Royal Heist

by Lynda La Plante

  16

  Dulay was wearing a navy cashmere coat and an Armani suit. He held a small carry-on bag and a briefcase. De Jersey had waited for him at the arrivals barrier in Terminal Four. They had an hour before the flight from Antwerp was due. Dulay agreed to identify the man, though he declined to follow him. He and de Jersey agreed to meet later that day at Dulay’s hotel, the Grosvenor House Hotel on Park Lane.

  When the Antwerp flight landed, de Jersey was waiting in the car park. Dulay called him on his cell phone as soon as he had picked out the target. De Jersey drove into position outside Arrivals. Dulay called again to say the flight had coincided with two others. The Antwerp passengers had gone through customs and were coming onto the concourse, but now the departure lanes were full of trolleys and passengers, making it difficult to spot the D’Ancona representative. Then Dulay suddenly said, “I’ve got him. He’s carrying a brown leather briefcase, raincoat, and yes! A tall blond man is right at his heels. That’s his guard. I can just see the chain on the guy’s briefcase—it’s handcuffed to him.”

  “Describe him,” de Jersey snapped.

  Dulay spoke rapidly. “He’s moving fast, heading for the middle exit. He’s balding, wearing rimless glasses, a navy suit, white shirt, and tie, about five ten, slim build, and he’s on a cell phone. He’s heading out now!”

  De Jersey couldn’t see the man. A black Range Rover passed him with a uniformed driver at the wheel. Then de Jersey spotted the D’Ancona man. He and his bodyguard came out together. The driver was quickly out of the Range Rover and opened the passenger and rear doors. Both men got into the vehicle and closed the doors. They moved off quickly. De Jersey followed, right on their tail.

  He had the Range Rover within easy viewing distance thanks to the heavy traffic. It was still backed up, even when they hit the A4. Twice when the traffic thinned out he almost lost them, but roadworks saved him and he was able to watch their progress four cars ahead. The distance lengthened as they drove into Cromwell Road, heading for Knightsbridge, then traffic was heavy again. Suddenly they headed toward Earl’s Court, and he followed as they crossed the Fulham Road, then King’s Road. The Range Rover continued toward the Victoria Embankment. Then it was driving toward Blackfriars Bridge, to Newgate Street, where they passed St. Paul’s. De Jersey sensed they were taking a very roundabout route. They were just passing Montague Place when the Range Rover took a sharp left. It was impossible for de Jersey to stay close at their heels without being spotted, so he drove on, making the next left. He drove into Smithfield, but there was no sign of them. He had lost them! Frustrated, he circled the roundabout in West Smithfield and branched off down a narrow side street leading into Bartholomew Close, which came out at King Horn Street. The Range Rover was parked on the corner of Newbury Street. He was just in time to see the two men from D’Ancona enter a building together. A moment later, the Range Rover drove off.

  De Jersey parked in a side street and walked back. The safe house was on the corner. A narrow road ran alongside the four-story building. Rubbish bins had been placed on the pavement. The place was unimpressive, painted black, and gave no indication of its function. There was no plaque outside, no bell, no letter box, and the double door leading into the property was made of reinforced steel. Although the upper windows looked innocent, they were not windows at all. The casements were built over shuttered protectors with tinted black glass. De Jersey could not risk spending any more time in the area and walked on.

  Less than a hundred yards away, the road curved to the right and led into Aldersgate Street. He walked a little further, then stopped outside a large, two-story, flat-roofed warehouse for lease. Perfect, de Jersey thought, for their purposes. It appeared to back onto the street where the safe house was. By the time he reached his car, he had called the estate agents and arranged to view the property the following morning. Then he drove back to the West End to meet Dulay at his hotel.

  Dulay had a pleasant room overlooking Hyde Park. De Jersey and he sat at a small table by the window.

  “Pigeon went home to roost. It’s a building in the Barbican, small back street, not far from Smithfield market, and it’s smack on a corner,” de Jersey said, drawing the safe house on a square of paper from his notebook. “Getting into it won’t be the problem. It’s knowing what we’ll be confronted with once we’re inside.” He passed the drawing to Dulay, who glanced at it, then jabbed with his stubby finger.

