by Dale Nelson
The trip to Cannes would be just under two hours, which would put him there in the early evening. That was a perfect time to begin scouting the hotel, as it would be full with dinner traffic. Jack put the pedal down and stepped through the gears, accelerating onto the highway and feeling the Maserati’s engine begin to stretch its legs and pull away.
He merged at just under a hundred.
God, he loved this job.
Rusty set up Jack with a villa rented under the Peter Ramsey alias that was a five-minute drive to the hotel. He changed into a cream-colored summer-weight suit, a blue gingham shirt, and a cotton, rust-colored pocket square that had been firmly pressed into exacting creases. He walked back down to the carport to the Maserati. The car was an extravagance, true, but it was also part of his cover. One didn’t drive up to one of the world’s exclusive hotels in a Peugeot and expect to blend into the scenery. This was Cannes, and if Jack was going to fade into the background, he had to look like he belonged in it.
To say that the Carlton Intercontinental was merely one of the most famous hotels in the world was to fundamentally misrepresent the grandeur of the place almost at the molecular level. So to was that an understatement of its importance to French culture. The Carlton was the epicenter for the Cannes International Film Festival, and for a few weeks in May, it was the axis upon which the film industry spun. The InterContinental had more in common with the Palace at Versailles than it did the run-of-the-mill luxury hotels that it shared geography with on the Boulevard de la Croisette.
Jack approached the hotel on the two-lane, palm-lined boulevard that ran along the beachfront. As he neared the Carlton, he spotted the gaudy pink-and-white signs advertising the Hassar diamond exhibition beginning its run on the twenty-eighth of July. Jack pulled off the boulevard into the U-shaped carport, dotted with palms. A maroon-jacketed valet was at his door instantly as the car stopped, asking if Jack was a guest of the hotel. Jack knew just enough French to say that no, he was simply here to dine, and handed the valet his keys. The valet accepted the keys with a disinterested air and welcomed Jack with the arrogant hospitality that was so singularly French. As Jack walked toward the entryway, he spied a nuclear orange Lamborghini Aventador angle parked in the upper left corner of the carport. The exhibition space was directly behind it. He took a moment, apparently to admire the car, as he slowly slid his valet ticket into his trouser pocket.
The single showroom extended out from the hotel’s northwest corner. The salon had floor-to-ceiling windows, though gaudy pink fabric awnings overshadowed them. Each awning had a message announcing Hassar’s pending exhibition. The awning extended to entirely cover the short patio, letting only a slit of light through. He could just make out the outline of a door. Jack made note of this too. A waist-high concrete wall separated the patio from the street and the awning. The patio was elevated above the sidewalk by several feet and connected to it by a long ramp.
Jack made a final pass over this with his eyes and committed it to memory. Thirty seconds total. The valet pulled his car away, and Jack stepped across the asphalt patch and into hotel, guided by a doorman with an extended arm.
Walking into the hotel, Jack ran down the checklist in his mind. The show opened in six days.
Task one: case the hotel. He had to learn the layout, the security, and the staff patterns intimately.
Task two: find the competition. He needed to figure out what their approach would be so that he could try to guess when they were going to make their attempt. At this stage, only Gabrielle would be inside the hotel. If he could make her, he could start figuring out their plan and reverse engineer it.
Task three: plan his own approach and escape. Reginald was probably right. Operating alone, this would have to be smash and grab. Jack would probably be fleeing to a chorus of alarms followed by a command performance of police sirens, and he would be captured by the many exterior cameras. He’d have to keep his face covered until he was about a block away, and that would be conspicuous. Additionally, his take would be limited to what he could fit in a briefcase or backpack.
Gentleman Jack Burdette stepped into InterContinental’s foyer and took in the lobby.
