Crown Jewel 4

 They crossed the lobby like survivors of a catastrophe, their path uncertain, leaning on each other, the only important thing to keep moving. It was three in the morning. A skeleton staff presided over the hotel. A clerk left her position behind reception and floated ahead to summon the elevator.

Simon took Vika to his room. She entered without protest. He gave her a T-shirt and a pair of boxers. She entered the bathroom with a tired smile, saying she wanted to clean up. Simon kicked off his shoes and collapsed into an armchair. He wore a doctor’s smock under his jacket. A strip of gauze covered his wound. Four stitches and a staple deeper down. The doctor had warned him that the blade had nearly penetrated the peritoneum. All Simon knew was that it hurt like hell. Vika’s stitch tally was lower and she escaped without a staple, but her injury was the worse, psychological and long-lasting.

The bathroom door opened and Vika came out looking very much younger and vulnerable, the T-shirt much too large and falling midthigh.

“I hate the Sex Pistols,” she said.

“It’s more about the statement,” said Simon.

“I’ll take Brahms any day.”

“A lover of the classics.”

“Of course,” she said, with flair. “I’m a princess, after all.”

She was suddenly wide awake, her eyes bright, her motions lively. “Want something?” she asked from the bar. “Tea? Shall I make you a drink?” She turned to look at him, hands on her hips. “You’re a whiskey man, but definitely not scotch.”

“Amen to that.”

“Bourbon?”

“Why not? Neat.”

She found a bottle of bourbon among the others and poured a healthy measure in a short glass. For herself, she decided on mineral water in a champagne glass. His eyes didn’t leave her as she crossed the room. She handed him the drink, then joined him where he sat, nimbly placing one knee to either side of him and settling on his lap.

They touched glasses. “Cheers,” she said.

Simon sipped the bourbon and set down the glass. Vika lowered her face to his and kissed him twice.

“One for each time you saved my life.”

For once, Simon was at a loss for words. He looked into her eyes and felt a part of himself slipping away, slipping into her. It was not a feeling he was familiar with and it made him at once giddy and uncomfortable. He was in dangerous waters.

“Why did you come?” she asked.

“I was worried when you weren’t in your room.”

“You checked?”

“Of course.”

“How did you find me?”

“I have my ways.”

“No, really…”

“The telephone directory. Crafty of me.”

“I saw you leaving the hotel and go to the casino. It made me angry.”

“Work.”

“You looked so excited.”

“That’s part of it. I was engaged to look into a spate of cheating. Actually, more than a spate. It’s important that I appear to be just another gambler.”

“Did you find them?”

“Maybe. It’s not just a question of finding them, but of proving how they do it.” There was a last thing that Simon failed to mention. He intended to track down the stolen money and return it to Lord Toby Stonewood. Every last penny.

“Actually, I was jealous,” Vika said shyly, as if admitting it to herself only now. “I wanted you to be with me.”

She brushed her lips against his. Simon ran a hand across the small of her back. Her skin was warm to the touch. They kissed. Softly, at first, slowly, an exploration. He touched her breast. Her nipple hardened. She gasped, and kissed him harder, passionately giving herself to him.

“Are you sure?” he whispered.

Vika nodded.

Simon placed a hand beneath her buttocks and stood, carrying her to the bed. He lowered her to the sheets and, with care, pulled her shirt over her head. She lifted her hips wantonly, and he slipped off the boxer shorts, thinking they looked better on her than they ever would on him. He undressed and lay beside her.

“Carefully,” he said as he took her in his arms.

He knew that they were both riding out the adrenaline, his born of savagery, hers of fear. He also knew that this was the start of something.

He kissed her neck and her breasts, running his fingers across her shoulders, her arms. His hand found hers and their fingers interlocked. She was as hungry as he, and they used each other’s bodies without shame, climaxing together, and afterward shared a good-natured, loving smile.

She closed her eyes and was asleep instantly. Simon lay beside her, studying her features, the tip of her nose, the ridges of her lips, the rise and fall of her chest. He was bewitched.

Dangerous waters.

  

Sleep wouldn’t come.

Simon rose and left the bedroom, drawing the pocket doors so as not to disturb her. He made himself an espresso and sat at the desk, laptop open. He accessed a software program called Apache. It was Vikram Singh’s name, chosen because of the Apache Indians’ famed ability to track an adversary over any surface. The screen showed a map of Monte Carlo. Simon pulled down the menu. Four objects were listed: SR1, SR2, SR3, and SR4, each a designation assigned to one of the miniature tracking devices he’d deployed in the casino.

He double-clicked on the first—SR1—and a track in the form of a solid line appeared on the map, with dots along the path indicating five-minute intervals. The track started at the casino, passed by the Café de Paris, then carved a winding route through the city. In turn, Simon selected the next three objects. One line was black, one blue, one red, and one green. Finished, he studied the map and smiled.

Bingo.

Had he placed the trackers on four random individuals, he could expect their paths to lead in different directions. Two might intertwine, or even end up at locations near each other, but not all four. The odds were a billion to one that four people with no association with one another would follow the same path, even for a short distance.

And yet that was precisely what Simon saw when he studied the map. It appeared, prima facie, that the men he’d tagged had shared a common path, at least part of the way. All four colored lines left the casino and went directly to the Café de Paris next door, just twenty meters away. There the lines blended into one as they entered the restaurant and—here was the first giveaway that they were not only associated with one another and thus part of a larger team but professionals—continued out the rear.

Curious as to their activities inside the café, Simon drilled down by shading a section of the track corresponding with the interior of the café and requesting the corresponding time stamp. Again, he was rewarded. None of the four had spent longer than two minutes inside the café. All stopped at the same location for just under sixty seconds. Either they had all decided to take a nice long leak at exactly the same bathroom at exactly the same restaurant or they were making a drop.

From the Café de Paris, the men went their separate ways. Two, however, ended up at the same address, where Simon deduced they were sleeping at this moment. The other paths ended abruptly after the men had traveled more than ten kilometers and their transmitters had dropped out of range.

Simon wrote down the address on the Avenue Georges Guynemer where the two men boarded. He decided it might be interesting to follow them in order to learn more about their daily activities. If, by a stroke of luck, the men wore the same clothing tomorrow, the tracker would do his job for him.

It was a start.

Simon closed the laptop. A yawn caught him by surprise and he returned to the bedroom. He dropped into an overstuffed chair beside the bed and watched Vika sleep. She looked peaceful and without worry.

Yet Simon sensed that she was hiding something from him. Before they left her mother’s apartment, he’d put away the tiara and jewelry and locked the safe. Vika had said she had come to sort through her mother’s things, but it was apparent there was another reason, a reason she had yet to divulge. He’d seen it in the tightness of her mouth when they’d left, the rigidity of her shoulders. Something was compelling her to remain even after all that had happened. 

Gazing at her in repose, Simon knew that when he found the man who’d attacked her and learned the reason behind her mother’s death, she would have to tell him. And it would have to be on her own.

*****

Robby woke at seven sharp, excited about the day to come. Stretching, he sat up and pushed back the covers. The air was frigid. He shivered. He touched his toes to the floor and lifted them right back up again. The wooden floorboards were cold as ice. He turned his head to listen for the groaning of the heating pipes coming to life. Old buildings were like old people. They made all kinds of strange, unexpected noises. The dorm was silent. It was too early in the season to turn on the central heating, though he didn’t know it. He steeled himself to the cold and walked to his sink to brush his teeth. There was a strange stillness in the air, a quiet more than quiet. He put his toothbrush back in its glass and opened the curtains.

White.

Everywhere white.

“It’s snowing!” he shouted.

The snow fell in fat, feathery billows past his window. A layer two fingers thick covered the rooftops. The courtyard was white as an ice rink. Clouds hovered low over the mountains, the pine forest a pale canopy. He opened the window and thrust out his hand. A pile grew quickly on his palm and he licked it off, tasting nothing, only prickly cold.

Robby closed the window and made a beeline for his armoire. Yesterday he’d spent ten minutes picking out his clothes for this morning. He had to start all over again. He sorted through his shirts and trousers. There wasn’t much to choose from. Students at Zuoz had to wear a uniform. He had two extra pairs of trousers, a few colorful sweaters, and his father’s Moncler parka, which was far too big for him.

He grabbed the parka and put it on over his pajamas, trying to disregard how long the sleeves were and the fact that he looked like a Q-tip wrapped up in a purple comforter. A terrifying thought came to him. The storm would worsen. The school would cancel leave. He wouldn’t be allowed to hit town. He’d miss his date with Elisabeth.

Robby dashed to the nightstand and scooped up his phone. The weather app said the snow would continue until Monday. He left his room and ran down the hall, banging on doors until he discovered someone awake, and demanded to know if he thought leave would be canceled.

“No,” said Edmond Fang.

“No,” said Mattias Gross.

“No,” said Pranay Gupta.

Robby returned to his room, only partially mollified. One set of nerves replaced another. He was going to see her. It was really going to happen.

His hands digging into the pockets of the enormous purple parka, he tapped his feet on the ground impatiently. He could think only of her. Of her blond hair and broad smile, of her warm, singsongy voice and the curve of her figure beneath her sweater.

His heart beat faster.

He had a half day of school to get through before his life would change forever.

*****

Simon had been working for an hour when he heard the pocket doors open and Vika came out of the bedroom.

“Guten Morgen,” he said, sliding the chair from the desk, offering a smile.

