The Paris Vendetta Read online

  He shook his head. Another mess.

  Collins came up behind him. “They were pros.”

  “How would you know?”

  “I know who sent them.” Collins laid the fire extinguisher upright on the floor.

  “Who?”

  Collins shook his head. “Henrik said he’d tell you.”

  He stepped to the counter and found the phone, dialing Christiangade, Thorvaldsen’s ancestral estate nine miles north of Copenhagen. It rang several times. Usually Jesper, Thorvaldsen’s chamberlain, answered, no matter the hour.

  The phone continued to ring.

  Not good.

  He hung up and decided to be prepared.

  “Go upstairs,” he said to Collins. “There’s a rucksack on my bed. Grab it.”

  Collins ran up the wooden risers.

  He used the moment to dial Christiangade one more time and listened as the phone continued to ring.

  Collins thumped his way down the stairs.

  Malone’s car was parked a few blocks over, just outside old town, near the Christianburg Slot. He grabbed his cell phone from beneath the counter.

  “Let’s go.”

  FOUR

  ELIZA LAROCQUE SENSED THAT SHE WAS CLOSE TO SUCCESS, though her flying companion was making the task difficult. She sincerely hoped that this hastily arranged overseas trip would not be a waste of time.

  “It’s called the Paris Club,” she said in French.

  She’d chosen 15,000 meters over the north Atlantic, inside the sumptuous cabin of her new Gulfstream G650, to make one last pitch. She was proud of her latest state-of-the-art toy, one of the first off the assembly line. Its spacious cabin accommodated eighteen passengers in plush leather seats. There was a galley, a roomy lavatory, mahogany furnishings, and mega-speed Internet video modules connected by satellite to the world. The jet flew high, fast, long, and reliably. Thirty-seven million, and worth every euro.

  “I’m familiar with that organization,” Robert Mastroianni said, keeping to her native language. “An informal group of financial officials from the world’s richest countries. Debt restructuring, debt relief, debt cancellation. They float credit and help struggling nations pay back their obligations. When I was with the International Monetary Fund, we worked with them many times.”

  A fact she knew.

  “That club,” she said, “grew out of crisis talks held in Paris in 1956 between a bankrupt Argentina and its creditors. It continues to meet every six weeks at the French Ministry of the Economy, Finance, and Industry, chaired by a senior official of the French treasury. But I’m not speaking of that organization.”

  “Another of your mysteries?” he asked, criticism in his tone.

  “Why must you be so difficult?”

  “Perhaps because I know it irritates you.”

  Yesterday she’d connected with Mastroianni in New York. He hadn’t been pleased to see her, but they’d dined out last night. When she’d offered him a ride back across the Atlantic, he’d accepted.

  Which surprised her.

  This would be either their last conversation—or the first of many more.

  “Go ahead, Eliza. I’m listening. Of course, there’s nothing else I can do but listen to you. Which, I suspect, was your plan.”

  “If you felt that way, then why fly home with me?”

  “If I’d refused, you would have simply found me again. This way we can resolve our business, one way or the other, and I receive a comfortable flight home as the price for my time. So please, go ahead. Make your speech.”

  She quelled her anger and declared, “There’s a truism born of history. ‘If a government can’t face the challenge of war, it ends.’ The sanctity of law, citizen prosperity, solvency—all those principles are readily sacrificed by any state when its survival is challenged.”

  Her listener sipped from a champagne flute.

  “Here’s another reality,” she said. “Wars have always been financed by debt. The greater the threat, the greater the debt.”

  He waved her off. “And I know the next part, Eliza. For any nation to involve itself in war, it must have a credible enemy.”

  “Of course. And if they already exist, magnifico.”

  He smiled at her use of his native tongue, the first break in his granite demeanor.

  “If enemies exist,” she said, “but lack military might, money can be provided to build that might. If they don’t exist—” She grinned. “—they can always be created.”

