The Take

by Christopher Reich

  Moving across the hall to the ambassador’s study, she caught the wash of headlights that swept across the driveway and illuminated the grand foyer. She heard a car door slam. Footsteps crunching on the gravel drive. The front door opened. Voices echoed from the grand foyer.

  She froze. Her heartbeat did not accelerate. Her blood pressure did not rise. If anything, she grew calmer, oddly excited by the slip-up in her briefing. It came to her that she might have a chance to do something more than deliver a minor fright.

  “Did you hear what that Dutch prick Van der Miede said about the president?” A man’s baritone voice. The ambassador. “The gall. Has he forgotten I’m a political appointee?”

  “Oh, darling, I think he was rather drunk.”

  “Listen, I have to send State a summary of the dinner. I’ll be ten minutes.”

  “I’ll be waiting, dear. You got me started in the car.”

  “Why you,” said the ambassador, laughing lustily. “Make that eight minutes.”

  Footsteps climbed the staircase.

  Valentina retreated into the bedroom. She searched the room for a place to hide, a spot to guarantee complete surprise. Her eyes moved from the furniture to the narrow entry hall. Placing a foot on each wall, she stemmed to the ceiling, positioning herself flat against it, hands on one wall, feet on the other.

  She listened as the ambassador’s wife approached, hearing the rustle of her dress, a faint humming of a popular tune. The woman passed beneath her and Valentina dropped to the floor. Feeling the vibration, the woman turned. Her eyes opened in surprise. Before she could speak, Valentina slugged her in the jaw, an uppercut delivered with all her force, fracturing the mandible, breaking several teeth, and knocking the woman unconscious.

  Valentina caught her before she collapsed and was careful to lay her down away from the broken glass. She slid the knife from its sheath and, kneeling closer, carved two words into the woman’s forehead, the tip of the blade dragging against the skull. Six letters that would deliver her master’s message more eloquently than any speech or discourse.

  “Honey,” called the ambassador from his study. “Don’t go to sleep. I’ll be right there.”

  Valentina walked to the French doors and lowered herself from the balcony, dropping to the lawn. The sentry remained with his back turned at his post on the dock, twenty meters distant. She slid into the cool water and, when she was fifty meters from shore, removed her belt and shoes and allowed them to sink to the muddy lake bed. She looked once more at the house before swimming across the lake to where a car awaited.

  She did not hear the ambassador’s anguished cry when he discovered his wife a few minutes later. It would only be when he cleaned her wounds that Valentina’s message would be read and the purpose of her late-night visit communicated.

  The six letters read “Yeb vas.”

  Fuck off.

  Chapter 7

  The sign read EUROPEAN AUTOMOTIVE REPAIR AND RESTORATION. It was past eleven and Kimber Road in southwest London was quiet. No lights burned in the reception as Simon continued past his shop and turned into an alley leading to the work entrance. He parked the VW in a lot surrounded by tall fencing and barbed wire. The fence wasn’t for his car. It was for the Ferraris parked next to it—valued at over a million pounds each—waiting to begin restoration.

  Inside, he turned on an overhead light and crossed the shop floor. There were six cars being restored at the moment. Five Ferraris and a Lamborghini Miura. He snaked his way through them, taking note where each stood in its renovation. One was nearing final inspection after eighteen months’ labor, paint sparkling, tires gleaming, prettier than the day it had left the factory. Another was well along the way, a new interior installed, covered with protective plastic, its hood open, the engine compartment empty and awaiting its rebuilt motor. Another had only just begun its journey, its doors removed, interior yanked out, paint stripped. A husk of an automobile.

  Simon’s team did nearly all the work themselves. They rebuilt the engines, cleaning each and every component, discarding faulty pieces, and machining new parts as needed. They pounded out the chassis, installed new suspension and exhaust, bringing the automobiles up to the most demanding modern standards. Even the painting was done on the premises in a sealed-off workshop adjacent to the main floor. Only the leatherwork—seats, dash, ragtops—was subcontracted to a shop in Sussex. They were mechanics, not tailors.