Vika walked past him, eyes cast down, a wan, dissatisfied smile on her face, and disappeared into the bathroom. The door closed. The sound of the lock slamming home felt like a slap in the face. His German wasn’t that bad.

Simon went back to work. The laptop was open. The Apache software showed no change in the trackers’ location from last night. Two of the transmitters remained at the address on the Avenue Georges Guynemer. A check of the street view on Google Maps showed the home to be a run-down salmon-colored villa located in a hilly part of the city, a stone’s throw from the Italian border.

Simon’s attention, however, was not on the laptop. It was on the leather wallet he’d lifted the previous evening from the man he’d identified as using a hidden camera to film the shoe. The wallet contained no means of identification, no bank or credit cards, no photographs, no love notes, or any of the other doodads one tends to collect in the course of daily life. The wallet held two thousand euros. That was all.

Simon opened the fold and ran a finger inside it. Out of habit, he searched every nook and cranny. In his old life, he did it to find drugs—a spindle of coke or something better—not information. His reward was a wrinkled piece of paper—some kind of ticket, at first look. Printed on one side were several groupings of letters and a time stamp: “19:17 16.6.18” (7:17 p.m., June 16, 2018). The other side was blank except for a watermark of an eagle’s head and a stylized abbreviation: “BTA.”

Simon put down the slip of paper and opened a new window on the laptop. In the search bar he typed the letter groupings as well as the abbreviation: “ZTW RSR BTA.”

He hit SEND and the gods of the Internet delivered unto him an answer. The slip of paper was indeed a ticket. A twenty-four-hour urban transit pass purchased at the Žarkovo station in New Belgrade and issued by the Belgrade Transit Authority.

Simon picked up the paper again. By rights, it should mean nothing. Yet his heart was beating more quickly than it had been a minute before, and there was no mistaking the surge of adrenaline that had him rising from his chair. During his drive from London, he’d been pursued by men whose driver’s licenses had identified them as residents of Croatia, part of the former Yugoslavia. They’d followed him to get revenge for the breaking up of their scam at Les Ambassadeurs.

Belgrade was the capital of Serbia, also part of the former Yugoslavia.

Simon drew the only natural conclusion.

There was a gang of Slavic criminals hitting casinos all across Europe.

Before he could give his thesis further consideration, Vika emerged from the bathroom. She was dressed in her clothing from the night before. Her face was scrubbed and she gave him an officious smile as she passed by.

“How are you feeling?” Simon followed her into the bedroom.

“Better.”

She picked up the phone and called room service, her back to him as she ordered breakfast for one. Simon put his hands around her waist and she peeled them off, holding them limply. “About last night.”

“Yes?”

“I owe you an apology,” she said. “I took advantage of you.”

“Of me?” Already Simon did not like the direction in which the conversation was headed.

“I needed to feel whole. Clean. I needed to erase the memory. Please, let’s not make anything more out of it.”

Simon flinched. “Oh?”

Vika gave his hands a squeeze and released them. “Again, I’m sorry.”

“Of course,” he said. “I mean, yes, you’re right. It was the moment. We got carried away.”

“Exactly. I’m glad you agree.” She smiled too kindly. “Of course, it was very nice. You were wonderful. I just don’t want you to get any ideas.”

“Ideas?”

“About us. About, well, you know. We’re two adults. These things happen.”

Simon nodded. Vika was speaking as if she were describing a lively game of charades. Infuriated, fighting to keep his anger and embarrassment in check, he excused himself, saying it was time for a shower.

He closed the bathroom door and turned the lock every bit as forcefully as she had. His head was spinning. How had his emotions betrayed him? Was he so desperate for connection that he mistook sex for love? He knew too much about the first and very little about the second. Despair fell over him like a cloud blocking the sun. His world had suddenly grown colder, darker.

He faced himself in the mirror and stood up straighter, trying to find the old Simon, “old” meaning prior to meeting Victoria Brandenburg. She of the direct gaze and patronizing tone. He tried the well-worn admonition “Snap out of it, man!,” but the words carried no heft.

Instead, he fell back on logic. An objective review of the facts. He reminded himself that he’d met her thirty-six hours ago. He barely knew her. She was a princess. A real princess. And a billionaire to boot. Not to mention an MBA who’d graduated with high honors from Europe’s top business school.

Simon was a hood working to make amends for a past as black as ever there was. He was a car thief, a bank robber, and a convicted felon who’d spent four years in a French prison where he’d murdered a man, a fellow inmate he’d killed with malice, forethought, and premeditation. Yes, he’d graduated from the London School of Economics and earned a graduate degree at the Sorbonne, but it was window dressing. He looked at the tattoo inked on his forearm, the symbol for the gang of Corsican criminals who’d made him one of their own. That was the real Simon Riske and it always would be.

The fact was that he had no business assuming she had feelings for him.

He had no parents, no relatives, and had never bothered to trace his heritage past his grandparents. She traced her lineage back a thousand years.

No business at all.

He met his eyes in the mirror. Was there anything more ridiculous than a fool?

He took a shower, then dressed quickly, throwing on tan chinos and a navy polo shirt. He left the bathroom, barely in control of himself. “We need to go to your mother’s apartment.”

“But why?”

Simon brushed past her, stuffing his wallet and phone into his pockets, popping a Fisherman’s Friend into his mouth. Damn the memories. “Bring your mother’s pistol. And this time load it.”

“What for?”

“You want to find out what happened to your mother? The answer’s there.”

*****

It was nicer to enter through the lobby, thought Simon as he held the door to the Château Perigord for Vika. There was no doorman, but a desk manned by a real estate agent eager to sell them an apartment in the developer’s new building on Portier Cove, the man-made spit of land being dredged up from the seafloor, enlarging the city’s beach. Studios started at nine million. It was pleasing to learn that there was a place more expensive than London. Simon made a note to come back in the next life as a developer.

The elevator was slow but had what was once called character. They rode without speaking, an invisible wall between them, no doubt of his making. Vika’s marching rhythm lost its vigor as they approached her mother’s apartment. Simon offered no bluff words of encouragement. Some things a person needed to reckon for themselves.

At the door, Vika took the pistol from her purse and gave it to Simon. He checked that a bullet was chambered and thumbed off the safety. He stood by as she searched for the proper key. He counted ten or more on her key chain, each coded with a different colored fob. She caught him observing her. “A master key for each house,” she stated.

“How many do you own?”

“Own or visit?”

This was a twist Simon hadn’t heard before. “Visit.”

“Five regularly. Marbella, Como, Manhattan…” She shrugged. “Paris and Pontresina.”

“Where’s home?”

“Schloss Brandenburg.”

“Sounds cozy.”

“Actually, it is rather—” She looked at him. “You’re poking fun at me.”

Her hand steadied and she slid the key home. Simon opened the door and stepped inside. The foyer was pitch-dark. He listened and knew the place was deserted.

“Come in,” he said. “No one’s here.”

Vika crossed the room to draw the curtains. Daylight robbed the place of its violent history. It was no longer the scene of a crime but a large, beautifully decorated flat that looked as though a gang of teenagers had thrown a rager in it the night before.

She gave the room a look, hands on her hips, like a general inspecting her troops. “What are we looking for?”

“Something that shouldn’t be here,” said Simon.

Vika led the way to the kitchen. She opened the refrigerator and handed Simon an ice-cold bottle of spirits. “We can start with this. Mama did not drink grappa.”

Grappa di Brancaia. The price tag was still affixed to the base: 249 euros. The good stuff. Someone else, then, had polished off half the bottle.

“Boyfriend?” Simon reasoned that a woman wouldn’t bring a bottle of grappa as a present, not if she knew her host hated the stuff. That was a man, all right. Ditto forgetting to take off the price tag.

“It must be the person she mentioned on the voice mail.”

“The one she thought was trying to hurt her.”

“Yes.”

“I think it’s time you played me the message.”

Vika hesitated, looking as if he’d suggested she have a root canal. The fact that she did not trust him twisted the knife a little further.

“Now,” he said, and she drew the phone from her purse and accessed the voice mail message left by her mother.

“Vika, are you there? Can you hear me? I’m in trouble. You’ve got to come down and help me. There’s a man. He wants to know about the family. I didn’t tell him anything. Of course, you know I’d never. But he keeps asking. I’m worried for you. For Fritz. I didn’t say a word. Please, darling. I thought he was my friend, but now I’m worried. He scares me.”

Vika stopped the message. “That’s all you need to hear. She goes a little crazy. It’s personal.”

Simon took the phone and replayed the message several times, listening for nuances, memorizing it verbatim. He zeroed in on the fact that Vika had forgotten to mention. “Who is Fritz?”

“My son.”

“Is he here?”

“God, no. He’s away at boarding school.”

“Where?”

“Switzerland. In the mountains. There’s a teacher who looks after him. A man who used to be in the military. Fritz doesn’t know, of course.”

“Any other children?” Simon demanded.

“No.”

“So why would your mother be worried about him?”

“I told you yesterday. She was paranoid. Everyone was out to get her. The shopgirl selling her gloves gave her dirty looks. The waiter was eyeing her purse. She even claimed that people broke into the apartment and searched her closet while she was out.”

“Maybe they did.”

Vika’s expression darkened. She was not a woman who encountered much resistance in her daily life.

“Let’s assume she had her friend over,” Simon went on. “You said she didn’t get out much. Where might she have met him?”

“She ate lunch three or four days a week at an Italian place down the street.”

“By herself?”

“With Elena.”

