There was a strong smell of leather in the lobby, the decor was subdued, dark wood furnishings and a claret carpet. Biolums were disguised as engraved glass bola wall fittings.
André Dubaud showed his police card to the receptionist and asked for the manager.
“You think she’s made a bolt for it?” Suzi asked Greg in a low voice.
“Yeah. She came here for one thing, delivering the flower to Julia. When that was over, her part in all this finished.”
“Snuffed?”
“Could be.” He scratched the back of his neck.
“But you don’t think so.”
“Not sure. My infamous intuition doesn’t say chasing her is a waste of time.”
“So how did she get out? This gold-plated rat hole is worse than a banana republic for security.”
“You’re the tekmerc, you tell me.”
“No. Seriously, Greg, I’d never take on a deal inside Monaco. Use hotrods to burn data cores in the finance sector, maybe, but only from outside terminals. It’s like Event Horizon; something you just have to learn to accept as untouchable.”
“I thought you left Event Horizon alone because Julia owned it.”
Suzi made a big show of shifting the weight round on her shoulder strap. “Yeah, well. That, and I’ve seen what’s left of people after our angel-face Victor has finished with them. Sometimes there’s enough to fill a whole eggcup.”
“He’s good, isn’t he? Julia and old Morgan Walshaw knew what they were doing giving him the job.”
“Too fucking true.”
“So you don’t reckon our Miss Fielder could get out on the quiet?”
“Put it this way, I’ve never heard of anyone else doing it. And I would’ve done. It’s the dome which is the problem. A one hundred percent physical barrier. The only holes are the official ones. Nobody needs to create smuggling routes into Monaco, see? Drugs aren’t illegal here. They actually have two pharmaceuticals licensed to produce narcotics. Any kind you want.”
“I didn’t know that.” Somehow he wasn’t surprised.
André Dubaud walked over to them with the manager, a tall old man with thinning grey hair, who actually wore glasses, round lenses with silver rims. He must do that for effect, Greg thought. It worked too; he had the kind of old-world dignity anyone would trust.
He listened to Greg’s request, and beckoned one of the receptiomsts over. Greg was given Charlotte Fielder’s American Express number, which he squirted direct to Victor.
The porter who was on duty the night of the Newfields ball was summoned from the staff quarters. Greg didn’t learn much. Charlotte Fielder had phoned the hotel and told them to pack her bags, a car would be sent to collect them. The porter couldn’t remember any details, it was a limousine of some kind, black, maybe a Volvo or a Pontiac.
“Not a green Aston Martin?” Greg asked.
“No, sir,” said the porter.
“You seem very sure, considering you couldn’t remember the make.”
“We have a complementary fleet of Aston Martins at the disposal of our guests,” the manager explained. He consulted his cybofax. “One was booked by Miss Fielder to take her to the El Harhari for the Newfields ball. But that’s the only time she used one.”
“Right, can you show me the memory for the camera covering the front of the hotel please.”
The manager gave a short bow. “Of course.”
They viewed it in his office, sipping coffee from delicate china cups. Greg watched the porter put three matched crocodile-skin cases into the boot of a stretched Pontiac, a chauffeur helped him with the largest.
“Progress,” said Greg. He leant forward and read the licence plate number off to André Dubaud. “Can we have a make on the driver as well, please.”
“It’s a hire car,” the Commissaire said, as his cybofax printed out the vehicle registry data. “I’ll have my office check the hire company’s records. The chauffeur’s identity won’t take a minute.”
Greg and Suzi walked back out into the dome’s filtered tangerine light. One of the Celestious doormen was holding the Citroën’s door open for them. André Dubaud followed slowly.
“Problem?” Greg asked.
A muscle on the side of André Dubaud’s cheek twitched. “There seems to be a glitch in our characteristics recognition program.”
“Meaning what?” Suzi asked.
“It’s taking too long to identify the Pontiac’s chauffeur.” He gave the cybofax a code number, and began speaking urgently into it.
