequented by bad people. Simon felt completely at home.
“What’ll it be?”
“Brandy Alexander,” said Simon.
“No Jack?” The bartender was tall, raven-haired, and direct in her gaze and her manner. Her name was Carmen. She was Spanish, from Madrid and proud of her Castilian lisp.
“Not tonight.”
She leaned in, dark eyes on his, confident in their desired effect. “Mixing things up, eh?”
He motioned her closer. “Carmen?”
“Yes, Simon?”
“Get me my damned drink.”
Carmen’s face dropped. “Cabrón,” she said.
Leaning an elbow on the bar, Simon turned and surveyed the room. It was a busy night, even for Libertine. The dance floor was packed edge to edge, decidedly more women than men. There wasn’t a suit or a tie to be seen, so he loosened his own and stuffed it in his pocket. Score one for the enemy.
Carmen returned, slamming the drink on the bar as if it were a court summons. “Brandy Alexander for Señor Riske.”
“Salud.” Simon raised the glass and drank half of it in a go. His eyes watered, and after a moment, the throbbing in his forehead went away. He thought back to the poker table and wondered how many times the cheat had slid a card from his sleeve to win a hand—the answer was “Too many”—and how he’d missed it. The more he thought about it, the more he marveled at the cheat’s prowess and his preparation. Not just the practice required, but his foreknowledge of how they ran the game at Les Ambassadeurs. Then there was the matter of his drinking. He had to have quaffed four or five brandy Alexanders just while Simon was at the table.
Simon looked at the frothy concoction set on the bar in front of him. It was too sweet for his taste, but there was no doubting its potency. How the man had maintained his sleight of hand after downing several of these was beyond him.
The DJ was playing Pet Shop Boys and Soft Cell, music from his salad days in Marseille. He finished the drink and ordered another. Effective, indeed.
“’Bout time.”
“Excuse me?” said Simon to the blond woman who’d placed a very pretty hand on his arm.
“That you took off that tie.” She was his age, coiffed hair, with a touch of pink lipstick, plenty of mascara, and a little black dress that might even embarrass Lucy. A diamond the size of a grape adorned her ring finger, and she wore pavé bands above and below it to let you know she played her games in better circles than you. She touched the knot on his forehead and her lips puckered in a measure of sympathy. “Darling, what happened?”
“Work.”
“What do you do?”
“This and that.”
“You’re too smart to be a bouncer, and besides, they don’t wear Zegna suits.”
“You noticed.”
“Not just the suit.”
“I’m flattered.”
“My name is Tania.”
“Hello, Tania.”
She waited for his name and when he didn’t give it, she tried harder. “Buy me a drink?”
Simon waved Carmen over. “The lady will have a—”
“A gin martini. Boodles, please. Ice-cold with three olives.” Carmen responded attentively, and Tania reached out to her as she was leaving. “By the way, what is the gentleman’s name?”
“Riske with an e.”
“Sounds dangerous. Does he have a first name?”
Carmen regarded Simon with a barely concealed scowl. “When he looks like that, does it matter?”
“Know her, do you?” asked Tania.
“In passing.”
Tania ran a loving hand along his arm, her beautifully manicured fingers dancing higher and higher. “I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me what really happened to you?”
Simon put a hand around her waist and drew her close. Her eyes were blue and sparkled nearly as much as her jewelry. But behind the makeup and the jewelry, he saw that she was tired and lonely, and he liked her the more because of it. “Maybe,” he said. “If you can convince me.”
Tania pressed herself against him. “Oh?” she said. “Have any ideas?”
“A few.”
*****
Vincent Morehead changed out of his uniform and walked to the employee entrance at the rear of the casino, making his usual stop in the kitchen.
“Early morning pickup,” he called across the service counter.
Gigi, a young sous-chef from Dakar, arrived carrying a white paper bag. “You have the best fed dog in town,” she said. “There’s filet, lamb, and foie gras, ground up together just like he likes it.”
“Peter Tosh is very grateful.” Peter Tosh was Vincent’s two-year-old black mutt, whose natural dreadlocks made him a dead ringer for the famed reggae artist.
“I’m free Saturday,” said Gigi. “In case he’d like to thank me in person.”
Vincent took the bag. “I’m fairly certain he would.”
“‘Fairly’?” Gigi put her hands on her hips in mock anger.
Vincent smiled. “Saturday. Good night.”
“Sleep well.”
Vincent tucked the bag underneath an arm and left the building. The employee exit opened onto a deserted landing next to the Fairmont parking lot and looked over the famed chicane of the Monaco Grand Prix. Vincent did not own a car. He lived two kilometers up the hill, just over the French border. Normally, he enjoyed the walk. The fresh air was a relief after being cooped up inside for nine hours. He spent the time planning what to make himself for supper. (Employees were forbidden from helping themselves to leftovers.) Tonight, however, his appetite had left him. Darker thoughts held his concern.
He set off up the hill, walking faster than usual. He’d identified two of them for certain. It was their eyes that gave them away. The eyes and the way they handled the shoe. The “shoe” was the rectangular device that shuffled the eight decks of cards and from which hands of baccarat were dealt. One of the men always grabbed it from the top and dragged it toward him with no regard for the tabletop. He had enormous hands, and one—the left—had a nasty scar running across it. The other man used both of his hands on the shoe, his touch as delicate as if he were handling nitroglycerin. His hands were as tapered as a pianist’s.
