Thief (9 page)

“As I understand it, Monarch rescued Agnes Lawton last year.”

Saunders was surprised to hear that. “I knew he stole the Iraqi battle plan before we invaded, but I didn't know that he … wait, I thought SEAL Team Six got Lawton.”

“The SEALs were involved, but it was Monarch who tracked down the kidnappers and led the rescue,” Arsenault insisted. “President Sands paid him millions to do it. Agnes told me so herself. That's not to leave this room by the way. It's evidently a national security secret.”

“Of course not,” Saunders said, sounding offended. “I wouldn't say a thing. But why would Monarch target you of all people? And how did he know about the vault, and the security, and the money?”

“You're my fucking head of security,” Arsenault snapped. “You tell me.”

Still, those were all good questions, all very good questions, but many of the answers that came to Arsenault were not very good at all. His anger flared again. He'd suspected thirteen months ago that Monarch might be a problem, a threat. Thirteen months ago, he'd even thought to have the man eliminated.

But life had simply gotten in the way, and Arsenault hadn't carried through on his instincts. Now he was paying for it. Monarch had targeted him, violated him, and ripped him off.

But why?

Twenty million dollars was a good enough reason, the mogul supposed.

But what if it was more than that? What if Monarch had been looking for evidence? That last thought stirred up Arsenault's stomach worse than a crawfish boil. Had there been anything in the vault that would doom him? Other than the undeclared valuables there was nothing. He was sure of it. Would they send someone like Monarch in to look around at his hidden assets? He couldn't see it.

But Robin Monarch
had
slipped into his house, drugged him, and stolen him blind. Not some other thief.
The thief
.

“Do you want me to find him, Beau?” Saunders asked.

“What do you think?”

“I don't have much to go on. I didn't actually see a file on him.”

For a few moments, Arsenault debated how much he could or should reveal to Saunders. A part of him wanted to say nothing more, but he felt he had no choice now.

“I've seen an edited file on him,” the mogul said at last.

Saunders looked surprised again. “How's that?”

“Agnes showed me a redacted dossier on him. After she told me the details of her rescue, I became fascinated by the idea that a thief could have pulled off something like that. I expressed my interest and the secretary, an old and dear family friend, showed me the file on him.”

“What did it say?”

The billionaire rocked back in his chair, wanting to open a copy of the file on his computer to refresh his memory. But Saunders would see the file and that was unacceptable. Instead, he told his security chief what he remembered clearly.

Monarch was the son of an Argentine con artist mother and an American cat burglar father. When he was twelve or thirteen, his parents were murdered outside a movie theater in Buenos Aires after they'd swindled relatives of the Peron family. The boy escaped into the slums. To survive he became a member of a street gang. Monarch still carried the gang's tattoo on his inner right forearm. FDL, La Fraternidad de Ladrones, the Brotherhood of Thieves.

Little was known about the years Monarch spent in the gang. But just before he turned nineteen he appeared out of nowhere in Miami, enlisted at an Army recruit station, excelled, went to Rangers, and onward and upward. Monarch ran a JSOC unit, an elite command of special forces operators from all branches of the U.S. military, before his criminal behavior during a classified mission got him a court-martial and put him in Leavenworth Penitentiary. It was supposed to be a fifteen-year sentence, but Monarch was offered his freedom less than a year later in return for stealing the Iraqi war plan.

The mogul knew very little about Monarch's activities during his subsequent stint with the CIA. That part of the file had been heavily redacted.

“I do know he became disillusioned with the agency about three years ago, and went out on his own,” Arsenault said. “And he was the shadow man behind the Greenfields affair, which is what made President Sands look to him after Agnes was kidnapped.”

Saunders thought about that, said, “A dangerous, resourceful man.”

“Very much so,” Arsenault agreed. “Which is why I want you to find out everything you can about him, especially his weaknesses, any leverage we might use to get my money back, and destroy him.”

