Crown Jewel

by Christopher Reich

  Robby had brought one last item with him. He took hold of a knotted piece of wood the length of his arm and twice its width. The man’s head popped out of the window, a hand extended to pull himself clear. Robby swung the log harder than he’d swung anything in his life. The blow landed squarely on the man’s forehead and cheekbone. He faltered. Robby swung again, the force of the blow traveling the length of his arm, aching in the bone. The man toppled out of the window and lay still.

  Robby lowered himself to the ground. He looked at the immobile figure. There was a gash across his forehead that was bleeding profusely. Robby’s first instinct was to help him. Then he remembered what the man had done to Coach and the thought vanished. He hoped the man would bleed to death. He remembered his own wound and glanced down to see his left hand covered in blood.

  A voice inside his head shouted for him to run. Instead, he lowered himself to a knee and freed the man’s pistol from his waistband. The gun was heavier than Robby had expected, the cold steel against his palm filling him with dread and possibility in equal measures. He noticed that the air was still. The snow had stopped. He gazed up and saw a small patch in the clouds. A single star was visible. A moment later, it disappeared. Suddenly, the air filled with snowflakes, smaller and wetter than before.

  He started across the meadow. He picked out headlights below in the valley, driving along the highway. He didn’t know how far it was—an hour’s walk, at least—only that he was shivering, bleeding, and couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. He certainly wasn’t going to continue up the hill. He’d freeze to death or die of exhaustion.

  He set off down the mountain, soon entering the stand of pines that belted the lower slope. He could feel the temperature falling. It was windier, too, the branches bending and groaning under the force of gusts. Whatever hope or courage the alcohol had provided had fled. He wanted someone to look after him, to lead him down the hill and take him inside a warm home and feed him. He wanted his mother. His eyes grew warm and wet.

  She’s not here. She can’t help you. You’re a big boy. It was the voice that had told him to run. He’d never heard it before. It was confident and fearless, and a little frightening. He knew that he must listen to it for his own good. The reason you ran away from those bad people was to help her, remember? You have to warn her. Now go!

  Robby wiped his nose and stood taller. He pressed the palm of his hand against his wound to stop the bleeding. After a moment, the tears ceased altogether. He redoubled his efforts. His pace grew steadier. His only thought was of reaching the road and signaling for help.

  Time passed. He forgot his fatigue and hunger. He was aware of his feet rising and falling and the snow wet against his cheeks. Something shone in his eye. He glanced up, annoyed. Not a hundred yards away, a car zoomed past on the highway. He began to run, leaving the cover of the trees. Another set of lights approached. Robby shouted and jumped up and down, waving his arms madly. The car flashed its brights, then turned off the highway onto a feeder road. The car had seen him. He was safe.

  Robby bent at the waist, hands on his thighs, gathering his breath. He tried to think of what to say, how to explain everything that had happened.

  The car drew nearer. He could hear the engine downshift, the tires crunching the snow and ice. The fog lamps on the car’s grille came to life, blinding him. They were yellow lamps like those on his mother’s car. Robby squinted, raising a hand to deflect the high beams. He noted the luggage rack on the car’s roof. He took a step, and another. The car drew closer still. It was a Range Rover. Racing white. The engine quit and the door opened. Elisabeth got out.

  “Hello, Robby,” she said. “Or would you like me to call you Fritz?”

  Robby held the pistol with both hands, pointing it at her chest. He placed his finger on the trigger. The metal was smooth and inviting. “Go away!” he shouted. “Now. I mean it.”

  “I can’t do that,” said Elisabeth. “Is that George’s gun? Look…Viktor is in the car. You hurt him badly. He’s quite upset, but he’ll be all right.”

  Robby looked past Elisabeth. He made out a vague silhouette in the passenger seat. A flash of white hair. A bandage over one eye.

  “He was chasing me. He wanted to hurt me.”

  “No one wants to hurt you, Robby.”

  “He shot at me.”