“Still no word?”

Vika shook her head, indicating that she hadn’t had any luck.

“Call her. Please.”

Vika placed the call. No one answered. Instead of rolling to voice mail, a disembodied voice stated that the mailbox was full.

“Is that like her?”

Vika shook her head.

“When we’re done here, we’ll see about checking the security cameras downstairs.”

“Commissaire Le Juste said that we needed a—”

“I know what he said.”

“But—”

Simon raised a hand. “This is the kind of problem I solve.”

Vika nodded, and he was pleased to see that she was getting used to the fact that he would be the one calling the shots.

Back in the living room, he asked, “Was it like this when you visited before?”

“Elena picked up after her, but Mama could let things slide. Growing up, things could get rather sordid.”

Simon picked up the stem of a broken glass. “This kind of sordid?”

Vika said yes and Simon continued his tour of the room, kneeling to look under the furniture, lifting sofa cushions and pillows, peering behind armoires and dressers. Vika followed at his shoulder and he sensed that she was nervous, overly protective. Instead of wanting him to discover a clue as to what had gone on there, she was afraid. Afraid of him finding the wrong thing.

She needn’t have worried. Besides a pack of cigarettes, a few coins, and a TV remote control, he turned up nothing of interest. When he’d finished looking, the two were standing at the end of the hallway. The door to the bedroom was open. “Do you want to come with me?”

“Of course,” she said, with false conviction. She led the way, stopping at the entry. The room was as they’d left it. The only sign of the altercation was the splintered dresser drawer lying on the bedspread. In contrast to the rest of the apartment, the bedroom was neat and tidy, a triangular vacuum pattern still partially visible on the carpet.

“Did Elena stick to cleaning bedrooms?”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I think your mother was harmed here.”

  

Vika stood in the doorway, one hand on the frame. She wasn’t accustomed to others doing her work for her, or for that matter to answering pointed questions and taking instruction from others.

Her eyes took in the room. She felt no fear of entering, no post-traumatic anything. It might come later, but she doubted it. Her entire life had been rife with drama. She’d learned at an early age to build walls, inside and out. It was another woman who’d been attacked. A woman she knew well, but had little feeling for.

She watched Simon move around the room, his concentration absolute. She wasn’t sure why the prospect of his finding the ring frightened her. Maybe it was the fact that she thought of him as “Simon” a day after meeting him, or that he already knew much too much about her. She reminded herself that this man had saved her life and that hours earlier she had made love to him and given herself to him as she rarely had anyone, including her husband. Maybe that was why she harbored a growing antipathy toward him. He was an outsider. A stranger. At best an interloper. At worst a palace thief. It wasn’t the ring he was after. It was something else. Something that Vika had never let anyone have entirely. Her heart.

  

It was jarring how memory can paint over a place, thought Simon. The bedroom was bright and sunny and smelled of pine-scented floor cleaner. Yet he couldn’t take a step without a shadow darkening the room, without hearing Vika’s desperate whimpering and reliving the shock of coming upon her.

“If they cleaned up, it’s because they left behind a mess,” he said. “Not just something broken, but something on the carpet or the floor.”

“Blood?”

“For example.”

He lowered himself to all fours, running his hands through the carpet. Something pricked his finger. It was a sliver of glass, hardly thicker than a hair. He came across a spot still damp at its base. He brushed the fibers back and forth. Was it darker than the rest? He peeked beneath the chairs, the dressers, the bed. He found nothing. Not even a dust ball.

Simon rose, looked at Vika, then entered the bathroom. It was the size of a locker room, with travertine floors and Wenge wood cabinets and brushed-stone counters with polished silver fixtures. He walked the perimeter, acutely sensitive to the pine-scented cleaner. Whatever had happened, it had happened here. A dozen white towels were rolled up like scrolls and stacked in an open-faced cabinet. He sorted through them and found red specks on one that he surmised had been placed at the bottom on purpose.

The contents of the drawers were neatly arranged. Too neatly, he thought, as if readied for a photo shoot for OCD Monthly. They’d been looking for something. That explained the living room, as well.

“Is anything missing?” he asked.

“Excuse me?”

“Isn’t that why you opened the safe?”

“I was checking on Mama’s things. When I saw the living room, I thought there might have been a robbery.”

“And?”

“No,” she said. “Not that I noticed.”

In the top drawer beneath the sink, he found several rings laid out in a row. He picked up a diamond solitaire. Three carats at least. Brilliant clarity. D or E, and he was ready to wager nearly flawless. VVS or VVS1. Value: two hundred thousand dollars at a minimum. Simon knew his precious stones. “It wasn’t a robbery.”

Vika said nothing.

Simon replaced the ring and shut the drawer. He opened the shower stall, glass on two sides, a rugged stone basin with a tile mosaic inlaid. A medieval shield with three roses in a yellow stripe running diagonally across it, and a knight’s helmet resting atop it. Across the bottom were the numbers “1016.”

“The family crest,” Vika said.

“A thousand years old,” said Simon.

“Just.”

His eye went to the ceiling and he saw it. There in the corner, next to a can light, was a skein of blood, long and unruly. He sniffed the pine cleaner, the ammonia hidden within making his eyes water. There had been more blood. Oh yes. Much more. They had killed her here, then taken her to the garage through the servants’ entrance. The car accident was an improvisation—the only way to hide her true cause of death.

Simon was forming a mental picture of what had happened. There was no forced entry. Stefanie Brandenburg had let her killer in or accompanied him from another location. They’d met at the Italian restaurant. He brought her the grappa because she liked Italian food. Drinks were poured. The grappa for him, Polish vodka for her. It wasn’t his first time here. Maybe he’d seen the Bang and Olufsen turntable and had promised to bring his favorite “oldies.” Hence the record album. They were the same age, or close.

He’d come for a reason. The same reason he’d gone to the restaurant to meet her. The same reason he’d been asking questions about the family—questions that had frightened Vika’s mother.

He wanted something. Something more valuable than a diamond ring worth a few hundred thousand dollars.

Vika knew what it was.

“You’re sure everything was in the safe?” Simon asked.

“Yes.”

“And no one has tampered with it?”

She shook her head. “I’d know.”

He stared at her from beneath his furrowed brow. There was nothing subtle about it. He doubted her veracity. She added nothing. After a moment, he nodded, not pressing her, but far from certain she was telling the truth. He left the bathroom without mentioning the blood on the ceiling.

  

The sun was reaching its high point, flashing atop the bay. Simon opened the door to the balcony and stepped outside to be met by a breeze. Yachts of all shapes and sizes cut through the water. Farther out, a French warship was moored, gray and hulking, a cruiser or destroyer, looking out of place among the festive boaters.

Vika joined him, gazing at the sea. The wind played with her hair and Simon liked that she didn’t bother trying to keep it in place. “I know it’s a bit awkward,” he said.

“Pardon?”

“Between us.”

“Is it?” said Vika. “I’m sorry if I seem distant. It’s better that we concentrate on why we’re here.”

“You’re probably right.”

“I don’t mean to hurt your feelings,” she said, knowing she was doing exactly that. “You were wonderful. It was wonderful, but…”

“Don’t read too much into this, Vika. We’re both adults. I think we have more important matters in front of us.”

She nodded, too enthusiastically, in Simon’s opinion. The smile that accompanied it screamed relief and salvation. One more suitor disposed of. At least things were settled between them.

“Did we learn anything?” she asked.

“I think so.”

“Would you care to tell me?”

Simon turned to her. If he wanted to, he could put his hands on her waist and draw her to him. He could tell her how he felt. He could say he was in love with her, already, right now. He saw nothing in her eyes that indicated she might reciprocate the feeling.

“I’d like to go to the garage,” he said.

“What for?”

Simon left the balcony, closing the door after she’d followed. On the way to the foyer, he spotted a framed photograph on the top shelf of a glass and chrome armoire. A boy. Thin and pale, wearing a rugby jersey, with Vika’s straight nose, a thatch of curly blond hair, and blue eyes that looked right through you. “Fritz?”

Vika smiled adoringly and picked up the photograph. “Well, that’s what we call him. His full name is Robert Frederick Maximillian. He’s away at school in Switzerland.” She returned the photograph to its place. “His friends call him Robby.”

  

Only half of the spaces in the garage were taken. Stefanie Brandenburg’s parking spot was ten paces from the elevator, befitting her age, title, and pocketbook, though probably not in that order. There was an oil stain from a leaky carburetor. And another stain a few feet away that was nearly as dark, but not oil.

The overhead lights were weak and fluttered as if they might go out at any moment. Simon activated his phone’s flashlight and moved it in an arc. Something sparkled, there against the wall. Gold. He picked it up.

“Look familiar?” he said, handing the cuff link to Vika. White enamel with a sword and shield and strange runes. This one was in perfect condition. “Now we know for certain,” he said. “Whoever it was that visited your mother the other night, he killed her.”

*****

There was no need for Commissaire Le Juste’s warrant or Simon’s expertise with a lockpick. A princess’s request sufficed.

With alacrity, the apartment manager led Vika and Simon to his office and into an adjacent room filled floor to ceiling with television monitors displaying live feeds from the building’s thirty-one security cameras.

It was almost too easy, thought Simon.

“Please understand,” the apartment manager explained, and the other shoe dropped. “If I could fulfill your request, I would. Alas, our system was subjected to some kind of attack just three days ago. Somehow our recordings…our entire hard drive…were destroyed. ‘Wiped clean’ are the words our security expert used. We are at a loss. One day all was working properly. The next, we were unable to record a thing. Kaput!”

