The hospitality company was called Hibiscus Hire and it was tucked away in a block of two-storey office suites a kilometre back from the Nice waterfront. De Payns climbed the stairs and walked into the lobby of the business at 8.30 a.m., as arranged via email.
‘Frédéric Ruesche,’ he said, handing his French ID card to the woman at the reception desk.
The woman looked at the card, ticked off his name on a clipboard, and led him through to a meeting room where a man and two women were standing. All were in their mid to late twenties and wore casual clothes.
‘Let’s go,’ said the woman from reception.
The five of them walked down a flight of fire stairs to the car park and climbed into a minibus.
De Payns sat next to a friendly man from Marseille named Jacques, and they swapped greetings as they merged onto the coastal road to Monaco.
‘You know anything about this gig?’ asked de Payns.
‘Pays well and I don’t have to buy groceries for a while,’ said Jacques, with a shrug. ‘Could be fun, as long as none of the guests is gay.’
De Payns nodded.
‘I’ll take the brunette,’ said Jacques.
‘I’m sorry?’
Jacques nodded to the two young women who were poring over their social media accounts, oblivious to their surrounds and each other. The brunette had introduced herself as Claire, the other woman was Simone.
‘You can have the blonde,’ said Jacques.
‘Oh, okay,’ said de Payns, smiling. ‘Bet she’ll be delighted to hear that.’
Jacques turned and gave de Payns a wink. ‘Don’t worry, mon pote. Stick with me and you’ll score.’
The minibus stopped at Monaco’s marina and the woman from Hibiscus Hire led the foursome to a security gate, where she handed some paperwork to a security guard, who checked their IDs.
‘I’ll be here at the end of the cruise,’ said the Hibiscus woman. ‘You’ve read and signed our code of conduct, so please stick to it.’
At the far end of the quay, a huge vessel loomed with the name Azzam stencilled on the side. Somewhere on the yachts and buildings around the quay, de Payns knew, a crew of three people from the Company were waiting to see the guests arrive and capturing them with high-powered lenses and sound-amplification dishes. From the surveillance material, the team would build a trombinoscope, a gallery of images, names, associates and habits of the main players and locations in an operation. It was one thing to say that Russians were being hosted on a UAE yacht, but it was useless without the identities and their backgrounds.
De Payns marvelled as he walked beside Azzam. He’d researched the boat but hadn’t appreciated the true size of eighty-two metres. They walked into the yacht through a crew gangplank near the stern and were greeted by a middle-aged man called Tom, wearing whites. He led them down two flights of stairs, all the while chatting about the crew facilities, including the galley and mess area, which looked like the workers’ mess in a mining camp.
‘Ladies,’ he said, pointing to one side of the dark, cramped passageway, ‘and gentlemen,’ pointing to a mahogany door on his right. ‘Get unpacked, reserve a bed for yourselves, and meet upstairs in five minutes. Susan would like a word.’
De Payns put his bag on the top bunk because Jacques got in first with the bottom. The quarters were like a coin slot, with a set of double bunks on one wall of the cabin, a louvred wardrobe on the other wall, and barely enough space to turn between them. Jacques lay on his bed and checked his phone while de Payns ducked out to look for the toilet. The layout of the yacht essentially put the crew in the area where the engines, diesel tanks and sewerage was located, and judging by the crew entrance, the quarters were underneath the massive hangar that held speedboats, jet skis and a small helicopter.
He checked the toilet and shower cabinets then continued along the low-ceilinged passageway. There was a hum all around him with the occasional raised voice as the vessel was readied for sea. He reached the foot of a companionway and looked up. At the top of the stairs two men looked down on him: one was Tom, the other a thick-set Middle Eastern man, mid-thirties, in a black polo shirt.
‘Hello, umm …’ said Tom, searching for a name.
‘It’s Fred,’ said de Payns. ‘I’m a steward. I was just looking around.’
‘Ah, right. It’s Susan you’ll be looking for,’ Tom said. ‘And she’ll be on this deck, but give her five minutes, okay?’
De Payns smiled his acquiescence but found his eyes locking with those of the Middle Eastern gentleman, who stared into his face silently, his thick neck straining as he chewed gum.
‘Sure—I’ll see you later,’ said de Payns, pulling back and returning down the passageway to his cabin. He wasn’t going to be able to fade into the background on this journey, the onboard security had made that very clear.
■
An Englishwoman in her early forties, Susan addressed the four new stewards in front of the bar in an entertainment area that included a dancefloor with a disco ball and a nightclub lounge area. The marina was visible through the opened doors at the far side of the dancefloor. She told them that they’d been selected for their expertise and that their discretion would be appreciated.
