Crown Jewel

by Christopher Reich

  Toby gathered the money into neat piles and put it back in the satchel. Ratka had tried to warn him off coming, but he’d insisted. He didn’t like the idea of being far away when the accident took place. With so much money at stake, there would be an investigation into his finances. He didn’t want his innocence to be questioned, lest there be delays in the transfer of the estate to his control.

  He preferred the mantle of sole survivor. He’d come with Vika to the Chesa Madrun to arrange her mother’s—his wife’s—services. People had seen them together the night before at the Sporting Club in Monaco. Returning to the Hôtel de Paris, Vika had held his arm as they’d crossed the lobby. They would comment on how beautiful she looked and how attentive he was. If ever there had been disagreements between them, they were past. Princess Stefanie’s death had brought them closer than they’d ever been.

  As for Robert, they’d taken him from school to make it a family weekend. No one would ever find his appointed bodyguard. Coach Norman MacAndrews’s disappearance would forever remain a mystery.

  Toby had it all planned out. If he was on a hike when the place went up, they would count him lucky. He’d need a suitable scar, of course. A piece of debris striking his cheek, something he could dine out on for the rest of his life.

  He finished his gin as Ratka entered the room.

  “We’re ready,” said the Serb. “My men are cutting the gas lines right now.”

  “Well, then,” said Toby. “Let’s.”

  Simon rounded the corner of the house, hunting for a way inside. The windows were shuttered, the doors locked. Growing desperate, he observed a rectangular hatch built low into the stone retaining wall. The hatch had a metal handle and appeared to open outward. Simon took it to be a coal chute from the days when a furnace warmed the house. He pulled on it, but rust and decades of disuse had welded it closed. He ran up the hill and broke off a sturdy branch. He returned and thrust one end inside the handle and leaned on the other. Leverage did its job. The hatch opened. Simon peered inside. A metal chute, filthy with age, descended to the storm cellar. He’d been correct. He removed his parka, arranged it on the chute’s flat surface, then lay down headfirst and slid to the bottom.

  In the cellar, he got his bearings. Except for the light from the hatch, it was pitch-dark and the blackness appeared to go on forever. He activated his phone’s flashlight and located the stairs. Several coal pokers lay at his feet. He picked one up. Heavy, iron, with a spade-shaped prod at one end. It wasn’t a SIG Sauer, but it was better than nothing. He climbed the stairs one at a time, the old rotting wood groaning under his weight. He had no choice but to go slowly. Should he give himself away, he was a sitting duck. Even Tommy couldn’t miss him here.

  Simon reached the top of the stairs two minutes later. An eternity. Gingerly, he pressed down on the door’s handle. It was locked.

  From deep inside the house, there was a gunshot.

  He was too late.

  Simon placed the sharp end of the poker into the doorjamb and forced the rod to the left. With a crack, the door flew open. He entered the house and found himself at the junction of two corridors. The light was dim, the ceilings low. He stood still for a moment, listening. He heard heavy footsteps descending a flight of stairs. Then silence. He advanced toward the sound, poker held at the ready. He had no idea what part of the giant house he was in. The doors on both sides of the hall were closed. He felt as if he were in a maze. He heard muffled voices somewhere ahead of him. A door slammed. More footsteps. Someone was running…coming his way. Simon raised the poker, holding it like a baseball player ready to swing for the fences.

  A figure rounded the corner.

  He swung.

  They’d moved Robby and his mother to the cardroom downstairs. It was a small, dark room, the smoke from a thousand cigars seared into the arolla pine walls, maroon throw rugs over the parquet floor. Elisabeth played solitaire at the table. Viktor sat behind her, eyes trained on Robby, his gun resting on his leg, the barrel pointed directly at him.

  “What are you going to do with us?” asked Robby.

  “What do you think?” said Elisabeth.

  “You’re going to kill us. Tell me why.”

  “Your family is very rich. We want your money.”

  “How will you get it if we’re dead?”

  “From your grandfather,” said Elisabeth.