Vincent had seen both of the men at least three times. Except for their eyes and hands, their appearances couldn’t have differed more. One day blond hair, the next brown. One day glasses, the next none. One day a mustache, the next a beard. Vincent had devoted his entire professional life to the gaming industry. It was not the first time he’d spotted cheats. But these…these were a cut above. They were professional criminals. They frightened him.
At this time of night, the streets were deserted, the only sound the pitter-pat of his leather-soled shoes. He continued past the botanical garden, checking over his shoulder at regular intervals. The more he pondered his position, the more frightened he grew. Naturally, he’d told his shift boss, but nothing had been done. When he’d asked to speak with the investigator sent by the company’s board of directors, he’d been told to be quiet. And then, tonight, he’d spotted the two men again.
Vincent was in a quandary. Whom should he obey? His boss or the Boss? He took a breath and asked for guidance. The answer came freely. Every person—man, woman, or child—had only one Boss.
Vincent lengthened his stride, his fear leaving him. First thing in the morning he would go to the police. It was decided.
“Hey you—black boy.”
Vincent froze. The voice had come from behind him. He turned. He recognized the man. He’d been at his table just prior to closing. The man with the widow’s peak and the nose of a hawk.
“Yes?”
Vincent felt a rush of wind behind him. Something very hard struck his head. Darkness enveloped him.
*****
A fingernail etched its way down Simon’s bare chest.
He woke.
Tania lay beside him, propped up on an elbow, studying the latticework of scars crisscrossing his torso. Another nocturnal companion had once commented that it looked as though he’d been worked on with a saw, a shiv, and a soldering iron.
“Work, too?” she asked.
“Pleasure.”
“Liar.” She stopped at a dark circular lesion on his shoulder. She sat up, the mood broken. “This is a bullet wound.”
“Is it?”
“And so is this.” The second was on his hip, a gulp away from a more important area.
“It can’t be,” said Simon.
“My first husband was a soldier. He had a few just like these. Is that where you got them? Military?”
“God, no.”
The inquisitive hand continued its tour, tracing a berm of scar tissue below his ribs that had bleached bone white over the years. “My second husband was a surgeon. These wounds were not tended to by a professional.”
“You can say that again.”
The hand slipped under the covers and probed a more sensitive area.
Simon’s eyes widened. “I’m afraid to ask what your third husband did.”
“I don’t have a third husband,” said Tania, her fingers proving very skilled indeed. “Yet.”
Simon gasped.
“And so?” she demanded archly. “Answer my questions.”
“Never.”
Tania straddled him, pinning his wrists to the bed. She was surprisingly strong for a lithe, naked woman half his size. “This is your last chance. Confess.”
Simon struggled, or pretended to. He enjoyed these games. “You’ll have to do worse things than that if you expect me to talk.”
She kissed his neck, her breasts grazing his chest. “I don’t expect you to talk, Mr. Riske.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” she replied, with relish. “I don’t.”
“Then what do you expect me to do?”
“Why Mr. Riske, I expect you to—”
Simon’s phone buzzed. Tania looked at it.
“To what?” asked Simon, willing the phone to its own special circle of hell.
“To—”
The phone buzzed a second time and she snatched it from the nightstand. “D’Art,” she said, reading the name off the screen.
The phone buzzed again. Simon told her to answer it. Tania sat up, tucking her hair behind her ear and assuming her best secretarial posture. “Good morning, Simon Riske’s office. Mr. Riske is currently occupied with an important client. May I take a message?”
“Do pardon me, ma’am,” came a ruffled baritone voice. “I’m sorry to disturb you…your…um, oh, good Christ, is he there?”
Simon, who’d heard every word, gently took the phone. “Tell me this is important, D’Art.” He threw off the sheets and walked to the window. Peeling back the curtain, he saw that it was a sunny morning with a few billowy white clouds low in the sky. “I’m listening.”
“Heard you lost twenty thousand pounds last night.”
“He was cheating. And where’d you hear that?”
“Toby Stonewood.”
“Lord Toby Stonewood?” Lord Toby Stonewood, Duke of Suffolk, was one of the richest men in England and the owner of Les Ambassadeurs.
“One and the same. He requests a moment of your time.”
“Regarding?”
“A private matter which he would like to discuss with you face-to-face.”
Simon looked toward the bed, where Tania lay all too invitingly. She had put on her oversized reading glasses and was politely checking her own phone. Simon liked the professorial look. “How’s this afternoon? Say, two?”
“How’s this morning? Say, now?”
Simon’s dreams of playing school with Tania were fading fast. “Now?”
“Unless you’d like to tell Lord Toby to come back later yourself.”
Simon studied the curve of Tania’s back, the nape of her neck. The problem with having sex with an absolute stranger was that it was never very good the first time. The second time, however, was always vastly improved.
“You have an hour,” said D’Art.
Simon turned back toward the window and spoke under his breath. “Give me an idea how serious this is. One to ten.”
“Eleven,” said D’Artagnan Moore.
“I knew you were going to say that.”
*****
Vincent Morehead came to.
He lay on a cold floor. It was bright and as his eyes focused he saw a great multicolored glass chandelier above him. He blinked furiously, and for a moment he thought he was back in the casino, or in the lobby of a fancy hotel. He didn’t know which. No hotel in the city had anything so ornate.