Greg met Suzi’s eyes as they sank down into the Citroën’s cushioning, they shared a sly smile. He knew André Dubaud wasn’t going to trace the chauffeur, it wouldn’t be a program glitch, that was too complicated. The simple method would be to wipe the chauffeur’s face from the police memory core, or make sure it was never entered in the first place. Either way, it would take a pro dealer to organize. His cybofax bleeped.
It was Julia. She appeared to be sitting in Wilholm’s study. The walls behind, her were covered with glass-fronted shelves, heavy with dark leatherbound books. The edge of a window showed sunny sky.
“How’s the speech day coming along?” Greg asked.
Julia smiled. “You’ll have to ask her when she gets back.”
“Right.” He was talking to an image one of the NN cores was simulating. He wondered how many of her business deals were made like this, flattering the smaller company directors with what they thought was a personal interview.
“Rachel was right about Charlotte Fielder,” Julia said. “She’s quite well known, at least to us. She’s one of Dmitri Baronski’s girls. Security keeps a fairly complete list of his stable in case any of my executives should stumble.”
“Who’s Dmitri Baronski?” Greg asked.
“A first-class pimp, although that doesn’t do him justice, he’s a lot more than that. Clever old boy, lives in Austria. Runs a stable of girls who aren’t quite as dumb as they like to make out to their clients. He’s made a fortune on the stock market based on loose talk they’ve picked up for him.”
“No messing?” For the first time, Greg began to feel a certain anticipation. “So this Fielder girl was a good choice as courier, then?”
“Yes. After all, would you know how to deliver a present to me, and be sure I’d see it?”
“Royan would,” Greg said. “But you’re right; method is one thing, carrying it off is another. Fielder must be bright enough to realize some of the implications of what she was doing.”
Rachel, Pearse Solomons, and Claude Murtand were sitting round the El Harhari security centre’s desk drinking tea. A plate of biscuits rested on top of the terminal. The monitor screens were dark.
“Got her,” Rachel said. “She left at five to eleven, and she was with someone.”
Greg didn’t like the dry amusement leaking into Rachel’s voice, it suggested a surprise.
Claude Murtand called up the memory, and Greg watched Charlotte Fielder walking out of the El Harhari with a young teenage boy. The kid kept sneaking daunted looks at Charlotte Fielder’s low-cut neckline, his smile flashing on and off.
Greg halted the memory and studied the boy’s eager, wonder-struck face. There was something not quite right about him. It was as if he was a model; everything about him, the awkwardness, the slight swagger, a designer’s idea of teenager.
“She’ll eat him alive,” Suzi snorted gleefully. “He won’t last the night.”
“Way to go.” Rachel said.
“André, can you get a make on that boy for me, please?” Even as he said it, Greg knew the boy would defy identification, just like the chauffeur. Judging by the apprehensive way André Dubaud was ordering the make, he thought so too.
“What car did they leave in?” Greg asked Claude Murtand. The hotel security manager tapped an order into his terminal’s keyboard, and played the outside camera memory on a monitor screen.
Greg and Suzi groaned together. It was the Pontiac.
He go
t Claude Murtand to run the outside camera memory, and watched the Pontiac rolling up to the El Harhari’s front door; the same chauffeur who’d driven it at the Celestious hopped out and opened the doors. Charlotte Fielder and her boy companion climbed in. Greg asked to see it again, a third time. His intuition had set up a feathery itch along his spine.
“Freeze it just before Fielder gets in,” Greg told Claude Murtand. “OK, now enlarge the rear of the car.”
The image jumped up, focusing on the open door and the boot. Charlotte Fielder’s raised foot hovered over the door ledge.
“More,” Greg said.
The image lost definition badly, black metal and darkened glass, fuzzy rectangular shadows stacked together. He peered forward.
“Suzi, look at the rear window, and tell me what you see.”