  “To scare you. If he wanted to hurt you, he could have. Believe me.”

  “Go away,” Robby repeated, less forcefully.

  “I’m going to take you home. You’re going to have a nice warm meal and a bath.” She was walking toward him, closing the gap between them.

  “Stop.”

  She smiled her warm smile. “No one wants to hurt you. I’ll tell you all about what we had planned once we get home. Come, schatzi.”

  Shoot her, said the voice in his head. She’s going to kill you. Then she’s going to kill Mama.

  Robby pulled the trigger. Nothing happened. He tried again, then turned the gun on its side, searching for the safety.

  Elisabeth snatched the gun from his hand.

  Robby stared at her.

  She slapped him across the face. “Get in the car.”

  Chapter 49

  It was ten o’clock in the evening when Isabelle Guyot finished preparing her reports for her meeting the next morning. The client was an English film director who kept nearly two hundred million euros on deposit with Banque Pictet and thought it gave him the right to pinch her bottom and call her “honey.” She’d disabused him of both notions.

  She finished her coffee and straightened her papers. There on top of the rest was the note she’d taken while speaking to Simon Riske.

  Dov Dr—

  At that point, she’d stopped writing.

  Without considering what she was doing, she typed the letters into her computer, completing the family name. He was not her client, but she knew who Simon had been talking about. Banque Pictet was not a large organization. Dov Dragan had visited often enough to be a personality. Secrecy began outside the front door.

  Isabelle stared at the letters, then positioned her finger above the SEND button. Her gaze lifted to the window and the lights of Geneva burning with verve and promise. A spotlight illuminated the jet d’eau, the magnificent plume of water sent skyward hundreds of feet. She’d always viewed it as a symbol of hope, of a future that would grant her her every wish and lift her fortunes every bit as high. Not any longer.

  Isabelle was well on the downslope to forty, with a fat bank account, a fancy title, and a fabulous wardrobe. All that was meaningful when she was inside these four walls. When she left for the day, she confronted a different reality. She was unmarried and unconnected and, with each passing year, increasingly unmoored. She had suitors, plenty of them, from her trainer at the gym to the director of a rival bank. None had captured her heart. She was beginning to fear that no one would.

  There are rules, she’d told Simon. Le secret bancaire was only one of them.

  They’d met ten years earlier at a financial conference in Paris when she’d sat next to him during a presentation on portfolio diversification. Upon its conclusion, he’d looked at her and touched her hand. He might as well have hypnotized her. Without a word, he’d led her out of the room and out of the hotel. She missed the last scheduled talk. It was a contravention of her duties and the first rule she’d break that weekend.

  The next thing she knew it was Sunday evening and she was in a taxi heading to Charles de Gaulle for her flight back to Geneva. In between, they’d had dinner at Le Drugstore, danced half the night at Castel, visited the flea market in Clichy, ran through Cimetière du Père-Lachaise, and eaten ice cream while contemplating Rodin’s The Thinker. There wasn’t a place where Simon didn’t know someone, and always someone who mattered. Nice places and not so nice places.

  And of course there was the sex. He knew her body as if it were his own. Nice places and not so nice places.

  A weekend in London followed a month later. Another
whirlwind tour with the best guide she’d ever known.

  Then the real world raised its head above the sheets.

  First, she turned down a trip to Amsterdam because of a corporate retreat she absolutely had to attend. Then she missed a weekend closer to home in Gstaad for a reason she couldn’t remember but that she had sworn was all-important at the time. The last straw was a planned weekend in London to celebrate his birthday.

  Simon had reserved a table at the restaurant Bibendum in Michelin House. It was their favorite place, mostly because it was there that over a dinner of linguini and white truffles they’d realized they were in love. For an encore, he’d procured tickets to a show in the West End.

  At the last minute, she’d called to cancel. A client had arrived without warning and demanded to see her. He was a big client, a billion-dollar client, and when the boss told her she had to stay, she didn’t hesitate. Not for a second.

  Rules were rules.