  Reaching the far side of the floor, he unlocked an unmarked door and ran up the stairs to his flat. A second door guarded entry, this one steel, bulletproof, and secured by twin deadbolt locks. He wasn’t paranoid, just “properly security conscious,” as the policeman who’d suggested the new setup termed it after arresting an unwanted midnight guest for attempted murder.

  The flat was large and airy, sparsely furnished with sleek, modern pieces; no walls separated living spaces, except the bedroom. Vintage posters advertising the 24 Hours of Le Mans and the Grand Prix de Monaco decorated the walls. There was a picture of Steve McQueen, leaning against his famous Ford Mustang, and another of Carroll Shelby, the legendary American automaker going face-to-face with Enzo Ferrari, his even more legendary Italian counterpart. Lining the wall to his bedroom were seven large black-and-white photographs. Each showed a stone sculpture of a man set into the recess of a tall, formidable rock-and-mortar wall. Each figure was depicted in an uncomfortable, contorted position made to represent one of the seven deadly sins. Pride, envy, wrath, sloth, greed, lust, and gluttony, in no particular order. He wasn’t a fan of the sculptures. In fact, he found them so ugly as to be hard to look at. The pictures were a reminder. Not of his weaknesses or any character defect, but of the grim landmark where the sculptures stood.

  In the kitchen, he cracked open a bottle of mineral water and drank half of it down. It was late. He knew he should go to sleep, but the night’s work was fresh in his mind. Time and again, he replayed his actions. The deft approach, shoulder brushing shoulder, one hand tapping the Russian’s forearm, distracting him, the other slipping inside the shirtsleeve, unclasping the deployment buckle, guiding the watch off his wrist. And then—in a motion so fast the naked eye would have been challenged to see it—replacing it with the counterfeit. A dozen tactile sensations, each imprinted on his mind. A precisely choreographed motion completed in the blink of an eye while Boris Blatt himself felt nothing.

  Three hours after the fact and two scotches for the better, Simon was still jacked up, dancing on broken glass. With a sigh, he collapsed onto his sofa and turned on the television. Sky News was showing highlights of the day’s football matches. He watched for a few minutes, only half paying attention. He’d lived in London a long while but he’d yet to form an attachment to any particular team. His loyalty would forever lie with Olympique de Marseille, a team playing in the French premier league from the city where he’d gone to live after his father’s death.

  Marseille.

  Heat. Dust. The scent of the sea. The mistral sweeping off the ocean, swirling through the alleys in the hills above the city where he’d lived. The perpetual buzz of a city on the make, a city where violence crouched hidden beneath the surface, ready to spring at any time. A city on edge.

  “Once again, our top story. There has been a daring robbery in the streets of Paris this evening by a band of professional thieves wielding automatic weapons.”

  Simon reached for the remote and turned up the volume.

  “Initial reports indicate that the team of twelve armed bandits hijacked a convoy of vehicles carrying a Saudi prince and his family to the airport and made off with over five hundred thousand euros.”

  Simon scooted to the edge of the couch, studying the images of the boulevard in Paris, listening to one of the livery drivers describe the incident.

  “Ils avaient tous des mitrailleuses et portaient des masques. Nous avions tous peur.”

  They all carried machine guns and wore masks. We were all afraid.

  The camera moved back
to the reporter. “It appears the bandits blocked the street and surrounded the trapped vehicles, making off with their take in a short time. Amazingly, no shots were fired. No one was injured.”

  When the report ended, Simon realized he hadn’t taken a breath the entire time. First the job at the Sotheby’s auction, now this.

  Agitated, he rose and walked to his bedroom. He took off his suit, hung it up with care, taking time to dust the shoulders and lapels with a mohair brush. Finished, he threw his shirt in the hamper and returned his shoes to the rack.

