Crown Jewel
Page 1
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2019 by Christopher Reich
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Author photograph by Daniel Dinsmore Photography
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ISBN 978-0-316-34236-0
E3-20190214-DA-NF-ORI
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Christopher Reich
Newsletters
To Liz Myers and John Trivers
Friends
Amicus certus in re incerta cernitur
Chapter 1
Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz
Engadine, Switzerland
The men were watching again.
There were two of them, up by the monastery on the hill overlooking the athletic field. They stayed in the shadows of the gallery, popping out to take a photograph, then ducking back again. The boy could tell they thought he hadn’t spotted them.
But he had.
He always did.
“Look out!” someone shouted. “Robby! Tackle him!”
Robby returned his attention to the scrimmage in time to see the scrum half—it was Karl Marshal, the best player on the team—lower his shoulder and plow into him. Robby’s feet left the ground and he landed flat on his back, his wind knocked out of him, sure he’d never take a breath again. The other players ran past, laughing.
“Might as well make a mud castle while you’re down there.”
“Only one you’ll ever have.”
He heard a whistle. Karl Marshal had scored a try.
Robby climbed to his feet and wiped the dirt from his face. When he’d regained his breath, he set off down the field, limping at first, then shaking it off and running as fast as he could. He was small for a sixth former and thin, with pale skin, a mop of curly blond hair, and questioning blue eyes. His size didn’t bother him. His father was tall. One day he’d grow. He might not be as big as the others yet, or as strong, but he was no quitter. One of his teachers had remarked upon his determination and called him “Das Krokodil.” For a few days, the nickname stuck. He liked being called “Krok.” A week later, everyone had forgotten it.
He caught up to the game in time to run into a ruck. He got knocked down two more times, but he caught a pass and almost tackled Karl Marshal. Robby was practical. He knew it would be foolish to expect anything more. Finally, the whistle blew. The scrimmage ended.
Walking back to the athletic center, he glanced at the monastery. It was nearly dusk, the gallery cloaked in shadow. The men were nowhere to be seen. Robby wasn’t concerned one way or the other. People had been watching him his entire life. The best thing to do was simply to ignore them.
It wasn’t until later that night as he got ready for bed that he thought about the two men again. He realized that this was the fourth time in the past week or so that he’d seen them. One had a large nose that looked like an eagle’s beak and black hair. The other was bald and never took his hands out of his pockets. Robby had exceptional vision. It ran in the family. It bothered him that they stayed so far away. Farther than the distance prescribed by the school for journalists and photographers. This was odd, Robby concluded, in his methodical manner. “Rum,” Mr. Bradshaw-Mack, his English teacher, would say. “Very rum, indeed.”
Robby went to the window and peered outside. Down the hill, the lights from the village of Zuoz glowed warmly, a spot illuminating the tall, rectangular spire of the Protestant church. A crescent moon sat low in the sky and he could just make out the silhouette of the jagged peaks all around. The Piz Blaisun, the Cresta Mora, and, further west, near St. Moritz, the Corvatsch.
He closed the window, secured the lock, then crawled into bed. His roommate, Alain, was reading an Astérix comic book his father had sent him from Paris. Robby wished he had a father to send him comics, or, preferably, a book about rugby, which was his favorite sport. It was hard to be too sad, though, because he’d never really known his dad, and besides, he had a wonderful mother.
Robby picked up his phone and considered calling her. The more he thought about the watchers, the more they bothered him. He refused to use the word “scared,” because
people like Robby were not allowed to be scared. It was a question of setting the right example. He heard Alain snore and decided against calling. Good manners were part of that example, too.
Robby turned out the light and laid his head on the pillow. There was math first period tomorrow, then history, and rugby again after school. As he drifted off to sleep, his eyes opened for a second, even less, and he thought he saw a shadow in the window. The watchers. Maybe it was just a dream or a figment of his imagination. Either way, the image didn’t register. He turned over and fell into a deep slumber.
It had been a long day and a twelve-year-old boy got very tired.
Chapter 2
Les Ambassadeurs
London, England
Simon Riske did not like losing money.
Seated at the center of a card table in the high rollers’ room at Les Ambassadeurs, London’s most exclusive gaming establishment, he peeked at his cards, then lifted his eyes to the dwindling stacks of chips before him. He wondered how much longer his bad luck could continue.
