One Night in Monaco

by Blair Babylon

  “Sam-Houston,” Gen said, grinning. “Hyphenated. We can call him Sam for short.”

  “Sam-Houston Finch-Hatten,” Roxanne said, trying it out. “That’s quite a mouthful.”

  “As big as Texas,” Gen said, and Roxanne nodded along with her, again, solid like that.

  Roxanne gestured toward a store window. Inside, diamond jewelry caught the light and sparkled like a laser show. “Holy malony. Did you see these rocks? It would serve the guys right if they left us alone and we went shopping for diamonds.”

  They marveled over the opulent gems and jewelry in the windows of the shops for a while and then sat down for a second breakfast at the patisserie in one arm of the center. The morning sunlight streamed through the skylight, ricocheted off the two enormous crystal chandeliers hanging in the mall, and threw spangles on the honey-colored and scarlet-inlaid marble floors.

  At the next table, two women wearing black dresses were eating pastry and gossiping in French. Gen spoke enough French to eavesdrop but not enough to have a proper conversation.

  Gen and Roxanne nibbled and relaxed, and Gen eased her flat shoes off her heels to give her swollen toes more breathing room.

  One of the two women sitting at the table beside them said, “I think he’ll have a black eye, which means he’ll be in a foul mood. Last time Pierre and Maxence brawled like that and Pierre had a black eye, he demanded that a make-up artist come in every day and cover it up.”

  “When was the last time this happened?” the other woman asked. “It seems like it happens often. Maxence seems volatile.”

  “Pierre could make a saint snap and try to murder him,” the first woman laughed. “And I think it’s that Maxence is a better boxer than Pierre. No wonder Flicka Hannover left Pierre and disappeared.”

  Gen caught her breath.

  Roxanne asked, “What?”

  Gen shook her head at Roxanne, flipping her fingers in the air, and kept listening to the two women.

  Roxanne set her pastry down and leaned back in her chair, listening.

  “And then Maxence stormed out,” the first woman said. “I heard he checked into the hotel near the casino and stayed at the roulette tables all night long.”

  The other woman laughed. “That wouldn’t surprise me. When he was young, he used to lose so much money in that casino, not that it mattered in the slightest.”

  They both laughed.

  They talked about other things. Gen kept listening to them, but the topic of Pierre and Maxence’s fight didn’t come up again.

  Another topic did, though.

  The second woman said, “Did you see that battleship off the coast this morning?”

  “I heard it is the third-largest yacht in the world after those Saudi ones. Some French billionaire owns it. I heard he is running guns in it.”

  “Great, now we have an arms smuggler with contraband in our waters as well as the usual assortment of criminals.”

  “I’ve heard Interpol is going to raid him.”

  “Interpol never raids anybody in Monaco. It’s one of the benefits of citizenship here. That and no income taxes.”

  “I heard he and his wife were in the casino last night. She was alone in the main rooms, while he gambled away three million dollars.”

  A raucous snort of laughter. “And he won’t get that back.”

  “These people think there’s no one watching, that we in service don’t count and don’t see.”

  “No,” the second one said wistfully. “They know we see. They just don’t care because they think we’re nothing.”

  After they left, Gen recounted it to Roxanne, who had only heard some of it.

  “We have to tell the guys,” she said. “Let’s get going.”

  Chapter Ten

  Yacht Club de Monaco

  Casimir: After breakfast

  Though it was still quite early, billionaire yacht owners and their uniformed staff bustled around the Yacht Club de Monaco. At seven-thirty in the morning, the sun had just cleared the horizon, but the owners sipped champagne and ate an elegant breakfast in the dining room or around the pool, if they were so inclined. Some yacht owners were still asleep in their fifth homes or hotel rooms in Monaco while their staff slept in bunks on the boats.

  The yachts’ crew members had been awake and working for hours. Some of the crew were cramming a granola bar in their mouths while they readied the ships to sail for some days at sea or, if a voyage was not planned, washed the yachts’ hulls, swabbed the decks, and coiled the ropes into pleasing knots so as not to embarrass their billionaire owners in front of the other billionaires.

