Chapter 72
International waters off the coast of Monaco
April 11, 4:10 a.m.
I PULLED ON a black wet suit top and balaclava-style neoprene hood. The night sky was overcast. There was nothing visible anywhere around us except for faint lights a mile or more off the bow of our Zodiac raft, which floated silently.
Louis was already in his wet suit, lashing shut a rubber dry bag with the equipment we’d need. Randall Peaks was futzing around back by the engine, and I was amazed and pleased at what a Saudi prince could do when he’s grateful to someone for keeping his sixteen-year-old daughter out of the headlines.
Need a raft? No problem. Need weapons? No problem—whatever you need, Mr. Morgan. We’ll move heaven and earth to help Private in whatever—
“Ready?” Peaks asked.
“Oui,” Louis said.
“Yes,” I said, and felt myself slip toward a mind-set I was taught in the marine corps and have continued to cultivate over the years: the cold, alert, and harsh way of thinking that seems to take over whenever I’m anticipating violence.
“Hand signals from here on out,” I said.
Peaks started the electric trolling motor mounted next to the outboard, and we started slowly toward the lights. He cut the motor when we were less than five hundred yards from the 120-foot triple-deck motor cruiser. She was sleek and midnight blue, and if it weren’t for the running lights, I think we would have had trouble finding her even with the GPS coordinates we’d been given.
Peaks lowered an anchor to slow the raft’s drift while Louis and I put on swim fins, masks, and snorkels before picking up the small dry bags. We slipped over the side and breaststroked through the swells, constantly scanning the yacht’s three decks. Nothing moved until we were right on the edge of the glow cast by the running lights.
Then Whitey lit a cigarette and walked forward along the rail of the main deck. The second he disappeared around the front of the yacht, we pulled the neoprene up over our lower faces and swam cautiously toward the stern and a wooden swimming platform to which a small speedboat was tied.
We hung off the rear of the smaller craft, stripped off the snorkeling gear, and opened the dry bags. I dog-paddled around the motorboat clenching a Glock 19 between my teeth to keep it out of the salt water. I placed it on the swimming platform. Louis came up beside me.
He climbed onto the platform first and rolled over tight against the hull, just below the painted name of the yacht, which read “Predator.”
I ignored the threat and followed Louis. Barely on the platform, I smelled cigarette smoke and caught sight of Whitey coming around the port side, still on the rear lower deck, moving as if he were on leisurely patrol.
I couldn’t move without being seen. Instead, I drew up the neoprene over my face and smeared myself against the wooden platform, gripping the Glock, pressuring the trigger safety, prepared to fire.
Whitey’s footsteps came closer, and then stopped. I held my breath, listening for the sound of a gun squeaking free of a holster, or worse, a shout of alarm. Instead, he walked on.
I gave Whitey two seconds before pushing up to my bare feet. Without a word or gesture to Louis, I oozed over the stern and onto the mahogany deck, as smooth and quiet as a snake. Whitey was twenty feet away, ambling and smoking with his back to me. I stalked him.
When I had closed the gap between us to less than five feet, I coiled to strike. Whitey seemed to sense something and began to turn, the cigarette glowing in his mouth. By the time he saw me, the butt of my Glock was already chopping toward his skull.
Whitey managed a cough before I hit him just above his right eye. He dropped dumbly to his knees, probably already out cold. But I wasn’t taking any chances. I hammered him again, and he pitched sideways onto the deck. I got zip ties from the dry bag, bound him to the rail, and gagged him while Louis stood guard.
It was ten minutes to five. The first hint of dawn showed on the horizon. We had to move.
Louis led the way off the rear deck, through a sliding glass door, and into a plush living and dining area. We padded forward, pistols leading, and I thought we were being quieter than your average ninja.
Then the dog started barking.
Chapter 73
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” a muffled and frustrated man yelled in French from somewhere on the deck above us. “Goddamn, it’s just Le Blanc getting coffee!”
