by Dale Nelson
Jack stood from the table, taking his glass with him. Pacing helped him think, but mostly he wanted Aleksander to believe he was contemplating actions. He was, just not the ones his host was expecting. He faced the far corner and appeared to study the wine rack.
“Who is the backer?” Jack asked, knowing Aleksander wouldn’t tell him. Sure enough, Andelić shook his head.
Jack was quiet for a time and finally tasted his scotch. As whiskies went, this one was practically ancient.
Even without the alcohol, Jack didn’t see a lot of options on the table. Which, he suspected, was the point. If he didn’t do this, Aleksander would give him up to French authorities. Maybe they could make a case, and maybe they couldn’t. Jack took him at his word when Aleksander said that Castillo fixed things in pairs. But even if the French couldn’t do anything themselves, they would certainly enlist the help of the US Embassy. That would mean the FBI. He’d survived one brush with them and was not likely to survive a second. Without question, Aleksander knew this.
“It’s late,” Aleksander said, standing. “Take the night to think on it. I trust that in the morning, you’ll have found the right answer.”
Jack was up early, having slept fitfully, but he stayed in his room until midmorning. Jack had a separate phone for Frank Fischer, which was locked in the glovebox of his car in the SFO long-term parking lot. He worked diligently to keep those two lives separate, but he also had to manage them both, and Frank Fischer couldn’t exactly just go dark every time Jack Burdette had a job, so calls were forwarded from that number to this phone using an anonymous routing protocol. Jack used a special privacy browser that didn’t keep a record of web traffic to log into his Kingfisher email. Mostly, he corresponded with people at his winery, answering emails sent to him the previous day. It was still the middle of the night in California, so it’d be several hours before he heard back. His winemaker was grousing, rightfully, that he’d missed another blending meeting and he needed Jack’s input on the vintage. There were also decisions to make and checks to write, none of which could be delegated. Not since Megan left.
When he felt like he’d done everything he could, or at least mollified his employees, Jack showered and went downstairs. There was no sign of Aleksander, which was good. He wasn’t interested in meeting with him. Jack hadn’t calmed down from their conversation the night before. What he did find was Viktor doing laps in the pool. Jack walked over to the side of the pool and got the man’s attention.
“Get dried off. We’re heading into town.”
“I’m swimming,” Viktor said matter-of-factly, treading water in the deep end.
“OK, well you can go with me, or you can give me the combo to the key lock.”
“And if I don’t?”
“How long do you think a keypad in a garage is going to stop me?”
“There are guards here.”
“There were guards in Paris.”
“We shoot back.”
“Look,” Jack said, “this banter is exhilarating, but I need to get into town. Are you going to come with me, or do I need to steal your boss’s car?”
Viktor bobbed in the water for a moment. It was obvious that he was weighing his options and the various consequences. If he let Jack go, he probably looked weak. Of course, the same could be said for going with him. He swam over to the side of the pool and pulled himself on to the deck. Jack handed him a towel.
“Be careful how hard you push, Burdette. You’ll find that people here push back.”
“That’s really good advice,” Jack said flatly. “You shouldn’t overlook it.”
Viktor took a few minutes to dry off and get dressed, and then they were racing into town.
“Where are we going?”
“If I’m going to be here for a while,” Jack said in a loaded tone. “I’m going to need some fresh clothes.”
Viktor guided Jack to the Plaza Mar 2, a massive, American-style shopping mall near the water. Jack entered the parking structure, also uncommon for European shopping centers, and drove up to the top deck so that he could find a spot with no cars on either side.
Jack and Viktor entered the mall. While American-style malls did exist in Europe, most shopping centers tended to be in the city centers with shops facing a central plaza. The Plaza Mar was every bit the monument to high velocity capitalism, American style. Jack wasn’t really interested in clothes; he was interested in a distraction. He found a men’s shop and told Viktor this looked good enough. Viktor nodded and found a bench in front of the store. Jack saw him pulling his phone out as he entered the store.
