Chapter 1

Eze, South of France

May 2011

The first time Mac asked me if I wanted to do the Monaco Job, I said no way.

For starters, Harrington Master is known for making the toughest safes in the industry. Twelve-digit passcodes updated automatically every week. Not a chance. Secondly, Monaco is the highest per capita police jurisdiction in the world. One copper for every seventy-five residents, one surveillance camera for every three. It’s irrational. Lastly, I was finally ready to walk from all this, for real this time. I’ve never cared about sticking it to the man nor do I care about beating the 2008 Harry Winston pull because bigger isn’t better to me. It’s just more of something I never wanted to do in the first place. The revolutionary spirit doesn’t pass down through our chromosomes.

“And do what?” Mac had asked. “We have sixth grade educations.”

“I don’t care,” I replied.

Then he said the one thing that confirms he’s evil:

“You know our fathers never got into a Harrington.”

And that’s how I started into this mess.

Nobody from the old guard had ever attempted a Harrington, and it began sounding like a pretty good way to go out. Au revoir to the rebellion. Not to mention the bag would buy me more than enough flamingo feed to steal away for enough time while I figured things out. I never liked the ups and downs of this life Well, the downs really. But If I’d known it’d bleed another year off my existence I would have walked away right there.

“Oh-dark-fifty,” Mac says, checking his watch. “He’s fine.”

“He’s late,” I say.

The dark cobbled street looks ancient at night, a feature of these medieval villages dotting The French Riviera that serve as commuter towns for the majority who work in Monaco. It costs your first born to live inside the limits of the second-smallest country in the world, second only to Vatican City but with a lot less praying, save for a few locations that play to one’s vices.

“It’s risky,” I continue to nag, “Changing driver’s this late.”

“You want my job?” Mac says.

“Unfortunately, you couldn’t do mine.”

“That’s why we make a good team.”

I wouldn’t have minded being a normal prodigy growing up, winning chess tournaments or whatever the wunderkinds did at the rotating list of European Boarding schools we attended. Some would call the application of my gift an artform. The Courts would call it aggravated theft, or Grand theft across the pond. I simply call it the path that was decided for me since before I left the crib. And not only will tonight be our biggest job yet, but it will also be my last, which ironically is the first decision I’ve ever made for myself.

A pair of slanted headlights turn the corner up ahead.

“A Peugot?” I say.

“A ninety-one Renault. You going to be busting my balls all night?”

“Can’t break tradition now.”

As our clown car approaches, the moonlight illuminates a handsome, dark chiseled face through the window. I’m starting to see the benefits of this upgrade. Mac quickly folds his six-foot-one frame into the back as I scrunch into shotgun and we’re off.

“Elrond,” Mac says. “This is my cousin, Jenny.”

The dark stranger takes my outstretched fingers in his leather driving glove. His car smells like the verdant edge of rainforest and his eyes glimmer like two carat gems.

“It’s a pleasure to be driving a Santorino,” he says in a baritone French accent that makes me tingle. Is it unprofessional to want to sleep with your wheelman? Mac’s toe pressing into the back of my seat is my answer.

Damn it.

“You were thirty seconds early,” I say, murdering the atmosphere. “Do you have our waypoints?”

The sexual tension leaves Elrond’s face like the soul departing a cadaver.

“Cap-d’Ail, fourteen minutes” he says, “Twenty-six minutes, arrivée a exchequer.”

I can’t even enjoy the way he says mee-noots.

“Fantastic,” I say.

My cold bitch façade is theoretically in service of precision. If we don’t get dropped at exactly oh-one-twenty, I won’t be standing in front of the vault at oh-one-thirty and this year will have been a complete waste of time. That is an outcome I cannot risk. My libido on the other hand is tired of playing second fiddle.

“Jenny thinks your car’s too small to make a proper insertion,” Mac says.

Fucking hell, Mac. I crank the window down and let my hair blow around in the breeze.

“Almost used to you as a blonde,” my cousin shouts.

That makes one of us. I can’t remember the last time I actually had a sense of self.

A bit of silent driving brings us to a series of switchbacks leading down from the main coastal road to a seaside apartment. It’s zero-one-zero-seven—1:07 AM—on the dot and a petite brunette climbs into the second row pilot’s chair next to Mac. Her door slams and again, we’re off. I feel a slight pinch on my shoulder.

“Exciting, Jenny!” Our chipper protégé is a fixed reminder that I’m two birthdays away from an age starting with a three that shall not be named.

“Steady is exciting,” I say, feeling Mac’s toe again, this time with the subtext being, reign in the bitch.

“The modified torque ratio on this jalopy is exciting,” the new girl says.

Elrond shoots a smirk into the rearview.

“Elrond,” Mac says. “Celeste Moulin. She’s on residency from the Polytechnique.”

“Bonjour,” he says, back in his natural French baritone.

“Merci beaucoup,” Celeste mutters as I hear her seatbelt click.

I take a deep breath, remembering, and perhaps longing for the naïveté of youth.

“What happened to our other driver?” Celeste asks.

“He’s indisposed,” Mac says, then for my benefit adds, “but thanks to Elrond we won’t be missing the Sight.”

Our good cop, bad cop thing is a routine I’d be willing to firebomb.

