Crown Jewel

by Christopher Reich

  “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 Mo
naco 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?

  Chapter 37

  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, wan
ting 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.”

  Chapter 38

  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?”