The H?tel Potocki on Avenue de Friedland was a structure that would have stood out as a magnificent showpiece in most any other city on Earth, but here in Paris, the Potocki was just another beautiful building on just another beautiful block full of beautiful buildings. It had been built as a palace two hundred years earlier for a family of Polish nobility who made it their life’s work to erect ornate residences all over Europe, and they’d spared no expense to illustrate their wealth and power to the Parisians. Even today it remained one of the most elegant mansions in the city, rented out as a high-dollar venue for parties, events, and private get-togethers of the elite.
This afternoon the entrances to the building were surrounded by crowds, all holding their camera phones high in hopes of catching images of the attendees of the exclusive function inside. In addition to the hundreds of onlookers, photographers and reporters milled about, limo drivers stood by their freshly polished vehicles in nearby lots, and private security manned the streets and sidewalks.
But the real action was inside. Through the monumental bronze doors cast by Christofle, up the grand marble staircase, and in the opulent Salle des Lustre, some three hundred well-dressed men and women sat around a long glowing runway that ran below and between rows of crystal chandeliers. The room was packed shoulder-to-shoulder, and thumping music and flashing lights gave an energetic, almost manic feel to the scene.
The announcer proclaimed the arrival of the winter collection, the crowd leaned in, and, one at a time, lithe models began marching authoritatively out onto the catwalk wearing dramatic velvet capes, thigh-high boots, and embroidered chiffon dresses.
The hum of the crowd was unmistakably approving.
In the ninth row, to the right of the runway, sitting at the southern end of the room and holding a camera and an iPad, a man in a charcoal Armani suit sat next to an elderly woman with a small poodle nestled in her arms. The man’s eyeglasses were as refined as his silk tie and handkerchief, and he looked on at the procession traversing the catwalk just like everyone else, craning his head, nodding along with each new look, and tapping notes into his tablet.
The man had avoided the majority of the cameras, and even the lights from the runway did not reach to him in his seat. He was just a face in the crowd. No one in the room was focusing on him, and other than the guard who scanned his pass and the roving waitress with the silver tray of champagne flutes, he’d had no interaction with anyone in the building, though he’d entered a full ninety minutes earlier.
As a new model stepped out from the wings and proceeded down the catwalk, the man in the Armani suit focused intently for a moment, then looked away.
Not her, he told himself.
He took a moment to look around the room again, and not for the first time in the last hour and a half, Court Gentry told himself that this was probably pretty much what his version of hell would look like. Through the too-bright lights he saw the vapid eyes, and through the too-loud music he heard the insipid discussions on inane topics all around him in multiple languages, conversations that he felt made him dumber by the minute for having been forced to listen to them.
The focus on the clothes and the colors and the style and “the scene” was nearly a foreign tongue to him, but he understood enough to know he didn’t give a damn about anything being discussed, anywhere in the building. He couldn’t imagine anything more annoying than the crowd he sat in, the words from their mouths, the oohs and ahhs about a bunch of clothes no one off a runway would ever wear, anywhere, and no one who’d ever eaten a sandwich in their life could fit into in the first place.
Everyone else here insisted on referring to this as Paris Fashion Week, but still, Court was pretty sure he was in hell.
This was the Zuhair Murad show of the Haute Couture Collection, and Court had done just enough study on the designer and his work to pass relaxed scrutiny as a member of the alternative fashion press. His cover was as a freelancer, sent to get impressions and images of the periphery of Fashion Week for an online style magazine, to chronicle the guests and the clothes and the “scene,” whatever the hell that was.
Court looked around. A coked-up sixty-year-old man with a horror-show facelift and eyeliner danced in his chair on the other side of the runway, sloshing half his champagne on the leg of the nineteen-year-old boy seated next to him.
To the extent Court had a scene at all, this sure as shit wasn’t it.
