The Palace

by Reich, Christopher

  From the airport outside the Swiss capital of Bern, a courier had ferried the case south along Lake Thun before turning due west and heading into the Simmental Valley. His destination was the resort town of Gstaad, elevation 3,445 feet, in the canton Bern. It was a ninety-minute drive. Once there, he navigated toward the famed Palace hotel, and past the hotel to a chalet not much smaller.

  The chalet belonged to Arabs, the Al-Obeidi family, originally from Dhahran. Tarek Al-Obeidi had served as managing partner of PetroSaud and, more recently, headed up the newly formed International Rare Earth Consortium. His older brother, Abdul Al-Obeidi, age sixty-one, had chosen a different profession. For the past twenty years he had served as the deputy chief of the Mabahith, the Saudi secret police.

  It was Abdul Al-Obeidi who the day before had made sure the doors to the chalet’s subterranean garage stood open so the courier could enter and off-load his sensitive cargo undetected. Abdul Al-Obeidi had phoned Borgia soon afterward to give him a firsthand description of the work being done.

  Swiss law demanded that every home have a secure, airtight room on the ground floor or, preferably, the cellar to serve as protection against a nuclear attack. The luftschutzbunker was large and high ceilinged, its concrete floor and walls painted a glossy battleship gray, a reinforced steel door one meter thick guarding entry and exit, anti-gas filters built into the ceiling. A worktable had been erected in the center of the room, no more than a thick plywood sheet set atop sawhorses. It was a temporary construct, to be disposed of after use. Four military-style vests rested on the table’s surface. The vests were made from molecular-weight polyethylene, black, with pockets on the left and right and a larger one across the back, all designed to house Kevlar plating to protect the wearer against bullets and shrapnel. These vests, however, would be used for quite the opposite purpose.

  On the floor beside the worktable was a tall plastic garbage bin filled with an assortment of nails, nuts, bolts, washers, screws, hinges, steel balls of various diameters, and razor wire, the last designed to slice off appendages and cause death by exsanguination to those not in the blast’s immediate vicinity.

  A gray, elfin man dressed in baggy trousers and a shabby cardigan stood by the table, hands in his pockets, as the explosives were brought in. He moved quietly and carefully, and with his trim mustache and scholarly glasses could have been mistaken for a shy-mannered country physician. In fact, in his earlier days he had practiced medicine as the chief of cardiology at Baghdad General Hospital. His career ended the day the Americans invaded Iraq. For the past sixteen years, he had specialized in the building of suicide vests and explosive belts for the Sunni insurgency. He was known by all as “the Doctor.”

  The Doctor opened the case and removed the bricks of plastic explosives, each individually wrapped in navy-blue plastic and weighing two and a half pounds, or approximately one kilo. When he had finished stacking the bricks, he chose one and peeled off the thick wrap. The plastique was colored a bold, unmistakable orange. Semtex.

  He knew what it was capable of, the destruction it could inflict. In an enclosed space, even a large auditorium, the effects would be impressive.

  Four vests used in unison in such a space.

  The Doctor could only imagine the result.

  All this Abdul Al-Obeidi had told him. Borgia had been grateful for his enthusiastic narrative.

  He turned to General Sabbatini. “Shall we go through it one last time?”

  “The plastique will be cached in an empty fuel reservoir next to the principal dormitory. At last count, the place is filled to bursting.”

  “How many?”

  “Eight hundred in a building meant to house one hundred fifty.”

  “Have you identified any agitators?”

  “Easy enough. All they do is complain, the lot of them. Not enough food. Not enough soft drinks. Their rights aren’t being respected. We have no right to hold them so long. Some are more vocal than others.”

  Borgia handed Sabbatini a piece of paper folded in half. “A list of phone numbers. Make sure they are on the agitators’ phones…even if they don’t have one yet.”

  Sabbatini slipped the paper into his breast pocket. “That shouldn’t be a problem. Their quarters are inspected several times a day. Guards have duplicate keys for all the lockers.”