Someone was standing near him. A shoe was inches from his face. He gazed up and recognized the man who’d sat at his table before closing. The man who’d called him “black boy.” Another man stood beside him. Vincent spun his head and saw that he was encircled. He was too groggy to count how many there were. Eight…ten…twelve?
Vincent pulled himself to his feet, only to stumble into the arms of one of the men. The man shoved him and Vincent stepped back into the center of the circle.
“Why…” he began, and though it was difficult to form words, he knew why and was afraid.
It was then he saw that the men all held lengths of pipe, some longer, some shorter. Lead pipes. The big, hawk-faced man tapped his pipe on the floor. The others followed suit.
“Tigars,” they began to chant. Tee-gars.
The room echoed with the word and the percussive taunts.
“Tigars.”
The first blow struck Vincent in the calf and knocked his leg out from under him. He fell to the ground. A man dashed at him, swinging the pipe at his head. Vincent raised a hand to protect himself. The pipe shattered his forearm. Before he could scream, another blow struck his ribs, then his shoulder. He collapsed on the floor, no longer aware of anything except the bright light above him and the agony that held him in its relentless grip.
“Tigars.”
Blows rained down. He writhed and screamed and prayed to be saved. Not to live, but to die and be spared such pain.
“And so,” came a commanding voice, echoing across the room. “What have you done to our new friend?”
The chanting stopped. The blows ceased. The circle parted.
A man Vincent had not seen earlier but knew from sight stepped closer. He crouched and took Vincent’s jaw in his hand, lifting his head so they could look at each other face-to-face.
“I hear you are an observant one. Too observant, perhaps. You guessed our game. Bully for you.”
“Won’t…talk…swear,” Vincent managed. He was crying. He couldn’t help it.
“You can be sure of that,” the man replied, to a chorus of laughter. “You are a strong one, aren’t you? Won’t do you any good. One man alone cannot prevail against a dedicated force. I’d ask you to stand, but that would be rude of me, given your circumstance. Let’s settle for sitting up.”
Vincent only half understood the words. The world was fading in and out, pain the only constant. Arms grasped his torso and shifted him to a sitting position, and when he howled in complaint they held him there. “No,” he said. “I won’t…tell…I…” His thoughts slipped away. He remembered being on a beach at home, feeling the warm sand sift through his fingers. His eyes rose to the colorful glass chandelier. Murano glass, he thought hazily. He’d visited the factory once.
“…problem with you boys,” the man was saying to the others, “is that you don’t hit hard enough. In my day, we had plenty of practice. We learned how to cripple a man, how to blind him. Mostly, we just knocked their brains out. To do real damage, like we used to do to the tough guys who wouldn’t talk, you need leverage and torque. You have to hold the pipe like so.” He shrugged. “Well, maybe, it’s better if I just show you.”
Ratka threw him a pipe, and the older man twirled it deftly before taking firm hold of one end.
Leverage and torque, thought the older man as he drew back his arm and took aim. Leading with his hip and then his shoulder, he brought the pipe around in a wide, whiplike motion and with all his might struck it against Vincent Morehead’s temple.
“And that, my friends,” he said, standing over the lifeless body, “is how you do it.”
*****
Simon arrived at the headquarters of Lloyd’s of London fifty-nine minutes later.
“What took you so long?” With a grunt, D’Artagnan Moore rose from a couch running along the wall of his office.
“I hope we didn’t entice you to break any laws,” said a handsome, ruddy-faced man with thinning gray hair, also standing.
“No more than usual,” said Simon, with a polite smile.
Moore crossed the room. He was a bear of a man, six and a half feet tall, three hundred pounds, with a shaggy black beard tickling the top of his bow tie, the rest of him adorned in the finest Highland tweed, despite the fact that the weather people had forecast a day of record heat.
“Had a good night, did you?” asked Moore, sotto voce, as he shook Simon’s hand. “She certainly sounded lovely.”
“I made it here, didn’t I?”
“And you’ll be glad you did.”
D’Artagnan Moore was a registered insurance broker, one of the most respected in the trade. His clients included shipping companies, art museums, airlines, vineyards, and other entities, public and private, offering products, services, and commodities that defied ordinary classification. It was barely ten, but he held a tumbler of scotch in one of his hands.
“Thought you waited till the sun was above the yardarm,” said Simon.
“My client is suffering a bout of nerves. Have to keep him company. Shall we?” D’Artagnan Moore led Simon across the office. “Simon Riske, meet Lord Toby Marmaduke Alexander Stonewood, Duke of Suffolk.”
“It’s a pleasure, Your Grace,” said Simon.
Toby Stonewood’s handshake was dry and firm. “Not sure if I should be afraid.”
“I’m sorry if things got out of hand last night,” said Simon.
“You did what anyone would have…and with reason.”
“Only sorry we didn’t manage to snare him.”
The Duke of Suffolk was tall and distinguished, the picture of the ruling classes, dressed in a double-breasted navy blazer with shiny gold buttons, white shirt, and a rep tie reserved for old Etonians, alumni of the poshest and most revered of British preparatory schools. A latter-day Wellington without the cockade hat, though if the tabloids were to be believed, he shared a similar reputation with the ladies.
“No luck tracking him down?” asked Simon.
“A clean escape, I’m afraid. And call me Toby. None of this ‘Your Grace’ nonsense. Can’t stand it.”