  “D’Ancona will have it secured like Fort Knox. They’ll have cameras on the outside. How the hell do you think you’re gonna get in without being seen, especially on a corner?”

  De Jersey repeated that that was not the problem. It was the layout inside the house that he needed to know. “What would you say I’m up against?”

  “Well, there are usually two reinforced doors as an external entry system, then another door leading into the foyer. I’ve been to a couple of their locations, and there were always several inches of bulletproof glass. They will have a sophisticated phone system to link the safes and selection rooms and even the fitting rooms. There may also be another set of doors, maybe three or four, to get into the inner sanctum. They have panic buttons dotted around like M&M’s. I doubt they’ll have a walk-in safe in a safe house, but I could be wrong.”

  De Jersey ripped up the drawing. “I take it you’re in.”

  Dulay nodded. “Yeah, I’m in.”

  “Okay, what about your Japanese buyer?”

  “I’ve contacted him. All I said was that I might get my hands on one of the most famous and largest diamonds in existence. I said I’d be looking for around a million a carat.”

  De Jersey smiled. The Koh-i-noor was 105.6 carats.

  “He said he’d be in the market for something of that price, and any other stones. I could get the Koh-i-noor cut by my lapidary, but if we sell to my Japanese buyer, he’d want it uncut. Buyers like him are interested in the stone’s size and history.”

  “Maybe we don’t touch the Koh-i-noor, but we’re going to have other stones of immense size and value. Can you trust the lapidary?”

  “I’d trust him with my life. We’ve worked together for twenty years. Even so, to move the stuff fast means he’ll be working day and night altering the stones and putting them into new settings so they’ll be untraceable. I need a nice cash incentive for him.”

  “How much are we looking at?”

  “Maybe a quarter of a million. If we do end up cutting the Koh-i-noor, he’s the right man for the job. It would take weeks to do, and we’d have to pay him extra to disguise it without dropping its value. We can transform it from an oval into a pear shape by tapering it at the back. I’ve listed gem dealers worldwide where we can spread the other stones. I’ve got contacts in New York, Antwerp, and India.”

  Occasionally the Frenchman would run his finger round the collar of his shirt. De Jersey listened, aware that Dulay was leading up to the subject of his cut.

  “How honest are the D’Ancona employees?” de Jersey asked. “I think we might need an insider and wondered if it was a possibility.”

  “Well, I was one.” Dulay shrugged. “I’d say the top brass would be unbribable—you only get to the top at D’Ancona by being above suspicion. But there are always the underlings. It’s all in the choosing. You get the wrong type and they’ll blab.”

  “Could anyone in the safe house be skimming?” asked de Jersey.

  Dulay looked doubtful. “If they’re dealing with such top-quality gear, there’s no way. These guys are working by appointment to the Queen. That rep you followed had to be carrying in some heavy-duty stones, with his briefcase chained to his wrist.”

  This wasn’t what de Jersey wanted to hear, so he changed the subject. “How’s the boat?”

  “The fucking money pit?” Dulay said angrily. “That’s partly why I’m here. It’s costing me a fortune.”

  “If I needed to use it, would you be up for it?”

  “If the price is right.”

  “Not
for charter, for the pickup.”

  Dulay sucked in his breath. “Woooooh! This is drawing me in closer than I want to be.”

  “Not if it’s, say, chartered to a company. We can use your crew. Can you trust them?”

  “Sure, but it depends what they have to do—and they’ll cost.”

  “They won’t know what they’re doing. You and I will.”

  Dulay tapped the table with his knuckle. “When would this company charter the floating palace?”

  “I’ll need it ready for the first week in May.”

  Dulay crossed to the minifridge. Suddenly he was not quite so confident. “So it’s May, is it?”

  “I haven’t got the exact dates, nor have I worked out how I want to use the boat, but make sure it’s crewed up and ready.”

