The Palace

by Reich, Christopher

  And so it was that Rafa did not hurry straight to the shower as he’d told his wife but stopped first in his private study. There, after locking the door, he sat at his desk and logged on to his email. It was not his regular email, but a secret address used for the most sensitive matters accessed through an encrypted website on the dark web.

  A single message from “PM” waited in the inbox. P for Paul. M for Malloy.

  Rafa’s finger hovered above the trackpad.

  Once, in better times, he had worked with Paul Malloy in the Swiss city of Geneva. Their business had been finance—more specifically, capital: the raising thereof. In those days, they’d communicated via shared company servers using standard email addresses. No longer. The closest of friends had become what might politely be called “estranged colleagues.” Depending on the contents of the message blinking on Rafa’s laptop the nature of their relationship would change once again. For better. Or worse.

  Rafa opened the message.

  Go to hell.

  Three words. Impossible to misunderstand.

  Rafa felt his guts twist. It was not the answer he’d wanted. Regardless, he must now embark upon a threatened course of action. It was not a matter of a wounded ego. It was a question of justice. Of right and wrong. Of keeping one’s word and honoring one’s promises. As in all business affairs, it dealt with money. A severance payment of five million Swiss francs, already several years late.

  For worse, then.

  He double-clicked on an icon titled PETROSAUD. A list of spreadsheets appeared. They had names like: “Emirates Lease 7.14,” “Indo Drill 1.15,” “Saud Refine 3.16.” And others named: “Commissions.”

  He’d always been good with other people’s money: asking for it, investing it, spending it, losing it. But this…this in front of him was different. A crime. Not a single instance, but many. Over and over again. With malice aforethought. Rafa had objected. He was many things, but not a criminal.

  An offer had been made. Join them. Not just Malloy, but all the big boys at the company, PetroSaud SA. It was easy money, Malloy had argued, over white wine and Dover sole at the Lion d’Or. Victimless. No one would find out. Billions for the picking.

  Rafa knew better. There were always victims.

  He hadn’t participated, but to his lasting shame, he hadn’t done anything to stop it. He was making too much money working the clean side of the business. He was in love. He planned on getting married. This was his chance to build up a stake. After a while, those justifications had worn thin. Silence amounted to complicity, sure enough. He had resigned, asking only for the bonus owed him. Five million Swiss francs.

  Before him on the screen was a compendious record of Malloy’s acts: names, dates, banks, accounts, monies taken in, monies invested…or not. Commissions paid. And more commissions. The sums were staggering. Millions. Tens of millions. Hundreds of millions. It was all there in its fantastically illegal glory.

  A flash of blue caught his eye. A spray of red. Rafa looked out the window to see a procession of automobiles enter the hotel forecourt and stop in front of the fountain. He’d been expecting one inspector, maybe two. Not the entire Thai Hotel Association.

  The doors of the cars opened as if synchronized. Men in tan uniforms, peaked martial caps, and mirrored sunglasses poured from the vehicles. All carried sidearms. Not hotel inspectors. Police. The “men in brown,” as they were known and reviled.

  Rafa understood everything at once. He’d waited too long to make good on his threat. He’d given Malloy and his friends too much time to agree. Another mistake added to the litany before it.

  He had a minute to act.

  Quickly, then. A new email address. A last hope. He chose several files, not all the material, but for the right set of eyes, enough. A trail.

  His index finger pressed the SEND key. He waited a second, then typed in a four-digit code ordering the hard drive to destroy itself.

  “Cry ‘Havoc,’” he whispered, “and let slip the dogs of war.”

  Rafa left his office, hurrying down the stairs to the lobby. Delphine was speaking to one of the officers, the tallest one, and, by his demeanor, the leader of the group. Never one to rest on her laurels, she spoke fluent Thai to Rafa’s colonialist minimum. He attempted to smile, as if he were accustomed to receiving unannounced visits from the police.

  “Good morning, officer,” he began in Thai, placing his palms together and bowing his head in welcome. “I am Mr. De Bourbon. What seems to be the problem?”