“Well,” said Lucy Brown, seated at his shoulder so she could view his cards. “What do we do?”
“What do you think?”
“Both cards are different.”
“So they are.”
“Neither match the cards in front of the dealer.”
“And so?”
Lucy screwed up her face and Simon allowed her a moment to figure things out.
It wasn’t normal for players to discuss their hands, especially when large sums of money were at stake. But Lucy was young and blond and pretty, and upon sitting down, Simon had explained to all present that he would be teaching her a thing or two about poker. The other players—all male—had taken a peek (some discreet, some not so) at Lucy’s black dress, her figure, and her blue eyes. If anyone had voiced an objection, Simon hadn’t heard it.
“Fold?” said Lucy.
“Fold,” he said, sliding his cards to the center of the table.
“Darn,” said Lucy.
Simon had a more colorful word in mind. Instead, he offered his best “not to worry” smile and signaled for a drink: a Fanta for Lucy and a grapefruit and soda for himself. Alcohol and gambling were as combustible as matches and gasoline.
It was an ordinary evening at Les A (as the club was known to habitués). Downstairs, a lively crowd milled about the gaming tables, the atmosphere one of a posh Georgian country house. The play was spread evenly among roulette, blackjack, and baccarat. Slot machines were the province of the lower classes and strictly verboten.
But the real action took place in the private rooms on the second floor.
It had been Simon’s plan to observe from afar while explaining the rules of the game to Lucy. The idea vanished approximately five seconds after he witnessed a player win a five-thousand-pound pot on a weak hand. Being a modest and unassuming sort, Simon had reasoned that he could do better. That was two hours and twenty thousand pounds ago.
“Another hand,” said Lucy, cheerily. “Our luck’s bound to change.”
Simon looked at her expectant gaze, her adventurous posture. Lucy was twenty-three and gifted with what some might, in the polite confines of Les Ambassadeurs, call a curvy figure. Like most women her age, she liked showing off her assets. Simon’s relationship with her was purely platonic, somewhere between father and friend. It was nebulous territory. In fact, he was her employer. Lucy worked as an apprentice in his automotive repair shop, where she was learning to restore vintage Italian sports cars, primarily Ferraris, with a Lamborghini thrown in here and there. In a sense, she was his own restoration project. But that was another story.
As for himself, Simon was dressed in a black suit and white open-collar shirt, both fresh from the cleaner. His nails were neatly trimmed and he’d spent ten minutes scrubbing them with steel wool to clean the grease from beneath them. He collected cuff links, and tonight, for luck, he’d chosen his favorites, a pair he’d been given by MI5, the British security service, as a thank-you for a job undertaken on its behalf a year earlier. His eye fell on his puny stack of chips and he scowled. So much for talismans. His hair was in the sleekest order, cut short so in need of a brush, never a comb, which was the polite way to say that it was receding faster than the Greenland ice shelf. Unlike the man a few places to his left—a wan unsavory sort who’d taken too much of Simon’s money—he’d shaved and treated himself to a splash of Acqua di Parma. His bespoke lace-ups were polished, and only his beryl-green eyes shone brighter.
But all his finery couldn’t disguise his true nature. Simon had spent too much time on the wrong side of the tracks to ever be a real gentleman. Some things you could never wash from beneath your nails.
“Well?” Lucy demanded, her lip thrust out petulantly.
“That’s plenty for tonight,” said Simon. “We’ve done enough damage.”
“But you still have some chips.”
“The idea is to leave with a few in your pocket,” he said. “More rather than less.”
Lucy appeared crestfallen.
“There’s just enough to buy us a fancy dinner,” he continued. “How about the Ivy?”
“That’s for old people.”
“It’s the princes’ favorite place.”
“Exactly.”
Simon considered this, realizing that “old” for Lucy meant anyone over twenty-five. “How about fish-and-chips at the pub round the corner?”
“I’m not hungry.” Lucy crossed her arms and pouted. It was an inviting pout and Simon felt sorry for her boyfriend.
“One last hand,” he said. “But I mean it.”
