The taxi dropped him at the train station in Dresden at eight in the morning. During the nine-hour trip from Dresden to Lucerne, Roberto filled the time making notes. There was a lot to do now.
His flat in Lucerne was fully furnished. A biweekly maid service ensured it was always clean and ready should he suddenly arrive. He sent a text to the service, saying he was coming. That text would initiate a quick cleaning and a fully stocked refrigerator and pantry. The service knew exactly what to buy for his arrival – his list was always on file.
Next he sent an email from the account of the company that owned the Lucerne condo. It advised the security director of his apartment building that a man named Roberto Maas would be arriving later that day. As the train clacked down the tracks, he handled a dozen other tasks and projects that had suddenly become necessary thanks to his dead-of-night departure from Prague. He methodically listed each and dealt with it.
The only things he’d wanted but couldn’t bring tonight were the artifacts in his living room cabinets. He enjoyed his collection of ancient things, but especially loved these particular golden objects. They were his prizes – they were unique, one of a kind. He’d arrange for a lawyer in Prague to pick them up in the next week or so. They’d be shipped to a law firm in Geneva and stored at the bank where his other antiques were kept. Once things settled down, Roberto would put them in his apartment once again.
By the time the train stopped at the Swiss border, he was checking his investment accounts at brokers in London and Geneva. When Roberto Maas presented his Swiss passport to the officer, he received a friendly “welcome home” in response. Piece of cake.
As with his other three homes, Roberto’s flat in Lucerne was complete – clothes hanging in the closet, everything ready for a visit on a moment’s notice. The few who needed a story were told a vague tale of a young man who was fabulously wealthy thanks to an inheritance from deceased parents. He was no different than a thousand other outrageously rich people who maintained homes worldwide, staff standing ready should the master arrive on a whim. Roberto was just a lot younger than most.
A different shell corporation owned each of his homes. The name Roberto Maas showed up nowhere. The only friends he ever cultivated were ones where he worked. No one knew where he lived or anything about his personal life. And that was good, since up to now the various identities he assumed really didn’t have personal lives at all. They were fictitious.
Roberto enjoyed being in Switzerland in autumn. As the taxi maneuvered the broad avenue around the water to the high-rise where his flat was located, Lake Lucerne shimmered in the late afternoon sun. It was gorgeous and the day couldn’t have been nicer.
Thanks to his earlier mail, the doorman was expecting him. Roberto merely flashed his passport to prove his identity and took the elevator upstairs. The maids had left the drapes open wide in anticipation of his arrival. He opened his patio doors and stepped outside. Lake Lucerne lay below, fringed by a panoply of trees and bushes in striking fall colors. Sunlight reflected off the majestic snowcapped peaks of Mount Pilatus and the Swiss Alps far in the distance. Not much impressed Roberto Maas, but this was one sight that always did. Of all his homes, this was his favorite, and he was glad to be back.
Roberto walked to the kitchen and opened the freezer. Pleased to find his martini glass and vodka bottle there, he retrieved both and poured the chilled liquid into his frozen glass. He peeled a lemon and created a twist.
The vodka was Stolichnaya Elit. He drank it as a tribute to his Russian heritage. But it wasn’t the regular Stoli Elit in its easily recognizable slim, tall bottle. It was the Himalayan Edition, costing three thousand dollars per bottle. Made from pure mountain water taken from underground springs, it was the most expensive vodka on the planet. The freezers of each of Roberto’s homes always had a bottle ready for his arrival. And there were a couple more in the pantry in case he got really thirsty.
He carried his martini to the patio table, came back inside and walked to a cigar humidor the size of a dormitory refrigerator. Its motor hummed quietly as it maintained a steady seventy degrees humidity. Roberto opened the door and retrieved a 2001 Cohiba Edicion Limitada cigar, a cutter and wooden matches. Seated at the table, he clipped the cigar, lit it and exhaled a satisfied puff. Each of these wonderful Cubans cost over fifty US dollars. No matter. Roberto Maas had the money, and he had the best. He sat back and took his first sip of the martini. It made him cough – it always happened that way, and he laughed at himself every time it did.
