Chapter 26

Le Magicien—better known as former British Army Major Richard Thompson—was sitting alone on a concrete bench at the edge of a pedestrian walkway just off Voie Georges Pompidou, looking out over the Seine. It was quiet this time of morning and he had a good view of a lithe young yogi in tight leggings holding a provocative tree pose. Earlier, he had picked up a to-go cup of café with a shot of espresso, and had wandered a bit before settling on this place, under the spreading branches of a small grove of poplars—all in all, not a bad start to another day in Paris.

He watched as the young woman subtly and slowly shifted to something that looked like a hood ornament on an old car, balancing on one foot while the non-standing leg raised up, and both of her arms reached forward.

At that moment he felt one of his phones vibrate, the device only one person in the world knew to call. He immediately knew what this was about and for a moment ignored the thing, but it continued to pulse. Eventually he hit “talk” and said, “Oui.”

“Where are you?” the scrambled voice on the other end asked.

“Enjoying a beautiful morning at the edge of the Seine,” Thompson replied. “It’s very pleasant this time of year.”

“Good. There’s a new film coming to a revival house that we’d like you to see.”

Thompson thought a moment, then picked up his paper cup as he watched a young couple stroll by, arm-in-arm. He took a sip of café and asked, “What is the movie?”

“An American in Paris,” the voice explained.

“I presume we’re not talking about Gene Kelly?”

“No, but equally skilled at his chosen profession. I believe you will enjoy it.”

“Enjoyment is never a consideration,” Thompson assured him. “When is the screening?”

“As soon as you can manage,” the encrypted voice replied. “And there is one thing you should know in advance about the lead actor in this show.”

He gazed out at the river as a houseboat chugged up the Seine past the Pont d’Arcole. “What about him?”

“He’s a brilliant thespian and very adept at deceiving his audience, which means you need to take the utmost care,” the voice said. “If you agree, you will receive the playbill shortly.”

A few yards further up the pedestrian esplanade a dachshund was taking a dump. Its owner was standing by patiently, his hand enveloped in a waste bag…a dirty job, but someone had to do it. Thompson’s mood abruptly shifted from contemplative to commerce, and he said, “Go ahead and send it to me.”

“Thompson’s definitely in the Equinox database,” Beaudin confirmed with an early-morning call, his scratchy throat sounding as if he hadn’t been to bed at all. “Worked for the Greenwich Global Group for years, until you closed it down.”

Phythian was not surprised that the G3 had employed the angry former British Army officer after investing what he presumed was significant time and money in his professional development. “Under his own name, or an alias?” he inquired in the darkness of his tiny room off the Pigalle alleyway. It was quieter, now that the squeak of bedsprings above, and on either side of him, had finally subsided.

“His and three others. Malcolm Findlay, from Auckland. George Tremblay, from Winnipeg. And Mason Graham, from Malta.”

“Any idea if he still uses any of them?”

“All passports apparently are still valid, and Graham’s credit card was used to reserve a room at La Pérouse Hôtel on Rue Amélie in the Seventh. He arrived three nights ago, and because Equinox still has a back door to financial transactions, I was able to determine that he’s still there.”

“Any idea who he’s working for now?” he asked.

“I checked around, made a few calls since we last spoke,” Beaudin replied. “All indications suggest he’s a freelancer for an upstart organization known as J Street.”

Clever, Phythian thought; named after the nonexistent street in Washington that French engineer Pierre L’Enfant had curiously omitted when he designed the grid for the nation’s capital. There were many stories suggesting why he had done this, but the one that seemed to stick was that he bore a strong grudge against someone whose name began with the letter J.

“What do we know about them?” he asked.

“Just that they’re a boutique outfit that came on the scene about eighteen months ago,” Beaudin explained. “Not long after the G3 took its final bow.”

“It was always expected that other organizations would bridge the gap,” Phythian said, almost defensively.

“Agreed. And I hear J Street is making a competitive push to gain market share.”

“I assume they’re deep web?”

“With a business model similar to the G3,” Beaudin confirmed. “Possibly organized by one of its former associates.”

“And you’re certain the Gabrielle Lamoines hit was arranged through them?”

“Yes, sir. Hired out to Major Thompson, as we suspected.”

“Did your late-night calls provide a reason why she was targeted?”

“Not specifically, sir. Nor the identity of the party who arranged it. But my source did mention something peculiar, although I haven’t been able to make any sense of it.”

“And that peculiar thing was?”

The locksmith in Andorra didn’t say anything for a few seconds, carefully choosing his words. Phythian knew he could be prickly when revealing information; after almost four decades of protecting confidential information, it had become part of his DNA.