  “Both of my grandpapas died a long time ago. I never knew them.”

  “Toby’s still alive. He’s your grandfather.”

  “Not my real grandfather.”

  “Real enough.”

  “Is it true, mother?” Robby asked.

  Vika didn’t answer. She didn’t know how to lie to her son. “May we use the bathroom?” she asked. “You’ve had us in here far too long.”

  “You can wait,” said Elisabeth, offering a cruel smile. “Soon it won’t be a problem anyway.” She played another card, then rearranged a few. She was cheating.

  Robby saw his mother looking at him strangely. She mouthed several words. He shook his head, and she did it again. “Hide-and-seek.” Robby understood at once. He looked at Viktor and his gun, then thought of Coach MacAndrews. When they’d turned him over in the snow, his eyes were open and unafraid. One second he was alive, the next dead. Robby nodded to his mother. All his life he’d been trained to act like a prince. It had come to this. He wouldn’t disappoint her.

  His mother glanced at the ceiling. She was telling him to go upstairs to the shooting room. There were lots of guns in the house. He’d gone hunting with his mother and a guide last summer. He hadn’t killed anything. He’d wanted to miss, but he’d learned how to load a shotgun and how to fire one.

  “I need to use the bathroom,” said Robby.

  “I told you to wait,” responded Elisabeth, still engrossed in her cards.

  “I can’t,” said Robby. “Or I’ll make a dirty, smelly mess.”

  “Aren’t we demanding?” said Elisabeth.

  “Now,” he said.

  “You are a little prince,” she said, as if proud of him. “Fine. Let’s go. But if you even think of doing anything you shouldn’t, I’ll hurt your mother. Understand?”

  Robby nodded.

  Elisabeth stood from the card table and walked to the door. “And you,” she said to Vika. “Stay.”

  Elisabeth opened the door.

  “It’s this way.” Robby turned left and walked down the hall. There was a closer bathroom, but it wasn’t the right one. He turned a corner and stopped at the first door. “Wait here,” he said.

  “Stop!” Elisabeth marched past him and poked her head into the bathroom. It was small, no windows, just a toilet and large marble sink atop a cabinet with feet like a lion’s paws. As in every other room in the house, the walls were made from arolla pine. These walls were different, however. They hid a secret.

  Elisabeth came back out and told him to go inside and to hurry up.

  Robby went in, shut the door, and locked it. He pretended to unzip his pants and made a pained, groaning noise.

  Years had passed since he’d played hide-and-seek inside the house. The last time, he’d gotten stuck in the attic and had suffered a panic attack when he saw all the dead rats caught in their traps. He was braver now.

  He took off his belt and used the buckle to pry open a special panel. He had to run the buckle’s tongue along both sides before it came off. He put the panel on the floor and crawled into the opening. It was dusty. His nose itched and he needed to sneeze. Somehow he didn’t. He squinted and made out the passage that ran to the other side of the house. There were lots of them like it. Over the years, Robby, and his mother and her father before him, had played in the house and fashioned their own entries and exits. He knew them all.

  “Robert, open the door.”

  “Just a moment,” he said, sticking his head back into the bathroom. “I’m busy.”

  “I said now.”

  “I’m not finished.”

 
“Hurry up.”

  Robby pulled the panel back into place. Scooting backward, he scraped his knee on an exposed nail. He cried out. He couldn’t help it.

  “Robert!” Then: “Viktor. Come! Quickly!”

  Robby skittered backward and the panel fell in the opposite direction, onto the bathroom floor.

  There was an earsplitting explosion and he saw a jagged hole in the door where the lock used to be. Viktor’s blue eyes peered through the opening.

  “Run, Fritz, run!” shouted his mother louder than she’d ever shouted before.

  Robby started up the narrow passage, stepping over joists and ducking under beams. The shooting room was upstairs on the far side of the house.

  He knew exactly how to get there.

  Chapter 74

  Ratka reached the bathroom and found Elisabeth peering inside a rectangular opening where a panel had been. “What happened?” he asked. “Was it you who fired?”

