The Geneva Deception (24 page)

20th March - 3.52 a.m.

Barrelling through the doorway, Tom took the stairs as quickly as he dared, Allegra on his heels. Nothing made sense any more. Nothing, except that he couldn’t let him get away. He connected whatever had happened here to both the killings in Rome and Jennifer’s death. He could lead Tom to whoever had ordered the hit.

A few minutes later, they emerged breathlessly into the ground-floor lobby.

‘Which way did he go?’ Tom barked at the officer, whose smile had quickly faded as he caught sight of the expression on Tom’s soot-smudged face.

‘Who?’ he stuttered.

‘The man who just came down ahead of us,’ Tom snapped impatiently.

‘No one else has been in since you went up,’
the officer replied in an apologetic voice, as if he was somehow at fault.

‘He must have come in another way,’ Allegra immediately guessed. ‘Probably jumped across from a balcony next door.’

They stepped through the sliding glass doors just as the garage entrance on the adjacent building rattled open. A blood-red Alfa Romeo MiTo chased the echo of its own engine up the slope from the underground car park, Tom glimpsing the driver as he quickly checked for traffic before accelerating down the street.

‘Is everything okay?’ the officer called after them with a worried cry as they sprinted to their car.

‘Are you sure it’s him?’ Allegra asked as she buckled herself in, bracing an arm against the dash as the car leapt away.

‘I remember every voice, every glance, every face from that night,’ Tom insisted in a cold voice. ‘He was as close to me as you are now. It was him. And if he’s here, whoever sent him might be too.’

They caught up with the Alfa near the casino, the priest being careful, it seemed, to stay well within the speed limit. Dropping back to a safe distance, Tom followed him down the hill and through the underpass back towards the port, where workmen were busy disassembling a
temporary dressage arena and stables under floodlights. Pulling in, they watched as he parked up and made his way down to the water, where a launch was waiting for him between two topheavy motor cruisers.

‘Drive down to the end,’ Allegra suggested. ‘We’ll be able to see where he’s going.’

With a nod Tom headed for the harbour wall and then got out, pausing to grab a set of nightvision goggles out of his bag. Putting them on, he tracked the small craft as it cut across the waves to an enormous yacht moored in the middle of the bay.

‘
Il Sogno Blu
,’ Tom read the name painted across its bows. ‘The Blue Dream. Out of Georgetown.’ A pause. ‘We need to get out to it.’

Allegra eyed him carefully, as if debating whether she should try and talk him out of it. Then, with a shrug she pointed back over his shoulder.

‘What about one of those?’

They ran down the ramp on to a pontoon where three small tenders had been tied up. The keys to the second one were attached to a champagne cork in a watertight storage compartment under the instrument panel. A few minutes later and they were slapping across the waves towards the yacht.

‘This will do,’ Tom called over the noise of the outboard as they approached. ‘If we get any closer they’ll hear us. I’ll swim the rest.’

She killed the engine, then went and stood over him as he took his soot-stained tie off and loosened his collar.

‘You don’t know who’s onboard or how many of them there are,’ she pointed out, the wind whipping her hair.

‘I know that someone on that ship helped kill Jennifer.’ He kicked his shoes off and stood up, looping the night-vision goggles over one arm. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Then I’m coming with you,’ she insisted.

‘You need to stay with the boat,’ he pointed out, handing her both the phones the croupier had given him and D’Arcy’s watch. ‘Otherwise it’ll drift and neither of us will make it back.’

She eyed him angrily.

‘I thought we were in this together.’

‘We are. But this is something I have to do alone.’

‘I could stop you,’ she reminded him in a defiant tone, standing in front of him so that he couldn’t get past.

A pause, then a nod.

‘You probably could.’ A longer pause. ‘But I don’t think you will. You know I have to do this.’

There was a long silence. Then Allegra stepped unsmilingly to one side. With a nod, Tom squeezed past her to the stern and lowered himself into the water.

‘Look, I’m not stupid,’ he said, with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. ‘I’ll be careful. Just give me twenty minutes, thirty max. Enough time to see who’s on board and what they’re doing here.’

Lips pursed, she gave a grudging nod.

Turning, Tom kicked out for the yacht with a powerful stroke, the waves rolling gently underneath him. He was lucky, he knew. On a rougher day, they might well have tossed him from crest to crest like a dolphin playing with a seal. Even so, it took him five, maybe even ten minutes to cover the hundred and fifty yards he’d left himself, his clothes dragging him back, a slight current throwing him off his bearing.

Up close, the yacht was even larger than it had appeared from the shore - perhaps 400 feet long, with sheer white sides that rose above him like an ice shelf, the sea lapping tentatively around it, as if afraid of being crushed. Even though it was anchored, the yacht’s shape made it look as if it was powering through the waves at eighteen knots, its arrowed bow lunging aggressively over the water, its rear chopped off on a steep rake, as if it had been pulled out of shape. Tom counted five decks in all, their square portholes looking as if they must have been dynamited out of the ship’s monolithic hull, capped by a mushrooming radar and comms
array that wouldn’t have been out of place on an aircraft carrier.