  The policeman’s answer was delivered with actions, not words. He nodded to his colleagues. They threw Rafa to the floor, hauling his long arms behind him and snapping handcuffs onto his wrists. It was a violent act, leaving Rafa stunned, bleeding from his mouth.

  “Stop this,” Delphine cried out. “What are you doing to my husband?”

  Rafa struggled to free himself, shouting for an explanation. A baton landed on his ribs. A boot dug into his neck. From the corner of his eye, he observed the officers running upstairs to the executive floor. Delphine stood alone, hand covering her mouth. He met her gaze and read only despair and resignation. This was no accident, no case of police malfeasance or random error. The police were here because of him.

  “What do you want?” Rafa managed, his mouth filled with blood. “Tell me.”

  Rough hands dragged him to his feet. “You are under arrest,” said the tall policeman, spitting the words into his face. “You will come with us.”

  “What for? I’ve done nothing.”

  “Rafa, please tell them.” Delphine’s eyes pleaded with him. “Whatever it is they want, give it to them.”

  “It’s nothing, Dee. I swear it.”

  Delphine grasped the policeman’s tunic. “What has he done? Please.”

  The policeman shoved her violently. She fell to the ground. The other policemen returned to the lobby, one carrying Rafa’s laptop, another hoisting a box of documents. In seconds, they were outside, loading their vehicles.

  Rafa followed, propelled by a stiff arm to his back. At the car, he put up a fight, refusing to lower his head and climb in. The leader hit him in the solar plexus and, when Rafa doubled over, took hold of his hair and folded him into the back seat. The last words Rafael de Bourbon heard as the door slammed and the cars raced out of the forecourt were his wife’s.

  “Rafa…what did you do?”

  Chapter 3

  London

  How is she?” D’Artagnan Moore stood at the entry to his office on the eleventh floor of the Lloyd’s of London building.

  “Not good,” said Simon, brushing past.

  “Any improvement?”

  “We’ll know more in forty-eight hours.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Whose is it? I should never have brought her with me.”

  Three days had passed since the accident. Simon’s shoulder ached from a partial dislocation and he’d gotten a nasty bump on the head. Otherwise he was fine. He’d handed the painting over to a representative of Lloyd’s in France. He’d come to get paid.

  “Sit down,” said Moore. “Have a drink. I might have a bottle of that Tennessee cough syrup you seem to favor.”

  “You purchased a bottle of Jack Daniel’s?” D’Artagnan Moore would sooner drink an ice-cold German Gewürztraminer than American sour mash whiskey.

  D’Art hesitated. “Not me personally. I asked my assistant. Can’t be seen to be lowering my standards.”

  “God forbid.”

  “Testy, aren’t we?”

  “Watch it, D’Art. Today isn’t the day.”

  D’Artagnan Moore walked to his drinks trolley and opened the bottle of Jack. He poured two fingers into a glass, saw Simon motioning for more, and added another two. For himself, he chose a crystal decanter, single-malt scotch with an unpronounceable name, and matched Simon drop for drop.

  “Health,” said Moore, raising his glass. He was a big man by any standard, six feet five inches tall, three hund
red pounds, a huntsman’s untamed beard touching his chest, dressed as always in a three-piece suit of Harris Tweed, a calico pocket square waving from his jacket.

  “Health,” said Simon, finishing half the glass. He dropped into a quilted club chair, wincing only a little. “Well…does the Monet check out?”

  “Ninety-nine percent. Looks very bonny.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means we were right to recognize the work as the Rouen façade stolen from Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum. The first experts are inclined to confirm that it is the original.”

  “How many experts are there?”

  “The museum received fifteen million dollars as compensation when it was stolen. Before they hand back the money, they want to be damned sure it’s the real thing. The answer to your question, I imagine, is ‘as many as necessary.’”

  “Any word in the press?”

  Moore shook his head. “A bit difficult to report the theft of a theft.”

  “And my fee?” asked Simon.

  Moore cleared his throat. He might as well have sent up a distress flare. “Pending.”

