The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2020 by Christopher Reich
Cover design by Julianna Lee
Cover photograph © Getty Images
Author photograph by Daniel Dinsmore Photography
Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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ISBN 978-0-316-45594-7
E3-20200625-DA-PC-ORI
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Discover More
About the Author
Also by Christopher Reich
To my daughters, Katja and Noelle,
and my mother, Mildred “Babs” Reich,
with love
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Chapter 1
Cannes
Côte d’Azur, France
Set the timer,” said Simon Riske.
“How long?” asked Lucy Brown.
“Four minutes.” Simon moved across the spacious bedroom, eyes fixed on the painting.
“Why four?”
“The security system monitors activate all locks every two minutes. I figure we have another two on top of that in case they decide to send someone to check. I don’t want to be here to find out if I’m right.”
“In case? I thought you stole the key. Why would they check?”
Simon looked at Lucy. Enough questions. “Set it. Now. And make it three minutes thirty seconds.”
Simon took the phone from his pocket and approached the painting. Activating the camera, he stepped back to ensure the entire canvas was in the frame and snapped a photograph. He examined the result. Satisfied that it was in focus and that the artist’s signature was visible, he sent it to an office on the eleventh floor of a modern steel-and-glass skyscraper in the heart of the City, the one-square-mile section of London that was home to many of the world’s financial juggernauts. The reply came back like a bullet.
Confirmed. Proceed.
Simon lifted the painting off the wall and set it on an onyx coffee table in the center of the bedroom. The canvas measured forty-two inches by thirty. It showed the façade of Rouen Cathedral at sunset and had been painted by Claude Monet in 1894. Estimates of its value ranged from thirty to fifty million dollars. Twenty-five years ago, it had been stolen from the famed Rijksmuseum of art in Amsterdam.
Simon Riske had come to steal it back.
“May I?” He extended his hand. Lucy placed a tube of lipstick in his palm. Simon removed the cover and spun the bottom, releasing a razor-sharp blade. “Time?”
“Three minutes.” Lucy bounced up and down on her toes, not an easy feat given her four-inch heels. She was dressed in a black designer cocktail dress with a plunging neckline and high heels with fire-engine-red soles. Simon didn’t care much about fashion. Prior to this assignment he’d thought “mules” were animals, not shoes. He’d accompanied Lucy to Harvey Nichols to buy her outfit and was still in shock at the price of feminine couture. He’d been sure to keep the receipt for his expense report.
During daylight hours, Lucy worked as an apprentice mechanic in his automotive repair shop in southwest London, a stone’s throw from Wimbledon, better known as the All England Lawn and Tennis Club. Instead of a three-thousand-dollar dress and fancy high heels, she wore a gray coverall and work boots, and kept her blond hair tucked beneath a baseball cap. Simon’s relationship with her was strictly platonic, somewhere between friend and father. In a sense, she was his own restoration project. But that was another story.
As for Simon, he was dressed befitting the occasion, a black-tie dinner dance and auction to benefit an international charity held on the first night of the Cannes Film Festival. He was a compact man, markedly fit in a peaked-lapel dinner jacket, his bow tie hardly perfect, but his own doing. His hair was dark and thick, receding violently at the temples and cut to a nub with a number two razor. He had his father’s dark complexion and brooding good looks and his mother’s beryl-green eyes. People mistook him for a European—Italian, Slavic, something Mediterranean. His nose was too bold, too chiseled. His chin, too strong. Take off the tux, add a day’s stubble, and he’d fit in hooking bales of Egyptian cotton across a dock in Naples.
Simon had a second profession besides restoring old cars. It involved remedying thorny, often unorthodox problems for an array of clientele: corporations, governments, wealthy ind
ividuals. Or, in this case, an insurance company—Lloyd’s of London—and, by extension, the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam.
Back to work.
With care, he punctured the canvas at the uppermost corner and drew the blade firmly and steadily along its perimeter—down, across, up, across—wincing at the rip of tearing linen twill. Removing the canvas from the frame in this manner would reduce its size by only an inch on its borders, or so he’d been told. Still, it was hard not to feel as if he were desecrating something sacred.
From the floor below came the sound of applause and laughter, followed by a burst of music. The auction was over.
“Time?”
“Stop asking,” said Lucy. “You’re making me nervous.”
“Don’t be,” said Simon, giving her a smile to calm her down. “We’re almost out of here.”
