Pale hazel clouds around the Cessna parted, revealing the coastal city of Nice. Stanley marveled at how, even on this hoary January afternoon, the Mediterranean beat the hell out of any painting. Even he, with the aesthetic equivalent of a tin ear, could understand why the French flocked to the patches of jagged, black-rock beach here.
From the airport, he drove a rental car twenty miles west to the village of Saint-Jean Cap Ferrat, a watercolor come to life on the Cote d’Azur. The combination of natural splendor, ideal climate, and glamour had made the Cap a favorite holiday destination of the European aristocracy and, for that reason, the latest hot spot of Hollywood’s elite.
Stanley first drove by Jerry Hill’s house. Last summer Hill had purchased the sprawling adobe villa, which was painted a shade of yellow Stanley speculated was called canary. Its flat roof was tiled with the traditional red clay. Behind it was a swimming pool-or, possibly, a multi-tiered artwork in white ceramic that contained turquoise water whose far edge ran along the hundred-foot-high seawall. The property’s many bushes and hedges were so smooth and symmetrical, it appeared that they were maintained with a barber’s scissors and a level rather than with a hedge trimmer. The grand front lawn was as spotless as a kitchen floor; when a tiny leaf fluttered down from a lime tree, Stanley half expected a servant to come running.
The neighboring home was nearly a twin to Hill’s, but painted a robin’s-egg blue with a flamingo pink roof-yet, somehow, all in all, quite conservative, if not stately. It had a commanding view of vast and exquisitely manicured gardens as well as much of the Mediterranean. According to a DCRI report, Abdullah, under the name Charboneau, was renting this property for more per month than Stanley paid in rent per annum.
Stanley proceeded two miles to the staging area, a secluded elementary school whose students and faculty were on Christmas vacation. In the cafeteria, where most of the two hundred or so undersized chairs rested upside down on long tables, he conferred with his counterparts from the DCRI and the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, the international intelligence agency, who had brought along ninety-two members of the elite special ops unit they liked to call the Secret Army of Paris.
To avoid the risk of placing the Hill family in the cross fire, Stanley decided to grab Abdullah at the Charboneau villa, despite the presence of at least five armed guards.
Shortly after sundown, a man dressed as an Electricite de France worker cut the power to Charboneau and Hill’s entire road, enabling the special ops troops to advance under cover of darkness and establish a tight perimeter around Graceland-the code name du jour for Fat Elvis’s digs. Additional troops sealed off potential escape routes. Any noise was masked by the waves crashing against the rocky seawall.
There was a time when Stanley would have joined the assault team. Now he watched from the safety of a comfortable leather chair inside a contractor’s van parked by an empty house eight blocks away. His DCRI and DGSE counterparts occupied identical chairs on either side of him. The three men focused on the pair of large monitors relaying Graceland through miniature cameras concealed on the special ops agents.
As the troops began their covert advance, a bearded young man slid out of one of Graceland’s kitchen windows, apparently making a run for it. The two agents in closest proximity swapped uncertain glances, like outfielders circling underneath the same fly ball. A third agent reached a hand from behind a topiary bush, tripping the fugitive.
Stanley wondered whether Abdullah was using the bearded man as a diversion.
A moment later, Graceland’s grand, round-topped front door creaked inward. The frosted-glass transom and sidelights offered no clue as to who or what was within the cavernous foyer. As if drawn by a giant magnet, the Frenchmen’s rifles swung in unison toward the opening.
Hands over his head in surrender, Abdullah stepped out. He wore only an open terry cloth robe and sweatpants. The hairy belly that drooped over his silk boxer shorts was a larger version of his bloated, scruffy face. Squinting out at the forest of rifle barrels, he said, in thick North African-accented French, “What the fuck, we forget to pay the electric bill?”