She sat in Claude Murtand’s seat right in front of the monitor screen, screwed up her eyes. “Shit yes!” she exclaimed.
“What?” Rachel demanded.
Greg tracked an outline down the left-hand side of the rear window, a ghost sliver of deeper darkness. “There’s someone else in there.”
Greg could sense André Dubaud’s growing anger; there was worry in there as well, churning his thought currents into severe agitation.
“It would seem that my office is unable to identify the boy at this time,” the Commissaire said.
Greg knew how much the admission hurt him. The Nice sacking was burned into the psyche of Monégasque nationals, everything they’d done since had been structured around safeguarding the principality. Now people were coming and going as they pleased. The wrong sort of people.
“No shit,” Suzi said, and there was too much insolence even for her.
“Madame, everyone who comes to Monaco is entered in the police memory core. Everyone. No exceptions.”
Wrong. You squirt my picture into this characteristics recognition program of yours, or Greg’s, or Rachel’s, or Pearse’s. You’ll get bugger-all back, just like the chauffeur and the kid. We never showed our passports to anyone, never thumbprinted an Immigration data construct.”
“Certainly not,” André Dubaud said. “You are here as Madame Evans’s guests. I know how much importance she attached to your mission. Though I might question her judgemerit in your case. Naturally, considering the urgency, you were spared the inconvenience.”
“And that’s it,” Suzi said. “Greg asked me how I’d pull someone from this pissant lotus land. Said I couldn’t. I don’t have what it takes, I’m hardline and covert deals. What you need for this is money. That’s what jerks your strings, Cornmissaire. Money. You people have turned it into a flicking religion, you fawn over the stuff. Christ, all Julia’s got to do is speak, and you roll over and spread your legs. All ‘cos she’s loaded.”
André Dubaud had reddened, lips squashing into a bloodless line, taking slow shallow breaths through his nose.
“Yeah, thank you, Suzi,” Greg said. “How about it, André?” Is there anyone else in the police department apart from yourself who has the authority to waive Passport and Immigration controls?”
“There are some others who could sanction such a courtesy. But it could only be done if the circumstances justified it,” André Dubaud said sullenly.
“How many people?”
“Please understand, money is not all that is required. The person making such a request would have to be of impeccable character.”
“How many?”
“Twenty-five, thirty. Perhaps a few more.”
“Oh, great.”
Victor’s face formed on Greg’s cybofax as soon as he entered the code.
“Charlotte Fielder was lifted out of here,” Greg said. “No doubt about it. This is a real pro deal; lot of money, lot of talent. The Pontiac that spirited her away from the Newfields ball was hired, the bloke who paid was the chauffeur. There’s no trace of him, he wasn’t entered in the police memory core. Same result for the boy she left with. As for the other person in the car, I couldn’t even tell you if they were male or female.”
The other three, Rachel, Suzi, and Pearse Solomons were sitting quietly round Claude Murtand’s office, happy to let him summarize. The air conditioner was humming softly, sucking out the accumulated moisture. Claude Murtand and André Dubaud were on the other side of the glass wall, talking in low tones, and casting an occasional unhappy eye in his direction.
“I can’t add much,” Victor said. “Fielder hasn’t used her Amex card for the last three days, so no leads for that. But then she hadn’t used it for a ten-day period prior to booking into the Celestious, either.”
“What did she use it for ten days ago?” Greg asked.
Victor glanced at something off screen. “It was in Baldocks, that’s a department store in Wellington, New Zealand. A bill for forty-three dollars; but it wasn’t itemized.”
“Not important,” Greg said. “So what was she doing for the ten days between Wellington and Monaco?”
“That’s what you’re supposed to tell me,” Victor said.
“Meeting Royan,” Suzi said.
“Right. But where?” said Greg. “I have two questions, based on what we’ve found out so far. Firstly, why take so much trouble over a courier? Given that all she had to do was deliver the flower box to Julia, someone has gone to a hell of a lot of effort to stash her away.”
