'You!' Abdil shouted into his two-way security intercom to the outside world for all to hear. 'I am impregnable in here!' With a flourish, he picked up his phone and called his private emergency service.
A minute later, there was the comforting sound of a helicopter approaching, and Abdil started cursing Vadim, who had been patiently waiting outside. 'Leave while you can, or the men jumping off that chopper will take your other eye for Bubu's sake.'
Abdil heard a giant thud on the roof. The limousine lurched forward and back, then began to lift into the air. He looked out his window in time to see Vadim waving goodbye to him from the ground. Abdil started to shout as the chopper banked to the right with the entire limousine in tow, carrying him up and away.
24
Conrad frantically checked the box one more time, looking for any kind of hidden compartment or false bottom he may have missed. But there was none. There was only this damn watch.
He stared in dismay at Baron von Berg's sole piece of personal jewelry. The dial was stamped with rolex oyster and sported an unusual outer track of black-painted Roman numbers on top and Arabic numbers on the bottom. But that was all. In a vault filled with the wealth of dead Nazis, robber barons, deposed dictators, oil sheiks, and the like, why would SS General Ludwig von Berg have gone to such great lengths simply to preserve an old watch?
It felt like a bad joke.
Not only did Conrad have to get out of here in one piece, there was no way Abdil would believe that this watch was all he'd found, much less hand him millions in cash for it.
There had to be more to this watch than sentimental value to a crazy Nazi.
Just like the name of the Roman god of war carried some meaning for Baron von Berg, so, too, did the number 1740 for the box. The same had to be true of this watch, which had its hour and minute hands stopped at midnight-or noon. That was no accident. The watch didn't stop winding down at that exact minute. Von Berg had left it that way.
A crazy thought seized Conrad. Von Berg may have been insane, but he was a military man, too. Military men, as Conrad knew all too well from growing up with the Griffter, used military time. And 1740 hours meant 5:40 p.m.
Conrad carefully pulled out the watch's side-turning knob and slowly adjusted the hands until the hour hand reached the number five on the dial and the minute hand reached the number eight.
When he pushed the thumb knob down again, the watch's two-piece screw-back case fell open. A coin hit the table and rolled onto the floor.
Conrad quickly snatched it up. It was an ancient Roman coin with a Caesar's bust and an eagle on the back. It was oddly familiar; it reminded him of the Tribute Penny that Serena wore around her neck. But that medallion was one of a kind.
Or was it?
Conrad quickly inserted the coin snugly beneath the gears of the watch and replaced the back case, inside of which was stamped oyster watch co. Then he strapped the watch to his wrist, closed the box, and stepped out into the vault with his shoulder bag. Without bothering to call for Elise, he slid the box back into its slot and walked out.
The security guard by the desk was already calling upstairs by the time Conrad stepped into the old brass elevator and let the doors close. As soon as they did, he dropped to the floor and reached into his bag to remove a knife.
He cut along the hidden seams beneath the carpet and then pulled the tiny hook in the corner he had seen to reveal a lower compartment. That was where the VIPs had entered and exited in secret from the old tunnel Midas had sealed up.
Conrad had seen this type of elevator only once before-Hitler's old Eagle's Nest retreat atop Mount Kelstein in Bavaria. The Nazis had bored a four-hundred-foot elevator shaft in the center of the mountain. That 1938 brass elevator was also a double-decker. Hitler and his important guests rode the brass-lined upper cabin to the top while his guards and supplies for the house rode unseen in the bottom cabin.
Conrad placed an explosive puck on the floor of the upper cabin and dropped into the bottom cabin and pulled the trapdoor shut. He then pulled out his hazmat gas mask and waited in the dark with a small detonator in his hand.
When the elevator stopped and the door in the top cabin opened in the bank's lobby, he heard shouts from security guards at the sight of the empty compartment. He then pressed the button and exploded the puck containing the knockout gas sufentanil. There was more shouting, and a body dropped with a crash in the cabin above him.
It took him a minute longer than he expected to pop the trapdoor open, but then he crawled out into the lobby and stood up, hearing loud hacking coughs as he stepped over the bodies.
The porter at the front door had managed to press a silent alarm before going down, and when Conrad finally stepped outside and ripped off his mask, the sound of sirens blared.
He walked quickly down the street, turned a corner, and hailed a cab. He was opening the door when the sound of a helicopter forced him to look up. To his astonishment, he saw the screaming face of Abdil Zawas pressed against the window of his limousine before it disappeared with the chopper over the roof of the UBS building.
Conrad quickly climbed into the back of the cab and said, 'American embassy.'
25
Midas stood in what he considered to be his rightful place next to the French president, his wife, and Papa Le Roche at the curb outside Saint Roch as they silently watched pallbearers load Mercedes's flag-draped coffin into the back of the hearse, which would take it to the more intimate burial service at the family's tomb at Pere Lachaise Cemetery.
Midas did his best to look somber before the crowds and cameras, but those next to him had more practice, and he had to work at keeping his chest from swelling with pride from his arrival at the pinnacle of European society. He'd had to buy his way in with the Brits, and even then his acceptance had felt forced. The Parisians were far more accommodating of his violent reputation, which for them only seemed to add a dash of romance to his otherwise mysterious background.
'Mercedes did love her rogues,' he heard Papa Le Roche repeat outside, although the plural reference reminded Midas of Conrad Yeats, and the thought that he and Yeats had shared Mercedes disturbed him. He took comfort in the knowledge that shortly, Yeats would be joining the dearly departed in the afterlife. It was all Midas could do to keep from checking his BlackBerry for word from Vadim in Bern.
Papa Le Roche then clasped arms with Sarkozy, Carla, and Midas. To great effect, he upstaged Midas by climbing into the front of the hearse himself-there was room for only one passenger, presumably the most important man in Mercedes's life-to ride with his daughter to the cemetery.
As soon as the black Volvo hearse drove off down the Rue Saint-Honore past the throngs of onlookers held back by police and metal fences, Midas turned to Sarkozy. 'Are you going to the burial?'
The French president shook his head. 'Rhodes calls. The world is a mess. Turmoil in the markets. War in the Middle East. We do what we can. I am to give the opening and closing presentations at the summit. I am but a bookend.'
'I will see you there, then,' said Midas, and clasped arms with Sarkozy and then enjoyed a double kiss with Carla before France's first couple climbed into their presidential limousine.
As Midas watched their motorcade drive off, led by police on motorcycles, he felt the pleasant vibration of power in the form of his BlackBerry calling. He picked up the call from Vadim. 'So we are rid of Yeats once and for
