What a difference a day makes.
The man who sat down to lunch yesterday in his grand, book-lined study in the Auction Towers penthouse was the world's most eligible thirty-nine-year-old bachelor. The man who was served lunch at the same library table today had turned forty.
It was Prince Karl-Heinz von und zu Engelwiesen's Big Four-O, and the fact that he had turned forty made him aware of more than just his own mortality. The responsibilities his fabulous wealth and title engendered, as well as the peculiar laws of inheritance which had governed his family for nearly three-quarters of a millennium, weighed heavily on his mind.
That he should concern himself with these matters now was in itself disconcerting—especially considering the past two decades of lusty, carefree living.
For Prince Karl-Heinz, indisputably one of the savviest businessmen in the world, was also acknowledged to be one of the most notorious playboys of all time. An exciting, passionate, and well-endowed lover, his life was a chronicle of liaisons and affairs. Movie stars, showgirls, supermodels, and other beauty queens—his amorous adventures did not stop there. An inspired lover of women—all women—his conquests had included the happily married wives and even daughters of friends, business associates, celebrities, and politicians.
Now, hearing a light tap on the study door of his condominium high above Burghley's, he called out in German, "Herrein!"
The door opened and in came Josef, his thin, precise secretary-cum- valet, who had been with him since his youth, and who knew his every quirk and peccadillo.
"Guten Tag, Your Highness," Josef greeted formally in German. "And may I take the liberty of wishing Your Highness a very happy birthday and many happy returns?"
"Guten Tag, Josef, and thank you," returned His Serene Highness, Prince Karl-Heinz von und zu Engelwiesen.
Josef hovered. "Would Your Highness like your lunch now or a little later?"
"Later, Josef."
"Very well, Your Highness."
After Josef left, Karl-Heinz became lost in his reverie once again. On this, his fortieth birthday, his stomach felt hollow as he reluctantly faced the harsh realities of his personal life. It was time he settled down, mended his licentious ways, and secured his future—no easy task for a man in his shoes ...
His Serene Highness, Prince Karl-Heinz Fernando de Carlos Jean Joachim Alejandor Ignacio Hieronymous Eustace von und zu Engelwiesen was blessed with an overabundance of everything. Besides his fortune, which was larger than most; his title, which was older and bluer than most; his aristocratic good looks, which were more handsome than most; he also possessed a libido which—what else?—was more overactively demanding than most. He looked younger than his forty recorded years—recorded, because for the past seven centuries not a single legitimate von und zu Engelwiesen had been born without a trio of lawyers present, whose duty it was to duly witness and certify in an ancient book of bloodstock that the newborn infant was indeed the product of the rightful von und zu Engelwiesen womb, the double loophole in this archaic tradition being, of course, that as many lawyers as not are unscrupulous, and even a triumvirate of them have been known to be bribable. And besides—how could there be irrefutable proof of the paternal sperm serene if lawyers were not present during insemination?
But be that as it may, there was no mistaking Prince Karl-Heinz for anything but the genuine article. The result of a carefully distilled pedigree, he exuded nobility from every pore, not only carrying himself like a prince, but speaking and looking like one, too. His nose was imperial, a true Roman nose: narrow, long, and slightly irregular, with the same central bump which all the ancestral portraits at Schloss Engelwiesen bore as proudly as their dueling scars. His ears, small and flat and nearly lobeless, were obviously a throwback to another of the many royal houses of Europe, with whom von und zu Engelwiesens had intermarried over the centuries. However, his eyes, slightly oval, bright blue, and crinkled at the corners, had a whimsical and definitely unprincely, mischievous cast.
Since the age of fifteen, Prince Karl-Heinz had bedded, but not wedded, the most beautiful women on five continents. Yet his highly publicized playboy exploits were but a small part of his character. Behind the libidinous facade there was a core of diamond-hard toughness, ruthless business acumen, and the kind of confidence that only absolute power and a serene birthright can bestow.
Ironically, that very same birthright was now the root of his greatest problem—and that could be traced all the way back to the year 1290, when his illustrious ancestor, Eustace, had been rewarded by Charlemagne for services rendered, and made a prince of the Holy Roman Empire.
