Chapter 1

Eze, South of France

May 2011

The first time Mac had asked me to do the Monaco job, I’d said no way. [JT1] 

For starters, Harrington Master is known for making the toughest safes in the industry. Twelve-digit rolling passcodes that change automatically every hour. Not a chance. Secondly, Monaco has the highest per capita police jurisdiction in the world. One copper for every seventy-five residents, one surveillance camera for every three. Not interested. [JT2] But mostly I was ready to walk away from all this, for real this time. I didn’t care that Monaco was the top of dad’s wish list or that it was one of the places he now thought holding the Omanji diamond—a mythical 155-carat[JT3]  rough cut bouncing around the black market, if it was even to be believed. None of this treasure hunting was ever my dream. Just more of something I never wanted to do in the first place.

“And what exactly are you going to do?” Mac had asked. “We have eighth-grade educations.”

“I don’t care,” I’d replied.

But then he’d [JT4] said the one thing he knew would get under my skin. “So, you’re okay if somebody else cracks a Harrington first?”

And that’s how I landed myself in this mess.

Something deep within me couldn’t leave that possibility on the table. My father is defined by his ghosts and maybe part of me was scared to have that happen too. Whatever it is, despite threatening to walk for a long time something has always kept me tethered. And so it’s become the greatest contradiction of my life, the difference between what I do and what I want to do.

Setting Freud aside, or perhaps invoking him, neither Mac’s old man nor mine had ever [JT5] attempted a Harrington, and the angle Mac was seeing on this job began sounding like a pretty perfect way to go out. Omanji or not, no one could ever question whether or not I was elite. Plus, the bag would buy more than enough flamingo feed to figure things out for a while. If I’d known it would bleed another year off my life, I would have walked away right there.

“He better not be late,” I say.

“Oh-dark-fifty.” Mac checks his watch. “We’re fine.”

This dark cobbled street looks downright ancient at night, a feature of these medieval villages dotting the French Riviera. Commuter towns outlying the second-smallest country in the world, Monaco, second only to Vatican City but with a lot less praying, save for a few locations that play to one’s vices. What I can see clearly is the constellation-strewn sky with its thousands of stories, some heroic, some fatal. And mine playing out down here—a dark tragic comedy.

“It’s risky,” I say, “changing drivers this late.”

“You want my job?” he asks. I should stop riding Mac.

“You couldn’t do mine,” I say,

“Which is why we make a good team.”

He’s right. And the only reason I’m on a team is because he knows how to deal with me. I’m a lot. It’s been that way since childhood.

I don’t think I deserve all the blame. I would have much preferred being a normal prodigy, winning chess tournaments or whatever normal kids did at the rotating list of European boarding schools we were shuffled through. Some would call the application of my gift an art form. The courts would call it aggravated theft, or grand theft across the pond where I’m from. I simply call it the path that had been decided for me since before I left the crib. And not only will tonight be our biggest job ever, but it will also be my last, which ironically is the first decision I’ve ever made for myself.

A pair of slanted headlights turns [JT6] the corner up ahead.

“Right on time,” Mac says.

“A little early actually,” I correct. “You got us a Peugeot?”

“A ninety-one Renault. You’re in a spicy one tonight.”

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

“Elrond,” Mac says. “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 my skin tingle. Is it unprofessional to want to sleep with your wheelman? Mac’s toe pressing into the back of my seat is my answer. Dammit[JT7] .

“You were thirty seconds early,” I say, murdering the atmosphere. I can feel Mac’s eyes rolling now that I’ve officially switched my line of complaint from being late to being early. You can’t win with me. “Do you have our waypoints?” I ask.

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

“Cap-d’Ail, fourteen minutes,” he says. “Twenty-six minutes to the exchange.”

I nod, not even allowing myself to enjoy the way he says mee-noots.