  Casimir and Arthur strolled down the sidewalk and approached the yacht club.

  Arthur was in his hail-fellow-well-met persona, casual and extraverted with a loose-limbed, careless gait while he walked, one of his masks that Casimir knew well. Caz also knew that the true Arthur behind all the myriad ways that he presented himself was a sober, quiet man who took his loyalties and his friendships very seriously. He was the pinnacle of Rudyard Kipling’s admonishment that man should keep his head when all about him were losing theirs.

  Casimir also had a fair idea of what Arthur’s real job must be, other than managing the estates and properties owned by his earldom.

  But that was a topic for another day.

  They strode down the street called the Quai Louis II, a small side-street directly on the water, toward the entrance of the yacht club. The sea lapped at the rocky shoreline and sidewalks leading out into the Mediterranean, where the yachts floated beside the docks. The slips right in front of the club itself were all full of gleaming yachts and a few of the smaller superyachts that were over thirty meters long, save one slip, where empty water lapped under an oily film.

  Arthur paused, regarding the empty slip.

  Casimir also stopped walking and looked at the empty space. It seemed odd that one of those highly coveted yacht parking spaces was empty, especially at this time of year. The Prince’s Winter Ball was scheduled for a few weeks hence.

  A silent glance between them confirmed that an empty slip right in front of the entrance was odd.

  Most of the yachts flew the triangular pinnacle flag of the Yacht Club of Monaco somewhere on their ropes or masts. Red and white stripes formed the pointed tip of the flag that fluttered in the breeze, while the broad base was two swords and a crown flanking a shield filled with red and white diamonds in a checkerboard pattern, matching the third tattooed shield that both Casimir and Arthur bore on their right arms near their wrists.

  The yacht club occupied a long, slender building directly on the marina that had been built to resemble a superyacht or a cruise ship. As it was Christmastime, mirrored scarlet orbs and gold garlands embellished the potted plants along the sidewalk that formed a de facto perimeter on the ground floor. A Christmas tree that was giant enough to impress the superyacht set graced the lobby, its top where Casimir and Arthur walked in. The inside was decorated in gleaming glass and many white-upholstered couches for lounging. The terraces and wood trim in the club were the same dark-finished wood that formed the hulls of the famed Carlo Riva speedboats.

  A burly, Slavic man with a shaved, well-tanned scalp stepped into their path. “I’m sorry, gentlemen. Members and guests only.”

  Casimir and Arthur weren’t wearing navy blue blazers bearing the coveted Monaco Yacht Club insignia nor the correct color of trousers mandated by the dress code, of course, and they hadn’t just disembarked from one of the yachts directly outside.

  Arthur signaled to the man with one dismissive finger like the bored English lord he absolutely was and tapped his phone screen three times. He spoke into it, “William, old chap, you’re in Monaco for the Winter Ball in a week or so, aren’t you? Would you be so good as to ring up the yacht club and gain us entry? Thanks a ton, old man.” He hung up and waited with his hands clasped in front of himself, calmly observing the security man who obstructed their path with an icy stare in his blue-silver eyes. />
  Casimir folded his hands and waited, too, trying to be as cool about it as Arthur. Arthur was just better at being a nobleman than the rest of them. Casimir had violently clashing sentiments about his family due to his childhood, but his conflicts were nothing compared to Maxence’s.

  The security man’s phone buzzed, and he answered it. “Yes? Yes, sir. Right away, sir.” He told Casimir and Arthur. “You’re free to enter. Have a good day, sir and my lord.”

  “I should say so,” Arthur muttered as they walked in.

  Around them, the guests who were up and about at the ungodly hour of seven-thirty wore navy blue blazers with the yacht club’s coat of arms with gray pants or, for the ladies, a gray skirt. The coat of arms for the Yacht Club de Monaco, sewn onto the left breast of the blazer, was an embroidered crown atop a red and white life preserver emblazoned with the initials YCM, surrounded by a golden wreath of leaves. The thread that embroidered it was spun gold.

