Pirate: A Thriller Read online

  “Drive,” the Frenchman said to the driver, ignoring Madame Li. The big car gathered speed smoothly and was almost instantly cruising at well over one hundred kilometers per hour, gracefully moving through the light morning traffic headed toward Paris.

  The Frenchman pushed a button in the center console and a grey felt privacy panel slid up behind the driver’s head. Then he fingered another panel of buttons, one that reclined his seat back to a more comfortable angle and another to dim the interior lights to a soft warm glow. A muted flat-screen monitor mounted on his armrest was tuned to local news. Some kind of procession was leaving Charles de Gaulle for Paris via the A-1 motorway. In the center of the procession, amidst a sea of flashing blue lights, a black Maybach limousine identical to the one Madame Li was riding in.

  “I am Luca Bonaparte, madame,” the Frenchman said, extending a stiff hand to be shaken. “This beautiful Maybach belongs to my dear friend here, Baron von Draxis. He was kind enough to volunteer his splendid vehicle for today’s operations. He insisted on picking you up as he has heard so many interesting things about you.”

  “I’m a very interesting person. I am also not subject to anyone’s approval. I am here to do a job and I intend to do it.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Don’t misunderstand. The baron here is a great friend to our mutual cause. So. You have a lot of work to do here in Paris. Are you fully prepared?”

  Madame Li sat back and regarded the two men without a reply.

  Bonaparte was as described by Major Tang. Good-looking enough to be a French film star, with a powerful intelligence burning within his dark eyes. His Chinese was beyond fluent. The German was beefy and bullet-headed but wearing a beautiful grey cashmere roll-neck sweater under a soft black calfskin jacket. Rich. Very, he decided. Rumor had it he’d made a fortune building supertankers for the French.

  Madame Li crossed his legs and smiled. “Yes, I had a lovely flight, thank you for asking. The service was cheerful, the food delicious, although I detested the movie, something politically correct about Rwanda.”

  “Your sarcasm is ill-advised. Suppose you behave yourself.”

  “Suppose you let me explain something to you, Comrade Bonaparte,” he said in flawless French. “I am attached to the personal staff of General Sun-yat Moon of the People’s Republic of China. I hold the rank of colonel in the PLA. I am here at his behest, not yours. I am only in your country because of his personal involvement in your current situation. As it happens, his desires, and those of China herself, intersect with your own at this moment in history. That may not always be true. It is an alliance of convenience. You would do well to remember that.”

  “Are you quite finished with your geopolitical lecture, Madame Colonel?”

  “No. I don’t like surprises. You were supposed to meet me, not him. I know why he’s here. You two are appraising me, deciding whether I’m up to the task. Well, I don’t take orders from you, or him, or anyone else. I expect to be treated with the respect and courtesy befitting my rank and the current state of affairs between our two countries.”

  There was a brief silence as the French minister considered this. Bonaparte had asked the Chinese in Beijing for a supremely qualified assassin. Their best, in fact. He’d clearly gotten even more than he’d asked for. He looked at von Draxis and smiled, raising his hands in a gesture of helplessness. Male shorthand for “What can one do?” When he next spoke, his voice was gentle and well-oiled.

  “Sorry, Comrade Colonel. My profound apologies.”

  “That’s much better. Continue to use that tone and we shall get along splendidly. Now, precisely when does this operation commence?”

  “It has already begun. If you push that button by your right hand, a small monitor will come up out of the armrest. Good. There is the newscast showing the motorcade a few miles up ahead. You see the vehicle similar to our own, yes? Inside that car is the sultan of Oman, who has just arrived for a state visit. I am personally awarding him the Légion d’Honneur at a ceremony tomorrow morning.”

  “Why are you telling me this?”

  “As you know, we always field a decoy vehicle or two on such occasions. To thwart potential terrorist attacks.”

  “Naturally,” Madame Li said. “Standard procedure.”

  “This morning, after a press conference at the Elysée Palace, a sécurité spokesman leaked a last-minute schedule change to a paid informant. He was told that I myself, and not Prime Minister Hon-fleur, would be greeting the sultan at the airport.”

  “Ist gut, ja? The media follows that car and not this one. That one on the television,” von Draxis said in his thickly guttural German accent, “that is the sultan’s.”

