Paul Laska would have very much liked to visit this beautiful nineteenth-century French estate in the summer. The swimming pool was exquisite, the beach below was private and pristine, and there was outdoor seating all over the back of the huge walled property, ideal natural nooks in the gardens and grounds set for relaxing or dining or enjoying a cocktail as the sun set.
But it was late October now, and though it was still quite lovely here, out in the back garden, with afternoon temperatures hovering in the lower sixties and evenings dipping down into the upper forties, there was not much in the way of outdoor recreation to be had for a seventy-year-old man. The pool and the Mediterranean were both frigid.
And in any case, Laska did not have time for frivolity. He was on a mission.
Saint Aygulf was a developed seaside town, without all the clutter and crowds of Saint Tropez, just to the south on the southern tip of the Bay of Saint Tropez. But it was as beautiful as its more famous neighbor; in fact, the exquisite villa, the hills behind it, and the water in front of it were, to put it mildly, paradise.
The property was not his own; it belonged instead to an A-list Hollywood actor who split his time between the West Coast of the United States and the southern coast of France. A call from a Laska aide to the actor’s people had secured the villa for the week, though Paul expected to be here less than a day.
It was well after nine p.m. when a burly Frenchman in his mid-fifties entered the back patio through the sliding glass doors from the library. He wore a blue blazer with a collar open to reveal his thick neck. He’d come up from Cannes, and he moved like a man who had someplace to be.
Laska stood from his chair by the infinity pool when the man approached.
“How wonderful to see you again, Paul.”
“Likewise, Fabrice. You are looking healthy and tan.”
“And you are looking like you are working too hard over there in America. I always tell you, ‘Come to the south of France, you will live forever.’”
“May I fix you a Cognac before dinner?”
“Merci.”
Laska stepped over to a rolling cart near his table by the pool. As the two men discussed the beautiful villa and the beautiful girlfriend of the actor who owned it, the Czech billionaire poured Cognac into a pair of brandy snifters and passed one to his guest. Fabrice Bertrand-Morel took the snifter, sipped, and nodded in appreciation.
Laska motioned for the Frenchman to take a seat at the table.
“You are always the gentleman, my dear Paul.”
Laska nodded with a smile as he warmed the cup of the snifter with e="3">his hand.
Then Bertrand-Morel finished the thought: “Which makes me wonder why you allow your bodyguards to search me for a wire. It was a little too intimate.”
The older man shrugged. “Israelis,” he said, as if that somehow explained the frisking that had just taken place inside the house.
Bertrand-Morel let it go. He held his snifter over the open flame of a tea-light candle on the table to warm it. “So, Paul. I enjoy seeing you in person, even if it comes with demands to lift my shirt and to loosen my belt. It has been so very long. But I am wondering, what could possibly be so très important that we would need to meet like this?”
“Perhaps the matter can wait until after dinner?”
“Let me hear it now. If it is important enough, then dinner can wait.”
Laska smiled. “Fabrice, I know you as a man who can assist in the most delicate of affairs.”
“I am at your service, as always.”
“I imagine you know of the John Clark matter that is on the news in the United States?” Laska inflected the statement as a question, but he had little doubt that the French investigator knew all about the matter.
“Oui, l’affaire Clark. Jack Ryan’s personal assassin, or so say the French papers.”
“It is every bit as grave a scandal as that. I need you, and your operatives, to find Mr. Clark.”
Fabrice Bertrand-Morel’s eyebrows rose slightly and he sipped his drink. “I can see how I could be asked to get involved with the hunt for this man, as my people are all over the world and very well connected. But what I do not understand, at all, is why I am being asked to do this by you. What is your involvement?”
Laska looked out at the bay. “I am a concerned citizen.”
Bertrand-Morel chuckled; his large frame shifted up and down in his chair as he did so. “I’m sorry, Paul. I need to know more than that to agree to this operation.”
Now the Czech-American turned his head to his guest. “All right, Fabrice. I am a concerned citizen who will see that your organization is paid whatever you wish to capture Mr. Clark and return him to the United States.”
“We can do this, although I understand the CIA is working the same mission at present. I worry there is the potential for stepping on one another’s toes.”
“The CIA does not want to catch the man. They will not get in the way of a motivated detective like yourself.”
“Are you doing this to help Edward Kealty?”
The older man nodded as he sipped his Cognac.
“Now I see why President Kealty’s people did not come to me about this.” The Frenchman nodded. “Am I to assume he has information that would be embarrassing to candidate Ryan?”
“The existence of John Clark is embarrassing to candidate Ryan. But without him captured, without the footage on the news of him being dragged into a police station, President Kealty looks impotent and the man remains a compelling mystery. We do not need him as a mystery. We need him as a prisoner. A criminal.”
“‘We,’ Paul?”
“I am speaking as an American and a lover of the rule of law.”
width="1em">“Yes, of course you are, mon ami. I will begin work immediately on finding your Mr. Clark. I assume you will be footing the bill? Not the American taxpayer?”
“You will give me the figures personally, and I will have my foundation reimburse you. No invoice.”
“Pas de problème. Your credit is always good.”