Chasing Ivan (10 page)

Chapter 17

JO MENTALLY URGED Michael to hurry as he set his cell phone down on the table, and opened an app. Dangling face down over the rail, hooked by the crook in her legs, her calves were really wailing now. She’d been crossing and uncrossing her ankles to shift the weight, but that no longer helped. Soon they would give out and she’d drop. On the upside, by using the monocular’s fine-tuning, she’d brought the phone’s screen into sharp focus.
 

As Kian watched, oblivious to Michael’s sinister intentions, the app came to life. It displayed red, yellow, and green buttons on the left, and a slider switch on the right. “The slider controls the wire’s length,” Michael said, his tone making this achievement out to be the equivalent of cold fusion. To demonstrate, he slid it until the grapefruit looked like a fat man in a tight belt. Michael shifted his gaze to Kian, obviously expecting a reaction.

“Fascinating. What do the buttons do?”

“Green is the release,” Michael said, extending his index finger with a flourish. He ceremoniously tapped the screen, causing the wire to slacken and the puck to thunk onto the table. “It’s heavier than it looks. Now, I want you to remember that button. It’s going to be very important later on. Next is yellow. When I tap this one, like so, the belt begins to tighten. The Swiss precision is too slow to see, but trust me, it’s moving.” He lifted the widget by the puck, and sure enough, after about ten seconds it was tight enough that he could remove his hand without it falling.

“Now, as you might guess, red is the opposite of green. Would you care for the honor?” He proffered the phone.
 

Ever the gentleman, Aspinwall mimicked Michael’s fanfare as he pressed the red button.
 

The grapefruit puckered and then burst as the wire tightened, sending sticky pink juice spraying in all directions. A second later, the puck clattered to the table and Michael lifted the top half of the grapefruit clean off. “No breakfast table should be without one.”

Jo thought Aspinwall was doing a great job of maintaining an enthusiastic face, despite being confronted with what appeared to be a late-night infomercial reject, at the end of long campaign day. Again his response was politely ambiguous. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Michael held up a finger, asking Aspinwall to hold that thought. Then he swapped apps on his phone, and again propped it up on the table so they both could see the screen. Jo strained to get the right new visual angle, adding a cramping back to her list of discomforts. Just a few seconds more, she repeated to herself for the dozenth time.

While both Kian and Jo watched with rapt attention, Michael tapped the screen and the image of a woman appeared. Jo didn’t recognize the face — she’d never been close enough for that — but she did recognize the dress. It was Emily Aspinwall.
 

“What is this?” Aspinwall asked, his tone no longer entirely cordial. “Why are you showing me a video of my daughter?”

Jo studied the picture. The first thing that struck her was that the image was being captured by a lapel camera. The centering was off, as was the angle, and the focus was less than perfect. It was just like the footage shot during her undercover training assignments. The second thing that struck her was the location. Based on the background, she knew where Emily was standing. She needed to let Achilles know, but this wasn’t the time to break away.

“It’s showtime, Ivan,” Michael said, with a raised voice.

Aspinwall looked around for the recipient of Michael’s remark, but didn’t see anybody.
 

Michael redirected his host’s attention to the screen. A hand had popped up in front of the lapel camera. It was holding a smartphone open to the same red-yellow-green button app they’d just seen demonstrated. The hand held it there for a good ten seconds, then the hand dropped and the cameraman moved. He turned Emily toward the railing so that they were both looking out over the Mediterranean, where dozens of festive yachts lit up the harbor.
 

Jo could almost hear music crescendo as the hand on the camera moved to Emily’s shoulder like Jaws coming out of the deep. As the fingers clamped around her flesh, the thumb beckoned for attention. It was tapping against the clasp of her necklace — a clasp that was decorated like a moon, but shaped like a puck.

Chapter 18

“I HAVE A confession to make,” Emily said, staring out at the panorama of bobbing yachts and twinkling stars.

“You can tell me anything, except goodbye,” Andreas said, his hand caressing the back of her neck.

She turned to face him. A string of white bow lights reflected in his eyes like a stairway to heaven. “I’ve never been as happy as I am now, at this very moment. I thought men like you existed only in dreams.”

Andreas replied so softly, she had to strain to hear it over the wind and slapping waves. “You bring out the best in me.”

“I’m sorry. I suppose that sounded sappy. I’m not usually like that. It’s just that I felt as if I knew you so well after all our online conversations, and now I have proof that you’re real.”

“I understand.”

“Do you? Yes, of course you do. That’s kind of my point. I was just, well, so ready for tonight to be a disappointment. Back in London, I mean. And then with all of this,” she gestured with both arms. “It’s … people always hide the bad things online. You only hid good things, starting with your handsome face. Usually it’s the ugly guys who post blurry pictures. And your lifestyle. Not even a coded hint. I just didn’t know guys like you really existed. And there I go again.”

Andreas said, “Let’s forget about the past, and stop worrying about the future, and just enjoy the moment.”

“Sounds great.”