The launch had been moored to a landing platform that folded down out of the stern. Swimming round to it, Tom hauled himself on board and then carefully climbed across on to the ship itself. The landing platform was deserted, although he could see now that when lowered it revealed a huge garage and electric hoist, with room to store the launch itself, together with a small flotilla of jet-skis, inflatables and other craft.

Quickly drying himself on one of the neatly folded towels monogrammed with the yacht’s name, he buttoned his jacket and turned the collar up to conceal as much of his white shirt as he could. Then he slipped his NV goggles over his head and turned them on. With a low hum, night became day, albeit one with a stark green tint. The outline of the deck’s darkest recesses now revealed themselves as if caught in the burst of a permanent firework.

Treading stealthily, Tom made his way up a succession of steep teak-lined staircases to the main deck, which he had noticed on the swim across was the only one with any lights on. Finding the port gangway empty, he made his way forward along it, keeping below the windows and checking over his shoulder that no one was coming up behind him. Two doors had been left open about
halfway along, the glow spilling out on to the polished hardwood decking and making his goggles flare. Switching them off, he edged his head round the first opening. It gave on to a walnut-panelled dining room, the table already set with china and crystal for the following morning’s breakfast. In the middle of the main wall he recognised Picasso’s
Head of a Woman
, taken from a yacht in Antibes a few years ago.

The second open doorway revealed the main sitting room. Hanging over the mantelpiece was a painting that Tom recognised as the
View of the Sea at Scheveningen
, stolen from the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. This room, too, had been set up, although in readiness for what looked like cocktails rather than breakfast: champagne cooling in an ice bucket, an empty bottle of ‘78 Chûteau Margaux standing next to a full decanter, glasses laid out on a crisp linen cloth.

Turning the goggles back on, he continued along the gangway, wondering if he had chanced his luck long enough up here and whether he should head down below instead. But before he could do anything, a door ahead of him opened. Tom froze in the shadow of a bulkhead. A man stepped out, talking on his phone. Tom’s heart jumped. It was the priest, his mouth twisted into a cruel laugh, but recognisably the same man he’d faced in the casino - medium build, white, wavy hair, ruddy cheeks.

Even as Jennifer’s image filled his mind, he felt the anger flood through him, sensed his chest tightening and his jaw clenching. Before he knew it, he was clutching his gun, her name on his lips, and death in his heart.

Il Sogno Blu
, Monaco 20th March - 4.21 a.m.

It hadn’t taken Allegra long to decide to ignore Tom’s instructions and follow him on board. There’d been something dead in his eyes, something in the way he’d deliberately patted his pocket to check that his gun was still there, that had suggested he would need her help - not to deal with whoever was on board, but to protect him from himself.

Having approached from behind so that the wind would carry the engine’s breathless echo away from the yacht, Allegra had pulled alongside the launch and lashed the tender to it. Then she had paused for a few moments, waiting for an angry shout and for an armed welcoming party to materialise. But none came.

Climbing across the launch and on to the landing platform, she made her way up to the main
deck, pressing herself flat against one of the aluminium staircases when a sentry walked whistling past above her. Unlike Tom, she had no night-vision equipment, so had to feel her way through the darkness, the distant flicker of the steeply banked shore providing only the faintest light by which to navigate. Even so, Tom was proving relatively easy to track, the deck still damp wherever he had paused for more than a few seconds.

Moving as quickly as she dared, she edged forward, ducking under windows and darting across the open doorways until she had almost reached the sundeck area which took up the entire front third of this level. At its centre was a helipad that she realised parted to reveal a swimming pool.

In the same instant she saw Tom ahead of her, crouched in the shadows of the side rail, his gun in his hand. She followed his aim and saw a man standing at the bow, looking out to sea, talking into his phone. Leaping forward, she placed her hand on Tom’s shoulder. He spun round to face her, a strange, empty expression on his face as if in some sort of trance.

‘Not now,’ she whispered. ‘Not here.’

For a few moments it was almost as if he didn’t recognise her, before his face broke with surprise, and then a flash of anger.

‘What…?’

She held her finger to her lips, then pointed above them towards the top deck. An armed guard was leaning back casually against the railings above them blowing smoke rings. Tom blinked and then glanced across at her, his eyes betraying a flicker of understanding.

She motioned for him to follow her, the second door she tried opening into a small gymnasium.

‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’ she hissed as soon as the door had shut. Their shadows danced off the mirrored walls, the exercise equipment’s skeletal frames looming menacingly around them as if they were limbering up for a fight.

‘I…’ he faltered, staring at the gun in his hand as if he wasn’t quite sure how it had got there. ‘You don’t understand.’