The lobby was both exquisite and, oddly, less grand than he expected. Built in 1911, the interior style and furnishings were styled after France’s Belle Époque period—what everyone who wasn’t French would call Victorian. The walls and floor-to-ceiling columns that lined the walkways were a regal white, now pinkish-orange in the setting sun. The floors were a diamond pattern of creamy marble with a wide, tan marble outline. Walkways of tan marble, flanked by columns, connected the various sections of diamond-patterned floor. The concierge and reception desks occupied opposite corners of the entryway and were greatly understated in the typical fashion of European hotels.
Signs of a similar bright pink-and-white styling stood upon easels on the left side of the lobby, directing casual passers-by to the exhibition hall. There were four such signs precisely spaced in between the columns on the chance that someone would fail to see the first three and thus miss out on the exhibition of Ari Hassar’s finest. Jack paused a beat in the center of the foyer, pivoted, and walked toward to the concierge desk on his right.
The concierge greeted him in French, and Jack replied “good evening” in English, knowing that most cultures appreciated if you made the attempt to speak their native tongue, but the French took such pride in their mother tongue that it was an insult to their ears, if not their entire cultural heritage, to misspeak the language. If you were not fluent, it was best not to attempt it. The concierge responded in a beautifully accented English.
“I couldn’t help but notice,” Jack said with the attendant irony, “the Hassar Exhibition.” Jack reached into his pocket for a card wallet, drawing out an embossed business card on heavy blue bond. Gold filigree identified him as international wholesaler with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, and Milan. By the time Jack said, “Exhibition,” the card was in his hand, hovering just below eye level. He watched her eyes read the card and then he withdrew it with a magician’s flourish that drew a smile from the concierge.
“Do you have a ticket?”
“Unfortunately, I do not. I was here on business...in as much business as one conducts in Cannes,” he said with a knowing smile that she returned. “I’m here to meet a colleague and noticed the signs and wanted to enquire about getting a ticket.”
The concierge clasped her hands together. “I am sorry, sir, but it is a private event. It is invitation only.”
He leaned in, placing a single hand on the counter and stage-whispered conspiratorially, “How does one go about an invitation?”
The concierge smiled softly, apologized, and said it was not possible. “I’m afraid these were all coordinated well in advance.”
“So, there’s nothing we can do?”
“Well,” she said with a sly smile, “Mr. Hassar is going to do a walk-through on Monday morning before the show opens. I suppose you could ask him yourself.” She smiled again politely, but in a way that said the conversation was over and that she had actual work to do.
Jack had no expectation that it would work, but it was worth a shot.
Jack thanked her for her time, placing a twenty Euro note in her hand with his right and placing his left atop hers, appearing to be an affectionate handshake. He winked and turned on his heel. Jack strode across the lobby to the opposite corner where there was a small bar. That was the best place to post. Jack ordered a Campari and soda and then rotated in his chair so that he could face the entire lobby.
To maximize his time, Jack figured to work the first two of his three objectives in parallel. As he was figuring out how he was going to pull the job, Jack needed to also think how his team—ex-team, he corrected himself—would approach it.
He didn’t begrudge them the chance at an eighty-five-million-dollar take. Jack would’ve done the same in their position. But he couldn’t deny the surreal feeling of playing ag
ainst a group of people he’d worked closely with for many years.
Enzo would be the leader.
That pained Jack the most. The others were all good at what they did, and Jack enjoyed working with them, but their relationships were simply transactions. Enzo Bachetti, however, was one of the only true friends in Jack’s life, aside from Reginald. They first met in the Italian city of Torino. While the city was infamous for its organized crime, it was positively famous for its tradition of thievery. Jack and Enzo met in the mid-nineties, both on the run from pasts they’d just as soon forget. They found a kinship in stealing jewels, racing cars, and drinking grappa.
Il Orologiaio. That’s what they called Enzo in Torino. The Watchmaker.
When Enzo turned to crime and reapplied his exacting precision, patient hands and considerable skill to safecracking, his occupation stuck with him, as did the name. Criminals loved nicknames.
Jack shook his head as though that would dismiss the memory and forced him to focus.