But the dog wasn’t listening. He was still barking, and we could hear him bounding toward the gangway, which gave us little time to prepare. I looked around, wanting an alternative to killing the dog, and saw none.
Louis, however, grabbed a cushion and a cotton throw from a love seat.
Before I could reach for another cushion, the Jack Russell terrier exploded from the gangway, back bristled, teeth as big as a Doberman’s. He took two surprisingly long jumps, ducked his head, and leaped at my throat.
I ducked, and he sailed over me. Louis swatted him out of the air with the cushion, jumped on him when he hit the floor, and wrapped up the dazed pooch nice and snug and safe in the cotton throw. We used zip ties to keep him that way, though we could not control his shrill, panicked whines, which must have been relatively normal sounds for the dog to make because the man now coming down the gangway seemed irritated but unalarmed.
“If you take a dump before I can let you out, you are a dead little terrorist,” he called in warning as he exited the gangway. “Napoleon, I swear—”
Wearing nothing but red athletic shorts and the silver lighter on a thin chain around his neck, Phillipe Rivier halted at the sight of us aiming pistols at him from less than twenty feet away.
The man who’d ordered his Jack Russell terrier to attack me near the Hôtel Lancaster didn’t yelp, or shrink, or show any outward sign of fear. He just glanced at the open sliding glass door before raising his hands and calmly said, “What do you want? Money? I keep very little aboard, and—”
“We want Kim Kopchinski,” Louis said.
Rivier acted bewildered and said, “Wrong yacht. There is no—”
“We’ve got the right boat,” Louis said. “Now, where is Kim? Or should I put a hole in your kneecap to make you remember?”
Rivier’s calm demeanor vanished. He snarled softly, “Do you have any idea who you’re fucking with here?”
“You’re Phillipe Rivier,” I said, pulling off my hood. “You pose as an import-export entrepreneur. But behind the cover you’re a middleman and silent financier in everything from illegal arms deals to heroin smuggling and human trafficking. It seems there’s nothing you won’t do for an illegal buck, which is why you spend most of your time in international waters with bodyguards, and a vicious little dog for your only real companion.”
Rivier hardened. “You should have kept the hood on, Morgan, because now that I know who you are, I’m going to make sure that you and Private—”
Louis snapped, “You’re doing nothing to him or to Private. We’ve got a copy of that memory stick you use to track your black businesses. That’s how we figured out you have Kim. You were disciplined and careful with the codes and initials and all, but you couldn’t help putting a couple of pictures of your dog on the drive, and one with your brother in the background.”
“Luckily, I recognized the little terrorist,” I said. “And Investigateur Le Clerc of the French National Police in Marseille recognized your brother, Benoit, who, it turns out, is gay, lives in Le Marais, loves Kim, and hates your guts. He told us exactly where to find you. So do the world a favor: shut the fuck up, Mr. Rivier, and go facedown on the floor, hands behind your head.”
Rivier remained furious, but he dropped to one knee and made to put his hands on the ground. That’s when I caught a flicker of motion through the window behind Louis.
The Nose was out there on deck with some other guy. Both men were crouching to aim through the window.
Chapter 74
THROWING UP THE Glock, I shouted “Down!” at Louis and shot t
wo wild rounds at the window. They sounded like cannon fire inside the cabin. Neither bullet connected, but they were close enough to make the two men dive for cover and hesitate to return fire.
“Kill them!” Rivier bellowed.
Louis grabbed the middleman and hauled him up in front of us as a shield.
I put my gun to Rivier’s head and said, “Wrong suggestion, Phillipe. Tell your boys to come in here, or we will do the world a favor and kill you. You’ve got five seconds to decide. Five, four, three…”
Rivier looked as if he’d eaten something rancid, but finally shouted, “Nez! Captain! Lower your weapons and come in here.”
The Nose appeared first, his pistol still up, looking for a clear shot at us, but finding none. We, however, had him dead to rights, and he knew it.
“Drop the weapon, and kick it away,” Louis said.
Rivier’s goon looked at his boss, who nodded. The Nose let the gun slip from his hand. It fell to the carpet and he toed it away.