“You’re certain?” Vika shared Simon’s disappointment. “You have nothing from Sunday night?”

“Nothing. Rien. But rest assured, Madame la Princesse, the system is once again functioning perfectly. It was a one-time problem. Never again.”

Vika thanked the multilingual manager graciously and he responded with something between a bow, a curtsy, and the Hitler gruss. A man to satisfy every client. Simon gave him a hard look to let him know he wasn’t entirely satisfied with his explanation, but there was nothing to be done.

“Bad luck,” said Vika when they were on the street.

“Luck had nothing to do with it.” The destruction of the hard disc added a level of sophistication to the crime that he would be wise to respect. It wasn’t difficult to wipe a drive. All you needed was an industrial magnet and access to the machines. It was the fact that they’d thought ahead. Stefanie Brandenburg’s murder was premeditated.

“How could they do such a thing?” asked Vika.

By now Simon was only half listening. “Come on,” he said, standing on the curb, scanning traffic. When she hesitated, he took her hand and crossed the street with her in tow. He opened the door to the Pharmacie Mougins directly facing the Château Perigord. She entered, confused, looking to Simon for an explanation. At the counter, he asked the pharmacist if he could speak to the manager. An attractive middle-aged woman wearing a crisp white coat, glasses tucked into her hair, emerged from the storage area. “How may I be of assistance?”

Simon walked to the far side of the counter and slipped a folded thousand-euro note across the surface. The woman’s brown eyes took in the bill and jumped angrily to Simon, who explained that he had not come for a “special” prescription. He offered a story about a stolen car and a wayward son and inquired if by any chance the pharmacy kept a camera trained on the front door. He knew the answer. He’d spotted it from across the street and believed there was a good chance it captured traffic moving in both directions along the Boulevard d’Italie. “I must find my boy,” he said, with emotion.

The banknote disappeared into the woman’s coat pocket.

She lifted the barrier, and a minute later, Simon and Vika found themselves wedged in a supply closet working the controls of a four-camera multiplex and recording system. The top right screen broadcast the sidewalk and front door in full-color high-def. Cars driving past in both directions were visible and Simon noted that he could make out their license plates.

It was a new setup, no more than a year old. Simon plugged in a date and time (up to ninety-six hours earlier). He started the recorded images at eleven p.m. the night Vika’s mother was murdered. In low light, the picture quality was fuzzed and shallow. They were looking for a Rolls-Royce Phantom IV and they found it at 11:46:15 as it left the driveway of the Château Perigord, turned left onto the Boulevard d’Italie, and drove past the pharmacy.

“That’s her car,” Vika said.

Simon froze the picture when the car was closest to the camera. Two men occupied the front seats. It was too dark to see their faces clearly, though he could make out the driver’s profile, his dark hairline forming the point of a widow’s peak. His passenger wore a driving cap and sunglasses. The boss, thought Simon. His sleeves were rolled up to the elbow. It was hard work lifting a body. Easy to lose a cuff link.

Simon used his phone to take a picture of the screen. There was a chance his friends at Interpol could clean it up, run it through their facial-recognition software, and get a read. He wasn’t optimistic.

He let the recording continue and his eyes went to a car following the Rolls-Royce. It was moving slowly, as if it had just pulled away from the curb. It was easier to see the men inside—pale, dark hair—but what interested him more was the car itself, a late-model Mercedes-Benz sedan, and, more precisely, its license plates. They were not Monaco plates, or plates from France, Italy, Germany, or any country belonging to the European Union. Plates issued by the EU sported a navy stripe emblazoned with a wreath of stars running down the left-hand side. These plates had no stars and no stripe, just numbers and letters. Simon froze the picture. All markings were plain to read.

656 SR 877

A tinge of unease ran down Simon’s spine. He was right that the license plate had not been issued by the European Union. It came from a country he was beginning to get to know all too well and dislike even more.

SR stood for Serbia.

*****

Patience was a luxury Simon Riske could no longer afford. Driving Vika’s station wagon east along the A8 into Italy, he kept his speed twenty kilometers above the limit and his eyes on the rearview mirror. He saw no unwelcome company, with Serbian plates or without. It was not often that events left him confused. Rarer still, utterly at a loss. Yet despite his most strenuous efforts, he could identify no ties between his discovery that a gang of Serbian criminals was robbing the Casino de Monte-Carlo of hundreds of millions of euros and probable Serbian involvement in the death of Princess Stefanie von Tiefen und Tassis. The only link between the two was Simon himself. It was maddening.

Rule number one: There is no such thing as coincidence.

Simon looked at Vika, more curious than ever to know what it was she was hiding from him. She was not a thief. He’d wager his life on that. She certainly wasn’t Serbian. Yet more and more, he sensed an aura of distrust coming from her, a desire to distance herself from him.

Wait, he told himself. Concentrate on one matter at a time. If there was something there, it would make itself known.

Simon gripped the steering wheel harder.

Patience was a luxury he could no longer afford.

  

The city of Ventimiglia hugged the slopes of the Bay of Genoa, twenty kilometers east of the French border. Originally the site of a Roman garrison, it couldn’t be more different from Monaco. There were no fancy apartment buildings, no five-star hotels, no casinos, and no port packed to the gills with luxury motor yachts three times the size of a Roman trireme. To look at, Ventimiglia hadn’t changed from the turn of the century—the nineteenth century. It was a stalwart bastion of earth tones climbing the hillside, sand and olive and rust, nothing taller than three stories, all faded from decades beneath the Mediterranean sun, and crowned by the spire of Santa Maria del Popolo.

Simon steered the car off the highway and along an ever-narrowing series of roads snaking through the hills behind the city. He had his own private history with Ventimiglia, one he’d never share with a princess. It was here that he’d lost his virginity to a buxom, raven-haired beauty named Giulietta. He was sixteen, though it was not a case of teen romance. He was not her Romeo, or anything like her first love. Giulietta was a thirtysomething-year-old prostitute who worked at Mama Lina’s, the most notorious house of ill repute on the Ligurian coast. A gift from Simon’s criminal brethren on the occasion of his stealing his first car.

“Been here before?” Vika asked.

“Once,” he said, looking at her. “School trip.”

“Those were fun.”

“Some more than others.”

“I know so very little about you,” she said. “Are you American or French or something else entirely?”

“My father was American. My parents divorced when I was small. I lived with him in England until he died. I was still a kid and went to live with my mother in Marseille.”

“That explains your French.”

Simon nodded and Vika asked, “Is that where you received your tattoo? I saw that it has an anchor.”

It also had a skeleton and a half-naked woman, but he was happy she’d noted the artwork’s nautical motif. “I ran with a wild crew,” he said. “Took me a while to get serious.”

He told her about his studies at the LSE and the Sorbonne, followed by his years at the bank in London until he found his new calling. She had no reason to ask about the gap between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three or to suspect he’d spent those years in prison, two of them in solitary confinement. And he had no reason to tell her. If she could keep secrets, so could he.

He no longer felt like chitchatting.

“Where is this place?” he asked.

“Just follow the map.”

“Jawohl, Frau Brandt.”

His tone jarred Vika back to their agreed-upon roles: employer and employee, or perhaps she’d prefer master and servant. He was rapidly considering charging for his services.

The car made a sharp turn onto a single-lane road. Bushes encroached from both sides. He rolled down the windows, and the scent of rosemary and coastal scrub filled the car. A salmon-colored villa with turquoise shutters sat atop a rise.

“That’s it,” said Vika.

Simon stopped the car a hundred meters shy of the villa. He asked Vika to give Elena another call. The voice mailbox was still full. “Let’s walk from here,” he said.

“But…”

Simon opened his door and she followed suit. He felt the butt of her gun digging into his waist. Rather than comforting him, it added to his unease. He had no business being anywhere near a firearm, and no business he engaged in should break that rule.

They walked to the house, each on their own side of the road. Though it was a warm day, all the shutters covering Elena’s windows were closed tight. A wind chime hanging from a pepper tree swayed with the breeze, tinkling mournfully.

“Elena,” Vika called as she approached the front door. “Are you home? Hello!”

So much for the element of surprise, thought Simon.

They banged on the door, and when there was no answer, Vika removed her set of magic keys.

“Is this number eleven?” asked Simon, wondering acidly if whoever bought someone a house was entitled to keep a key.

“That’s enough out of you, Mr. Riske.”

“Back to Mr. and Ms.?”

“It’s better that way.”

“Very well, Ms. Brandt. Or is it Brandenburg? Or maybe Madame la Princesse is easiest.”

“Shut up,” said Vika, jaw clenched, gaze fixed straight ahead. Maybe, thought Simon, there was a heart beneath all that ermine.

She knocked once more and Simon put his ear to the door. He signaled that he heard nothing, then walked to the garage and peered through the peeling slats. “There’s a car. A Fiat.”

Vika said she had no idea what kind of car Elena drove, but that she had relatives in Sicily and might very well be there. Vika found the correct key and unlocked the door. Simon entered first. The foyer was cool and crisp, and smelled pleasantly of rosemary and garlic. A meal had been prepared recently.

“Elena,” Vika called. “It’s Madame Brandenburg.”

There was no answer.

