James Twining - The Geneva Deception

‘You’re here. Good.’

A man had come in off the balcony, a radio in one hand, a mobile phone in the other. Short and wiry, his olive skin was pockmarked by acne scars, his black hair shaved almost to his skull. Rather than blink, he seemed to grimace every few seconds, his face scrunching into a pained squint as if he had something in his eye.

‘Tom, this is Special Agent Carlos Ortiz.’ They shook hands as she introduced them. ‘I’ve borrowed him from my other case for a few days to help out.’

‘Welcome.’

Ortiz’s expression was impenetrable, although Tom thought he glimpsed a tattoo just under his collar – the number fourteen in Roman numerals. Tom recognised it as a reference to the letter ‘N’, the fourteenth letter of the alphabet, and by repute to the Norteños , a coalition of Latino gangs from Northern California. Ortiz had clearly taken a difficult and rarely trodden path from the violent street corners of his youth to the FBI’s stiff-collared embrace.

‘I hope you’re half as good as she says you are,’ Ortiz sniffed. Tom glanced questioningly at Jennifer, who gave him an awkward shrug. ‘Did you get the envelope from the State Department?’

‘Yeah.’ She nodded. ‘Let’s talk about that later. How long have we got?’

‘It’s set for midnight so…just under an hour,’ he replied, checking his watch – a fake Rolex Oyster, Tom noted, its second hand advancing with a tell-tale staccato twitch rather than sweeping smoothly around the dial as a real one would.

‘Everyone’s already in place,’ Stokes added. ‘I got six agents on the floor at the tables and playing the slots, and another four on the front and rear doors. Metro and SWAT are holding back two blocks south.’

‘What about the money?’ Tom asked.

‘In the vault in two suitcases,’ Stokes reassured him. ‘Unmarked, non-sequential notes, just like they asked. They’ll bring it out when we’re ready.’

‘Let’s get you mike’d up.’

Ortiz led Tom over to the car, which Tom suddenly realised had been turned into a desk, the seats ripped out and the roof and one side cut away and replaced with a black marble slab.

‘I guess rich people are always looking for new ways to spend their money, right?’ Ortiz winked.

‘Some just have more imagination than others,’ Tom agreed.

Ortiz removed a small transmitter unit from the briefcase and, as Jennifer turned away with a smile, helped Tom fix it to his inner thigh, hiding the microphone under his shirt.

‘If anyone finds that, they’re looking for a date not a wire,’ Ortiz joked once he was happy that it was secure and working. He checked his watch again. ‘Let’s go. Kezman asked to see you downstairs before we hit the floor.’

‘Any reason we didn’t just meet down there in the first place?’ Jennifer asked with a frown.

‘He thought you might like the view.’

They stepped back inside the elevator and again it headed down automatically, stopping at the mezzanine level, close to the entrance to the Amalfi’s private art gallery.

‘He suggested we wait for him inside,’ Ortiz said, nodding at the two security guards posted either side of the entrance as he walked past.

The gallery consisted of a series of interlinked rooms containing maybe twenty or so paintings, as well as a number of small abstract sculptures on glass plinths. It was an impressive and expensively assembled collection, bringing to mind the recent newspaper headlines when Kezman had broken his own auction record for the highest amount ever paid for a painting. Tom’s eyes sought out the Picasso he’d bought on that occasion in amongst the works by Cézanne, Gauguin, van Gogh, Manet and Matisse.

‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Jennifer said in a low voice, echoing his own thoughts. ‘Although, I don’t know, it feels a bit…’

‘Soulless?’ Tom suggested.

‘Yes.’ She nodded slowly. ‘Soulless. Perhaps that’s it.’

Tom’s sense was that Kezman had been less concerned with the paintings themselves than by who had painted them. To him these were trophies, specimens of famous names that he’d only bought so that he could tick them off his list, much as a big-game hunter might set out on safari intent on adding a zebra’s head to the mounted antelope horns and elephant tusks that already adorned his dining-room walls.

‘What do you know about him?’

‘He’s rich and he’s smart. In thirty years he’s gone from running a diner in Jersey to being the biggest player on the Strip.’

‘He buys a place that’s losing money, turns it around or knocks it down, and starts over,’ Stokes added, having been listening in. ‘As well as the Amalfi, he owns three other places in Vegas, two in Atlantic City and one in Macau.’

‘And he’s clean?’ Tom asked.

‘As anyone can be in this town,’ Stokes replied with a smile. ‘He mixes with a pretty colourful crowd, which always gets people talking, but so far he seems to check out.’

‘He used to collect cars, but art is his new passion now,’ Jennifer added. ‘He’s become a major donor to both the Met and the Getty.’

‘Which is your favourite?’

Kezman had breezed into the room wearing sunglasses, a gleaming white smile and a tuxedo. He was closely flanked by an unsmiling male assistant clutching a briefcase in one hand and two gold-plated mobile phones in the other. From the way his jacket was hanging off his thin frame, Tom guessed that he was armed.

Kezman was in his mid-fifties or thereabouts, and shorter than Tom had expected. Although he was still recognisably the same person, the photo on his jet had clearly been taken several years before, his brown hair now receding and greying at the temples, the firm lines of his once angular face now soft and surviving only in the sharp cliff of his chin. The energy in his voice and movements, however, was undimmed, his weight constantly shifting from foot to foot like a boxer, his head jerking erratically as he looked around the room, as if it pained him to focus on any one thing for longer than a few seconds. He answered his own question before anyone else had a chance to respond.

‘Mine’s the Picasso, and not just because I paid a hundred and thirty-nine million dollars for it. That man was a genius. A self-made man. A true visionary.’

Tom smiled, the machine-gun rattle of Kezman’s voice making it hard to know whether he was talking about himself or Picasso.

‘Mr Kezman, this is…’

‘Tom Kirk, I know.’ He grinned. ‘Luckily the FBI doesn’t have a monopoly on information. At least not yet. I like to know who’s on my plane.’

Tom stepped forward to shake his hand, but Kezman waved him back.

‘Stay where I can see you, goddammit,’ he barked.

Tom suddenly understood why Kezman was wearing sunglasses and moving his head so erratically – he was clearly blind, or very nearly so, his aide presumably there to help steer him in the right direction as he navigated through the hotel.

‘Retinitis pigmentosa,’ Kezman confirmed. ‘The closer I get to things, the less I can see. And one day even that…’

His voice tailed off and Tom couldn’t stop himself wondering if this explained Kezman’s insistence that they should go up to his private apartment first, before meeting him down here. It was almost as if he’d wanted to give them some small insight into his shrinking world. A world where there was little point in furnishing a room he could barely see, but where a view was still there to be enjoyed. At least for now.

‘I’m sorry,’ Tom said. He didn’t know Kezman, but he meant it all the same.

‘Why? It’s not your fault,’ Kezman shrugged. ‘Besides, in a way, it’s a gift. After all, would I have started my collection if I hadn’t known I was going blind? Sometimes, it’s only when you are about to lose something that you really begin to understand what it’s worth.’