The Take

by Christopher Reich

  “Dead end.”

  “In town for a while?”

  “A few days.”

  “Stop by tonight for a drink. Better yet, I’ll make you dinner.”

  “Steak-frites?”

  “You got it.”

  “My favorite,” said Coluzzi, pleased that Jojo didn’t have a clue he’d ripped him off the year before. “And, Jojo, don’t overcook it this time.”

  Chapter 12

  Don’t overcook it.

  Jojo Matta felt his cheeks color as he watched Coluzzi go down the hall. He stamped out his cigarette and marched to the kitchen, angrier than he could remember. The nerve. As if he’d forgotten all about how Coluzzi had cheated him.

  Jojo tied on his apron and began the evening prep. He had two specials planned, grilled swordfish with steamed vegetables and mussels with garlic sauce. He opened the refrigerator and removed the fish, dropping it on the chopping block. He found his filleting knife and set to work cutting the slab into steaks. He could have purchased his fish precut, or even prepackaged, but he preferred to do it himself. It was a question of respect. If he charged thirty euros for a meal, he wanted to give his customers their money’s worth. It was how he did things. He wasn’t a cheat like Coluzzi.

  Jojo looked down and saw that his hand was shaking. He drew a calming breath and set to work chopping the potatoes and carrots, the razor-sharp blade moving in a blur. He liked to go to the farmers’ market every morning and pick out the produce himself. It was another way he showed his customers respect. The best ingredients at a fair price.

  The mere thought of fairness brought Coluzzi back to mind. How long had they known each other? Fifteen years? Twenty? Even if they weren’t family, they were friends.

  And friends didn’t steal from friends.

  The blade jumped. Jojo felt a nick and looked down to see a sliver of his thumb lying on the cutting board. The blood came a second later. He put his thumb under cold water for a minute, then rubbed it with a styptic pencil and bandaged it.

  He’d been cooking since he was fourteen and was forced to take a class in meal preparation at a reform school near Perpignan. The school believed that learning the rudiments of French cooking offered their unruly charges a career path while channeling the anger and lack of discipline that had led them to commit crimes in the first place. The first part was true enough. Jojo had worked as a chef on and off for the past forty years. The second part less so. It wasn’t always a good idea to put sociopathic teenagers in proximity to sharp knives and boiling water. Jojo had left school with his leg scarred by scalding water and missing half an index finger. The upside was that he knew how to prepare a world-class coq au vin.

  And that, he decided, was Tino Coluzzi’s problem. He didn’t respect anyone. Not friends. Not family. No one.

  It was at a party last year that Jojo had run into Massimo Forte, the biggest jewelry fence this side of the Italian border. After a few drinks, Forte had let slip what he’d paid Coluzzi for the take from Harry Winston. The figure was double what Coluzzi had told them.

  Not ten percent more.

  Not twenty percent more.

  Double.

  One hundred percent more.

  Jojo wasn’t averse to a little padding here and there. It had been Tino who’d cased the boutique, rounded up the crew, and jacked the truck they’d used to drive through the window. Likewise, his planning and execution had been top-notch. Tino ran a tight ship. No question he deserved a fatter share.

  But padding was one thing. Gouging, another.

  Jojo went back to work. He dumped the bloodied vegetables in the garbage, washed off the chopping block, and started again. He’d tried to put Coluzzi’s double-dealing out of his mind, but that was no longer possible.

  The man was here.

  In Marseille.

  It was a question of pride.

  Jojo had to make things right.

  Dropping the knife, he went to his office and closed the door behind him. He wiped his hands before making the call.

  “Hey,” he said. “You’ll never guess who just walked into the club? And he’s coming back for dinner. I’m thinking we should give him a special welcome.”

  An hour later, Tino Coluzzi sat alone outdoors at the Café la Samaritaine, drinking an espresso and watching traffic trawl through the Vieux-Port. Skiffs bringing in the second catch of the day. Tourist boats returning from Les Calanques. Day sailors mooring motor yachts.