Simon felt the hairs on his neck bristle. If Elena wasn’t here, who was? He told Vika to stay where she was and started up the stairs. It was a three-story house, and the stairway wound up and along the walls. He stopped on the second-floor landing, looking, listening. All was quiet, unnaturally so. Who had made lunch? he asked himself again, fighting the urge to draw the pistol. Why wasn’t anyone answering?

“Elena,” he called out.

Vika remained on the ground floor, gazing up. When there was no answer, she shrugged, lifting her hands.

Simon craned his neck and searched the third-floor landing. No one. He felt the floor behind him depress. The parquet creaked. He only just saw the flash of color out of the corner of his eye before the man hit him, crashing into him and toppling him to the ground. A blow glanced off Simon’s cheek before he could react. He threw up a hand in time to stop a fist from breaking his nose. His assailant’s shaggy black hair covered a red, agitated face. Simon turned the fist and the man howled. He couldn’t weigh more than 150 pounds and Simon saw that he was a teenager, sixteen or seventeen at most. He was wiry and strong and squirmed like a snake.

Before Simon knew what was happening, the kid had his hand on the gun and yanked it clear, pointing the barrel at Simon’s face. Simon rolled to his right, driving his arm between them, forcing the pistol away as it fired. So close to his ear, the blast deafened him. Simon grabbed the boy’s shooting hand by the wrist and held it tightly. The pistol dropped to the floor.

“Stop it,” he shouted in his peasant’s Italian. “I’m a friend.”

The boy thrashed and struggled. Simon thrust his knee out, knocking the boy off-balance, then followed it with a fist to the gut.

Winded, the kid rolled off Simon and onto the floor, grasping his midsection.

“Dammit.” Simon got to his feet, touching his cheek gingerly, then peered over the railing. “You didn’t tell me she had a son.”

“Rico?” called Vika. “Are you all right? What happened?”

“He’s fine,” said Simon. “Me too, by the way.”

The young man managed to sit up and Simon helped him to his feet. He was taller by an inch, skinny as a string of pasta. At some point, Simon must have hit him in the face because his lip was cut and there was a streak of blood on his chin.

“Vaffanculo,” spat the kid, every bit as stupid and full of piss and vinegar as Simon had been at that age.

Simon shoved him against the wall to teach him manners, and, well, because he felt like it.

“Where’s your mother?”

  

Simon had seen plenty of badly beaten men in his life. In truth, he’d inflicted the punishment himself more times than he cared to remember. Sometimes he’d liked it. But he’d never seen a human being so savagely attacked as Elena Mancini, and it made his heart cry out.

She lay in a single bed in a small whitewashed room on the top floor of the villa. A cross hung on the wall above her head. A sheet covered her body. Vika had said she was sixty years old, but her face was so swollen, her eyes hardly visible inside great mounds of purple and blue, that it was impossible to have any idea how old she was—eighteen or eighty.

“They came Monday morning,” Rico explained. “I found her when I came home from school. She wouldn’t let me take her to the hospital. She was too afraid. I called the doctor and he came to us. He pleaded with her to seek treatment. When she said no, he did what he could. Her cheekbone is fractured. Her nose, too. She lost three of her teeth. Her eardrum is ruptured.” Rico turned and stared at Simon. “Who did this to my mother?”

Simon shook his head. If he didn’t know their names, he knew their type. He was all too familiar with intimidation tactics. The beating was administered to instill fear, the injuries calculated to ensure that she didn’t forget it anytime soon.

Rico nodded coldly. “Whoever it is, sir, please do the same to them. Tell them it is from her son. And please, repay with interest.”

Simon didn’t think it his place to answer. He was not Vika’s hired muscle, nor did he want anyone to think he was. He remained at the doorway and motioned for her to join him. “Ask her what the men wanted and if she can describe them. I’ll wait downstairs. I don’t imagine she’s happy to have a strange man in the house.”

Simon walked downstairs, passing through the kitchen and into the garden. He found a place in the shade and accessed the Apache software. One of the markers had moved to a spot above the port. One of the men he’d tagged must have donned the jacket worn the night before. Simon zoomed in on the map until the name of a restaurant blossomed. The Brigantine. He doubted the man was eating alone, and suddenly Simon very much wanted to return to Monaco and get back to the job he’d come for.

Simon glanced up at Elena’s bedroom window. Vika had been with her for a quarter of an hour. It was easy to imagine the threats they’d made against her. Rico’s life was in play, whether he knew it or not. People capable of such savagery did not make empty promises, nor did they stop with one victim.

“Jebena kučka.”

Simon said the words aloud, recognizing them. He remembered the rapist’s black eyes. He would be lying if he said that he’d seen into them and found them soulless and desolate, or cruel and debauched. Only now could he state that they were without regard for life or decency.

Simon walked up a dirt path and sat down on a stone bench. He now knew who these people were, if not their names. Slavs. Serbians, to be exact. He knew from firsthand experience that there was no one more brutal. Slav criminals killed blindly. They maimed without reason. They inflicted pain for pain’s sake. Everyone else could stand in line for second place. Chechens. Sicilians. Corsicans. They were all pikers compared to the Slavs.

No matter how he turned things around, it came back to the same question: What were the Serbs doing interfering with the royal family of von Tiefen und Tassis?

*****

Well?” asked Simon as they walked down the drive.

“She was too afraid to talk,” said Vika.

“Nothing? Not what they looked like, what they wanted to know, who was with your mother the night she died?”

“They threatened to kill Rico.”

“So she knows who did it?”

Vika nodded and he shook his head, visibly upset that he’d let her speak with Elena alone. He stopped suddenly, fixing her with a resolute stare, then gazed back at the villa. His intent was evident.

“You can’t,” she said. “I won’t allow it.”

“She knows,” said Simon.

“And she’s been through enough.”

“She can save your life.”

“I’m sorry.”

Simon walked to the driver’s side without offering to open her door and started the car before she could fasten her safety belt. He drove very fast, frustration pulling at his features. Several times, he looked at her and she could see that he wanted to ask her why she hadn’t tried harder, that he took her inability to force Elena to talk as his own fault. There was nothing she could say to change his opinion. Still, Elena had told her something, even if Vika couldn’t tell it to Simon Riske.

This was a problem she needed to solve herself.

  

“Dear Elena, I’m so sorry,” Vika had begun after entering the room. She pulled a chair closer to the bed and waited for Rico to leave before continuing. “Are you certain you shouldn’t be in a hospital?”

Elena shook her head.

“We’ll take you to Monaco,” Vika continued cheerfully. “I’ll call the Grimaldis. They loved Mama. I promise you’ll be safe there. No one would dare touch you.”

“No.” Elena’s voice was like a nail drawn against a chalkboard. She tried to sit up, hands pushing weakly against the mattress.

Vika laid a hand on her shoulder. “All right, then. We’ll stay here. Are you comfortable?”

Elena fell back. She nodded, her relief palpable.

“And you have enough to eat?”

“Yes.”

Vika moved closer, arranging the sheets on the bed so they were just so, tucking a strand of Elena’s hair. “Elena, Mama is dead.”

The woman’s chin dipped to her chest. Tears overflowed her swollen eyes. She knew already. Rico must have seen it in the papers.

“They say she drove her car off a cliff.” Vika tried to sound factual rather than terrified. “Can you imagine such a thing? Mama driving alone at night.” A smile to punctuate the horror. “It can’t be the truth. Someone did this to her. Someone evil. Then they did this to you.”

Elena remained mute, a tremor seizing her face, her shoulders.

“Someone was at the apartment the night she died,” Vika continued. “It was a man. We found a cuff link. I saw that there was a plate of prosciutto in the kitchen. You always made it when I came for a visit, with melon from your garden.” With care, Vika took Elena’s hand in her own. “Who came to visit that evening?”

Elena shook her head, sobbed. “I don’t know.”

“Mama told me she was frightened. You’re frightened, too. Why, Elena? Why was she so afraid? What did the men say to you? Did they tell you not to talk?”

“Yes.”

“Not to tell me who was visiting Mama?”

“Yes.”

“You know?”

“Yes.”

“Tell me, Elena. Please.”

A shake of the head, violent in comparison to those before.

“For Mama. For Fritz.”

Tears flowed freely from beneath her closed lids. “Rico,” she said.

“Does Rico know?” Vika asked.

A hand latched onto Vika’s arm. Elena’s head lifted off the pillow. “He will kill Rico if I talk.”

Vika wiped Elena’s cheeks with a handkerchief. “It’s all right, dear Elena. The men made you promise not to tell me or they will kill Rico. I understand. Really, I do.”

“So sorry. Very. Very.”

Vika patted her arm. “Family,” she said.

Elena raised her hand and beckoned Vika closer. “I know where.”

“Know what?”

“I hide it.”

“You did?” Still Vika didn’t understand what Elena was hinting at.

“For your mother. She scared.”

“You hid it? The ring? You hid the ring!”

Elena nodded.

“Where? Oh, Elena, thank God.” She kissed the woman’s forehead and listened very closely as Elena lifted her head from the pillow and told her.

  

“Almost there,” said Vika, offering a smile of conciliation.

They’d left the Moyenne Corniche and he was driving much too rapidly down the hill, approaching the Avenue Saint-Michel, which served as the invisible border between France and Monaco.

Simon nodded but said nothing.

Her smile evaporated. Vika folded her arms, withdrawing into herself. He hadn’t spoken the entire ride back to the hotel, making it all too clear that he knew she was keeping something from him. It was his form of protest. Look at him, so smug, so self-righteous. The idea that he believed he had any right to expect her to tell him anything infuriated her.

