Risk

by Raquel Belle

  “Deal,” I squeeze him again.

  “Okay,” he pats my butt, I move away and he takes the gun from my hand, “go wash away those tears and I’ll set the table. You’ll feel better after you eat something.” As I walk to the bathroom I hear Jack call to me, “It wasn’t chambered.”

  ***

  We’re well in to our meal and I’m beginning to feel a lot better—maybe it was low blood sugar—when I ask Jack, “Do you think Anton really would have shot?”

  “Well, that Maxim 9 is a silenced handgun, it doesn’t sound even as loud as slamming a car door, so he could definitely have gotten away with it, but no, he wouldn’t have done it. I don’t think so, at least. I’ve known him for too long and what we did wasn’t really that much of a train wreck. We did break the rules though and that was very unprofessional so I had to do the gentlemanly thing and take his offer. Anything else would have been a slap in the face and very bad form.”

  “That’s a relief. I thought he meant all those things he was saying.”

  “Oh, he meant it.” Jack shoots his brow, “if I’d said no, things would definitely get ugly down the road. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow…but one day if I needed something…maybe from someone who’s connected to Anton…and I reached out, there might be a bullet with my name on it. Let’s not dwell on that though. We screwed up, but we’re making it right. Let’s focus on that. There’s still $4million on the table.”

  “What was that smile in the end that you two shared?”

  “Uh, he knows me as being…different,” Jack smiles.

  “What do you mean, different?”

  “Not like…that. Not like what we were doing.”

  “Oh,” I laugh, “yeah, that was pretty stupid.”

  “Hey, I was having fun till the last part. He’s just never caught me on the back foot in a negotiation. I suppose if all goes well we’ll be laughing about it when this is over.”

  “I hope so,” I say. “Do you think this is going to be dangerous?”

  He thinks for a moment, “Yeah, I do, but not for you. I won’t put you in harm’s way Deanna, I promise. He wants you involved so we’re going to give him that, but that’ll be on my terms. Not his.”

  “I can handle myself, Jack.”

  “I know you can, Deanna.”

  “Well, aside from just now.”

  “No,” he smiles, “that’s part of why I know you can. You’re quick on your feet and your brain links A to Z really fast, maybe with some training you’d be ready for field work, but you’ve got to let me call the shots on this one. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if anything happened to you.”

  I find myself chewing the inside of my cheek, Jack sees it.

  “You will be put to use though, I guarantee it. And for that I’m going to need your trust. You have mine. Have I earned yours?”

  He looks as serious as I’ve ever seen. “Yes, you do, Jack.”

  He puts his hand out “So, what do you say, partners?”.

  “Partners,” I say.

  We shake on it.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jack

  Deanna had been through the wringer with the events of the previous day. The confrontation with Terry, the weirdo at the gas station, being threatened by Anton, and lastly, thinking that I was going to kill her—that one I can only laugh at.

  She’s sharp as a tack. You’d think only someone who’d had experience in the clandestine world of spies and double agents would have come to such a conclusion. She’s an amazing woman, truly.

  You’d also think that after everything she’d be ready to throw in the towel, but to her credit, she’s only concerned with what comes next. That night when we got to bed I just held her and stroked her hair, listening to the sound of her breathing till she fell asleep in my arms.

  We woke in the same position. I liked it. It’s nice waking up to someone. We showered and changed. I put on jeans, a t-shirt and my boots. Deanna did much the same and then we headed down to meet Anton.

  We’re there at 8 ‘o clock exactly and spot Anton in the same booth as yesterday, except this time he’s in my seat. First come I suppose. Everyone wants that seat.

  Anton signals the waitress and then greets us. “Morton,” he says, “Deanna, glad you could join us,” he smiles.

  I can’t help but laugh, it puts Deanna at ease.

  “Morning,” she says.

  We sit down and order breakfast, I go with coffee and the works—eggs, bacon, toast, sausage, mushrooms—Deanna does coffee and a cream cheese bagel with salmon. Anton sticks with his coffee.

  When the waitress leaves us, he places his hand on a thick folder and says, “This is everything.” He pulls out a dossier, opens it and places it in front of me, “Meet Melvin Whittaker,” a color picture of your archetypal Hollywood jetsetter stares back at me, he looks like a slime ball—it’s in the eyes, “Melvin has been coming up in the art scene the last few years and now has his heart set on becoming a competitor to Christie’s Auction House. This Saturday he’s going to host his first major private auction. Invitation only.”

  I slide the picture over to Deanna and scan a few more of them. High rollers he’s hobnobbing with…places he frequents. “Looks like a jerk,” she says. I laugh and pass her the rest.

  Anton goes on, “Invites were sent out to select bigwigs and collectors over the last few months. On the invite is a login to a website that is regularly updated with item listings and opening bids. Two weeks ago, a new lot number was added with an opening bid of $20million. The item was not identified, it is listed as—to be revealed at auction. This generated a lot of interest in the community and now everybody is clamoring for an invite to see what all the fuss is about. A source close to Whittaker’s camp says that it is the lost Cherub with Chariot, crafted in 1888.”