  Coluzzi looked past them and out to sea. In the distance, the walls of the Château d’If sparkled as if laced with gold. Though he’d lived in and around Marseille for twenty years, he’d never visited the castle and one-time fortress where the Count of Monte Cristo had been imprisoned. Right now he was thinking that prison might be a safer alternative, all things considered.

  He dipped a biscuit into his coffee and stirred it. He was dumb. There was no other explanation. Dipping his feet into water far too deep for him. Not for a second had he considered who he must contact to offer the Russians the letter. The lure of a quick fortune had blinded him to the impracticality of his situation. He’d made a fool of himself calling the consulate, pretending to have industrial secrets to peddle. Now what was he supposed to do? Call back the American and say it had all been a mistake? Hide the letter under a rock and run away?

  Coluzzi shook his head. There was no going back. He’d compromised his life the moment he read the letter.

  Nearby a car honked. Two policemen walked past, eyes scanning all those seated around him. Suddenly, he felt exposed and vulnerable. He finished his espresso and left a five-euro note on the table. It was foolish to show himself at such a public location, he thought as he crossed to the promenade. His recent haircut and change of attire lent him a superficial anonymity, but it only went so far. Were anyone to take a closer look, they’d recognize him in no time.

  He felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He stopped near a fish stand and answered. “Yeah?”

  “You called us.”

  “Who is this?” asked Coluzzi.

  “Who is this?”

  And then he placed the accent. It was the Russians.

  “Stevcek? Is that you?”

  “Yes, I am Boris.” The voice was high-pitched and wavering. Stevcek sounded more nervous than he.

  “When can we meet?” asked the Russian. “Please tell me. I’m happy to come to your home.”

  Coluzzi held the phone away from him. His home? He was proposing to hand over sensitive materials that he had more or less admitted to stealing and the Russian thought it prudent to come to his home.

  “Hello?” said the Russian. “Are you there?”

  At that moment, a ship’s horn sounded. Coluzzi looked to the mouth of the harbor and spotted the bow of a very large luxury motor yacht nosing into the harbor. Two hundred feet. Three-story superstructure. Helicopter lashed to an aft landing platform.

  A superyacht.

  The boat was moving rapidly, and from its size, profile, and navy-blue hull, he recognized it as the Solange, the largest yacht moored in Marseille harbor. A tattered black-and-white flag fluttered from the mast. The skull and crossbones.

  The yacht belonged to Alexei Ren, the fifty-year-old Russian billionaire and owner of the Olympique de Marseille football club.

  Coluzzi realized then that he was making an error trying to barter the letter through a minor diplomat posted to a second-rate consulate who sounded as if he’d gone through puberty the week before. A man who couldn’t even afford a blow job at Jojo’s.

  Boris Stevcek had as much chance of reaching Vassily Borodin as Coluzzi did the president of France.

  “Hello? Sir? Sir?”

  Disgusted with himself, Coluzzi ended the call and walked toward the imposing yacht. Music blared from the top deck, where a party was in full swing. He was not the only man on the docks staring at the bevy of topless women dancing energetically, champagne flutes in hand. The yacht drew closer and soon passed.

  A lone
figure sat in the shade of the aft deck, studying a laptop. He had dark hair and a thick beard—a pirate in appearance, too—his white linen shirt billowing in the wind.

  Alexei Ren.

  Coluzzi stared at the figure, transfixed.

  He had his answer.

  Chapter 13

  It was raining when Borodin landed in Moscow. As he stepped from the plane, a biting wind snapped at his cheeks. He rode alone into the city, his mood as stormy as the sky.

  “I’m running late,” Borodin informed his driver. “Get me to Yasenevo by four.”

  The sedan surged ahead, and in moments he was traveling at one hundred fifty kilometers per hour in the private lane reserved for government officials and the wealthiest of the land. Next to him, traffic on the outer ring road was at a standstill. Three o’clock and rush hour was in full swing. In fact, Borodin had noted, traffic was always bad. The experts dismissed the problem as a side effect of the growing economy. One more lie. The economy was cratering and everyone knew it.