  A pull-up bar was bolted to the ceiling at the back of his closet. With a grunt, he grabbed hold of it and did fifteen chin-ups, then hung for a few seconds, feeling his shoulders burn, his biceps strain under his weight, his stomach grow taut. And when he couldn’t hang a second longer, when his fingers began slipping off the bar, he summoned the strength to grip it tighter and knock out five more.

  “I can,” he grunted with each repetition. And then: “I will.”

  Four words he’d adopted as his creed a lifetime ago.

  He dropped, savoring the rush of blood to his arms, the hard-won lightheadedness, the victory, however fleeting, of mind over body.

  I can.

  I will.

  Winded but still antsy, he pulled on a T-shirt and jeans and returned to the living room. He switched the channel to BBC 2, only to be confronted with another report about the robbery in Paris. He shook his head in frustration but listened nonetheless, like a child made to sit through a lecture he’d heard before. He turned off the television the moment it ended.

  There would be no sleeping for a while.

  He knew of only one salve for what ailed him. Work.

  Back in the garage, he hit the lights. A dozen floods lit up the floor as if it were high noon. Already feeling better, he walked to his office. In its prior incarnation, the shop had been a posh nightclub managed by a hood who’d been skimming twenty percent off the top and cooking the books. Simon had been hired by the investors to obtain the real ledgers. He’d traded his success fee for the lease on the building, making sure the deal included the sound system, lock, stock, and barrel.

  He opened the audio cabinet and punched in a playlist. The growl of an electric guitar reverberated across the floor. Marc Bolan and T. Rex. The seventies. Rock ’n’ roll at its wildest. Raw. Primal. He cranked the volume, then went onto the floor and surveyed his small Italian dukedom.

  The latest arrival was a ’74 Daytona Spider set for full restoration. His father had owned a car identical to this: corsa red, beige leather, wire-spoked rims. He’d called it his “stallion,” after the rampant horse that decorated the badge on the hood.

  Simon slid into the driver’s seat and placed his hands on the wheel, fingertips brushing the polished wood. He’d done the same thing hundreds of times as a child when his father was away on business and he’d been left alone with Abigail, the bibulous housekeeper. He was eight or nine, the age when cars are objects of awe and worship, emblematic of all things sophisticated and mature. All things adult, and thus off-limits.

  He remembered the scent of the old garage: damp hay, oiled leather, rotting rafters. They’d come to England from New York to open the European office of Riske Commodities Trading Corporation, a firm his father had started from an office in Lower Manhattan, and which at its peak included branches in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco.

  The divorce had been far in the past. All he’d known of his mother was that she lived in France and had a new family of her own. It had been just the two of them, Anthony Riske and his son. They’d lived in a rambling country house in Kent, forty miles outside London. Even now, Simon had little idea what his father had done for a living. He recalled talk of gold and silver and oil, and howls of protest about prices being too low or too high.

  Sundays had been reserved for excursions into the city and surrounding countryside. Visits to the Natural History Museum and Covent Garden, lunches at the Compleat Angler. Invariably, on the way home, his father would stop the car on a country road, drag Simon onto his lap, and teach him to drive, goosing the motor to make his son squeal with delight.

  “Twelve cylinders with a dual six. That’s not an engine. It’s a force of nature. You can feel it in your bones.”

  And when Simon asked when he might drive by himself, his father would pat him on the head and answer in his rich, tobacco-cured voice, “In due time. In due time.”

  The downfall, when it came, was swift, brutal, and without warning.

  One day all was fine. The next, Simon was pulled out of school, the house put up for sale, and the housekeeper, nannies, and gardener let go. The cars were loaded onto trailers and driven away by men in blue jackets with a half-dozen policemen watching. All the while, his father stalked the empty house promising that it was all a misunderstanding, a “temporary problem of liquidity,” and that he was going to make it up to him.

  “In due time. In due time.”

  It was Simon who discovered the body. His father had not come down to breakfast after failing to tuck him in the night before. Hungry and frightened, he’d searched the house, calling for his father, before venturing outside and padding barefooted through the damp rose garden. With every step, his worry grew. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.