She cocked her head and stared at him. If he could suspect her of dissembling, she could do the same with him. She tried on the role of investigator herself. Suppose he wasn’t who he said. Start there. Suddenly, she saw things in a new and disturbing light. She thought about his arrival at the hotel and later “running into her” while strolling at night. Was it just luck, or something else? And what about his rescuing her only moments before she was to be violated? He was a strong man, very strong, yet why had he let her assailant escape? And what to make of his reticence to stay in Elena’s room? Did he not wish to be recognized? Was there something bothering his conscience that had forced him to leave?

What if Simon Riske was one of them?

Vika scolded herself. She was thinking like her mother. Cruel and paranoid and divorced from reality. But wasn’t there a saying about even the paranoid being right some of the time?

It couldn’t be. Not Simon. She refused to believe it. Madness.

She recalled his touch in the bedroom, the look in his eyes, the moments of pleasure he’d given her. If she was honest, it was the same look to be found in her eyes. No wonder it was so easy to recognize.

The hostility between them was her fault. Conditioned by a lifetime of betrayal, deceit, and falsehoods, she was simply unable to trust another person.

Just then, Simon laughed. It was such a joyous, good-natured laugh that she couldn’t keep from smiling herself. At once, her suspicions disappeared. She was ashamed of herself for harboring such thoughts.

“What is it?” she asked, wanting very much to take his hand and tell him how she really felt.

Simon pointed to a small, stout man in a driving cap and blue windbreaker standing at the entrance to the hotel. “Well, look who it is? I’ll be goddamned. He made it.”

“Who?”

“Harry.”

*****

He should have brought a sled.

Robby meandered along the path leading from school into town, marveling at the snow. It was a ten-minute walk, but with a sled, he’d be there by now. He would have probably even had time to go back up the hill for a second run. He yanked on a fir bough and scurried away to escape the cascade of snow. He’d been silly to worry about the school canceling leave. He rounded a curve and saw the spire of the town church. He was nearly there.

His mind turned to Elisabeth. He’d imagined he was going to be nervous, so he’d prepared a list of subjects they might discuss. He didn’t want to just sit there like a bump on a log. So far, his list included soccer, comics, music, and the best games to play on your phone.

“Robby! That you? Hold up!”

At the sound of the loud adult voice, the unmistakable accent, Robby turned. Coach MacAndrews had rounded the bend behind him and was hurrying to catch up. He wore a dark jacket and a knitted cap with a silly ball dangling like a tassel. He was smiling. Coach MacAndrews never smiled.

“Hello,” said Robby.

“Where are you off to, then?”

“Town.” Wasn’t it obvious?

“Me too. I could use a hot chocolate at Simmens. Care to join me?”

Robby cringed inside. “I’m meeting someone.”

“Are you, now? Good on you. One of your school buddies. Is he on the team?”

“Just a friend,” said Robby. He kept his head bowed and his hands burrowed in his pockets, hoping Coach MacAndrews would get the message. But after a few more steps, it was apparent that the man had nowhere else to go. Robby couldn’t believe his bad luck.

“So, how are you getting on, then?”

“Fine,” said Robby.

“You like your new school?”

“It’s fine.”

“Better than that glum pile of stones you came from. Don’t care for that part of England.”

Robby shot him a glance. He wondered how Coach MacAndrews knew that he’d been at school in Newcastle for a term last year to learn English.

They walked for a while without talking, crossing a meadow with an alp on one side. An alp was an old low-slung wooden barn where farmers kept their dairy cows all winter long. The cows were still on the mountain. The storm had come too fast for the farmers to bring them in. Even so, the smell of hay and manure made Robby’s eyes water.

They came to a flight of stairs descending the hillside, broad, decaying flats of wood cut into the earth. Robby waited for Coach to go ahead. Coach had a habit of flinging himself down the stairs two at a time to show off how fit he was. In fact, he was always moving faster than anyone at school. Karl Marshal said he had a rocket permanently inserted up his butt. Maddeningly, Coach waited for Robby to go first.

“Mind your step,” he said, as if Robby were a little girl. “So, you’re meeting a friend. Maybe we’ll all have hot chocolate together. My treat.”

At this, Robby moaned. He knew it was rude, but he couldn’t help it. And to be honest, he didn’t care.

“What’s that?” said Coach.

“Nothing.” Robby summoned his courage. “It’s just that I’d rather meet my friend by myself.” And having said the words, he stopped in his tracks and looked Coach in the eye.

“Come now, lad. Nothing wrong with a bit of company.”

“You don’t understand…” Robby hated him for making him explain. Why couldn’t he just go on his way? It was as if he was forcing him to say yes. “I’m not supposed to bring any friends.”

“That so?”

“I’m supposed to come all by myself,” said Robby.

Coach came closer. He wasn’t smiling any longer. “And who told you that?”

“My friend.”

“He got a name?”

“It’s a she,” Robby admitted.

“A ‘she.’ Really?”

“I told him,” said Elisabeth.

She stood at the base of the stairs. She was wearing blue jeans and a dark parka. There was a dusting of snow on her hair, as if she’d been waiting for him for a while. Robby noticed she wasn’t wearing makeup. She looked harder, unfriendly, even. He waved, relieved to see her, giving no thought as to why she was here and not outside Café Simmens.

Elisabeth didn’t wave back. Her hands hung by her sides, close to her legs, almost as if she was hiding something.

Coach slid past Robby down the stairs so that he stood between them. “Robert,” he said. “Run back to school. Go inside and find matron. Tell her you need to see the head. If she’s not there, go to your room and lock the door.”

“Don’t move,” said Elisabeth in a voice that Robby hadn’t heard before. It was a throaty, demanding voice and it scared him.

“Do as I say, Robert.” Coach MacAndrews’s hand came out of his parka. He was holding a gun…a black pistol like the Navy SEALs carried in Call of Duty. Robby was frightened and confused. He looked at Elisabeth, but she didn’t seem either frightened or confused.

“Go,” said Coach. “I won’t tell you again.”

There was a pop, like a firecracker, and Coach MacAndrews toppled forward and rolled down the stairs. Robby looked over his shoulder. Two men stood behind him. Tall, fit, dressed in dark clothing and wearing knit caps. One held a pistol, and smoke streamed from its barrel. The other man had silver stripes on his pants and a machine gun slung over his shoulder. A car was parked in the woods behind them. Robby recognized it at once. It was his mother’s Range Rover. Racing white with luggage racks on the roof and fog lamps mounted on the front grille. Someone was behind the wheel. It was not his mother.

Robby froze. He was unsure what to do, if he should run or cry out. He turned back toward Elisabeth. She stood over Coach. She had a pistol, too, and it appeared much too large for her hands. Coach turned on his side and reached an arm toward her. For a moment Robby could see his pale face, his eyes opened wide. She fired the gun and Coach dropped to the snow. The gunshot was louder than before, shockingly loud, and Robby jumped in his skin.

And then one of the men was upon him—the one with the machine gun—ripping one of the stripes off his pants and slapping it across Robby’s mouth. It was duct tape. He picked Robby up in both hands and bundled him to the car, tossing him into the back seat and climbing in next to him. Someone opened the rear and Robby was aware of the other man rolling Coach’s body into the back and covering it with a woolen blanket. The hatch closed. The second man climbed in next to Robby. Elisabeth got into the front seat. The car began to drive over the uneven road.

“We’re taking you to your house,” said Elisabeth, turning to face him, her elbow thrown over the back of her seat. She was smiling, just as she’d smiled at him on the athletic field. As if she hadn’t just fired a bullet into a man’s back. “To Chesa Madrun. I’m sorry about your coach. We couldn’t have him talking to anyone. I could see that he recognized me. You don’t have to worry about anything. Soon your mother will be here, too. Then we can tell what this is all about. Are you going to cooperate?”

Robby nodded. He wasn’t scared anymore. The last gunshot had done something to him. He felt as if he no longer had any emotions. He was like one of the zombies he saw on television, all cold inside but possessed of a single, all-important purpose.

They drove in silence. Robby watched the familiar sights pass. Ten kilometers outside Pontresina, they turned onto a private road that climbed into the forest, making a series of sweeping curves until finally reaching a plateau offering a view down into the valley. Robby had seen it a hundred times, yet for some reason it looked different. Maybe it was him.

He caught sight of the tower and then they were at the Chesa Madrun.

They parked in the garage. Elisabeth had a key for the elevator. This bothered him tremendously. How did she get it? Who gave it to her? They took him to the third floor. She walked with him to his bedroom, holding his hand as if he were a toddler.

“Viktor is going to stay with you,” she said, her voice full of forced kindness. “He’s going to be your friend. If you need anything, ask him. I want you to be a good boy. Do as you’re told and everything will work out fine. You’re smart. You know what this is about. Do as we say and you’ll be back at school Monday.” She kissed him on the cheek. “You’re my good boy. Tschuss.”

“Tschuss,” Robby whispered as she left the room.

Viktor used a church key to lock the door. He had hair white as snow and blue eyes. A pink scar pulled at the side of his mouth, making him look as if he’d just eaten something that tasted bad. He pulled out a chair from Robby’s desk and sat, placing his pistol on the desktop.