His security chief hesitated, said, “Or you could always just let it go.”

The mogul snorted. “Why? Because he's accomplished? No, Billy, the way you deal with a man like Monarch is to learn him inside and out and then bring in people even more accomplished than he is.”

Sounding unconvinced, Saunders said, “You have a budget in mind?”

“Money is no object. There's principle at stake.”

“Okay. Where do you want me to start first? The CIA?”

Arsenault thought about that before he said, “You'd have to be Houdini to get records out of there. But something had to have happened to Monarch that made him want to leave the life of an Argentine gangbanger for the U.S. Army. And Monarch told Cassie Knox that he was stealing from me to give to orphans. My instinct says these things are all linked.”

“I'll book a ticket to Buenos Aires for the day after tomorrow.”

“Take the jet,” the mogul said. “Tonight.”

 

12

MID-JANUARY …

EVEN SISTER RACHEL WAS
surprised by how far Monarch had come in the three weeks since his arrival at the Hogar d'Espera. He'd walked on Christmas Day, and stopped feeling crushed by the stroll down the hallway two days later. Though the stitch in his side continued as a nagging reminder of the bullet wound, he'd felt better each day, taking longer and longer walks in the foothills surrounding the Refuge of Hope.

Carrying a walking stick and a knapsack with water, Monarch left the orphanage's clinic around seven that morning, and went out into one of those glorious Argentina summer days. There was not a cloud in the sky. Within hours it would be blistering hot, but that early in the day there was still a cooling breeze blowing far inland off the ocean.

He intended to exit the rear of the compound, heading for a favorite trail. The voices of children stopped him. A dozen boys and girls were playing soccer on the new field. Monarch stood there awhile watching the kids stretching and doing drills, thinking once again how good it felt to give back to the place and to the person who'd saved him. All the difficult things he'd had to do in life, all the things for which he felt remorse, seemed neutralized, balanced out here.

“Are you looking at the good you've done, or waiting for me?” Sister Rachel asked.

The missionary doctor had come out wearing loose pants, running shoes, and a white long-sleeve jersey.

“Both,” he said.

“What way are we going?” she asked as they headed for the rear gate.

“
El camino dificil,
” he said.

She paused, said, “The Difficult Way? Are you sure you're ready for that?”

“As sure as I was the first time I climbed it,” he replied.

They went out the gate, and walked a trail that cut across the side of the steep hillside for a mile or so before coming to a junction. The main trail continued on across the face of the foothills, and the other took a precipitous route toward rock bands, outcroppings, and cliffs high above them.

“How are you feeling?” Sister Rachel asked as he paused.

“No rocks on my back,” Monarch reminded her, and started his ascent.

The path was stony, friable, and climbed nearly straight up the face of the hill. Within fifty yards, he felt the stitch in his side grow, and sweat break out on his forehead. With every step he flashed on that first time up the Difficult Way.

*   *   *

“What good have you done today?” Sister Rachel had asked Robin as they started that first climb.

She'd brought Robin to the refuge from the slum clinic after he'd agreed to try to change his life. When he was physically able, she'd made him fill a knapsack full of rocks and forced him out on hikes, just the two of them, short at first, and then longer and more difficult.

Robin asked her repeatedly why it was necessary—the rocks, the weight—and she'd just given him the same answer: “Doctor's orders.”

And now this question: “What good have you done today?”

Robin was not used to thinking in this manner. His parents had flaunted laws, and gone so far as to say that the rules did not apply to people who were crafty enough. He'd followed the eighteen rules of La Fraternidad de Ladrones up to a point. But he'd always been willing to bend the bylaws of the Brotherhood of Thieves to suit his purposes. He understood right and wrong, of course, but always managed to justify being on the wrong side of the law.

Sister Rachel's question, though, it wasn't a rule, and it wasn't a law. But it definitely annoyed him.
What good have you done today?