“Because she can lead us to Royan,” Suzi said.
“Fair enough. So that means the people behind her, the ones with the Pontiac, don’t want us to know where Royan is. Ordinarily, I’d say that pointed to a kidnapping.”
“But there’s the flower,” Victor said.
“Yeah, and also the eight months that Royan’s been missing. Holding someone for eight months without a ransom demand is ludicrous.”
“Who knows how alien minds work?” Suzi asked.
“Not me,” said Greg. “But the chauffeur and the kid were human-” he broke off, remembering the boy’s perfection. “Make that humanoid.”
“Oh, bollocks,” Suzi said. “Fucking aliens walking round Monaco.”
“They might have the technological know-how to enter and leave the dome whenever they wanted,” Greg pointed out. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Too complicated, especially now they had established money could do the job just as easily. “The thing is, someone powerful is moving Fielder around. That’s the second question. Why not bring her in to Monaco the way she was taken out? Letting her come in through the normal channels, going through Passport control, thumbprint, the legal construct, then booking into the Celestious, all of that let’s us find out who she is. Why? When they could obviously have handed over the flower to Julia, and left us completely in the dark?”
Suzi stretched in her chair. “Go on. You’ve obviously got an answer.”
“Two different groups,” Greg said. “She came from Royan, to deliver the flower. Then afterwards, someone else nabbed her.”
“If it was a tekmerc squad, could you find out, Suzi?” Victor asked.
“Maybe. But it would take time. Week, maybe two. Then longer to find out who put the deal together.”
“Not good enough,” said Victor.
“Fuck you too.”
“If you want my opinion,” Greg said, “the group that arranged for Fielder to be lifted are the ones who took the first sample from the flower.”
Victor nodded. “That fits. You think they’ll have found Royan by now?”
“If they had a psychic interrogate Fielder, it would take a minute to find out what she knew. Drugs and a polygraph, that’s about thirty minutes. They’ve had her for nearly three days now.”
“Bloody hell.”
“There’s one easy short cut we could try,” Greg said. “Phone Fielder’s cybofax number, and use whatever clout Event Horizon has with English Telecom to find out the co-ordinate.”
“Good idea,” said Victor.
His image on Greg’s cybofax slid smoothly to one side. Julia appeared on the other half, s
itting in her study again. Nothing behind her had moved, even the sunlight shining through the window was at the same angle.
“No need to make it an official request,” she said. “I’m infiltrating the location response targeting software in lineisat’s antenna platforms. Calling Fielder’s number now.”
Greg waited.
“No reply,” Julia said. “There isn’t even a signal from the transponder.”
“Keep trying.”
“If all they wanted from Fielder was Royan’s location, then she’s probably been snuffed,” Victor said.
“No, she hasn’t,” Greg said.
“OK.” Victor subsided with good grace. He had seen Greg’s intuition at work before.
Greg wondered what young Pearse Solomons was making of all this. The security hardliner had been sitting at attention ever since Victor had come on the cybofax. After Julia appeared he hadn’t taken a breath.
“That just leaves us with Baronski,” Greg said.
“What can he tell us?” Suzi asked.
“Charlotte Fielder left the party early, with a rich young boy, in an expensive car. She walked out of the El Harhari freely, I’d almost say happily. That means the boy was either someone she knew, or more likely the son of a client. Either way, Baronski should be able to tell us.”
CHAPTER 9
It was the sun again, inexplicably wrong. Charlotte finally twigged the reason when she was having a latish breakfast in the Colonel Maitland’s aft dining-room.
Fabian sat opposite her as usual. He acted dazed, almost in shock, barely eating his cereal. Every time he looked at her it was with an unsettling degree of reverence.
But then Fabian was a boy in lust. He was also a remarkably fast learner. She had spent a strenuous two hours last night coping with his enthusiasms and demands before he finally drifted off into an exhausted sleep, then he’d been ready for more this morning. Which was why they turned up late at the table.
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