The Swan and the Jackal (3 page)

“Seraphina…,” I call out, my voice hoarse with pain, every kind of pain, “…Sera…”

~~~

I wake up the next morning lying in a cold field with the sun on my face. The thin layer of white snow around my body is stained black by soot from my clothes. I look up at the sky, so clear and so blue, and I see a sliver of gray smoke rising into the air in my peripheral vision.

With difficulty, I try to get up, but can only go as far as rolling over onto my side. Dead grass pricks my cheek. Snow melts in a little indention near my face as my hot breath expels from my lips and nostrils against it. I’m freezing, yet I’m warm and it doesn’t make sense.

The thin layer of smoke rising over the tops of the trees in the short distance is coming from what was left of my house.

She didn’t leave me there to burn.

Why did she drag me out?

Upon realizing, finally I feel the pain in the back of my head and I reach up weakly to massage the area with my fingertips. She had to have dragged my body up the concrete steps.

I’m aching all over. But I’m alive. And I wouldn’t be if Seraphina didn’t want me to be.

I will find her.

I’ll never stop looking for her.

It’s a dangerous game that she and I play, that we’ve always played. Only this time, she has upped the ante.

And I’m all in.

Chapter One

Fredrik

Present Day…

Five men, two on each side of me and another seated at the head of the dinner table my opposite, watch me with guarded eyes.

My gun was taken at the door.

“It is a peaceful dinner, monsieur,” the door man had said. “No weapons allowed.”

“Very well,” I had said and removed my gun from the back of my pants, placing it on the table.

I knew not to wear more than one as I’d surely be patted down before they allowed me inside. And I was correct.

But I need no gun.

Unarmed, I walked past a dozen guards carrying a bottle of wine and stepped into the belly of the beast surrounded by four of François Moreau’s most experienced men.

I knew in advance also that the wine I brought would be whisked away by one of the waiters and placed in the center of the table. François thanked me for the gift. It was an expensive French wine, after all, and it would have been quite rude of him not to thank me, even knowing that I came here to kill him.

“Is it true?” François asks casually, looking over the length of the table at me seated on the other end. “Vonnegut has a bounty on three of his former men? Including you?”

I nod. “I suppose the rumors are true for once.”

A slim, confident smile pulls the edges of François’ hard, weathered mouth. He has short graying hair, cut smoothly at the back of his neck and combed over to one side in the front, plastered to his small head by thick amounts of hair gel.

“And I suppose tis’ good that I have no interest in filling bounties for a man like Vonnegut.” His smile becomes more arrogant, as if I have him to thank for being alive in this moment.

I nod again and bring my lips to my wine glass, which isn’t the wine from the bottle that I brought.

The dark-haired man sitting to my left with a scar above his left eyebrow removes his white cloth napkin from the table in front of him. He unrolls it from its neat little arrangement and places it within his lap. The other three men sitting on the outsides of the table follow suit when they notice the waiters entering from a side door balancing full plates on their hands. François remains in the same position, not looking away from my eyes even when the waiter places his plate in front of him.

François steeples his hands, his elbows propped on the table.

“So, Monsieur Gustavsson,” he begins, “it is my understanding that you were sent here to get information from me on my employer, correct?”

“Yes,” I answer, but offer him nothing else. I prefer to make him work for the details I know he wants before he has me killed.

“And what makes you think that I am at liberty to give you such information?” He appears amused by the very prospect of it.

My expression remains standard. Cool. Calm. Unruffled. And he grows more nervous by the second by my absence of tension. I’m only one man. Weaponless. Sitting at a table amongst five other men who, most assuredly, are packing heat despite the doorman’s claims. I’m but one man in a mansion on a private land just outside of Nice, France, where at least nine other men armed with guns patrol the outside.

He must know that I am not just
one man,
after all.

I steeple my hands the same as his.

“Before this,”—I wave one hand at the wrist briefly—“
lovely
evening is over, I can assure you that I’ll have the information I came for.” I point my index finger upward gently. “But not only that, you’ll give it to me freely.”

He looks surprised. And amused.

François shakes his head and lifts his wine glass to his lips, afterwards setting it gently back on the table. He takes his time, the same as I have, by making me wait for more of a response. The blond-haired man sitting to my right eyes me from over the rim of his wine glass. All four of the men are dressed like François and myself. Tailored black suits and ties. Though I definitely look better in mine. And as if they were a collective, they pick up their forks and begin eating at the same time. François finally joins them, though I’m confident it has nothing to do with being hungry. He’s simply wanting to drag out his moment of pause longer than it needs to.

He chews and then swallows.

“Is that so?” François finally says with an air of authority and a smile. His shiny silver fork clinks against the glass plate as he sets it down.

“As a matter of fact, it is,” I say with confidence, as if I were simply telling him that, yes, it
is
raining outside, and welcoming him to step over to the window and see for himself. “I know your Order to be run by a man named Monsieur Sébastien Fournier. He took over last year after Monsieur Julien Gerard was killed in Marseille.”— François wipes his mouth with his cloth napkin and continues to listen—“I also know that your Order is strictly black market and that many of the men under Fournier are American, running American hits on innocent American women.”

François tilts his graying head to one side, thoughtfully.

“Oh come now, monsieur, you cannot make me believe that you, of all people, care what happens to a few innocent women,” he taunts me.

I remain unruffled on the outside, but on the inside, his words sting. And he knows this, otherwise he wouldn’t have brought it up.

Bringing my lips to my glass again, I meet François’ eyes from across the table, challenging him to test me further, without having to move a muscle in my face.

He smiles faintly and takes another sip.

I set my glass on the table.

“Well, I must say,” François cuts in, looking down at his food, “if you know all of this, what more would you possibly need from me?”