Jack moved through the shop and selected a few items in his size, enough to put an outfit together. Jack dressed well, even while working, and in most instances wouldn’t be caught dead shopping in a mall. That told him something about Viktor certainly, and possibly Aleksander as well. When he was forced to buy off the rack, Jack wore Zegna or Hickey Freeman, not H&M. He could also pick out a cop from a crowd by the cut of their suit. Jack’s Spanish was decent, and he got a dressing room, where he hung the clothes up on the hook.
He pulled his phone out and called Rusty.
Rusty solved problems.
Jack’s problem right now was that he needed to get the hell out of Spain.
In the decade or so that they’d been working together, Jack actually learned very little about Rusty’s background, other than he’d once been an FBI agent. Rusty joked that his job had been enforcing those piracy statements you see before watching a DVD. Rusty never shared anything about what he’d actually done in the bureau or what prompted him to leave it and diametrically shift his career to illicit logistics. But he could find Jack nearly anything from clean cars to plane tickets in a short amount of time. These things never came cheap, but what he paid Rusty for was both speed and safety. Rusty, for his part, often said that he enjoyed the challenge Jack’s procurement requests presented. Most guys wanted a getaway car, and they’d settle for a clean but dinged up Fiat, whereas Jack wanted to travel in style—so Rusty would find him a Maserati GranTurismo. Most people in Rusty’s position would assume that was arrogance on Jack’s part, but as a former cop, Rusty knew that police would never be looking for someone in a luxury sports car because it didn’t fit the profile, and those things were incredibly hard to find on short notice. When looking for getaway cars, the police tended to search for what criminals the world over favored—cheap, reliable, and a few years old.
“I’m surprised it took you this long to call,” Rusty said when he picked up. It took Jack a second to figure out what he meant. Then he realized that Paris would still be all over the news. He felt so isolated here, disconnected.
“You would not believe the last twenty-four hours if I told you,” Jack said.
“I’ve been working with you long enough, my friend. Very little would surprise me.”
“I’m in Alicante, a ‘guest’ of Ozren Stolar’s former boss.”
“Okay,” he said without missing a beat, “I’m surprised. What do you need?”
“I need a plane ticket back to SFO and a new passport.”
Rusty paused a moment.
“Is there a problem?” Jack asked.
“Jack, we’ve been burning through passports these last few years, and they’re getting harder and harder to make. TSA is a joke, but CPB isn’t.”
“I know, but I don’t have a choice. They confiscated mine.”
“Who?”
“Aleksander Andelić. That’s my … ah, host, I guess you’d say. Look, I don’t have a lot of time. I’ve got a minder, and I was able to shake him, but that’s not going to last long.”
Rusty paused for a second, and Jack knew from experience that meant he was doing calculations.
“Can you give me two days?” It was Wednesday.
“I have got to be back in California by Friday morning, or I’m in a lot of trouble.”
“Legal?”
“No, but it’s just as important.”
&nbs
p; “All right, let me think.” Rusty was quiet on the other end for a bit. “Okay, I believe I can make that work. The passport isn’t the issue. I have an emergency one that I made for you a while back, just in case you got into a jam. It’s clean. But this is my only one. You need anything else, and they’ll have to be made. I assume you’ll need this delivered?”
“Yeah, in Alicante. I think I’ve got a bit of a leash here, but I’ve got a way to get out if I have to. Also, whatever you could dig up on Andelić would be appreciated. I also need to know whether the French authorities are making any progress on the case. Andelić is saying that he’s keeping my name out of it so that I’ll work for him. I need to know if that’s true.”
“Okay, let me see what I can do. Anything else?”
“Yeah, I’m going to need a gun.”
