The Palace Page 4

  Danni drew the pouch toward her, already uneasy about the job, and removed the two items inside. First, a late model iPhone. No protective case. Scratched all to hell. She turned it on. A picture of an attractive blond woman filled the screen. There was no prompt for a numeric passcode. The owner preferred facial recognition. Fair enough.

  Danni set the phone to one side and examined the second item: a MacBook laptop. This pleased her. The SON Group specialized in iOS and macOS operating systems—specifically, how to hack them and breach their every security measure. There was a rumor going around that the SON Group had inserted one of its engineers into the Apple software development team in Cupertino to “help” develop the latest iteration. If asked, Danni would answer with a smile to rival the Sphinx. The less said, the better.

  Two men appeared in the doorway. Dov and Isaac, her two best engineers. One was short and fat. So was the other. Both had shaved heads and three days’ growth of stubble. Neither had spent so much as a minute beneath the Mediterranean sun these last years.

  They approached Danni’s desk and without bidding scooped up the phone and the laptop. “The usual?” said Dov.

  “Drain them,” said Danni. “Not one drop left.”

  “Who’s it for?” asked Isaac. “Langley? London? Hey, the phone has a little sand in it.” He laughed snippily. “Don’t tell me the Saudis again.”

  Danni shot him an angry look. The Saudis were a sore point and the reason she had barely slept these past weeks. The SON Group’s clients were limited by strict company policy to governmental organizations: intelligence agencies, defense entities, security forces, and the national police of countries deemed friendly to the cause—the “cause” being democracy and the advancement of Western ideals. SON’s technology had been developed with a singular purpose: to combat terror and crime. They were the good guys, even if they did charge top dollar. Danni had no problem with that.

  She did have a problem with her company’s technology falling into the wrong hands. Word had gotten back to her that the recent murder of a journalist critical of the Saudi ruling family (and attributed to a Saudi prince) had been abetted by SON software secretly installed on the journalist’s phone, thus allowing the prince to track the journalist and lure him to his death. Needless to say, the Saudis were not a client.

  “Don’t ask,” she snapped. “Just get it done. And fast. By yesterday.”

  The men left the office with the offending articles.

  Danni checked her watch before placing a phone call. The time in Italy was one hour earlier. If her client wasn’t out of bed, he ought to be.

  “Pronto,” said Luca Borgia in his rumbling baritone.

  “Your package arrived from Thailand. I’ve assigned my best men to it.”

  “Danni, I cannot thank you enough,” said Borgia, all charm as always. “What would I do without you? A serious matter. I’m concerned.”

  His unctuous manner did little to lessen her anxieties. In no way did Borgia fit the description of a SON Group client. He was as far from a governmental entity as could be imagined. Luca Borgia was a businessman. A billionaire industrialist who controlled one of Italy’s largest holding companies with interests in everything from silk to steel. One of those interests happened to be a twenty percent stake in the SON Group. Borgia had been one of her father’s initial investors. He was family. Company policy or not, Danni had no choice but to assist him in solving what he’d claimed was a case of industrial espionage.

  It helped that she in no way countenanced the theft of company secrets. Someone had gotten their hands on her own company’s closely guarded software and gifted it to the Saudis. Now a journalist was dead.

  “Give me a day,” said Danni.

  “A day. But no longer,” said Borgia. “Some matters cannot go unpunished.”

  Chapter 5

  London

  The Warwick Arms was a grand name for a block of council flats in Stepney, East London. Four grim twenty-story buildings huddled in a cruciform around an unloved park with rusting swing sets and neglected picnic tables. Simon found a parking space nearby, guiding his car through a maze of broken bottles, beer cans, and assorted trash. A group of sullen-eyed teenagers monitored his approach. Somewhere a hound was baying. He’d arrived at Gin Lane, two hundred some years later. Hogarth would feel right at home.

  The Brown family occupied a flat on the sixteenth floor. Simon had called ahead. A corpulent, weathered woman in a flowered housedress, cigarette dangling from the corner of her mouth, greeted him.

  “You’re him,” she said. “Riske. I don’t suppose you have good news, seeing as how my Lucy isn’t with you.”

