Epilogue

 

Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur, France

 

“You’ve made your bones, girl,” Luna said, when Elaine woke up in the hospital after the surgery.

She squeezed her friend’s hand. Finding it difficult to speak, she said, “If you hadn’t thrown me that pistol, I wouldn’t even be alive right now.”

Raj Malik remained in intensive care for two days, in critical condition, but he would pull through. His room was covered by an armed guard. As soon as he recovered, he would be moved to a French jail to face a number of charges, including diamond smuggling, attempted murder and resisting arrest. He would spend at least the next twenty years in a French prison.

Elaine was released from the hospital the following morning.

 

* * *

That afternoon, Luna, Nick and Dmitry were all sitting around the dining table in the farmhouse, satiated from a delicious mid-afternoon feast that Tony had prepared—fettuccine Alfredo, Caprese salad with pesto sauce, Focaccia bread, Tiramisu...

Elaine had her right leg propped up in the seat of an extra chair, her ankle in a cast. Her shoulder was bandaged and still ached. The bullet had entered just under her collar bone and had shattered her clavicle, but fortunately, had not done any serious damage.

While Tony made them all coffees and cappuccinos, Dmitry was telling them about his encounter with the charging elephant herd, and how the poachers had started shooting at him.

Elaine’s mind wandered a bit as Dmitry talked—she felt elated that Raj had been arrested and would go to jail, but she also still felt bad about Stanley Ketchum and the clinics in Darfur. Seeing all those poor, suffering people, especially the children, had made a deep and indelible impression on her. Now there would be no more funding for the medical facilities. The diamond mine would be lost until someone discovered it again, somehow, someday. All that natural wealth would go to waste. The French police and Secret Service knew nothing about Stanley Ketchum or the mine—Elaine and Luna had simply said that Raj had been behaving suspiciously for the past few months and they had decided to conduct their own internal investigation, afraid that if they went through formal internal affairs channels, Raj would find out about it, and that he was simply too high up in the organization for them to risk it. And of course Giorgio Cattoretti’s name had not been mentioned, and never would be.

Weighing heavily on Elaine’s mind was the fact that she had not yet called Anneke and told her what had happened to Stanley Ketchum. She had to make that call, unpleasant as it was.

Interestingly, Giorgio Cattoretti had not called Raj on the Paris-bound plane to warn him, even though he could have when he got away from Nick. The French police had checked his sat-phone records and no calls or texts had been received at all on that phone during the flight.

That made Elaine feel a little sad, too. She really believed that Giorgio had been sincere about going straight and setting up the diamond cutting factory in Croatia. He had lied through his teeth about everything else, she was sure, but not about that. He probably would have funded the clinics, too.

Elaine glanced past Dmitry and the dining table, into the foyer. His and Luna’s bags were sitting by the front door, packed and ready to go. They would both be going home this afternoon.

“That must have been scary,” Nick said, bringing Elaine’s thoughts back to the present.

Dmitry had just finished his story about the elephant stampede.

Nick sipped his coffee, smiling at the Russian. “I bet you never want to go back to Chad, huh Dmitry?”

“Nyet, no true.” Dmitry looked around the table at Elaine, and at Luna. “I very like the normal Chadian people—very warm and friendly. And they very clever, too.”

“How so?” Nick asked, surprised by the comment.

“I very like those foot washers they have in their hotel rooms. So practical. Maybe I make such device in my apartment in Moscow.”

“Foot washers?” Nick said, glancing at Elaine. She had no idea what he was talking about, and Nick didn’t seem to either.

Looking a bit uncertain, Dmitry motioned to the kitchen floor and said, “In hotel room, next to toilet. Small washing bowl for feet.”

Tony set a cappuccino in front of Luna, now looking intrigued by the device Dmitry was describing.

“What did this thing look like, exactly?” Nick said.

“Just like toilet,” Dmitry said, “only smaller.” He spread his hands apart. “So big. Spray nozzle on end. Very convenient for washing feet.”

Elaine smiled, and Nick started laughing.

Luna and Tony cracked up, too.

“Shto?” Dmitry said, glancing around sheepishly.

“Those aren’t for washing your feet,” Nick chuckled.

The big Russian looked utterly mystified. “What must I wash in them?”

Now Tony was laughing so hard tears were running down his cheeks, and he almost spilled the coffee he was about to serve.

“It’s called a bidet,” Elaine said, trying not to laugh. “It’s a French invention—I’m sure you know that Chad was once a French colony.”

