The Take

by Christopher Reich

  One by one, he had drawn the operational records. He was patient. He allowed time to pass between his inquiries. A month or two went by between trips to the archives. (The SVR was, and remained, hopelessly backlogged in transferring its paper files to digital.) One by one, he had corroborated the veterans’ statements.

  More importantly, he had been able to spot a common thread. Over and over, the same name had appeared in each file. Earlier, he had been a deputy case officer. Later, he had acted as the case officer in charge. And later still, as a divisional chief.

  The conclusion was inescapable.

  Still, he had lacked the incontrovertible evidence necessary to make such a monstrous accusation. He had only come upon it later, after learning that his newest agent in the U.S. capital had a brother who toiled as an archivist at the CIA’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Again, he had chosen misdirection to guard against detection. There had been no stealing of classified case files. Instead, it had been Borodin’s idea to have him search a little known corner of the archives: the CIA’s commendation reports, many of which dealt with the awarding of medals to foreign agents in place. It was common practice for espionage agencies the world over to present their operatives, or “Joes,” a medal along with a written commendation during clandestine meets with a case officer, if only to take back both afterward. Spies were by definition insecure and unbalanced. A medal, a commendation, a promotion in imaginary rank, boosted their morale immeasurably.

  And so it was that the archivist had found the letter.

  The buff-colored envelope had been sitting in a box three floors below ground (sector R, row 51) in the section dedicated to Russian Operations 1990–1995. From there, the letter had made its way to Borodin’s agent and onward to Prince Abdul Aziz, only to be stolen during a random robbery.

  Or had it been random after all?

  Borodin looked at the photograph one last time.

  Of course it was not random, he said to himself, barely suppressing the desire to slam a fist on the table.

  With a calming breath, he brought his attention back to the business card. Swiveling in his chair, he turned toward his desktop computer and logged into the SVR’s intranet. He did not use his own name but that of a fictitious agent he’d created when he’d begun his inquiries, Nikolai Beria. A sharp-eyed historian might recognize the family as that of the founder of the NKVD, Joseph Stalin’s dreaded secret police and predecessor of the KGB.

  Borodin accessed the service’s international intelligence registry and entered the name Valentina Asanova had given him. The registry contained names, aliases, and, when possible, physical descriptions of all individuals known to work for a foreign intelligence agency. The names included both overt employees like contract staff for the Central Intelligence Agency or the British Foreign Office and covert operatives who had been identified but not exposed. Currently, the registry contained names from over seventy nations.

  The name Simon Risk(e) brought up no hits.

  There was a Simeon Rosak, age fifty-seven, former paratrooper with the Israeli Defense Forces, now listed as an analyst with the Mossad. There was a Simon Rhys-Davies, age twenty-seven, graduate of McGill University, currently a minor official in the Canadian foreign ministry. And a Simone Risen, age forty-four, employed by the DGSE, the French intelligence agency.

  But no Simon Riske, with or without an e.

  Borodin logged out of the registry. He hadn’t expected a hit. If the man was an agent, he was using an alias, though with the installation of facial-recognition software at nearly all international transport hubs as well as the widespread adoption of biometric passports, it was becoming increasingly difficult for covert operatives to move about unnoticed. These systems relied on the precise mapping of an individual’s physiognomy—the distance between a man’s eyes, for example, or the width of their lips—which no disguise could alter. An agent could make his eyes green or blue. He might wear a mustache or shave his head. He might use makeup to appear seventy or forty. But once the topography of his face had been captured, his days of moving freely were over, no matter what he called himself.

  To amuse himself, Borodin pulled up his open-source web browser and Googled the man’s name. Several Facebook accounts showed up, a LinkedIn page, and a mention in a British automotive journal. He checked them in turn, finding little of interest. As Riske’s business card listed him working for a London-based investigative firm, he paid particular attention to the article discussing the sale at auction of a vintage Ferrari restored by a garage in London owned by a Simon Riske…with an e. There was no further mention of the man, nor was there a photograph. He moved the cursor to close the page, his finger poised to click. He looked at the article again, his eye spotting the words “American born.” For a second, less even, a spark of suspicion fired in his brain, much like the shock one receives when walking across a carpet in socks. But like that shock, the spark was short-lived and he discounted it.