  “I made the connection, Baron,” Madame Li said, unable to hide his irritation with this kind of condescension. “But why?”

  “We want the media choppers following the other car,” Bonaparte said calmly. “You’ll find out why in a minute.”

  “Das ist sehr gut,” the German said, amused at the little woman’s impatience with them. He opened an aluminum case that was resting on his lap. Inside, nestled in black foam, a lightweight assault weapon and two rocket grenades. Von Draxis quickly assembled the weapon and affixed a grenade to the muzzle. A broad smile spread across the Teutonic features.

  “Schatzi and his toys,” Bonaparte observed with some amusement.

  “You should see mine,” Madame Li said with a coy smile. He found himself relaxing, having fun.

  “Fasten your seat belt,” Bonaparte said, “I see we are getting close.” He lifted a receiver from its cradle and said a few words to the driver. The big car slowed perceptibly approaching an overpass over the A-1 motorway to Paris.

  “Ach! Here zey come,” von Draxis said.

  A second later, another vehicle swerved into view beside them traveling at high speed. It braked hard, slowing to match the pace of the Maybach. A hooded gunman was visible by the rear window of the nondescript Citroën sedan. As the distance between the two cars narrowed to six feet or less, a bearded man lowered the tinted window and pointed the muzzle of a heavy automatic weapon directly at the Maybach.

  Madame Li’s instinct was to dive for the floor, but the seat belt and the meaty hand of the German on his shoulder kept him pinned to his seat. There was a muffled rattle from the sedan and heavy thuds as high-caliber rounds slammed into the door. The armor inside the door shuddered and stopped the bullets, but it was disconcerting, to say the least. He plainly saw the gunman, who wore a black balaclava, raise his sights, now aiming at the window inches away from his face.

  “Get us the fuck out of here!” Madame Li screamed, and Luca looked over at her, amazed. The genteel and aristocratic female voice was gone, replaced by that of an older man, crazed with fear for his life.

  “Schatzi, if you don’t mind?” Bonaparte said, pushing a button that retracted the large sunroof above their heads. Sunlight flooded the car and also the sound of a second automatic weapon at very close range. Another gunman was firing at the front-seat window, attempting to take out the Maybach’s driver.

  Von Draxis, frighteningly quick for his size, got to his feet with the stubby grenade launcher in his hands. At that moment, the first gunman opened up again. The passenger window by Madame Li’s face instantly frosted over in overlapping starburst patterns as the heavy rounds slammed into the thick glass. Madame Li closed his eyes and waited for the next burst. There was a pause in the fire as if the terrorist shooter could not believe what he was seeing. He was firing from less than six feet away!

  “Now, Schatzi,” Luca Bonaparte said.

  The German was standing now, his feet wide apart to maintain balance. He was tall enough so that his body from the chest up was outside the big Maybach. He raised his weapon and fired. As he did, the Frenchman lowered the shattered window so they could see.

  A loud whoosh above Li’s head and then a thunderclap explosion and a flash of fire lit the interior of the Citroën. The blast blew the roof off the sedan a
nd thick black smoke poured from the blown-out windows as the car careened away, out of control. As the Maybach accelerated, Madame Li saw the burned-out sedan hit a bridge abutment head-on, and then the fuel tank blew. Flame and smoke climbed into the morning air. Out of nowhere, a motorcycle escort appeared around them and the big car surged forward and sped away from the carnage, quickly reaching a speed of 170 kph on the A-1 to Paris Centre Ville.

  Madame Li sat back and closed his eyes. The powerful air-conditioning systems were quickly sucking the sharp smell of cordite out of the Maybach’s interior. He was content to wait for the explanation he knew would come. In the meantime, he formulated the message he would encode and transmit to the Golden Dragon as soon as he was comfortably checked into his suite at the hotel.

  For the next forty-eight hours, he would be working with a man who was absolutely fearless and unstoppable. General Moon’s assessment had been correct. Luca Bonaparte was precisely the man Beijing had been looking for, for a long, long time.