  Dulay scooped a handful of ice into his vodka, then returned to the table. “I want a heavy slice, Philip. If I’m going in this deep, I want to be paid big bucks. I’ve brought you the buyer and now you want me to get the boat ready. So how do we work the payoff?”

  “You’ll get a split. Not a payoff, a split. We can’t do it without you. How does that sound?”

  Dulay drank thirstily. “Good, but I need cash up front to start getting the shop prepared for the work we’ll have to do. Extra furnaces, a smelting kiln for the gold. It all costs.”

  De Jersey agreed to pay him ten thousand. “I’ll also need some assurance from the buyer. All I have is your word that he’s interested. Don’t take this the wrong way, because I do trust you.”

  “That’s big of you, considering how far I’ve gone already.”

  “Calm down. It makes sense, though, doesn’t it? We need our buyer to put himself on the line with us. If he wants the Koh-i-noor, we want a cash incentive from him to know he’s trustworthy.”

  “We can trust him. He’s worth billions, and I’m vouching for him, for Chrissakes.”

  “Not good enough. We want a million per carat, and we want a million in cash up front as a down payment or we might sell to someone else.”

  “He’s not gonna go for it.” Dulay drained his glass.

  “If he wants it, he’s rich enough to make sure he gets it.”

  Dulay was pulling at his thinning hair. “Okay, I’ll put it to him, but you can’t mess him around. Like I told you before, I don’t wanna turn up as chopped liver.”

  “Put it to him, or if you don’t want to, I will.”

  Dulay hesitated. “Okay, let’s see what he says.”

  “Is he still in Paris?”

  “Yes. I’ll fly out this afternoon.”

  As soon as Dulay was in his car, de Jersey called Wilcox. He wanted to check out Dulay and, more important, his buyer, so he needed Wilcox to tail him from the London hotel to Paris.

  “You’ve never met Dulay, have you?”

  “Tony did once, but I never have. What time have I got to be there?”

  “Go straight to the airport and wait.”

  Wilcox sighed. “I’ve only just got in from Leicester, Eddy.”

  “So, make a trip of it. Take your woman.”

  De Jersey took the warehouse for a year and paid six months’ rent in advance in the name of Philip Simmons. Also through the agents, he gained, with some financial persuasion, access to the drawings of the D’Ancona building. For security reasons, no single party ever held a complete layout of a safe house, so all he found out was the size of the building, the rear door area, and small backyard. The drawings showed that the building had four floors and a basement. He could not discover anything about the work inside, though four years previously the owners had been granted planning permission by the council for the installation of undisclosed security measures. D’Ancona had covered their tracks; any attempt to find out details of these “undisclosed security measures” would alert the company to a possible problem. De Jersey had to find another way of gaining an interior plan of the safe house.

  Driving through Aldgate into the East End, he called Driscoll and told him to monitor the D’Ancona safe house. He had spied the perfect observation post. The warehouse had a flat roof, and from there Driscoll could watch the safe house without being seen.

  “I got a lot going on right now,” Driscoll said, sounding tired.

  “And I haven’t?” snapped de Jersey.

  “Why can’t Jimmy do it?”

  “He’s tailing Dulay, who’s meeting up with our buyer. I just want to make sure he’s on the level.”

  “The buyer or Dulay?”

  “Both.”

  “So I got to schlep over to this warehouse now? The wife is gonna have a fit.”

  De Jersey was impatient to get on. He told Driscoll where he would find the keys to the warehouse and hung up.

  When he got home de Jersey was unprepared for Christina’s concern. She had contacted the horse breeders in Ireland, only to hear they were not expecting him. Her concern quickly turned to anger, though. Every time she had tried his cell phone, it was turned off. It was irresponsible to go off without leaving a contact number. She told him that her mother was ill and she had to leave for Sweden.

  “You should have just gone, darling,” he said.

  “You should have called home.”

  “I didn’t think.”

  “No, you didn’t. I want to know why you lied about going to Dublin.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Freddy said you weren’t even expected.”