Life is good. Look at me – a twenty-nine-year-old centimillionaire, enjoying a cigar and a martini on the twentieth floor of a condo I own, overlooking Lake Lucerne and the Alps. A new identity thanks to my preparations for just such an event, and a potential threat eliminated.
He would like to have known who the Russians were and how they’d found him. But that wasn’t going to happen; he wouldn’t risk his new identity in a search for the people trying to kill off his last one. His security precautions and contingency plans, painstakingly prepared years before and constantly updated, were excellent. It was highly unlikely whichever organization had figured out who Juan Carlos Sebastian was could ever link that man to the newly incarnated Roberto Maas. No need to spend time worrying about something that wasn’t likely to be a problem. And if someone did figure it all out, which could certainly happen, he would deal with it just as he had in Prague.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Two Years Later
Lucerne, 2009
Roberto Maas ended the call to London then spoke to his colleague across the room. “The closing’s set for Friday on the Bridgewater building. Do you want to fly over or should I?”
Philippe Lepescu glanced at the calendar on his phone. “If I go, I’ll need to come back that evening. I’ve got the football match in Geneva on Saturday. If your schedule allows it, I’ll pass this time.”
“Perfect. I’ll stay the weekend.”
“Really? I can’t believe it!” Lepescu laughed and returned to his work. It was no secret that London was one of Roberto’s favorite places. And there was that British Airways flight attendant he’d met a few weeks back. Philippe would have been amazed if Roberto hadn’t wanted to go.
From the beginning of their business partnership the men had chosen to office together in one large upstairs room of the mansion Roberto had purchased for his headquarters. The three-story medieval building was located on the old city square facing the lake. Through floor-to-ceiling windows they could see the mountains standing majestically in the distance. The building’s ground-floor exterior was adorned with beautiful murals that caught the eye of tourists. As they snapped photos, almost no one noticed the small brass sign that said “Ciprian Investments.” A buzzer was nearby but little used. Despite his vast wealth and holdings, Roberto’s company had few visitors.
The business name had been chosen by Philippe to honor his deceased father Ciprian Lepescu, a proud Romanian gypsy who had been murdered by police when Philippe was five years old. At the time of his death the elder Lepescu was engaged in his trade – stealing – and made the mistake of setting off a silent alarm in a building he was burglarizing. When he crawled out through a hole he’d cut in the roof, five policemen shot first and asked questions later. For them, another rotten gypsy was out of their hair. For Philippe, his beloved daddy was gone and he would never forget it. The gypsy in him would avenge his father’s death somehow, somewhere down the line.
For years Philippe carefully hid his hatred for the authorities as he went through university, graduated and took a position at a major Swiss bank in Zurich. The genes he’d inherited from his gypsy parents accounted for his handsome, dark features and a quick mind. At the bank he’d progressed up the corporate ladder rapidly. By the time he was twenty-five he was second man in the side of the institution that managed the bank’s own portfolio of investments.
Three years ago Philippe had been sent to New York for a conference. In a rare stroke of fort
une, his first-class seat was next to that of Roberto Maas and they were both staying at the Plaza Athenee in Manhattan. On the plane the men chatted over cocktails and dinner and exchanged business cards. As they spent the week in New York, they met for drinks one night, dinner another, and ended up enjoying each other’s company.
Over time Philippe shared secrets with his new friend, considering himself lucky to have someone to talk with about the hatred that lay just beneath his polished veneer. He had been pleased to learn that Roberto, a very wealthy man only two years his senior, had the same disdain for authority. Roberto told how he’d been on his own for several years, having lost both parents in an automobile accident near their home in Luxembourg. After finishing university, so Roberto’s story went, he spent his time traveling the world, enjoying the good life and living off investment income.