  “Wait, he says or is this confirmed?”

  “My man tells me the intel is good, Morton.”

  “Okay, go on.”

  He closes up the file, then pulls out another one and spreads it open. “This is Sheikh Khalid bin Abadi,” he shows me a picture of a bearded man in head gear, “he’s been looking to get his hands on an egg for years, but no one will sell no matter how much money he offers. It’s an item that confers status, so when you have one, it’s rare for the owner to part with it. Our theory is that Whittaker has invited the Sheikh because he knows he will outbid everyone from here to the moon. My client and the Sheikh are business rivals and were my client to attend the auction, the Sheikh would undoubtedly try to embarrass him by paying an astronomical price to acquire the egg, far more than my client is prepared to.”

  “So, why buy it when you can just steal it, huh? Who is this mystery client, Anton?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Morton. It would be a violation of my terms with him. But with a little research you could guess. He’s the owner of the largest private collection of Fabergé eggs in the world.”

  Deanna shows me the screen on her phone, there’s a Wikipedia article, she points out the name. Another Russian. I nod, but I don’t say the name out loud. It would offend Anton.

  “Any information on the seller?” I ask.

  “No. It’s more like we know of him, but no one has never seen the man and no one knows his name. We suspect that he’s bratva. There are only ever hints that operations and moves are attributable to him, it’s all speculation. Even now, we aren’t a hundred percent certain that it’s him, we can only guess. It’s not important though. The egg is already in the vault, it’s of no consequence how it got there or whom it belongs to.”

  “What vault?”

  Anton closes the file and puts it back in the folder as our waitress arrives. I leave my food aside for the time being, Deanna starts picking at her salmon bagel. When the waitress leaves, Anton pulls a third file from the folder. He opens it up and turns it to me.

  “The recently completed Konquest Building. At 1175 feet it’s almost 23 meters taller than the Wilshire Grand, making it t
he tallest building in Los Angeles.” There are plans and schematics galore. “Every bit of information that we could dig up about the building is in here. From floor plans to security systems, it’s not complete of course, but this is what we could find.”

  “You mentioned the vault?”

  “The vault is one hundred feet underground.”

  “That sounds like it’s going to be a slog, is that my only option?”

  “Well, there’s a before scenario and an after. Either you take it from the vault or you take it off the Sheikh. You don’t want any collateral damage so I expected you’d want to go for the vault.”

  “I’m not a safe cracker, Anton. A job like that needs a five-man crew at the very least,” I flip through the documents, it looks like there’s an elevator to the vault, that might be a way in, but ten feet of concrete and too many steel doors—not to mention the vault door itself—makes this look like the only way in is with a hostage. It would take days to drill, dig and explode our way in there. Not really what I’m looking for. “What’s the Sheikh’s security team like?”

  “They’re pros, there are no less than six men with him at all times.”

  “Putting down six trained professionals without killing them is not the easiest thing to do, Anton.”

  “I was thinking you’d catch it in transit, perhaps a few well-placed RPG’s to the motorcade.”

  “That could easily end up in a bloodbath.”

  “Morton,” he sighs, “this is the job, how you go about it is your business, I’m only presenting you the options as I see them.”

  “What about during?”

  “You mean during the auction?”

  “Yeah, it’s just going to be sitting out there in the open, right? The egg. They’re going to show it to everyone aren’t they?”

  “Tickets—the event is going to be guarded like fort Knox—and the invites all have NFC chips in them.”

  “What’s that?” Deanna asks.

  “Near field communication,” Anton says, “the invites are the tickets and they’re scanned on entry. There’s an encrypted serial number on each one that ensures the ticket is one that was validly issued.”

  “Can you forge them?”

  “It’s impossible to know, we would have to have access to a ticket first to see how the encryption works and what the algorithm is. To do that you’d have to steal a ticket so you might as well use a stolen one.”

  “Is that an option?”

  “Once again, you don’t want collateral damage, who are you going to steal tickets from hours ahead of the event and insist they keep quiet about it without killing them? We also don’t have a list of all the guests so we wouldn’t know how to pick the right target. If the tickets are reported stolen they’re taken off the system, so even if we stole them to try to forge them, we’d be alerting them ahead of time. It might be an option though.”

  “Why don’t we just ask for tickets?” Deanna suggests through a mouthful of bagel.

  “This is the most high-profile auction this city has ever seen, people have been trying to buy tickets for months. It’s a dead end. We’ve explored the option.”

  “Come on,” Deanna says, “there’re always extra tickets. It’s just like when you want to get in to a club and the doorman says it’s full, you just have to use a little finesse.”

  “You think it’s that easy?” Anton says.

  “Well, he’s a man, right? Ever heard of a honeytrap?”

  “You’re going to charm the tickets out of him?” Anton’s brow flies up.

  Deanna shrugs and smiles. “I do it all the time.”

  “Okay, let’s keep that on the table then,” I say, “where’s the auction going to be? If we can get the tickets then I need to scout the location and see if a during scenario is feasible.”