“Got it. All right, I’m on this. I’ll bill you as usual. Let’s say twenty-five. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jack hung up. He actually had passports stashed in two locations in Europe for just this kind of situation. Unfortunately, because of the timing constraints neither of those places were accessible to him. The first was hidden in a villa that Frank Fischer owned in Tuscany. Jack bought it with the remaining funds from the Carlton job after he decided it’d be a good idea to get out of California for a while. This was something of a last resort, because if Jack was on the run, it wouldn’t be a good idea to run to a place that Frank Fischer owned. The second passport was in a safety deposit box in the bowels of a Swiss bank. But without a passport to get into Switzerland, he couldn’t get to it. The purpose of that one was, if the passport he carried was compromised, he would have a few days before it caught up with him. Since neither of those two were options, he needed to rely on Rusty.
Jack was already over the time he’d allotted for this trip and had expected to be back in California by now. On Friday, he was meeting to finalize a deal with an important distributor that would extend Kingfisher Wines beyond northern California. The deal included not only prominent stores along the west coast, but also into the wine programs for some of the most influential restaurants in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. This was the kind of move that could get Kingfisher the exposure it needed to potentially become a national brand. If nothing else, they could become a highly sought-after cult wine. Jack would never have scheduled these events so close together, but the deal with this distributor didn’t finalize until the Paris job was already set, and Jack didn’t have a good reason for pushing it off. At least not one that he could tell his potential new distribution partner.
He couldn’t cancel that meeting either.
Those new markets might be exactly what he needed to make the winery self-sufficient.
A business that didn’t rely on periodic cash injections from the founder meant that Jack could stop stealing.
But Jack needed to be in California to finalize the deal in person. He and Hugh Coughlin had been working on this for a year. This was the final negotiation and signature. Jack couldn’t just reschedule and say, Sorry I’m out of town. They’d spent a year convincing this company that Kingfisher was a substantial enough operation that it was ready for the next step. This meeting had been planned for months, and the work to get to that point took several months of negotiation. Cancelling it without a date to reschedule, which Jack couldn’t provide because god only knew how long this Venice thing would take, would send the message that Kingfisher wasn’t ready. To say nothing of what Hugh would do when Jack told him why. Hugh knew of Jack’s past, which is to say that he knew Frank Fischer was an alias. He also believed that Jack had given up this life. If he learned that Jack was trying to delay the meeting with the distributor because he was on a job, Hugh would walk away and never return.
Jack left the dressing room with the clothes on the hanger, untouched. He thanked the store clerk on the way out and found Viktor out front, who gave him a perplexed look.
“You don’t have clothes?” Viktor asked.
Jack said, “Where do people go in this town when they want to spend money?”
When they got back to the Ferrari, Viktor admitted that he didn’t know and said that he hadn’t spent a lot of time here. That told Jack that he didn’t live at Aleksander’s compound, at least not full-time. Jack opened up his phone and retrieved the Google search he’d done in the dressing room. The Ferrari had a navigation system, so Jack plugged in the address, and they drove to the store, which was less than ten minutes from the Plaza Mar. Alicante wasn’t a particularly wealthy town, and it didn’t have the offerings of a Monte Carlo, or even a Rome, but what Jack found would suit his purposes exactly. He parked the car on the street and could immediately sense Viktor’s unease.
“The store is right there,” Jack said, indicating with his hand.
“We’re not going to park the car here.”
“Come on, live a little.” Jack got out. Viktor did so as well but hovered near the car, as if unsure that he should leave it. Eventually, he relented and followed Jack inside. Jack found the store to be a reasonably upscale shop that carried many of the European labels that he was familiar with. He spent a long time chatting up the store owner and lazily browsing. After ten minutes, Viktor tapped his watch. Jack ignored him and looked at jackets. After another five, Viktor said that they should be going. Jack flashed the old, wizened tailor a knowing smile.