Dmitry’s cheeks suddenly turned crimson—he apparently knew the word. “How can I know anything about these crazy czar-palaces!”

 

 

* * *

After Luna and Dmitry left the farmhouse that afternoon, it seemed too quiet. Even in one day Elaine had grown accustomed to having them around. Nick and Tony and the kids seemed to miss them, too.

That evening, as she slowly climbed the stairs to go to bed, Nick appeared at the top and Tony at the bottom, asking if they could help.

“No, no, no,” she said. “I have to move around by myself. The sooner, the better.”

Tony picked up her crutch, which was leaning against the rail at the bottom of the staircase, and carried it up to the top for her. As he passed her again on the way down, watching her clinging to the railing and slowly taking each step, he looked worried. But he went reluctantly back down to the foyer and into the kitchen.

“Are you sure you’re okay, baby?” Nick said, still watching her from the top.

“I’m sure. Just go relax, play on the computer.”

When Elaine finally reached the second floor, Nick had gone into her office and was sitting in front of her computer, playing a car racing game. She watched him for a moment as he frantically twisted the “steering wheel” back and forth, already absorbed in his own world. Just like a child, she thought.

Of course she had forgiven him. Forgiven him for everything.

She made her way into the kids’ room, hobbling on her crutch. She looked in from the doorway, at Amelia’s innocent, sleeping face, and then over at Ryan’s.

She gazed at her children, realizing how lucky they were—and their whole family was—compared to the poor people in Darfur.

After hesitating only a couple of seconds, she finally made up her mind.

Now she could make the call to Anneke.

 

* * *

Giorgio Cattoretti was not a man who handled failure gracefully.

He sat slumped in a chair in Room 37 of the Hotel Villa de France in Tangier, nursing a big glass of cognac. He had arrived this morning and checked into the same room he and Elaine had stayed in, two doors down from the room where Matisse had crafted his famous masterpiece.

Cattoretti was physically sore, exhausted, and utterly depressed. He had been through hell the past few days, barely managing to escape from Chad in one piece. He had arrived in Tangier this morning, checked into the hotel room under a fake name, and had been licking his wounds ever since.

How could he have known that Elaine could actually bring down Raj Malik? That was his primary mistake. She was an amazing operative, yes, but he really hadn’t believed that she could lock horns with Raj and win. Raj was a formidable opponent, and Giorgio figured he would wriggle out of it even if he was caught red-handed with the contraband at an airport, which apparently is what had happened. From what Giorgio could gather on the news, Raj had tried to flee, had been shot by the police, and was now recovering.

Giorgio guessed Raj Malik probably wished he was dead right now.

The root of Giorgio’s depression, however, was the fact that his ingenious plan to come out of hiding, and go at least partially straight by building the diamond-cutting facility in the safe haven of Croatia, was not going to happen. That was the most painful thing of all—the isolation of living like a fugitive was killing him, and the thought of staying hidden away for additional months or even years, until he could dream up some other solution, was debilitating. He had fantasized about openly living in luxury in Croatia for so long that he had become firmly attached to the idea. During his time in Chad, he had even dreamed of making a big media splash about the donations to the clinics that Stanley Ketchum had helped establish. Elaine had been right about that—donating money to help the impoverished, suffering people of Darfur was even better than being a patron of the arts.

Giorgio downed the rest of his cognac and gazed miserably over at the couch, remembering how beautiful Elaine had looked when she reclined there, in the white hotel bathrobe, her long legs tucked up underneath herself, while they both relaxed and enjoyed their ritual nightcap. Planning the Stanley Ketchum caper with her had been the most fun he’d had in years.

How could he have treated her so badly? It was all for the greater good.

Giorgio dragged himself out of his chair to pour himself another drink.

At that instant, there was a familiar dinging sound that he hadn’t heard for a few days.

The sat-phone.

It was on the windowsill, where it could pick up a signal.

Giorgio held the faint and foolish hope that Elaine might call him for some reason, not that there would be any.

He reluctantly padded across the room towards the phone, sure it was a glitch, an advertisement from the satellite service provider, some such crap. The phone just dinged once—it was only a text message.

Giorgio picked it up and glanced at the display.

1 TEXT MESSAGE RECEIVED.

When he clicked open the inbox and saw the French phone number, his heart gave a hard thump.

He opened the message, his hand trembling slightly. It was just a bunch of letters and numbers.

 

LAT 12.93834

LON 24.23872

 

The Cat smiled.

 

 

(End of Book 3)

 

To download Book 1 of the next Lust, Money & Murder Trilogy—The Greek Trilogy— click here.

 

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