Crown Jewel

by Christopher Reich

  “I noticed your artwork the other day. We don’t see that often at the club. Just trying to put two and two together.”

  “I was young. I grew up. Nothing more to it than that. And you, Mr. Dragan: where did you come from before Cap Ferrat?”

  “Here and there…Tel Aviv, mostly.”

  Dragan was Israeli. That was the accent, though it was apparent Dragan worked hard to lessen its bite. He was a tough Jew in a part of the world that didn’t particularly welcome the type. “That Dragan,” said Simon. “Pardon my lapse. I may have purchased shares in the company you founded. Remind me.”

  “Audiax. We had a patent on sensitive listening devices. Surveillance, that kind of thing. Very popular with the defense industry. The IPO was after I’d left. I fear I sold too early. It’s hard to turn down a billion dollars.”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “You were a broker?”

  “Private banking, actually.”

  “My bankers are Swiss. Pictet in Geneva.”

  “Banque Pictet is a good firm.”

  “Finest in the world,” said Dragan. “I have friends in London. Where did you work? Perhaps they know you.”

  “It’s been a while,” said Simon. “Unless they have a Ferrari that needs fixing up, I probably wouldn’t know them.”

  The waiter arrived and Dragan ordered Negronis for both of them. Simon wasn’t a fan of the drink, which was Campari, gin, and vermouth. He found it bitter and cloying, and vermouth had never done anything for him to begin with. But Dragan wouldn’t stop praising it, or the bartender’s skill in preparing it, and Simon went along. He knew Dragan’s type: always lauding his every accomplishment, acquisition, and association as the best. Audiax had earned him a billion dollars. Banque Pictet was the finest in the world. And the Negroni was a cocktail nonpareil. Maybe they should both unzip their pants, yank them out, and see whose was bigger then and there.

  Simon asked how long he’d been living in the South of France, and Dragan said, “Not long enough.” He’d purchased the Villa Leopolda (“the most beautiful property on the coast”) ten years earlier and had his eye on an adjoining property to enlarge his estate.

  The drinks came and Dragan raised his glass with relish. One would have thought it was going to add fifty years to his life, or at least make him a little better looking. “Chin-chin.”

  “Cheers,” said Simon, and after he took a sip, “Delicious.”

  “Told you.” Dragan smiled, delighted with himself. “The best!” He put down the drink and leaned across the table, a hand motioning Simon closer. “I saw you arrive earlier with a lovely woman. Your wife?”

  If Dragan had noticed his tattoo when he was wearing a blazer, surely he would have remarked on the absence of a wedding ring. “A friend,” said Simon.

  “Some friend.” Dragan raised his eyebrows suggestively. “Though she looked rather tense.”

  “She’s had a difficult day.”

  “Too bad you couldn’t find a way to ease her worries.”

  “I did what I could.”

  “For a friend.”

  Simon’s temperature rose a notch. “Yes.”

  But Dragan wasn’t done with the subject. “She’s someone,” he said, screwing up his face as he searched his memory. “Now I know. Princess Victoria of Germany. Of course. I read that her mother died recently. Pulled a Princess Grace and drove straight off a cliff. My, my, Mr. Riske, you move in fancy circles.”

  “And I’m not even a billionaire.”

  “If you’re not helping her with her car, what are you helping her with?”

  Simon finished his Negroni. It was worse than he remembered. “It’s getting late, Mr. Dragan. If you’ll excuse me.”

  “Give the princess my regards. Let’s hope she’s every bit as wild as that mother of hers. She certainly shares the same figure.”

  As Simon rose, his fingers locked around the armrest of his chair. If he let go they’d be around Dragan’s neck, even if the man was twenty years older and weighed fifty pounds less. Simon decided he was going to beat Dragan at the time trial if it was the last thing he did.

  He left the Bar Américain in a foul mood.

  Being an investigator was about contacts, thought Simon as he rode the elevator back to his floor. Who you knew, who you trusted, and who you could count on in a pinch. You never lied. You never misled. You never turned down a request when it might benefit a colleague. And you expected the same in return. It was the professional’s code.