“Bien,” Louis said. “Now, on your belly, hands behind your head, feet wide. You, same thing.”
The captain, a weathered man in his forties, put the shotgun aside before he even stepped inside the cabin and went facedown on his own. Louis had both men’s ankles and wrists in zip restraints before I did the same to Rivier.
“What do you mean to do to me?” Rivier asked after I’d shoved him down beside the others.
“Depends on you,” I said. “You can continue to stonewall us as to Kim’s whereabouts, which will force us to search the yacht, a time-consuming process that will truly piss us off and force us to take desperate measures with the memory stick, like sending a copy to the police. Or you can tell us where she is, we get her, and we leave you to your sorry-ass life, keeping several copies of your records in various locations as insurance that you will never, ever try to contact Kim again or try to take revenge against us.”
“Sums it up,” Louis said.
“How can I trust you?” Rivier asked.
“We told you the deal,” Louis said harshly. “Take it or leave it.”
Rivier hesitated, and then said, “She’s up one deck and forward. Master stateroom at the end of the hall.”
Relieved that she wasn’t dead, I said, “I’ll get her.”
“I’ll wait here and call our friend,” Louis said.
I suppose I expected to find Kim in handcuffs or tied down. But when I pushed open the door to the stateroom, it was worse than I could have expected.
Rivier had stripped her to her underwear and attached leather straps and bonds to her wrists and legs that held her loosely spread eagle on a bed with black sheets. She was blindfolded, and when she heard me enter, she started to beg in a thick, slurred voice, “Please, Phillipe. Just kill me. I can’t go on like—”
“You’re safe now, Kim,” I said, crossing to her. “It’s Jack Morgan. You’re safe and going home to your grandfather.”
I pulled off the blindfold so she could see it was true, and she dissolved into soft weeping as I pulled my knife from the diving sheath strapped to my calf. I cut free her wrists. When I did, I saw the livid tracks on the insides of her arms. There were syringes in the wastebasket.
“What has he drugged you with?” I demanded.
“Heroin,” she managed. “Trying to get me hooked again.”
I wanted to ask her how in God’s name she’d gotten involved with a guy like Phillipe Rivier, but I figured it could wait. The sooner we were off the yacht, the better. I found a blanket and covered her with it.
“Can you walk?” I asked.
She nodded groggily, and I helped her up. She was wobbly and leaned on me as we left her prison cell and made our way back to the living area. When she saw Rivier, she came out of her stupor and shrieked at him, “I hope you rot in hell for what you’ve done to me.”
“What I did to you?” Rivier said, amused. “You asked for it, Kimmy. You always asked for it.”
She pushed away from me, tried to go for a knife in the galley, but I caught her and said, “That only hurts you. It’s over now. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“I’ll always hurt her,” Rivier said. “She’ll never get away from that, no matter how hard she tries to escape it.”
Kim stared at him, and then broke down sobbing in my arms.
“Get her out of here, Jack,” Louis said. “Our ride’s out there already.”
“Take care of the rest of it,” I said.
“What ‘rest’?” Rivier asked.
As I led Kim toward the rear deck, Louis said, “I’m going to raise your anchor, start your motors, and set a course on your autopilot. In about an hour, an hour and a half, you’ll enter French waters. And when you do, you’ll quickly be boarded by Investigateur Christoph Le Clerc of the Marseille office of the French National Police. He’ll take evidence on an obvious incidence of piracy on the high seas, and the first thing he’s going to collect is that fancy lighter around your neck.”
“What?” Rivier shouted. “We had a deal!”
“Jack, what is this phrase from Animal House again?” Louis asked.
Over my shoulder, I said, “You fucked up. You trusted us.”
Chapter 75
Nice, France
7:22 a.m.
WE BOARDED PRIVATE’S Gulfstream at the airport.
Kim had been quiet for most of the ride in on the Zodiac, nodding off at times. But on the drive from Monaco to Nice, she’d started to shake from withdrawal. We’d anticipated her having some physical issues and had brought along a concierge doctor and nurse. They immediately took Kim to the back of the cabin and shut the divider.
