The Corsican Caper (8 page)

The three-car procession, widely spaced and traveling at an unhurried pace, made its way through the center of town. “Remember when you stayed at Monsieur Francis’s other house the last time you were here?”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“Not quite. At the end of that road there’s a
rond-point
—a traffic circle. It looks like it goes somewhere, but it doesn’t. That’s the end of the road.”

They drove on, into the 7th and 8th
arrondissements
,
where many of Marseille’s wealthiest residents live in their large houses behind high stone walls. There was less traffic now, and the Renault had dropped back, frequently out of sight on the narrow, twisting road. They passed Reboul’s old house. “Not long now,” said Olivier. He called Ahmed and told him to close up on the Renault.

Another two hundred meters, and one last bend. The road had narrowed to a single lane before ending in the small traffic circle. The Renault came around that last bend and stopped short, behind Olivier. Ahmed’s pickup came to a halt immediately behind the Renault. There was nowhere for the driver to go. He was trapped.

Sam and Olivier walked back to the Renault, where Ahmed was waiting, his arms crossed, glaring at Rocca, the driver. He seemed to have shrunk behind the wheel, his face the picture of apprehension. Olivier opened the driver’s door and, in his most threatening police manner, told Rocca to get out. “Nobody ever comes down here,” he said, “so we can have a nice quiet chat without being disturbed.
Bon
, now let me see your driver’s license, and give me your cell phone.” For a split second Rocca might have considered protesting. But with three large and unfriendly men looming over him, he thought better of it, and did as he was told. Olivier noted the license details and handed it back. The phone he kept.

Olivier, prompted by Sam’s questions, proceeded to give Rocca a grilling. Who had hired him? How did Rocca contact him? Where did they meet? When was their next
rendezvous? Why were they interested in Reboul? What exactly were they looking for?

To many of the questions Rocca had no answers, and it became clear that, apart from the cover story, he had been kept in the dark. After twenty frustrating minutes they were ready to let him go.

With the engine running and his window open, Rocca plucked up his courage and asked to have his phone back. Olivier bent down to give him the full benefit of his impenetrable sunglasses. “You’re lucky to get your car back,” he said, slapping the roof.

Rocca drove off, wilting with relief.

Reboul was pacing across the terrace, anxious for news. He listened intently as Sam gave him a précis.

Thanks to his driver’s license, they knew Rocca’s name as well as his reluctantly given address. But they were convinced that he knew very little apart from the name of the man who had hired him, which was probably as false as the cover story. As for his description, it could apply to almost any man wearing a Panama hat, white shirt, and sunglasses. All they had to go on was the phone number Rocca had been given and told to use when checking in every evening. There was a name opposite the number in Rocca’s phone, but it was a Monsieur Martin, a name shared by more than 220,000 other French families, the equivalent of the Anglo-Saxon Mr. Smith.

Reboul looked and sounded discouraged. “So where do we go from here?”

“Well,” said Sam, “we have that number, which is a start. Let’s call it, see who answers, and try to get his real name. And I think I know just the person who could do that without raising an alarm: Mimi.”

Sam called her to explain the problem, and his idea—that Mimi pose as someone from the phone company’s customer relations department, conducting a survey on customer satisfaction. “If you could get his address as well as his name,” said Sam, “that would be great.”

Sam could almost hear Mimi shaking her head. “But the phone company would have all that,” she said. “Why don’t we check with them first?” Which one of Olivier’s police pals did, only to find that the subscriber was not a person but a company: Escargot Investments, with a billing address in Monaco.

For a moment, there was a disappointed silence, eventually broken by Sam. “I have an old friend on Wall Street, a researcher for an investment banker. She specializes in corporate secrets. Give her the name of any company, registered anywhere in the world, and she’ll find out who owns it.” Sam looked around at the others and shrugged. “Or we could go to Monaco and try our luck.”

Elena was intrigued by the idea of going to Monaco, which she had never seen, and she asked the obvious question: “Why not do both?”

Activity is the next-best thing to progress, and it was quickly agreed that both was what they would do. First, the call. It was only 7:30 a.m. in New York, but on Wall Street they start early, and Sam’s friend picked up after the second ring.

“Gail? It’s your old admirer, Sam. Are you still as beautiful as ever?” He winced, and held the phone away from his ear. “That bad at keeping in touch, am I? I’m sorry, I really am, but I’ve been traveling a lot. Gail, listen: I’m doing a job in France, and I could use a little information about a company in Monaco.” Sam had to endure a few minutes of good-natured scolding from Gail before she calmed down and agreed to see what she could dig up about Escargot Investments in return for lunch—a long lunch—at Daniel next time Sam was in New York.

Sam and Elena set off for Monaco early the next morning. Reboul had insisted that Olivier drive them since he was familiar with Monaco, and said that he had a favorite aunt there he’d be happy to see. As they left Marseille for the autoroute, Elena, always avid for information about any new destination, had her nose deep in a guidebook borrowed from Reboul’s library. She shared odd items with Sam: Monaco, covering only 500 acres, could easily fit into New York’s Central Park, at nearly 850 acres. The population is about 36,000, made up of more than 120 different nationalities.
The first stone of the castle, home of the current prince, was laid on June 10, 1215.

“Morning or afternoon?” said Sam, whose thirst for statistics was limited.

Elena sighed before continuing. “To lure new inhabitants, the early rulers established an attractive fiscal system.”

“In other words, residents don’t pay taxes. Nice.”

