The Take

by Christopher Reich

  Instead of anger, he felt a sudden lightness of being, the fleeting beatific joy that came from knowing that one was right. The letter was genuine. Absolutely, incontrovertibly genuine.

  “Well?” asked Kurtz.

  “Take me to the airport.”

  “But, sir—”

  “I’m going to get that damned thing myself.”

  “Out of the question. It was already too much of a risk going to Cyprus.”

  “Nonsense.”

  Kurtz stepped closer. “People are asking questions.”

  Borodin turned on Kurtz. “And I am going to bring them back answers.”

  “Not alone. Major Asanova was a formidable asset. Whoever did this—”

  “I’ll need a team of five. We have twenty men from Directorate S within three hours of Marseille. Find me the best. And make sure one of them is a decent shot. If Mr. Coluzzi thinks he can toy with me, he is sorely mistaken.”

  Chapter 52

  It was a drive through the most beautiful landscape on Earth. They made their way south along two-lane roads that rose and fell with the hills and valleys, past vineyards and wheat fields and grand country estates, through towns and hamlets, the air rich with the warm, fertile scent of the earth, the colors a palette of russet tones.

  Driving was one of the few activities that relaxed Simon. Often, the faster he drove, the calmer he grew. Today, he made sure to check those instincts. He kept to the speed limit and obeyed every light and stop sign. They were off the radar. He wanted to keep it that way.

  Nikki asked him again about his past. This time he told her, joking he had better take the opportunity while he still had it. He told her the real story as he knew it, not the sanitized version he’d grown used to recounting even to those he was close to. It was the truth with the emotions exposed; he was surprised at how raw some still were all these years later.

  He told her about the fear and abandonment he’d felt after his father’s suicide, the bottomless well of anger at his not having left a note, the lingering notion that Simon was in some way responsible no matter how much he knew it wasn’t the case. The move to Marseille, the beatings he’d endured at his stepfather’s hand, until one day he’d decided enough was enough and he hit back. The decision to quit school. His first days on the street—un petit voyou—a little thug working the block. His distaste for the drug users he shepherded in and out of the dealers’ lairs, until he started using drugs himself. His move up the food chain to stealing cars, the unbeatable rush of leading a dozen police cars on a two-hour chase through Marseille and the surrounding countryside. No one knew the area as well as he—every street, every alley, every shortcut. No one.

  All the while, Nikki nodded and said she understood or asked him a question about how he’d felt or why he hadn’t done something differently. Simon heard no judgment in her voice, just curiosity and empathy. And so he went on.

  And then, the bigger move up to knocking off armored cars. The first time as part of a crew, surrounding the vehicle on all sides, one team charged with getting the cash, the other with fending off the police. The wild firefights in broad daylight, bullets whizzing everywhere, none by the grace of God hitting him. To this day, he admitted, he loved blowing off a clip of ammo on full auto with his AK. Yes, he owned one, but he kept it at his shooting club in London. He had lots of guns there. One day he’d show her.

  He told her about the day he was arrested, what it felt like to be shot—it hadn’t hurt until later; at the time, he’d been too pumped with adrenaline to feel anything. He knew who had betrayed them but told no one.

  “Why?” Nikki asked.

  But Simon had moved on. The answer was coming. He didn’t want to get ahead of himself. He was back in Les Baums, and for the first time he told another person about killing Nasser-Al-Faris, how he felt nothing looking down on his dead body, not remorse, not guilt, not relief. Nothing. He was dead inside.

  And then, his punishment in “the hole.” His certainty each and every day that he was losing his sanity. The endless hours made worse by not knowing how long he must endure. A month. A year. Longer. And all of it avoidable if he gave up one man’s name.

  “Why didn’t you?” Nikki asked in disbelief. “You knew who betrayed you. He was responsible for the death of Bonfanti’s son. Not you.”

  “We were all responsible,” Simon replied. “The second we decided to rob that truck, we’d given up any right to justice. Still, I should have known he was a rat.”