  Most important, you left yourself out of the equation. It wasn’t about you. It was about the client.

  And so, it was in brazen defiance of this last rule that Simon called one of his oldest and most trusted sources. Her name was Isabelle Guyot. She was Swiss and worked for Banque Pictet in Geneva.

  “Salut, Isabelle,” he began.

  “You. It’s been a while.”

  “I need your help.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “You guys have a client I’m interested in. A real piece of work.”

  “Don’t go there.”

  “Just personal curiosity. I’m not building a dossier on him.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting something? Bank secrecy.”

  “The name is Dov Dragan. D-o-v-d-r-a-g-a-n.”

  “Simon, please…It’s the law.”

  “Founder of Audiax Technologies. Israeli citizen. Resident of Cap Ferrat. Chairman of the racing committee of the Monaco Rally Club. And client of Banque Pictet and Cie. The finest private bank in the world. See? I’m practically a family member.”

  “You sound funny. What has this guy done to you?”

  “He’s got me riled up, but I’ve got a feeling about him. Something doesn’t quite match.”

  “And you’re asking me to break the law because…well, just because? Simon, this isn’t like you.”

  The elevator arrived at the fourth floor and Simon walked down the corridor to his room. “Indulge me. I’ll take you to dinner next time you’re in London. Bibendum. That’s your favorite place, right?”

  There was a long sigh. Simon imagined Isabelle in Pictet’s lavish offices on the Route des Acacias in Geneva. She was a year or two younger but a decade more mature, with straight black hair and eyes the color of topaz. No one looked better in a navy two-piece. As for Pictet, it might not be the finest private bank in the world, but it was one of the oldest and enjoyed a sterling reputation. It was the private banker’s private bank.

  “I couldn’t if I wanted to,” said Isabelle. “These days it is impossible to access a client’s account without leaving a record. I’d have to have a reason why. I’m not his PM or his AR.”

  “PM” for portfolio manager. “AR” for account representative.

  “Didn’t I hear through the grapevine that you were promoted? Directeur adjoint, n’est-ce pas?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Air’s pretty thin up there.”

  “And the view’s a lot better.”

  They laughed and Simon wondered if she was remembering the same things he was.

  “So, it wouldn’t be out of place for someone in your lofty position to check Mr. Dragan’s account to make sure he’s being well taken care of…You know, to be sure that Pictet didn’t miss a chance to sell him something.”

  “I always forget you used to do this, too,” said Isabelle.

  “I just wasn’t as good as you.”

  “Ha! If you’d taken the job we offered, you’d be running the place by now.”

  “I’d be working for you.”

  “Even better.”

  There was a pause, a lengthy silence replete with expectations dashed and unspoken hurt.

  “Still no Mrs. Riske?”

  “The position remains vacant.”

  “And always shall…”

  He didn’t need to ask if she’d married.

  “Goodbye, Simon.”

  Chapter 43

  Charge it to Mr. Riske’s room,” called Drag
an to the bartender as he left the Bar Américain.

  He jogged across the street and hurried down the incline to the port. He’d poured it on a little thick, but he’d gotten the result he needed. There could be no doubt that Riske was attached to Princess Victoria Brandenburg von Tiefen und Tassis. The nature of the attachment was unclear, as was Riske’s reason for being in Monaco. The time trial was a pretext. For the moment, though, neither mattered. Riske fancied himself the princess’s knight in shining armor. It was up to Dragan to tarnish his shield or knock him off his horse altogether.

  At the port, he flashed his badge and passed through the security gate, hardly slowing.

  Ratka was sprawled on a couch in the main salon watching a football match when Dragan arrived. “Six million,” muttered the Serb, sitting up. “Last night’s take. Not bad, eh?”

  Dragan snapped up the remote and turned off the television. “Haven’t you seen that match enough times? You lost. Remember?” With disgust, he tossed the remote onto the table. “Six million isn’t enough.”