  “Pending?”

  “Forensics in progress. Testing the paint and canvas to confirm that they date from the era and match the artist’s other works.”

  “If you sent me to steal a forgery, I will wrap my hands around your neck and strangle every last drop of life from your body.”

  “You’ll do nothing of the kind,” said Moore. “Since when is there anything like a sure thing? The watch you stole from Boris Blatt a while back could have been a counterfeit. We had no way of knowing beforehand. I know you’re worried about Lucy, and I’d move heaven and earth to change things. But I can’t. Neither can I change the nature of our work.”

  Simon stared out the window, down the Thames, to Tower Bridge, the HMS Belfast, the river coursing with maritime traffic. The world went on.

  Earlier in the day he’d paid a deposit of two hundred thousand pounds for Lucy’s care and rehabilitation, enough to cover a thirty-day stay. He wasn’t a greedy man, far from it, but he didn’t care to go bankrupt while Lloyd’s took their own sweet time authenticating the painting. His fee was six percent of the paid claim, nearly a million dollars. As far as he was concerned, the money was Lucy’s.

  “Twenty-four years old,” he said wearily. “What am I going to tell her family?”

  “They don’t know?”

  “Lucy doesn’t speak with them. I only found out where they live this morning.”

  “Tell them the truth, or a modified version thereof. She was injured while working.” D’Art stretched a long arm for a dossier on his desk and deposited it on the table in front of Simon. “What do you Yanks say? If you get kicked off, it’s best to get right back on.”

  Simon looked at the dossier. “I wasn’t kicked off. I brought back the painting. There were just…complications.”

  “Ready to tell me what happened?”

  “The thing was we had it. We were done.” Simon ran a hand across his mouth, seeing the events of the evening play out in his mind. He’d given Moore the briefest of explanations from the hospital in Nice. Now he related in detail all that had happened, from the moment they’d boarded the Yasmina to the seconds before the car crash.

  “Who is Samson Sun anyway?” he demanded when he’d finished. “Run-of-the-mill billionaires don’t employ the Waffen-SS as security.”

  “No idea beyond what he says he is. Investor. Film producer. Does it matter?”

  “He’s no investor. I don’t know what he is. All I can say is that he didn’t earn the money himself to buy that yacht.”

  Moore pointed to the dossier. “Which brings us to your next assignment.”

  Simon lifted the cover, then, thinking better of it, let it fall. “Pass.”

  “It’s right up your alley. Executive defrauding his employer. You can work from your home on this one. I don’t foresee any automobiles or boats on the horizon.”

  “Pass,” said Simon.

  Moore raised a finger, a magician with one last trick. “The fee is—”

  “I said, I’m done.”

  “Of course,” said D’Art, all apologies and deference. “Forgive me for being callous. Take some time. A week. A month, even. A holiday will do you good.”

  “I’m done done,” said Simon. “Tendering my resignation.”

  “You’re not serious. You suffered a mishap. It was an accident. It can happen to anyone. Come now, Simon. I won’t hear of it.”

  “Do you ever wonder if it’s worth it? I mean all this running around to return items to their rightful owners. Watches, cars, paintings. Tracking down a million pounds pilfered here, two million there. Who really cares if a Monet stays on the wall of a boat for another twenty years? How does that measure against Lucy’s life?”

  Moore’s expression indicated he thought this was as selfish an argument as one could make. He was a man defined by his profession. Insurance was as essential to civilized society as the rule of law. “It’s not a question of the painting or of a watch or of a few million pounds pilfered here or there. It’s a question of maintaining order. Of doing the right thing and punishing those who don’t believe they have to. I can’t think of many things more important.”

  “I don’t do abstract. I’ll leave that to you.”

  “You’re upset.”

