Frank Connor paid off the taxi and presented himself to the doorman at the Diamond Club in Belgravia. “Tell Mr. Danko that Bill from California is here. I’ll be upstairs at the tables.”
Connor paid the exorbitant entrance fee and walked upstairs. The Diamond Club was a privately licensed casino catering to wealthy Eastern Europeans who had made the move to London in a big way over the past ten years. The club was divided into three floors. The ground floor offered an elegant bar and restaurant. The second floor housed the casino itself. And the third floor was reserved for private gaming and management.
Connor took a place at a blackjack table in the center of the room. At 1 a.m., action was lethargic, with no more than two dozen players scattered around the floor. Connor ordered a whisky and began to play cards. After three hands, he’d lost two hundred pounds. He signaled to the floor captain and informed him that he’d like to see Mr. Danko. The captain nodded politely and continued on his rounds. Ten minutes and another two hundred pounds to the worse, Connor still didn’t see Danko.
Enough, he told himself. He was done being polite.
Connor ordered a second whisky loosened his tie, and began to really play. In ten minutes he was up a thousand pounds. In an hour he was up five thousand. He asked for a cigar, and when the captain returned with a Cohiba, Connor told him to tell Mr. Danko that unless he wanted to continue having a very unprofitable night, he’d better get his Bosnian butt down here faster than he could say Slobodan Milošević.
The captain left. To prove his point, Connor bet all or nothing on the next hand and drew an ace over king. Blackjack.
Danko showed up sixty seconds later. He was tall and slim, dark hair slicked back off his forehead, his Slavic stubble kept at an appropriate length, and he looked much too comfortable in a white dinner jacket.
“Hello, Frank. Long time.”
“Sit down.”
Danko dismissed the dealer and sat next to Connor. “What are you doing here?”
“I need your help.”
“Look around you. I’m out.”
Connor glanced around the casino before coming back to Danko. “I see the same guy. You know Rome. I need you to do a job for me there. Are your passports still in shape, or do you need me to run something up for you?”
Danko smiled, no longer so comfortable. “Frank, listen, I appreciate your interest. It’s a compliment, I know. But I’ve moved on. I’m forty. Too old for that kind of work. Come on. Give me a break.”
“No breaks tonight. Tonight is a break-free zone. Know what I mean? Now come on, get your stuff. You still keep that nifty rifle upstairs? Let’s go on up to your office and I can fill you in on the details. Job pays ten thousand dollars.”
“I make that much in a day here.” Danko leaned closer, so that the smell of his cologne was ripe in Connor’s nose. “I gave you seven years. Where’s the American citizenship you promised? Where’s the resettlement to California? You strung me along and then dumped me when you didn’t need me anymore.”
“I rescued your bony ass from an internment camp when you weighed ninety-six pounds. You owe me.”
“Thank you, Frank, but I think that I’ve paid you back.”
Connor considered this. “I can offer twenty thousand.”
“Frank, it’s time to go.”
Connor tried to pull Danko closer, but managed only to knock over his whisky and spill it onto Danko’s dapper jacket. “You may even know the target,” he continued, undeterred. “Emma Ransom. Remember her?”
“No, Frank. I don’t remember anybody or anything. That’s how you taught us.”
Danko lifted a hand, and two doormen were at the table a second later. “Take Mr. Connor downstairs,” he said. “Help him find a cab.”
“I’m still playing cards, you ungrateful Slavic piece of shit.”
“Time to go.”
Connor rose aggressively and one of the doormen grabbed him by the shoulders. Connor shook him off, then gathered his chips. Leaving, he flung a five-hundred-pound marker at Danko.
It missed.