  “Will your men be on the island?”

  “Security on Lampedusa is handled by a private contractor. My troops will helicopter in upon receiving word of the incident. I have it on good authority that we will receive a tip that another attack is about to occur.”

  “There will have to be casualties,” said Borgia. “Italian blood must be spilled.”

  “At least it will be quick. A warrior’s death.”

  “Patriots,” said Borgia.

  “It will appear as if the agitators detonated the Semtex themselves. Later the pistols and grenades will be found, what’s left of them. It will be all the proof we need.”

  “More than enough, one hopes.”

  “And Melzi, our distinguished minister of the interior?”

  “Everything is set for Torino. His men have identified several terrorist cells. The cells have been provided similar stores of explosives and weaponry. The chemical signature of the plastic explosives will be the same across the board. It may take a few days, a week even, but there will be no denying a high level of coordination between the groups. Only one conclusion can be reached.”

  “A revolution,” said Sabbatini.

  “A failed revolution.” Borgia’s phone rang. His sister. He sent the call to voice mail. The phone rang again. “Will you excuse me, Massimo? Family.”

  “Of course.”

  Borgia walked out of earshot. “What is it, Beatrice? Really.”

  She was hysterical. “Hadrian is dead. He killed himself. He jumped, Luca. He jumped.”

  “’Trice, calm yourself.” Borgia turned and saw that Sabbatini was watching him intently. It was critical he not betray the slightest worry. “What do you mean, he’s dead? I spoke with him earlier.”

  “He had been beaten. His face…his eye. There was blood on his shirt. He walked right past me and jumped.”

  “Jumped? I don’t understand.”

  “From the top of the hotel.”

  “Gesù e Maria.”

  Borgia managed to calm her and listened as she relayed the events more clearly. There had been a party of sorts, a business gathering to launch one of HW’s new funds. Hadrian Lester had gone off to speak with an Arabian sheikh. She didn’t know who the man was or what they had discussed. Lester had returned twenty minutes later looking as if he had been severely beaten. Worse was his mood. He had been distant, inconsolable, utterly bereft, as if something terrible had befallen him.

  “A sheikh? You’re sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Was it Tarek?” he asked, even though he was certain Tarek Al-Obeidi was elsewhere.

  “I don’t know,” she answered unsteadily. “I don’t think so.”

  Borgia told his sister to find a friend and stay with her. He would call back shortly. He ended the call and gestured to the paratrooper. Two more minutes. He dialed the number for Kruger. The call went to voice mail immediately, indicating that the phone was powered off. Kruger never turned his phone off when working.

  Hadrian dead. Kruger MIA. Something was wrong.

  Next a call was made to the Singaporean minister of defense, General Teck Koo. One of us. General Teck answered promptly. Borgia related that a man who did some work for him had gone missing in Singapore. No reason for concern, but he was hoping Teck could check if he was in the custody of the authorities. A small problem: he doubted that the man had valid identity papers on his person. He offered a brief physical description. A word about his nationality. And, finally, if Teck did locate him, could he see that the man was released in the shortest of delays. After a labored silence, Teck agreed.

  Borgia ended the call. He refused to panic. Setbacks. Nothing
more. Had not Caesar lost a quarter of his legions before conquering the Germanic tribes? He drew a breath, though not entirely successful in camouflaging his anxieties.

  “Everything okay?” asked Sabbatini.

  “My sister. She fears her husband may be having an affair. She is distraught.”

  “Women.” Sabbatini shrugged. A subject about which he knew too much.

  Borgia managed a laugh, even as the enormity of the problem hit home and his bowels turned to water. Sabbatini clapped him on the back. The men watched the last crates being loaded onto the aircraft.

  “We will be in Lampedusa by eight. A routine supply run. By midnight, all will be in place.”

  The men clasped hands. Years of discontent. Months of plotting. The day had finally come.

  “Just a few more hours,” said Borgia.

  “And you?”

  “Leaving in the morning.”

  “Be careful.”

  “You’re not going to wish me luck?”