  “I wasn’t with him.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t buy all my horses from Freddy. Sometimes I want it kept under wraps exactly what I’m thinking of buying. I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’ve always got such good excuses for disappearing.” She sighed. “I’ve been so worried about my mother. You’ve not been fair.” Christina hesitated to voice her suspicions, but she couldn’t help blurting out, “Are you seeing someone?”

  De Jersey was genuinely shocked that she could even consider it a possibility. “Of course not! No woman could ever—”

  “Well, why have you been taking so many clothes from your wardrobe then? You take them each trip and they never come back. I checked because I wondered if anything needed to go to the cleaners. Two suits are missing and several shirts.” She folded her arms.

  De Jersey had left the clothes at his Kilburn flat but came up with an excuse fast. “I gave them to a couple of the trainers. Ask them if you want proof, but this is so unlike you, Christina. I’ve never given you any reason to think I might be having an affair.”

  She burst into tears. He held her close. “Get your things packed. We’ll put you on the first plane out to see your family. There’s not another woman in the world I would so much as look at.”

  He arranged for his pilot to fly her to the airport. He knew he must take greater precautions from now on, especially since he would need to spend more time away from the estate. It was already early February, and if they were to go ahead on the second of May, they had to work fast.

  Wilcox called from Paris just after four o’clock. He and Rika had caught the same plane as Dulay and had followed him to the Ritz.

  “I had to book in, Eddy, just for a night. Anyway, it got Rika out of my hair. Dulay didn’t check in. He went straight to the desk. They handed him the house phone, he spoke briefly, then went into the coffee bar. About ten minutes later this huge guy appeared. Looked like Odd Job man in the James Bond movie. He had a few words with Dulay, then they went out to the foyer.” Wilcox explained how he had followed Dulay out of the hotel, where he had had a conversation inside a parked Mercedes with another man, presumably their buyer.

  “He’s tall for a Jap,” Wilcox said. “’Bout five eleven, well built, snappy dresser. Odd Job was hovering around, so he’s got to be the bodyguard.”

  “Jimmy, did you get his address? Who the fuck is this guy?”

  “I got it from the porter. He’s a regular guest. Comes over five or six times a year. He’s a computer giant.
His company’s worth billions, and he’s based in Tokyo. His name is Mr. Kitamo—”

  “That’s all I need to know right now.”

  “That’s what we should have put our money into, computer software.”

  “Well, we didn’t! Talk to you later—”

  “He’ll probably have a Web site—”

  “Jimmy, get off the phone.”

  “Try searching the Web for Kitamo triple K computer software and—”

  “Jimmy, go screw your girlfriend!” de Jersey snapped, ending the call.

  De Jersey spent the rest of the day with his jockeys, trainers, and managers. The cost of the heist so far was straining his resources. It would be paid back by the Moreno sale, but that was still not liquid. He gave instructions for two more horses to be sold, which hurt him and perplexed the managers and trainers. Looking over the accounts later, he saw that even with the sale of another eight racehorses and two brood mares, he could not keep the estate going for more than four months. It was imperative that he pull off the heist.

  That afternoon Fleming took Royal Flush out on the gallops for de Jersey to watch. He was in stunning form. However, that night de Jersey couldn’t sleep. He was overtired, with a head full of plans. He went to his study for some brandy. Eventually he walked outside.

  It was a clear, cold night, and his breath steamed. He was jolted out of his dark reverie by Fleming, who was hunched in his overcoat.

  “Can’t sleep?”

  De Jersey shook his head.

  “Me neither,” Fleming said.

  They walked in silence for a while, then stood against the fence that surrounded the grazing paddock.

  “You have problems, haven’t you?”

  De Jersey nodded.

  “It’s obvious with the pick of your crop being sold off. It’s breaking my heart.”

  “Mine too, but I’m in a deep hole.” He paused. “I have a friend in Ireland, Michael Shaughnessy, not a big breeder but a good man.”

  “I don’t think I know him,” said Fleming.

  “He keeps a low profile,” de Jersey said. He wondered how Fleming would react to what he was about to propose. He guessed that he’d have to make it worth his while with cash. It usually came down to that.