would see eighty cents on every dollar for his role in providing the necessary infrastructure and support, but then again, he was doing all the heavy lifting. There would be plenty of money to go around, and his company would go from being a virtual non-player in the Americas to a heavyweight, overnight.
He poured another jolt of spirit into his glass and swallowed it, swishing it around in his mouth to better appreciate its nuance.
This was a setback, but one he could recover from. He just had to keep his head and be clever.
The first thing he would need to do was hire a new security group. Whatever had happened with Yuri, these kinds of mistakes couldn’t be tolerated — first the debacle in Trinidad, then the failed execution in Israel…Yuri had obviously either gotten sloppy or had lost his touch. It didn’t really matter which. Grigenko couldn’t afford to have second-rate talent working for him. Yuri had been the best at one point, but no longer, and it was time to retire him. If he surfaced, a bullet to the back of the head in a Moscow alley would permanently terminate their relationship.
He sat down heavily and sighed.
What should have been a week of triumph had culminated in his greatest defeat.
That couldn’t stand.
It was time to get off the mat and start swinging again. He had delegated too much responsibility to Yuri, and the man had failed him. There was an important lesson in that. If he wanted something important done right, he needed to attend to it himself and not hand it off to underlings. There were no shortcuts.
Thinking through his next steps, he flipped open his rolodex and pulled out a card, then put his feet up on his desk and leaned back as he dialed a number.
“Andrei. It’s Mikhail Grigenko. Yes, yes. It has been too long. My friend, I think today is your lucky day. Can you come over for lunch?”
~ ~ ~
Tom wiped sweat off his face as he rounded the bend to the single lane bridge in the optimistically-named town of Hopeville, just north of Punta Gorda. The damned Nissan was running rough again, either because of the crap gas he’d been getting or something wrong with the fuel system. It coughed and protested as he crept over the water, and he mentally committed to changing the fuel filter tomorrow no matter how unpleasant the weather was.
He made a left onto the dirt road that led to his tiny house, and the old truck shuddered, wheezing like an asthmatic in a dust storm.
“Come on, baby. Just a little farther,” he coaxed, stroking the dash hopefully, as though his encouragement would make the difference in the vehicle making it or not.
The engine died with a gasp, and the headlights dimmed as it continued rolling from the momentum. He pulled onto the grass at the side of the road and cursed, then got out and began walking to his house, just a hundred yards up the road.
Even at ten at night, the heat was oppressive, and he swatted at mosquitoes that quickly found him as he wearily trudged home.
The single silenced bullet caught him in the back of the head as he passed his front porch. He tumbled face forward, dead even as he dropped.
His killer approached from behind. Nudging Tom’s inert form with his foot, he pulled a cell phone from his pocket and made a call.
“Problem solved. Get someone to drop him into the ocean — let the sharks take care of him. We don’t need any questions being asked.”
“Five minutes.”
“I’m out of here.”
Chapter 29
A stunning young blonde with aggressively-styled short hair, wearing a black leather jumpsuit that clung to her like a second skin, stood at the roulette table in the Salon Europe of the world famous Grand Casino de Monte Carlo, playing five thousand dollars at a spin. She had arrived an hour earlier and was now up — she had two hundred thousand dollars of chips in front of her after starting the evening with a hundred and fifty. A small gathering of admirers, mostly male, watched as she won and lost, her outfit drawing as much scrutiny as her winning streak, all shiny, supple surfaces and chrome zippers. Her bronze skin accented the captivating almond shape of her eyes, and even in a venue that was no stranger to beautiful women, she was a stand out.
Jet pushed more chips onto black and nodded to the croupier, who watched as other players made their bets before he closed the gaming and gave the wheel a spin. She sipped her mineral water with a lime twist, the pink of her tongue darting seductively out of her mouth to catch a stray droplet on her bottom lip. A collective pause in the breathing of the spectators accompanied the slowing of the wheel, and a muffled exclamation greeted her winning yet again.
By any standards, the casino was opulent, filled with the wealthy from all over Europe, Russia and the Middle East, a favorite of the rich and famous for generations. The building exuded old money and prosperity, and boasted a reputation that had been carefully groomed for over a hundred and fifty years. Made famous to the general population after featuring in several James Bond films, it was a staid playground for the well-heeled in a country where one needed a minimum income of approximately five hundred thousand dollars a year to reside.
She threw her head back and laughed at a flirtatious comment from an extremely handsome Swiss gentleman in his forties, who had whispered in her ear by way of congratulation. Her eyes sparkled in the light cast by the overhead chandeliers as she wagged her finger at the prospective suitor, who was as taken with her as the other men who had decided to pause from their gambling near her table.
Round and round the wheel spun, meting out its rewards and punishments dispassionately, the croupier acting as the master of ceremonies in a never-ending celebration of Lady Luck’s fickle tango.
Her phone vibrated in her hand. She glanced at the text message before deleting it. Two words that signaled the real start of her evening.
[He’s here]
Samuel Terin was a Hollywood legend, an iconoclastic director who rubbed shoulders with an entourage of A-list celebrities and who was frequently connected to one beautiful starlet or another. His last three films had set box office records, and his distinctive long hair and week-old growth of beard made his still ruggedly handsome fifty-something-year-old face instantly recognizable the world over. No stranger to the casino, he was considered one of the more eligible bachelors prowling the Euro corridors — whenever he wasn’t knee-deep in making a movie, he routinely spent his spring and early summers at his villa on the outskirts of nearby Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, a stone’s throw away in the South of France.
She knew from the newspapers, as well as the dossier that David had received from his American contact, that roulette was his favorite game of chance — just as she knew that his reputation as a lecherous playboy was well-deserved, and that he secretly favored bondage, discipline and S amp;M play — sometimes so rough that it had taken considerable financial incentive to keep delicate matters out of the public eye. He favored young women, preferably blond, athletic and intellectual, the more exotic and alluring the better. And he seemed to have a weakness for dominant ones, but not Germanic, mannish domination — more eclectic and stylish than that, his taste running to French and Dutch when in Europe.
Her entire appearance had been crafted to attract him. The leather outfit, the hair, the high-rolling bets, the intoxicating perfume that was one of his favorites — the dossier had been remarkably thorough, as good or better than any she’d been given while with the Mossad. David’s CIA contact had come through for him on this, and also by obtaining a set of blueprints that was as closely guarded a secret as any nuclear device.
Grigenko was the sort of new money that enjoyed the proximity of the kind of fame only Hollywood could deliver. He counted as his friends a long list of movie stars, producers and directors, one of whom was the