The Sight Mac’s referring to is De Beers’ semi-annual event when they release rough diamonds to the market. Diamonds may be a girls best friend, but they’re anything but rare. It’s companies like De Beers, Al Rosa, or Rio Tinto who ensure your honey’s nuptial commitment remains costing three months-worth of salary. And the trading activity following a Sight is the perfect cover for bringing more nefarious types of stones into circulation. My dad was always hell bent on disrupting capitalist institutions but the advantage to robbing crooks is their aversion to police reports. It’s taken me twelve months posing as a merchant of the Monaco Diamond Exchange to figure out who exactly is trading in these types of rocks. And despite the abort-worthy secret I’m hiding from my team, the year I’ve just invested is the main reason I’m unwilling to postpone tonight. I’m not wasting another six months waiting around for the next Sight when their lockboxes will be flush again.

“Arrivée a Monaco,” Elrond says. “Sees mee-noots.”

Six minutes to target. It’s 1:14 AM.

We pass a sign that reads MONTE CARLO with an arrow pointing straight ahead. Monte Carlo is simply the most infamous of the nine-administrative wards of Monaco. The entire sovereignty is half the size of New York’s Central Park yet home to 1% of the world’s total wealth, as is the beauty of self-determination. The open border we’re now crossing dates back to the accord of 1861, which like any good treaty paved way for the minority party to open a casino. It also stipulated France’s provision of military defense which must have seemed like a good idea at the time for the Monegasque, but most importantly it let them decide that income taxes weren’t really for them. And most importantly for us, neither was personal surveillance.

“Enabling comms,” Mac says. I hear a tick in my earpiece. “Ronde, come in, Ronde.”

A familiar Barry White sounding voice comes in over our radio.

“Nice hot rod, boss.”

Given that Monaco’s CCTV network rivals the Kardashian’s estate, Ronde Remington—our tech support and normally our bus driver—isn’t bringing the truck anywhere near the target tonight.

“How’s the God’s eye view?” Mac says. “You like working from home?”

“Doing a load of laundry right now,” Ronde says. “We’ve got a situation.”

“Don’t tell me you broke my drone.”

“There’s a patrol heading south on Charles Boulevard now. You need to make the next left onto Pasteur.”

See, Monaco’s cruisers store their dash cam footage locally, which means Ronde can’t override it and we want to be good Boy Scouts, zero footprint.

“That adds two minutes to target,” I say. “Give us another route.”

“The only other option is Port Ave,” Ronde says, “unless you can make in the next thirty seconds.”

Without warning Elrond downshifts and the Renault’s engine revs. I’m pressed back into my seat. Celeste whoops as we hurtle towards a blue-lit road tunnel. Accelerating through the subterranean bypass, I’m squished against the door. We enter the traffic circle then Elrond jerks the car right at the exit and I’m thrown left into the console as The Renault pops back out into the night. A similar thing happens again at the next roundabout and my stomach turns while Elrond decelerates back to a normal speed.

“Glad I didn’t eat,” Mac says.

“Nicely done,” Ronde says over the radio.

If this wasn’t my last job, I’d say we landed a new wheelman. Elrond banks softly around the next curve and the harbor speckled with anchor lights comes into view. Port Hercule, the only deep-water port in Monaco, meaning if you’re the son of a petro-billionaire needing a place to dock your pleasure crafts filled with Russian escorts, this is it.

“Three minutes out,” Ronde says. “All clear to the exchange.”

I tie my hair up and remove the night vision head gear from my satchel. Mac and Celeste are fastening their straps as well around heads and chins.

Exchanges aren’t typically great places to rob. New York, for instance, the real trading floor these days is a data center in Mawha, New Jersey. Forty miles from where I was born but that’s another story.  Diamonds are different from stocks however and thanks to the Four C’s, these exchanges haven’t moved to the cloud. Cut, color, clarity, and carat; the determinants of whether a rock should sell for a hundred dollars or a hundred grand. Folks still like to look before they buy.

Elrond veers off Port Ave and the big stone facade of the Palais de la Scala is revealed. The old, converted theatre sees fifty thousand carats trade hands daily. That’s $50-some-odd million per twenty-four hours. Following a De Beers Sight, that volume will double and inventory levels skyrocket within the safe deposit boxes in the vault. Not to mention, there is all kinds of other stuff stashed away in these boxes secured within the Monaco Harrington. We’re mostly going for rough diamonds, but you’ll also have your football-shaped finished diamonds, pear shapes, hearts. Then there’s rubies, gold, emeralds, watches, amethyst, pearls, bond coupons, family heirlooms, x-rated photos, love letters, you name it. The six accounts I’ve identified for tonight will have at least $10-$15 million each in stones plus whatever else they’re using these boxes to hide. It shaping up to be a good haul.

The impeccably clean Dunant Avenue is barren save for an arm-in-arm couple teetering down the road, away from the direction of the casino. They veer out of sight by the time Elrond turns onto the service road that runs behind the theatre. At exactly 1:20AM we bounce to a halt. And bingo was his name-o.

“All clear,” Ronde says over the radio.

And at that, Mac, Celeste, and I click open our doors and scamper up to the back wall of the exchange. As our lifeline, the Renault pulls away Mac makes a sign of the cross. It’s the crook’s prayer really. Celeste smacks her gum and doesn’t seem too concerned with the divine. I personally like to stay neutral on these things. Whomever it is that’s going to be judging me at the end of my days, I’d rather stay off their radar for the next twenty minutes.