  At the yacht club, ties were forbidden before six in the evening and mandatory thereafter, and the tie must be the official tie embroidered with a YCM miniature coat of arms, available to members from the club’s store. The official tie pin must be inserted a precise ten centimeters below the knot, though no one had brought out a ruler in years. This was a yacht club, after all. They had standards in dress and in membership. Had it been summer, members’ trousers or skirts would have been white, but of course, no one wore white pants to the yacht club after September.

  Casimir turned to Arthur. “Did you say, ‘William?’ Did you just call up the heir to the British throne to get us into a yacht club?”

  “I’m not going to screw around when Maxence is missing. Let’s split up to cover more ground.” Arthur looked at the few people basking in the particularly warm Mediterranean sunlight that morning. He moved past Casimir, greeting a tall, blond woman who wore a vibrant blue scarf that matched her eyes with her yacht-club ensemble. “Hello, Astrid-Gitte, your highness! I know the honorifics are not necessary, but I haven’t seen you since the Shooting Star Cotillion three years ago.”

  Her huge smile filled with genuine delight when she recognized Arthur.

  Everyone loved gregarious, personable Arthur.

  Casimir, however, meandered among the other guests, all of whom were wearing their navy blue blazers with the embroidered member’s insignia and gray trousers. He didn’t see anyone he knew, so he eventually found himself outside the building on the sidewalk, studying the Mediterranean Sea and the tidy rows of multimillion-dollar yachts.

  Crew members scurried around the ships, cleaning and polishing.

  That empty space of lapping water where no yacht floated seemed significant.

  Casimir strolled down the sidewalk to where an especially large yacht, a superyacht around a hundred meters long, occupied two berths vertically and lay beside the empty slip that so intrigued Caz and Arthur.

  Time to turn on the charm like he was facing a jury.

  If only Roxanne were there, they could double-team the poor sods and elicit the information they needed in half the time.

  But Rox should stay with Gen. If someone didn’t properly coddle the pregnant countess and keep her company, Arthur would be beside himself with distraction. It was better that Roxanne hold down that fort.

  “Hello, there,” Casimir called out to the two staff members who were scrubbing oily film off the port side of the superyacht, lest it damage the fiberglass and steel.

  Two white girls with wide faces that seemed Eastern European stopped what they were doing, glanced at each other, and then looked back at Casimir. Their white shorts were too short for this chilly December weather and for working on a ship, but workplace and anti-harassment laws don’t apply on the high seas. Both had long blond ponytails flowing down their backs and wore identical white baseball caps that were blank on the front.

  One of the girls, her face painted with thick make-up, raised her hand to greet him. “Yeah, hey?”

  Casimir smiled his friendly grin that usually worked on younger women, an exuberant and unassuming grin. “Hey, I’m a new member of the club. I just joined up, and this is my first stop here. I don’t want to look like an idiot. My ship is offshore. They’re working on where to park my ship closer in, but I took a tender to shore. I’m a little hyper after sailing down here from Koninklijke Nederlandsche Zeil en Roeivereeniging, I mean, the Royal Netherlands Yacht Club.”

  “Oh, yeah. We go up to Enkhuizen marina in the summer sometimes. It’s nice.”

  “We had to go all the way around Spain, and we were at sea for a week! I just wanted to get off that boat, you know what I mean?”

  The girl he was talking to smiled a little. “Yeah, cabin fever.”

  “Exactly. I want to dock my ship closer to the club. Is this the only slip that’s open right now?”

  “Oh, it’s not available,” the girl said. From the appearance of her plump cheeks and arms, Casimir thought she couldn’t have been older than twenty-four.

  He spread his arms at the empty water. “Looks pretty open to me. Do you know if I could just park there? I mean, if it’ll fit. I don’t know if it will.”

  “How long is your yacht?” the girl asked. Her accent might have been Russian or something Slavic like that. It certainly wasn’t Dutch.