Simon considered this, offering an agreeable smile. He’d worked with the wealthy and the more than wealthy for the past fifteen years. Smile aside, he’d learned better than to think of himself as an equal. Distance was to be recognized and respected. “Toby, then.”
Pleased, Stonewood placed his empty glass on the side table. “How did you spot him?”
Simon dragged over an armchair from D’Art’s desk and set it so that it faced the couch. Simon’s past was a closely guarded secret. Something about his having been a member of a criminal organization tended to frighten away prospective clients. “Let’s just say I have some experience with his type.”
“As well as a sharp eye. You were a policeman, then?”
“Not exactly.” He let the words linger and the suggestion of the truth with them.
“We have cameras to keep an eye on all of our tables,” said Toby Stonewood. “Especially on players who win a bit too much and a bit too often. I think our security chief calls it ‘defying statistical averages.’ We didn’t catch it.”
“Sometimes a human eye can see things a camera can’t.”
“Did you know he was cheating the entire time?”
“I knew I was losing too much. That put me in a bad mood.”
“Whatever it was,” said Lord Toby, “your eye or your intuition, I need it.”
The nobleman scooted to the edge of the sofa and fixed Simon with an earnest gaze. He explained that Les Ambassadeurs was not the only gaming establishment he owned. He was also the principal shareholder of the Société des Bains de Mer, the corporate entity that owned the Casino de Monte-Carlo, perhaps the most famous casino in the world, located in the principality of Monaco.
“I only wish our losses were limited to twenty thousand pounds,” Lord Toby went on. “Unfortunately, they’re far worse. I must ask that you keep what I’m about to tell you in this room.”
“You have my word,” said Simon.
“And he knows how to keep it,” said D’Art. “Lloyd’s of London’s trust in Simon is unmatched.”
Lord Toby Stonewood stared at Simon long and hard, his flint-blue eyes unblinking. “Over the past nine months,” he began, “the casino has suffered losses on an unimaginable scale, nearly all of it from our baccarat tables. As you know, baccarat is almost entirely a game of chance. Over time, it’s weighted with a two percent advantage to the house. In theory, it is impossible for us to lose over any extended period…a day, a week, a month. Now, of course on occasion a high roller will put together a streak and take home ten, twenty million. But those are one-offs. Usually, he’ll come back and lose it. Still, somehow we’ve managed to lose nearly two hundred million dollars.”
“Cheating,” said D’Art.
Toby Stonewood nodded. “There’s no other answer.”
“What did your security staff say?” asked Simon.
“Couldn’t find it. Believe me, we’ve tried. I spent days with them in their operations center studying live feeds, tracking players we suspected. We have it all: facial-recognition technology, cameras to spot card switching, radio tracker in our chips. Even so, we came up empty-handed. It just appeared that too many people were winning. Nothing illegal in that. We brought in an expert in this kind of thing. Rooting out cheats.”
“And?”
Toby shifted in his seat, his complexion gone gray. “Yes, well,” he said uneasily. “He disappeared the next day. Turned up a week ago tangled in a fishing net off the coast of Villefranche.”
“Are you still losing?”
“On a daily basis. If this continues, the casino will be bankrupt in a month.”
“Close down the tables,” said Simon.
“Not an option,” said Toby. “We might as well shut down the entire place.”
“How can I help?”
“Come down. Take a look around. That’s all I ask.”
“But I don’t know a thing about cheating on this scale.”
“You spotted the man at your table last night.”
“One man. And I missed his partner. You have a larger problem.”
“And we’re taking active measures to stop it. You offer a kind of different skill.”
D’Art leaned forward, putting a hand on Simon’s knee. “Give Toby a listen. The timing couldn’t be better. Monaco’s hosting the International Boat Show next week. The town will be overflowing with tourists, most of them wealthy and ready to drop a few thousand at the casino.”
“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” said Simon.
“There’s to be a Concours d’Élégance the last two days of the show…for cars, of course. Plenty of Italian contraptions like the ones you fix up. Cover doesn’t get any better.”
“D’Art’s right,” said Toby. “You’d fit right in. Bring one of your cars. There’s a time trial, as well. Bit of fun. I’ll pay the entry fee. We’ll put you up in a suite at the Hôtel de Paris. All expenses on the house.”
“Damned good grub, if I do say,” boomed D’Art.
“I’m fine with a ham and cheese,” said Simon, shooting his friend a look.
“Figures,” said D’Art, disparagingly. “Along with your Tennessee sour mash. Americans.”
“I don’t mind a croque monsieur, myself,” said Toby, keeping the peace. “Allow me to sweeten the pot. We’ll bankroll you with one hundred thousand dollars to play the tables. Keep whatever you make.”
“That’s not necessary,” said Simon.
“And a success fee,” added Toby. “How does one million dollars sound?”
“Success defined as?” asked Simon.
“Hard proof of cheating…and whoever’s behind it.” Toby Stonewood sat back on the couch, arms crossed, worry etched into his face. “If you can track down the money, so much the better. I’ll give you five percent of anything you find. Mr. Riske, this has got to stop.”
Simon looked from one man to the other. He wondered how much Lord Toby Stonewood had offered the expert who’d washed up in a fishing net. Success fees were nice, but you had to be alive to collect them. A million dollars was no good to a dead man.
“Well?” said D’Art.
Simon had already made his decision. “Deal,” he said.
He was a gambling man. He never turned down a bet on himself.