“I fixed the kids' football,” Robin said grunting with effort. This was the steepest climb she'd taken him on yet. “That's a good act, right? I patched the bladder and sewed the skin myself.”

“Now we're heading in the right direction,” the missionary doctor said, puffing behind him. “How did you feel doing it?”

Robin thought about that, shrugged, said, “I was just helping them, I dunno, just doing something that they couldn't.”

“Right, but how did it make you feel inside?”

Over the years he'd spent inside the street gang, Robin had rarely talked about his emotions. Being a member of
la fraternidad
was all about skill, strength, and street smarts. Claudio had taught him to hide his feelings deep, especially if they suggested weakness. Now, however, Sister Rachel seemed determined to open up everything he'd been taught to close off.

“I don't know,” he said, frustrated at all these questions she asked.

“Did you watch the children play with the ball?”

He stopped, gasping, staring up the hill and wondering if he could make it to the top.

“Robin?”

“Yes, I watched them play,” he said, irritated.

“Close your eyes, then. See them playing, and tell me what you felt.”

Robin realized he'd felt good, real good, and when he reexperienced the feeling in his mind there on the steep hillside he started to smile.

“There,” Sister Rachel said. “That sensation. Do you know what it is?”

He opened his eyes and shook his head.

“It's selflessness,” she replied. “It's putting others before yourself. It's time spent in service, not being served. Every time you do something like that you will feel that emotion, which is very close to the strongest emotion of all, which is love.”

“Okay?” Robin said, climbing on and feeling confused all over again. No one had ever spoken to him like this.

“I want you to keep track of when you have that feeling and why,” Sister Rachel said. “Every time it happens, I want you to write in your journal describing what you did to deserve it.”

“Oh, c'mon, Sister,” he groaned. “This isn't part of the deal. I mean, I left
la fraternidad,
isn't that enough? What's the point of all this?”

She did not reply, and stayed silent the rest of the brutal climb. An hour and twenty minutes after they'd started, the trail climbed a staircase of stone, crossed a shelf of rock and joined another trail in a T.

There was a wooden bench there. It was autumn and there was enough of a breeze blowing that Sister Rachel had to push back strands of unruly hair when she sat and took in the view. Buenos Aires stretched out below them. Dusk was fast approaching and the first lights were coming on. Robin shrugged off the knapsack, dropped it in the grass.

“Why am I carrying the rocks?” he asked.

Not looking at him, Sister Rachel said, “The rocks represent your sins, Robin. God's laws you have broken. The things you have stolen. All of it.”

With that shocking news, she got up, walked to the knapsack and opened it. She reached in, rooted around, and came up with a stone about the size of an egg. She leaned back and whipped the rock off into the gathering darkness.

“You earned that by helping with the soccer ball,” she said. “You will lighten your load with every good deed. Do you understand?”

*   *   *

Twenty years later, Monarch could still hear her voice ringing in his head when he finally reached that shelf of rock and sat on that very same bench, soaked to the skin, and feeling weaker than he'd anticipated. Sister Rachel sat beside him and he realized that she was getting older, less vigorous.

“What will happen to the refuge?” he asked. “I mean, when you're gone?”

The missionary pivoted her head, looked at him in annoyance, said, “I'll have you know I can climb the Difficult Way in half the time you just took.”

“I know,” Monarch said, feeling his heart rate finally slow. “I'm just thinking about the future. No matter what happens, your work needs to go on, right?”

She appraised him as if seeing him from a new perspective, said, “Yes. You're right. I don't like to think about it, but I should make my wishes known.”

“What about that land to the north of here?” he asked.

Sister Rachel cocked her head, sighed. “I asked what it would cost to buy it. The landowner said six million.”

“How big is it?”

“Nearly nineteen acres,” she said.

“Counter at five million, and tell him there will be no financing involved,” Monarch said. “Offer him a million dollars down payment. The remaining money will come in increments of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars four times a year for the next four years.”