  He closed the article, then phoned the agent in charge at the Russian embassy in London.

  “Find out everything you can about a firm named Special Protective Services and Investigations,” he said. “I want something by morning.”

  Chapter 28

  Boris Blatt walked down the Bahnhofstrasse, the stress of the past days easing from his neck and shoulders. He adored Switzerland, and especially Zurich. The food was uniformly excellent, the weather better than either London or Moscow, and the police well trained and incorruptible. His enemies knew better than to come after him in Switzerland.

  Blatt continued down the prosperous thoroughfare lined with the world’s most famous boutiques, jewelers, and, of course, banks. At one point he’d held accounts at nearly all of them. Bank Leu, Zurich Gemeinschaftsbank, Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft. Just saying the names was enough to trigger memories of his rise to power: visions of blood, lucre, and fear.

  Boris Abrahamovich Blatt had started his career as a businessman peddling smuggled American Levi’s at Sunday flea markets along Moscow’s outer ring road. With the profits from jeans he moved into sports shoes and Italian designer suits. His new contacts in Italy, namely the Camorra in Napoli, proposed he look into selling more lucrative merchandise. They sent cocaine his way and Blatt sent unrefined opium theirs. By 1994, he was doing over a hundred million dollars a year in turnover.

  It had been a frightening time. Even at a distance of twenty years, Blatt’s palms grew clammy at the memory. With the fall of the Soviet Union and the move to a free-market economy, Russia descended into a state of chaos. Business was conducted at the end of a gun barrel. A successful negotiation was one where you walked away alive. A day didn’t pass without a businessman being assassinated on the streets of Moscow. Blatt made it through by being smarter, stronger, and tougher than the rest. He was loyal to a fault, but woe unto those who betrayed him. His favored punishment involved boiling an enemy to death in a giant vat of hot oil. He did this often enough to know that a man could last between three and four minutes.

  Blatt’s timing had been fortuitous. As Russia began to privatize its industries, he stood ready with money, contacts, and ambition. In a series of rigged auctions, he scooped up the gems of his country’s corporate might. Aluminum in the Urals. Timber in Siberia. Oil in the Caucasus. He earned his first billion in 1998. He hadn’t looked back since.

  For years he’d traveled to Zurich to call on his bankers. There was no pressing need for the trips. He could have checked his balances from home or simply spoken with his portfolio manager on the phone. Still, he visited as often as six times a year just to ensure his money was where he had deposited it and that no one had stolen it while he wasn’t looking.

  Blatt had examined this behavior and decided that it was as inescapable as it was irrational. The fear bred from the centuries of persecution visited upon the Jews of Eastern Europe had embedded itself in his genes, his very DNA. His behavior was no different from that of a merchant living in a shtetl outside Kiev a hundr
ed years ago who constantly checked beneath his straw mattress that his money was safe and sound. This tie to his ancestors pleased him. It reminded him that he came from a race of survivors.

  Today, however, he had not come to Zurich to visit his money.

  He’d come for a different reason altogether.

  Blatt crossed the Paradeplatz and continued along the Bleicherweg to Stockerstrasse. The lake was a few blocks to his left, and on this warm, sunny day he could smell the clean, crisp water. He’d brought a two-man complement with him, both registered with the Swiss government and permitted to carry firearms. They walked a few paces behind him, dressed in casual clothing. Bianca, his blond German girlfriend—decidedly not a Jew—walked at his side. As always, she insisted on holding his hand.

  After a few blocks, Blatt turned up a side street and stopped in front of a door marked simply J. GRUBER ET CIE. He rang a buzzer and raised his face to the hidden security camera. He heard the lock disengage and pushed open the door, shooing in Bianca ahead of him.