My cold bitch façade is theoretically in service of communicating our need for precision. If we don’t get dropped at exactly 1:20 AM, I won’t be standing in front of the vault at exactly oh-one-thirty and I will not wait another six months until the next window of opportunity opens again. I’m not keeping my life on hold any longer.

“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.

“I’m almost used to you as a blonde,” he 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 from the main coastal road down to a seaside apartment. It’s 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 that shall not be named beginning with a three.

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

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

Elrond shoots a smirk into the rearview.

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

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

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

I take a deep breath, 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.”

I won’t be missing our good cop, bad cop routine when this is over.

The Sight Mac’s referring to is De Beers’ semi-annual event when they release rough diamonds to the market. Diamonds may be a girl’s 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. Herein lies the advantage of robbing the black market actors: their aversion to police reports. Dad was an equal opportunist when it came to making enemies on either side of the law.

It’s taken me twelve months posing as a merchant of the Monaco Diamond Exchange to figure out which members were said black market actors laundering these types of rocks. And despite the abort-worthy secret I’m hiding from Mac and the rest of the team, I’m unwilling to postpone tonight. I’m not waiting six months until the next Sight when their lockboxes will once again be flush.

“Arrivée a Monaco,” Elrond says. “Six minutes to the exchange.” Sees mee-noots.

It’s 1:14 AM.

We pass a sign reading 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 only half the size of New York’s Central Park yet home to 1% of the world’s total wealth, such is the beauty of self-determination. The open border we’re crossing now 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 for the Monegasque which must have seemed like a good idea to them at the time. But most importantly it let the Monegasque 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.”

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

“Nice hot rod, boss.”

Given that the coverage of Monaco’s CCTV network rivals that of the Kardashian family, Ronde Remington—our tech support who normally rides along in the van—won’t be coming with us to the target tonight.

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

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

“You broke my drone?”

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

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.

“Negative,” I say. “That adds two minutes to target. We need another route.”

“No can do,” Ronde says, “unless you can make Port Ave in the next thirty seconds.”

Without warning Elrond downshifts and the Renault’s engine revs. I’m pressed back into my seat and Celeste whoops as we hurtle toward a blue-lit 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 to a normal speed.

“Hope you didn’t eat,” Ronde says. “Nicely done.”

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 is the only deep-water port in Monaco, meaning if you’re the son of a petro-billionaire this is where you would dock your pleasure craft filled with Russian escorts.

“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.

Exchanges aren’t typically great places to rob. Take New York, for instance, the real trading floor nowadays 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 in that the four C’s won’t have these exchanges moving to the cloud. Cut, color, clarity, and carat. Determinants of whether a rock should sell for a hundred dollars or a hundred thousand. Folks tend to still want 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 trading hands daily. That’s $50 million in a twenty-four hour period. Following a De Beers Sight, that volume will double and inventory levels skyrocket within the safe deposit boxes locked up in the vault. Not to mention, there is all kinds of other stuff stashed away in those boxes. Some real, some mythical. We’re mostly going for rough diamonds, but you’ll also have your finished football-shaped stones, pear shapes, and hearts. Then there’s rubies, gold, emeralds, watches, amethyst, pearls, bond coupons, family heirlooms, x-rated photos, love letters from affair partners, 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 lockboxes to hide. That’s a total haul of sixty to ninety million which is set to be a good night. You could double that if you believed one of these purveyors was trafficking the Jumanji but I wouldn’t bank on that.

The impeccably clean Dunant Avenue is barren, save for an arm-in-arm couple teetering away from the casino. They veer out of sight by the time Elrond turns onto the service road running behind the theatre and at exactly 1:20AM we bounce to a halt.

“All clear,” Ronde says over the radio.

At that, Mac, Celeste, and I click open our doors and scamper up to the back wall of the exchange. The Renault pulls away while Mac makes a sign of the cross—the crook’s prayer, really. Celeste smacks her gum and doesn’t seem at all 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 think it best I stay off their radar for the next twenty minutes.