by Dale Nelson
“But why not just get out? What more do you need?”
“I’ve had your wine, you know,” Aleksander said, deflecting. “It’s quite good.”
“Thank you, but I’m having a hard time seeing how that’s relevant.”
“Because I could just as easily ask you what you need, Jack.” Aleksander downed his coffee. “These aren’t the kind of people who are going to allow me to just walk away, not when I have something they want. At least for us, this isn’t a life that you simply retire from. Unless,” he wagged a finger, “you have an organization that someone would be a fool to try and move against.”
And Jack began to see Aleksander’s strategy.
This man was less a thief now and more a field marshal. Aleksander was building security to protect against the forces in his world that would try to take what he had. This wasn’t a man who would recklessly move against the Qatari royal family, a group whose wealth could hardly be measured in mere dollars, to say nothing of the reach that wealth afforded them. Aleksander wouldn’t take that risk unless he absolutely believed in the payoff. Jack had learned that much in their short time together. His execution might be “smash and grab,” but his broader strategy was anything but.
There was a certain logic to what Aleksander was proposing. Jack would take on much less risk if he were only scouting and planning the jobs, essentially filling the role for Aleksander’s thieves that Reginald once did for him. For a ten percent share of their takes, Jack could be fully whole within a few years.
“You’ve talked about this network. Political connections, legal ones, and you say you’ve kept my name out of the spotlight in Paris.”
“That’s right,” Aleksander said.
“And Venice squares us?” Jack asked. “I do this, and we’re clear on Paris.” Jack said this as a statement, not a question. “I’m never going to have to worry about that other shoe dropping.”
“Paid in full.”
“I don’t have to worry about some point, later in life, where you’d like to compel me to do something I don’t want to do, and you decide to hold something over me. Or threaten my winery or the people who work there.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” Aleksander said. He sounded sincere.
“Because if you did, I’d be forced to make you use these political connections. Among other things,” Jack said, quoting Aleksander from earlier. “I want to make sure that we’re absolutely clear on something.”
“And what’s that?” Aleksander asked, his voice taking a dangerous edge.
“Just this—if you ever threaten me, there is no measure of what I’ll bring down on top of you. There is more than enough evidence to suggest that Ozren and Milan were behind the Carlton. The press believes your people did it anyway. A few quiet words to Ari Hassar could make your life very uncomfortable. That’s one person in my Rolodex. How much do you want to know about the rest?”
“Threatening your host is bad form.”
“So is kidnapping your guest.”
“I believe you accepted that ride willingly.”
“You’ll forgive my cynicism on that score. If I’m not being kept here against my will, where is my passport? Or are you just safekeeping it so I don’t lose it? I forget.”
Aleksander cracked a smile, but it was cold, an emotionless slit across his mouth. “I don’t put a lot up to chance, Jack. Nor, I think, do you. Now, we can go on threatening each other, or we can come to an agreement. I think we could each do the other a lot of unnecessary harm. Or we could work together and make a lot of money. Do you want to just make wine, or do you want an empire? I said I’m getting paid handsomely for the Al Thani job. I wouldn’t expect you to do this for free.”
“Well, that’s something.”
“Five hundred thousand, for a few days’ work.”
That, he wasn’t expecting. Jack tried to maintain a blank expression.
“Your offer is intriguing to me,” Jack said, “or I wouldn’t still be sitting here. But the Al Thani Collection is too risky. Give me a few weeks, and I can plan something else for you.”
“No,” Aleksander said in a tone that was as finite and fixed as gravity. “I’ve made a commitment on this. If I back out now, it will be nearly as bad as trying and failing.”
Jack was boxed in. He wished he’d seen this for what it was sooner. Venice was stupid and dangerous, but Jack didn’t see a way out that didn’t result in Aleksander revealing Jack’s involvement in Paris. This jewelry collection belonged to one of the wealthiest families in the world. Ari Hassar was frightening, in part, because he employed people that previously worked for Israel’s intelligence agency. The Qatari royal family had an intelligence agency.
The only alternative Jack had was to escalate further and see whether Aleksander called him. He wasn’t bluffing, Jack could do those things. But so could Aleksander. However, if he did this job and got paid, he’d be helping Aleksander out of whatever bind he’d found himself in. That, too, had value. Having an ally with his connections could also be useful.
The real question was, where would this train stop?
“All right,” Jack said. “I’ll do it, but I’ve got conditions.”
“Your bargaining position isn’t the best.”
“How are you going to ensure that the Al Thanis aren’t going to come after me when this is all said and done? You said you could protect your name; you didn’t say anything about mine.”
“I have that covered.”
“Not good enough.”
“I want the other Panthers to suspect that this was me, but I want there to be doubt. Quiet words are placed. It serves me little for them to think that it was you. We’re also not taking very much, just a few pieces to send a message. Meanwhile, you need to do your part and keep your identity concealed as you would on any other job. Satisfactory?”