*****
The drive to the shop passed in a blur. Window open, music blaring, Simon tapped his hand on the wheel in time to the beat. He was listening to the Clash and singing along to “The Magnificent Seven.”
He crossed Blackfriars Bridge, skirting Waterloo Station and Battersea Park before heading into the more peaceful residential confines of Southfields. Nothing lifted his spirits like a new assignment, especially when it dropped into his lap out of the blue. It wasn’t the paycheck at the end of it (though he was never one to turn down a chance at earning a hefty sum) so much as the opportunity to immerse himself in an unfamiliar, often foreign field. And then to test his newfound prowess under adverse, even perilous, conditions.
Monaco. Larceny on an organized scale. A time trial thrown in for good measure. And a million-dollar success fee at the end of it. What wasn’t to like?
His good mood vanished a few seconds after he turned down the alley to his shop and found a car blocking his parking spot. The overflow lot sat adjacent to the alley. He activated the gate opener and parked between two automobiles protected by body tarps.
The automobiles were Ferraris, each worth in excess of five hundred thousand pounds. The expensive ones he housed inside the shop 24/7. His own car was a VW Golf R, pearl-gray with Recaro seats and Pirelli low-profile tires. It was a high-performance gunner masquerading as an everyday Joe. Just as he liked it.
Simon let himself out of the gate. A ten-foot fence topped with razor wire surrounded the lot. The gate was secured and, according to the salesman, capable of withstanding a frontal assault by an armored tank. God forbid, thought Simon, a tank in southwest London. He lived a stone’s throw from Wimbledon. The stewards of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club would surely be appalled at the thought.
A beat-up sign above the work entrance read EUROPEAN AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR AND RESTORATION.
His pride and joy.
The car blocking his spot was a black Daytona Spider, ’70 or ’71, a sleek two-door with Borrani spoked wheels, a long sloping hood, and concealed headlights. It had cost twenty thousand dollars the year it was made—expensive, but not exorbitant. Today it would fetch three million. Expensive, but not exorbitant.
But not this one. At least not today.
Simon bent to examine the front fender hanging askew, noting that the paint was scratched and that a turning lamp was missing. He rounded the car and winced. The right rear quadrant of the car was crunched like an accordion and the rear tire was bent inward.
“Hey!” An angry voice pierced the midmorning calm. “Don’t touch that car!”
“Get away from there!” came a second voice. “Scram!”
Simon looked over his shoulder as two young men rounded the corner of his shop, running in his direction. One was slim, short, with black curly hair and an olive complexion. The other was tall, buff, and blond, his cheeks flushed red. Both were dressed in torn jeans and T-shirts that looked as though they’d never been washed.
“Did you tell me to scram?”
“That’s our car,” said the bigger one.
“My car,” the shorter one added.
“Yours?” said Simon, approaching the owner. “Doesn’t look like you know how to drive it. What did you hit? A parked car? A building?”
“He drove over a curb and hit a stanchion, then—”
“Shut up, Eric.” The shorter man stuck his hands in his pocket and bowed his head sheepishly. “Are you him? The guy that owns this shop? Risky?”
“Riske,” said Simon. “The e is silent.”
“Then you will fix my car. I need it no later than tomorrow at one.”
The taller, blond man took up position behind his friend. “One o’clock.”
Simon crossed his arms. “Is that right?”
“I realize it’s a rush job. I am willing to pay accordingly.”
Simon kept his comments to himself. Rude, demanding, and narcissistic weren’t unknown character traits of individuals who owned this type of automobile. “I’m booked,” he said.
“What do you mean?”
“Full up. All slots taken. Besides, we don’t do minor body work. I can give you the name of a shop in Islip that—”
“No,” interjected the shorter man.
“—should have it done in about three weeks,” Simon finished.
“Three weeks?” The blond one, Eric, put a hand to his forehead and bent double as if someone had kicked him in the gut. “You’re a dead man,” he muttered to his friend.
The owner of the car continued, unfazed. “It must be you. No one else.”
Simon looked at the man more closely, then examined the car. A piece of the puzzle fell into place. “Have we met?”
“You restored both of my father’s automobiles. He says you are the only person allowed to touch his cars.”
“Besides you?”
The short man grimaced. “We will come to that later. Right now, let us concentrate on the matter at hand. You will fix the car, Mr. Riske. No one else.”
“Your father is?”
“Rafael Harriri. I’m Martin, his oldest son.”
Simon was as principled as the next man, but there was something about the name of a former client and a billionaire, not necessarily in that order, that shaped his thinking. “Come with me.” He unlocked the door to the shop floor, motioning for them to go ahead. “Hurry up. And don’t touch a thing.”
The floor was buzzing with activity. A dozen Italian sports cars in various states of disarray were spaced across the floor. There were ten Ferraris and two Lamborghinis (“Lambos” in the trade), though it was difficult to tell which was which, or if some were even cars at all. Doors were missing, interiors ripped out, hoods standing at attention, the engines either missing entirely or half dismantled. Three cars had been stripped of paint and their dull metal husks resembled the hulls of long-abandoned ships.
Simon surveyed the lot, taking note of where each car stood in its long and tortured path back to life. The cost to restore them ran anywhere from a hundred thousand to a million. It was worth it. Once he’d finished his work, the combined value of the vehicles under his roof would top fifty million dollars. Not bad for some flimsy metal, a little rubber, a few strips of decent leather, and an internal combustion engine.
