Sidney Sheldon's Reckless (33 page)

Jeff stared at the envelope. “What's this?”

“Your ticket to Bruges. Drexel's expected at a poker game there this Saturday. Playing under the name Harry Graham.”

Harry Graham . . . why does that ring a bell?

“It's a stunning city,” said Frank.

“I know.”

Jeff and Tracy had pulled off a wonderful job in Bruges once, conning a vile wife beater out of one of the finest collections of Dutch miniatures in Northern Europe.

“Your train leaves in an hour,” Frank said brusquely. “I'll ride to Gare du Nord with you and brief you on the way.”

CHAPTER 24

L
UC CHARLES'S SATURDAY NIGHT
poker games were legendary among the Bruges fine art community. At Charles's idyllic fifteenth-century converted monastery overlooking the Spinolerai Canal, the game was always seven card stud. Despite the fact Charles himself invariably came out on top—the self-made collector and owner of the most valuable collection of Dutch impressionists still in private hands was not a man who liked to lose—invitations to Luc Charles's poker night were much prized. To be offered a seat at Luc Charles's infamous baize-topped card table, rumored to have once belonged to Queen Marie Antoinette of France, and to sit beneath the Vermeers and the Rembrandts and the Hedas was to have reached the very pinnacle of Belgian society. Charles's money might be new—Luc's father was a baker from a Brussels suburb—but his home and art collection were old and grand enough to make even the snobbiest aristocrat's eyes water with envy, and their pupils dilate with longing. Fortunes were made and lost at Luc Charles's poker table, and the host was always happy to accept a painting in lieu of cash. At his own valuation, of course.

Tonight's players were a mixture of regulars and newcomers. Pierre Gassin, senior partner at Gassin Courreges, the most prestigious law firm in Brussels, was a familiar face, as was Dominique Crecy, the great modernist collector. Johnny Cray, an American trust fund baby on a tour of a place he pronounced “Yurrup,” was a newbie. So was his friend, Harry Graham.

Graham was older, very thin, with badly dyed hair and a withdrawn, slightly moody manner.

“He looks ill,” Luc Charles told Johnny Cray, pulling the young man aside. “His skin's positively yellow. Does he have blood poisoning?”

“No idea,” said Johnny. “I only met him a week ago, at a small game in the country. He begged me to bring him tonight. I hope that's OK?”

Luc Charles grinned wolfishly. “It is if he loses.”

“Oh, he will.” Johnny's smile grew so wide it looked as if it were going to eat the rest of his face. “I've never seen a more reckless player.”

“Reckless?”

“Like he's possessed. It's bizarre. With an average hand, he plays brilliant, thoughtful poker. But as soon as he thinks he's holding a winner? Boom!” Johnny made an explosion gesture with his fingers. “He loses it. I took fifteen thousand euros off him last week and that was at a tiny game. I heard he lost big at Deauville.”

“How big?” Luc Charles's mouth started to water.

“Seven figures.”

“In one night?”

“Fuck one night. On one
hand
,” said Johnny.

Luc Charles walked back to where Harry Graham was admiring one of his portraits.

“Are you an art lover, Mr. Graham?”

The American shrugged. “I know what I like.”

“A wonderful starting point,” Luc smiled. Looking more closely at Harry, he asked, “We haven't met before, have we? I feel as if I know you from somewhere.”

Unfortunately for Luc Charles, he'd been meeting a lot of Americans lately. Group 99, the tiresomely publicity-hungry rich-haters-cum-terrorists had been making a concerted effort to target the fine-art world, introducing a number of extremely high-quality fakes to the market in recent months. Even the top auction houses had been duped, including the mighty Christie's, who had sold what they believed to be an Isaac Israels painting for $7.2 million only to have Group 99 release a YouTube video revealing its true provenance. Heads had rolled, but the net result was that market confidence had been hit hard and insurers were particularly jumpy. Luc's insurers were owned by the American giant UIG (United Insurance Group). In the last month alone, Luc had received three “courtesy” visits from UIG execs. It wouldn't surprise him to have another show up at one of his poker games, hoping for some sort of inside track. And Harry Graham
did
look familiar.

