He smiled. “Did you?”
“Yes.”
“When you were—”
“I don’t know. Young.”
“And do you still like it?”
“Yes,” Flicka said, smiling at him over the seat back. “Yes, I like it.”
“Then maybe I’ll try growing a beard,” Raphael said.
“I like that you’re growing your hair out a little, too.” It was a little longer, in that it looked thicker on the sides and fell a little over his forehead.
He shook his newspaper to straighten it and grumbled, “I look like a banker instead of a soldier.”
“I think it looks amazing.”
His smile warmed as he looked up at her. “All right, then I’ll keep it, too.”
Flicka turned back in her seat.
Alina had taken to sitting with Flicka when she could, probably because Flicka was with her so much. It was a little distressing that she didn’t want to sit with Raphael, though. He was her father. Flicka was just kind of a babysitter.
No, she wasn’t.
Flicka was now Alina’s stepmother.
Well, that was interesting.
It wasn’t every day that one went from being the princess in the story to being the stepmother.
Flicka wondered if she would have to turn evil, and then she wondered just how much of a change that would be, anyway. She knew she’d always been a trifle willful and spoiled. “Evil” probably wouldn’t be a stretch for her.
Valerian was walking down the aisle of the plane toward them, clutching the backs of the seats during the minor turbulence.
He nodded at Flicka, and she smiled sunnily and nodded in return even though he had always made shivers crawl up her spine. He looked like an older version of Raphael, even suggesting that Raphael was going to be a stunning silver fox someday, and yet something in Valerian was intrinsically so different.
Raphael had never given her scared chills like that; not when she’d met him as a kid, not when he had peeled too-aggressive dates off of her as a teenager, and not when he’d been so astonishingly dominant in London that she’d been ready to do absolutely anything for him—even kneel on the floor at his feet, naked, while he pet her hair and stroked her breasts, sometimes for hours before he’d done whatever else he’d liked to her.
A different kind of shiver ran through Flicka, and she crossed her legs. Her clit was throbbing between her thighs at the memory.
Behind her, Valerian said to Raphael, “You have a meeting tonight to discuss the next shipment.”
Raphael said, “I understand.”
Even their voices were similar, but for their age difference.
The newspaper rattled again as Valerian walked back toward the front of the plane.
Flicka held Alina’s hand and didn’t want to know what the hell that was about.
Details of the Next Shipment
Raphael Mirabaud
The devil is in the details.
That night, Raphael walked through the same alleyway, into the same restaurant, through the same forbidding corridor to meet Piotr Ilyin as he had for the last meeting.
Shouldn’t Russian mob bosses have several restaurants they liked to eat in? Surely the police would catch on eventually if he held all his business meetings in the back room of the same restaurant week after week. It was terrible operational security.
Piotr should have hired Dieter Schwarz and Rogue Security to advise him on security and operational protocol.
Raphael nearly chuckled aloud.
Except, of course, Piotr now controlled Rogue Security through Raphael, and that wasn’t a laughing matter.
The steak had been good, though. Raphael could understand wanting to come back there for another one of those butter-tender steaks.
Piotr Ilyin had arrived at the restaurant before them, like last time, and was seated in the small room while his security staff stood at the walls. He was eating a slice of bread from the basket on the white-covered table.
As before, Raphael and Valerian sat, they ordered, and they made small talk while they dined for two hours until nearly the end of the meal.
Piotr pushed his plate away. Smears of the cream peppercorn sauce remained on the snowy porcelain. “You’ve been shepherding commodity shipments into the country very well.”
He meant drugs. Raphael nodded.
“We need to discuss your next operation, however. We’ll have larger shipments entering from Russian territories to run through Italy or the Netherlands. From here, they’ll proceed to the rest of Europe.”
“Where is it coming from?” Raphael asked, steepling his fingers in front of himself.
“The United States, oddly enough,” Piotr laughed.
The United States exported very few things that were of interest to European organized crime syndicates. Drugs came from the Middle East and Asia. Asia and Africa produced cheap counterfeits of watches, purses, and prescription drugs.
Guns. Lax gun laws in the United States made it the world’s supplier of small firearms. Using fake identification to purchase an army’s worth of handguns and rifles was simple, and international gun runners took advantage of it.
“And we’re selling them to?” he asked.
“Some friends with very pronounced opinions, but that’s none of our concern. We aren’t racists. We’ll sell guns to anyone.”
So the buyers were jihadists, Nazis, or another terrorist group. Before Raphael had run away, he’d shepherded a large shipment of automatic weapons to a Finnish outlaw motorcycle gang, the Cannonball MC, which had used them to annihilate a rival organized crime gang.
More weapons in Europe meant more violence in Switzerland, as always. Inwardly, Raphael cringed, but he twitched one eyebrow up and smiled with one side of his mouth.
Valerian was watching Raphael with a straight, level gaze, examining him. Raphael had seen that lack of expression thousands of times. It meant judgment.
