The Take Read online

  “Your chariot.” He opened Lucy’s door.

  “A gentleman,” she said, lingering a moment too long and a step too close.

  “Lucy Brown, it’s past your bedtime.”

  “What about my champagne?”

  “Didn’t you just say you’ve had too much?”

  Simon stood aside. Lucy slid into her seat, slamming the door.

  Simon rounded the car, pausing to slip the timepiece from his pocket. He held it so the moon glinted off the platinum case and illuminated its ivory-colored dial. The watch was a 1965 Patek Philippe perpetual calendar chronograph with moon phases. Value: three million dollars. A month earlier, a member of Boris Blatt’s criminal organization had stolen it from a jeweler in the north of the city. Simon had been hired by the jeweler’s insurance company to retrieve it.

  Simon climbed behind the wheel and drove out of the parking lot. In moments, he was speeding beside the River Thames.

  Three million for a watch.

  Amazing what people would pay for things these days.

  Chapter 3

  Lloyd’s of London, the world’s preeminent insurance exchange, had its offices in a steel-and-glass skyscraper in the heart of the City, the one-square-mile district that was home to England’s most powerful financial institutions. Late on a Sunday night, lights burned brightly on all floors. Insuring risk was a twenty-four-hours-a-day occupation.

  Simon parked in the subterranean garage and showed his ID at the reception desk on the main floor. “Mr. Moore,” he said, giving the name of his contact.

  “Know the way, do you?” said the security guard.

  Simon took an elevator to the eleventh floor. The door to the office was unlocked. He followed the scent of coffee and cigars to the end of the hall.

  “Don’t you sleep?”

  D’Artagnan Moore sat at his desk, banging figures into his computer. “Did you get it?”

  “And here I thought you were staying awake to make sure I got home all right.”

  “Well, did you?”

  “You mean this?” Simon dropped the watch on the desk.

  “Careful!” Moore scooped up the timepiece in his immense hands, appraising it before offering Simon a relieved look. “Of course I was worried about you. It’s just that I was worried about this beauty more.”

  D’Artagnan Russell McKenzie Moore was a bear of a man, six and a half feet tall, three hundred pounds, with a mane of untamed hair and a black beard that had been neither groomed nor trimmed in years. As was his custom, Moore was dressed in a tweed hunting jacket over a cardigan vest. Simon had known him since the age of eight, when he’d lived with his father in the village of Royal Tunbridge Wells and the two boys had attended the same day school in Surrey. Simon’s father, Anthony Riske, had come to London to set up a branch of his commodities-trading business. Moore, the son of minor nobility, went on to Harrow, Cambridge, and a stellar career in the insurance industry. Simon’s path took him in a different direction.

  “Still haven’t told me where you learned the trade,” said Moore, eyeing him from beneath a shaggy brow. “I don’t imagine they taught you that at the LSE.”

  Simon smiled cryptically, then dropped into a chair across from the desk. “What are you going to tell your partners?”

  “They know better than to ask. Discretion is the better part of profit.” Moore slipped the watch into a beige jewel pouch and locked it in his desk. “Went well, did it?”

  “To a point.”

  Moore’s leonine head came to attention. “How so?”

  “There was a second as I was leaving when I thought he might have noticed the switch. Not consciously, maybe, but by instinct. Guys like that have a sixth sense about this kind of thing.”

  “Takes one to know one.”

  “Are you saying I’m a thief?”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” said Moore. “But he didn’t…notice, I mean.”

  “No.”

  “Then none’s the wiser. What’s he going to do? Report it missing? By God, I’ve got friends at Scotland Yard who wish he would.” Moore rose from his desk and poured two drinks from his sideboard. He handed a glass to Simon. “Health.”

  “Health.” Simon swallowed the scotch in a single gulp.

  “You Yanks,” said Moore. “Think everything needs to be consumed at once. This isn’t some cheap Tennessee sour mash. Sip it, lad.”

  “Laphroaig. Single malt.”

  “I’m impressed.”

