Chapter 94

 

 

Hotel de Paris, Monaco

 

7:49 p.m.

 

Calla felt Nash’s breath on her neck as he zipped her haute couture dress. He’d chosen it himself.

The House of Dior piece, feminine to the core, was a vintage strapless gown highlighted with gold thread embellishment made of ruffles and layers of gossamer fabric. The dress was delicate in eighteenth-century gray, a Dior signature from the forties and frosted with iridescent beading and embroidery. The flowing skirt of ombré petals, resembled a gathering of peacock feathers calling to mind the bird associated with the Queen of the Olympians.

“You’re a real sight, Calla.” His lips pressed briefly on the length of her neck. “You’ve always been.” His compliment was sincere. It was too easy to get lost in the way he looked at her. “I take it that smirk means it may not stay in place very long. Last time you wore one of these we ended up on a London hotel roof, running after a mad man with a Caliber 99, or were we the ones being chased? The dress caught a snag wiping away thousands of dollars of couture value. Oh, and I think we lost the two-thousand-dollar shoes while we were at it.”

Calla took a frank and admiring look at him. It was the first time she’d felt like smiling in twenty-four hours. She pressed her feet into the Saint Laurent’s heels, expertly crafted in Italy with the finest leather. They displayed an elegant peep-toe silhouette, a minimalistic ankle strap and stiletto heel.

“You know I can’t walk in these. So, don’t expect them to stay intact.”

“That’s why you have my arm,” he said, extending his elbow, dressed in a smart tuxedo jacket.

Calla read the Brioni Vanquish II label. Nash was a man comfortable in the field, but he had style to the bone and he stood comfortably in the super-luxurious fabric, a tuxedo woven in a cloth using blends of some of the rarest fibers in the world, like kiviak, pashmina, and vicuna.

“Right, you ready?” Nash said.

She nodded.

“Jack has swept the building for any abnormal digital activity. If he gets an entry in the auctioneer’s network, we have Archimedes. The only place we have no access to is the auction room which the hotel is keeping extremely secret.”

“So, what do Jack and I do?” Calla said,

“I’m allowed in with a plus one, and that would be you, but my right hand is expected on those auction touch screens.”

“We won’t know what this person looks like, will we?”

“No, but Jack is on it. Once we’re in there, the rules of play are explained. My job is to get an ID and ping that to Jack’s database on his phone.”

Calla managed a tentative smile. “Okay, Scorpion Tide. Did you have to pick the Diamond Suite?”

“Nothing’s too good for you.”

Nash had spared no expense.

He scrolled through an incoming message on his phone. “Allegra says the Blackhorse Group members may be the world’s royalty, but above them sits an elite group of twelve, the top tier of the knights.”

He pecked her hand. “Let’s not think about it now.”

Nash led Calla to the balcony door that overlooked the Mediterranean Sea and bordered the Monte Carlo coastline. It was Calla’s first time in the Principality of Monaco, a sovereign micro-state and city-state, located on the French Riviera. Bordered by France on three sides, the mini country on France’s sun-kissed Mediterranean coast was home to under forty thousand people, one in three of whom were millionaires.

Calla pressed into Nash’s arm as they left the suite. His scent washed over her and she let him draw her into a hug. “It’ll be okay. We’re going to enter this auction and buy everything they’re selling including the genes of our child.”

“But where did you—”

“I joined forces with your father. Believe me money is not an object tonight.”

Nash slotted his firearm in its holster and buttoned his jacket. The tie suited him and framed his perfect athletic build. He was going to bid for them. For their child, if necessary.

They left the suite and took the elevator to the ground floor. Guests were to be ushered into a private dining room. Jack met them at their table, smartly dressed in a similar tuxedo.

At exactly quarter to nine, the bidders would be led blindfolded into the private room. Calla couldn’t put a name to any face as the waiters whisked swiftly around them. A sharp pain drummed in her temples and she scanned each face in the room.

“What is it?” Nash said.

She could read brain activity but didn’t know where the vibes came from. Her eyes shot open and she shook her head. “Nothing.”

“Calla Cress! I’m still waiting for an answer.”

The voice came from a man at the next table. He rose and approached. She turned to face him and her eyes narrowed. He took her hand and kissed it. Nash and Jack’s gaze failed to leave the man once.

Nash slowly rose. “And you are?”

The man had deep-set brown eyes like two bronze coins. His brown hair was short and expensively groomed. A musk fragrance too strong for Calla’s taste stung at her nose. He had a wide-chested build and his tuxedo fit like a pencil in a sharpener.

“I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced.” He glanced at the men. “She’s a heart breaker this one. Allow me to introduce myself. I’m the one she let go.”

The man’s sudden appearance had startled her. And the knot in her stomach unraveled with each word he spoke. “There was no heart to break.”

The man smirked. “I’m the one who proposed to her two years ago.”

Jack and Nash exchanged looks.

Calla narrowed her eyes into him. “And she said no. What do you want, Rowe?”

His accent was British betraying his Lithuanian surname that Calla remembered as Norkus.

“The same thing you do, I’m here to bid for whatever is on that list.”

“Tell me, has the GCHQ given you a night off for good behavior?” Calla said.

“We need to be as much a part of the action as anyone digitally or cyber-minded on the globe.”

Calla was keen to get to the bottom of his intrusion. “What exactly are you bidding for?”