  “The boy,” said Elisabeth. “He went in there. I sent Viktor after him.”

  Ratka bent and stuck his head inside the panel. He saw only a dark, confined passage much too narrow for a man of his size to fit into. “Where’s the princess?”

  “In the cardroom.”

  “No, she isn’t. I was just there.” Ratka took hold of his daughter’s hair and yanked her closer to him. “Damn you.”

  “Take your hands off of her,” said Toby, arriving a moment later.

  Ratka released Elisabeth, turned, and shoved Toby against the wall. “Quiet.” He pointed to Elisabeth. “Find the boy. Kill him.”

  “Don’t shoot him,” said Toby. “It will spoil everything.”

  “Do as I say,” said Ratka. “We’ll fix it later.”

  “Wait,” said Toby. “I know where he’s going. It’s where I’d go if I were him.”

  “Where?” asked Ratka.

  “The gun room. All kinds of rifles and shotguns. It is a hunting lodge, you know.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Upstairs. In the old wing. Far side of the house.”

  “Go,” said Ratka. “Take Elisabeth.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll find the princess.”

  Robby felt his way forward in the dark, hands seeking out the rough timbers, feet moving cautiously, one step at a time. It was pitch-dark, the light from the bathroom no longer a help. When he was little and played hide-and-seek, they’d all carried flashlights, the old-fashioned kind with batteries. He didn’t have that or a phone. He had to rely on touch and memory. He came to a wall blocking his path. He turned to the left and slid sideways into a narrow gap, his back pressed against a sheet of plywood. They had called this part the cliff, because you had to get past it as if traversing a knife’s edge. A cobweb covered his face. He grimaced, stopping to raise a hand and wipe it off.

  “Boy! You there? Viktor is coming for you. You’re dead. Hear me? Dead.”

  The bad man sounded as though he was close enough to reach out and grab Robby. It was an illusion. Either because it was dark or because everything was so tight, every noise sounded as though it was an inch from Robby’s face. He could hear Viktor grunt and groan.

  Robby kept moving, relieved when the wall behind him fell away right when it should. He had more room now. He knelt down and ran his fingers along the wall facing him. He detected a depression in the wood the shape of a large square. He was in the right place. He pressed against the panel. It didn’t budge.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he detected a ray of light. His breath caught. It was Viktor’s flashlight. He’d reached the cliff. Robby was directly in his line of sight. Without thinking, Robby made a fist and slugged the panel. He felt something crack in his hand; a sharp pain reverberated along his forearm. He moaned. The panel fell onto the floor of a closet.

  Robby dropped to his hands and knees and pulled himself inside just as a gunshot exploded in the dark. He bit back a scream. Shaking with fear, he stood, only to be suffocated by an army of musty woolen coats. He found the doorknob and escaped the closet, collapsing onto the floor. He was in the old part of the house, the original cabin built over a hundred years ago. He was standing in a small, stinky room with hooks hanging from the ceiling and the walls. It was called the drying room. It was here that hunters hung up the carcasses of the game they’d shot so the dead animals would cure. Stairs ran up the opposite wall to a landing. The door on the landing led to the loft. On the other side of the loft was the gun room.

  Robby closed the closet door and ran up the stairs. He turned the knob and found the door locked. Hope turned to desperation. He rammed his shoulder against the door, but it was old and sturdy. He ran back down the stairs, searching for something to break the lock. He found a pile of chains in one corner. On top of them was a large steel hook twice the size of his hand. He picked it up and returned to the landing. Over and over, he struck the hook against the door handle until finally it broke off and the door swung open.

  “Boy!”

  Robby checked over his shoulder and saw the closet door swing open, Viktor’s blond head appear.

  Robby ran.

  He was almost there.

  Simon stopped the poker an inch from Vika’s face as she ran into him, nearly knocking him over. “Simon.”

  “What happened? I heard a gunshot.”

  She was breathing hard, but she appeared unhurt. “What…How?” she asked haltingly.