  He arrived in Yasenevo fifty minutes later. Located in the southwestern suburbs of the city, the headquarters of the Foreign Intelligence Service comprised three towers grouped around a central lawn, as well as several single-story buildings spread over a grassy campus. The largest tower, and first to be built thirty years earlier, had suffered from shoddy construction and had begun sinking into the soft Muscovy earth months after it was occupied. During Borodin’s first years as an agent, the building’s frame had become so warped that the windows would not open. While the central heating worked like a dream, air-conditioning was sporadic at best. During the short but extremely hot and humid Russian summer, air inside the building would grow warm and ripe. Worse, it was an ingrained habit of Russians, many of whom who had grown up sharing apartments with two or even three families, to ration their showers. A good wash once a week was as much as one could expect. Recalling the ungodly stench on the hottest of summer days, Borodin winced. Because of the smell, the main building had garnered a nickname repeated to this day. “The Outhouse.”

  “Everything all right, sir?” asked the driver, noting his expression of disgust.

  “As good as can be expected,” said Borodin.

  Only after Boris Yeltsin came to power—his protégé, an undistinguished KGB agent formerly exiled to the hinterlands of East Germany, at his side—were funds discovered to retrofit the building and replace the HVAC system.

  “Three fifty-five,” announced the driver as he pulled to a halt in front of the main building. He turned, his eager face beaming. “Five minutes early.”

  Borodin patted him on the shoulder. “Thank you. Now if you’ll give me an umbrella.”

  The driver’s face fell. “A what?”

  Outside, the rain was falling heavier than before. Twenty meters separated the car from the entrance: Borodin maintained a dignified gait as he walked to the building. He refused to run or appear at all put out by the dismal conditions. He knew that subordinates were watching, eager as always for something to gossip about, even if it were only how the director had made a clumsy dash to the lobby, or, God forbid, slipped and fell. If anything, he walked more slowly than usual. To hell with them. Heavy rain and whipping winds were of no consequence to the director of the SVR.

  Once inside, he took his private elevator to the tenth floor. His secretary took one look at him and flung herself from her desk, rushing to his side, helping him take off his sodden overcoat.

  “Get me a towel and a change of clothing,” he said politely. “Oh, and tea.”

  His secretary was older and rotund, and immune to fashion. “With a little something to lift your spirits?”

  “Thank you, but no. Just hot. Very hot.”

  It was then that Borodin noticed the blond woman seated outside his office. He passed her without a word or a glance. At his desk, he busied himself reading messages and checking his favorite American websites for the requisite time. At some point his secretary entered with a change of clothing. Borodin’s job often required him to stay at his desk for days at a time. Over the past few years his closet here had filled to overflowing while his closet at home had thinned to the bare essentials. He changed and combed his hair before taking his place at his desk, a slab of mahogany as big as an aircraft carrier. A new headline appeared on the New York Times’ website. Any other day, it would have made his blood boil. Today, it was exactly what the doctor ordered.

  “Send in Major Asanova,” he said, speaking into his speakerphone—like the desk, a relic from a bygone era.

  The door opened. The blond woman entered and saluted. Even without heels, she was a head taller than he. He waved away the salute and rose from his desk, greeting her with a kiss to each cheek, and a third to show she was in good favor. “Sit, Major.”

  Valentina Asanova tucked her skirt beneath her legs as she sat down.

  “I understand you were in Berlin.”

  “Yes.” A nod. No further words. No smile. The psychologist inside every field man noted she displayed no visible wish to ingratiate.

  “On assignment to Division Two,” he continued, without prejudice. No one wished to be assigned to Division Two.

  Another nod. The gaze unwavering.

  Borodin returned to his desk. He had forgotten how striking the woman was. The blue eyes. The white-blond hair. She was undoubtedly beautiful, but it was her air of maturity and intelligence that elevated her allure to another level.