“I want the key to the safety deposit box in New York,” I say.

The lines around François’ mouth deepen with his smile. He looks up toward the waiter standing at the ready to his left and the waiter goes over to him.

“Please, do us all a kindness and open that bottle of wine that Monsieur Gustavsson was so generous to bring this evening.” He gestures toward the bottle with two fingers.

The waiter does as he is told and sets the opened bottle in the center of the table.

The other four men at the table all place their silverware back onto their plates, knowing that something other than dining is going on now and that they need to remain sharp. All of them wipe their mouths with their cloth napkins after taking a sip from their wine glasses.

François snaps his fingers and a small-framed woman with honey-colored hair pinned to the back of her head steps through a side entrance and scurries over to him. She is exquisite. Vulnerable. Frail. She wears a short black skirt that clings tightly to her hourglass form. I study the gentle slope of her bare neck and the fullness of her plump breasts underneath the thin white fabric of her blouse. She’s not wearing a bra and her nipples are like little beads of sex inviting me to devour them.

I would love to break her beneath me.

Briefly, she meets my dark gaze but looks away before François catches her. And in just that small moment, I could sense the tiny jolt between her legs.

“New glasses please, mademoiselle,” he orders and she scurries off to do his bidding.

“You like what you see?” François asks, noticing my attention on her as she leaves the room. “Perhaps I could offer you her services before our meeting comes to a close? I
am
a generous man, after all. Just because I do not plan to let you walk out of here alive does not mean I cannot treat you to life’s luxuries before you die. Think of it as a parting gift.”

“That won’t be necessary,” I say. “But I appreciate the offer.”

“Well, you should at least eat something,” he says, gesturing at the food in front of me that I haven’t touched.

I shake my head and sigh. “I did not come here to dine, monsieur, as you know. I came here for the key. That is all.”

“Well, you won’t be getting it,” he says and offers another smile.

Then he points to the blond-haired man sitting next to me and says, “Bring me the black box on my desk.”

The man glances at me coldly, drops his napkin on the table and stands up. And as he’s leaving the room, the woman with the honey-colored hair and heat between her legs re-enters the room with six slim wine glasses wedged strategically between her fingers. She sets one in front of each of us, walking over to me last. She takes her time about pulling her slender hand from the glass. I don’t offer her the luxury of my eyes.

François points at her. “Come here,” he says and she walks over to him.

He looks across the table at me in a sidelong glance with a clever look in his eyes. He points at the opened bottle of wine I brought. “He will drink first,” he says indicating me.

The woman takes the bottle and approaches me with it.

“You think I did not anticipate your intentions?” François says waving his hand in a dramatic fashion at the wrist. “I know more about you than just your…mishap…in San Francisco. Killing that woman. That
innocent
woman.” I’m seething beneath my skin, but I can stay calm. Taunting me in this way only shows François’ true level of worry. “I know
all
about you.” He grins maliciously and instantly I get the feeling he hasn’t brought out the big guns yet, that he knows something worse about me that I did not expect him to know.

For the first time since I walked through those mansion doors, I’m unsure of my next move. But I can keep my calm. It takes much more than the provoking words of a dying man to trigger me.

The woman pours the wine into my glass and steps over to the side.

Seeing that I’m not going to ask François exactly what else he knows, he proceeds to tell me anyway.

“I’ve heard of your past.” He takes another sip of the wine he’s been drinking since before dinner began. “About how you got that nickname of yours.” He rubs the fingertips of one hand together and looks up in thought. “What was it? Ah, yes, I remember now. They called you the little jackal. A scavenger boy. Rabid and worthless.”

I’m going to enjoy watching him die.

I pretend to be unaffected and simply raise my brows inquisitively. “Seems to me you’re trying to buy time.” I glance briefly at my Rolex. “You don’t have much left, I’m afraid.”

François chuckles and smiles at me with teeth. He leans forward against the table and relaxes both arms across it. The blond-haired man re-enters the dining room with a glossy black box that fits in the palm of his hand. He places it on the table in front of François.

Without taking his eyes off me, François opens the box and removes a gold key dangling from a thick gold chain.

He holds it up in the light so that I may see it.

“I do not fear you, monsieur,” he says as he opens his suit jacket and carefully drops the key into his hidden breast pocket. “I did want to give you an opportunity to, perhaps, negotiate your terms. But you really do possess more confidence than any man should.” His deep-set light-colored eyes drop from mine and fall on the new wine glass in front of me. “Why don’t you do the honors and drink from the wine you brought.” He smiles vindictively and brushes his hand in the air toward me, urging me to drink it. “That is what you expected, isn’t it?”

The dark-haired man on my left suddenly appears uncomfortable, shifting on his chair with a look of agitation. He reaches up and slides his index finger behind the neck of his dress shirt and moves it back and forth, trying to pull the fabric from his sweating skin. His face is growing pale and sickly.

François looks at him with little concern. “Is something wrong?”

The dark-haired man stands from the table. “Forgive me, monsieur, but I am not feeling well. Perhaps I should sit the rest of the evening out.”

François nods and waves him away.

The man pushes his chair out and steps away from the table, grasping his napkin in his hand. He wipes the sweat from his forehead with it as he leaves, stumbling just before he rounds the corner and disappears from sight.

“I’m certainly glad I didn’t eat the food,” I say with a raised brow. Touching the edge of my plate with my finger, I push it away from me.

The other men, including François, look down at their plates simultaneously and then toss their napkins on top of the leftovers. Two waiters act immediately to remove the food from the table.

François looks irritated, as if he’s already addressing the issue in his mind of firing his head chef as soon as this is over.

“Why don’t you have a drink?” he suggests, getting back to the matter at hand. “Or, did you forget?” He points at my glass.