  “Stay here,” he said to the bodyguards. “I won’t be more than an hour.”

  The men crossed the street and blended in with a trendy crowd gathered at an outdoor café.

  The door closed behind Blatt. He and Bianca stood in a security cage and waited for the second door to open. Strangely, he felt more vulnerable inside the box of bulletproof glass than when he was exposed on the street. Several of his former colleagues had been killed in phone booths and restrooms, and he was wary of confined spaces.

  A buzzer sounded and the door opened automatically. Bianca led the way into a large, nicely appointed showroom not dissimilar to what a customer might find at Beyer or Gübelin or any of the other luxury watch and jewelry boutiques lining the Bahnhofstrasse. Maroon carpeting, tasteful leather chairs, antique Louis XV desks, a grandfather clock. There were no display cases, however, no vitrines sparkling with gold watches and diamond rings. There was just Herr Gruber, Europe’s most discreet dealer in stolen goods, a thin, spritely octogenarian wearing an olive sweater vest beneath a black suit, his hair whiter than the last time Blatt had seen him, but the glimmer in the blue eyes as sharp as ever.

  “Herr Blatt,” Gruber exclaimed, arms raised in welcome. “So nice to see you. A good trip, I hope.”

  “Uneventful,” said Blatt. “That’s the most one can hope for these days.”

  “And who is this?” Gruber took both of Bianca’s hands in his.

  “Be careful,” said Blatt. “Bianca is not as tame as she looks.”

  Gruber made a catlike hissing sound and dropped her hands. “Welcome, Bianca. May I offer some coffee or tea?”

  “No,” said Blatt curtly. Niceties bored him. He hadn’t flown five hundred miles for a cup of coffee and a piece of apfelkuchen. “I have something interesting for you.”

  “So you said on the phone. I’m brimming with curiosity. Such mystery. Such intrigue. Sit. Sit.” Gruber held a chair for Bianca and waited for Blatt to seat himself before taking his place on the opposite side of the desk. From a drawer, he removed a green baize display tray and set it between them. “And so? What is it today? A ruby necklace perhaps? A Fabergé egg?”

  “A watch,” said Blatt. “Swiss, of course.”

  “Oh?” Gruber’s shoulders slumped, visions of a wildly lucrative transaction dashed.

  “Don’t look so glum. I didn’t fly here to sell you a Swatch.” Blatt unclasped his wristwatch and set it on the tray. Gruber picked it up by its strap and brought it close to his eyes. His effervescent smile returned. “This is not a watch,” he said, once again all alacrity and goodwill. “This is a rarity. A Patek Philippe day date perpetual calendar chronograph with phases of the moon. Also known as Reference 2499. Patek manufactured ten pieces per year beginning in 1951 and ending in 1986. A total of three hundred fifty units. But most were of gold or rose gold.” He paused and shook the watch as if it were a child’s bauble. “This is platinum.”

  “So it is.”

  “Of which only two were created,” continued Gruber. “One of which was last sold at Christie’s Geneva in 2012 for the sum of 3.6 million dollars. I hadn’t realized it had come on the market again.”

  Blatt met the inquiring look head-on. “I obtained it from a private seller.”

  “No doubt you have the box, all papers, packing slips.”

  “Sadly, no.”

  “Aacchhh.” Gruber grimaced, shoulders falling. “In this circumstance, I couldn’t offer you near its value. I’m sure you understand. It would have to go to a discreet party, someone content to keep his purchase confidential.”

  Blatt tapped his foot impatiently. He hated this part. The circling of rivals. The staking out of one’s turf. “He can wear it. Isn’t that enough? He doesn’t have to go around advertising the fact.”

  “Alas,” said Gruber, “when one spends so much money on an item, one often likes others to share in his victory. It’s the odd man, indeed, who buys such a masterwork only for the pleasure it affords him.”