“Out with it,” he pressed.

“All she said was ‘Vivaldi,’” Beaudin eventually replied. “I don’t think she was talking about the Italian composer, either.”

This took Phythian right back to what Arnaud Clément had told him yesterday, about the neofascist nutjob named Alessandro Bortolotti and his nationalist movement.

Violentiam. Valeo. Diripio.

“Merci beaucoup,” he said. “Is there anything else?”

“Well, sir,” Beaudin demurred. “You know that five-million price on your head I mentioned yesterday?”

“Are you trying to make a point, Beaudin?”

“Yes, sir. Just the fact that if Thompson’s still there in Paris, there’s a good chance he has another job lined up.”

Noah Wenner detested coming to this place. He was uncomfortable with the thick steam and the sweaty stench and all the naked men with their fat asses perched on cedar benches, rivulets of perspiration and stale testosterone oozing from their pores. Earlier, when Isaac Melancon called and told him to meet him at Club Athlétique de Lux at eight o’clock, Wenner had little choice but to follow orders. Now they were sitting side-by-side in one of six private saunas, a towel spread across Wenner’s lap while Melancon’s personal assets were exposed for all to see.

“So, the little Polish turd fessed up to taking the memory card?” the CEO of the Clear Bank of Luxembourg asked.

“He did,” Wenner wheezed. He was having difficulty breathing, the moist, hot air swelling his lungs and throat. “When Djokovic questioned him, he claimed someone sent him a blind text offering him twenty thousand Euros to borrow it for it for a night.”

“What happened to it then?”

“The original plan was to hand it off to some computer hacker, with the idea that he’d get it back the next day. Instead of doing that, however, for some reason he gave it to a woman. She promised to return it to him within twenty-four hours, but she never showed.”

“And our Serbian friend was certain he was telling the truth?”

Wenner nodded, wiped a trickle of sweat from his forehead. “He said he tried to get more out of him, used several different methods that involved significant pain. In the end, though, I think that’s all he knew.”

Melancon fixed him with a dark glare, said, “This woman he gave it to. Do we know her name?”

“We do,” Wenner told him. “Gabrielle Lamoines.”

“Seriously? The French reporter who was murdered?”

“It appears so.”

“So where is the card now?” Melancon asked, so sign of regret or sympathy. “Not in the possession of the police, I hope.”

“The answer to that is anyone’s guess, sir. It’s a very high-profile case, and it’s possible the investigators found it. That’s the worst-case scenario. Of course, there’s every chance that whoever killed her might have taken it, or maybe she gave it to someone else.”

“You are aware how valuable that card is,” Melancon snapped at him.

“Absolutely, sir. And we are doing everything we can to locate it. As long as it still exists, we will find it.”

“I trust you know better than to disappoint me.” The CEO stood up in all his naked glory, dripping from the condensation of steam and sweat. “The financial health of this institution—and the privacy of its clients—totally depends upon getting it back.”

Wenner followed his boss’ lead and rose from the wood slab. He tightened the wet towel around his waist, cinched it with a knot. “I understand,” he said. “The good news is, the card was equipped with a specialized sensor. A homing device designed to ‘ping’ whenever it’s plugged into a circuit board with a wifi connection. Known in the trade as a black pigeon.”

“And has this ‘black pigeon’ pinged?”

“Not yet, sir. Which suggests that wherever it is, whoever has it in their possession, they haven’t looked at it yet. They may not even know what it is.”

Melancon turned and looked at his long-time assistant, his eyes glazed over from the heat. And his anger. “Do I have to tell you again how important it is that we get that card back?”

“I’m already on it, sir,” Wenner replied. “There’s a person I sometimes use for jobs like this. She’s expensive, but well worth it.”

“Whatever it takes.” Melancon pushed open the glass door and exited the steam room, Wenner following close behind. The change in temperature and air viscosity was an instant relief. “Next time we speak I want this matter settled. Is that clear?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And the card back wherever the fuck it belongs.”

“Of course,” Wenner assured him, knowing that by now the thing was in the wind, almost impossible to locate, and also knowing there was no woman, expensive or not, who could get it back. This meant that by the end of the week he would be without a job, after all those fucking years submitting to the whims of Isaac Melancon.

Of course, it was better than being dead—which was not wholly out of the question, either.

Flaó.

Whenever Georgy Sokolov had a craving for it, that meant he had to have it now. As with most mornings on Ibiza, he’d worked up an appetite after rolling over in bed and making love with Nataliya, but today he couldn’t be content with his usual breakfast of syrnikis and kolbassa. Two of the few fond recollections he still held from his Russian childhood, the traditions of which he seemed to be abandoning more and more since his personal circumstances had gone to shit.