  “I don’t understand. You could have walked out after a day.”

  “Looking back, the decision’s easy. Then, things were different. I was different. I wanted to be the one who gave it to him. Face-to-face.”

  “How long were you in solitary confinement?”

  “The hole? Two years, give or take.”

  “You were only nineteen. A boy.”

  “I was old enough.”

  Simon went on to tell Nikki how the worst experience in his life had turned into the best, all because of one man.

  The monsignor.

  He related the miracle Paul Deschutes, SJ, had wrought, a lifetime of education in one year, days that were too long, suddenly not long enough. The new and ineffable joy of learning. The wonderment of knowledge for knowledge’s sake and the power that came with it. Eureka. Simon had found his purpose.

  “What happened to him?” Nikki asked, her eyes lit with Simon’s enthusiasm. “Did you stay in touch after he got out?”

  “He didn’t get out. He was sick. He knew he was dying. I never saw him after I was let out.”

  Simon slowed as he drove through the commune of Rognac. To their right, an inland lake, the Étang de Berre, spread to the horizon. They crested a hill, and he could see the Mediterranean, twenty miles in the distance.

  “Then Coluzzi showed up. I can’t remember what he’d done. All that time I’d dreamed how I was going to kill him. It was the thought of revenge that had kept me alive until I met the monsignor. But when I saw him, I couldn’t do it. The monsignor wouldn’t have allowed it. The last day we were together in the yard, one of those Sundays, he told me he had no one else in the world. His daughter had died ten years earlier. He hadn’t seen her mother since long before that. He said I was the only one he had left. I remember him looking at me…looking into me with his blue eyes…he told me he had only one thing of value to give anyone. It was in a safe deposit box in a bank in London. He didn’t have the key. He couldn’t remember the box number, just the name and branch of the bank. He told me that it was very valuable, that it would, in effect, leave me rich for life. Before we went back inside to our cells, he made me promise that I would find a way to open the box and take possession of what belonged to me.”

  “Did you?”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How?”

  “There was really only one way. I went to college. I earned my degree in economics. I applied for a job at the bank. I made sure I was assigned to the private banking department. Even then, I had to work for years before I could gain access to the files that showed which box was his and to convince someone to break the rules and open it for me.”

  “But you managed it? You opened the box.”

  “I did.”

  Simon narrowed his eyes, remembering the moment, standing alone in the small, cramped room deep in the ground beneath the bank. From one cell to another, he’d thought. For a while he sat on the hard metal chair, staring at the box, afraid to open it. Afraid of being disappointed. Afraid of discovering something that would change his life just when it was the way he liked it. Mostly, he realized he was afraid of all that the box represented. It was, after all, the end of his journey with the monsignor.

  And then, remembering that his colleague was waiting for him, and that he was due back at his desk in a few minutes’ time, and he must prepare for a client arriving just after lunch, he inserted the key, gave a crisp turn to the right, and opened it.

  “Well?” asked Nikki. “What
was inside?”

  “Nothing. The box was empty.”

  “Empty? There was nothing in it?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But he lied to you. He said it would leave you rich for life.”

  “It did.”

  For a moment Nikki didn’t answer. Simon looked at her and saw the disappointment in her eyes. Like everyone, she had expected a different ending.

  “Don’t you see?” he continued. “The box held my future. Its contents had given me purpose, a goal to strive for. I had an education. I had a job with unlimited prospects. A career on the right side of the law. That empty deposit box made me richer than I ever could have imagined.”

  “I think I see now.”

  “It was like the book by Dumas. I had found my treasure. The rest was up to me.”

  “So here you are.”

  Simon nodded. He kept his eyes straight ahead, offering a prayer to whoever or whatever was listening, thanking them for putting the monsignor in his life. The road dipped and began the long descent into Marseille. Already he could see the tips of the apartment buildings on the northern edge of the city.

  After fourteen years, he was coming home.