Except for the part about his wealth, the story Roberto told Philippe was fiction. What was true was that Roberto was opening an office to be the headquarters for the management of his far-flung investments. He offered a second-in-command position to his new friend Philippe. Six months after these two young men met, they were working together. Today, two years later, they were close friends and colleagues with no secrets between them. At least Philippe thought so. Actually Roberto still had plenty of secrets. Philippe just didn’t know about them.
CHAPTER NINE
Roberto settled in easily to his new life in Switzerland. Unlike his previous incarnation as a bartender in Prague, he chose to put down roots this time. No longer would he be living in a cheap flat, ready to flee in a heartbeat should things turn against him.
The decision to be more visible – living in one of his owned houses and maintaining an office – came at a price. It meant Roberto had to be much more careful about his past. The night he left Prague, he’d abruptly cut off communications with the United States government people he’d known. That night had been a turning point; somehow he’d been careless enough that he might have been killed. He couldn’t be sloppy anymore. Now no one, not even his CIA employers, would know who or where Juan Carlos Sebastian was. His appearance had changed – different hair color and style, a neat mustache and beard, a more formal wardrobe – and his thought process had changed too. There would be no more mistakes.
It was a foregone conclusion Juan Carlos would eventually work again. Roberto thrived on the danger, intrigue and mystery associated with his other life. When he felt sufficient time had passed, he used a foolproof chain of encryptions to send a one-line email to his contact, his former lover at the US Embassy in the Czech Republic. It said, “Juan Carlos lives.”
Within two hours a response worked its way back through the same web of addresses. “Wondered what happened to you. Miss you at the bar. Other places too! Looking for work?”
“Always.”
As simple as that, the relationship restarted, although it was different this time. His American handler would never hear the name Roberto Maas or know he lived in Switzerland. She knew how to hire Juan Carlos Sebastian, but there would be no more face-to-face meetings as there had been in Prague. He was anonymous now. And his price had gone up. Even the assassination business had been affected by inflation.
Not long afterwards she had contacted him using prearranged signals. He received a one-word text. “Four.” That one word told him where to go and how to get his instructions. He responded “Oui.” Yes, he would accept the assignment.
Roberto sent Philippe a brief text saying he’d be out of the office the next day to handle some personal business. At six a.m. he boarded the train from Lucerne to Dijon, France, where he rented a car using the papers and identity of one Marcus Hildebrand. He drove the rental car aimlessly around the countryside for an hour. Certain no one was following him, he returned to the train station and dropped off the rental vehicle. He was in Paris ninety minutes later. He spent the afternoon reconnoitering the job he had accepted, and by midnight he was back in Lucerne via Lyon, France, finalizing a plan for the weekend.
Early Saturday he flew to Brussels as Roberto Maas then switched identities. Marcus Hildebrand took an express train to Paris. He ate an early lunch, strolled the neighborhood where his target lived, and confirmed that he had a dinner reservation at the Ritz. From his very predictable habits, Roberto knew dinner would be followed by several hours of drinking at one of the expensive strip clubs near the Arc de Triomphe. Everything seemed fine.
At ten p.m. he picked a lock on an empty apartment he’d found during his visit to Paris a few days ago. From its front windows he could clearly see into a dimly lit flat just across the tree-lined street and one floor down. It was a perfect place for his assignment. Roberto Maas, in Paris as Marcus Hildebrand, transformed back to the assassin Juan Carlos Sebastian for the evening.
He settled in to wait. An expensive rifle lay on the floor next to him, ready for use on a moment’s notice. Conditioned by years of practice, he sat quietly. Sometime after midnight a taxi dropped off a heavily intoxicated man in his sixties who unsteadily entered the building across the street. Soon lights came on in his second-story apartment and seconds later the man lay dead on the floor of his flat.