  “The hell you say.” Ratka jumped to his feet, instantly defiant. “Our biggest single night’s haul. My boys did damned good.”

  “It’s my software that did damned good. Your boys did as they were told.”

  “Always you, always you. Jesus, you got some problem.”

  “Send in every team tonight. Casino and Sporting Club. I want twelve tables in play.”

  “Twelve? You are out of your mind. We can just send up flares telling everyone what we’re doing.”

  Dragan was in no mood for dissent. Ratka was a thug who thought his gold Rolex bought him the class he’d never have. Worse, he was a stupid thug. He needed to be told what to do and how to do it. “And double the betting limits. No, triple them. I don’t care who’s looking. It’s all over after tonight.”

  “We’ll need a controller at each spot,” said Ratka, frowning.

  “And I’ll make sure one is there.”

  “How much do we need?”

  Dragan told him the exact amount.

  “Fuck me.”

  “Get your men suited up. Let me worry about the fallout. I’ll talk to him and give him a heads-up.”

  “You better.”

  Calmer, Dragan walked to the large dining table, where sales brochures for the Lady S were arrayed in a fan shape. “Anyone interested in this bucket of bolts?”

  “Not for the price he’s asking. Everyone wants the latest and greatest. The Lady S was built twenty-five years ago. She might as well have oars, benches, and a drum.”

  “He won’t have to sell when we’re done.”

  “He’s already bought a slot in Italy to build something bigger,” said Ratka. “I’m glad he’s confident.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Confidence got me eleven years behind bars.”

  Dragan ran his hand over his scalp. “We have another issue that requires our attention first.”

  “First when? Before I send twelve teams in tonight?”

  “This can’t wait. It’s Riske.”

  “Who?”

  “The man with the black Daytona. Your friend from last night.”

  “What about him?”

  “He’s gotten too close to our princess. He’s certain to complicate things.”

  “We take care of him when we take care of her.”

  “How did that turn out last time?” asked Dragan, not needing an answer before going on. “He’s got to go now.”

  “He’s here to race his car. Don’t worry.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “You holding something back from Ratka? Who is this guy?”

  “I don’t know. I can tell you one thing. He’s not a mechanic who fixes fancy cars. He was one of you once.”

  “Lucky him,” said Ratka.

  “I spent my life around people with hidden motives, professional liars, killers. He’s all three. I want him gone.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  “There’s a cocktail party for the race starting in a few hours at the Salle des Étoiles in the Sporting Club. I’ll see to it he has a reason to go out to the portico. When he does, take him. I’ll arrange for his things to be moved out of his room. It will look as though he left town and disappeared. I don’t want his body washing up in a fishing net.”

  “It was a weighted net,” protested Ratka.

  “Never to be seen again.”

  Ratka glowered at him.

  “Twelve teams. Triple bets. Twenty million. Any questions?”

  Chapter 44

  Roger Jenkins left his office on the fourth floor of Thames House, headquarters of MI5, the British security service, with a tight grin on his face. It wasn’t often he got a chance to put one over on Riske. He’d greatly enjoyed hearing the normally unflappable American rebel at the news that Jenkins knew his present location on planet Earth to the last millimeter.

  Jenkins took the elevator to six—counterintelligence—and walked to the far north side of the building. Something was up. The hall was teeming with officers, looking even grimmer than usual. Sadly, that was the norm rather than the exception these days. It was MI5’s job to protect Britain against any and all terrorist threats, as well as to conduct policing on a national level. The last years had witnessed a slew of attacks, and a far greater number thwarted. Jenkins didn’t dare ask the cause of the kerfuffle. It was all very much “need to know.”

  Jenkins’s work with Box was of an entirely different nature. There was more than one way to stop a crime.

  A set of double doors blocked the way. Jenkins slid his badge into the reader, then pressed his right eye to the retinal scanner. He waited for two beeps, then withdrew the badge and opened the door. A guard sitting in a glassed-in office asked to see his ID, though they’d known each other for years.