  Simon stood and went to the drinks trolley, pouring himself another. “There’s a young woman I happen to care for very much lying in a hospital bed with her brain so swollen they had to cut out a piece of her skull to relieve the pressure. There’s a good chance she won’t live, and if she does, it’s a lock she’ll never be the same person she was before. If she can talk again, it will be a miracle.” He finished the drink and set the glass down. “D’Art, if I don’t restore one of my cars as well as I’m able, it might not win a gold medal at a Concours. Maybe it won’t drive as fast as it possibly could, but that’s where it ends. No one gets hurt, except for maybe a bruised ego. No one shoots at me. And I’m happy that way. I’ve had enough of maintaining order, as you say. Order can maintain itself without me.”

  Moore took a step toward him as he passed. “Please, Simon. This isn’t you.”

  Simon stopped at the door. “You know something, D’Art? This feels like the best decision I’ve made in a long time.”

  Chapter 4

  Tel Aviv

  The chartered Gulfstream jet landed at Ben Gurion Airport at one minute past nine o’clock in the morning. It had been an eight-hour flight, two hours faster than commercial. The pilot had his instructions. Deliver the package as quickly as possible. He’d chosen the most direct route, a straight shot from Bangkok over the Bay of Bengal and across Central Asia, clipping the no-fly zones of Iraq and Iran, altitude 45,000 feet, speed 590 knots with a rare 60-knot tailwind.

  A panel van waited on the tarmac. Its driver stood alongside a customs official and a member of IDF airport security, Uzi submachine gun hanging from one shoulder. They had received word, too. Formalities were to be carried out without delay.

  The plane came to a halt, the fore passenger door opening before the engines spooled down. The driver climbed the stairs the moment they touched the asphalt. He disappeared inside the aircraft. When he reappeared, he carried a sealed pouch beneath one arm. As per international regulations, he handed the flight manifest over for inspection. A nod of the head and he was free to go. A longtime member of the Israeli Defense Forces and veteran of Unit 8200, the country’s top-secret intelligence-gathering organization, he fired off a salute before hurrying back to the van.

  He took Route 1 west, leaving the main highway at Ganot and turning north to skirt the easternmost suburbs of Tel Aviv past Ramat Gan and into the Shama Hills. His destination was a nondescript two-story office building, gray, windowless, a staple of industrial parks around the globe. There was no marking above the door, no corporate sign or logo, nothing to indicate the identity of the building’s tenant. The o
nly evidence that it was occupied at all were the numerous satellite dishes arrayed on the rooftop and the intimidating antenna that looked like the mast of an interstellar spacecraft.

  “She’s waiting,” said a bleached-blond receptionist whom office lore claimed held the IDF women’s marksmanship record. The driver ran upstairs and entered his superior’s office, setting the pouch on the desk. Mission completed, he turned about-face and left the room. He knew better than to expect a thank you, or any acknowledgment at all.

  The woman seated at the desk slid the pouch toward her. From her drawer, she took her paratrooper’s KA-BAR knife, blooded in the line of duty, and with care sliced open the pouch. She was forty-two years of age, raven-haired with hard, unflinching blue eyes, her once considerable beauty eroded by the rigors of twenty years’ toil in the service of her country. She was dressed in a tailored navy-blue suit and white T-shirt, a Star of David hanging from her neck. It was a nicer uniform than the one she’d once worn but a uniform all the same. Her name was Danielle Pine, but she was known to anyone who mattered in the business as Danni. No last name needed. She replaced the knife in its sheath and returned it to her drawer before continuing.

  After completing her obligatory military service, Danni had earned a degree in applied mathematics before returning to the army as a signals intelligence officer, a code breaker. She possessed other talents and before long was snapped up by the darker side of the game, the Mossad, Israel’s spy service. At some point she’d disappeared entirely, gone “deep black,” working as a covert operative on missions so secret few others knew about them even today. And then, after six years, she was back, spat out the other end of the tunnel. “Blown,” she’d said, on the rare occasion she discussed her work.

  Today, her job title, if she had one, would be president of the SON Group, a cyber-intelligence firm founded by her father, retired general Zev Franck, himself a former spy and pioneering member of Unit 8200. The SON Group’s technology wasn’t just cutting-edge. It was past that. Way past.