‘You’re right, I don’t understand…’ She broke off at the sound of someone approaching with a squeak of rubber soles, the noise growing and then slowly fading away. ‘You said you were just going to see who was here. Not get yourself killed.’

‘It’s him,’ Tom said in a low voice, almost as if he was trying to convince himself. ‘He set her up!’

‘
He
doesn’t matter. What’s important is finding out who sent him.’

‘I saw him and I…’ Another long pause, until he finally looked up, his lips pressed together as
if he was trying to hold something in. ‘You’re right. I wasn’t…’

With a curt nod, she accepted what she assumed was as close as she was going to get to an apology. ‘Let’s just get off this thing before they find us.’

Checking that the gangway was still empty, Allegra led him back towards the stern. But they were only about halfway along it when the echo of a barked order and the sound of running feet forced them to dive through the open sitting-room door and crouch behind the sofa, guns drawn. Three men tore past the doorway, the approaching thump of rotor blades explaining the sudden commotion.

‘Someone’s landing,’ Allegra breathed.

‘Which must be what all this is for,’ Tom said, pointing at the carefully prepared drinks and glasses. ‘We need to…What the hell are you doing?’

‘Inviting us to the party,’ she said with a wink. Having taken out both the phones Tom had handed her earlier, she used one to dial the other and then slid it out of sight under the coffee table. ‘At least until the battery runs out.’

With the phone hidden and still transmitting, they made their way back along the gangway, then down the staircase to the landing platform, the helicopter’s low rumble now a fast-closing thunder.
As it landed, they cast off, using the engine noise as cover to throttle up and spin away towards the harbour and the relative sanctuary of their waiting car.

Il Sogno Blu
, Monaco 20th March - 4.56 a.m.

Santos uncorked the decanter and poured the Margaux into four large glasses. It pained him to share a bottle as good as this at the best of times, but to split it at this time of the night with two former members of the Serbian special forces, whose palates had no doubt been irretrievably blunted by eating too much cabbage and drinking their own piss while out on exercise, seemed positively criminal. Then again, they would recognise the Margaux for what it cost, even if they couldn’t taste why it was worth it. And that was half the point in serving it.

‘Nice boat,’ Asim whistled. ‘Yours?’

He was the older of the two and clearly in charge, squat and square headed, with a five-mil buzz-cut and a bayonet scar across one cheek.

‘Borrowed from one of my investors,’ Santos
replied, sitting down opposite them. ‘How was your flight?’

‘No problem,’ Dejan, the second Serb, replied.

Compared to Asim, he was tall and gaunt, with curly black hair that he had slicked back against his head with some sort of oil. One of his ears was higher than the other, which caused his glasses to rest at a slight angle across his face.

‘Good,’ Santos replied. ‘You’re welcome to stay the night, of course.’

‘Thank you, but no,’ Dejan declined, Santos noting with dismay that he had already knocked back half his glass as if it was tequila. ‘Our orders are to agree deal and return.’

‘We do have a deal then?’

‘Fifteen million dollars,’ Asim confirmed.

‘You said twenty on the phone,’ Santos retorted angrily. ‘It’s worth at least twenty. I wouldn’t have invited you here if I’d known it was only for fifteen.’

‘Fifteen is new price,’ Asim said stonily. ‘Or you find someone else with money so quick.’

There was a pause as Santos stared angrily at each of the Serbs in turn. With Ancelotti’s team of forensic accountants due to start on his books any day, he was out of options. And from their obvious confidence, they knew it. He glanced across at Orlando, who shrugged helplessly.

‘Fine. Fifteen,’ Santos spat. ‘In cash.’

‘You understand the consequences if you are not able to deliver…’

‘We’ll deliver,’ Santos said firmly, standing up.

‘Then we look forward to your call,’ Dejan shrugged, draining his glass. ‘Tomorrow, as agreed.’

Shaking their hands, Santos showed them to the door, waited until their footsteps had melted into towards the engine whine of the waiting helicopter, then swore.

‘We could find another buyer,’ Orlando suggested.

‘Not at this short notice, and the bastards know it,’ Santos said angrily. ‘It’s tomorrow night or never.’

‘De Luca and Moretti agreed to the meet?’

‘I told them that things had got out of hand,’ Santos nodded. ‘That business was suffering. Then offered to broker a settlement. They didn’t take much convincing. Usual place. No weapons, no men. It’ll be our only chance to get the watches and the painting in the same room.’

‘As long as we can get to D’Arcy’s.’

‘We only need three,’ Santos reminded him. ‘We’ve got Cavalli’s already and Moretti and De Luca should both be wearing theirs. D’Arcy’s is back-up.’

‘They’ll come after you. They’ll come after us both.’

‘They’ll have to find me first.’ Santos shrugged. ‘Besides, life’s too short to waste it worrying about being dead.’

‘Amen,’ Orlando nodded, topping up their glasses.