  Simon never made a show of being disappointed. He told her he understood and that she was only doing what her job demanded. They both valued their careers. It took her a while to realize what had happened. The calls when they came were polite and professional. No more whispered nothings about sexual transgressions past and to come. No more intimations of how she brightened his life. And no more invitations.

  Then the calls stopped coming altogether.

  Isabelle caught her reflection in the mirror. She was still attractive. Beautiful, maybe. But the circles under her eyes were darker than in the past. She noted a line at the corner of her mouth that hadn’t been there the day before. The Botox didn’t eliminate those pesky frown lines for as long as it used to.

  Rules.

  Isabelle hit the SEND button hard enough to break it.

  The screen filled with the particulars of Mr. Dov M. Dragan’s account at Banque Pictet. She continued on to the second page, then the third.

  She read all the pages, confused. Then read them again. Nothing made sense. How could any of this have happened without raising a flag?

  She made a note to call Simon Riske first thing in the morning.

  He’d been right to worry.

  Chapter 50

  A kick in the gut opened Simon’s eyes.

  Everything was blurry. A collage of colors dangled above him. Reds and blues and oranges. He lay on a marble floor beneath a chandelier made from hundreds of cut glass pendants. His head throbbed. His body felt sore and jittery, as if the current from the stun gun hadn’t fully dissipated.

  Strong hands lifted him to his feet. The two men from the Sporting Club let him go. He bent double and retched. Someone slapped him across the face.

  “Control yourself.” Ratka stood facing Simon. Ratka who’d politely introduced himself before throttling Simon with enough juice to light up Frankenstein’s monster and his bride. Ratka who’d murdered Vika’s mother and, Simon was reasonably sure, had tried to rape Vika. Ratka who’d beaten a defenseless woman to within an inch of her life to guarantee her silence.

  Simon spat a gob of blood and phlegm onto the toe of Ratka’s shoe, then looked up. “Sorry. Won’t happen again.”

  Ratka buried a fist in Simon’s stomach. Simon felt his stitches tear. Time passed and he could breathe again.

  “Why are you here?” asked Ratka. “Why are you helping the princess?”

  Simon took his time answering. He’d just landed in the last act of a play and he wasn’t in a hurry to get to the end. “I just met her,” he said. “I’m here for the Concours, for the time trial. I’m not helping her at all.”

  “Bullshit.”

  The two men who’d thrown him into the car held lengths of lead pipe in their hands, and each tapped one end threateningly in his palm.

  “What do you want with her?” asked Ratka.

  “Nothing,” said Simon. “She’s a friend. That’s all.”

  “And so you follow her around all over the place, to the top of the mountain, to her apartment at night, to her apartment in the morning, to see her friends. Who are you really?”

  “I was worried about her. I don’t want anything from her. I barely know her.”

  Ratka took this in, his mouth curled skeptically. “Where did you learn to fight?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Ratka came closer, face-to-face, tilting his head to make sure Simon was looking at him, looking into his eyes. “You know who I am. I know who you are. You think I’d forget a guy who had his hand on my balls? I’ll kill you for that alone.” He paused to examine Simon and didn’t like what he saw. “My friend says you were like me once. Me, I’m not sure.”

  “How like you?”

  “Businessman. You know: tough guy.” The words were said with pride.

  “What friend?”

  Ratka sighed, looking to the other two and throwing up his hands. “I’m going to give you one more chance, Mr. Simon. Maybe you tell me something, I’ll let you go. I don’t want to hurt a nice guy. Ratka isn’t like that.”

  It was a sham, a charade. Simon knew it. Ratka knew it. What surprised Simon, however, was the Serb’s disinterest in the proceedings. He didn’t care if Simon was helping the princess or what his motivations might be. Nor did he have any idea about Simon’s true reason for coming to Monaco. It wasn’t just that Simon’s fate was already decided. Ratka was going to kill him. That part was clear. It was that he didn’t view Simon as a threat. There was nothing Simon might know that could strengthen Ratka’s hand. Everything had already been decided and it had been decided in Ratka’s favor.