No, it had to be flaó, a traditional Ibizan pastry filled with goat cheese and ground almonds and honey. He was obsessed with it, and there was only one place on this side of the island where it could be purchased to go: a cliffside restaurant in the small village of Es Cubells, eight miles from his secluded villa, but thirty minutes by car along the narrow road that, in most places, was a single lane of tightly packed stone.

That’s where Nataliya was now. She was crossing the small, dusty lot toward the SUV when her phone chirped. She continued to be amazed that it worked all the way out here in the middle of fucking nowhere, and she felt like letting it go straight to voicemail. The Mediterranean sun was already starting to bake her skin, and her eyeshadow felt as if it were melting down her cheeks; plus, the cardboard bakery box was too big to carry in just one hand.

The phone persisted, however, so she hustled toward the vehicle and set the pastries down on the front fender, then pulled the cell out of the purse that was slung over her shoulder, saw it was Georgy.

Fuck. Now what?

“Hi Sweetie…what’s up?” she asked.

“That whore…she’s gone!” he barked at her.

“What? Who—?”

“That shlyukha, the one for tomorrow night. She’s gone. And Dimitri’s dead. Killed with his own gun.”

Nataliya’s blood pressure spiked from zero to the stratosphere in a flash of a second. She could feel it pulsing in her brain, and her heart instantly constricted as if someone had reached into her chest and was squeezing it. How the fuck could this have happened? she asked herself as her legs grew wobbly. That târfă jgheab couldn’t be missing, not today—not after the last girl had gone and killed herself.

She reached out her empty hand to steady herself, knocking the box of pastries to the ground. Then she managed to get a grip, take a breath, and think through what Sokolov was telling her. “Did you check the rocks?” she asked him.

The rocks below the horizon pool were where the last căţea had been found, after she’d presumably leapt to her own death in a fit of despair.

“I’ve checked everywhere. You need to find her.”

Nataliya rolled her eyes and glanced upwards toward the heavens. This was the last thing she needed right now. She kicked at a flaó that had rolled out of the box, sent it flying across the gravel lot. “I’m on it,” she said, like the compliant little twat she was.

“Pre-bidding is up to million and half,” Sokolov reminded her. “Get. Her. Back.”

“I said, ‘I’m on it.’ ”

She was. Unbeknownst to the former billionaire, she had inserted a tracking chip into Abby’s neck at the very same entry point where Alberto from Albania had stuck her with the needle. The pinprick would itch for a day or two, and the girl wouldn’t suspect a thing.

“You’d better be,” Sokolov said. Then, softening his tone, he added, “And Honeybun… did they have the flaó?”

“Yes, Sweetie,” she replied. She took a few steps across the gravel lot and gathered up the pastry from where it had come to rest, put it back in the box. “Don’t worry…the little skank can’t get far.”

The bitch named Nataliya was speaking again in that language Abby didn’t understand, but the implication was clear: she’d just learned about her escape.

They would have searched the villa and the landscaped grounds first, but of course they hadn’t found her; not there, because she’d stowed away in the back of the SUV and by now was here in this tiny village perched on a ragged cliff that dropped off to the sea hundreds of feet below. A good half hour from the place she’d been held captive, some sort of luxury estate in an exotic locale with water and sky as far as she could see. Despite her expensive private education, her knowledge of geography was minimal. She could still be in Italy, or Greece, or Spain. Maybe Turkey? Where was that, exactly?

She’d managed to get out of the vehicle when Nataliya had parked and gone inside some sort of restaurant. The terrain was arid and scrubby, a few palm trees and cactus…aloe, too. A few tables were set off to one side under white canopies, and a couple other cars were parked in the lot. Plus a motorcycle.

She knew all this because thirty seconds after the woman had gone inside, Abby had popped the inside latch of the vehicle’s tailgate and opened it just far enough to slip out. Then gently pushed it closed until the lock clicked into place.

From there it was a quick scramble around the vehicle to a low stone wall. She crawled over it, landed in a patch of volcanic-looking landscape stones on the other side. Decorative shrubs had been planted at regular intervals, as if it were some sort of rock garden, but hadn’t yet filled out enough for her to completely hide from view…but it was enough cover for her to see what was going on, without giving herself away.

That’s when she’d heard the phone ring and the harsh words began. Hushed yelling, both of them agitated about something. The fight didn’t last long, just enough for the woman to kick something that had spilled from a box…a donut or something. Then she’d ended the call, tucked the thing back in the box, and climbed in behind the wheel of the SUV.

She started the engine, then stepped on the gas as she swerved through the gravel lot in the same direction from which Abby was certain they had just come.