  “You’ve told me a dozen times. And I’ll take Jack any day.”

  “Cretin.”

  “And proud of it. How ’bout another?”

  Moore brought the decanter to the desk and poured Simon another drink. “Talk. You’re as nervous as a bull in a slaughterhouse.”

  “Just unsettled.”

  “Shop not doing well?”

  “Pays for itself.”

  “And then some. We write insurance on automobiles, too, you know. The price of those Italian contraptions has gone through the roof of late.”

  “I restore them. I don’t own them. There’s overhead. Salaries. Parts are a fortune. I need to order a new dynamometer to test my engines. Thing costs fifty thousand pounds.”

  “Go back to private banking. I know a dozen shops would love to have you.”

  Simon looked around the office. He’d spent years toiling inside a plush coffin no different from this. In all, they were good years. Challenging, enriching, stimulating. He’d taken the job with an express purpose. He’d been tasked to find something. When he’d succeeded, he left.

  He’d begun his career at twenty-seven, old for someone without an MBA. If anyone had been curious about the gap in his résumé between the ages of nineteen and twenty-three, they never said. They were too dazzled by his First from the London School of Economics and his medal for excellence in mathematics from the Sciences Po. And, anyway, by then they’d met him and that was enough.

  Twelve-hour days had been common. Weekends, the norm. No one was more driven. But if Simon wore his ambition on his sleeve, he was the rare type whose motives were not in question. The bank’s interests came first. His own, afterward.

  His chosen field was private banking, catering to the investment needs of wealthy clients. His interest lay in helping people, building relationships, and instilling trust. It wasn’t long before he was guiding clients in all aspects of their financial lives. He advised on art purchases, arranged for appraisals of jewelry, offered the bank’s opinion on how much gold to keep in their vault and how much to keep at home.

  And it was in these personal dealings that his special skills first became apparent. When a client suspected his son was falsifying his school’s tuition bills and using the funds to purchase illicit drugs, Simon silently volunteered his help and within a week had the young man enrolled in a rehabilitation facility in Arizona and his dealer locked up in an interrogation room at Scotland Yard.

  When another client suspected an employee was selling his company’s proprietary technology to a rival, Simon asked (this time aloud) if he might look into the matter. A month later, the employee was arrested for industrial espionage while the business rival ponied up a generous settlement to avoid a lawsuit.

  And when another let slip that his girlfriend had absconded with two million pounds sterling from his office vault and run away to Ibiza with a lover half his age, Simon took it upon himself to rectify the situation. In a short time, the money—or most of it—was back in his client’s vault. Sadly, the girlfriend chose not to return.

  Word of his uncanny ability to solve even the thorniest of problems spread rapidly. His mastery of language served him well. Besides his native English, he spoke French, Italian, Spanish, Russian, and a bit of Arabic. His clients often wondered if he’d spent time as a policeman or maybe a soldier or, pray tell, a spy—whatever that meant in this day and age. To which Simon had only laughed and said that their problems had not been as difficult to solve as they’d appeared and, really, an
yone could have done it.

  He had tendered his resignation without warning. Nothing the bank had offered could entice him to remain. He’d left them his private number and an offer to do what he could should a client have a special problem. That had been five years ago.

  “Go back to the bank?” Simon downed the scotch and banged the glass onto Moore’s desk. “Pass.”

  “Well, then, you have your investments,” said D’Artagnan Moore. “Market’s been doing nicely. You’ve always been a wiz.”

  “No complaints.”

  “What is it, then?”

  Simon looked at Moore, at the dark eyes peering at him from beneath those impossibly tangled eyebrows. It was apparent Moore was sincere in his desire to help. Some things, however, Simon had learned were best kept to oneself. “Nothing,” he said. “Just getting older.”

  “Aren’t we all, lad? Aren’t we all?” Moore produced an envelope from his top drawer and slid it across the table. “This should ease the pain. Go a ways toward buying that dyno…no—”

  “Dynamometer.”

  “Gesundheit.”