  “Buona fortuna,” said General Massimo Sabbatini. “Or should I say, ‘Break a leg’?”

  Chapter 54

  Umbria

  The call came three hours later as Luca Borgia was driving through the Umbrian foothills, approaching the Castello dell’Aquila.

  The number appeared on his automobile’s information screen.

  Relief.

  “Kruger?”

  Chapter 55

  Tel Aviv

  Kruger? Where are you?”

  Inside the software lab on the second floor of the SON Group’s offices in Tel Aviv, Israel, fourteen hundred miles from Italy, Luca Borgia’s voice rang out from the high-performance Piega loudspeakers.

  “Utram Road. Standing in front of the Singapore Metropolitan Detention Center.”

  “Sounds like they’re next door,” said Isaac.

  “Quiet.” Danni patted Isaac on the back and pulled up a stool to sit beside him and Dov.

  She’d counted on Luca Borgia to be a responsible businessman, and Borgia did not disappoint her. Minutes after receiving his May billing statement (nine days early), he had opened it, presumably scanned the contents, and saved it to his personal files. The Pegasus spyware was set free. For the past hours Danni and the combined team of the SON Group had been making a deep dive into Luca Borgia’s world.

  For all intents and purposes, she might have been holding Luca Borgia’s phone in her hand. At her whim, she could access any app on it without the need for a pesky user name or password. In the parlance of spies, she “owned” him.

  Borgia’s image was displayed on a color monitor mounted on the wall. He had placed his phone in a dashboard holder, and she could see him in his camel-hair jacket and pink shirt, his forehead fairly glistening with perspiration. She also knew his location to the nearest fifty centimeters as relayed to SON by the Global Positioning System that formed the heart of his Maps app.

  A second monitor showed a map indicating his current location—traveling along Autostrada E35 in Central Italy. Thanks to the Maps app, they also knew that his home was the Castello dell’Aquila, the location where he parked his car most nights.

  “What the hell happened?” Borgia demanded.

  “Riske.”

  “You said he was finished. I believe your words were ‘fish food in the Gulf of Thailand.’”

  “He must have big lungs.”

  “I don’t see anything amusing about this situation.”

  “You had to be there.”

  Isaac put the call on a five-second delay. “The other one, Kruger…Dutch?”

  “South African,” said Danni, who had an ear for accents. “Not Afrikaans. A native, I’d say. A tribesman.”

  Isaac turned off the delay. Once again, they were live inside Borgia’s phone.

  “Listen to me,” said Borgia. “Hadrian Lester is dead. He took a dive off the top of a hotel right in front of my sister.”

  “On his own?”

  “Apparently. Suicide.”

  Danni recognized Lester’s name from the emails De Bourbon had stolen from PetroSaud.

  “It’s him,” said Kruger. “Riske. He saved the reporter.”

  “General Teck Koo said you killed a seventy-year-old hawker. I told you to keep things nice and neat.”

  “It couldn’t be helped.”

  “You said the same about Bangkok. That turned into a bloodbath.”

  “It couldn’t be helped.” Kruger’s irritation was evident, as was Borgia’s.

  “So you say. Well, at least you have the flash drive.”

  “When I tracked down Riske, he was in an Internet lounge. The flash drive was inserted in his laptop. It would be wise to assume he downloaded some, if not all, of its contents.”

  “Colonel Tan told me the drive was encrypted.”

  “If it’s encrypted, it can be decrypted.”

  “For now, that’s not a concern. The files are four years old. We’re tied off on this end. All the better Hadrian’s dead.”

  “I wouldn’t share that sentiment with your sister.”

  Danni could see the mean smile on Kruger’s face, whoever he might be. She didn’t think it would be a good idea for him and Borgia to be in the same room, at least for now.

  “So you believe it was Riske who beat him up?” said Borgia.

  “Who else?”

  “Which means Hadrian talked.”

  “People always do.”

  “Jesus Christ,” murmured Borgia.

  “How much did he know?” asked Kruger.