We were soon in the air, heading back to Paris.
“This your normal duty at Private?” Peaks asked from across the aisle. “You know, rescues? That sort of thing.”
“They come up,” I admitted, and yawned. “Why?”
“The prince is happy Maya’s safe, and grateful to you and Langlois,” Peaks said. “I don’t think the same can be said about me.”
“Looking for a job?” I asked.
“If it comes to that,” Peaks said.
“If it comes to that, I’d love to talk,” I said.
Louis, to my surprise, was already snoring in the seat in front of me. I put in earbuds and called up a white noise app for the sounds of waves softly crashing on a beach. It was as if I were home, and that noise was coming in my window. I fell hard and deep.
When I felt someone shaking my shoulder what seemed like a few minutes later, I jerked awake in a foul mood, pulled out the earbuds, and stared angrily at the doctor.
“I didn’t want to disturb you, but you’ve been sleeping an hour,” she said. “And Kim keeps asking for you.”
“Okay,” I said, forcing open my eyes. “I’ll be right there. How is she?”
“Considering what she’s been through, the heroin and all, she’s good,” the doctor said. “We gave her a slight dose of morphine to stay her withdrawal for a more suitable time and place, and a smaller dose of amphetamine salts to keep her heart rate up in the meantime.”
“She stable enough to make the trip to L.A.?” I asked.
“I think so.”
I thanked her and went aft, knocked, and went through the divider. Kim lay under blankets, propped up against pillows. She had an IV in her arm and looked wrung out and pale.
The nurse left and shut the divider behind her.
“You don’t give up, do you, Jack Morgan?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Not as a rule,” I said. “The doc said you wanted to talk to me.”
Kim looked at her lap, bit the corner of her lip, and nodded weakly.
“I owe you an explanation,” she said. “After what you’ve done, you deserve it. But please, I’d appreciate it if my grandfather hears none of this. He’s…he’s one of the few people in my life who always believed the best of me.”
I leaned up against the cabin wall and said, “You don’t owe me an explanatio
n. But whatever you feel comfortable telling me stays with me.”
Chapter 76
OVER THE COURSE of the next forty minutes, Kim gave me the CliffsNotes version of her story. After her parents died in the boating accident, she felt compelled to return to France, where she ended up working in Cannes as part of the film festival staff. She ran with a young, wild Euro crowd. There were drugs, and she got a taste for them, heroin in particular.
Kim met Phillipe Rivier the night of her twenty-fifth birthday at a nightclub in Cannes. He was fifteen years her senior, but he was handsome, sophisticated, mysterious, and by all appearances fabulously wealthy.
“There was also this…” Kim started playing with the blanket. “He was very, very sexy. And it was like in that book, you know?”
“Book?”
“Fifty Shades of you know?” she said. “Except it all took place on the boat.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, and fell silent for several beats. “It was good for a while, an escape from everything, I guess. And then it wasn’t. I realized he was keeping me isolated on the yacht, and when I complained, he either punished me or gave me a little heroin, which kept me in line.”
Kim said she lived aboard Rivier’s yacht for more than two years. During that time, she became a junkie, using the heroin to deaden herself to her predicament.
Then one night, four months before Louis and I got the call from her grandfather, Kim said she overheard Rivier tell Whitey and the Nose that it was time to get rid of her, that the drugs had made her a liability. They were moored in the harbor at Marseille, one of the few times the yacht was so close to land.
“They were going to kill me once we were back out to sea,” Kim said. “Phillipe seemed to get aroused by that because later that evening he came to my cabin for the first time in weeks. I thought he might, so I had prepared.”
Instead of shooting up the powdered heroin he had given her earlier in the day, she’d saved it. When he gave her more, she heated both batches and pretended to shoot it while he stripped off his clothes. She lay back, acting as though she was in a heroin-induced stupor, and when he came to her she stabbed him with the hypodermic needle and drove the drugs into him.