  Valentina Borisovna Asanova was a child of the state, an orphan raised in government institutions. As a youth, she’d excelled at gymnastics and spent her teen years as a member of the national team. After an injury ended her sporting career, she’d studied electrical engineering at Moscow State University. Later still, she’d graduated at the top of her class from the Russian foreign intelligence academy.

  Indeed, she possessed the entire package. Intellect, physical prowess, beauty, ambition.

  There was, however, something else that had recommended her to Vassily Borodin. As a child, she had suffered abuse at the hands of a succession of counselors, teachers, and coaches. Sadly, such treatment was the norm for the cold, unregulated institutions run by the state. If a child complained, she—or he—was simply abused worse. As a caring human being and a father, Borodin abhorred such treatment and was ashamed to be part of any apparatus that had allowed it to go unchecked. As director of the country’s spy service, however, he took a different view.

  Valentina Asanova’s years of trauma had left her a clinical sociopath with limited emotional capability and an abiding antipathy toward her fellow man. In short, she possessed no conscience. Her battered psyche’s greatest need was recognition. In the greatest of Russian traditions, her sole ambition was to serve the state.

  She was the ideal recruit.

  “Harass and intimidate,” he went on. “That’s your mandate, isn’t it?”

  Again the nod. He noticed that she’d placed her hands under her thighs and that her features had settled into a resigned grimace.

  “Correct me if I’m wrong, Major, but a hallmark of H and I is stealth, is it not? The job does not demand physical confrontation. On the contrary, it is to introduce an element of fear, an intimation of terror, of uncertainty; to frighten the target without actually doing any physical harm.”

  The muscles in the woman’s jaw tightened. Her eyes narrowed, but she said nothing. Borodin noted a daub of color in her cheeks that had not been there a moment earlier. He spun his monitor so she might see it. “This story just hit the wires. ‘Ambassador’s wife attacked by assailant in Berlin.’ At the ambassador’s residence, no less.” He paused to allow her to read a few lines. “Any comment? It was you, wasn’t it? I can’t imagine who else would wish to break into the American ambassador’s house precisely when he was attending a meeting to which we were not invited.”

  A vein at the woman’s temple had magically appeared. Even at a distance, he could see it pulsing with frightening intensity.

 
Borodin turned the monitor back toward him and adopted a less benign tone. “Well?” he demanded. “I suppose you think it was a success because you weren’t caught. Don’t you realize it doesn’t matter if they can’t prove anything? The Americans know who was behind it. Damned careless of you. But then that’s something of your trademark, isn’t it, Major?”

  Still no answer, the grimace as tight as a death rictus.

  “Just what the hell did you do to the woman? Answer me!”

  Valentina Asanova slid forward in her chair. Her hands came free of her thighs. She began to stand, her very pretty lips opening. Borodin felt the force of the wrath, as if hit by the concussion of a grenade. But as quickly, she relaxed. With a schoolgirl’s modesty, she adjusted her skirt, ran a hand across the gold chain at her neck, and offered a polite, subservient smile. “May I inquire why you requested my presence?”

  Borodin sat back in his chair and expelled the breath he’d been holding. “I’m glad to see you don’t let your emotions get the best of you all the time.”

  “No,” she replied with good humor. “Not all the time.”

  They eyed each other, but neither laughed.

  Borodin slid a dossier across the desk. “I have a job for you.”

  Chapter 14

  Simon arrived at the Gare du Nord at four p.m. The station was hot and as crowded as a Moroccan bazaar. A new custom of placing pianos in train stations had spread across Europe. An elderly man with wild gray hair played a lively boogie to no one’s apparent appreciation. Simon kept a tight grip on his bag as he negotiated his way to the taxi stand. Young North African males accosted him at every step, aggressively demanding to help with his bag, shouting offers of rides in their own cars or on the back of a motorcycle. He ignored them.

  Once outside, he was discouraged to find that the line for taxis stretched around the block. He turned the corner and walked north to where cabs joined the queue. He raised a hand in the air. A moment later, a liveried sedan pulled over. Cabbies didn’t like waiting any more than he.