Deeded vast tracts of lands in what is now Germany, Eustace was also awarded that plum of all plums—exclusive rights to the papal mail routes for the entire western Mediterranean.
And it was that very same Eustace, the first in a long, unbroken line of princes of the Holy Roman Empire, who had laid down the von und zu Engelwiesen family laws governing inheritance for future generations; strict, binding laws which remained in effect to this very day, and to which Prince Karl-Heinz was required to adhere, and to which, therefore, he owed his current predicament.
At the heart of it was primogeniture, not so unusual in itself, since many of the noble houses of Europe still practice the ancient tradition of passing titles and inheritances down through their eldest sons. And as Karl-Heinz was his ailing father's only male offspring, primogeniture should normally have guaranteed his inheritance, and precluded his sister, Princess Sofia, from the running.
However, that was where the distinctive von und zu Engelwiesen complication arose, a problem little appreciated by Karl-Heinz. Thanks to Prince Eustace, the family's particular law of primogeniture clearly spelled out that no less than two prerequisites had to be fulfilled before the eldest son could attain his rightful inheritance.
The first, a precaution to ensure a pure bloodline, was that Karl- Heinz must marry a female who was also a descendant of the Holy Roman Emperors—an obstacle which winnowed the playing field down to a tiny handful of eligible women.
The second was that his wife had to give birth to a male heir before the death of Karl-Heinz's own father, the old prince.
If both these criteria could not be met, the inheritance would then automatically pass on to the eldest son of the next closest relative. As luck would have it, Karl-Heinz's sister, Sofia, and her husband, Count Erwein, had managed to produce a virtual army of strapping and exceedingly handsome if featherbrained princelings.
Meanwhile, time was running out for Karl-Heinz. His father, the old prince, was in such deteriorating health that it was doubtful whether he would even live to see his next birthday ...
Now, with the noonday sun streaming through the windows, Karl-Heinz considered his options, or rather the lack thereof. It occurred to him that if he wanted to secure his rightful inheritance, forty carefree years of bachelorhood had better come to a screeching halt. He would have to dig up an appropriate, blue-blooded wife fast, and hope to God she was a childbearer who could produce a son in record time.
The specter of Leopold, Princess Sofia's lamentably sulky eldest son inheriting the estate which, by all rights should be Karl-Heinz's, loomed ominously in his mind. It didn't take much imagination to see Leopold, a hopelessly provincial spendthrift with harebrained schemes and no business sense whatsoever, run through the entire fortune and undo the work of seven centuries in a single generation. Karl-Heinz had seen it happen to other great and powerful families, and had no desire to see it occur to his.
He felt every one of his forty years weigh heavily today, and sighed gloomily. His thoughts of Sofia and Leopold had definitely taken the shine off his day; they made his entire life's work seem pointless.
Yes, he mused, if I know what's good for me—and I do!—my playboy days are over. Definitely over ...
And with that depressing thought, he could only wonder at his own stupidity in waiting so long ... perhaps too long ... to secure his birthright.
He was still wondering about it during lunch, oblivious to Cesar, his Spanish majordomo who, hovering discreetly, sniffily orchestrated the perfect serving of everything from the lobster salad to the freshly ground, scalding hot coffee.
But the lobster went uneaten; the coffee was half drunk.
His Serene Highness, Prince Karl-Heinz von und zu Engelwiesen had lost his appetite. How, how on God's earth, he asked himself, could he of all people have been so cretinously stupid, so unforgivably asinine as to wait until today, his fortieth birthday, to see the light? Truly, such imbecility is unworthy of me! he thought with the bitter recriminations of someone who has won the lottery, but has forgotten to cash in the ticket.
He needed to make up for lost time—and lose no time doing it.
Yes, Karl-Heinz thought, uneasy rests the head, even if it wears no crown ...