  “Well, that’s done,” Bonaparte said, and, with an appreciative nod to the German, reclined his seat once more. There was apparently a humidor in the console, because he extracted a cigar and fired it with a beautiful gold lighter. It was engraved with an ornate B encircled by an olive wreath.

  Delusions of grandeur? This modern Bonaparte was many things, but Madame Li didn’t think delusional was one of them. A twisted visionary, perhaps, nothing new about that. Expelling a cloud of pungent smoke, he said, “Sorry, how rude of me, Madame Li. Would you care for a cigar? Schatzi doesn’t touch tobacco.”

  “I think not.”

  “A Vegas Robaina. A gift from my amigo, Fidel, during my last visit to his island paradise. A manly smoke.”

  “You are most amusing, Monsieur Bonaparte,” Madame Li said with a wry smile. He’d dropped his guard during the heat of the moment and he’d caught it. Madame was a monsieur.

  “Sorry if we alarmed you,” Bonaparte said, “but there wasn’t really time to explain.”

  “I think we have a few minutes just now,” Madame Li said.

  “Yes. By all means, let me explain. There was a young man in that Citroën named Philippe Honfleur. He was the youngest son of our current prime minister. He was the unwilling guest of a small cadre of rightist paramilitary types hired by me to attack this vehicle. Needless to say, they did not know that I would fight back. This outrageous attack on me by the prime minister’s son and his would-be fellow assassins will be viewed as a blatant attempt to derail my negotiations with the sultan of Oman. The evening news will be full of the attempts on both our lives.”

  “Clever boy,” Madame Li said, chuckling. In truth, he admired the ruse.

  “Sometime in the next few hours, the badly charred body of the prime minister’s son will be identified by the police medical examiners,” von Draxis said, smiling broadly. “The press will go insane.” He was busily putting his weapon to bed in the aluminum case.

  “Very impressive,” Madame Li said, and he meant it. The scheme was inspired. And the German clearly a man of great courage and cunning. “Will I see you again, my dear Baron?”

  “My work here for the moment is ended, Frau Li,” von Draxis said. “My plane is even now warming its engines at Le Bourget. I must get back to my beloved Valkyrie, my yacht, you see, so, I will be leaving you. I am only sorry that I won’t be joining you for the fete at Château Belmaison this evening.”

  “A fete?”

  “Mais oui, madame. I have invited the sultan of Oman to Paris. Tomorrow morning at the Palais he is to receive the Légion d’Honneur. Tonight, I am hosting a soiree to celebrate this great honor to be bestowed upon His Excellency, the Sultan,” Luca said. “Une bal masqué at my country estate. You are invited to this masked ball, Madame Li.”

  “I accept with pleasure. We will miss you, Baron von Draxis,” he said and offered the German his hand. The baron took it and smiled, his blue eyes crinkling in a most warm expression of goodwill.

  Von Draxis added, “Zo, Frau Li, we have now this day begun the inevitable spiral toward a new world. This is what shall later be called history, madame. Enjoy it.”

  “Indeed. Who knows what reprisals against the current government we might expect? Or what the lunatic extremists who support me might extract in retaliation for this craven attempt on my life?” Bonaparte said, and expelled a cloud of smoke with great satisfaction. “We might even see another most unfortunate assassination.”

  “Or two.” The baron chuckled. The car slid to a stop in front of a hangar at Le Bourget and the German climbed out. The driver shut the door, climbed behind the wheel, and the Maybach accelerated away. Luca reclined his seat and expelled a great cloud of Cuban cigar smoke.

  “Bienvenue à Paris, Madame Li,” Bonaparte said.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hampstead Heath

  CONGREVE, HIS VIVID IMAGINATION HOUNDED BY BASKERVILLES, was racing across the haunted Grimpen Moor in the north of England, when the telephone jangled. He was so deeply lost in his beloved and well-thumbed Sherlock Holmes volume, he’d first thought the ring was part of the cracking good story. He looked up at the brass ship’s chronometer mounted on the wall above his reading chair. There was a click and whir. Eight bells tolled midnight in the cozy sanctuary of his library.

  He reached for the phone.

  “Hullo,” he said into the mouthpiece, and waited for whatever bad news was even now inexorably zipping along the wires in his direction.

  “Is that Ambrose Congreve?”