  Mastroianni laughed. “You have such a diabolical way.”

  “And you don’t?”

  He glared at her. “No, Eliza. I don’t.”

  He was maybe five years older, equally as rich, and though aggravating, could be quite charming. They’d just dined on succulent beef tenderloin, Yukon Gold potatoes, and crisp green beans. She’d learned he was a simple eater. No spices, garlic, or hot pepper. A unique palate for an Italian, yet a lot about this billionaire was unique. But who was she to judge? She harbored a number of her own idiosyncracies.

  “There is another Paris Club,” she said. “One much older. Dating to the time of Napoleon.”

  “You’ve never mentioned this fact before.”

  “You never showed any interest, until now.”

  “May I be frank?”

  “By all means.”

  “I don’t like you. Or more accurately, I don’t like your business concerns or your associates. They are ruthless in their dealings, and their word means nothing. Some of your investment policies are questionable at best, criminal at worst. You’ve pursued me for nearly a year with tales of untold profits, offering little information to support your claims. Perhaps it’s your Corsican half, and you simply can’t control it.”

  Her mother had been Corsican, her father a Frenchman. They’d married young and stayed together for more than fifty years. Both were now dead, she their only heir. Prejudice regarding her ancestry was nothing new—she’d encountered it many times—but that didn’t mean she accepted it gladly.

  She stood from her seat and removed their dinner plates.

  Mastroianni grabbed her arm. “You don’t need to serve me.”

  She resented both his tone and grasp, but did not resist. Instead she smiled, switched to Italian, and said, “You’re my guest. It’s the proper thing.”

  He released his grip.

  She’d staffed the jet only with two pilots, both forward behind a closed cockpit door, which was why she’d attended to the meal. In the galley, she stored the dirty plates and found their dessert in a small refrigerator. Two luscious chocolate tarts. Mastroianni’s favorite, she’d been told, bought from the Manhattan restaurant they’d visited last evening.

  His countenance changed when she laid the treat before him.

  She sat across from him.

  “Whether you like me or my companies, Robert, is irrelevant to our discussion. This is a business proposition. One that I thought you would be interested in entertaining. I have taken great care in making my selections. Five people have already been chosen. I’m the sixth. You would be the seventh.”

  He pointed to the tart. “I wondered what you and the garçon were discussing before we left last night.”

  He was ignoring her, playing a game of his own.

  “I saw how much you enjoyed the dessert.”

  He grabbed a sterling-silver fork. Apparently his personal dislike of her did not extend to her food, or her jet, or the possibility of the money to be made.

  “Might I tell you a story?” she asked. “About Egypt. When then-Général Napoleon Bonaparte invaded in 1798.”

  He nodded as he savored the rich chocolate. “I doubt you would accept a no. So, by all means.”

  Napoleon personally led the column of French soldiers on the second day of their march south. They were near El Beydah, only a few hours away from the next village. The day was hot and sunny, just like all of the others before it. Yesterday Arabs had viciously attacked his advance guard. Généra
l Desaix had nearly been captured, but a captain was killed and another adjutant général taken prisoner. A ransom was demanded, but the Arabs disputed the booty and eventually shot the captive in the head. Egypt was proving a treacherous land—easy to conquer, difficult to hold—and resistance seemed to be growing.

  Ahead, on the side of the dusty road, he spotted a woman with a bloody face. In one arm she cradled a baby, but her other arm was extended, as if in self defense, testing the air before her. What was she doing here, in the scorching desert?

  He approached and, through an interpreter, learned that her husband had pierced both her eyes. He was mortified. Why? She dared not complain and simply pleaded for someone to care for her child, who seemed near death. Napoleon ordered that both her and the baby be given water and bread.

  That done, a man suddenly appeared from beyond a nearby dune, enraged and full of hate.

  Soldiers came alert.

  The man ran forward and snatched the bread and water from the woman.