Lucy brightened, clutching his arm and scooting closer. “We’re going to win. I know it!” She kissed his cheek and Simon said that was close enough and scooted her back a few inches.
It was then that the tenor of the evening took a dramatic turn.
Simon ponied up his chips. The cards were dealt. Simon’s were as miserable as usual. The players called and raised and called again. The dealer tossed out the last cards.
And that was when Simon saw it again. A flick of the wrist. A rustle of the sleeve. A flash of white. The player two seats to his left—the unkempt man who’d been winning the entire evening—was cheating. Twice now—Simon had caught it. The man was good, a professional, or “sharp,” in the parlance, but Simon knew a thing or two about cards himself, and about unfair advantages.
“What is it?” Lucy nudged him, sensing something amiss.
“Nothing.”
Lucy held his gaze and he gave her the subtlest of looks—eyes harder, jaw steeled—and she looked away, knowing better than to ask any questions. If he ever had a daughter, he hoped she’d turn out something like Lucy, though he’d never in his life allow her to go out dressed as she was.
Simon signaled to the server. “Jack Daniel’s,” he said. “Straightaway.”
Lucy tugged at his sleeve. “You said only a fool drinks while gambling.”
“Did I?”
Lucy nodded urgently.
“That was before we lost your annual salary.”
“Maybe we should go.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Not when we’re just starting to have fun.” He turned to the dealer. “Five thousand pounds…no, make it ten.”
The dealer shot a discreet glance at Ronnie, the casino boss, who stood at the door. Ronnie was a friend. He and Simon played on the same rugby team on Saturdays during the fall. He was forty, tall, and dapper in a white dinner jacket, red carnation in his lapel. A black Clark Gable with the same gambler’s mustache and rakish air. Ronnie nodded, shooting Simon a cautionary look, then left the room.
Ten stacks of chips came Simon’s way.
The server arrived with his cocktail. Simon stole it off the tray and downed it. “Another,” he said, returning the empty to the tray, flipping the server a fifty-pound chip for good measure. “And one for my friend, too.”
Lucy took a judicious step away from Simon. She’d worked wit
h him for three years. She knew his moods. She knew when a bomb was about to go off.
Simon noted the cheat shift in his chair, the corners of his mouth lift in anticipatory delight.
The dealer called for bets. Simon ponied up five hundred pounds, the minimum.
There were two ways this could go. He could wait and take matters into his own hands, or he could act now, expose the cheat, and let Ronnie sort things out.
Simon preferred the first choice. A confrontation in the alley followed by a full and frank exchange of views. He would take back his money and the cheat would pick himself up off the ground and get to the hospital to look after his missing teeth and broken bones.
But, of course, there was Lucy to think of.
The game progressed. For once, Simon had a decent hand. He called and raised and called and raised.
The dealer turned over the last card, known as “the river.” An eight of spades.
Simon was holding two kings and an eight of hearts. The eight of spades gave him two pair. His best hand all evening.
The room went quiet, the only noise the clack clack clack of the roulette ball skipping across the wheel in the outer room.
The player next to Simon tossed in his cards. “I’m out.”
“Raise two thousand pounds,” said Simon.
The man next to him tossed in his cards. “Out.”
“Call,” said the cheat, picking up four blue chips and tossing them into the pot.
It was the moment of truth.
“Two pair,” announced Simon. “Kings and eights.”
Simon’s eyes went to the cheat, who coolly deflected the gaze. To his credit, the man didn’t flinch. One hand went to his kingdom of chips, fingers racing between spires, touching each in turn. It was a distraction, a motion to lure the eye. He lifted the cards off the table. Fanned them deftly. And in the downward motion he made the switch. A flick of the wrist. A rustling of the cuff. A flash of white, though this time his motion was so expert that even Simon, eyes trained on him, did not catch it.
“Full house,” the cheat announced, spreading his cards on the table.
Shouts went up. Exhortations of amazement and disbelief.
“Damn,” said the player to Simon’s right. The other players simply shook their heads.
And as the cheat extended his hands for the pot, Simon lashed out and grabbed one wrist, closing his fingers around it in a vice. Their eyes met. Instead of protesting, of calling out Simon, the man stood, wrenching his hand free, the violent motion knocking over his chair. He stumbled backward, head turned, plotting a way out.