James Twining - The Geneva Deception

‘ Merci, monsieur , but four should cover everything.’ He slid a one-thousand-euro chip back, then signalled at the floor manager that he needed to be relieved.

‘You lost both those hands on purpose, didn’t you?’ Allegra muttered as they made their way back towards the entrance.

‘He charges a ten-thousand-euro fee.’

‘Fee for what?’

‘For looking after this -’ He held up the chip that the croupier had returned to him in change. Two numbers had been scratched on to its reverse. ‘Come on.’

Reaching the main entrance lobby, Tom led her over to the far side of the galleried space, where a mirrored door on the right-hand side of the room gave on to a marble staircase edged by an elaborate cast-iron balustrade. They headed down it, the temperature fading, until they eventually found themselves in a narrow corridor that led to the men’s toilets on one side and the women’s on the other.

Checking that they hadn’t been followed, Tom opened the small cupboard under the stairs and removed two brass stands joined by a velvet rope and an Hors Service sign. Pinning the sign to the door, he cordoned the toilet entrance off and then disappeared inside, reappearing a few moments later with a smile.

‘It’s empty.’

‘Is that good?’ she asked, an impatient edge to her voice as she followed him inside.

The room was as he remembered it: four wooden stalls painted a pale yellow to his right, six porcelain urinals separated by frosted-glass screens to his left. Unusually, the centre of the room was dominated by a large white marble counter with two sinks set on each set of a double-sided arched mirror. The walls were covered in grey marble tiles.

‘Six across, three down.’

He showed her the numbers scratched on to the chip and then turned to face the urinals and began to count, starting in the far left corner and moving six tiles across, then dropping three tiles down.

‘I make it this one,’ he said, stepping forward and pointing at a tile over the third urinal.

‘Me too,’ Allegra agreed with a curious frown.

Snatching up the silver fire extinguisher hanging just inside the door, he swung it hard against the tile they had picked out. There was a dull clunk as it caved in.

‘It’s hollow,’ Allegra breathed.

Tom swung the extinguisher against the wall again, the hole widening as the tiles around the opening cracked and fell away until he had revealed a rectangular space. Throwing the extinguisher to the floor, he reached into the space and hauled out a large black holdall.

‘How long’s that been here?’

‘Three or four years?’ he guessed. ‘Nico paid off the builder the casino hired to re-tile this room. It was Archie’s idea. A precaution. Enough to get us operational again if we ever had to cut and run. He chose here and a few other places around the world where we had people we could trust.’

Allegra leaned forward as he unzipped the bag.

‘What’s inside?’

‘Batteries, tools, drill, borescope, magnetic rig, backpack,’ he said quickly, sorting through its contents. ‘Money, guns,’ he continued, taking one of the two Glocks out, checking the magazine was full and placing it in his pocket.

‘And this?’ Allegra asked, frowning as she took out a small object the size of a cigarette packet.

‘Location transmitter. Three-mile radius,’ He pulled out the receiver, slotted a fresh battery in place and then turned it on to show her. ‘Stick it on, if you like. At least that way I won’t lose you.’

‘Don’t worry, you won’t get rid of me that easily.’ She smiled, tossing it back.

‘Good. Then you can give me a hand with this up the stairs. Nico will be waiting by now.’

Boulevard de Suisse, Monaco 20th March – 3.35 a.m.

Barely ten minutes later, they pulled in a little way beyond D’Arcy’s building. Nico had been right – you couldn’t miss it. Not only was a police car parked outside on the narrow one-way street, but the upper stories of the otherwise cream apartment block were scorched and coated with ash, like a half-smoked cigarette that had been stood on its filter and then left to burn down to its tip.

Tom gave her a few minutes to struggle out of her dress and heels and into the casual clothes that had been left for them in the car, and then rapped impatiently on her window. She lowered it and he thrust the second Glock and a couple of spare clips through the gap.

‘Ready?’

‘Are there actually any bullets in this one?’ she asked, eyebrows raised sceptically.

It wasn’t that she minded carrying a gun. In fact, she quite liked its firm and familiar presence on her hip, like a dance partner’s hand leading her through a rehearsed set of steps. It was just that she preferred to know what she was dealing with.

‘Let’s not find out.’ He winked.

The building was called the Villa de Rome, an appropriate and perhaps not entirely coincidental name if they were right about D’Arcy’s involvement with De Luca and the Delian League. Although old, it betrayed all the signs of a recent and rather ill-judged refurbishment, the entrance now resembling that of a two-star hotel with ideas above its station – all rose marble, smoked glass and gold leaf.

‘ Bonsoir ,’ a junior officer from Monaco’s small police force rose from behind the reception desk and greeted them warmly, relieved, it seemed, at the prospect of a break in his vigil’s lonely monotony.

‘Thierry Landry. Caroline Morel,’ Tom snapped in French, each of them flashing the special passes that Nico had produced for them. ‘From the palace.’

‘Yes, sir, madam,’ the officer stuttered, his back straightening and heels sliding almost imperceptibly closer together.

‘We’d like to see D’Arcy’s apartment.’

‘Of course.’ He nodded eagerly. ‘The elevator’s still out, but I can escort you up the stairs to the penthouse.’

‘No need,’ Tom insisted, stepping deliberately closer. ‘We were never here. You never saw us.’

‘Saw what, sir?’ The officer winked, then froze, as if realising that this was probably against some sort of royal protocol. To his visible relief, Tom smiled back.

‘Exactly.’

Leaving the officer saluting to their backs, they climbed the stairs in silence, the fire’s charred scent growing stronger and the floor getting wetter as water dripped through from the ceiling like rainwater percolating into an aquifer. There was a certain irony, Allegra reflected, in how the fire brigade had probably caused more damage to the flats below D’Arcy’s than the blaze they were meant to be protecting them from. She couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a warning there for them both: were they causing more harm by trying to fix things than if they had just let matters run their natural course?

On the third floor, Tom stopped and swung his backpack off his shoulder. Reaching inside, he took out a small device that he stuck on to the wall at about knee height, then turned on.

‘Motion sensor,’ he explained, holding out a small receiver that she guessed would sound if anyone broke the transmitter’s infrared beam.

They continued on, emerging half a minute later on the top landing, the fire’s pungent incense now so heavy that she could almost taste the ash sticking to the back of her throat. Tom flicked his torch on, the beam immediately settling on the door to D’Arcy’s apartment that had been unscrewed from its hinges and placed against the wall.

‘Quarter-inch steel and a four-bar locking mechanism,’ Tom observed slowly. ‘Either he knew his attackers or someone let them in.’

They stepped inside the apartment on to a sodden carpet of ash and charred debris, weightless black flecks fluttering through their torch beams like flies over a carcass. The walls had been licked black by the cruel flames and the ceiling almost entirely consumed, so that she could see through it to the roof’s steel ribs and, beyond them, the sky. The furniture, too, had been skeletonised into dark shapes that were both entirely alien and strangely familiar, although the fire, ever capricious, had inexplicably spared a single chair and a large section of one wall, as if to deliberately emphasise the otherwise overwhelming scale of its devastation.