  Simon slipped the envelope into his jacket pocket. “Nothing else on your desk that needs attention?”

  “Not at the moment. Seems that all the cheats, crooks, and con men are away on holiday. Why not join them? Take a vacation. Spain. Portugal. Take a trip home.”

  “The States?”

  “I hear Cape Cod is lovely. Take a lady friend. Man like you must have a string of them.”

  “Sure thing, D’Art,” said Simon. “They’re lined up in front of my flat.” Three months had passed since his last relationship had ended. He was enjoying his status as a single male in a fast-paced, cosmopolitan city. He was in no hurry to change that. “Tell you what. I’ll go if you go. Bachelors’ road trip. Not Cape Cod. Ibiza. Saint-Tropez. You pick the spot.”

  Moore roared in delight. “Me in a bathing suit? God save us.”

  The two laughed a while longer. Moore stood and escorted him into the hall, a meaty arm laid across Simon’s shoulder. “Relax, lad. I’m sure something will turn up. Until then, enjoy life.”

  Chapter 4

  Tino Coluzzi drove rapidly through the forest, both hands on the wheel, face crowding the windscreen as he negotiated the single-lane road. It was crow-black. The canopy was so dense it denied the slightest light from the night sky. The track turned to the right and dropped. His stomach fell with it. Something large darted across his path. He braked. A shadow disappeared into the brush. A stag.

  After leaving the highway at the village of Buchères, Coluzzi had cut his headlamps. The hills were filled with cabins belonging to hunters and those who’d simply withdrawn from society. He was anxious not to alert anyone about the Château Vaucluse’s midnight visitor.

  Another turn. The car shuddered as he crossed a barren stream. A dramatic incline and he was free of the forest. Stars appeared above a vista of rolling hills. He could see the château squatting on the hilltop a hundred meters ahead. It was a hulking structure with stone walls, narrow windows, and a slate roof. A local baron had built it as his hunting lodge two hundred years earlier. For decades it had sat empty and in disrepair. Coluzzi had picked it up at auction for a song.

  He crested the ridge and steered the car into the forecourt, breathing easier as the tires dug into the gravel driveway. He continued through the archway and parked in the garage, certain to immediately lower the door behind him. Retrieving the case containing the money and the prince’s calfskin satchel, he crossed to the main building. Before unlocking the servants’ door, he paused and closed his eyes to listen. All was still. Far away an owl hooted. Then there was nothing but the wind.

  Inside, he carried the cases to the kitchen and, with a grunt, threw them onto the island. The nearest house was three kilometers away. Still, he moved from window to window, checking that the shutters were closed. Only then did he turn on the lights.

  He stared at the cases for a minute, then descended to the cellar, picked out a decent Burgundy, and returned. He knew to a penny what was in one of the cases. The contents of the second were a mystery.

  He poured himself a glass of wine and drank it slowly, pondering his dilemma. Stop now. Do as agreed. Deliver the briefcase to the American, waiting for him even now at a hotel in Fontainebleau. Don’t ask any questions and walk away. His cut was seventy percent. Over four hundred thousand euros. For the next few years, life would be easy.

  The right course of action was plain to see.

  And yet…why had he come to his château?

  Coluzzi ran his hand over the smooth calfskin, tapping a manicured fingernail against the polished lock. He was a thief. He could no sooner ignore the prince’s briefcase than he could leave an untended purse on a counter.

  Setting down his wine, he went to work. Naturally, the case was locked and his set of picks nowhere at hand. With the help of a paper clip and a nail file, he freed the clasp, careful to leave the escutcheon unblemished. With the same care, he removed the case’s contents. One Saudi diplomatic passport. Several files containing documents written in Arabic, and thus incomprehensible. A printout of an email from a “V. Borodin”—happily in English—with the header “Landing Instructions / Cyprus,” giving the name of an airfield, coordinates, and radio frequencies. An envelope holding the bill from the hotel. Another overflowing with receipts cataloguing purchases made during the prince’s stay. One copy of The Economist. One copy of Paris Match. One oversized business card on the finest stock in the name of “Madame Sophie,” listing a phone number and an address in the 16th arrondissement, and redolent of costly perfume.

