Tino Coluzzi drove rapidly through the forest, both hands on the wheel, face crowding the windscreen as he negotiated the single-lane road. It was crow-black. The canopy was so dense it denied the slightest light from the night sky. The track turned to the right and dropped. His stomach fell with it. Something large darted across his path. He braked. A shadow disappeared into the brush. A stag.
After leaving the highway at the village of Buchères, Coluzzi had cut his headlamps. The hills were filled with cabins belonging to hunters and those who’d simply withdrawn from society. He was anxious not to alert anyone about the Château Vaucluse’s midnight visitor.
Another turn. The car shuddered as he crossed a barren stream. A dramatic incline and he was free of the forest. Stars appeared above a vista of rolling hills. He could see the château squatting on the hilltop a hundred meters ahead. It was a hulking structure with stone walls, narrow windows, and a slate roof. A local baron had built it as his hunting lodge two hundred years earlier. For decades it had sat empty and in disrepair. Coluzzi had picked it up at auction for a song.
He crested the ridge and steered the car into the forecourt, breathing easier as the tires dug into the gravel driveway. He continued through the archway and parked in the garage, certain to immediately lower the door behind him. Retrieving the case containing the money and the prince’s calfskin satchel, he crossed to the main building. Before unlocking the servants’ door, he paused and closed his eyes to listen. All was still. Far away an owl hooted. Then there was nothing but the wind.
Inside, he carried the cases to the kitchen and, with a grunt, threw them onto the island. The nearest house was three kilometers away. Still, he moved from window to window, checking that the shutters were closed. Only then did he turn on the lights.
He stared at the cases for a minute, then descended to the cellar, picked out a decent Burgundy, and returned. He knew to a penny what was in one of the cases. The contents of the second were a mystery.
He poured himself a glass of wine and drank it slowly, pondering his dilemma. Stop now. Do as agreed. Deliver the briefcase to the American, waiting for him even now at a hotel in Fontainebleau. Don’t ask any questions and walk away. His cut was seventy percent. Over four hundred thousand euros. For the next few years, life would be easy.
The right course of action was plain to see.
And yet…why had he come to his château?
Coluzzi ran his hand over the smooth calfskin, tapping a manicured fingernail against the polished lock. He was a thief. He could no sooner ignore the prince’s briefcase than he could leave an untended purse on a counter.
Setting down his wine, he went to work. Naturally, the case was locked and his set of picks nowhere at hand. With the help of a paper clip and a nail file, he freed the clasp, careful to leave the escutcheon unblemished. With the same care, he removed the case’s contents. One Saudi diplomatic passport. Several files containing documents written in Arabic, and thus incomprehensible. A printout of an email from a “V. Borodin”—happily in English—with the header “Landing Instructions / Cyprus,” giving the name of an airfield, coordinates, and radio frequencies. An envelope holding the bill from the hotel. Another overflowing with receipts cataloguing purchases made during the prince’s stay. One copy of The Economist. One copy of Paris Match. One oversized business card on the finest stock in the name of “Madame Sophie,” listing a phone number and an address in the 16th arrondissement, and redolent of costly perfume.
And, finally, another three packets of currency totaling thirty thousand euros. He thumbed the bills, considering whether to add them to the grand total to be split among his crew. The answer was a resounding “No.” Finders keepers.
He studied the items on the table. Nothing appeared to be of value, though he was always pleased to learn the name of a high-class madame. There were no jewels, no bearer bonds, no plutonium, no secret formula for a nuclear bomb or for eternal youth. Nothing close to what his criminal mind had labored to imagine since taking the job.
Either the American was mistaken and something was missing or Coluzzi hadn’t found it yet.
Certain it was the latter, he opened the briefcase and ran his fingers along its interior lining. No surgeon had a more delicate and perceptive touch. He found the hidden pouch without difficulty. He retrieved a flashlight from the pantry and shone it inside, running a thumbnail along the top seam. A spring mechanism opened an eight-inch pocket. He removed the manila envelope inside and withdrew the contents.
Five minutes later, he replaced them and returned the envelope to its hiding place.
Coluzzi had been right to recognize the cruelty in the prince’s gaze. The papers he was carrying were correspondence between the FBI and the Saudi Arabian Mabahith, discussing the transfer of a prisoner from U.S. to Saudi detention.
The prince, it seemed, was the chief of his nation’s secret police.
But surely the American knew this already. After all, he was some sort of spy himself. Such information did not warrant employing Coluzzi’s services.
There had to be something else.
Coluzzi poured himself another glass of wine and waited for his heart to slow. There was nothing more hidden in the case’s walls. He was sure of it. Therefore, it must be concealed in a false bottom. He pressed his fingertips around the perimeter, searching for a release. He picked up the case, studying it from each side, then from below. He decided the prince wasn’t the sort to waste time searching for a hidden release mechanism. He set the briefcase back down on the counter and studied the lock. To open the case one had to first unlock it, then slide a circular nub to the left. He tried pushing the nub up, then down. Nothing happened.
Suddenly angry, he depressed the nub with his thumb. Harder still. He felt a catch. A tray slid from the base of the satchel.
Voilà!
Coluzzi pulled the tray all the way out. He viewed the contents and his heart sunk. A letter, he thought disappointedly as he took the envelope in his hands. It was small, square rather than rectangular, and unsealed. No name, but an address on the rear flap. Coluzzi was not an educated man in the traditional sense and it took him a moment to recognize the words embossed in blue ink.
“Really?” he whispered.
With care, he removed the paper inside and read the engraved header. Beneath it, in gold leaf, was a drawing of a structure he vaguely recognized.
“Dear Colonel,” the note began.
The body of the letter was handwritten in neat, cursive script and ran to four sentences. On first reading, Coluzzi didn’t grasp what might be so important as to warrant the chief of the Saudi Arabian secret police hiding it inside a briefcase or, for that matter, to induce a shadowy operator to offer a Corsican thief six hundred thousand euros to steal it. It was a thank-you note between two men. Nothing more.
Coluzzi read the note a second time, the names of both sender and recipient slowly registering. Anxiously, he picked up the envelope and studied the address inscribed on the rear flap to make sure he was getting all this correctly. His skin turned to gooseflesh.
No man should be in possession of this note, he told himself. Not the chief of the Saudi secret police. Not an American spy who arranged meetings at luxury hotels. Most of all, not a lifelong bandit who’d been lying and stealing since he could say “Give me all of your money or else.”
Seized by a sudden and irrational fear for his safety, Coluzzi slipped the letter back inside the envelope, replaced it in its hiding place, and dumped the rest of his wine in the sink. He was out the door seconds later.
Cases in hand, he returned to his car and, in minutes, was traveling at rapid speed through the forest. He was not a man who scared easily, but he was smart enough to know when he was in over his head. Experience had taught him that fear was the better part of self-preservation.
Yet even now he did not consider giving the American the briefcase.
Only when he reached the highway and joined the anonymity of his fellow late-night travelers did he breathe easier. He followed the signs south toward Beaune and Aix-en-Provence. He would not be safe in Paris. He was going where he could take sanctuary among his own kind. Corsicans. Thieves. Brigands. He was going home.
The drive calmed him, and before long, his natural, larcenous instincts asserted themselves. Others would come looking for the letter. This he knew. He had two choices. He could wait until they found him, in which case he would be a dead man, or he could find them first and make them a proposition.
Tino Coluzzi’s fear vanished. In its place, he saw opportunity.
The letter was worth far more than six hundred thousand euros.
In the right hands, it was worth a million. Five million. Ten million euros, even.
And in the wrong hands?
Coluzzi smiled. In the wrong hands, it was invaluable.