‘You’ll be signing NDAs,’ she said, ‘but that’s just a piece of paper. The rule on these yachts is that whatever happens here, stays here. Don’t get into conversations with the guests, don’t make passes at the guests, don’t say yes to sex with the guests, and this is a dry tour, so no drinking. Clear?’
Susan noticed a lack of response. ‘I’m serious ladies,’ she snapped. ‘Some of these people think an unmarried woman is a prostitute, so get this straight: no flirting, no batting eyelids, no sex. Got it?’
They all murmured their comprehension, and Susan moved on to who would be working in which sector of the vessel. They’d have specific tasks when entertaining, and each of them had a sector they were responsible for cleaning and maintaining, including guests’ cabins. De Payns was assigned as backup barman on the main and upper decks, due to his experience as a sommelier in Paris hotels. His general duties section was stateroom three and the library and cinema above and below it.
They signed their NDAs and then peeled off into groups. De Payns and Simone were paired with Otis, the taciturn head barman of Malian extraction, who told them the guests were likely to be from the Gulf States and Eastern Europe, which meant the drinks orders would be predominantly champagne and vodka, and they’d have to keep a constant supply of caviar flowing.
They were given white shirts with gold trim and the word Azzam stitched on the left breast. The crew was segregated from the owners and the guests, so de Payns spent the morning and most of the afternoon with no view of the areas reserved for the playboys and their ‘companions’, but he was asked to develop a detailed knowledge of the booze storage areas and the intricate rabbit warren of companionways and service passageways that allowed the crew to move around Azzam without being seen by the VIPs. He spent almost an hour with Otis and Simone, familiarising himself with the cellar, which was located one deck below and held what de Payns estimated to be around two million euros worth of wine and port, in an area the size of a squash court. After stocking the upper deck bar and the owner’s lounge—where it was obvious the meetings were going to be held—Simone and de Payns were sent back to the entertainment area to polish champagne glasses.
‘The answer’s no, by the way,’ said Simone, who was closer to thirty than twenty. ‘We’re not sleeping together.’
‘Gee,’ said de Payns, holding a glass to the light to check for smears. ‘I didn’t even get the thrill of asking.’
She laughed.
‘Or the adrenaline rush of being refused.’
Simone shook her head. ‘Claire wants to swap cabins, but it’s up to me apparently.’
De Payns made a face.
‘You know how this works, don’t you?’ she asked. ‘Crew pair-off—it’s a thing. So, Claire and Jacques …’
‘I like my bed,’ said de Payns.
‘You didn’t organise this with Jacques?’ she asked.
‘Jacques is precisely the kind of person I don’t organise things with,’ said de Payns.
Simone chuckled, relieved. ‘Well, he’s organised something with Claire.’
‘He can be his guest,’ said de Payns. ‘I encourage creative thinking.’
■
The yacht left its berth just after 4 p.m., and de Payns and Simone were summoned to one of the upper decks, where the guests stood around a swimming pool while a Parisian jazz quartet played in the corner. The deck’s glass barrier stopped the winter chill, but the Riviera had also served up a still afternoon, making for pleasant cruising. De Payns served half-filled champagne glasses from a silver tray, noting faces and groupings as he went. When he’d delivered drinks, he’d return to fetch platters of crusty bread with caviar spread on top, with shaved radish as a palate cleanser. As Otis had predicted, there was a UAE group—none of them in traditional robes—and also an Eastern European group in silk shirts and expensive jeans. He counted four security people, in black polo shirts and black pants, positioned around the sides of the deck. Their shirts weren’t tucked in and the bulges on their right hips demonstrated they were armed. It wasn’t the sort of protection that was used in Paris; this was so conspicuous as to be almost a challenge.
‘Who’s our owner?’ asked de Payns, as he returned to the bar and handed a tray to Otis.
‘Blue jacket, silver hair,’ said Otis, doing his best to not look at the guests. ‘He’s got a long Prince Something name, but he’s called Jamal.’
‘I call him Monsieur Jamal?’ asked de Payns, corking a bottle of Cristal he’d lifted from a silver ice bucket.
‘You won’t call him anything, Fred,’ said Otis, smirking. ‘We don’t speak to Prince Jamal. We speak to Susan and she speaks to him.’
‘I see,’ said de Payns. ‘And what happens if Jamal wants to tell us something?’
‘He sends Ahmed,’ said Otis, angling his head slightly towards the security guard that de Payns had met earlier with Tom. Ahmed now wore a black windbreaker and leaned on the fold-back door that separated the pool deck from the bar. ‘But you don’t want that, because if Ahmed starts a conversation with you, you’re probably in trouble.’