“Good enough,” Jack said. “Next, I need to get back to California, just for a few days. I’ve been gone longer than I expected to, and my people are going to get concerned. There’s also a matter that I need to attend to.”
“Out of the question, I’m afraid,” Aleksander said, and his voice was resolute. “I can’t risk you getting cold feet once you get home. This is why I have your passport for safekeeping. I have to insist that you perform this one service for me. After that, you are free to go, though I certainly hope that our other conversation will continue. I’m sorry, but it has to be this way.”
“That doesn’t work for me,” Jack said. “A few days, then I’ll be back. You have my word.”
“Again, out of the question. Whatever it is, it will have to wait.”
“So, you’d really dime me out to the police? After I’ve seen your home. After everything you’ve told me about your plans. Venice. You’d risk me talking to the police?”
Aleksander’s eyes narrowed, but Jack continued.
“Maybe they can get me on Paris, but maybe they can’t. But you can be sure my next call is to Ari Hassar.”
“I think not,” Aleksander said. “That’s a game of bluff I don’t think you’re prepared to play. It relies on him killing me before I can tell him that you really stole his diamonds. And the police? Please, be my guest. I’ll dial them myself. I think you’ll find the local authorities somewhat uncooperative. And the French? Good luck.”
Good luck with Ari Hassar, Jack mused. Hassar paid Jack to steal those diamonds. Jack was angry enough now to call Aleksander’s bluff just to see the look on his face when Hassar laughed him off the phone. But Jack also knew that was impossible. Even now, the knowledge of how the Carlton job actually unfolded was a secret Jack would take to his grave. Better to let Aleksander think he’d gotten the upper hand, as much as that infuriated him.
Aleksander set his espresso cup in the sink to be dealt with later and walked out of the kitchen.
But Aleksander was also leaving Jack with an unacceptable set of tradeoffs.
Aleksander was about to learn, paraphrasing something Viktor had r
ecently said, some people push back.
Seven
Rusty called him later that day.
He would deliver the passport to Jack in Alicante midafternoon on Thursday. Jack was booked on a red eye out of Amsterdam that same night, under the name the passport was under. It would be a total of three flights, but he’d get home in time for the meeting.
Jack would return to Spain as soon as that was done.
He’d given his word and would keep it. This was a dangerous move, and Jack knew it. Aleksander was bound to react poorly, but he couldn’t kill him because he needed Jack for Venice. That much was clear. So, as long as Jack knew that Aleksander needed him alive, Jack was going to push against the bars of the cage. Whatever the repercussions were, he’d manage them. If Aleksander went too far, Jack would refuse the job. Jack could establish some precautions against reprisal.
Assuming he returned at all. The idea of simply staying in California was never far from his thoughts. He’d given Aleksander his word, but what was that really? Honor among thieves? Hardly. How far could Aleksander’s reach possibly be?
Aleksander talked a lot about how his organization was a fraction of what it once was, how he needed Jack and the money this Venice job was going to bring to help him rebuild it.
If he really was facing an imminent threat from these other Pink Panther cells, how long did Aleksander have before they came to collect?
What if Jack just waited the bastard out?
But once Jack left Spain, the threat Aleksander Andelić posed wasn’t necessarily a physical one, but an existential one. If he did release Jack’s name to the French authorities, that meant it would eventually get to the FBI, because they investigated the crimes Americans committed overseas. If that happened, Jack would have to run. Though Danzig couldn’t arrest him, she made damn sure to fingerprint him and listed Frank Fischer as a known alias in the National Criminal Information Center database. That would lead them straight to his winery and would likely open up an investigation into any number of crimes, including forgery for his identity and money laundering for the winery.
He’d built his savings back up to about a million over the last four years doing small jobs. It was a fraction of what he’d had, but the winery was starting to turn a profit, and he was drawing a legitimate salary from it.
It was possible that he could fall through the cracks on this, but not likely. Not with the FBI involved. They’d run his name, and that’d be it. Now, it’d be their word against his, but Jack didn’t have a domestic alibi for his whereabouts to explain where he’d been when the Hotel Ritz was being robbed in Paris.
If Aleksander did turn him in, Jack could always counter. He could trade whatever they had on him for what appeared to be a case of bribing police officers and possibly other government officials. And that was just in Paris. Aleksander basically admitted that he was paying off the local police in Alicante. The FBI wouldn’t care about that, however.
Jack realized the greater danger in involving the police was what would happen if they actually did raid Aleksander’s home. He’d implied knowledge of Jack’s previous jobs. He had to come by that information somehow. As a former special forces soldier from a failed state, it stood to reason that he had access to people with intelligence training. The probability that Aleksander had solid intel on Jack’s movements over the last few years was good. If blackmail was his game, he was going to make a case of it.
The police getting their hands on that would be devastating.
Jack didn’t see an outcome that didn’t involve him coming back to Spain to do this job, at least not one that was acceptable to him.
But that wasn’t going to stop him from leaving. He’d worked too hard to get his winery into this distribution channel, and if this deal went through, it might mean he could retire—truly retire—from thieving.