Robby climbed onto his bed, crossing his legs Indian style. It wasn’t a big room and it was hard not to stare at Viktor. There were three shelves above the desk and on them were Robby’s toy soldiers, hundreds of them. They’d belonged to his father and his father before him. They were fashioned from iron and expertly painted. One shelf was for Napoleon and his men. The next was for Wellington and the British. The top shelf was for Blücher, who was German and without whose cavalry Wellington would never have defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. Waterloo was in Belgium. All this his father had taught Robby as they’d played with the soldiers hour after hour on snowy winter afternoons.

Viktor picked up one of the soldiers and examined it.

“That’s a hussar,” said Robby. “Do you speak English?”

“Little,” said Viktor.

“You can have him.”

“Thank you, but…” Viktor replaced the soldier on the shelf.

Robby smiled. The thought came to him again that he had changed. Over and over, he saw Coach’s hand drop to the snow, as effortlessly as if he were some kind of toy that had been unplugged. Was that all dying was—being unplugged? It didn’t sound so scary. The only thoughts he’d ever had about death concerned his mother. He loved her more than anything. He didn’t want her to die.

He told himself he was like those zombies. He had no feelings. Nothing could hurt him. He was driven by one motivation and one motivation only.

He had to get free.

He had to save his mother.

*****

I came for the football tickets,” said Harry Mason.

“Get my car in shape and I’ll buy you a season pass.”

“Box seats?”

“In the trainer’s lap.”

“I’d set him straight, that’s for sure.”

Simon introduced Harry Mason to Vika, calling her Ms. Brandt, as she preferred to be known to strangers. Harry was a lifelong Labourite, but he had a traditional love of queen and country, and all things royal. There was no telling the extent of the fawning if he learned she was a blue blood.

“What are you doing with him?” Harry demanded of her.

“Mr. Riske is helping me sort some matters out,” Vika explained diplomatically.

“Good luck with that,” said Harry with a roll of the eyes, and they all had a laugh.

“I think I like Mr. Mason,” said Vika.

“No better man,” said Simon, giving his shoulder a hug, and Harry blushed three shades of red.

The Daytona was brought up from the garage. Harry spotted the damage from Simon’s collision with the hay cart. He gave his employer a nasty look. “Not again.”

“Couldn’t be avoided,” said Simon. “There’s a decent garage in Cap d’Ail, ten minutes down the road, that handles most of the high-end trade in these parts. They’re waiting for you. Anything you need is yours. But Harry, it’s not the cosmetics I’m concerned about as much as the performance. I need to soup this baby up. Give me everything you can find.”

“You have my word. Dare I ask why?”

“You daren’t,” said Simon. “You have until tomorrow morning. Do whatever it takes.”

“What kind of car exactly are you wanting to beat?”

“Bugatti Veyron.”

Harry’s face soured as if Simon had just recommended a brand of blended scotch.

“My feelings exactly,” said Simon.

“One thousand horsepower, sixteen cylinders…It’s not a car, it’s a rocket ship. There’s no beauty in that beast.”

“He can’t use anywhere close to all that horsepower without flying straight through a curve. Give me a car that will keep me close. I’ll outdrive the man.”

“I’ll see what I can do.” Harry climbed into the Daytona, pulled his cap low on his forehead, and put the car in gear. He made the loop around the Place du Casino, gunning the engine as he went up the hill.

“That was for you,” Simon said to Vika.

“I find the Irish so colorful. Don’t you?”

“That’s one way to describe them.”

They entered the hotel. Glancing to his right, Simon observed a familiar face in the shadows of the Bar Américain. A tanned gargoyle with cropped silver hair in search of his senator’s toga. Simon freshened his pace and accompanied Vika to her room.

“I’m arranging for our doctor to visit Elena,” she said as they stood at her door.

“She should be in the hospital, but I understand her wishes. I’d be scared, too.”

Vika turned to face him, hands clasped at her waist. “I’m sorry if I was hard on you earlier.”

“Don’t be. You weren’t.” Simon didn’t need any woman feeling sorry for him for any reason. “Stay in your room. It might look safe out there, but it’s not. Whoever killed your mother knows you’re here. They followed you to the crash site yesterday. They followed you to the apartment last night. You’ve learned that, right?”

Vika nodded.

“Just in case,” Simon went on, “I’m putting a valet at the end of the hall. If he sees you, he’s to call me.”

“I’ve had enough of going out. Promise.”

Simon almost believed her. “I’ll be down in a bit to check on you. I’ve got some research to do. You can join me tonight at the casino.”

“That would be nice.”

“I have work to do and I don’t want to be distracted thinking about what kind of monkey business you’re getting up to.” He stepped closer to her. “We both know you’re not telling me everything.”

Vika said nothing, her eyes afire with indignation. The princess had been called out.

“Are you?” he continued.

“I’ve told you everything you need to know. Some things are, and always will be, private.”

“Not if it puts my life in jeopardy, too.”

Simon said goodbye. On the way to his room, he checked the status of the Apache app. The map of Monaco lit up the phone’s screen. He noted the position of the trackers and stopped cold. At last! After leaving the restaurant Brigantine, one of the men he’d tagged had proceeded to an address on the Rue Chaussée. What made that remarkable, though, was that one of the trackers who had moved out of range had reappeared and was presently at the same address. Simon zoomed in on the map, committing the street name and number to memory. Rue Chaussée 476. For once he had a real lead.

It was in a spirit of heightened enthusiasm that he regained his room. His phone buzzed before he could take off his jacket. It was Thierry Vallance, deputy director of Interpol.

“Allo, mon ami,” answered Simon, cautiously hopeful that Vallance had some useful information about the men who’d followed him from London.

“Winning anything?” said Vallance.

“Yeah, but not honestly.”

“Oh?”

“There’s a ring of cheats down here. Serbs, I think. You’ll know more when I do.”

“Nasty types. Be careful.”

“Good news?”

“I don’t know if it’s good news, but it is interesting. The men following you, Goran Zisnic and Ivan Boskovic, they are Croats, not Serbs. Either way, we know them well. They are in the drug trade. Part of the Solntsevo Brotherhood. Big-time traffickers and distributors. Heroin. Cocaine. Methamphetamine. The bad stuff. Large quantities only. They are active all over Europe and the Middle East, but they are based in London.”

Simon had been mistaken about them being part of an international gambling ring. The new information, however, did little to explain why they had been following him. “Drugs? Why would they be after me?”

“I cannot answer that question. Are you working on anything related?”

“Hold on. Where in the Middle East?”

“Dubai, of course. Beirut. Tripoli. Does that help?”

“Not sure.”

Since Simon had Vallance on the line, he read off the number of the Serbian license plate belonging to the car that had followed Stefanie Brandenburg’s Rolls the night she was killed.

“Don’t hold your breath,” said Vallance. “Serbia isn’t tied into our European Commission vehicle database. Normally, I’d need to go through their department of justice.”

“It’s a priority,” said Simon. “I’m certain they had a hand in murdering a woman.”

“Since when do you investigate murders? Isn’t that strictly police work?”

“Since yesterday,” said Simon, and Vallance knew better than to go any further.

“Understood. I’ll see if I can pull some strings.”

“Pull a lot of them. I owe you.”

Simon put down the phone. He poured himself a mineral water, finally took off his jacket, then sat down at the desk. He opened his laptop and pulled up the address for the house on Rue Chaussée on Google Maps, clicking on STREET VIEW. Located above the hill from the botanical garden, it was an older villa in good repair set back from the street, with a steep driveway leading to a single-car garage. It appeared to be a house like any other, a residence of a moderately successful man or woman. The paint was fresh, the windows clean. Simon studied the house from as many angles as possible. At some point, he was going to have to break in to gather the evidence he needed for Lord Toby Stonewood.

Finished with that task, Simon dug in his pocket for the cuff link he’d found in Princess Stefanie’s parking space and dropped it on the desktop. It rolled around in a tight circle and he picked it back up, studying it closely. Painted on an oval white enamel background was the tip of a broadsword, its base enveloped in flames, a five-pointed golden star where the handle should have been. To either side of the blade was a palm frond, and across the bottom, following the curve of the link, were two squiggly lines that looked like runes or some sort of Elven language that Simon might have found in the Tolkien books he’d once loved.

The design was an insignia of some kind, either from the military or a government organization. He was put in mind of his own cuff links from MI5, the ones that had failed him miserably at Les Ambassadeurs. He took a picture of the link with his phone and emailed it to Roger Jenkins, his contact at Box, the term insiders used to refer to the British security service, and asked for help.

Simon finished his water, then called Jenkins, to make sure the matter received the attention it deserved.

“What are you doing in Monaco?” asked Jenkins upon answering. “English lasses not good enough for you?”

“Aren’t you giving away trade secrets?” Simon asked, hiding his pique that MI5 possessed the technology to allow someone to locate him on a whim.

“We know a lot more than that. Nice room you have there, by the way.”

“You have not hacked my phone,” said Simon.

Jenkins laughed. “Not yet we haven’t. Better be a good chap or else.”

Simon informed Jenkins of the purpose of his call and all levity fled their discussion. Jenkins pulled up the email with the photo attachment. “Can’t say I recognize the insignia, but you’re right about one thing. Definitely military. With the sword and the star, I’m tempted to say Russia—rather totalitarian, don’t you think?—but the fronds throw me.”

“And the lines at the bottom? It’s a foreign alphabet. I’m sure.”

“I was just looking at those. Sumerian? Babylonian? Could be window dressing—you know, artistic flair.”

“Doubtful.”

“You check the back for an inscription?”

“A what? Damn it all! Hold on a sec.” Simon scrambled to examine the underside of the cuff link. Jenkins had been smart to ask him to look. There was something. Again the runes. Four markings, two of which repeated. Simon took a picture using his flash and emailed it posthaste.