How would Enzo approach this?
Enzo and Gaston would be the inside team. They would most likely move in at night and hide until the exhibition staff brought the jewels in. The hotel security systems were professional grade but not bank quality, and Gaston could easily disarm them. They would have to come in from the street. The lobby was too well lit and under constant observation by the staff unless they were trying a Trojan Horse play in hotel or service uniforms. Jack reconsidered his assessment of their play. Gaston was a native speaker and thought fast on his feet. A Trojan Horse removed the complexity of the alarm system, which would give them more time on the inside. He made a mental note to think through this more thoroughly when he returned to the villa.
He’d never had to plan a job where he was racing against another team before, and he found himself second-guessing his assessment of their plans. You could generally guess what the police would do and how, as the patterns of law enforcement were nearly universal.
He needed to focus on Gabrielle.
Gabrielle’s job was recon and intelligence. She would map the interior of the hotel, describing the positioning of staff and noting their shift changes and would make every effort to get into the exhibition itself. Enzo and Gaston would need her to describe the interior layout of the hall and the guards’ positioning.
Gabrielle Eberspach was the daughter of a Bavarian father and a northern Italian mother, both descendant from nobility and readily made that known, not so much in word as in deed. Gabrielle grew up straddling the Alps—her parents separated when she was young—and spent much of her teenage years at a Swiss boarding school where she majored in skiing and modeling. Gabrielle’s father, an industrialist, eventually grew tired of her jet- setting at the expense of his pocketbook—despite having plenty to spare, but he was German so he abhorred flash and waste—and made her choose which parent she would live with. Offended at the prospect of having to choose between either of them, Gabrielle chose her mother to spite Heinrich Eberspach, who then severed all ties—filial and fiduciary—with German efficiency.
Jack didn’t know exactly how she came into the criminal life, but he knew that her mother didn’t have the ability to afford her own lifestyle, let alone Gabrielle’s, and that well very quickly ran dry when her father cut her off. Gabrielle was beautiful but was a little too voluptuous to make it as a model in the “heroin-chic” late 90s. Likely, she got involved with the wrong kind of man, and he showed her how she could maintain the lifestyle she wanted by being a little less than honest about how.
Jack spotted a leggy brunette in a green dress. She was walking with a man who Jack guessed was at least fifteen years her senior, but he carried it well, and the disparity wasn’t such that it was obvious she was playing to his vanity. Gabrielle was a blonde, but she often wore wigs or dyed her hair, and she used colored contacts. The woman steered the man toward the bar, and Jack’s pulse quickened. Jack grabbed his drink and made to leave.
They had crossed the lobby and were approximately halfway to him. The bar was becoming crowded, and there were several collections of mostly full tables between Jack and the rest of the lobby, but they hadn’t made him yet. He paid for his drink and kept his profile to the lobby so he could keep an eye on them without being totally exposed.
Jack looked around for the exits. The bar was in the back corner of the lobby with a few clusters of Belle Époque-style tables and chairs set on a farther orbit out from the bar. He thanked the bartender in French and made to leave, looking down at his phone to hide his full face. Jack maneuvered through the bar area, weaving around chairs, still with his face stuck in the iPhone. His pulse raced.
Jack chanced a look. He had to know whether he was made or not.
His eyes tracked up from the phone still held not far from his face.
The woman in the green dress and her older escort were right in front of him.
It wasn’t her.
Jack stared at the woman dumbly for a second, as if he was unsure of what to do next. He recovered his composure a moment later and stepped out of their way, apologizing in French. Jack exhaled. Bullet dodged, but he let the feeling sink in.
Seven
Jack returned to the Carlton the next morning.