  And, finally, another three packets of currency totaling thirty thousand euros. He thumbed the bills, considering whether to add them to the grand total to be split among his crew. The answer was a resounding “No.” Finders keepers.

  He studied the items on the table. Nothing appeared to be of value, though he was always pleased to learn the name of a high-class madame. There were no jewels, no bearer bonds, no plutonium, no secret formula for a nuclear bomb or for eternal youth. Nothing close to what his criminal mind had labored to imagine since taking the job.

  Either the American was mistaken and something was missing or Coluzzi hadn’t found it yet.

  Certain it was the latter, he opened the briefcase and ran his fingers along its interior lining. No surgeon had a more delicate and perceptive touch. He found the hidden pouch without difficulty. He retrieved a flashlight from the pantry and shone it inside, running a thumbnail along the top seam. A spring mechanism opened an eight-inch pocket. He removed the manila envelope inside and withdrew the contents.

  Five minutes later, he replaced them and returned the envelope to its hiding place.

  Coluzzi had been right to recognize the cruelty in the prince’s gaze. The papers he was carrying were correspondence between the FBI and the Saudi Arabian Mabahith, discussing the transfer of a prisoner from U.S. to Saudi detention.

  The prince, it seemed, was the chief of his nation’s secret police.

  But surely the American knew this already. After all, he was some sort of spy himself. Such information did not warrant employing Coluzzi’s services.

  There had to be something else.

  Coluzzi poured himself another glass of wine and waited for his heart to slow. There was nothing more hidden in the case’s walls. He was sure of it. Therefore, it must be concealed in a false bottom. He pressed his fingertips around the perimeter, searching for a release. He picked up the case, studying it from each side, then from below. He decided the prince wasn’t the sort to waste time searching for a hidden release mechanism. He set the briefcase back down on the counter and studied the lock. To open the case one had to first unlock it, then slide a circular nub to the left. He tried pushing the nub up, then down. Nothing happened.

  Suddenly angry, he depressed the nub with his thumb. Harder still. He felt a catch. A tray slid from the base of the satchel.

  Vo
ilà!

  Coluzzi pulled the tray all the way out. He viewed the contents and his heart sunk. A letter, he thought disappointedly as he took the envelope in his hands. It was small, square rather than rectangular, and unsealed. No name, but an address on the rear flap. Coluzzi was not an educated man in the traditional sense and it took him a moment to recognize the words embossed in blue ink.

  “Really?” he whispered.

  With care, he removed the paper inside and read the engraved header. Beneath it, in gold leaf, was a drawing of a structure he vaguely recognized.

  “Dear Colonel,” the note began.

  The body of the letter was handwritten in neat, cursive script and ran to four sentences. On first reading, Coluzzi didn’t grasp what might be so important as to warrant the chief of the Saudi Arabian secret police hiding it inside a briefcase or, for that matter, to induce a shadowy operator to offer a Corsican thief six hundred thousand euros to steal it. It was a thank-you note between two men. Nothing more.

  Coluzzi read the note a second time, the names of both sender and recipient slowly registering. Anxiously, he picked up the envelope and studied the address inscribed on the rear flap to make sure he was getting all this correctly. His skin turned to gooseflesh.

  No man should be in possession of this note, he told himself. Not the chief of the Saudi secret police. Not an American spy who arranged meetings at luxury hotels. Most of all, not a lifelong bandit who’d been lying and stealing since he could say “Give me all of your money or else.”

  Seized by a sudden and irrational fear for his safety, Coluzzi slipped the letter back inside the envelope, replaced it in its hiding place, and dumped the rest of his wine in the sink. He was out the door seconds later.

  Cases in hand, he returned to his car and, in minutes, was traveling at rapid speed through the forest. He was not a man who scared easily, but he was smart enough to know when he was in over his head. Experience had taught him that fear was the better part of self-preservation.