  He looked at Nikki and took her hand. “Let’s go get that letter.”

  Chapter 53

  Neill sat on a bench at the head of the platform reading a copy of the Nice-Matin, watching with dismay as the last of the train’s passengers filed past without any sign of Simon Riske. He was dressed in shorts and sandals, checked short-sleeved shirt, a cap on his head, looking as Gallic as a native of Athens, Georgia, could hope.

  The train had arrived ten minutes earlier and was met by a dozen police officers. The passengers had been made to wait to disembark while the police supervised the unloading of the Russian agent. From his vantage point, Neill watched as the body was removed on a stretcher, placed on a gurney, and wheeled past him.

  “Where is he?”

  “I checked the train. He’s not here.” The voice on the comm link belonged to Dobbs, a Paris-based field agent who’d shared the train with Riske.

  “How is that so?”

  “He must have gotten off in Avignon.”

  “Your brief was to keep an eye on him.”

  “I saw him return to his seat after the Russian killed herself. The rail marshal was with him. It was impossible to keep eyes on him without drawing attention to myself. I just assumed—”

  “So you didn’t actually see him get off the train in Avignon?”

  “At least thirty people disembarked. It was crowded.”

  “That’s not my question.”

  “No, sir, I did not see Riske or Detective Perez with them.”

  “Stay in place.” Neill called Riske’s phone and, when it rolled to voice mail, hung up and dialed the team in the surveillance van. “Get me a location on Riske.”

  “One minute, sir. He’s in Marseille…at the station…actually, he’s about twenty meters away from you.”

  Neill hung up and addressed Dobbs on the comm link. “Get back on the train. See if you can find Riske’s phone.”

  Neill continued to the café, where he ordered an espresso and a lemon tart. He dropped two cubes of sugar into the coffee and drank it before starting on the pastry. During his time in the air, the boys in the van had run a check on the phone numbers Riske had found in Luca Falconi’s apartment. All five SIM cards had been purchased at a kiosk on the Rue Saint-Martin, a block away from the apartment. The first of the numbers had been activated several hours earlier, shortly after the number Riske had reported as belonging to Coluzzi had stopped functioning. At present, whoever was carrying a phone with that SIM card was on or near Entre les Îles, a pair of islands lying east of Marseille.

  The men in the surveillance van had also followed Riske’s calls to the Saudi telecom service. With dismay, Neill had listened to the tapes of Riske obtaining the prince’s email password. The evidence led to an unpleasant and unimpeachable conclusion. The man knew too much.

  “He ditched us,” said Dobbs.

  “Come again?”

  “I found their phones stuffed between their seat cushions.”

  “Bring them to me.”

  With care, Neill carved off a piece of the lemon tart, only for it to crumble before he could place it on his fork. The French, he had come to decide, possessed a mastery of cutlery beyond his ability. He chewed on the creamy filling, pondering his next move. Riske, it had turned out, was that rarest of all birds. He was even better than advertised.

  Neill finished his tart and dumped the paper plate into the trash. Walking toward the exit, he placed a call to a home in the hills above Antibes. A man answered. “Jacob.” Zha-cobe.

  “Is this Martin Jacob?”

  “No, I am Gilles Jacob. I’m afraid you have the wrong number.”

  But the call did not go dead. There were several clicks as Neill was switched over to the secure line of the CIA substation located in the basement of Monsieur Jacob’s house.

  “Hello, Barnaby,” said Larry Tanner, the agent who ran the place. “Didn’t know you were in the neighborhood. How can we help?”

  “I have a situation that’s developing a bit too quickly. I need to borrow one of your men.”

  “Not a good time. We’re stretched thin these days. What do you have in mind?”

  “A shooter. I need him on-site within three hours. Should have him back to you by tomorrow.”

  “Let me check.”

  Neill left the station and walked up the hill a block to where he’d parked his car, a silver Audi sedan. Just then, Tanner came back on the line. “You’re in luck. I have just the guy. Put in twenty years as a sniper with your old outfit.”