  “Forbear,” he screamed. “She has forfeited her honor and tarnished mine. That infant is my disgrace. It is an offspring of her guilt.”

  Napoleon dismounted and said, “You are mad, monsieur. Insane.”

  “I am her husband and have the right to do as I please.”

  Before Napoleon could respond, a dagger appeared from beneath the man’s cloak and he inflicted a mortal wound to his wife.

  Confusion ensued as the man seized the baby, held it in the air, then dashed it to the ground.

  A shot cracked and the man’s chest exploded, his body thudding to the dry earth. Captain Le Mireur, riding behind Napoleon, had ended the spectacle.

  Every soldier seemed shocked by what they’d seen.

  Napoleon himself was having trouble concealing his dismay. After a few tense moments he ordered the column ahead but before remounting his horse, he noticed that something had fallen from beneath the dead man’s cloak.

  A roll of papyri held tight by a string.

  He retrieved it from the sand.

  Napoleon commandeered quarters for the night in the pleasure house of one of his most resolute opponents, an Egyptian who’d fled into the desert with his Mameluke army months ago, leaving all of his possessions to be enjoyed by the French. Stretched out on downy carpets strewn with velvet cushions, the général was still troubled by the appalling show of inhumanity he’d witnessed earlier on the desert road.

  He’d been told later that the man had done wrong stabbing his wife, but if God had wanted her vouchsafed for infidelity, she should have already been received into someone’s house and kept on charity. Since that had not occurred, Arab law would not have punished the husband for his two murders.

  “Then it is a good thing we did,” Napoleon declared.

  The night was quiet and dull, so he decided to examine the papyri he’d found near the body. His savants had told him how the locals routinely pillaged sacred sites, stealing what they could to either sell or reuse. What a waste. He’d come to discover this country’s past, not destroy it.

  He popped the string and unrolled the bundle discovering four sheets, written in what appeared to be Greek. He was fluent in Corsican, and could finally speak and read passable French, but beyond that foreign languages were a mystery.

  So he ordered one of his translators to appear.

  “It’s Coptic,” the man told him.

  “Can you read it?”

  “Of course, Général.”

  “What a horrible thing,” Mastroianni said. “Killing that infant.”

  She nodded. “That was the reality of the Egyptian campaign. A bloody, hard-fought conquest. But I assure you, what happened there is why you and I are having this conversation.”

  FIVE

  SAM COLLINS SAT IN THE PASSENGER SEAT AND WATCHED AS Malone sped out of Copenhagen, heading north on the Danish coast highway.

  Cotton Malone was exactly what he’d expected. Tough, gutsy, decisive, accepting the situation thrown at him, doing what needed to be done. He even fit the physical description Sam had been given. Tall, burnished blond hair, a smile that betrayed little emotion. He knew about Malone’s twelve years of Justice Department experience, his Georgetown legal education, eidetic memory, and love of books. But now he’d seen firsthand the man’s courage under fire.

  “Who are you?” Malone asked.

  He realized he couldn’t be coy. He’d sensed Malone’s suspicions, and didn’t blame him. A stranger breaks into his shop in the middle of the night and armed men follow? “U.S. Secret Service. Or at least I was until a few days ago. I think I’m fired.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because nobody there would listen to me. I tried to tell them. But no one wanted to hear.”

  “Why did Henrik?”

  “How’d you—” He caught himself.

  “Some folks take in stray animals. Henrik rescues people. Why’d you need his help?”

  “Who said I did?”

  “Don’t sweat it, okay? I was once one of those strays.”

  “Actually, I’d say it was Henrik who needed help. He contacted me.”

  Malone shifted the Mazda into fifth gear and sped down the blackened highway, a hundred yards or so away from a dark Øresund sea.

  Sam needed to make something clear. “I didn’t work White House detail at Secret Service. I was in currency and financial fraud.”