Simon dropped off Martin Harriri and his friend in the waiting room, then doubled back to his office. Lucy Brown stood, arms crossed, blocking the door. “I didn’t go out.”
“Wise decision.”
“You’re wearing the same clothes.”
“Am I?”
“You haven’t been home.” Anger curdled to disgust as she thought through the accusation.
Simon used the opportunity to slide past her and enter his office. How was it that women always knew when you’d been fooling around?
Lucy followed closely. “So, where were you?” she demanded.
“Get the two guys in the waiting room some tea,” he said. “Tell them we’re looking at the car and that I’ll be back to speak with them in a while.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Now, if you please, Ms. Brown.” He rounded his desk and sorted through the mail—bills, as usual—making a point not to look up. Finally, she took the hint and, with a huff, departed.
“And don’t give them your phone number!” he added, a second too late.
Simon picked up the phone and called Harry Mason, his chief mechanic and floor boss. “Meet me out back. Need you to look at something.”
“I’m busy.”
Simon rubbed the back of his neck. Harry Mason was pushing seventy, a short, irascible Irishman with a perpetual scowl. He patrolled the floor looking as though someone had stolen his last bottle of scotch. He cared about two things in life: cars and soccer, though not in that order. Simon knew that Harry was seated at his desk with his face buried in the sports page of The Sun, reading about his beloved football club, Arsenal.
“How’s the new manager doing?” Simon asked.
“Not good enough,” responded Mason with fire, taking the bait. “He’d better light a fire under their asses if he wants a top-four finish.”
“Put down the paper and meet me out back. Now.”
After he filled his mug with coffee, he left the office and found Mason giving the black Daytona a once-over.
“Who the hell managed to do this? Those two knuckleheads in the lounge?”
“You mean our newest clients.”
“We don’t do repair work.”
Simon knelt to examine the front fender, waggling it like a loose tooth. Taking hold of it with both hands, he gave a terrific yank and the fender came free altogether. Standing, he handed it to Mason. “Today we do.” He ran a hand along the crumpled chassis. “How long to fix this?”
Harry Mason crossed his arms over his belly. “Bang out the metal, sand it down, prime it, then put it through the paint shop.”
“I didn’t ask what needs to be done.”
“Week.”
Simon took hold of the passenger wing mirror, which was bent at a right angle, snapped it off, and tossed it onto the front seat. “Think Adriano has any of these in stock?”
“Why would he?”
“We’ll need to fix that ourselves.”
Harry Mason grimaced.
Simon squatted to study the front wheel, then lay down on his back and slid under the car. “Harry, take a look at this.”
“For Chrissakes,” said Mason. “Must I?” There was much moaning and griping until Mason slid beneath the automobile beside him.
“New struts?” asked Simon, the light from his phone illuminating two fractured metal rods attaching the wheel to the suspension.
“Didn’t that numbskull brake at all before taking it over the curb?”
“I’m betting our client had had a few too many.”
“I thought their kind didn’t imbibe.”
“He’s Lebanese.”
“His problem, isn’t it?”
“Do we have any replacements?”
“We do.”
Simon slid out from under the car and got to his feet. When Harry Mason was slow to free himself, Simon lent him a hand and hoisted him to his feet.
“You’ve got something on your jacket,” said Mason.
Simon studied the stain. Oil. A great big gob of it. The jacket was a write-off. He swore under his breath. “Add it to the bill. He can afford it.” He removed the jacket, crumpled it into a ball, and dumped it in the trash. “So?”
“So what?” asked Mason.
“How long for all of it?”
“A month. We’re full up as is. I can put someone on it next week.”
“I need it tomorrow.”
“Are you daft? New paint alone takes two days to dry.”
“I’ll drive slowly.”
“Drive? Where? This isn’t your car.”
“I’ll be entering it in the Concours d’Élégance in Monaco next Saturday. Steam clean the engine, detail the chassis top to bottom, and renew the leather.”
“The entire shop will have to work on it all night long.”
“I’ll be right there with them. I’m going upstairs to shower. Our new clients are in the reception area. Tell them our specialists are examining the car top to bottom and that I’ll be along in thirty minutes.”
Simon’s flat occupied the second floor of the building. Entry was gained through a pair of reinforced steel doors, one off the shop floor, the other at the top of the stairs. His real job demanded that he protect himself as well as his cars, even if he wasn’t worth anything close to the least expensive of them.
In the daytime, he worked as an investigator, problem solver, and all-around busybody. His clients included corporations, wealthy individuals, and the occasional law enforcement or intelligence agency. He was the man you went to when you couldn’t go to anybody else. If that sounded ominous, it shouldn’t have. Ninety percent of his cases involved nothing more perilous than surfing the Internet, slipping some banknotes into the hand of the right person for a bit of information, or following the odd Joe here or there. The steel doors were for the other ten percent.
One day he’d think of a proper title. Something with just the right amount of intrigue. For the time being, his business cards gave his name, email, and phone number. His reputation told prospective clients everything they needed to know.
Simon locked the door behind him and crossed the living area to his bedroom, where he took off his clothes and threw them in the hamper. He busied himself putting shoe trees in his loafers and returning them to their proper position. A full-length mirror hung above his fleet of shoes. He saw a lean, muscled man, broad shoulders, arms too big for his size, torso decorated by the scars Tania had found so interesting. Knife, dagger, shiv, blowtorch (actually a jerry-rigged can of deodorant and a cheap lighter…and yes, that one hurt the most). The circular nubs of ruined skin were bullet wounds and courtesy of the good guys, namely, the Marseille police. There was a reason he’d been in that prison.