  “Seventy meters,” Casimir said. That would be classified as a superyacht but not an ostentatious one.

  The girls nodded approvingly. “You might be able to park it there, but I doubt they will let you. That slip is where the Grimaldis keep their yacht.”

  Grimaldis. Maxence’s family name was Grimaldi.

  “Oh, really?” Casimir laughed, desperate for more information. “The Grimaldis’ yacht usually parks there?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know where it went. It was there yesterday, and I thought I heard it move sometime before midnight. We were in bed, though, so I could be wrong.”

  The yacht belonging to the Grimaldis had left the harbor around midnight, shortly before Pierre’s security team had called Arthur.

  Casimir’s veins chilled. He said, “But Rainier Grimaldi is such an old guy. Surely, he just sits around the boat and doesn’t take it out.”

  “Not that Grimaldi,” the other girl said, coming up to stand with her friend. She wore matching blue eye shadow and bright red lipstick, as well as her uniform shorts. “The other one, the hot one. We’ve been in and out of port here for the last few years. We saw him and his wife several times last summer, right after they were married.”

  And his wife. After they were married.

  “Oh, you mean that Pierre Grimaldi guy, not his uncle Rainier Grimaldi,” Casimir said.

  “Right! That one,” the girl agreed, her shiny, red lips smiling more broadly at him.

  Casimir looked over at the empty boat parking space as if he were measuring it. “Do you think a seventy-meter ship will fit in there? I have eight staterooms and some sporting stuff. I don’t want to block you in.”

  “I don’t know? The yacht that’s usually there is about fifty or sixty meters. It looks like it has three or four cabins. It’s called The Last Toy.”

  The Last Toy.

  Bingo, just the information Casimir had been fishing for. “I’ll have to talk to the organizing people here. I thought we submitted our request for a berth three months ago online, but they say they never received it. Computers, right?”

  They laughed. “Computers, yeah.”

  Casimir thanked them and walked back to the club, where Arthur was just walking out.

  Arthur sauntered into the sunshine with his hands in his pockets and lifted his head so that the breeze blew his black hair back from his face. He was the very picture of a composed Englishman, unruffled by whatever business he was attending to and nearly bored with how nothing challenged his serene competence.

  Jesus, something must be horribly wrong.

  Chapter Eleven

  Inside the Yacht Club

  Arthur

  After Casimi
r had wandered off, Arthur surveyed the members of the yacht club and considered his next move.

  A crystal-blue swimming pool and cabanas occupied the top floor of the Yacht Club de Monaco building. A parapet ringed the roof, a half-wall barrier to keep the drunks from toppling onto the busy thoroughfare on one side of the building or the small street and marina on the other.

  It also served to keep the commoners below from observing their betters too closely.

  It also shielded Arthur from the people who had been following them ever since they’d left the hotel that morning.

  Arthur had counted two surveillance teams of at least three men each tailing them from the hotel to the yacht club. Considering how they moved and overlapped their coverage, he suspected they were two separate teams from two different sources and were not coordinating their efforts. He’d watched them from reflections in shop windows and an occasional glance over his shoulder with the camera on his phone.

  At one point, one of the men from the Red Team, as Arthur had begun identifying them, had stepped in front of the Blue Team, and a scuffle had ensued.

  Both groups had nearly lost Arthur and Casimir in the kerfuffle.

  Interesting.

  Arthur had decided not to lose them, as he didn’t want to alarm Casimir nor alert the surveillance teams that he’d spotted them. If it became important later, he could grab Casimir and slip away.

  As Arthur wandered among the members of the yacht club, the sun and bright sky above shone as brilliantly blue as the pool, though the pool had a touch more teal to it. The Mediterranean Sea sparkled a purer blue in the marina and deeper azure as it spread to the horizon, and a mild breeze fluttered around the champagne flutes, saucers of fruit and cheese, and breakfast items on the tables between the reclining teak deck chairs.

  Astrid-Gitte hadn’t had much to tell him. She was delightful, as always. Arthur was careful to maintain contact with his friends from school and high-society events.