McGarvey dealt the prince the six of hearts faceup.
Salman shrugged again, and he flipped his down cards over to show a jack and a king. His hand totaled six.
McGarvey threw his head back and laughed, then gave Salman a vicious look of satisfaction as he turned his cards over. “Sept,” he said. “I win, you lose.” He laughed. “Again.”
The young woman with Salman reached down to kiss him on the cheek, but he brushed her away like she was an annoying insect. “Eight hundred thousand?” He directed his question to the chef de parti.
McGarvey shook his head, and slid the shoe to the man on his right. “I came looking for a challenge, not a slaughter.”
Salman turned, his eyes narrow, a slight sardonic smile on his thin lips. “Perhaps another time, then? Another, more interesting game?”
“I’m looking forward to it.” McGarvey got up, tossed two black plaques to the croupier and chef de parti, and walked out, the crowd parting respectfully for him.
The opening shot had been fired, and walking back to his hotel McGarvey found that he was actually looking forward to whatever came next. He wasn’t yet certain that Salman and Khalil were one and the same, but he was certain that he would kill the man, and do it very soon.
THIRTY-EIGHT
McGarvey was having a late breakfast on the balcony in his suite when Salman’s secretary telephoned at nine. “The prince would like you to join him aboard the yacht this morning to continue your conversation, then perhaps take a short cruise this afternoon.”
McGarvey smiled. Salman was reacting exactly the way a man with an overinflated ego would act. “What time should I be there?”
“A car and driver are at the front door of your hotel now.”
“Tell the prince I’d be happy to join him,” McGarvey said, and he hung up the phone.
From where he sat, he could see Salman’s yacht docked at the outer pier just inside the breakwater across the bay in La Condamine. A French Alouette helicopter was parked on the ship’s afterdeck, but the distance was too great for McGarvey to make out much detail, except that the ship was very large and all her flags were flying as if the prince was celebrating something.
Which, McGarvey mused, he was if he was the terrorist Khalil.
McGarvey took his time finishing his coffee and croissants and the Herald Tribune before he took a leisurely shower and got dressed in white slacks, a soft yellow, light, V-neck sweater, and tasseled loafers without socks. He debated arming himself, but decided against it. This invitation to the yacht was too open and public a move for anything untoward to happen, unless it was an accident, for which a pistol would be no defense.
The car was a pearl-white Mercedes S500 with Spanish plates, and if the very large German driver was impatient for having been kept waiting, he did not show it as he opened the rear door.
“There was a pretty girl with the prince at the casino last night. Tall, blonde. Will she be aboard this morning?” McGarvey asked.
The driver nodded. “That would be Inge Poulsen, the prince’s social secretary.”
McGarvey snapped his fingers, as he’d forgotten something. “Give me a minute,” he said, and he walked back into the hotel.
He went to the concierge, an attractive young woman in a light blue blazer with the hotel’s crest on the breast pocket. She looked up, smiling. “Good morning, Monsieur Brewster. How may I be of service?”
“How soon can you have a dozen roses delivered to Prince Salman’s yacht?”
“How soon would you like them delivered?”
“Within fifteen minutes.”
Her smile broadened only slightly. “That won’t be a problem, sir.” She took a card from a drawer, and handed it and a pen across to McGarvey.
“They’re to be delivered in person to Mademoiselle Inge Poulsen,” McGarvey said. He wrote on the card as the concierge dialed a number. From an admirer. Kirk.
She said something into the phone, then nodded and hung up. “The flowers will be delivered to the yacht within fifteen minutes.”
McGarvey handed her the card and a one-hundred-euro note, then put on his sunglasses and went back out to the car and driver Salman had sent for him. The docks were less than one thousand meters as the crow flies, but they had to skirt the bay, and traffic was heavy, so it took nearly ten minutes to get to the yacht.
The morning was warm. Only a slight breeze fluttered the flags that had been run up on halyards along the port and starboard and from the bow to the masthead above the bridge deck. The yacht was a Feadship, built in Holland. At 428 feet on deck, she was sleek, with a long tapering bow, a sharply sloping superstructure with sweeping curved lines, until the stern, where a wide sundeck overlooked an even wider helipad.
In the bright sunlight the brilliant white hull sparkled like a precious stone under a jeweler’s lamp. No other yacht in the harbor came close to the splendor of the Bedouin Wanderer, and in fact, Salman’s ship was larger than Adnan Khashoggi’s before him, and even larger than the yacht on which Aristotle Onassis had hosted parties with his wife Jacqueline.
A ship’s officer, dressed in an immaculate white uniform shirt and shorts, waited at the head of the boarding ladder, but McGarvey ignored him and sauntered down the dock to the stern of the yacht for a better look at the helicopter. It looked new, its registration numbers were Spanish, and although the rotors were still tied down, the windshield was not covered and the engine air intake ports were not blocked. Nor were the tips of the rotors sheathed, as they would be if the ship was preparing to sail this afternoon with the chopper on deck.
A florist’s van pulled up behind the Mercedes, and the delivery boy brought a long flower box across to the yacht. He said something to the officer, who gave McGarvey a questioning look, and then led the boy aft and up to the sundeck above the helipad.
After a moment or two the delivery boy followed the officer back to the main deck and left the ship. In the meantime, Inge Poulsen, the beautiful woman from the night before, came to the rail of the sundeck. She wore only the thong bottom of a white bikini. Her breasts were small, her shoulders and neck narrow, her face tiny with high cheekbones, and when she lifted her sunglasses, McGarvey could see that her eyes were very large.
She had taken the roses out of the box and held them to her nose.
McGarvey raised his sunglasses. “Bon matin, Mademoiselle. Le parfum c’est agreable?”
“Très bien, merci. Mais vous êtes trop aimable.”
“Not at all,” McGarvey said. He nodded to her, then walked back to the gangway and boarded the yacht. “I believe that I’m expected,” he told the officer who looked nervous, as if he was expecting trouble.
“The prince has been awaiting your arrival, sir. Are you familiar with the yacht?”
McGarvey glanced through the big windows into the main saloon, and shook his head. “Never been here before.” He looked at the officer. “Where is everybody?”
“There are no guests this morning,” the officer said. He pointed the way aft. “The prince is in the salle de gym. I’ll show you.”
McGarvey almost laughed. On a boat such as this, owned by a man such as Salman, there would not simply be an exercise room. He followed the officer beneath the stairs that led up to the helipad and sundeck, through a door, and down a short, plushly carpeted and expensively decorated passageway to a second door.
“Just here, Monsieur,” the officer said, opening the door and stepping aside to allow McGarvey to pass.