She stood quietly, contently, studying his face. It gave her a different kind of surprise. He’d had work done. Not Botox or hair transplants, but reconstructive work. It was expertly done, but she knew from a summer internship in her uncle’s office how to spot the scars. And his eyes, they weren’t naturally blue. He was wearing colored lenses. All this was normal for the superyacht crowd, she felt sure, but it struck her as out of character for Andreas. He was like her, more Labrador than poodle. “How do you know our host?”

“Voskerchyan? I do work for him from time to time. Perks like this are part of our retainer arrangement.”

If this is a perk
, Emily thought,
the base pay must be fantastic
. “You never told me exactly what kind of consulting it is you do.”

Fireworks erupted with a boom and a series of smaller pops. The first salvo of the evening. Andreas had told her there would be a display to mark the end of the show. Since the best viewing was aft, he’d invited her to the bow, where they could enjoy some privacy. She appreciated the romantic gesture. She was also pleased when Andreas ignored the display in order to give her an answer.
 

Speaking loudly to be heard over the booms, oohs, and aahs, he said, “My work doesn’t really fit in a box. I’m trustworthy, and good at solving problems. Men like Voskerchyan need people they can trust, and they tend to have lots of—”

Still looking at the decorative lights reflecting in Andreas’s eyes, Emily saw them cloud over as his words suddenly ground to a halt. His face followed with an almost schizophrenic transformation, shifting from warm honey to iced steel. Her elation turned to that heart-stopping fear one gets when the doctor looks up from the x-ray and says, “Bad news.”

Chapter 19

JO FOUND HERSELF completely entranced by the scene unfolding before her eyes. Her screaming calves and groaning shoulders had faded to background noise, so engrossing was the human drama unraveling on the deck below. A minute earlier, when Michael had closed the app to heighten Kian’s tension, she’d ripped away to alert Achilles of her findings. Jo had filled him in on Emily and Ivan’s location, along with the devious device The Ghost had surreptitiously strung around her neck.

When she bobbed back down to watch the saga play out, Aspinwall appeared to have no blood going to his face. She appreciated his condition. A single synaptic connection, a literal flash of understanding, had sent him from the top of the world to the bottom of a boot, and left him reeling from the change of altitude. He was lost. The righteous indignation and false bravado that were often the bedrock of a politician’s defenses had no place in discussions involving the safety of their children.
 

Michael was waiting patiently for Aspinwall to come to the conclusion that his only move was the one prescribed, whatever it might be. He was in checkmate.

When he finally spoke, Aspinwall’s voice was little more than a whisper. “What do I have to do?”

Michael’s reply was forceful and quick. “Bring me the head of Prince Albert.”

“What!”

Michael held his gaze, unflinching. He let Aspinwall’s imagination run amok with medieval images of swords and sacks and silver platters, dead eyes and distended tongues and bloodied blades. “Just kidding, Kian. All you need to do is go to His Highness’s reception, as planned, and make a simple statement to the press.”

“I don’t have to hurt anybody?”

Michael shook his head.

“And Emily will be okay?”

“If you’re fast enough, she’ll never even know she came within a finger tap of a slow and agonizing death. She’ll never even imagine the feel of steel closing around her throat, or the overwhelming terror that seizes the mind when lungs are powerless to inflate. She’ll finish off her date completely oblivious to the fact that she spent this evening dancing on the brink, and will go home having enjoyed the best day of her life. If you’re fast enough.”

“What do I have to say?”

“Does it matter?”

Aspinwall paused.

“You’re wasting time, Kian.”

“No, it doesn’t matter.”

Michael handed him a slip of paper that Jo couldn’t see. “Read this out loud. For practice.”

Jo watched Aspinwall’s face run a gamut of emotions before she heard the words, “It’s so nice here, I’m dreading going back to London.”

It took her a second to appreciate the brilliance of the simple sentence. It was a smart bomb. The statement was so plausible, both for its context and its content, that nobody would expect coercion. Who hadn’t made a similar statement while on vacation to someplace as magical as this? But the media would be on Aspinwall’s words like tigers on red meat. Their spin would be relentless. Pundits would come out of the woodwork, disillusioned supporters would be interviewed, outrage would be voiced, all feeding the machine that never slept. Aspinwall hadn’t just implied that the city many considered the finest in the world, the city he was vying to lead, was “not so nice.” He made it clear that he preferred his nation’s historical rival. It was suicide by Freudian slip.

“Your delivery was a bit flat,” Michael said. “But I’m sure you’ll perk up in front of the cameras, with the prince in the room and the Monaco Yacht Show logo over your shoulder.”

Aspinwall swallowed a frog as he nodded. “What kind of guarantee do I have?”

Michael shook his head in disappointment. “The common sense kind, Kian. We could have kidnapped Emily and dangled her over a kennel of starving dogs. But that’s not our style. We’d only do that if you attempted a retraction. Instead, we’ve gone to extravagant lengths to come and go like a bad dream. Tomorrow, there will be no trace of our existence but the footprints on your mind. In time, even you’ll begin to doubt that this was real.”