He wore the same suit as he had the night before, only now sporting a lavender shirt and a striped purple tie. Jack also wore a pair of Persol Steve McQueens that he kept on indoors as he scanned the lobby. Satisfied, he removed the glasses, folded them, and slid them into the suit’s breast pocket. Jack ordered a coffee from the bar and found a seat in the lobby that gave him a comprehensive view of the place. Over the next two hours, he pretended to read a copy of yesterday’s Le Monde while he observed the lobby and committed it to memory. There was no sign of Gabrielle yet. Jack broke at eleven for an early lunch, which he took at the Carlton’s restaurant. Jack opened his leather-bound folio and made notes, transcribing everything he’d discerned regarding security, the staff, their shifts, and the flow of the place. He also sketched the lobby, noting the exits and the hallway leading to the exhibition salon.
After lunch, Jack decided to take some chances.
He followed the equally ubiquitous and ostentatious pink-and-white placards right into the exhibition salon. The doors were closed but unlocked, and Jack could hear work on the other side of them. He opened the double doors and stepped through. The salon was well lit, even with the white curtains drawn, as three sides of it consisted of large French windows. The column motif of the lobby repeated here, though the floors were different. These were parquet as opposed to marble, which Jack suspected was for dancing. Jack counted six workmen assembling secure display cases. A number of the cases had already been completed and were positioned around the columns and along the walls. Jack was intimately familiar with this model—the glass was shatterproof and was hardened against both blunt force like a hammer strike as well as being resistant to piercing, such as from a pick or even a small-caliber bullet. Emptying the cases would take entirely too long, unless he made his move at night and they left them unguarded and they left the stones in the cases overnight. Both scenarios Jack discounted out of hand.
Burdette took in the entire room, committing it all to memory.
“Qu’est-ce que vous voulez?” one of the workmen asked, lazily, more annoyed at having to ask what the interruption was about than at the interruption itself. He was a round-faced man with wiry brown hair, cut close, and a very deep tan. The room smelled of mineral oil. The workman held his mouth open in a half-exasperated expression, as if expecting Jack’s answer to come from his own lips as much as Jack’s. When Jack didn’t immediately respond, the Frenchman jerked his head and popped his lower jaw, adding astonishment to his irritation.
Jack held up his hands and said, “Mon erreur.” Then, he took a tentative step backward, showing the angry Frenchman that he’d just realized his mistake.
The workman muttered, “Connard,” and went back to his work.
Jack closed the do
or behind him, smiling. The minute he’d spent looking around that room was more valuable than nearly any other intelligence he could’ve gathered today. He now knew the layout of the exhibition and the type of cases they’d be using. He would never have planned on smashing the cases to retrieve their contents, but knowing that wasn’t an option was helpful not only in forming his own plan but in trying to guess what the team would try. Gabrielle’s focus over the next few days would be to get inside that room and get as much detailed information about it as possible, if she hadn’t already, because that would formulate the foundation of their approach. Unless they had inside information as to where the jewels would be stored when they weren’t in the display cases, or if they planned to hit them in transit. The latter was certainly higher risk, and the former played to the team’s strengths. They had one of the trade’s foremost safe men, after all.
Jack returned to the lobby, found an unobtrusive chair, and quickly sketched the layout of the salon, noting the columns and the number of cases that were already constructed. From there, rough math would tell him about how many cases he could expect, and that would give Jack a sense of the overall volume he’d need to plan for.
After completing his sketch, Jack returned to surveillance.
He spotted Gabrielle shortly after two, and this time there was no mistaking it. She wore a white dress with large black dots that jealously hugged her curves, large sunglasses, and a wide-brimmed sun hat. Her hair was red, mostly likely a high quality wig. Jack wouldn’t have made her but for Gabrielle removing her sunglasses when she stepped inside. She took a seat in the center of the lobby, which gave her a relatively unobstructed view of the entire place. She was there for maybe five minutes before a man Jack placed in his mid-forties wearing a summer-weight navy suit approached her, offering his hand. Gabrielle accepted it, standing as she did. They exchanged short words, the corners of Gabrielle’s mouth turned up slightly at a timed and practiced smile. Then, the man waved an arm at the exhibition hall and guided her toward it.