“Let me take this round. Someone’s sure to pick it out.”

“Could it be Serbian Cyrillic?”

“Serbian? The plot thickens.” Jenkins hemmed and hawed. “Don’t think so. It isn’t Cyrillic at all. Anything else we can help with?”

Simon thanked him and asked him to do his best to obtain a speedy reply. He’d barely hung up when the phone buzzed again. He didn’t recognize the number. French country code. Nice city code. “Yes?”

“Mr. Riske. My favorite mechanic. Time for a drink? I’ve got some news about the time trial that might interest you.”

It was the gargoyle from the Bar Américain. Dov Dragan.

Simon needed a moment before giving his answer.

*****

King of the world!” shouted Martin Harriri after he’d snorted a quarter gram of cocaine off the hooker’s cleanly shaved mons veneris. He rolled off the king-sized bed and stumbled naked to the window. A steady rain fell on Hyde Park. Mist hung low over the green canopy. “What do they call that again?” he asked, pointing to the blue finger of water barely visible in the center of the park.

“The Serpentine,” said the hooker, who was raven-haired, busty, and gorgeous. “Give me another, darling.”

“On the table. Have all you want.”

She rubbed his back and kissed him. She was from Latvia or Estonia or someplace that escaped Martin. He freed a magnum of Cristal Rosé from the ice bucket, guzzling what remained from the bottle. His heart was beating madly and he was having trouble keeping everything straight. The problem with coke was that the more you did, the more you wanted to do, and the more you wanted to do, the more you needed to do just to get back to where you were a few minutes before. Supply wasn’t a problem. He’d come to the hotel equipped to hide out for as long as necessary. There was an ounce in the desk and another kilo back at his apartment. The apartment was out of bounds for the moment. He couldn’t go anywhere until he knew that matters were settled with the Solntsevo Brotherhood.

“Eric!” he yelled into the next room. “Call room service and get us another bloody mags.” “Mags” for magnum, which the Dorchester on Park Lane was offering for one thousand pounds a bottle.

There was no response. Martin staggered into the drawing room. The place was a shambles. Clothing strewn over the furniture. Dirty dishes littering the tables. Half-empty glasses smeared with lipstick.

“Eric?”

His friend’s head peeked out from the corner of the sofa. A girl lay on top of him. They were both passed out. Martin vaguely remembered giving them a Xanny to chill. Had they eaten the entire plank? He’d been going for fifty-odd hours himself and considered seriously whether it was time for him to take a Xanax, too, and let the party come to its ceremonious conclusion.

Martin glanced back into the bedroom, where Bella was chopping a line for herself. He stared at her naked body. Those tits! There was no point in stopping while there were still ample party supplies. He called room service and ordered another magnum of champagne, a tin of caviar, and, for the hell of it, an order of eggs Benedict, though the thought of eating made him want to retch.

There was a knock at the door and he thought that was damned swift, even for the Dorchester. He wrapped a towel around his waist and opened the door.

Two men stood there. Both wore dark suits and white shirts. One had a cast on his left wrist. The other’s face was bruised, one eye swollen. They could have been brothers. Simon Riske would have recognized them as the men who’d followed him into the mountains two days earlier, Goran Zisnic and Ivan Boskovic, and whom he’d just learned were two of London’s most notorious drug lords.

“You won’t ask us in?” said Goran.

“Come in. Come in, my friends,” said Martin, throwing open the door, thinking only vaguely that there was no reason for them to be here…and how the hell did they know where he was, anyway?

Ivan followed Goran into Martin’s terrace penthouse. “How much they charge? For this?”

“Per day? Ten thousand. But if you book it for a week, they cut you a break.”

“Ten thousand,” said Goran, walking through the rooms as if he owned the place. “And still you can’t pay us.”

“You have the car,” said Martin. “That settles our business until I make things right. It’s only a few hundred thousand pounds. The car’s worth a few million. Relax.”

“No car,” said Ivan.

Martin only half heard him. He was headed into the bedroom and straight to the mound of cocaine on the desk, lowering his head and snorting it without the aid of a straw or rolled-up banknote. Had Ivan said “No car”? What did he mean by that? Martin had told them where to find the Daytona as well as about Simon Riske’s plan to drive it to Monaco for the Concours d’Élégance. All they had to do was take it back. Had they miffed that up somehow?

Determined to find out, Martin raised his head from the desk in time to meet Goran’s fist straight on. He felt his nose break and saw stars, falling to his knees as blood rushed from his nostrils and warmed the back of his throat. He dropped his head and spat a fat red gob onto the carpet.

Rough hands lifted him to his feet. Goran handed him a washcloth. Dazed, Martin pressed it against his ruined nose. Behind him, Ivan was talking to Bella in a common language. She was from Croatia…That was it. She kissed him twice, once on each cheek, then gathered her clothing and fled the room.

“What do you mean ‘No car’?” Martin demanded, trying to regain some measure of respect.

“You tell him we were coming?” asked Goran.

“Riske? What do you mean? Tell him about you? Of course not.”

“He sees us. He does this to Ivan. I wrecked my Audi. Nice car. I think you told him we are coming.”

“Slow down,” said Martin in an effort to make sense of it all. “Where is the Daytona?”

“Who the fuck knows?” said Ivan.

“You didn’t steal it from him?”

“We don’t steal nothing,” said Goran heatedly. “We take what is ours…what you owe us.” He approached Martin with a smile. “We are here today in spirit of friendship. You got ten thousand a day for this place, you got the two hundred thousand you owe us.”

“Three hundred thousand,” said Ivan from the drawing room. “Don’t forget the car.”

“Not insured,” said Goran, with a shrug of irritation. “Three hundred thousand.”

Martin looked around the spacious suite. “This? This is credit. My father’s account. He stays here all the time.”

“Get cash from hotel.”

“I can’t. Maybe a thousand pounds from the front desk. Come on, Goran. Do a line. Make yourself a drink. Calm down. Life is good. Let’s settle this like gentlemen.”

Martin saw Bella and her friend finish dressing and leave. Ivan stood near the couch, facing Eric. Suddenly, Eric’s hands shot in the air. There came a muffled cry of distress. Ivan was holding a pillow over Eric’s face, leaning on him with considerable effort. Before Martin could protest, Goran slugged him in the stomach. He bent double.

“Last chance.”

“Five thousand in my jacket,” said Martin after he’d gotten his breath. “Eric has a few thousand, too. That’s all.”

Martin watched as Ivan moved away from the couch. He was holding the pillow and coming toward him.

“Eric?” he said. “Are you okay? Eric?”

“No,” said Ivan. “He not okay. Not ever again.”

Martin began to cry. Panic overtook him. Until now, a voice had been telling him that he had nothing to worry about. He was the son of a billionaire. He was rich. If he’d bought too much cocaine without paying, it was a matter they could rectify. After all, they were gentlemen.

He’d been wrong. Goran and Ivan were going to kill him. Even in his stupor, he knew enough to be deathly frightened.

Martin dashed toward the drawing room. Goran stopped him without difficulty, pinning his arms behind him. Goran said something to Ivan, who dropped the pillow and went to the desk, opening the top drawer and taking out the baggie of cocaine.

“Take it,” said Martin between sobs. “That and the cash. The car is in Monaco. Get it there. He’s doing a time trial this weekend. Steal it from the garage. Piece of cake.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Please.”

Ivan opened the baggie and peered inside. “We don’t do drugs. Drugs for weak people. Idiots. People like you.” He dug his fingers into the powder and removed a handful.

“Eat it,” said Goran. “You like it so much.”

“It’s too much,” said Martin. “I can’t.”

Goran held him tighter as Ivan forced his mouth open and rammed his fingers inside it, depositing a fistful of the white powder. Martin fought and fought, but finally he swallowed, gagging. He felt his heart jump. His vision cleared. For a moment, he felt better, even that he might come out of this okay. Then Ivan put another handful into his mouth. He swallowed quickly this time, thinking it might not be so bad after all. As soon as they left, he’d drink a gallon of water and call the hotel doctor. Then he’d make himself throw up.

Ivan dumped all that was left of the baggie into his hand and pushed it into Martin’s mouth. Martin’s cheeks flushed and he felt himself growing hot. In less than a minute, he’d consumed more than an ounce of high-quality cocaine. A toxic amount. His head began to pound and there was a terrible pressure behind his eyes.

Ivan dropped the empty baggie onto the ground. Goran released Martin. He fell onto the bed, onto the cool sheets. His heart was beating like a jackhammer, the rush of blood in his veins deafening. He was hot. Too hot. His forehead felt as if it were afire. Cheeks, too. He tried to sit up and the muscles in his back spasmed. There was something warm filling his mouth. He turned his head and frothy white liquid poured onto the sheets, gushing out of him like water from a broken hydrant.

The pounding in his chest grew faster still. The roar in his ears louder.

It was hard to draw a breath.

And louder still.

Oh Lord, he was dying.

And then the pounding stopped.

Martin looked at Goran and exhaled.

It was all better.

Eyes wide open, he fell onto the sheet. Dead.

Goran looked at Ivan. “You ever been to Monaco?”

Ivan shook his head. “Fuck no.”

“What do you think? That car really worth two million?”

“More.”

Goran put his hand on Ivan’s shoulder as they walked to the door. “This time that son of a bitch won’t know we’re coming.”

*****