  Blatt shifted uncomfortably. He was certain Gruber had read about his having bought the Ferrari at Sotheby’s two nights earlier. The tabloids in London had pasted his face on the cover with the headline FERRAR-$KI and indicated in no uncertain terms that he had overpaid for the automobile. The American he’d met at the auction—Riske—had cautioned him not to go above twenty million, but once bidding began, Blatt made the decision the car would be his no matter what the price. And so when the bidding reached twenty-five million dollars, there he was with his hand in the air.

  He was still smarting from the deduction to his bank account.

  Worse, only yesterday he’d been forced to settle an outstanding invoice from a persistent contractor who’d built the underground Olympic-sized swimming pool beneath his new home in Highgate. He was hemorrhaging money. The watch would cover the cost of the pool, with a bit left over to purchase Bianca a small bijou. There was nothing like a large rock to stoke a woman’s performance in the bedroom.

  “How much?”

  “I can offer one million,” said Gruber.

  “Euros?”

  “Dollars.”

  “Two million,” said Blatt. “And euros.”

  “One and a half,” countered Gruber. “Dollars. And that is final.”

  “That’s robbery.”

  Gruber set the watch on the tray and pushed it toward Blatt. “If you say so.”

  The Russian shot from his chair, taking Bianca by the hand. “I’ll be back in an hour. Have a cashier’s check ready.”

  Outside, Blatt spent a moment taking deep breaths in an effort to calm himself. He felt as if he’d been physically violated, raped even. At any other time he would have snatched his watch off the tray and stormed out of the building.

  One million five.

  The nerve.

  Should anyone discover he’d accepted forty cents on the dollar, his reputation would be in shreds. In Moscow, in his salad days, he might have shot the man then and there. At least he could trust Gruber to keep quiet on the matter. Or could he?

  Blatt dined with Bianca at the Kronenhalle, allowing himself an extra glass of Dole and a helping of the restaurant’s excellent chocolate mousse to salve his wounds. By the time they left, he’d almost convinced himself that he wasn’t being taken advantage of.

  He returned an hour later.

  Gruber was waiting in the showroom. Two men sat in the corner, both young, steel-eyed, pistols bulging beneath their jackets.

  “What’s this, then?” asked Blatt.

  “There is a problem,” said Gruber.

  “At the bank?”

  “With your watch. It is a counterfeit.”

  Blatt regarded Gruber with bewilderment. His men had stolen the watch from the most reputable jeweler in Golders Green, who had been selling it on behalf of a client. There was no question but that it was authentic. “Impossible,” he blurted. “I got it from…” He closed his mouth.

  Gruber brought out the bai
ze tray and Blatt observed that the watch had been disassembled. “The case is platinum,” said the Swiss. “That I will grant you, but it was not manufactured by Patek Philippe.”

  “By who, then?”

  Gruber wedged a loupe in his eye and read the markings from the interior of the case. “The Ming Fung Watch Company, Hong Kong.” He handed Blatt the loupe and the case.

  “Holy hell,” said Blatt.

  “Quite good, granted, but hardly Swiss.”

  Blatt replaced the case on the tray. “I don’t understand.”

  “All of it is fake. The dial, the hands, the clasp, the movement. Fake. Fake. Fake.”

  “But…”

  Gruber offered a weak shrug as consolation. “Boris, you’ve been had.”

  Blatt left the building. An idea had come into his mind, and with every step he grew more convinced of it. At some point during the four weeks he’d been in possession of the watch, someone had stolen it and replaced it with a counterfeit.

  Blatt’s bewilderment hardened to anger.

  He would find the thief.

  And he would punish him.

  Chapter 29

  Simon took a cab back to his hotel. He undressed and put on a robe, then ordered a light dinner from room service, including an order of fresh sardines and toast. He had an idea he might be drinking more than he’d like later in the evening, and the fish and bread was a proven measure to lessen the effects of alcohol. Waiting for the meal to arrive, he reviewed the notes from Delacroix’s phone. Once again, he was astounded as to the security man’s access to the prince’s most private data. The next step involved using that data—national identity number, credit card numbers, and more—to gain access to the prince’s email and phone records.