Jack purchased a few shirts and two pairs of casual pants. Jack also purchased a jacket, which he would need to come back for tomorrow. That would be the excuse he needed to get out of the house but also give Rusty a location. Jack paid for his things and thanked the store owner for his time and left. He had a credit card matching the name on the Swiss driver’s license and passport. The card was a Mastercard Luxury Titanium that was registered to the Global Services Ltd Corporation. Global Services was one layer of a Russian nesting doll of shell corporations. Jack never stole from individual citizens, be it their property, credit, or identities. Corporations with insurance were one thing, but a person that had done him no harm was something else.
He found Viktor nervously waiting by the Ferrari. Jack put his bags in what could only notionally be considered the back seat of the two-door car, and they took off. Much to Viktor’s chagrin, Jack said they had one more stop to make. He spotted a Hugo Boss on the way in and drove there. Viktor decided he’d wait with the car. “Suit yourself,” he said and ran inside. This was a faster trip, more focused on essentials. He also bought a black leather duffle bag. Jack returned to the car and told Viktor that they could, at last, return home.
Jack parked the car in the garage and thanked Viktor for his time. The other man just shrugged and headed for the stairs on the outside of the building that would take him to his quarters. Jack took his things up to his room and changed into an outfit that he’d purchased—white pants and a black polo. Then he walked downstairs. He’d need to confront Aleksander at some point. It might as well be now.
He headed downstairs and heard the sounds of intermittent typing. Jack followed a previously unexplored hallway and found Aleksander in his ground floor office. The desk faced the door so he could see whomever was approaching. The curtains were drawn shut behind him. Aleksander looked up as Jack approached. The office was large, big enough for a circular table and four chairs as well as the desk. There were three large paintings on the wall opposite the windows.
“Good afternoon,” Aleksander said tentatively.
Jack knew that he had to deescalate the situation from the night before. This wasn’t going to work if Aleksander was openly hostile. “Listen, I wanted to apologize for coming off a little high-handed last night. I felt backed into a corner and usually don’t respond too well to that.”
Aleksander nodded, and then he stood. “I understand, and I think might have reacted the same way. We both have our interests to protect, yes? That was not how I wanted that conversation to go either. I am under significant pressure too.” Aleksander walked around the desk and put an arm arou
nd Jack’s shoulder, which was intended to feel collegial, but Jack believed was entirely to steer him out of the room. “Let’s get some coffee,” Aleksander said.
When they reached the kitchen, Aleksander said, “The Pink Panthers are a much looser organization than the media coverage implies. They seem to view us as a criminal fraternity, working together in giant secret meetings where we plan these audacious heists,” he said. There was a sarcastic bent in his voice. “In truth, it is far from that. Particularly now. Some rival organizations are coming after me because I have something they want, namely my political connections and a strong intelligence network.
“They believe I am weak because of the setbacks we’ve endured over the last few years. I’ll acknowledge that some of those failures have made me vulnerable. Brussels in particular.” Aleksander went over to a large and complicated looking espresso maker. He went through the ceremony of grinding, measuring, and packing the coffee, then activating the machine. Aleksander made, without asking, an espresso for himself and an Americano for Jack.
“Now, they come at me like sharks in the water. I’m taking a gamble with this Al Thani Collection, I know. But I think a success here will keep the wolves at bay for some time. I need to do something audacious to show that I’m still a player.”
“I thought this one was going to be off the books.”
“Yes and no. We need to do this without the Al Thani family finding out that we’re involved. You’ve already pointed out their capacity for reprisal. However, within certain circles, my circles, my involvement would be known. That gets me what I need.”
“And you’re not worried that one of these other Pink Panther gangs would tip the Al Thani family once they found out it was you? Seems like a good way to take out a rival.”
“Certainly, that is always a risk, but we tend not to operate that way. My backer is going to pay me a lot of money for this, enough that it covers the risk for me. I’m going to turn around an invest much of that money in talent and training, rebuilding my organization. I was sincere in that. I’d offer you a significant amount of money to train my crews. That notoriety would go a long way to convincing the vultures that I’m still relevant.”