Rowe’s eyes fell on her lower leg exposed in the slit of the dress. “Still got that tattoo on that amazing ankle. Quite intriguing. I believe that tattoo made a stir when we first met.”

 

 

 

 

Calla glanced the length of the room not wishing to make a scene. Rowe wasn’t going to give up easily, he’d been a rotten pain from her high school days at Beacon Academy where he’d chased her like a dog in heat.

They’d met at a debate where she’d represented Beacon, a prestigious independent girls school, against his school’s team. Later he tried to get easy with her until she knocked him senseless. It was the day Calla discovered she had an unusual strength in her punch and the beginning of learning to restrain it.

Rowe was of Lithuanian descent, born and bred in South London. His grandparents had deflected to the United Kingdom and developed one of the largest technology empires in Europe based in Canary Wharf, London. Later, Rowe was recruited by GCHQ and met Calla again years later at a technology summit.

Calla shot him a glare. “I think you’ve overstayed your welcome.”

Rowe smacked his lips at Calla, completely ignoring Nash and Jack. “Not until we begin from where we left off.”

Her hand balled into a fist, a gesture that caught Nash’s eye. He reached for it and enfolded it within his. “You heard her, Rowe, or whatever your name is. Your seat. We’ve some business to attend to and need to get to it.”

Nash’s words had an angry bite. Any minute now he would get a message on his phone asking him to go into the auction. If they got distracted, not only would they be logged out of the auction they might also possibly be blacklisted by the Blackhorse Group who may come after their lives. The group expected one to play their game as a lifetime commitment.

Calla shot up. “You’re done here.”

Nash rose.

“Not until I tell you what I found out about that tattoo of yours,” Rowe replied.

Calla tapped her chin with her fingers. The blasted thing had been a mystery all her life. The tattoo was a visible secret she chose not to speak about. An identity she kept only to herself and had fully neglected to let Jack and Nash know of its striking resemblance to the Maltese Cross. A spin-off version, possibly early century, she’d read about while on sick leave in Gibraltar.

“It’s not a tattoo.”

“The symbols on it follow a pattern that GCHQ have picked up.”

Calla didn’t want to discuss it. The imprint had plagued her from childhood. On her right ankle, just above the bone lay a coin-sized birthmark. It resembled a tattoo, so much so that, at Beacon Academy, the head teacher reprimanded her, presuming Calla had paid to have a tattoo imprinted. That alone constituted grounds for expulsion.

It had taken a trip to the local hospital to verify the legitimacy of the birthmark. The border was calligraphic, with rows of petals designed in sync. In the middle lay a depiction of a three-petal flower and two unreadable symbols. She’d always imagined they looked like Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Nash’s phone beeped. “We need to go.”

Rowe drew closer, setting a hand on Calla’s bare arm. Not until pretty thing here and I—”

Nash’s fist was faster than Rowe’s mouth and met his nose in a sharp clout. Rowe dropped to the floor, his hand covering his bloodied nose. “I believe she said she was done,” Nash said.

Calla smirked. Rowe would be silenced for now. She’d have to find another way to get back the images she’d let him take of her tattoo in high school.

Rowe had turned a childhood frivolity into a National security hunt for undecipherable symbols only because the symbols matched the Deveron Manuscript, a government document held in Berlin’s ISTF headquarters and under guard by Eichel.

“Love how you handle business, Nash,” Jack said, as they retreated to the room where auctioning teams were gathering. They neared the end of the lobby and passed through a door where two security guards stood. The first man in a dark suit jutted his jaw forward. “Who’s the main bidder?”

Nash stepped forward.

“You’ll go through that security door. All electronic devices stay behind except for the phone that was sent,” the man said.

Nash nodded and removed his gun holster and handed it to Jack.

“Step this way. Your friends will be allowed to mingle in an adjoining room and wait for you there.”

Calla took Nash’s hand. “You can do this.”

Jack gave Nash a brief nod, probably to assure him of the undetectable bug he’d placed within the threads of his tuxedo.

Calla and Jack moved to the adjacent room, a drawing room where attendants served salmon canapés and a myriad of cocktails. She scanned the room and found a quiet corner with a table behind a divider. They took a seat and turned on the listening device.

“You think Nash will make it?” Calla said.

Jack gave her a reassuring look. “He has to.”

Jack turned up the volume and they heard the security guard’s voice speak to Nash through the speaker. “You need to perform a DNA scan.”

Calla faced Jack as if on cue. “How does it work?”

“From the registration details I saw, they’ll scan a vein, matching his identification. With the DNA they have on record. It works just like a fingerprint scan. The ID scanner will look for vein geometry. Everybody’s different and unique.”

“So, Nash will be scanned for vascular patterns.”

“Yes, impossible to counterfeit.”

“Will it work?”

“Come on, the government steals genetic material from people for its own purposes all the time. Sometimes the pharmaceutical industry will do the same.”

“But won’t they be different to his father’s?”

“I changed the file when I registered Nash.” He eyed her. “He’ll be okay.”

“The hemoglobin in the blood will absorb the light but the tissue around doesn’t. This makes the veins around the blood show up as black lines. The person scanning will then read vein thickness, branching points and angles and compare it to the file I hacked into their system.”

They heard more shuffling over the shared speaker on Jack’s bugging device.

And then silence.