‘Tough guy?’ asked de Payns lightly, fishing for information.
‘And smart,’ said Otis. ‘He was a spy or secret police, something like that, back in Abu Dhabi. Stay away from him.’
De Payns nodded and made a beeline for Jamal, a tanned, good-looking man in his early fifties, who wore his authority lightly. He was speaking to a younger, more intense Arab man with a tightly curated goatee and aviator sunglasses.
De Payns made to pour, and Jamal turned to stare at him with intelligent, ruthless eyes. ‘No, thank you,’ said Jamal in French, his accent neutral.
De Payns turned his body to the goatee man, who didn’t wait for the bottle to be presented.
‘Go on,’ said the man, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Piss off.’
De Payns smiled and continued his rounds, pouring champagne, eventually returning to the bar, where Otis was smothering a laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’ asked de Payns, picking up a fresh bottle of champagne.
‘I see you met Nasir,’ said Otis.
‘Meet would be stretching it,’ said de Payns. ‘What’s his problem?’
Otis lowered his voice. ‘His biggest problem is his excellent hearing, you understand, mon pote?’
De Payns did.
■
The full party of VIPs, as far as de Payns could make out, comprised Jamal and Nasir, and a tall Russian in a black silk shirt who kept his eyes on Simone. The other Arabs and Eastern Europeans looked like hangers-on. There didn’t seem to be a meeting of the size suggested in the Lotus document drop. Given that most of the people around the pool were either heavies or lackeys, de Payns wondered if he was even on the right vessel.
De Payns asked Otis, ‘It’s a small party we’ve got here—how come they needed extra stewards?’
Otis shrugged. ‘We’re about half full. The real VIPs are here when the helicopters have landed.’
The sun reached the horizon, giving the central Mediterranean a golden-rose light as Azzam sailed for the north of Corsica in light seas. The receding Cote d’Azur was transitioning into twilight and guests reached for jackets and polar fleeces. De Payns was topping up glasses with Cristal when he saw a dark shape in the sky approaching the stern. By the time he’d retreated into the bar, a black EC-135 Eurocopter was flaring for landing at the helicopter deck which was two decks below and aft of the pool deck. This landing was followed shortly by two more.
The first of the new guests arrived poolside a few minutes after the third helicopter landed. A trim man in his early forties, dressed in dark sports coat and a deep red shirt, emerged from the VIP companionway beside the pool deck and walked to the pool’s edge, where he did what every military man did in such a situation: assessed his placement on the yacht and every single person around him and above him. Behind him, three heavies in slate-grey windbreakers and black ripstop pants fanned out around the pool deck, openly assessing the other guests as well as the security. De Payns saw small wires emerging from their left ears and observed bull necks and tactical boots. The tall man in the black silk shirt approached the new arrival and shook his hand. A torrent of Russian poured between the two men as de Payns approached with a bottle of champagne; he was dismissed in favour of Simone and her silver tray of chilled vodka shots.
De Payns lingered, on the pretext of topping up other glasses, and heard the tall Russian call his red-shirted compatriot ‘Boris’.
Another party emerged on the pool deck. In the lead was a compact man in his late thirties—Arab, de Payns thought—who strutted to the pool surrounded by thugs. Behind him was a lean man with a small hunchback, in his forties, who looked like his security detail.
Jamal, the Azzam’s owner, approached the younger of the two and called over Boris and his Russian friend. The new group formed in the middle of the pool deck, circled by backup people and hangers-on, then an outer circle of security.
De Payns loaded up with canapés and Simone followed him with a tray of vodka shots. Jamal shouldered de Payns out of the way, ushering Simone into the midst of the group, where hands reached for shot glasses. Holding his aloft, Jamal—speaking in English, which appeared to be the group’s lingua franca—proposed a toast to the younger of the Arab men, whom he called Faisal, and then to Boris, welcoming them aboard his yacht.
The temperature dropped as the sun did, and the guests were called through to the mahogany-panelled owner’s dining room, located forward of the pool deck. De Payns switched to sommelier duties, thankful that his mentors at the George V had prepped him for complicated wine lists and rich people showing off about vintages. He and Simone worked around the waiters, which included Jacques, whom de Payns noticed had left a small silver ring in his left earlobe despite being told by Susan to remove all jewellery.
The sommelier’s station was set back from the dining room in its own little wine room, and as de Payns corked a 2010 Chateau Lafite, Ahmed entered, close up and observing his movements.
‘You’re new,’ the security man observed as de Payns placed the bottle on the sommelier’s trolley and readied his napkins.
‘I guess that depends on who is talking to me,’ said de Payns, smiling.