  Simon nodded. “May I come in?”

  “I’m Dora. Lucy’s mother. But you know that.” The woman swept him inside with a wave of her cigarette. “What’s she done now? Go ahead. I don’t shock easy.”

  They walked down a short hallway to the living room, just big enough for a couch, a recliner, a coffee table, and a television. All had seen better days except the television, a brand-new seventy-inch flat-screen broadcasting football highlights. Before Simon could sit, a tall, rail-thin teenage boy with a bad complexion and tousled blond hair the color of Lucy’s ambled in. “Who’s this, then?”

  “I’m Simon Riske. Lucy works in my shop.”

  “This is Brian,” said Dora Brown.

  Simon shook their hands and said he was pleased to meet them. He noticed Brian absently scratching his upper arm and remembered that Lucy had said he was an addict. Heroin, meth, opioids, all of the above. An older brother had overdosed years before while Lucy was still at home.

  “Lucy’s been in an accident,” he said after they’d all sat down and Dora Brown had decided not to offer him anything to eat or drink. “She’s in the hospital.”

  His words were met with dead glances all around. No gasps of distress. Just a grudging acknowledgment of the news, as if she’d finally gotten what was coming to her.

  Simon kept his explanation to the essentials. Lucy had been helping with a job in France. On the way home, they’d gotten into an automobile accident. A car had run a red light and struck the passenger side of their vehicle. Lucy had suffered a broken leg, fractured ribs, and a fractured skull. As soon as she was stable, he’d arranged for an airlift to bring Lucy to a private clinic in Surrey, where she would receive the finest treatment.

  “So she’s all right?” said Brian, shaking loose a cigarette. “Having a bit of a kip?”

  Simon stared at the young man. “She’s been placed in a medically induced coma to help relieve the brain swelling. The good news is that she’s breathing on her own. The doctors are hopeful.”

  “She’s a vegetable, then?” said Brian. “Going to be one of those drooling out the corner of her mouth, stares at you like a zombie.”

  “That’s enough,” said Simon, a bat of an eye away from dusting the kid.

  A tear ran down Dora Brown’s cheek as her jaw began to quiver.

  “Who are you, then?” asked Brian, all outrage and bravado. “She’s my sister. I can say what I please.”

  “Shut up,” said Dora, lashing out at her son. “It’s Lucy we’re talking about.”

  “Just joking, Ma.”

  “Get out,” she said. “Go. Leave us be.”

  “But—”

  “Now!” Dora was out of her chair, hand pointing to the hall. Brian stormed from the room, but not before making more mocking noises.

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Riske. We do what we can. Please go on. How is Lucy really?”

  “As I said, she’s in critical condition. We just have to wait and see.”

  “See what?”

  “If she recovers and how well.”

  Dora’s face clouded, and she regarded him with suspicion. “But you…you’re fine. Doesn’t look like you have a scratch.”

  Simon nodded. “I was lucky.”

  Dora dismissed this with a roll of the eyes. “And now? What am I supposed to do? I suppose you
’ve come for money. Look around you. We can’t afford a fancy clinic. The NHS barely pays for my diabetes medicines as it is.”

  “I’m seeing to her care.”

  Dora Brown’s gaze shifted. She appraised Simon in a different vein. “You and her…you aren’t?”

  “Lucy is my best apprentice. Our relationship is strictly professional.”

  From the recesses of the flat came the sound of a baby crying. Dora didn’t appear to hear. Simon rose from the sofa. “Well, then,” he said, taking a step toward the hall.

  “She was in France, eh?” Dora looked past Simon and out the window to a world she’d never have. “I always wanted to go to Paris.”

  “When Lucy’s better, I’m sure the two of you can both go.” Simon smiled. “Together.”

  Dora Brown shot him a dark glance; she’d have none of it. “Just because she’s ill doesn’t mean she’s going to come home when she’s better. Or that I’d welcome her.” She leveled an accusing finger at him. “It’s your kind’s fault. Everything was fine until he left. He was a chartered accountant, my Reg was. Making good money. We were in Fulham then. Edward, my oldest, won a scholarship to the church school. Lucy was just a sprout. I’d just had Brian. He was difficult even then.”