A sharp knock on the door erased the smile.
“Mr. Sun? It’s Pierrot from security.” English with a strong French accent.
Lucy shot Simon an angry glance. “I thought you said four minutes.”
“You locked it, right?”
“I know how to follow instructions.”
“Stall.”
“How?”
“Talk to him.”
“And say what?”
“You’re a woman in a billionaire’s bedroom. Think of something.”
The billionaire in question was named Samson Sun, the nephew of the Indonesian minister of finance and brother-in-law of a Malaysian king. To the world, he was known as a businessman and philanthropist, and, more recently, a movie producer.
Simon had met him a month earlier at an automobile auction held at the Villa d’Este on Lake Como. It was a setup to begin with, the Monet having been spotted in a photograph in a piece on Sun appearing in the French edition of Architectural Digest. When Sun purchased a Ferrari at auction the final day (a 1966 275 GTB Berlinetta for fifteen million euros), Simon introduced himself as the man who’d overseen its restoration and offered his services should Sun have any other automobiles so in need. A conversation ensued, then later a lunch and a dinner, after which Sun insisted that Simon attend his fundraiser the following month in Cannes.
“I’m sorry,” called Lucy, cheek pressed to the door. “Mr. Sun is in the bathroom.”
“Please open up, madame. It is necessary.”
“I can’t,” she said. “I don’t have any clothes on.”
“Is Mr. Sun with you?”
Lucy looked to Simon, who nodded. The security system would show it was Sun’s key that had opened the door. “Of course he is. Who else do you think I’m with?”
“Please ask him to come to the door.”
“Oh, all right,” said Lucy, aggravated. “Don’t get in a tizzy. I’ll tell him.”
Simon returned his attention to the job at hand. One by one, he sliced the last stubborn threads and freed the canvas from the frame. “Give it to me,” he said. “Quick.”
Lucy reached into her purse and took out a plastic packet the size of a neatly folded handkerchief. Simon tore open the packet and shook loose a black polyurethane cylindrical tube. Handing it to Lucy, he rolled up the painting as tightly as possible and, with her help, slipped it inside. A drawstring drew the cylinder snug, hardly more than an inch round. Lucy removed another item from her purse—a red bow—and affixed it to the carrier.
“A present from our host,” said Simon.
The knocking recommenced, louder this time.
“Madame, please. Open the door.”
Simon heard the guard trying the lock, finding it secured from the inside. He imagined Pierrot had just learned that Samson Sun was not, in fact, in his bedroom about to enjoy intimate relations with one of his guests, but downstairs presiding over his auction.
The pounding increased in intensity.
Simon placed a call. Somewhere circling above them in the sky there was a helicopter waiting to pick them up. “We’re ready to skip town. How far out are you?”
“No go. Mechanical issues. We’re still on the ground.”
“What do you mean? We need to get out of here yesterday.”
“Nothing I can do. I’m grounded until a mechanic gets here. Good luck.”
Simon muttered an appropriate expletive and hung up. “We’re on our own.”
“I guess it’s too late to put it back,” said Lucy.
“Just a little.”
“Your move, boss.”
“Open the door,” said Simon. “Let him in.”
“And then?”
“I tell him a bedtime story and give him a kiss good night. Ready?”
Lucy nodded, but he could read the fear in her eyes. It was not the first time he’d brought her along on a job, but it was the first time he’d enlisted her active participation.
He extinguished the lights and took up position beside the door, back against the wall.
Lucy swallowed hard, then opened the door. “Yes? Can I help you?”
Pierrot the security guard looked at Lucy, then shouldered his way past her into the bedroom. Simon stepped forward and punched him in the kidney, as painful a spot as there was, then placed him in a headlock, arm drawn savagely across the neck to impede the carotid artery and cut off the flow of blood to the brain. Pierrot struggled but was no match for surprise and superior strength. His body went limp. Simon lowered him to the floor, removing his earpiece and lapel microphone.
“Pierrot, ça va?” asked a rough voice. “Qu’est-ce qui se passe?”
“Tout va bien,” answered Simon, his French that of a native.
“C’est toi, Pierrot?”
Simon frowned, dropping the microphone and earpiece onto the floor. That was a fail. “Time to move.”