  “The Corps?”

  “MARSOC.” Marines Special Operations Command. The successor to Force Recon and the United States Marine Corps’ most elite unit. “Spent a bunch of time in Afghanistan. He was a night soldier. In between he stopped off in Iraq. There’s a note here says he held the record for the longest kill in his battalion. Took out a bad guy at twelve hundred yards.”

  Neill whistled long and low. “Quite some distance.”

  “Been with us since ’11. He’s solid. I’ll task him out to your shop, but make sure you sign off on an interagency chit within thirty days. We’re watching every penny these days.”

  “You got it. What’s his name?”

  “You’re gonna love this. Jack Makepeace.”

  “You’re right. I love it,” said Neill, sharing Tanner’s jocularity like any good fraternity brother.

  “You’ll have his records in a second,” said Tanner. “Where am I sending him?”

  “Marseille.”

  Chapter 54

  Coluzzi’s phone rang as he stepped onto the dock in the old port. The screen showed no number, only the word “Unknown.” Unknown to others perhaps, he mused, placing the phone to his ear. “Yes,” he said.

  “I will be arriving this evening at eight p.m. at the aerodrome in Aix-en-Provence. I do not wish to stay long. Please have my property ready.”

  “Just bring the money. There won’t be any problems.”

  “You’ll have your money,” said Vassily Borodin. “Eight p.m.”

  “One last thing,” said Coluzzi, needling the Russian. “How will I find you?”

  “If there are other Gulfstream jets there, look for the one with the Russian flag on the tail.”

  The line went dead. Coluzzi left the dock and walked up the hill toward the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde. The Aerodrome d’Aix-en-Provence was a modest airfield ten kilometers outside the city with a single runway long enough to accommodate only midsized jets. No commercial air service was offered. In fact, if Coluzzi recalled correctly, it wasn’t licensed to welcome international flights. There was a reason he knew so much about the aerodrome. Years back, when he’d brought in planes from Morocco packed to the gills with hashish, the aerodrome had been his port of choice. Apparently, he wasn’t the only
one able to buy off the ground personnel.

  Coluzzi arrived at the top of the hill. He was hot and sweaty and on edge at the prospect of making the transfer at the aerodrome. He didn’t relish the idea of walking by himself across a wide-open runway to Borodin’s plane. He’d be a sitting duck. Any of Borodin’s men could take him out with an easy shot. How could he have agreed to such a thing?

  He clutched his phone, weighing whether he ought to demand that Borodin meet him elsewhere. After all, he had what the Russian wanted. Why shouldn’t he be the one to decide? Then an idea came to him. Oh yes, he thought. That might work. He relaxed, if only for an instant. Sometimes the best ways were the oldest.

  If Borodin wanted to make the exchange at the aerodrome, so be it. Tino Coluzzi was one step ahead of him.

  Buoyed by the clarity and cleverness of his thoughts, he stepped into a patch of shade beneath a grove of pines. From where he stood, he looked down on the old port. One slip was markedly vacant. He placed a call to the only other Russian he knew.

  “I was beginning to wonder if something happened to you,” said Alexei Ren.

  “The meeting’s set.”

  “When?”

  “None of your business.”

  “I’m happy to offer my services in the form of any protection you might need.”

  “I’m fine on my own.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “On the contrary. I trust you to act entirely in your own best interests.”

  Ren laughed richly. “Perhaps you are correct. There’s just the matter of my finder’s fee.”

  “I don’t suppose you’d care to wait until tomorrow.”

  “I don’t suppose I would.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “As you said, I trust you to act entirely in accordance with your own interests.”

  “Do you think I might run before I give you your money?”

  “On the contrary, Mr. Coluzzi. I think you might be dead.”

  Coluzzi sighed. He realized there was no way out of paying Ren. “Have your men pick it up at the main station after three. I’ll leave it at the kiosk. Give them my name. They’ll be expecting you.”