  Simon clasped his hands, giving Lucy’s mother his attention. He could see that she needed to unburden herself, as if Lucy’s accident was as much her fault as Simon’s.

  “Are you in touch with your husband?” he asked.

  “With Reg? He’s gone. Twenty years now. Fell off a curb stone drunk and caved in his head. Lucy needed a father. We all did.”

  “I’m sorry.” Lucy had told him only that her father had deserted the family, not that he was dead.

  “In our blood, it seems. Reg liked his pints. My Edward used drugs. Brian, too. I like the occasional drop, don’t I?”

  “I have a card from the clinic where Lucy is recovering. The phone and address are right there. If you’d like to visit, I can send a car.”

  Dora took the card without looking at it. “Of course, we will. I work tomorrow, but maybe the weekend.”

  “I’m sure Lucy would like that.”

  The baby was still crying, louder now, and Simon wondered if anyone at all was looking after it. Dora lit a cigarette, her eyes once again hazy. “France, you say?”

  Simon backed out of the room, stating that he would show himself out.

  He saw the man as he exited the cracked glass doors of the Warwick Arms. A stocky figure in a black T-shirt stretched across the hood of Simon’s car, for all appearances removing the wiper blades and having no qualms about doing so in full view of all passersby.

  “Hey,” Simon shouted, breaking into a trot. “Get off my car!”

  The car was a Volkswagen Golf R, pearl-gray, polished and waxed, Momo rims, a coat of Armor All lending the low-profile tires a rich sheen. It was a stylish automobile, nothing flashy. Simon thought of it as a wolf in sheep’s clothing. The 2-liter 4-cylinder turbo-charged engine put out 300 horsepower with 288 pounds of torque and was capable of propelling the vehicle from zero to 100 kilometers per hour in 4.3 seconds. He had no need to drive that fast and, with traffic as it was in London, rarely had the opportunity. For the record, he considered himself a conservative driver, almost law-abiding. Once a month, however, he drove into the countryside and put the car through its paces up and down the hills and valleys of Devon. It was his speed fix. Simon liked fast cars. It was that simple. The French had a term for this condition. “Déformation professionnelle.”

  And he had a particular affection for his windshield wipers, which were custom order from Wolfsburg.

  Simon shouted again. This time the man glanced over his shoulder and returned the greeting. “Sod off,” he shouted back.

  The picnic tables had filled up with a dozen locals, mostly scruffy young men furiously engaged in their late-morning workout of guzzling beer and smoking cigarettes. Lift, gulp, smoke. Repeat. Simon knew the type. Once he’d been like them. Probably meaner, he decided. Definitely crazier.

  One by one they abandoned their seats and moved into Simon’s path.

  “Leave our mate be,” said one, maybe twenty years old, broad in the shoulder with muscular arms, a crew cut, and a lazy scowl. He wore a Mötley Crüe T-shirt. Simon hated Mötley Crüe.

  He stopped, face-to-face with the man. He wasn’t frightened. He was exhilarated. He’d been wanting to hit something since leaving Lucy in the clinic. The JD he’d had with D’Art encouraged the notion.

  “He’s your friend?” Simon asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “What’s he doing to my car?”

  The hooligan turned, addressing his crew with amusement. “This one here’s a Yank.” He returned his attention to Simon, giving him his best American accent. “Excuse me, sir, but you must have taken the wrong bus. I’m afraid you’re in a very dodgy part of town. Bad element, if you know what I mean.”

  Laughter and jeers.

  “I asked you a question,” said Simon, matter-of-factly.

  “So?” spat the hooligan. “Think I care?”

  The hooligan’s friends closed ranks behind Simon. There were six in all, two in tracksuits, the others in ripped jeans and T-shirts. Veterans of three-month stays in prison. Small-time drug dealers. Loan sharks, provided they could do their math. Dangerous enough.

  “It would be impolite not to answer,” said Simon.

  “Are you saying I’m rude?”

  Simon considered this. “Uncommunicative.”

