Private Monaco

Chapter 69

Justine and I left the Fairmont Hotel. As we started west toward the apartment, I checked my phone and saw I’d missed a call from Mo-bot while we’d been in the loud party with Carver. I listened to her message as we picked our way along the crowded street, following the pedestrian walkway around the racetrack toward the seafront.

“Mo and Sci have gone to follow up a lead,” I told Justine. “Some guy called Kendrick Stamp.”

“Any idea why?” she asked.

I shook my head. “Mo-bot didn’t say.”

We hurried through the city. The sun was falling rapidly and I was sure the coming of darkness would take the festivities to a new pitch. I wondered if locals liked the race or whether it was viewed as an economic boon to be endured. Did they leave the city, make a bundle renting out their homes, and return when the kerfuffle had moved on to the next country on the Formula One tour? I imagined the race brought in tens of millions of dollars at a minimum, so expected there was general good feeling toward the event.

The race fans thronging the city were already excited and I wished I could be one of them, carelessly partying the night away. But I’d chosen a different path through life, one that took me into harm’s way far too often. One that regularly meant my choices weren’t my own.

I looked at Justine, so beautiful, so intelligent, her face tight with stress. She deserved better than this, surely? Even if I didn’t feel I did. She should have a life of comfort and ease with someone who could make her the center of his world. Someone whose mission in life wouldn’t put her in danger.

She caught me looking at her and smiled. The darkness in my heart faded a little, and I smiled back. My logical mind might believe I should surrender her to a better life, but my heart couldn’t let her go. She was my world and I loved her.

Twenty minutes later, we were back in the apartment. There was no sign of Mo-bot or Sci. I checked Mo-bot’s workstation and found some information about a man called Kendrick Stamp. He was a former FBI agent, who’d served as a scout sniper in the Marine Corps before joining the Bureau, but there was no indication of why Sci and Mo-bot were interested in this man. There was a hotel reservation in his name at the Metropole, which would explain the lead they were following up.

I tried Mo-bot’s phone but there was no answer. Sci’s also rang through to voicemail.

By 6:30 p.m. Justine and I were starting to get worried.

“I don’t like this,” I said, fidgeting restlessly by the dining table.

Justine was flicking through the local channels, looking for news. “They’ll be okay,” she assured me, but I could see the concern writ large on her face.

“I think we should check the hospital,” I said. “And go to the hotel. Ask around. See if anyone has seen them. Talk to this Kendrick Stamp.”

“Jack,” Justine said, pointing at the TV.

She put the volume up on a news report in French. I couldn’t understand the detail, but it was clearly giving details of a shooting outside the Hotel Metropole in Monaco earlier in the day. I caught the gist of a police appeal for witnesses and the fact the victims were two American tourists, but that the attack was targeted and there was no evidence there was a danger to anyone else.

“You don’t think...” Justine began.

I didn’t get the chance to reply. My phone rang and I answered immediately.

“Mr. Morgan, this is Valerie Chevalier. Your colleagues Maureen Roth and Seymour Kloppenberg have been shot. They are in the Princess Grace Hospital receiving treatment. Their conditions are grave.”

“I’m on my way,” I said, before hanging up.

Justine looked at me expectantly, but it took me a moment to break the news because a pit had opened inside me and sucked all the sense and joy from life.

Their conditions are grave.

I understood the significance of those words and could hardly cope with the horror of them being applied to my friends.

Finally, I looked at Justine, my eyes wet.

“Mo and Sci have been shot.”