The tattoo running the length of his forearm explained it all. It showed a ship’s anchor around which a skeleton was draped, some wiggly blue lines that were supposed to be waves, and the words “La Brise de Mer.” It was the name of the notorious criminal organization founded in Corsica and active across the southern coast of France, the Bouches-du-Rhône and the Côte d’Azur. He came by the tattoo honestly, if the word applied. From ages sixteen to nineteen, he’d roamed the streets of Marseille boosting cars, robbing jewelry stores, and hijacking armored trucks. His actions earned him the tattoo, the bullet wounds, and a stretch in Les Baumettes, a prison celebrated for its lawlessness and barbarity.
The thought of prison and his time there sent an unwelcome shiver down Simon’s spine.
He jumped up and grabbed the pull-up bar bolted to the ceiling. He knocked out twenty reps, then hung for a good ten seconds, feeling his muscles stretch and cry out for relief, then gave himself five more.
Time for a shower.
“I have good news and bad news,” Simon explained after he’d ushered Martin Harriri and his friend Eric into his office and shown them a place to sit. “The good news is that since I know your father and, if I recall, advised on the purchase of the car, I’ve decided to fix it.”
“And the bad news?”
“I’ll need at least a week, maybe two.”
“I’m dead,” groaned Martin, burying his face in his hands. He sat in a director’s chair that had belonged to Steve McQueen during the making of Le Mans. Eric sat behind Martin on the sliver of free space available on the couch, a vintage jukebox brushing one shoulder, a stack of olive legal files a meter high the other. The rest of the office was equally cluttered. It was a graveyard of memorabilia, most of it related to Simon’s work. The general disorderliness stood in stark contrast to his flat. There was something there for an analyst to look at, but Simon didn’t go in for that kind of thing.
“When I was younger,” Simon said, “I drove a few cars I wasn’t supposed to. You’ll survive.”
“Were they a Ferrari Daytona?”
“It wasn’t the make so much as who they belonged to. Believe me when I say the owners weren’t happy with me.”
“What happened?”
Simon ignored the question. “Right now, let’s worry about you. Give me your father’s phone number.”
“You can’t call him.”
“Feel free, then. Tell him the bill will be fifty thousand pounds. I’ll need a down payment…say, twenty thousand. You’re good for the rest of it.”
Martin considered this, then slid his phone out of his jeans. “What are you going to say?”
“Just give me the number.”
Simon dialed as Martin read out the digits. Mr. Rafael Harriri, billionaire trading magnate, favorite son of Beirut, and collector of fine European automobiles, answered immediately.
“Rafael? Simon Riske…Yes, it is a surprise…All good with you?” Pleasantries were exchanged with Simon explaining that no, he was not married, no children were on the way, legitimate or not, and that his business was doing nicely indeed. “Listen, Rafael,” Simon said when decorum permitted. “I’ve got a piece of rough news.”
Martin sank lower in the chair. An unpleasant keening noise emanated from him as if he were suffering from a painful stomach ailment.
“I’m afraid I’m stealing your Daytona,” Simon went on. “Yes, that’s right. I’m stealing it.”
Martin dropped a hand from his eye. The moaning abated.
“By the purest coincidence, I ran into your son this morning. He pulled up at a light next to me. I didn’t recognize him, but I knew the car in an instant.” Simon met Martin’s gaze. “It’s never looked better. Absolutely showroom condition. I realized then and there that I needed to take it with me to Monaco next weekend for the Concours. I got your boy’s attention—fine-looking young man, I might add—and, well…he’s sitting across the desk from me in my office as we speak. I know it’s asking a lot and on short notice, but what do you think? May I take it to Monte? Of course, we’ll put it on a truck there and back…No, no, I’ll pay the fees. I insist…Good. It’s settled, then.”
Simon talked for another ten minutes before ending the call.
Martin stared at him, dumbstruck. “Why?”
“Everyone needs a guardian angel once in a while.”
“Thank you, Mr. Risky.”
Simon winced. “The e is silent.”
“If there’s ever anything I can do…”
Simon stood. “You can start by paying up. Did we settle on twenty thousand pounds?”
Martin took the request in stride. “Do you accept cash?”
*****
Of course it was Karl Marshal who saw her first.
It was during rugby practice two days earlier. Conditioning was finished and the team was practicing ball skills prior to a scrimmage. Coach MacAndrews had taken Robby to one side to tutor him on how to kick a drop goal, a skill that Robby had yet to master.
“Drop. Skip. Kick,” said Coach MacAndrews.
Robby did his best to follow the instructions. He held the big ball in his hands, dropped it onto the ground, and kicked it. Each time, the ball dribbled a few meters down the field and he would rush to retrieve it.
“Dammit, man,” said the coach, squaring Robby’s shoulders toward the goalposts and walking him through the motions yet again. “Do as I say. Drop. Skip. Kick.”