  “Afternoon, sir.”

  “Afternoon, Alwyn.”

  “Mr. Sethna is expecting you. Not happy about it. Warn you right now.”

  Jenkins passed through the second set of doors and continued down the hall. He had to admit to a bit of resentment that his position didn’t demand such stringent security measures. It was whispered that a nuclear bomb could land square on the roof of Thames House, and the counterterrorism offices on the sixth floor would survive intact and unscathed.

  “Bully for them,” whispered Jenkins through pressed lips. He was a round, jolly man, pleasant enough to look at, if entirely unmemorable. With thinning hair, watery blue eyes, and an air of perpetual distraction, he gave the impression of being lost and in desperate need of assistance wherever he went.

  Roger Jenkins’s title was assistant deputy director of investments. Prior to joining the security service, he’d worked as an equities analyst at Barclays at the same time that Simon Riske was earning his stripes in the City. For Jenkins as for Riske, a life of chasing a bigger office and fatter salary quickly lost its luster. When he saw an advert in the Financial Times looking for experts in finance and venture capital, he jumped.

  It was not generally known that the security service allocated a significant percentage of its budget for investing in technologies designed to make the world, and Britain in particular, safer. It was Jenkins’s job to comb the world for those technologies.

  Recently, he’d been the one to discover a German company, Wolf Systems, that had patented a means (via an SS7 exploit) to pinpoint a mobile phone’s location anywhere in the world. It was a tool MI5 and its sister agency across the river, MI6, the Secret Intelligence Service, coveted. After a short negotiation, Wolf Systems was acquired by a secretive British investment fund, Trafalgar Holdings. The nation’s combined security and law enforcement agencies had been using Wolf’s technology since.

  The sad fact was that once an individual elected to own a smartphone, he or she was as easy to find as the nose on your face…whether the person was using the phone or not. Word on the street was that the Yanks had a more robust version of the same technology and were tracking, reco
rding, and storing away the location of their citizens…every one of them…just in case.

  So much for privacy.

  “Knock knock,” said Jenkins as he rapped on Zaab Sethna’s door.

  “Enter.” A wiry, dark-skinned man looked up from his desk. “It’s you.”

  “You were expecting…?”

  “Hoping…you wouldn’t make it.”

  Zaab Sethna, assistant director for counterintelligence, Middle East, pushed his chair back from his desk and motioned for Jenkins to take a seat. Sethna was Iraqi by birth but had lived his entire life in the UK. He had a Saudi king’s nose and beady black eyes he kept hidden behind tinted Gandhi glasses. As usual, he was dressed impeccably, far better than his government salary would allow.

  “Take a look at these.” Jenkins handed Sethna his phone, the photos Riske had sent ready for viewing.

  “So?” Sethna betrayed minimal interest.

  “Figured you might be able to tell me who they belong to.”

  “I’m busy…Don’t you know what’s going on?” Sethna realized his error. “Of course you don’t.”

  “Apparently whoever these cuffs belong to may have murdered someone.”

  “Apparently?”

  “Just have a look, Zaab,” said Jenkins. “Have a pint at the club on me.”

  “And a second if I give you the answer?”

  “As you wish.”

  Sethna took off his glasses and examined the photographs of the cuff links. “A sword enveloped in flames resting on a five-pointed star and surrounded by palm fronds.”

  “And check the runes at the bottom.”

  Sethna shot Jenkins an evil look. “Honestly, couldn’t you figure this out? Didn’t you read your Bible at that fancy public school you went to?”

  “Too busy being buggered by my classmates, I guess. Now shut up and spill.”

  “Judges seven. The sword of God. Gideon used it to slay the Midianites. I could be wrong, but it’s along those lines.”

  “And the runes…the script at the bottom.”

  Sethna squinted. “Ancient Hebrew.”

  “Is that so?”

  “‘Hear all, see all, know all.’”

  “Mean anything to you?” asked Jenkins.