Carrier in hand, he guided Lucy into the corridor, turning left and advancing down the narrow hall before descending a flight of stairs. The music grew louder. The din of excited voices reached them as the dance floor came into view. A man in a dark suit identical to Pierrot’s pushed his way toward the stairwell. Simon stopped. Options for escape were dwindling rapidly. Turning, he told Lucy to retrace her steps, placing a hand in the lee of her back. “Faster.”
Lucy ran up the stairs, pausing at the top to remove her shoes.
“To your right,” said Simon, praying that his memory of the location’s layout held up.
A glance over his shoulder proved the security guard was following. Ten feet away a door blocked their progress. Lucy struggled to open the latch.
“Let me.” Simon threw the lock, sliding the door open. A stiff breeze rushed over them. A spray of water. The sharp scent of salt, brine, and rain. “After you.”
Lucy stepped onto the fourth deck of the ship, seventy feet above the Mediterranean Sea. Two miles distant, across an expanse of sea, the lights of Juan-les-Pins and Cannes glimmered like diamonds. “Which way?”
“Aft.” Simon noted Lucy’s puzzled gaze and pointed to the rear of the vessel. “That way.”
The vessel was the Yasmina, a 503-foot mega-yacht built by Blohm+Voss shipyards of Hamburg, Germany, with a crew of seventy, including two full-time skippers and room for thirty guests, powered by a triple-screw diesel engine with a maximum speed of thirty knots and a range of three thousand miles.
Lucy jogged across the deck, stopping alongside the elevated helipad. Simon stared into the night sky, hope over reason. A gust knocked him back a step. He saw no flashing lights, only a bank of clouds approaching from the Maritime Alps. There would be no miracles tonight.
Behind them, the security guard emerged onto the deck, pistol drawn and held to his thigh. “Excuse me, monsieur. Would you mind stopping for a moment?”
Simon deftly handed Lucy the carrier. “Oh, hello. Is there something the matter?”
The guard spoke a few words into his lapel mike, then holstered his weapon inside his jacket. “Can you both accompany me?”
“We were just enjoying the night air,” said Simon, as a drop of rain struck him in the eye.
“Of course you were. I’m sure it won’t take more than a minute.”
Simon looked toward Lucy. “Honey, can you come here? This gentleman would like to have a word with us.”
“Really? What for?” A look of confusion for Simon. A smile for the security guard. She took Simon’s hand and leaned her head against his shoulder.
Not bad, thought Simon. Not quite ready for the BBC production of Romeo and Juliet, but well done, all the same.
“Happy to,” he said to the guard. “We just left the auction. I never knew dinner and a boat ride could cost so much.”
“I’m sure Mr. Sun will be grateful.”
“I certainly hope so.” As Simon spoke, he stepped toward the guard, placing one foot inside his stance, then attacking—as nimble as a cat, as fast as a cobra—taking hold of the man’s lapels, pivoting sharply, launching him over his hip and shoulder, and out over the railing of the boat. The guard’s cry and subsequent splash was drowned out by the pounding music emanating from the open-air dance floor. The Yasmina was underway, making 10 knots. In moments, the man had disappeared in the roiling sea.
“Will he be all right?” asked Lucy.
“A mile to shore,” said Simon. “Give or take. He’ll be fine.” But he wasn’t sure. A mile at night was an eternity. With the storm…
“We need to get off the boat. Pronto.”
He directed her to the far side of the helipad and down a flight of exterior stairs, calculating the time until the painting was discovered missing, if it had not already been. At the bottom of the stairs, guests spilled onto the main deck. Most were dressed similarly to him and Lucy. Men in dinner jackets, women in cocktail dresses. Inside, the grand salon had been transformed into a mock-up of Studio 54, the fabled New York discotheque. A raised dance floor lit from below, DJ booth, mirror ball, go-go dancers on pedestals. Earth, Wind, and Fire blasted from the speakers. The only thing missing was Bianca Jagger riding a white stallion and Andy Warhol huddled in a booth with Halston and Elizabeth Taylor.
Simon led the way across the salon, happy for the anonymity afforded him by the throng of revelers. He stole a flute of champagne from a passing waiter and downed it. There was no reason to believe anyone would be looking for them. One guard had seen the two of them in Samson Sun’s bedroom, and that had been but briefly and in the dark. He’d been left unconscious, but for how much longer? The only other person to suspect them was currently swimming to shore.
The Palace Page 1