  He always laughed at the Hollywood stereotype of agents wearing dark suits, sunglasses, and skin-toned earpieces surrounding the president. Most of the Secret Service, like him, worked in obscurity, safeguarding the American financial system. That was actually its primary mission, since it grew out of the Civil War, created to prevent Confederate counterfeiting. Only after the assassination of William McKinley, thirty-five years later, had it assumed presidential protection responsibility.

  “Why’d you come to my bookshop?” Malone asked.

  “I was staying in town. Henrik sent me to a hotel yesterday. I could tell something was wrong. He wanted me away from the estate.”

  “How long have you been in Denmark?”

  “A week. You’ve been gone. Just got back a few days ago.”

  “You know a lot about me.”

  “Not really. I know you’re Cotton Malone. Former naval officer. Worked with the Magellan Billet. Now retired.”

  Malone tossed him a glance that signaled rapidly depleting patience with his evasion of the original question.

  “I run a website on the side,” Sam said. “We’re not supposed to do stuff like that, but I did. World Financial Collapse—A Capitalist Conspiracy. That’s what I called it. It’s at Moneywash.net.”

  “I can see why you’re superiors might have a problem with your hobby.”

  “I can’t. I live in America. I have a right to speak my mind.”

  “But you don’t have a right to carry a federal badge at the same time.”

  “That’s what they said, too.” He could not hide the defeat in his voice.

  “What did you say on this site of yours?” Malone asked him.

  “I told the truth. About financiers, like Mayer Amschel Rothschild.”

  “Expressing those First Amendment rights of yours?”

  “What does it matter? That man wasn’t even American. Just a master with money. His five sons were even better. They learned how to convert debt into fortune. They were lenders to the crowns of Europe. You name it and they were there, one hand to give money out, the other to take even more back.”

  “Isn’t that the American way?”

  “They weren’t bankers. Banks operate with funds either deposited by customers or created by the government. They worked with personal fortunes, lending them out at obscene interest rates.”

  “Again, what’s wrong with that?”

  He shifted in his seat. “That’s the attitude that allowed them to get away with what they did. People say, ‘So what? It’s their right to make money.’ No, it’s not.” The fire in his bell
y surged. “The Rothschilds made a fortune financing war. Did you know that?”

  Malone did not reply.

  “Both sides, most times. And they didn’t give a damn about the money they loaned. In return, they wanted privileges that could be converted into profit. Things like mining concessions, monopolies, importation exceptions. Sometimes they were even given the right to certain taxes as a guarantee.”

  “That was hundreds of years ago. So the hell what?”

  “It’s happening again.”

  Malone slowed for a sharp curve. “How do you know that?”

  “Not everyone who strikes it rich is as benevolent as Bill Gates.”

  “You have names? Proof?”

  He went silent.

  Malone seemed to sense his dilemma. “No, you don’t. Just a bunch of conspiracy crap you posted on the Internet that got you fired.”

  “It’s not far-fetched,” he was quick to say. “Those men came to kill me.”

  “You sound almost glad they did.”

  “It proves I was right.”

  “That’s a big leap. Tell me what happened.”

  “I was cooped up in a hotel room, so I went out for a walk. Two guys started following me. I hauled ass and they kept coming. That’s when I found your place. Henrik told me to wait at the hotel until I heard from him, then make contact with you. But when I spotted those two I called Christiangade. Jesper said to find you pronto, so I headed for your shop.”

  “How’d you get inside?”

  “Pried open the back door. It’s real easy. You need an alarm.”

  “I figure if somebody wants to steal old books, they can have ’em.”

  “What about guys who want to kill you?”

  “Actually, they wanted to kill you. And by the way, that was foolish breaking in. I could have shot you.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t.”

  “Glad you knew that, ’cause I didn’t.”

  They rode in silence for a few miles, coming ever closer to Christiangade. Sam had made this journey quite a few times over the past year.

  “Thorvaldsen’s gone to a lot of trouble,” he finally said. “But the man he’s after acted first.”