  “Too much. He wanted to short the market. He promised me we’d make a killing. A hundred million at least.”

  “So he knew it’s going down this weekend?”

  “Yes.”

  “You didn’t tell him anything more?”

  “God no.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Yes, dammit,” said Borgia. “This man Riske, does he know about our plans?”

  “Before, no. Now, I wouldn’t be so sure. And remember, he knows your name.”

  Borgia could be seen banging the heel of his hand against the steering wheel. “We’re twenty-four hours away from changing the world,” he said. “We cannot allow this man, whoever he is, to interfere with our plans. Do you understand me?”

  “I do.”

  “Find Riske and the woman. This story ends now.”

  The call ended. Luca Borgia shook his head repeatedly, grimacing, frowning, baring his teeth. Danni had never seen a man so worried.

  And she, in turn, felt worry’s cold, dry fingers tighten their grip around her own neck.

  Danni rose from the stool and paced the room. “He’s planning an attack and it’s going to take place within the next twenty-four hours.”

  “You should see some of the stuff we pulled off his phone,” said Dov. “He’s out there to the right of Attila the Hun and Genghis Khan.”

  “Some of our own countrymen share those beliefs, if I’m not mistaken,” said Danni.

  “So, what do we do?” asked Isaac.

  “Get me a list of everyone Borgia has phoned in the past thirty days. Cross-check it against emails with those names. Tell me what you find.” She turned to Dov. “Can we get into the Maps app…I mean into the measurement and reporting functions?”

  “Sure.”

  “I want to know everywhere Borgia’s been during the last month.”

  “You got it.”

  Danni moved closer to the two engineers. “It’s imperative we find out what Luca Borgia has planned. And when we do, we tell Simon Riske. Everything else comes to a halt. Do I make myself clear?”

  The men nodded.

  “Okay, then.” Danni drew a breath, charting out the next steps. “First thing, we contact that journalist and let her know that her life is still in danger.”

  Chapter 56

  Singapore

  Lights burned inside the sixth-floor apartment at 14 Fort Road. From his position outside the building’s gates, Shaka made out shadows mov
ing behind drawn curtains. Someone was home. Someone who believed he was still locked up and, therefore, that she was safe to pursue her investigation. He hoped that London Li had a guest. It would make things easier.

  Shaka moved toward the entry. The night was hot and sticky, his shirt clinging to his back. The flags in the apartment building’s forecourt hung limply. A car emerged from the garage. The gates to the compound opened slowly. Shaka slid inside as it passed him and turned onto the street.

  In the lobby, a concierge sat at the reception, hypnotized by his phone. Shaka circled the building, descending the ramp to the underground garage, walking to the elevator alcove. A key was required to summon the lift. There was no indicator to show what floor either of the two elevator cars might be on. He waited a minute, then another, growing impatient. It was late. Most residents were probably home and tucked in for the night. This was Singapore, not Jo’burg.

  “This story ends now.” Borgia couldn’t have been any clearer.

  Shaka tapped his foot, willing an elevator to come. Even now, London Li might be leaving her apartment, taking Riske with her.

  “Screw it.”

  Shaka turned and ran back up the ramp and crossed the forecourt to the lobby. The door was unlocked. He went inside. There was a waiting area to one side with a couch and a glass coffee table. The concierge glanced at him, then went back to his phone. He was young. Twenty, skinny as a rail, his collar a few sizes too large for his thin neck.

  Shaka walked to the counter, smiling in greeting. He threw out an arm and wrapped his fingers around the little man’s throat, crushing his larynx as he might crush an aluminum can of soda pop, lifting the man off his feet. Angry at himself, at the concierge for doing his job, he tossed the man onto the ground, then rounded the counter and broke his neck. He couldn’t stand the writhing and wheezing. A set of keys dangled from the man’s belt. Shaka removed it.

  The sixth-floor corridor was dim and deserted. As he advanced toward London Li’s apartment, motion sensors activated the lights. He put his ear to the door. Silence, then voices. Footsteps.