When Raphael had been very young, his father’s judgment had been violent when Raphael was found lacking. He hadn’t been young or small for a long time, not since he had grown and bulked up at the age of thirteen. Valerian had tried to punch him one last time when he was fourteen. He’d knocked his father’s fist away and slammed him against the wall, shouting that Valerian would never hit him again.
And he hadn’t.
Piotr Ilyin said, “We’ll need to activate that rather interesting network of yours to ensure this rather large shipment gets into the right hands. It will arrive at the Port of Rotterdam in three days.”
Raphael frowned. “We can hire dolts with strong backs without recalling Rogue personnel from their current, contracted operations.”
“There might be some problems with it.”
“What should my men prepare for?” he asked.
Piotr smiled. “It’s not addressed to us.”
Ilyin wanted to use Rogue Security to steal a shipment of guns from some other organized crime syndicate.
Raphael forced his smile wider. “Now that’s interesting.”
The Ilyin Bratva didn’t need to steal guns. Buying them was simpler and easier, maybe even more profitable in the long run. By stealing them, Raphael and Rogue Security would be implicated in a crime and targeted by a rival crime syndicate. If they tried to leave the Ilyin Bratva, they would be vulnerable to both revenge from that other syndicate and to arrest.
“I’m so glad you think so,” Piotr said. “It looks like this is the beginning of a long, fruitful career for us.”
Calling Magnus
Raphael Mirabaud
The worst news.
Valerian still didn’t trust him.
Of course, he didn’t. He would be a fool to trust Raphael. Raphael had tried to take over the bank with a vote of no confidence from the governing board, foiled only at the last moment by Valerian bringing in additional old-school votes.
At the very least, Raphael was a competitor for the position of the Geneva Trust silverback
gorilla.
At the most, he was a traitor who would get a lot of people killed.
Now, Raphael held a phone to his ear, readying himself to make a phone call to Magnus Jenson. Valerian and another man were listening in on separate phones.
The three of them were sitting in Valerian’s office, high above the muttering, pattering crowd weaving between each other and the streetcars below on the Rue de la Croix-d’Or. The window was cracked open. A wintry breeze blew through the gap, needling Raphael through his suit jacket and shirt.
The new guy had shown up that afternoon, the day after the late-night meeting with Piotr Ilyin, introducing himself as Nazariy Sokolovsky in Russian-accented German. His pale blue eyes were almost as colorless as his white scalp, fuzzed with ivory near his ears. He was a strong, bulky man, though, and he’d arrived with two silent bodyguards.
They were using landline phones, which should tip Magnus off that something was wrong even if Raphael hadn’t sent that surreptitious text a few hours prior.
Raphael dialed the long number Flicka had recited to him several times the night before, making sure he’d memorized it. It was a different number than the secure line to Magnus that Raphael knew, a special number, and a call on that number should also alert Magnus that something was wrong.
The line clicked in his ear, opening. “Ja?”
Trust Magnus to go straight for German with no other words.
Raphael said, “We have an operation to mount in two days. A container ship will arrive at the Port of Rotterdam. We’ll take control of a shipment there.”
“Take control,” Magnus said, his voice low and expressionless.
“Yes. We will take control of it.”
Raphael could almost see Magnus roll his eyes as the pause in the phone line lengthened. He finally said, “Details.”
“I’ll provide them over the usual route.”
“Done.” Magnus hung up.
Sokolovsky nodded and hung up the phone. “And the usual route is?”
“Dark web.”
“Of course, and you will get the contact links where?”
“Rogue Security has a tame hacker,” Raphael told him. “He’ll send files for the Tor browser, VPN, and contact links.”
“Fine. We will place tracking and keylogging software on your computer.”
Because of course, they would. “I expected nothing less.”
Raphael also expected that Blaise Lyon had all kinds of apps, even ones that could foil a keystroke logger or other spyware. It would probably send back gibberish or a pre-programmed fake message.
Hope filled Raphael, but he kept his head down and his mouth pressed into a grim line.
Another Message
Flicka von Hannover
Fire is pretty.
While Alina played on the floor, Flicka was drinking tea that was just tea when Kyllikki brought her a sealed envelope, presented on a silver tray.
When Flicka had been a princess living in a castle, one of the staff had just handed her the mail, not delivered it on a silver tray like a roasted goose.
The square, gray envelope did not have a stamp or an address, just her name in block handwriting. It hadn’t come in the post.
She thanked Kyllikki. “And where did this come from?”
“A man brought it and asked that I give it to you.”
Flicka stood and walked across the room, as far away from Alina as she could get.
Did these bankers have no sense of operational security? Anything could be in that envelope, from anthrax to ricin or worse. “Did you get his name?”
“Quentin Sault.”
Flicka’s hands itched for firearms. “And what did he look like?”
Kyllikki described Quentin Sault right down to his limp, thinning hair.
Nausea rose in Flicka’s stomach, and she swallowed hard.
Pierre and his Secret Service wouldn’t allow Quentin Sault to openly deliver a poisoned letter.
She tore open the envelope.