But it was Court’s job to fit in, no matter what the surroundings, and he did his job well. He was invisible here, because it was his job to be so, just as it had been his job to remain invisible while riding the Metro in D.C., roaming the streets of Hong Kong, or piloting a yacht off Minorca.
His eyes flicked back to the runway, and as the beautiful women came out one by one, he continued scanning them.
Not her. Not her. Not her, either.
His attention moved from the slow procession of models and off the runway entirely. Two athletic men with dark suits and dark hair entered the hall on his right from an access door near the entrance to the stage. They stood back against the wall, scanning the crowd. Court pinged on them instantly, and his eyes casually followed them as they moved closer to the curtain where the models emerged.
Across the lights of the runway he saw another pair of goons, similarly attired, both dark and swarthy. They stood close to the action, and directly behind them a few seated men and women called out to them to try to get them to move.
A security man attached to the venue stepped over to the pair on the far side and ushered them a few feet closer to the wall. They complied, more or less, but they remained within reach of the models on the stage and runway.
And then a tall female model with coal-black hair marched out from behind the wings in a black chiffon dress with silver piping. She was as beautiful as all the others, perhaps even more intense and serious about her work than the rest as she moved up the runway. Through the flashing of dozens of cameras, she marched her stilettos to the beat of an old David Bowie song souped up with industrial techno. Court noticed all four of the big men looking up at her, and then he noticed all four men turning and scanning the crowd. They didn’t follow her walk down the length of the raised platform, but their eyes stayed on the three hundred or so in the audience.
Court turned his attention away from the bodyguards, and he focused again on the model.
She was utterly stunning. And she was his target.
CHAPTER 3
Court had her bio down cold. Her name was Bianca Medina; she was twenty-six, positively ancient for a model, although she was one of the most gorgeous women Court had ever laid eyes on, striking even on a runway full of stunning women.
There was a confidence in her moves that he, a complete layman in the world of fashion modeling, recognized instantly.
He raised his camera, pointed it at her, and took a few shots like the rest of the crowd holding cameras, but quickly he turned the lens to the first duo of security men at the back wall. He took several pictures, then shifted in his seat a little and got a few shots of the pair on his right, on his side of the runway.
Private security protection was not the norm for the models here at the Zuhair Murad show, but Court knew things about Bianca Medina no one else in the room did, and for that reason he knew she didn’t have much in common with the other women walking the runway today.
She showcased her dress and left through the sequined curtain at the rear of the stage. The security men disappeared through the stage doors at the same moment she did, no doubt forming around her backstage to escort her to her dressing area. Court assumed she’d be hustled into another outfit and sent back out onto the runway in minutes, but he’d seen all he needed to see, so he stood and left the Salle des Lustre.
As he headed down the grand staircase on his way to a side entrance of the H?tel Potocki, he thought about what he’d just learned. He’d been told Medina would have her own security team of five men, but he’d needed to test the accuracy of this information he’d been given on this assignment. With his own eyes he’d seen four bodyguards, and he assumed another man would be waiting outside in a vehicle, so his intel appeared to be accurate.
Good, he thought. His client’s tradecraft might have been amateurish, but it seemed, so far, at least, that his intelligence product was solid.
Court exited the building, passed by dozens of mostly young men and women clambering to get a look at a famous guest or a beautiful model at the side exit, then he walked two blocks to his black 2010 Yamaha XJ6 motorcycle, left in a lot on the Rue Chateaubriand. Here he unlocked the top case on the back of his bike and then took off his Armani jacket. After kicking out of his leather wingtips, he pulled the two-piece motorcycle rain suit from the case and put it on in seconds, then slipped into a pair of black tennis shoes. He crammed his coat and shoes in the case and relocked it, donned his black helmet, lowered the smoked visor, and climbed aboard the bike.
He drove around to the back of the venue, having already scoped out the exit the models were using for the fashion show. Here he parked fifty yards from the door but remained on his motorcycle, and he steeled himself for a long wait.
* * *