Might as well have a quick look round before I leave — might see something I fancy.’
He nodded. We headed down towards the centre. There was high ground around us; nothing but snow- capped Alps as far as the eye could see. No fast-food joints. No hire shops offering gloves included. The retail names were all the same as in GUM: Prada, Gucci, Versace.
We passed parking areas with coin-operated telescopes on steel stands. In days gone by, the tourists would have looked at the distant peaks or skiers on the pistes. These days they probably gawped at the multi-million- dollar houses and the Russians who stayed in them. That was what I was going to do, anyway.
‘Park up here a minute, Jacques. I’ll get one last look at the place.’
He pulled into one of the lay-bys and I spilt out. I checked the coin slot. It was two euros for two minutes.
‘You got any cash, mate? I’ll pay you back when I’ve been to a bank.’
He pulled out a large plastic bag from a side compartment. ‘The parking’s very expensive here.’
He passed me the whole thing. Now I knew what the Royal Family felt like when they went walkabout. I threw in ten minutes’ worth.
That pink and yellow fairy picture couldn’t have belonged to a boy. And if it did, Stefan needed to start playing with Action Man or some shit like that. So there was probably a little girl. And if there was a little girl, there was a mother.
I cast about in the general direction of the chalet. He’d looked bored with the designers. He’d be on the move before long. I moved up the road to the high ground. Chances were, he wasn’t down here in the village. This area was for the rich. The super-rich, like everywhere else on the planet, took the high ground — and on the side of the valley where the sun liked to come and stay.
I moved it about until I hit the chalet we’d just left. The Range Rover had gone. Eyes away from the optic, I checked the road left and right. The black blob was heading towards the altiport, contouring one of the higher roads. I shoved in more cash to make sure and followed the road upwards until the Range Rover came back into view.
It disappeared intermittently behind chalets, rocks and trees this side of the road.
It passed a row of four large chalets and this time it didn’t reappear. The chalets were monolithic. Their roof overhangs almost came down to the ground. Their gardens sloped downhill towards me.
There were three bodies in the white expanse of garden at the second chalet from the right. Two small figures in pink all-in-one ski suits. I couldn’t make out their faces. They jumped on a sledge near the top of the slope. Waiting for them at the bottom was an adult in a white all-in-one. She had long dark hair.
I scanned the four chalets and back along the road to the left. Still no black blob.
The sledge reached the bottom of the hill. The woman started dragging it back up. The kids scrambled behind her in the snow. She stopped in her tracks. I focused on her. She was looking up the hill. She waved. I swung the telescope to follow her gaze. A man in jeans and a red jacket was waving back to her from the veranda.
The kids came into view. They scampered past the woman and up towards the man.
I refocused on him. It was Frank.
The two pink all-in-ones were soon running onto the veranda. Big hugs and kisses followed. The white suit climbed onto the veranda and approached him. She kissed him on the mouth.
The two kids bomb-burst past them. I moved the telescope. Mr Lover Man and Genghis moved into the frame. Genghis pretended to box with them as they jumped up at him.
I now knew the other reason Frank didn’t want anyone to know about Tracy and Stefan — including his wife. I’d traipsed around enough galleries and checked out enough Russian family portraits during my culture fest to know about male primogeniture.
The State Tretyakov Gallery was the first place Anna had dragged me to. Sixty-two rooms, 150,000 works of art. That was a week I’d never get back. Most of it was a blur, but it was impossible not to notice that it was all about the boy. The first-born male was top dog, the only one that mattered. The girls could only inherit if there were no males in the way.
Stefan’s job would be to continue Frank’s newly founded dynasty. He’d be the first of a new generation of Russian billionaires who wouldn’t know a lot about the journey their dads had taken out of old Russia, just as the old American robber barons, like the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts, had drawn a veil over what they’d done to trouser their fortunes.
I watched as they disappeared into the chalet, then waited a couple of minutes, but nobody came out again. I jumped back into the Merc and pointed towards the high ground. ‘Those chalets up there — are they the rented ones?’
Jacques turned in his seat. ‘Yes. For the party. Every hotel in Courchevel is full.’
‘Let’s get back to the helicopter. But not the way we came. Through the town. Does that work for you?’
‘Yes, of course.’
He drove further into the resort.
‘By the way, Jacques, aren’t you going to ask me?’
‘I have a new rule, sir. I only speak when I’m spoken to.’
‘Go on. Just this once.’
‘Thank you, sir. So, does it have a pool?’
PART SIX
1
The din from the Cessna Cargomaster’s 675h.p. Pratt & Whitney engine we were almost sitting astride engulfed the cockpit. If it hadn’t been for the headphones I was wearing, I wouldn’t have been able to hear a word of Joe’s rant.
The Indian Ocean was six thousand feet below us. We had another twenty minutes of it at 125 knots before we hit Mogadishu. We’d been following the surf line of the Somali coast north. The country was only a little smaller than Texas, but it had more than three thousand kilometres of coast, about the same as the whole eastern seaboard of the USA. Plenty of space in which to park hijacked shipping, and there was enough of it below. Oil tankers and cargo ships wallowed in the swell. Skiffs were tied up alongside. Rusted wrecks lay on the beach.
The lushness of the Kenyan landscape had been left behind more than an hour ago. Almost the moment we crossed the border, the terrain had turned to dust. There was nothing but sand and rough old brush as far as the eye could see. Further west was Ethiopia, and more of the same. To the north of Somalia was the Gulf of Aden. The country had a lot of unexploited iron ore, gas and oil. So far, the clans had been too busy making money from the sea, but I was sure it was only a matter of time.
The single-prop Cessna was essentially a flight deck with a great big cargo hold up its arse. FedEx used them in this part of the world because they could handle the rough terrain. Guys like Joe also used them to fly in and out of the worst places in Africa to pick stuff up or drop it off. But unlike FedEx, Joe would never be asking for a signature.
In my door compartment there was a headset extension lead that must have reached all the way down to the aluminium roller shutter that doubled as a cargo door. The shutters were originally devised for freefalling; they were easy to open in flight. So Joe not only dropped off things and bodies, he dropped them into places where landing was clearly a bad idea.
He was from Zimbabwe. His accent was as hard and leathered as his skin. ‘Malindi — fucking great, man. I’ve been there ten years now. Fucking Mugabe is a fucking madman. My farm’s been cut up for war veterans.