Inside, she recognized Pierre Grimaldi’s precise cursive handwriting, also a side effect of graduating from Le Rosey boarding school. Everyone had nice handwriting and elegant table manners, if they chose to use them.
My Dearest Flicka, the letter read.
Flicka snorted and did not allow herself to descend into her rage about that salutation again.
Pierre’s voice sounded in her head as she read his words: I miss you. I love you. I have always loved you.
That sounded a lot different than when Raphael said it. Pierre’s voice didn’t have that ring of authenticity. It didn’t make her believe it.
I need you to come home to Monaco. I need you to be with me, even if you can’t forgive me. If you can’t, I understand. But I need you. Monaco needs you.
Flicka scanned the rest of the letter, picking topics out of the false sentiment. The prose was remarkable not for what it said—the same declarations of love and devotion, solemn promises, pleas, and offers of negotiation and contracts—but for what it didn’t say.
Pierre didn’t mention Flicka’s remarriage to Raphael just a few days ago. He must not know, or he chose to ignore it as irrelevant and not a legal impediment because he would have the courts nullify it.
He also didn’t mention that his uncle was in a persistent vegetative state and being kept alive by machines, as Maxence had told her, and that Pierre would need to be declared the reigning monarch of Monaco soon or he would lose it all. There was one short note near the end, I beg you to return as soon as possible, but other than that, nothing.
Flicka asked Kyllikki, “Could you please supervise Alina for just a moment?”
“Certainly, ma’am.”
Flicka walked out of the room, the paper in her fist, at a serene pace.
Three Russian guards followed her at a discreet distance. They were inside the Mirabaud estate and still had Alina under their control, so they probably thought she wasn’t a flight risk.
Flicka sauntered around the second-story walkway that overlooked the entryway below to the large sitting room. During parties, this room must be used as an open bar, as there was a bartender’s set-up in the corner and cocktail tables with ample seating. The exterior wall was composed of windows and rose an additional story into the air, overlooking Lake Geneva and the mountains. French doors opened to a balcony outside.
She plucked Raphael’s lighter from a bowl beside the French doors. His half-full pack of cigarettes with the odd ink blotch in the corner was the same one that had lain there for a week, she noted, and was pleased with that.
She walked out onto the balcony.
The frigid winter wind caught her and knifed through her clothes the moment she walked outside. White chop covered the blue of Lake Geneva, and snow crept farther down the Alps in the distance every day.
Flicka snapped open the lighter and lit one corner of Pierre’s letter on fire, holding it aloft by the opposite corner and letting the icy wind fan the flames until the fire licked her fingertips. Her fingernails began to shrivel in the heat. She released the burning paper over the balcony’s railing. The flames consumed the last bit of it as the scrap rode the wind toward the lake. Ash scattered on the frozen grass below.
One of the Russian guards was leaning out the door behind her. “Madame? Would you like a coat?”
“No, thank you. I’m coming in.” She dropped Raphael’s lighter into the bowl on her way back to her suite and Alina.
A Ship Full Of Guns
Raphael Mirabaud
The worst part was
how much I enjoyed it.
Raphael stood flush against a wall beside a tall building at the Port of Rotterdam in The Netherlands. The December wind whipped at his black clothes in the dark. The pockets of his fatigues bulged with tools but not weapons. The Ilyins didn’t allow him to touch any sort of a weapon.
Beside him, Magnus Jensen, Aiden Grier, and Aaron Savoie stood against the wall, slouching, looking nonchalant, and armed to the teeth.
The Ilyin Bratva guys had been all over them as soon as they’d met up at the port an hour after sunset, so Raphael couldn’t even talk to his men with any privacy.
They’d had time to give him hell for his scruffy beginnings of a beard and shaggy hair, however. That kind of thing hadn’t changed.
At the bank that afternoon, Sokolovsky had handed Raphael an odd-looking coin that turned out to be two magnets stuck together. He’d attached it to Raphael’s shirt. “Leave it there.”
At the very least, it was a microphone. At most, a camera.
The Port of Rotterdam was the busiest in Europe, a constant churning of ships, cargo, and departing trucks. Crowds filled the main docks even though it was after midnight, and truck traffic growled along the streets. In the harbor, ships traversed the busy waterways. Piping tug boats dodged between vast cargo ships and the floating mountains of the container vessels.
The enormous container ship that was the target of their operation rocked sedately in its slip, a hulking shadow that blocked the floodlights shining from the other side of the port. Half its cargo had already been unloaded.
The container filled with illegal weapons was due to be winched off the ship by a crane within the next few minutes.
The crane, black-sketched against the gray sky, lifted a semi-truck-sized trailer off the ship and swung the behemoth toward the dock, blocking out the feeble stars shining through the gloom.
Raphael and his men leaped into motion, sprinting for the trucks.
A few grabs, an injection or two, and some men who had chosen the wrong employer slumped against the wall in the dark.
Adrenaline roared through Raphael as he methodically incapacitated one man and reached for another, pinching off that guy’s blood flow to his brain with a quick sleeper hold around the guy’s neck.
At Midnight (Runaway Princess: Flicka, Book 4) Page 18