The Monaco lecture was tactfully interrupted by Olivier, who asked if they had any plans for lunch. If it was OK with them, he said, he would like to slip away and see his aunt.

Arriving in Monaco, Olivier dropped them off in the Place du Casino, where Sam’s attention was caught by one of his favorite French landscapes: the long, shady, inviting terrace of a bar and restaurant. This was the Café de Paris, which Sam at once identified as a perfect spot for lunch. But first, to give them an appetite, he wanted to visit the headquarters of Escargot Investments.

The address supplied by the phone company turned out to be a modern apartment building not far from the casino. Judging by the dozens of discreet brass plaques displayed in the lobby, ordinary residents were vastly outnumbered by companies. And among them, on the fifteenth floor, was Escargot Investments.

The office was marked by yet another brass plaque, fixed to a heavy, locked door. Sam pressed the buzzer, and a metallic voice asked him to identify himself and state his business. “The name is Phillips,” said Sam, “and Herr Trauner, my
banker in Zurich, has recommended that I come to see you to discuss an investment project.”

The door clicked open, and Elena and Sam found themselves in a small reception area elegantly decorated in shades of gray. A receptionist, equally elegant, was stationed behind a highly polished partners’ desk that was bare except for a vase of white roses and an open copy of
Vogue
.

“
Bonjour
,” she said. “I don’t believe you have an appointment, do you?”

“That’s what I’m here to set up.” Sam patted his pockets, and came up with a page torn from his diary. “Let’s see now—I was told to ask for a Monsieur Martin.”

The receptionist frowned, disturbing the symmetry of two perfectly plucked eyebrows. “I’m sorry. There’s nobody of that name here. Are you sure it wasn’t Monsieur Morton?”

Sam slapped his forehead with the palm of his hand. “Of course,” he said. “Trust me to get things wrong. Would Monsieur Morton be available for a quick chat?”

The frown deepened, the receptionist apologized again. Monsieur Morton was away on a business trip to Shanghai, and there was no one else available.

“What a bummer,” said Sam. “I don’t think we can count that as a great success, do you? Maybe a glass of
rosé
would help.”

They were sitting on the terrace of the Café de Paris,
looking out across the Place du Casino. Elena, whose fascination for ghoulish details never failed to surprise Sam, was studying the façade of the casino. “Those guys, the heavy gamblers who lose everything at the tables,” she said, “where do you think they go to commit suicide?”

“Glad you asked,” said Sam. “It’s usually under one of those big palm trees over there. If not, the other places should be listed in that little guidebook of yours. Under S.”

The wine arrived, and they sat back to enjoy the ever-changing view of the mixed bag of tourists who invade Monaco every summer. As ever, the women’s outfits were more stimulating than the endless baseball caps and cargo pants worn by the men, and Sam was enjoying the current fad for short shorts and high heels. Elena was less impressed by another popular summer fashion—white skirts or dresses billowing with layer upon layer of frills that reminded her of her grandma’s vintage lampshades. She was elaborating on that theme—“Those dresses are for ten-year-olds with tanned legs”—when Sam’s phone rang.

It was Gail, calling from New York, where the time was just past 7 a.m. When Sam complimented her on her early start, she told him that she’d already been to the gym and had had her protein smoothie breakfast.

“OK,” she said. “About this Escargot Investments setup. It’s complicated, which always makes me think there’s some funny business going on. The company’s registered in Monaco, but it’s owned by a trust in the Cayman Islands,
which in turn is owned by an
Anstalt
in Lichtenstein, with branches in Zurich and Nassau. In other words, whoever the real owner is doesn’t want the world to know about it.”

“But there must be people with names somewhere,” said Sam.

“Sure there are—the front men for the trusts, who are usually local lawyers. That doesn’t get us anywhere. I’ll keep trying. I have a friend in Nassau who owes me a favor. I’ll ask him to see what he can dig up.”

“Gail, you’re a princess.”

“I have just one word for you, Sam Levitt—Daniel.” And with that, the line went dead.

While Sam had been talking, Elena had been studying the menu, nodding her head with evident satisfaction. “Liver and bacon—which you never get in the States anymore—and then
profiteroles
with hot chocolate sauce,” she said. She closed the menu with a snap, and leaned forward. “So tell me, what did your snoop find out?”

A very pleasant hour passed, and they were having a second cup of coffee when Elena peered over the top of her sunglasses across the Place du Casino. “Well, well, well,” she said. “Look who’s here, with his favorite aunt.” And there, strolling through the crowd, was Olivier, his arm around the waist of an extremely pretty blonde who couldn’t have been more than twenty-five.

“I’ve noticed it before,” said Sam. “They do have very young aunts over here. I think it’s the Mediterranean climate.”
He took out his phone and called Olivier. “Could you pick us up in about ten minutes? We’re at the Café de Paris.” Olivier swung around, saw them, grinned, and gave them the thumbs-up before he and his delightful aunt hurried away through the crowd.

On the drive back to Marseille, Elena dozed and Sam reviewed the progress they’d made. Not much, he had to admit. Not much at all.

Oleg Vronsky was not a happy man. The only thing he had learned from having Reboul’s car followed was that Reboul was aware of it, and more than capable of dealing with it. “So,” he said to Nikki, “the man’s not a fool, and he knows something is up. I don’t know how good his ferrets are, but there’s a chance they might find out that I’m involved. That would not please me.” Nikki, distracted from the magazine he had been reading,
Body Beautiful
, nodded sympathetically.