  “This one here’s got some big words. Un-com-mun-ic-a-tive.”

  The wiper thief had managed to free one of the blades and was starting on the other. The blades cost thirty pounds apiece. Simon would have to special-order them or get some of lesser quality from the dealership in Hounslow. It wasn’t the cost that bothered him so much as the inconvenience.

  A hand shoved Simon in the back. “Am I being uncommunicative, too, boss?”

  Simon turned. The man was the biggest of the group, heavier by forty pounds, a head taller, beady eyes, arms as thick as an oak.

  “No,” said Simon. “You’re being an asshole.” He threw a jab, knuckles extended, and struck the man squarely beneath the jaw. It was a lightning strike, delivered with half of what Simon had. Half was enough. As the man collapsed, Simon spun and grabbed the hooligan, Mötley Crüe T-shirt gathered in his fists, and brought his forehead down on the bridge of the man’s nose. The crunch of collapsing cartilage was audible. Still clutching his shirt, Simon chucked him to one side, if only to avoid the blood spouting from the man’s ruined nose. That one was full strength, thought Simon. He didn’t want to show any disrespect.

  “Leave,” said Simon. “Scram. It’s how we Yanks say ‘Get lost.’”

  The remaining four turned tail. Two backed away cautiously. The smarter two ran.

  Simon reached his car before the wiper thief could react. The purloined blade lay on the hood. Simon dragged the man off the car by his waistband. The thief threw an elbow. Simon grabbed the offending limb and twisted it behind the man’s back, ignoring his own discomfort, giving it a powerful upward thrust, dislocating the man’s shoulder, tearing a tendon or two.

  The scream brought a smile to Simon’s face. It wasn’t a humorous smile, and part of him had an urge to use the wiper blade for an entirely different purpose than what the manufacturer had intended. Reason prevailed. Simon kicked the man in the ass as he fled.

  He needed a minute to replace the blades on his wipers.

  A minute after that he was driving west toward his shop.

  Chapter 6

  Singapore

  In the Lion City of Singapore, it was seven o’clock in the evening, and London Li was beginning to think she’d been stood up. Seated in the Renku Lounge of the Marina Bay Sands hotel, London scanned the lobby using her well-honed instincts to select who her contact might be. Dozens of people walked past in every direction. To the casino, to the luxury shopping mall,
to their hotel rooms. Was it the crooked, balding man in the gray suit or the muscular bearded man with the bowling-ball belly? The Indian with the shaggy gray hair or the elderly Chinese man who looked as if a strong wind might blow him clear across the Straits of Malacca.

  The problem was twofold. First, the lobby was enormous, a hundred meters at least, running the length of the hotel’s twenty-three-story atrium. And second, she didn’t know who she was looking for. The email she’d received had simply instructed her to be seated at the rear corner of the lounge adjacent to the piano bar at six p.m. It had been signed “R.” For all she knew, R could be a woman.

  London Li was not anxiously awaiting the arrival of a date. She was here on business. Thirty-one years old, staunchly single, London Li worked as a reporter for the Financial Times, the newspaper printed on pink paper. Her beat was white-collar crime: fraud, corporate malfeasance, insider trading. And not your garden variety either. The big stuff only. Front page, above the fold. She’d exposed an African dictator who’d emptied his national treasury, a Scottish banker who’d manipulated the LIBOR to the tune of twenty billion dollars, and a Colombian drug lord who’d purchased a chain of U.S. banks. If half of what R claimed was true, she might be on to her biggest scoop yet. The files he’d sent painted a picture of theft on a monumental scale. Scratch that. A gargantuan scale.

  Or, in the journalist’s vernacular, a “Pulitzer.”

  London Li was ambitious. Like a shark is hungry.

  An attractive Western man approached. Well-dressed, black hair, wolfish good looks. She perked up, sitting taller. He looked the type. I-banker, trader, salesman for a hedge fund. Dark suit. Open collar. AP Royal Oak. Definitely something to do with money. The man stopped at her table, appraising her a little too frankly. For a year she’d had a column in a local paper with a dreadful picture of her. Maybe he’d seen it.