Ahmed didn’t return the smile or take his eyes off de Payns. He was the same height and build as de Payns, but he’d spent more time in the gym.
‘You’re new to this boat,’ said Ahmed, his clean-shaven face impassive. ‘Where are you from?’
‘Paris,’ said de Payns. ‘The George V, and in the winter sometimes I’m in St Moritz.’
‘Monaco is a long way from Paris,’ said Ahmed, in Syrian-accented French.
‘It’s not a bad place for a working holiday,’ de Payns said with a shrug. ‘I like the beaches and the girls, and the money is good when you get these kinds of gigs.’
Ahmed nodded slowly, contemplating. ‘Girls and money. What else could you want?’
Seeming satisfied, he turned and left.
■
After the dinner, Otis called de Payns back to the main bar. ‘Get the owner’s bar ready,’ he instructed. ‘They’re going up there for a private meeting.’
De Payns scooted up the companionway and let himself into the owner’s bar. It had been decorated like a 1920s London club, with dark green Chesterfield chairs, wood panelling, a card table, a conference table and even a bookcase. The bar itself looked like it belonged in The Great Gatsby. De Payns checked the wines and the cocktail equipment and then walked around the large room turning on the wall lighting and the green-shaded lamps on small side tables.
He walked around the conference table, a great oval slab of oak; it was obvious this was where the VIPs were going to sit during the meeting. He wondered if he would have another chance as good as this one. He quickly turned off the lights he’d switched on, because if he was going to plant a bug in this room, he didn’t want to be watched on CCTV by security as he did so. He hurried for the crew companionway, went down three flights and then moved aft along the narrow passageway that led to the crew quarters in the stern of the yacht. The engine sounds became louder as he entered the crew zone, and he was more aware of the movement of the boat as it surged through the Med.
Aware of the hostile security teams currently stalking the boat, he tried to tamp down his nerves as he ducked into his cabin and rummaged in the secret lining of his bag, pulling out a small, black plastic recording device the size of a thumb drive. Pushing back out through the cabin door, he emerged into the passageway and moved forward, feeling the surge of the vessel push him slightly into the right wall.
‘You lost?’ came the voice he now knew. French with a Syrian accent.
De Payns turned, acting like a man who’d been called by nature, as he faced Ahmed. ‘I can’t find the toilet. I didn’t know if I was allowed to use the one up there.’
Ahmed got in close to him and de Payns wondered if he’d been followed, or if the crew quarters was a standard security beat. ‘They’re just up there,’ said the Syrian, neutral, looking for tells in de Payns’ expression. ‘You were shown this morning.’
‘Oh, of course,’ said de Payns. ‘But it’s like a rabbit warren in here. I got lost.’
‘Okay.’ Ahmed smiled and gestured for de Payns to walk in front of him. ‘The party is maybe ten minutes away from their after-dinner drink, so don’t take too long.’
De Payns stood in the tiny toilet stall, too nervous to take a piss. His hands were clammy and he could feel cold sweat on his forehead. He had flashes of Romy and the boys, Paul Degarde and his wife, and his unexplained overreaction to the drunks at Saint-Lazare. He took a deep breath and brought his focus back to the present and his environment. He washed his hands and walked quickly back towards the owner’s bar, pausing at the foot of the companionway that would take him up to it, when he almost ran into Simone.
‘It’s going to be a long night,’ she said, rolling her eyes. ‘The tall Russian—they call him Lenny?—has already checked to see how tight my pants are.’
‘That’s nice of him.’
‘It would help if they’d given me the right-sized shirt.’
De Payns nodded his agreement. The women wore V-necked shirts, and the one Simone had been given was a size too small.
‘I’d swap you,’ said de Payns, tugging on his shirt, ‘but I don’t want him checking my pants. I’m shy.’
Simone giggled. ‘Let’s get the bar ready, they’re coming up.’
‘Would you mind going back for the corkscrews?’ he asked, hoping for an opportunity to plant the listening device. ‘There’s none up there.’
‘Ahead of you,’ she said, holding up a corkscrew and heading up the companionway.
As they entered the owner’s bar she asked, ‘Why have you been walking around here in the dark? Were you a ghost in another life?’
‘I was enjoying the lights,’ de Payns explained, pointing through the glass doors that faced aft and back to the sparkling wonderland of Monaco and Nice, which blazed like Christmas trees in the darkening coast.
‘I see,’ she said, placing the corkscrew on the bar counter. ‘We have a romantic.’
‘Well, it’s not every day you’re on a boat like this watching a sight like that.’
‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But there’ll be plenty more memorable sights before this cruise is over, and they won’t be of Monte Carlo.’