Whatever the consequences were, Jack would have to bear them.
That afternoon, Jack and Viktor again took the Ferrari into town so that he could pick up the items he’d purchased at the menswear shop the day before. Jack was quiet on the drive. The usually laconic Viktor seemed in a particularly sour mood and was not talkative either.
Jack parked in front of the menswear store. As before, with bored disinterest in Jack’s sartorial agenda and very real concern over the car, Viktor told Jack he’d wait with the Portofino. Jack reached behind him and grabbed the black bag he’d purchased at Boss. “What do you need that for?” Viktor asked.
“I found one in here that I think I like better, and I want to compare them. What do you care?”
Viktor shrugged. Jack walked inside. The store owner greeted him and said his things were ready, which he dipped into a back room to go get. There was another customer in the shop. He was about Jack’s age, wearing a blue sharkskin suit, a black and white striped shirt, and no tie. He had a bright red pocket square with yellow medallions outlined in blue.
Despite his dour mood, Jack worked hard to suppress a smirk.
Jack and Rusty traded nothing more than glance and a barely perceptible head nod. The store owner appeared with Jack’s things and directed him to the fitting room. As he did, Rusty called from the front of the store, asking to see something else. The store owner excused himself and went to see his other customer. Jack entered the fitting room and drew the curtain behind him. He set his things on a hook and looked under the small bench in the room. There was a Hugo Boss duffel bag identical to the one Jack brought in under it. He set his empty bag on the floor, placed the other on the bench, and looked inside. There was a nine-millimeter Beretta APX and a passport, each wrapped in a towel. There was also a folder at the bottom of the bag.
Jack popped out the magazine to confirm that it was loaded and, seeing it was, chambered a round. Rusty had also included a small concealment holster, which he used to clip the weapon to his waistband under his shirt. He checked over the passport. It was Canadian in the name of John Ogilvie. Finally, Jack opened the folder, which contained his flight information. He put the passport in his pocket, placed the clothes in the bag, and left the fitting room. Walking past the counter, he told the clerk that everything fit perfectly. The man thanked him with a broad smile and went back to what he was doing.
Jack had his passport and a way out of the country.
Generally speaking, there were four kinds of fake identities, excepting, of course, the ones issued by national intelligence services. The first was the archetypal fake driver’s license that American kids used to sneak by bouncers who usually knew better but not enough to care. The second were those that were actual stolen documents—driver’s licenses, passports, and the like. In this model, someone looking to craft a new identity would simply replace the picture and potentially doctor the name. It took about five minutes for a skilled forger to change the picture on most passports. From there, they simply changed one or two digits on the passport number so that it didn’t immediately flag as stolen.
The third type were true forgeries created from a blank, previously unused passport. The forger then filled in the details, ensuring that the typeface, size, and color were correct. Creating fake country stamps was incredibly easy, and used passports draw less scrutiny. A good forged passport could go for five thousand dollars, an exceptional one upwards of ten. Because all of the information on them was bogus, they wouldn’t stand up to a background check, but those didn’t happen at a border crossing. In fact, most border control agents had less than sixty seconds with a passport. In that time, they had to determine whether it was a fraud or at least raise enough suspicion that it merited pulling the person out of line for further review.
The passport that Jack just received fell into this category.
The fourth type of identity was the hardest to come by because it was truly real. The driver’s license was real because the owner got it by standing in line at the DMV, and the passport was real, issued by the United States Department of State. The difference was that the underlying proofs—Social Security
numbers and the like—were doctored in some way. Frank Fischer’s was this kind. To create that, Jack had used a Social Security number that had been registered at one point. The owner died, and the number was loaded into the so-called “death database,” where someone with access would reassign the number to a name provided for a few thousand dollars.
For all intents and purposes, Frank Fischer was a real person. He had utility bills, a credit score, and paid taxes. The identity wouldn’t hold up to the full weight of a federal investigation, but Jack also knew that if it ever came to that, he’d be in a situation that required him to run anyway.
On his way out of the store, Jack looked over at Rusty and said, “Nice suit.”
Rusty smiled over a display of pocket silks. “London,” he said.
Jack returned to the Ferrari, set the bag in the back, and took off. He was doing fifty by the time he’d reached the end of the block and Viktor barked, “Hey, take it easy.” Jack slowed down a touch and guided the car out of town. When it was clear they were not going in the direction of Aleksander’s house, Viktor asked, “Where are we going?”
“Scenic route,” was all Jack said. He headed south on the N332, which took them south along the coast. It was only ten miles to the airport, and traffic was light. Four miles out, when it was clear that they weren’t returning to Aleksander’s house, Viktor asked again what the hell was going on. Jack pulled off the road onto the shoulder. He paused a moment, then reached behind to the small of his back and drew out the Beretta. Leveling the pistol at Viktor, he said, “Hand me your phone.”
“What the fuck is this?”
“In this of all professions, you can’t seriously be asking that question. Give me your phone. Slowly.”