Robby made another vain attempt. The ball skidded off the side of his shoe and landed with a splat in the mud. The others laughed but Robby paid them no heed. Years ago, when he was little, that kind of teasing would have left him bawling. He’d been very good at crying. At some point, however, he’d stopped being affected by loud voices and heated remonstrations. Now he viewed the situation from a safe and objective distance. He was a twelve-year-old boy with limited athletic skills who could not kick a rugby ball. With practice, he would learn. The thing was to keep trying. A voice he was sure belonged to his father egged him on. One day, the voice said, he’d kick the farthest field goal that Scottish bastard MacAndrews had ever seen.
“Marshal!” called the coach. “Show the little prince how to do it.”
But for once Karl Marshal was not paying attention. He was standing well away from the rest of the boys, looking across the field toward the wanderweg, or footpath, that started in the village of Zuoz and led up the hillside past the athletic field, all the way to the peak of Piz Griatschouls, the mountain the boys called the Puke-erberg when they had to run up it each and every week at the end of Saturday morning practice.
No one was thinking about running up the Puke-erberg right then.
To a man, they were looking at the same thing that had captivated Karl.
That “thing” was a woman, who at that moment was drawing alongside the field and was no more than twenty meters away. Or, Robby thought, about the same distance as a decent punt.
It was not uncommon for people to walk past the field during practice. You could set your watch by Frau Baumgartner, the headmaster’s wife, who passed by when the bell tolled three o’clock on her daily trek to the monastery (to combat her thrombosis) and returned when the bell tolled four. In fact, so many people trafficked the wanderweg at all times of day that no one paid them any attention.
Until her.
The woman was tall and blond with a figure to satisfy every teenage boy’s desires. She was wearing tight blue jeans and an open-necked shirt covered by a quilted down vest. The shirt was of interest because it fluttered in the late afternoon breeze and afforded them a telling view of her cleavage. Finally, the woman was beautiful. There was no other way to put it. She was not merely sexy or pretty. She was jaw-droppingly, gut-wrenchingly, drop-dead gorgeous.
Or, as Karl Marshal more succinctly put it later, “She was heinous.”
No one spoke to her that first day. The entire team, including Robby, froze in their tracks and stared. She didn’t say anything either. In fact, it seemed that she didn’t even notice they were there. She glanced over their heads at the school buildings that stood on the hillside behind them but didn’t register their communal and, to be honest, rude stare. Even Coach MacAndrews was struck dumb. He forgot to yell at Karl for failing to pay attention, though a few seconds later (upon coming to his senses), he did grab him by the ear and order him to knock out twenty burpees.
She came each day thereafter, always during practice, always wearing the quilted vest, her shirt buttoned just as the boys liked it. If they were scrimmaging, she would stop to watch and, by her rapt attention, appeared to know something about the sport.
It was Stavros Livanos who first spoke to her. And it was because of him that they learned she was not Swiss at all, or French, as many of them guessed, but German.
“Hey!” he’d shouted. “Wanna play?”
And when she didn’t respond, he repeated the question in German.
“Hey du, möchst du mit uns spielen?”
Stavros was Greek, but he’d grown up in St. Moritz and spoke with an Engadiner’s bergschnur.
“Nein, danke,” she answered. “Sie Buben sind viel zu stark und zu schnell für mich.”
No, thank you. You boys are much too strong and fast for me.
She spoke perfect high German. Moreover, Robby recognized the accent as being from Hesse, the region in central Germany where his own family came from.
It was at that moment that he fell hopelessly in love with her.
He was not alone. Since that first sighting, the mysterious woman was the subject of conversations from morning till night. Had she moved to the village? To whom did she belong? There was no chance someone so goddess-like could be unattached. Was she perhaps the rakish art teacher Signor Marelli’s mistress? Or a famous actress hiding out from the paparazzi? Or had a billionaire established residence nearby, and she was his companion? There was no shortage of guesses.
In the boys’ locker room, a challenge was issued. Who among them was brave enough to ask her?
Karl Marshal spoke up immediately, vowing to ask that very afternoon. Stavros Livanos promised to beat him to the punch. In seconds, every boy was shouting that it would be him. There had never been a room full of braver men. But ninety minutes later, when her blond head appeared behind the soccer goal and she came into full view wearing that vest and that shirt, with the wind behaving as instructed, and she walked alongside the field, no one said a word. Not Karl. Not Stavros. Not anyone.
Instead, it was Robby who, emboldened by their Teutonic kinship, asked.
“Guten Tag,” he said in a firm voice. “Entschuldigung. Wie heissen sie?”
Good afternoon. Excuse me. What is your name?
The woman stopped and, seeing that the scrimmage had come to a halt and that the entire team was hanging on her response, grinned. It was a warmhearted, approachable grin, and every boy on the field smiled in return. Coach MacAndrews, too.
“Mein Name ist Elisabeth,” she replied.
My name is Elisabeth.
And then she did what she did that caused Robby’s heart to burst from his chest and his feet to become glued to the ground.
“Wie heisst du?” she asked.
What’s your name?
“Robert,” he replied, with the bearing and diction he’d been taught his entire life.
“Allo, Robert,” she said. “Es hat mich sehr gefreut ihnen kennenzulernen. Bis morgen dann. Tschuss.”
Hello, Robert. I’m very pleased to meet you. Until tomorrow, then. Bye-bye.
Robby nodded, unable to come up with anything resembling an answer. It was no wonder he’d forgotten a thought he’d had only ten minutes before, when he’d gazed at the monastery and realized that he had not seen the two strange men since Elisabeth first arrived.
*****
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