“I don't think so.” Graham turned away, glancing at his watch impatiently. “Shall we get started?”

“Certainly.”

Luc Charles led the way to the card table. He was probably imagining things. The good news was that Johnny Cray's “reckless” friend was getting jumpy already.

That boded well for the night ahead.

FROM HIS HOTEL BEDROOM
directly across the canal, Jeff Stevens had an almost perfect view through the sash windows of Luc Charles's drawing room.

With the aid of his trusty Meade ACF LX90 telescope, Jeff could see not only the players at Charles's table, but the hands of the ones with their backs to him. Poor old Dom Crecy was unlikely to leave the Charles residence tonight richer than he arrived, clinging on to his pair of kings like a drowning man clutching a branch in a tsunami. Jeff couldn't see Hunter Drexel's cards, but he had an excellent view of his face. Harry Graham, rather to Jeff's surprise, had chosen a seat directly opposite the window, which had been opened to let in the night air. It was the first time Jeff had seen Hunter's features in person, in the flesh as it were, and he found himself fascinated, trying to glean any information from his expressions, the look in his eyes.

Who are you?
he found himself asking.

What are you thinking, right at this moment?

What do you want?

But like all good poker players, Hunter's face gave away nothing. Was he a terrorist or a victim? A good guy or a traitor? Was he really just playing cards to live, so he had enough cash to eat and hide and finish his story on fracking—or whatever it really was? Jeff had his doubts. If Hunter's plan was survival, he wouldn't be chasing down big stakes games like Luc Charles's seven card stud, or Pascal Cauchin's legendary Montmartre poker evenings.

No. There's some other reason he's doing this. Playing with billionaires. Risking exposure. No one needs to win millions of dollars just to survive.

Whatever Hunter's plan, he looked as if he were struggling tonight. And not just at cards. His face was almost unrecognizable from the pictures Jeff had seen from before his Group 99 abduction. Hunter looked thin and ill and exhausted and old.

Jeff kept watching.

BACK AT THE MODEST
bungalow they had rented on the outskirts of the city, Sally Faiers glanced anxiously at the clock.

She wanted Hunter home.

She had a bad feeling about tonight.

It didn't help that, even after everything she'd done for him, all the risks she'd taken, Hunter told her nothing. Like who Hélène was and why she'd left in such a hurry. Or why he had to go to this poker game tonight. Or what he planned to do with the money, assuming he won.

“I will win,” he told her, through chattering teeth. It was a flash of the old Hunter, the cocky charmer she remembered. But a rare one. And he didn't look like a winner anymore. He looked like a desperate man, in need of a real doctor.

After two weeks together, Sally still didn't even know what Hunter's mysterious article was about, or where and when he was going to publish it.

“Soon,” was all he'd tell her. “The less you know, the safer you are, Sal.”

But Sally didn't feel safe. As she dressed Hunter's wounds, tended his fevers and pumped him up with the illegal antibiotics she'd bought online, she felt further and further removed from reality. From the normal world she'd left behind in London. Her flat. Her job.

Ex-job.

All she had left was her own article, her own secrets. She tried to focus on writing, while Hunter was running around the city doing God knows what, but it was hard. Right now Sally couldn't imagine how today would end, never mind make any sort of plan for the future. Somehow her exposé of corruption in the fracking business no longer seemed as important and earth shattering as it had when it started. She felt isolated and riddled with doubt.

Even Tracy Whitney had stopped calling. It was as if Sally and Hunter were on a boat with no power, drifting deeper and deeper out to sea. Hunter claimed to know where they were going. But all Sally could do was sit and wait for them to sink, or starve, or go insane out here all alone.

A knock on the door made her leap out of her skin. Darting into the bedroom, Sally reached under the bed with shaking hands and grabbed Hunter's gun. Images of Bob Daley's head being blown apart rushed, unbidden, into her mind.

Flattening her back to the wall, she edged back into the living room, towards the door. Adrenaline coursed through her body. She was ready to shoot when she suddenly caught a glimpse of who it was on the doorstep:

Monsieur Hanneau, their sweet, bookish next-door neighbor.