Juan Carlos put the rifle back on the floor, lowered the window he’d cracked and left the empty flat. The latex gloves he’d worn all evening were discarded at the train station. From the train he sent an email. “Done.”
On Monday the body of a high-ranking member of the Palestine Liberation Organization was discovered in his Paris flat. The rifle that killed him turned up in the empty apartment across the street. By then Roberto Maas was already working at his desk in Lucerne. He checked a bank account in Montserrat around lunchtime. His half-million-dollar fee had arrived.
There would be no further clues and no solution to the Paris murder. Another job completed successfully.
CHAPTER TEN
The two men proved to be perfect partners. The administrative skills Philippe Lepescu possessed blended perfectly with Roberto’s intuitive business sense. Roberto’s degree from university had been in languages, but his real talent lay in making deals. He was a natural at sensing when to buy, when to hold and when to sell. He would have made a great fund manager, but with his vast wealth Roberto didn’t have to work for others. He used his overt skills – his business acumen – solely for his personal benefit.
His covert skills – his marksmanship, cleverness in dispatching a person needing to be eliminated and the like – were specialties for which he found himself in frequent demand. There was more of that business than he could accept. Ciprian Investments took more and more of his time, but a part of him, the “Juan Carlos” part, loved the wet-ops work and the thrill that accompanied it. More often than not his employers got a “non” response to their coded requests for Juan Carlos’s services. At other times he disappeared from the office for a day or a week, handling his “personal business.” Philippe never questioned him. None of my business, Roberto’s partner thought.
As Roberto Maas’s fortune grew, Philippe’s followed suit. He had started with nothing, but after only a couple of years in partnership with Maas, Philippe had a personal net worth of more than three million dollars. Roberto gave him a small interest in most of the deals the company did. Philippe ran the numbers, did the due diligence, and offered suggestions and ideas. He hired the lawyers and accountants who inevitably were required to close complicated transactions in one of a dozen countries. Roberto always made the final call. But he trusted Philippe Lepescu more every day.
Trust was both a blessing and a curse for Roberto. Humans were social animals. Even the lowest of them had a basic need for socialization, friendship, companionship. Many people found it in marriage, others in lifelong relationships with one or two close friends. Philippe was closer to his partner than anyone else. They shared confidences and he would do anything for Roberto. And he was sure Roberto enjoyed his friendship too, but not in the same way. Roberto himself was different – often distant and icy. He could be c
old as a serpent, especially with people with whom he dealt in business. Roberto always smiled and joked with Philippe, but he sometimes felt it was forced – it didn’t come naturally. His partner was a man who played his cards close to the vest, a man who kept his feelings locked away inside. Or maybe he didn’t have any. Cold as ice, they called people like Roberto Maas.
Years ago when his father sold fifteen-year-old Slava Sergenko to the brothel in Moscow, the boy did in fact switch off his emotions. He suppressed the thoughts, feelings and desires that would allow him to be close to another person. Never again would he feel the shock, abandonment and despair that had engulfed him when his own father handed him over to a sex ring for money. No one would ever get close again. No one would ever hurt Roberto Maas that way again. But although the professional killer Juan Carlos Sebastian could perform his art without compunction, somewhere deep inside the feelings remained.
Roberto actually did care for Philippe. In no way was this a sexual thing. Roberto Maas had been down that road. He didn’t give a damn what other people did in private. Homosexual or heterosexual – he accepted the old adage “to each his own.” At this point in his life, sex was with a woman. Bought and paid for. No love, just lust. No feelings except the feelings that came with a satisfying climax. No commitment, no long-term connection, no nothing. Cold as ice. Always.
As his friendship with Philippe developed, Roberto grew more and more concerned about the strange concept of letting someone else get close. Something inside him wanted, needed a friend. Desperately. He enjoyed spending time with Philippe. He appreciated the man’s intelligence and his contribution to the company, but even more he was becoming genuinely interested in Philippe as a person … as a friend.
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