  Simon took hold of her arms. “Who fired the gun?” he asked.

  “Elisabeth. Ratka’s daughter. I told Fritz to get away.”

  “Get away…where?”

  “This is an old house. There are passages no one uses anymore. Some have been walled off. I told him to get to the shooting room.”

  “Can you take us there?”

  Vika nodded. “Of course.” Then: “How did you find us?”

  “Don’t worry about that. I’m here. That’s what matters.” Simon saw that her hands were bound. He took his set of picks and selected the sharpest among them, using it to slice through the plastic cuffs. “Who else is inside the house?”

  “Toby and Ratka and one of his men.”

  “Where?”

  “Back there,” said Vika, throwing a glance toward where she’d come from. “Ratka’s man went after Robby.”

  It was then that Simon caught a whiff of something noxious. He remembered Dragan’s words about Ratka’s plans. “Can you smell it? Gas. Ratka’s cut the lines. He’s going to blow the place. He wants to make it look like an accident.”

  Vika led Simon across the great room and up a broad flight of stairs hugging the walls. As they reached the top, Ratka appeared on the floor below. He fired at them. The bullet struck the wall behind Vika. She stumbled and Simon guided her to the corridor, out of Ratka’s sight. “Go on,” he said. “Help your son. I’ll be right behind you.”

  Vika ran down the hall leading to the oldest part of the lodge. The corridors were narrower still, a forest-green runner covering the flooring, the walls lined with bleached steinbock horns, the local mountain sheep. She came to a junction. The oncoming hall led from the back of the house, where she’d been held with Fritz. She heard footsteps approaching and raced to the end of the hall, throwing open the door to every room, hoping this might prove a distraction. She mounted a half flight of stairs and threw open the door to the shooting room.

  Fritz faced her, holding a double-barreled shotgun. “Mother.”

  Vika crossed the room. “They’re coming. Give me the gun.”

  “No.” Fritz put the shotgun to his shoulder. His eyes darted to the doorway. “Get down,” he said.

  Elisabeth entered the room, Toby Stonewood at her shoulder. She raised her pistol. Her hand never made it past her waist before the shotgun fired. Two shells of twelve-gauge buckshot struck her in the chest and neck, lifting her off her feet and slamming her into the wall, nearly decapitating her. She was dead instantly.

  Toby looked at the body, then at the boy. “I believe you’re
all out,” he said, advancing on him.

  Robby split the barrels, hurriedly replacing the spent shells. Toby tried to wrestle the gun from his hands. As they struggled, Vika picked up Elisabeth’s pistol. She didn’t dare shoot for fear of striking her son. She ran at Toby, gripping the pistol by its barrel, and struck him in the back of the skull. Toby crumpled to a knee. Fritz freed the shotgun, closed the breach, and struck Toby across his jaw, sending him to the floor unconscious.

  “Kill him,” said Fritz. “Kill him, Mother.”

  Vika aimed the gun at Toby. Behind her, Viktor came into the room, eyes on Robby. Viktor raised the pistol, then noticed Vika. He hesitated, looking between them. She shot him twice and he fell to the ground.

  Fritz set the shotgun against the wall. Vika hugged him. He laid his head on her shoulder. He’d grown in the weeks since she’d last seen him. “I love you,” she whispered.

  Fritz nodded. “We got them.”

  Simon entered the first room he came to. There wasn’t adequate space to swing the poker as Ratka went past, so he knelt and waited, the poker held low in both hands. He heard Ratka’s labored breathing, felt his heavy step advance down the hall. As the Serb ran past, Simon thrust the rod out of the doorway, tripping him. Ratka fell onto his belly. Simon jumped into the hall. Standing above Ratka, he drove the ball of the poker into his neck. The blow had little effect. Simon brought the poker down again as Ratka spun onto his side and grabbed the rod. His other hand brought the pistol to bear. Simon kicked it from his grip. Ratka took hold of Simon’s ankle and wrenched it to one side. He was a strong man. Simon lost his balance and fell against the wall.