The man climbed the shallow marble steps to the head of the grand staircase. To the left was the entrance to the auction auditorium proper; to the right, Burghley's carpeted showroom galleries, a succession of wide open spaces which could be divided or opened up, whichever the occasion required, via instantly movable walls on tracks.
"May I heeeeelp you?" drawled the bored Locust Valley lockjaw behind the sales counter.
He looked at her. She was one of three exceptionally thin, uniquely chic, and peculiarly interchangeable ex-debutantes who sold Burghley's books, catalogues, magazines, and pricey, specially printed books.
"Yes," he told her. "I would like a copy of Attractions."
"The November-December issue?" She raised perfectly plucked eyebrows. "Or the current one covering September-October?"
"The November-December. Also, if you have it, the January- February."
"I'm teeeeeribly sorry, but those won't be in for another month and a half yet."
"Then the November-December issue will be fine."
She turned to the magazine rack behind her, and reached for a copy of Attractions, the oversize glossy magazine which was Burghley's preview of upcoming worldwide events.
"Would you like any catalogues while you're at it?" she asked. "We've just unpacked a new shipment, and they cover the whooooole rest of the year."
"No, thank you," he said.
"That'll be twenty dollars, then."
He pulled out his wallet, fished out a crisp twenty, and handed it over. She rang up the sale, stuffed two sheets of oxblood tissue paper into a small silver-gray buff shopping bag with string handles and BURGHLEY'S FOUNDED 1719 printed in oxblood on both sides of the heavy buff paper, and slid the magazine inside it.
"There you are." Handing it across the counter, she smiled automatically, already tuning him out.
Back outside on Madison Avenue, the man took the magazine out of the bag, rolled it up tightly, and stuck it in his coat pocket. As for the shopping bag, he crumpled that and the tissue paper into a ball and tossed it into the trash can on the corner. He didn't even want to be seen carrying around a Burghley's bag—it was too noticeably chic and memorable, and in his line of work drawing attention to himself was not only bad for business, it was a risk he could not afford to take.
He was the most successful career criminal in the world, only nobody knew it.
Which was exactly the way he intended it to remain.
A grand strategist at heart, he hadn't gotten to where he was by sticking out in a crowd. Or trusting anything to luck.
On the contrary. Caution was his middle name, and keeping a low profile his tried-and-true game. Too smart to openly consort with others of his kind, he was not, however, above using highly skilled criminal personnel when needed.
In those cases, he did as he'd done in Macao—delegating the details to an associate who would see to everything while he himself wisely kept his distance and stayed safely, invisibly, far in the background. The melodramatic black disguises he donned on the rare occasions he met with his go-between were no affectation; they were a necessity.
The secret to his success had always been that no one—not even his own second-in-command—could identify him as the mastermind should a job ever go wrong.
To date, this recipe of one part anonymity to one part caution had served him well. Neither Interpol, the FBI, the Surete, Scotland Yard, nor a single police department on earth had him in their criminal files, not even for so minor an infraction as a parking violation.
Blessed with a photographic memory, he never left a paper trail, was a virtuoso at laundering money, and was worth a hundred million dollars of cunningly concealed assets in gold, diamonds, and cash stashed safely in—and invested cleverly from—an untraceable maze of dummy corporations and numbered bank accounts in Liechtenstein, Grand Cayman, and the Isle of Jersey.
Needless to say, he could long ago have retired in supreme luxury. The only reason he still worked was because he truly liked crime.
Now in the midst of planning his curtain call—his biggest and most daring caper ever—his foremost concern was to ensure that it would not go down in the annals of history as merely the crime of the year. Nor the crime of the decade.
No, nothing short of the crime of the century would do.
This was to be the crowning achievement of his criminal career; his glorious swan song before retiring to join the world's law-abiding citizens.
But best of all, he would be able to sit back, far above suspicion, and watch as the authorities ran around in useless circles, trying to hunt down the elusive mastermind.
Because it went without saying that they would never find him, for the simple reason that as far as they, or anyone else was concerned, he did not exist, at least not as a criminal.
And that, he thought with the satisfaction of someone whose life is devoted to matching wits with the guys in the white hats, is nothing if not truly elegant.