  Anton searches through the pages in the file and finds the diagram he’s looking for, “Conference room A. I don’t see how you’d be able to pull that off though. You’ll be on the top floor and have to fight your way through a poes ton of security to get out of there. Even if I were to get a chopper to the roof you’re still going to have one hell of a scuffle on your hands.”

  “Poes?” Deanna asks.

  “It’s Afrikaans, it means cunt,” Anton says.

  “Classy.”

  “I apologize.”

  “Alright,” I say, “leave this stuff with me and after breakfast we’ll go take a look and see what we’re dealing with.

  “Right then,” Anton says. He piles everything back in to the folder and stands. “Check in with me later. Call if you need anything.”

  “Will do,” I say.

  Anton leaves us and I pull my breakfast to me.

  I dig in, it was about to get cold.

  Deanna goes over to the other side of the table and pulls out the information on Whittaker.

  “It’s like you’ve been doing this for years,” I say.

  “I don’t know, I think it’s kind of fun,” she smiles and I can see that she’s excited. She looks through the pictures very carefully and then checks out his known associates and haunts. There are also surveillance notes that go back a week.

  “What are you thinking?”

  She shows me a picture of Whittaker at a bar. It looks like a fancy place. “This is where I can bump in to him, accidentally, on purpose,” she smiles, “from these notes it looks like he stops for a drink most evenings. Must be a post-work thing. He was there Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday last week. When do you want to do it?”

  “Sooner the better, we’ll have to try tonight because if he’s not there then we’ll have to bank on tomorrow. Most people are creatures of habit, but we can’t leave anything to chance.”

  She nods and keeps studying the information while I finish eating.

  “First things first,” I say as I push my plate away, “I need to check out Konquest to see if I can get out of there once I snatch the egg. That will determine whether we go with the honeytrap. You want to come with or hang back?”

  “You go on,” she says, “I’m going to go upstairs and work on this stuff,” she points to Whittaker’s profile.

  “Okay then, I’ll see you in a little while.” I stand to leave but then Deanna calls to me, “Yeah?”

  “Give me Anton’s phone number.”

  I pull out my notebook, turn to the page with the number and show it to her. She taps it in to her phone. “Thanks,” she says, then blows me a kiss, “I’ve got this.”

  I smile. She gets cuter every day. I just hope she knows what she’s doing.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Deanna

  Once Jack left I immediately called Anton and told him that I needed a laptop. He told me he’d send one up to the room. After heading upstairs, I leapt up onto the bed and crossed my legs before spreading out all the information in front of me. This is definitely not a time where I can half-ass my way through something. I can’t leave anything to chance. I’ve got to come up with a solid plan.

  Melvin Whittaker really does look like a jerk. I know it’s not fair to label someone like that when I don’t even know him…but there’s just something about his facial expressions. He kind of looks smug and fake…insincere. His profile says he’s thirty-eight years old and single. He has a home in Manhattan and one in LA.

  I don’t know if I’m reading this right but his financials make it look like he’s heavily in debt. When you’re a million in the hole but you still have two houses and a Ferrari and a Jaguar, something doesn’t quite add up.

  It’s a house of cards. Obviously this guy is concerned with his image because he’s hanging on by a thread.

  That can work to my advantage. In my experience, guys who chase money and power are generally doing it for one thing…women. I hope that’s the case this time.

  I’ve got to make this guy feel like the Rockstar he wants to be and back him in to a corner where he can’t say no. That means I’ve got to learn as much about him as I can. I hear a knock on
the door. I open it and there’s a bellhop standing there.

  “Delivery for Deanna?”

  “Yes, that’s me.” I take the bag from him and close the door. It’s from the Apple Store. Inside is a MacBook Pro. It takes a few minutes to set up, then I connect to the hotel’s Wi-Fi and get busy.

  ***

  Jack

  I used the GPS in the Escalade to find the Konquest building. It’s another monster of glass and steel. The drive was anything but great, the traffic in this city is a nightmare. I could’ve walked here faster. After parking in the underground garage, I take the elevator up to the lobby.

  If their intention was to one-up the Wilshire Grand then they might have succeeded. The interior is the personification of opulence. Everything is gold, silver, marble and rich, dark woods.

  It’s massive. There are banks of elevators on either side of the huge space with a reception area far opposite the large glass doors at the entrance.

  In the middle of the room is a digital wall that’s touch operated. It scrolls through upcoming events till you touch it and then you can access directory services. I wish I’d brought Deanna. I’ve never been great with computers.

  I decide I’ll be better off with a human being so I head to reception.

  I see an attractive green-eyed blonde, a brunette who looks just like her and a redhead as well. Perhaps management like to cater to all tastes. I choose the blonde and get her attention.

  “Hi there,” she says with a big smile, “welcome to Konquest, how can I help you today?”

  “Hi there. I’m a head of security and my employer is going to be attending the auction this Saturday, I just wanted to come down take a look at the route we’ll be taking and see conference room A and whatever else your own security can show me.”

  “Certainly, can you tell me who you’re with?”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t do that.” I’m sure they’re used to these requests.