  He found his father in the garage hanging from a rafter. Simon was twelve but small for his age. He rushed to his father, wrapping his arms around his legs, trying with all his might to lift him, hoping to relieve the pressure even a little so the rope would stop digging into his neck and maybe his father’s eyes wouldn’t bulge so horribly.

  If there was a note, no one found it.

  For years Simon was certain that it had just been overlooked. At night, lying in his bed in the cramped, unhappy home in the hills above Marseille, he imagined what his father had written to him. Something about Simon being strong enough to go on, and him being sorry, that there had been no other way out, and that surely Simon would understand.

  “In due time.”

  Simon fought off the memories and climbed out of the car. He left the main floor and entered an adjacent studio, passing through a plastic curtain to reach the paint room. A black Dino, a ’74 or ’75, sat in the bay, waiting to be stripped.

  Simon opened a locker and donned a paint-smeared coverall. Grabbing a heat gun and a scraper, he went to work, starting on the hood, holding the gun inches away until the paint began to curdle and he could scrape it off. He worked in columns, inch by inch, slowly, meticulously. The job demanded muscle and concentration. Soon his shoulders ached and sweat ran from his forehead.

  They all carried machine guns and wore masks, the witness to the robbery in Paris had said.

  The images from the news had stirred things up as surely as a stick prodding a hornet’s nest. There were things he didn’t want to remember. Events dangerous to recall for the emotions they provoked, the long-buried desires they stoked. The memories came to him all the same, as he knew they would ever since lifting the watch off Boris Blatt’s wrist.

  He imagined the report of his old AK-47, the reassuring kick of the machine gun pressed to his shoulder, the wonderful, bittersweet scent of spent cordite in the warm air. Mostly, though, he recalled the thrill of it all.

  Twenty years later, he could still taste it.

  “Damn!” Simon called out as the scraper slipped and nicked his thumb. He stepped away from the car, shaking his hand, wiping the blood on his pant leg. He found a plaster in the locker and bandaged the cut. His eye fell to his forearm and the artwork on it. Some tattoos faded over time. For some reason his appeared to have grown brighter.

  The past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.

  Someone famous had said that. An American writer. He didn’t remember the name. He only knew that it was true.

  Monday

  Chapter 8

  It was nine the next morning when Lucy Brown parted the curtain and stepped into the painting studio. “Someone to see you.”

>   With rapt attention, Simon guided the scraper in a vertical stripe down the automobile’s hood, the shavings falling away in a curlicue. “Client?”

  “Never seen him before.”

  “Did he bring his car?”

  “Just an umbrella.”

  “There,” said Simon, stepping back and surveying his progress. After ten hours, he’d managed to strip the entire hood. Another week and the car would be finished, though he had no intention of completing it himself. Sometimes he had to remind himself that he was the boss. He rolled his neck, wincing as his bones cracked. Only then did he look at Lucy. “Does he have a name?”

  “Mr. Neill. He said he was a friend of a friend. Oh, and he’s one of yours.”

  “Mine?”

  “American.”

  “Where is he?”

  “In the workshop. He seemed to know his way round.”

  “Is he touching any of the cars?”

  “No. Hands in his pockets.”

  Simon considered this. “Tell him I’ll be there in a minute. Give him some tea.”

  Lucy nodded. But instead of leaving, she stepped through the curtain and crossed the studio toward him. She was unrecognizable from the night before. The pencil skirt and fitted blouse had been replaced by a gray coverall with the name “Max” sewn on the breast and sensible work boots. Her blond hair was pulled into a ponytail and tucked into a baseball cap. Her only concession to makeup was the streak of grease decorating her cheek.

  “What is it?” asked Simon, noting the look on her face.

  “You’re not going to see him like that?”

  “Like what?”

  Lucy pointed to a mirror. Simon turned and caught a glimpse of himself. His coverall was stained with sweat. His face was red from exertion and his hands were blackened by paint shavings. “Were you up all night again?” she asked.

  “Me? No. Course not. I got up early. Wanted to get a start on the week.”

  Lucy cocked her head. “Is that right?”