  “Okay, listen,” said Simon, addressing him tough guy to tough guy. “Whatever happened happened. I don’t want any trouble. I don’t care about the princess. She’s pretty. I was trying to help.”

  “Talk, talk, talk.”

  “A man like you can understand what I was really after,” Simon went on. “There’s nothing more to it than that. I just want to drive my car, then go home. You and me, we’ll never see each other again. I swear—”

  Ratka shot a jab into Simon’s throat, knuckles curled. Simon hit the floor, and Ratka kicked him repeatedly with everything he had. “You think I got nothing else to do? You think I like you wasting my time? Ratka has plans. When he asks you a question, you answer. You don’t give him any bullshit. Why aren’t you answering me now? Where’s all your talk?”

  Ratka knelt next to Simon. He held a pistol in one hand, and with the other he forced Simon’s mouth open and rammed the muzzle into it. “You’re lying to me. I don’t know what you want with her…maybe the tiara, I’m thinking. You’re some kind of thief, maybe something else…but listen to me, we’re gonna get it. We’re gonna get all of it. We’ve been working a long time and we’re not going to let some Mr. Slick like you come from England or wherever the fuck and mess things up. Not going to happen. Ratka has plans.”

  He dragged Simon to a sitting position, the gun, tasting of smoke and iron, rattling against his teeth. Simon looked at him, eye to eye, daring him.

  “See you later, Mr. Slick.”

  Ratka pulled the trigger.

  Metal struck metal.

  The chamber was empty.

  Ratka pulled the gun from Simon’s mouth and stood. “You think I’m going to make a mess in my house? Marble’s hard to clean. Carrara marble. From Italy. Just like in the old lady’s bathroom.” A last kick, arms flailing like a drunk sailing a beer can down the road. “It doesn’t matter anyway. My friends here will take care of you. Outside. It’s cleaner that way. Bye-bye.”

  Simon collapsed to the floor, his heart pounding. He gasped, blinking, trying to make sense of what had happened, why he was still alive. Pain directed his thoughts to his person. He knew that at least one rib was cracked. His throat felt like a crushed soda straw. He was having difficulty breathing, or even swallowing, for that matter. He heard Ratka fire off instructions to his men in Serbian. He caught the words Benzin, pozni, and nista, nista, nista. Gasoline, fire, and nothing, nothing, nothing. He didn�
�t like the sound of any of it.

  Ratka stopped at the front door. “Mr. Simon, I’m gonna tell my friend he was wrong. You’re not like me at all. Not a tough guy. You’re a pussy.”

  The door closed. Simon eyed the two men. His perspective on his situation changed. He was alive. He had a chance. Maybe it wasn’t the last act.

  “Up, up,” said one of the men. “Hurry.”

  Simon struggled to his feet. He looked at the men with the pipes in their hands.

  He thought of Vincent Morehead. He thought of Elena Mancini. “We’re gonna get it. We’re gonna get all of it.” Mostly he thought of Ratka, and what Simon was going to do when he caught him.

  “Give me a second.” He raised a hand to signal that he was complying and stood up more unsteadily than he felt. “Belgrade,” he said, remembering the transit ticket he’d found in the cheat’s wallet. “Žarkovo. I knew a girl who lived there. A beauty. You’re Serbian, right?”

  The men shared a look. “Žarkovo…You been?” asked the slimmer one.

  “Beautiful city. Great beer.”

  Booze and broads. The common denominator among males under eighty.

  “You like Jelen?” asked the stockier one, naming a brand of beer.

  “The lager,” said Simon. “Liv…Lev…”

  “Lav?” suggested the slimmer one, with the slicked-back black hair, Elvis.

  “That’s it,” said Simon. “Lav.”

  “Lav no good,” said Elvis. “Like water.” He pointed to Simon. “Americans don’t know shit about beer.”

  “You’re making me scared standing there with those pipes.”