For God's sake.
Feeling foolish and ridiculous, Sally slipped the gun under a cushion and opened the door. He probably wanted to borrow a cup of sugar or something. This was Belgium, not bloody Beirut.

“Hello, Monsieur Hanneau. I was just . . .”

The bullet was silent, but it blew a hole in Sally's chest the size of a grapefruit.

She was dead before she hit the floor.

HARRY GRAHAM LOST THE
first two games. He won modestly in the third and grotesquely overplayed his hand on the fourth, ending up down several hundred thousand euros.

Luc Charles thought,
Reckless doesn't begin to cover it.
This fellow Graham clearly had money to burn.

At nine o'clock they broke for a meal—fat, juicy mussels in white wine and garlic, washed down with a local Belgian beer. Harry Graham barely touched his food. Understandable, given how much money he'd just lost, although Luc Charles got the unsettling impression that losing didn't seem to mean that much to Mr. Graham.

It's not the winning,
Luc decided.
It's the playing. The high stakes. The risk. As long as his adrenaline's up, that's all that matters.

“One more hand, Mr. Graham?” Charles asked, as a butler cleared away the plates.

It was a rhetorical question, but the American answered anyway, nodding brusquely.

“Of course. Always.”

FORTY MINUTES LATER, A
murderous Luc Charles watched from the window as his guests took their leave. Pierre Gassin and Dom Crecy both left by car, their chauffeur driven Bentleys arriving discreetly at the side entrance to the monastery. Johnny Cray drove off in his own, matte-black limited-edition Lamborghini.

Cray's friend Harry Graham, the night's big winner, hopped into a water taxi. Luc watched his skinny, blond head get smaller and smaller before fading to black completely as the boat drifted down the canal, swallowed by the night.

In Harry Graham's pocket was a check made out to cash.

It was for 850,000 euros.

He played me,
Luc Charles thought darkly.
The bastard played me.

Luc never made bets above his personal limit of a hundred thousand per hand. Never. Yet somehow this silent stranger had lured him into it.

Johnny Cray had described Harry Graham as reckless. But the truth was, Harry had made Luc Charles reckless.

He made me a damn fool.

Luc Charles didn't know much about Harry Graham. But he intended to find out more.

A lot more.

As soon as Graham's boat was out of sight, Luc Charles picked up the phone.

JEFF STEVENS'S BOAT DRIFTED
quietly a few yards behind Hunter's.

Jeff's hotel kept two old-fashioned, gondola-style canal boats with long punts that were available to guests day or night. They employed three old men whose sole job it was to slide the wooden poles into the water and gently propel these vessels along Bruges's famous waterways.

It was quiet tonight. Jeff was the boatman's only customer, and even he didn't go far, asking to be let out after only a few bridges had passed. Hunter had stepped out at one of the many mooring spots along the Spinolerai into a barely lit cobbled street. Just managing to catch him before he disappeared from view, Jeff followed him towards Steenstraat. Drexel glanced around him briefly, but didn't seem to notice anything untoward. He turned right into the pretty cobbled square of Simon Stevinplein, then left into Oude Burg, where small crowds of tourists were still milling around, even at this late hour. Bruges's famous Belfry was lit from below, giving it a quasimagical glow that made the surrounding gabled houses even more fairy-tale-like than they were by day.

It's like Disneyland,
Jeff thought, taking care not to lose Hunter as he weaved through the crowds on Breidelstraat, past the lace and biscuit shops, before coming to a stop outside a bar in Burg Square. Wedged next to the magnificent Gothic Basilica of the Holy Blood, Gerta's was the kind of hole-in-the-wall sliver of a place you could find in any European city, a haven for thirsty tourists. After one last glance around, Hunter slipped inside.

The bar backed directly on to the Basilica wall. That meant there was no way out, other than the way in.

I could take him right now,
Jeff thought.
End this thing.

But both Frank Dorrien and Jamie MacIntosh had been clear about his brief:

Follow. Gather intel. Do not confront.

The problem was that its frontage was so small, it was impossible for Jeff to see anything without either standing right by the window or actually going inside. Pulling his baseball cap lower over his face, he decided on the latter. As far as he knew Hunter didn't know who he was, still less what he looked like.