  “Yes, I suppose it is. Who’s calling, please?”

  “Oh, Ambrose, it’s Diana Mars. I’m so sorry to ring at such a wretched hour. But I felt that I had to call immediately.”

  “Are you in some kind of danger, Lady Mars?”

  “Call me Diana, please. No, I’m not. But I fear you may be.”

  “Ah, well, in that case, you needn’t be alarmed. I’m quite accustomed to danger, you see. Goes with the territory, as they say in the, uh—territories.”

  “Ambrose, please, hear me out. I think your life may be in grave danger. If you don’t mind, I’d—I’d rather not speak of this over the telephone.”

  “Well, I could drive over to Brixden House. At this time of night, it would take me only about—”

  “No, no. Not in this house. I’ll explain when I see you. I’d drive myself over to you but there’s something wrong with the Bentley. It’s the only car I have keys for…and, well, I don’t want to rouse my chauffeur.”

  “A pub somewhere in between us? No, that won’t work. Too late.”

  “All closed. I know what we’ll do. We’ll meet down at Spring Cottage. It’s all shut up but I have a key, naturally. Do you know it? My summer house?”

  “The Tudor structure on the river below the main house.”

  “Exactly. Can you meet me there in half an hour?”

  “Half past. Jolly good. See you then.”

  He hung up the phone. For some reason, when he stood up, he tried to touch his toes. Hadn’t done it in years, but he felt just spry enough at the moment to attempt it. Blast. No luck. Couldn’t do it now, because his damn belly got in the way. Still, it felt pretty damn good to limber up a bit. Get the old blood flowing before one sprang into action. He stopped on his way out the door and shook his head, laughing at this picture of himself, the still-vigorous knight-errant taking up his battle-weary lance and entering the lists once more.

  In his dressing room, shedding his navy silk pajamas, he paused by the small bow window seat and sat on the cushion. What does one wear to a secret midnight rendezvous in a deserted house? Considering a selection of tweed jackets, he chanced to notice through the window that lights were still on in Mrs. Purvis’s bedroom. Upon returning from hospital, she had been installed in the rooms over the gardener’s cottage some few hundred yards distant. It was decided that she would be far more comfortable there than in her prior digs, the small bed-sitting room under an eave on the third floor of Heart’s
Ease Cottage.

  Mrs. Purvis not sleeping well? The doctor had said she’d be uncomfortable for at least another month. The bullet had torn a muscle in the chest wall that would be slow to heal. Poor dear. Ambrose had had no idea just how much her cheery presence meant until she was gone.

  He chose a much-loved tattersall shirt, and a cavalry twill jacket over an old pair of flannels. Then, with a shudder of pleasure, he slipped on the brand-new pair of driving shoes he’d bought at Mr. J.P. Todd’s establishment. They were red, a rather vivid shade, which Ambrose thought gave them quite a racy flair. Dorothy’s slippers, Sutherland had called them upon their debut, and Congreve, unlike Ross himself, had not been even slightly amused.

  He switched off the lights in his dressing room and the single lamp beside his bed and headed for the back staircase. At the end of a short corridor was a door to a room he’d seldom entered until very recently. An enchanted room, full of magic and wonder he’d only just discovered. He took three long strides and was there, hand on knob.

  He could hardly believe his zooming pulse rate as he entered his garage and reached for the light switch.

  Click.

  Oh.

  Just the light reflected in the mirror finish of the long sculpted bonnet took his breath away. The car, his car, was a Morgan. The 1962 Plus Four Drophead. Forty-three years old, but she’d undergone a frame-off, rubber up restoration, whatever that meant. Wooden chassis, ash, stainless-steel wire wheels with spinners. A newish color one seldom saw on a Morgan, bright canary yellow for the body with a sort of Harrod’s green for the fenders. Forced to choose a word to describe the paint scheme to someone, he might use the word “snappy.” Yes, he thought, opening the driver’s side door and climbing behind the wooden steering wheel, definitely snappy.

  And he’d bought the two-seater machine off the Internet (actually, his pal Chappy Morris at the Crown and Anchor had done it all on the pub’s office computer) for a good deal less than twenty thousand quid! Why, he’d simply stolen the jewels when you thought about it.