The Geneva Deception

Tom knelt down and gingerly lifted D’Arcy’s arm.

‘His watch,’ he breathed as he tried to get at the fastening. The cold flesh had risen like dough around the black crocodile-skin strap, his blackened fingers leaving dark bruise-like marks on D’Arcy’s pale skin.

‘What about it?’

‘It’s a Ziff.’

‘A Ziff?’

‘Max Ziff. A watch-maker. A genius. He only makes three, maybe four pieces a year. They sell for hundreds of thousands. Sometimes millions.’

‘How can you tell it’s one of his?’ She crouched down next to him.

‘The orange second hand,’ he explained, the catch coming free and the strap peeling away, leaving a deep welt in the skin. ‘That’s his signature.’

‘I’ve seen one of these before,’ she frowned, reaching for it.

‘Are you sure it was a Ziff?’ he asked with a sceptical look. Not only were there so few of them around, but they were so unobtrusive that most people never noticed them when they saw them. In fact that was half the point.

‘It wasn’t a Ziff. It was the same Ziff,’ she insisted. ‘It was in Cavalli’s evidence box. White face with no make on it, steel case, roman numerals, orange second hand and…’ she flipped it over ‘…Yes. Engraved Greek letter on the back. Only this is delta. Cavalli’s was gamma.’

‘Are you sure it…?’ he asked again.

‘I’m telling you, it was identical.’

Tom shook his head in surprise.

‘It must have been a special commission. He normally only makes one of anything.’

‘Then we should talk to him,’ Allegra suggested. ‘If it’s unusual, he might remember who ordered it and where we can find them?’

‘We’d have to go and see him. He doesn’t have a phone.’

‘Where?’

‘Geneva. We could drive there in a few hours and Archie could -’ A sharp electronic tone broke into the conversation. Tom’s eyes snapped to the door. ‘Someone’s coming.’

They leapt towards the exit, Allegra pausing only to hit the close button and snatch her hand out of the way as the door slammed shut. Working quickly, Tom stuffed the keypad back into the recess and screwed the access panel on, rubbing soot over it so that the area blended in with the rest of the wall.

‘Outside,’ Allegra mouthed, dragging him on to the balcony, the air cool and fresh after the panic room’s putrid warmth. Moments later, his back pressed against the stone, he heard the unmistakeable sound of someone crunching through the ash and debris, entering the room and then stopping. Reaching into his backpack for his gun, Tom flicked the safety off. Allegra, standing on the other side of the doorway, did the same.

‘It’s Orlando,’ a voice rasped in Italian. Tom frowned. He sounded strangely familiar. ‘No, it’s still shut…’ A pause as he listened to whatever was being said at the other end, Tom barely daring to breathe in the silence. ‘They’ve cleared away what was left of the bookcase, so they must know it’s there…’ Another pause, Tom still trying to place a voice that he was now convinced he’d heard only recently. If only he could remember when and where. ‘I’ll make sure we have someone here when it opens. It’s the least they can do for us. Otherwise there’s someone in the morgue…we’ve got an agreement…As soon as they bring the body in…Don’t worry, everything’s already set up. I’ll be back before they land.’

The call ended and the footsteps retreated across the room towards the stairs. A few minutes later, the motion sensor beeped again and Allegra let out a relieved sigh. Tom, however, was already halfway across the room, heart thumping.

‘Where are you going?’ she called after him in a low voice. ‘Tom!’ She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back. ‘He’ll hear you.’

Tom spun round, his eyes blazing, a tremor in his voice that he barely recognised as his own.

‘It’s him,’ he spat angrily. ‘I recognised his voice.’

‘Who?’

‘The priest,’ Tom said through gritted teeth, all thoughts of Cavalli and the League and following up on the Ziff watch having suddenly left him. ‘The priest from the Amalfi. The one sent to handle the Caravaggio exchange.’

SIXTY

20th March – 3.52 a.m.

Barrelling through the doorway, Tom took the stairs as quickly as he dared, Allegra on his heels. Nothing made sense any more. Nothing, except that he couldn’t let him get away. He connected whatever had happened here to both the killings in Rome and Jennifer’s death. He could lead Tom to whoever had ordered the hit.

A few minutes later, they emerged breathlessly into the ground-floor lobby.

‘Which way did he go?’ Tom barked at the officer, whose smile had quickly faded as he caught sight of the expression on Tom’s soot-smudged face.

‘Who?’ he stuttered.

‘The man who just came down ahead of us,’ Tom snapped impatiently.

‘No one else has been in since you went up,’ the officer replied in an apologetic voice, as if he was somehow at fault.

‘He must have come in another way,’ Allegra immediately guessed. ‘Probably jumped across from a balcony next door.’

They stepped through the sliding glass doors just as the garage entrance on the adjacent building rattled open. A blood-red Alfa Romeo MiTo chased the echo of its own engine up the slope from the underground car park, Tom glimpsing the driver as he quickly checked for traffic before accelerating down the street.

‘Is everything okay?’ the officer called after them with a worried cry as they sprinted to their car.

‘Are you sure it’s him?’ Allegra asked as she buckled herself in, bracing an arm against the dash as the car leapt away.

‘I remember every voice, every glance, every face from that night,’ Tom insisted in a cold voice. ‘He was as close to me as you are now. It was him. And if he’s here, whoever sent him might be too.’

They caught up with the Alfa near the casino, the priest being careful, it seemed, to stay well within the speed limit. Dropping back to a safe distance, Tom followed him down the hill and through the underpass back towards the port, where workmen were busy disassembling a temporary dressage arena and stables under floodlights. Pulling in, they watched as he parked up and made his way down to the water, where a launch was waiting for him between two topheavy motor cruisers.

‘Drive down to the end,’ Allegra suggested. ‘We’ll be able to see where he’s going.’

With a nod Tom headed for the harbour wall and then got out, pausing to grab a set of nightvision goggles out of his bag. Putting them on, he tracked the small craft as it cut across the waves to an enormous yacht moored in the middle of the bay.

‘Il Sogno Blu,’ Tom read the name painted across its bows. ‘The Blue Dream. Out of Georgetown.’ A pause. ‘We need to get out to it.’

Allegra eyed him carefully, as if debating whether she should try and talk him out of it. Then, with a shrug she pointed back over his shoulder.

‘What about one of those?’

They ran down the ramp on to a pontoon where three small tenders had been tied up. The keys to the second one were attached to a champagne cork in a watertight storage compartment under the instrument panel. A few minutes later and they were slapping across the waves towards the yacht.

‘This will do,’ Tom called over the noise of the outboard as they approached. ‘If we get any closer they’ll hear us. I’ll swim the rest.’

She killed the engine, then went and stood over him as he took his soot-stained tie off and loosened his